Georgia Governor Brian Kemp has signed three election-related bills that proponents say are designed to increase election security. The bills restrict the number of voting machines available on election days, mandate more frequent audits of elections procedures, and require digital ballot images to be published online for the public to review, among other reforms. The ACLU of Georgia has indicated that it plans to challenge these laws in court.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The new laws solidify the ability of conservative activists to challenge the eligibility of voters who appear to have moved, a priority among Republicans who say outdated registrations could be used for fraud unless they’re more quickly removed. Few cases of illegal voting have been confirmed by State Election Board inquiries, and voting rights advocates say legitimate voters have been targeted by challenges.

Activists have contested more than 100,000 voter registrations since Georgia’s 2021 election law allowed any resident to challenge unlimited registrations within their counties. County election boards have rejected most of those challenges, often because they lack enough evidence to prove that a voter is no longer eligible to vote in Georgia.

The laws also satisfy conservative demands for more access for partisan election observers, visible watermarks printed on ballots and an eventual move to stop counting ballots based on computer QR codes, which are unreadable by the human eye.

In addition, digital ballot images will be available online for public review, fewer voting machines will be required in election day polling places, and third-party presidential candidates will automatically appear on Georgia ballots if they also are on the ballot in at least 20 other states and territories.

The Colorado legislature recently passed a bill that would require all county jails and detention facilities to provide in-person polling stations and facilitate mail-in ballots for eligible voters. If signed by Governor Jared Polis, the legislation would make Colorado the only state in the country to require jails to provide in-person voting opportunities. In Denver, which adopted similar reforms for its jails, turnout among individuals in custody actually exceeds turnout of the rest of the voting population.

Bolts:

It would require that sheriffs establish polling stations within local jails across Colorado each general election to operate for at least one six-hour period. It would also require every jail to designate a ballot drop-off location, for those who want to vote by mail.

Colorado would be the first state to enact a mandate of this sort. Nevada, Massachusetts, and Washington state have recently passed initiatives meant to make jail voting easier, but none feature the central requirement of Colorado’s: turning local jails into in-person polling places. . . .

The reform does not affect who is already eligible to vote. Colorado, like nearly every other state, bars people from voting while they are incarcerated if they’ve been convicted of a felony, and SB 72 keeps it that way. Rather, the bill seeks to improve ballot access for a group of people who already have the right to vote but face major barriers to actually using it.

Should Polis sign SB 72 into law, it’ll go into effect in time for this November’s election. (A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to tell Bolts whether Polis, a Democrat, would sign the bill. Several people who’ve worked closely on it said they expect he will.) This bill would not apply to primary elections; its proponents say they hope to expand it in the future.

The full text of Senate Bill 72 is available here.

Civil rights groups representing Black voters in the Louisiana congressional redistricting case have asked the Supreme Court to stay a three-judge panel’s ruling that the state’s latest map, which creates an additional minority opportunity district, is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The application argues that compliance with Section 2 inevitably requires some consideration of race, but that consideration did not—and does not—constitute impermissible racial discrimination. The application also invokes the principle that stays should generally be granted when an injunction is issued in the period leading up to an election, a principle the Supreme Court has routinely deployed in recent years to block injunctions won by voting rights plaintiffs.

Roll Call:

The State Legislature drew that map in January with a second Black-opportunity district following years of litigation over the Voting Rights Act. Wednesday’s application asked the justices to let the state use that January map this fall.

The applicants, who include some of the original plaintiffs in the case, said last month’s ruling left the state without a map at all, and state officials said they must have one in place by May 15 to conduct the state’s elections.

According to court records, the three-judge panel set a June timeline for the court to approve a new map for the state. But the application said that would be too late, as well as an injustice to Black voters in the state after the Supreme Court itself had prevented the drawing of a new map before the 2022 election.

The full emergency stay application is available here.

Louisiana has given notice that it will appeal a three-judge panel’s recent preliminary injunction against use of the state’s latest congressional maps. The panel found that the new district lines, drawn after a district court found the state needed to create a second minority opportunity district to comply with the Voting Rights Act, violated the Equal Protection Clause. The notice of appeal comes just hours after the panel gave the state a June 3 deadline for passing an interim remedial map.

The full amended notice of appeal:

Notice is hereby given that the State of Louisiana, by and through Elizabeth Murrill, the Attorney General of Louisiana, and Nancy Landry, in her official capacity as Louisiana Secretary of State, hereby appeal this Court’s April 30, 2024 order granting a preliminary injunction, ECF No. 198, as well as orders relating to that injunction (including ECF No. 219), to the United States Supreme Court. This appeal is taken pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1253.

A three-judge panel has given the Louisiana legislature a June 3 deadline for passing a new congressional map after the panel held its previous map violated the Equal Protection Clause. That prior map was enacted after a district court required the state to create a second minority opportunity district to comply with the Voting Rights Act. If the state fails to enact a remedial map that complies with both orders by June 3, the panel “intends to order the use of an interim remedial Congressional districting map on June 4, 2024.”

Associated Press:

A panel of federal judges who recently threw out a congressional election map giving Louisiana a second mostly Black district said Tuesday the state Legislature must pass a new map by June 3 or face having the panel impose one on the state. 

However, voting rights advocates and Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill said they would take an appeal in defense of the new map to the Supreme Court. 

“Today, three federal judges who never spent a day running an election have ignored uncontradicted testimony that we need a map by May 15, and once again turned Louisiana’s Congressional elections upside down,” Murrill said an emailed statement.

The latest order from a panel of two federal district judges and an appellate judge said they would begin work on a remedial plan while giving lawmakers a chance to come up with a plan during the current regular legislative session, which must end by June 3.

“To be clear, the fact that the Court is proceeding with the remedial phase of this case does not foreclose the Louisiana Legislature from exercising its ‘sovereign interest’ by drawing a legally compliant map,” the judges wrote.

Whatever comes out of the court could impact the makeup of the next U.S. Congress. Given voting patterns, a new mostly Black district would give Democrats the chance to capture another House seat. The map that was recently tossed converted District 6, represented by Republican Rep. Garret Graves, into a mostly Black district. Democratic state Sen. Cleo Fields, a former congressman who is Black, had said he would run for the seat.

The full scheduling order is available here

In the race to be Maryland’s next Senator, Prince George’s County executive Angela Alsobrooks has received the lion’s share of endorsements from Democratic party leaders. But U.S. House Rep. David Trone, who is challenging Alsobrooks for the Democratic  nomination, is looking to build support through an advantage of his own: spending $57 million of his own money. That self-financing effort, one of the largest in history, has fueled Trone’s 9-to-1 spending advantage over Alsobrooks—and has shone a spotlight on the unprecedented rise in self-funding by wealthy candidates in American elections.

NBC News:

But Trone’s self-funding is only the biggest example of a broader trend in congressional races. Candidates gave $61 million to their House campaigns in 2023 and $70 million in the Senate, with nearly half of that coming from Trone in his Senate bid. 

Ohio Republican Matt Dolan ($7 million) and Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida ($3.5 million) were the next-biggest Senate self-funders in 2023, followed by Ohio Republican Bernie Moreno ($3 million), who defeated Dolan in the Senate GOP primary earlier this year.

Seven other Senate candidates whose campaigns are still active all cut themselves seven-figure checks last year: six Republicans (Maryland’s Robin Ficker, Utah’s Brad Wilson, Florida’s Keith Gross, Montana’s Tim Sheehy, Michigan’s Sandy Pensler and Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormick) and one Democrat, Florida’s Stanley Campbell. 

Seventeen House candidates gave their campaigns at least $1 million last year; former Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., loaned his campaign $2.4 million to finance his attempted return to Congress, and Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., gave his campaign more than $2 million.

There’s been a fairly steady increase in congressional campaign self-funding in recent years, and a massive leap since the early 2000s. 

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This week I’ll be blogging on ELB along with Kunal Dixit. Kunal is about to graduate from HLS and has been a terrific member of HLS’s Election Law Clinic. Welcome, Kunal!