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
Category Archives: voter id
You can find the opinion in Greater Birmingham Industries v. Alabama at this link. This opinion is very troubling because the majority held it was appropriate to grant summary judgment to the state of Alabama despite evidence that at least … Continue reading
WRAL: Legislative Republicans called on the courts Thursday to lift an injunction and require voter to present photo identification at the polls this November, saying a bill they passed earlier this year should satisfy the last arguments against the rule.“It … Continue reading
You can find the 27-page unanimous decision, with no explanation for the 3 year delay in this case, at this link. This is mostly a loss for the plaintiffs in these cases, as the appeals court rejected many (though not … Continue reading
Release: Voter ID laws are becoming more common and more strict, and the stakes for American democracy are high and growing higher by the year. New research from the University of California San Diego provides evidence that voter ID laws … Continue reading
News & Observer: Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper signed a wide-ranging elections bill into law Friday, HB 1169. It passed the N.C. General Assembly with the support of every Republican and most Democrats. In addition to its other changes listed above, the … Continue reading
Des Moines Register: The Iowa Legislature adjourned its coronavirus-disrupted 2020 session Sunday after a marathon overnight debate that saw the passage of a mostly status quo budget and a controversial expansion of the state’s voter ID program. Marc Elias suggests litigation if this … Continue reading
Read his oped. … Continue reading
See here and here. … Continue reading
CLC Release: [Click here to read a joint statement on the settlement by North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger, Spirit Lake Nation, and Standing Rock Sioux Tribe]In the wake of the district court’s denial of the State’s motion to dismiss, … Continue reading
Josh Douglas Courier-Journal oped. … Continue reading
From the conclusion of today’s opinion in Priorities USA v. State of Missouri: Because the affidavit requirement of sections 115.427.2(1) and 115.427.3 is misleading and contradictory, the circuit court’s judgment declaring the affidavit requirement unconstitutional is affirmed. Further, the circuit … Continue reading
CNN: ” The measure, introduced Friday by state Sen. Andrew La Grone, is a proposed state constitutional amendment that would require a poll worker to ‘review a photograph or digital image of each voter to verify the identity of the voter … Continue reading
AP: North Carolina Republican lawmakers made a last-minute plea on Friday to a federal judge as they seek to save a photo identification requirement to vote that had been set to begin with the March primary.The GOP legislative leaders already … Continue reading
Josh Douglas in the Courier-Journal: [T]he [proposed] law requires all voters to show a photo ID issued by the federal or state government that lists an expiration date. University-issued student IDs count. But IDs from the University of Kentucky and … Continue reading
The law, enacted over the Governor’s veto, usually requires a qualifying photo ID to vote. As compared to the previous ID law passed in the wake of Shelby County and invalidated in 2016, it expands the list of acceptable IDs … Continue reading
Jonathan Zasloff has posted this paper on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Requiring photo identification before voting has generated fiercely contested litigation and scholarly literature. This Article attempts to move the debate forward by examining how precisely Voter ID works … Continue reading
Michael G. DeCrescenzo and Kenneth R. Mayer have written this article for ELJ. Here is the abstract: How much did Wisconsin’s voter identification requirement matter in 2016? We conducted a survey of registered nonvoters in the counties surrounding the cities … Continue reading
Winston-Salem Journal: For the second time in four years, a version of North Carolina’s election law was in federal court, this time based on allegations that if enacted, black and Latino voters would be disenfranchised.Attorneys for the North Carolina NAACP … Continue reading
Helpful info from VoteRiders. … Continue reading
Here is the appellate opinion in Brakebill v. Jaeger. … Continue reading
The denial of a preliminary injunction in North Carolina. The opinion is here … with not much by way of explanation. … Continue reading
The Des Moines Register reports. … Continue reading
The WSJ Editorial Board thinks not: Democrats accuse Republicans of suppressing the minority vote with laws to ensure ballot integrity. But then how do they explain record minority turnout last November? If Republicans were trying to stop minorities from voting, … Continue reading
WRAL: Legislation meant to work around a problem the state has had getting college IDs approved for voting identification was filed Tuesday.Lawmakers had been promising this fix. Most of the state’s universities failed to satisfy legal requirements set out by the General … Continue reading
WRAL: Student IDs from a dozen University of North Carolina schools, including UNC-Chapel Hill, didn’t get the signoff they needed Friday for students to use them at the polls during the 2020 elections.With a deadline in state law passing, it’s … Continue reading
On February 22, Rick noted that a North Carolina state trial court had voided a constitutional amendment pertaining to voter ID, because the amendment had been put on the ballot by a legislature elected pursuant to an unconstitutional gerrymander. Today, … Continue reading
There’s been ongoing litigation over the legality of Wisconsin’s voter ID rule (and other changes to Wisconsin election law). And by “ongoing,” I mean largely “in stasis”: opinions from the trial court were issued in July 2016 (and partially stayed … Continue reading
Release: The Wake County Superior Court today ruled that the illegally gerrymandered North Carolina General Assembly did not have legal authority to place constitutional amendments on the ballot because it did not act with the full will of the people of North … Continue reading
New paper: Strict ID Laws Don’t Stop Voters: Evidence from a U.S. Nationwide Panel, 2008-2016 Enrico Cantoni, Vincent Pons NBER Working Paper No. 25522Issued in February 2019NBER Program(s):Political Economy U.S. states increasingly require identification to vote – an ostensive attempt to … Continue reading
NBER: Effects of Photo ID Laws on Registration and Turnout: Evidence from Rhode IslandFrancesco Maria Esposito, Diego Focanti, Justine S. HastingsNBER Working Paper No. 25503Issued in January 2019NBER Program(s):Law and Economics, Public Economics, Political Economy We study the effect of photo ID laws on voting … Continue reading
The Chronicle: A new voter ID law will require photo identification to cast a ballot in North Carolina. Earlier drafts of the bill disallowed students at private colleges in the state—such as Duke—from using their college ID card to vote, … Continue reading
Indiana Lawyer: Indianapolis attorney Robbin Stewart was raised to value the right to vote. In his home state of Delaware, Stewart watched his mother work as a citizen lobbyist to protect the environment, and he got his first taste of … Continue reading
Editorial: Open access to N.C. polls needs to be part of voter ID script (Capitol Broadcasting) — If there’s one thing state legislative leaders should realize from Monday’s legislative committee meeting, it is that it will take more than … Continue reading
News & Observer editorial. … Continue reading
News & Observer: Boards of elections would provide registration cards with photos, and students at North Carolina’s public universities would be able to use their school IDs to vote under a draft voter ID bill that Republican legislators released Tuesday. … Continue reading
In collaboration with Take Care, Election Law Blog is pleased to present a series of posts offering thoughts on legislation to reform the U.S. electoral process. Election reform is back on Congress’s agenda. Having won control of the U.S. House, Democratic leaders have said that … Continue reading
NYT: The judge, Daniel L. Hovland of the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota, wrote in a brief, two-page order that it was simply too close to Election Day to do so. He noted that “federal courts are … Continue reading
This looks like something good for a journalist to follow up on. A reader writes: “Texas apparently no longer interested in making voter ID available.I’ve been looking at Texas’s voter ID page (http://www.votetexas.gov/mobile/eic/index.htm) and noticed that, as of today, two … Continue reading
Missourian: As the Nov. 6 general election approaches, a new shake-up regarding voter identification laws has election authorities across Missouri — including in Boone County — on their toes. Cole County Judge Richard Callahan on Tuesday blocked provisions of the … Continue reading
AP: Arkansas’ highest court on Thursday upheld a voter ID law that is nearly identical to a restriction struck down by the court four years ago. The 5-2 decision from the Arkansas Supreme Court means the law, which requires voters … Continue reading
The court’s opinion and order is here. … Continue reading
Justices Ginsburg and Kagan (but surprisingly not Justice Sotomayor) dissented, citing the Purcell Principle. Justice Kavanaugh did not participate. Breaking: #SCOTUS allows North Dakota voter ID requirement, which had been enjoined during the primaries, to be enforced during the general … Continue reading
Vox has this interview with Allan Lichtman, discussing what he thinks was the Framers’ biggest mistake. … Continue reading
NPR reports on the work of Spread the Vote, one of the two main national organizations (VoteRiders is the other) helping eligible voters get the IDs they need. … Continue reading
Read the order granting a preliminary injunction and a related order. The orders relate to signature matching requirements for absentee ballots, the time to cast such ballots, and voter id requirements. … Continue reading
The News & Observer reports. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement from the Supreme Court last week, was certainly the “swing justice” in key cases on major issues from abortion to gay rights. But when … Continue reading
With no fanfare, the mandate issued from the 5th Circuit in the Texas voter ID case yesterday, ending the appeal. As I wrote back in April, the panel issued a “fundamentally disingenuous opinion” by Judge Edith Jones, which was really … Continue reading
Order: The State of North Dakota moves to stay the district court’s injunction of April 3, 2018, concerning certain subsections of the North Dakota elections statute, N.D.C.C. § 16.1-01- 04.1. Based primarily on the imminent primary election date of June … Continue reading