I’ve been getting a lot of press queries about the latest Trump filing in Pennsylvania, this one in federal court, seeking to delay the certification of the vote. I don’t have time to write up a full analysis, but I’m … Continue reading
Category Archives: The Voting Wars
Emily Bazelon in the NYT Magazine: America’s pandemic election was a remarkable, unlikely feat. “The challenges and obstacles were perhaps the highest in history, or at least since the Spanish Flu in 1918, and we saw fewer problems than in … Continue reading
WSJ: President Trump said Friday he would continue to fight election results that showed him on the cusp of losing to former Vice President Joe Biden. Privately, people familiar with the conversations say, advisers are urging him to prepare for that eventuality.Mr. … Continue reading
Hamm v. Boockvar, a state court case attacking some PA Secretary of State curing procedures. Hearing on Wednesday. Keep your eye on this one, and the other suit I wrote about earlier today. … Continue reading
NYT: With the election coming to a close, the Trump and Biden campaigns, voting rights organizations and conservative groups are raising money and dispatching armies of lawyers for what could become a state-by-state, county-by-county legal battle over which ballots will … Continue reading
Jessica Huseman: Donald Trump Jr. looked straight into a camera at the end of September as triumphant music rose in a crescendo. “The radical left are laying the groundwork to steal this election from my father,” he said. “We cannot … Continue reading
Josh Douglas at CNN: In at least 18 cases this year, federal trial courts ruled in favor of plaintiffs and put on hold various election rules, often due to the challenges of voting during the pandemic, only to see federal appeals courts … Continue reading
Reuters reports. … Continue reading
I spoke with Mary Harris of Slate’s “What’s Next” podcast about the state of play in the courts. … Continue reading
WaPo: Federal judges nominated by President Trump have largely ruled against efforts to loosen voting rules in the 2020 campaign amid the coronavirus pandemic and sided with Republicans seeking to enforce restrictions, underscoring Trump’s impact in reshaping the judiciary.An analysis by The … Continue reading
Justin here. I’m tracking the litigation over election issues related to COVID-19 … and the list of cases just hit 325. (The Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project also has a really useful sortable database of these cases, with more info. And … Continue reading
Guy Charles NBC oped: We turn to courts to help us address deficiencies in voting rules that are really not designed to stand up under any type of pressure, whether it is the pressure of close elections or the pressure … Continue reading
ProPublica: As ballots began pouring in by mail after Wisconsin’s April 7 primary, local election officials became increasingly perplexed over which ones to count.A federal judge had ordered that ballots arriving as many as six days after the election should … Continue reading
L.A. Times: A Memphis, Tenn., poll worker turned away people wearing Black Lives Matter T-shirts, saying they couldn’t vote. Robocalls warned thousands of Michigan residents that mail-in voting could put their personal information in the hands of debt collectors and … Continue reading
You can listen here. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: After a very long delay in an emergency election case, the shorthanded United States Supreme Court came to a 4-4 tie in an election law case out of Pennsylvania on Monday evening. While … Continue reading
NYT: The Texas case is one of at least eight major election disputes around the country in which Federal District Court judges sided with civil rights groups and Democrats in voting cases only to be stayed by the federal appeals … Continue reading
WaPo reports. … Continue reading
Nate Persily and Charles Stewart at The Monkey Cage: Americans are worried about this election. And who can blame them? Each day, a new story, whether true, false or overblown, creates fresh anxiety about mail-in voting or polling places.A battleground-state survey conducted … Continue reading
WaPo deep dive: Even as a coronavirus outbreak has upended the White House, Democrats and Republicans have been gaming out another potential crisis that experts agree could plunge the country into unprecedented turmoil — a contested election in the weeks … Continue reading
As I noted in this Slate piece earlier this week, “Generally, though, the Republican side may be far more successful in blocking lower court orders sought by Democrats and voting rights groups seeking to expand voting by mail. Although Democrats … Continue reading
Pam Fessler for NPR: With so many cases still up in the air, legal experts say it’s difficult to tell whether Democrats or Republicans are coming out ahead. Democrats have won numerous victories — including fending off a Republican effort … Continue reading
Marshall Cohen for CNN: After a string of early legal victories in voting rights cases, Democrats are now fighting on more challenging terrain in federal appeals courts across the country, and have seen some of their hard-fought victories wiped off … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: While the nation’s attention has been focused on the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis and the ensuing questions surrounding that, it’s important to remember there will still be an election in one month. … Continue reading
Ned Foley WaPo oped: In other words, although voters might be under the impression that they get to choose the president, in fact, the Constitution does not mandate that role. Ordinary voters have a say in the process only as … Continue reading
WRAL: A federal judge on Wednesday warned the State Board of Elections that recent changes to requirements for absentee mail-in voting in North Carolina do not have his approval.Those changes, outlined in a Sept. 22 memo from the state board … Continue reading
AP: They’ve been fighting in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over the cutoff date for counting mailed ballots, and in North Carolina over witness requirements. Ohio is grappling with drop boxes for ballots as Texas faces a court challenge over extra days … Continue reading
WaPo: For six months, the rules for how Americans can vote during the coronavirus pandemic have been locked in court battles while states across the country rushed to embrace mail ballots.Now, with just weeks to go before the Nov. 3 election, voting … Continue reading
Erwin Chemerinsky NYT oped. … Continue reading
Politico: A year before President Donald Trump alarmed Americans with talk of disputing elections last week, his team started building a massive legal network to do just that.Dozens of lawyers from three major law firms have been hired. Thousands of volunteer … Continue reading
News & Observer: The Republican members of the state elections board who resigned in protest earlier this week gave the public false information, the board’s leader said in an emergency meeting Friday.He and the other Democrats who remain on the … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Madison’s parks have become the latest fronts in Wisconsin’s voting wars.The liberal stronghold is hosting “Democracy in the Park” events on Saturday at more than 200 locations across the city, where poll workers wearing yellow vests will assist … Continue reading
Leah Litman in the Atlantic: The case captions tell much of the story. Republican Party officials, including those in President Trump’s reelection campaign, are trying to stop states’ efforts to expand voting—they are suing to prevent mail-in voting, extensions for … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: With less than six weeks to go before Election Day, and with over 250 COVID-related election lawsuits filed across 45 states, the litigation strategy of the Trump campaign and their allies has … Continue reading
Bart Gellman: There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens … Continue reading
Watch: This webinar, recorded on September 21, 2020, covers international perspectives relevant to the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election. Co-sponsored by The UCI Office of Global Engagement, UCI Law and the Jack W. Peltason Center for the Study of Democracy, this … Continue reading
The federal case that had been put on hold pending the resolution of a parallel case in the Pa Supreme Court is now back on following the Pa. Supreme Court’s resolution of related state law claims. Here’s the Trump Campaign’s … Continue reading
NYT: Ahead of an election that seems certain to have the most litigated voting rules ever, Democrats won important cases over the past week in the critical states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.But appearances can be fleeting. Even with only … Continue reading
Zoe Tillman for BuzzFeed: President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican Party are devoting millions of dollars to wage a state-by-state legal battle against mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic, not only suing state officials but also intervening in cases where … Continue reading
Ben Jacobs: With less than seven weeks to the general election, both Democrats and Republicans are preparing for a drawn-out fight to decide who serves the next four years in the White House — with at least some of the … Continue reading
NYT explainer. … Continue reading
Business Insider reports. … Continue reading
WaPo: A federal appeals court on Friday struggled with how to weigh North Carolina’s history of discriminatory voting restrictions while examining the state’s latest election law that requires voters to present photo identification before casting ballots.The new photo ID provision has been … Continue reading
NYT: Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign is establishing a major new legal operation, bringing in two former solicitors general and hundreds of lawyers in what the campaign billed as the largest election protection program in presidential campaign history.Legal battles are … Continue reading
Important Ned Foley in Politico: /already, both nominees have suggested that if they lose, it will be because of wrongdoing on the other side, raising the prospect that they might not accept a loss. In a speech in August, President … Continue reading
Reuters does a deep dive into the small cadre of vote suppressors such as von Spakovsky, Christian Adams and Cleta Mitchell: This year, the Trump campaign and the Republican Party have cited concerns about voter fraud in a nationwide legal … Continue reading
Amber Phillips for WaPo. … Continue reading
When I linked to news last week that super lawyer Ben Ginsberg was retiring from Jones Day I wrote: Superstar election lawyer Ben, who served as national counsel for the Romney 2012 campaign, has been an important voice in recent … Continue reading
Great news: A team at the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project has just launched the COVID-Related Election Litigation Tracker, a free, searchable, litigation tracker to help the interested public find, sort and better understand the flood of COVID-related litigation. The pandemic … Continue reading
Politico Q and A (on Justin’s ELB Covid-Election litigation list): Stanton: You track the number of election-related lawsuits that have been filed. I understand that we’re now well above 150 cases? Levitt: It was 226 the last time I checked. It’s moving … Continue reading