Monthly Archives: April 2025

In a preliminary order issued over the weekend likely designed to split the baby, a federal district court in North Carolina has told North Carolina election officials that they should follow a state court’s ruling to figure out which of thousands of military and overseas ballots cast by North Carolina voters should be thrown out in a dispute over the winner of a November state Supreme Court election. But the federal court also told election officials not to certify the winner of that election until it can decide if the state court–ordered remedy is unconstitutional. This is a recipe for disaster. The federal court should have heeded the advice of Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2000 Bush v. Gore case about not allowing a questionable redo of vote totals to be announced before there’s been a ruling on the legality of the redo. The judge’s order in North Carolina could well lead people to believe the state Supreme Court election was stolen no matter what happens. Read Article

North Dakota governor signs bill doing away with Fargo’s unusual voting system | Jack Dura/Associated Press

North Dakota’s governor signed a bill Wednesday to prohibit the unusual voting system used by his state’s largest city. The bill signed by Republican Gov. Kelly Armstrong bans ranked-choice and approval voting. Ranked-choice voting, in which voters rank their preferred candidates, is used in Alaska and Maine and various cities, but not in North Dakota. Voters select as many candidates as they want under approval voting; the top vote-getters win. Fargo adopted approval voting via ballot initiative in 2018 and uses the system for electing the mayor and four city commissioners. The measure came after previous elections in which candidates won commission seats with just slivers of the overall vote in crowded races. Read Article

Pennsylvania: Provisional ballots are increasingly being rejected for technical errors | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Provisional ballots are meant to be a fail-safe for voters, to be used when there are questions about eligibility or whether someone has already voted. They give election officials a chance to verify the ballot should be counted before they’re added to the tally. But in Pennsylvania, that fail-safe is failing more often. Between 2016 and 2024, the percentage of provisional ballots rejected due to technical errors on the outer envelope have increased from .95% to 4.92%. In that time, the commonwealth added no-excuse mail voting, a major change that dramatically increased the number of mail ballots counties receive and led to a related increase in the use of provisional ballots. Read Article

Utah: Audit finds some elections offices stored passwords in plain sight, other security issues | Bridger Beal-Cvetko/KSL

Auditors are recommending several changes to ensure the cybersecurity of Utah’s elections after finding a handful of potential “vulnerabilities” with password management and improperly stored election computers. While the report from the Office of the Legislative Auditor General found that election computers were not connected to the internet, as required by state law, it said an election server in one county had hardware that could be used to connect to the internet. The report also advised election officials to fix other issues after finding that some election workers in small counties stored usernames and passwords on paper notes next to computers and that two election computers in a pair of smaller counties were stored “in unsecured locations to which members of the public had regular access.” Because election equipment cannot be connected to the internet, hackers would need physical access to breach any of the computers, which is why auditors said it’s risky to have that equipment accessible to the general public. Read Article

Wisconsin: Shouting match erupts at Elections Commission over Milwaukee ballot shortages | Molly Beck/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A routine meeting of the Wisconsin Elections Commission erupted into a shouting match Thursday after one member attempted to discuss Milwaukee officials temporarily running out of ballots during the April 1 election. Commission chairwoman Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, threatened to eject Republican commissioner Bob Spindell for bringing up a topic that was not on the meeting’s agenda and refusing to stop after she ruled the comment out of order. Spindell ignored Jacobs’ order to cease discussing the matter, triggering an explosive back-and-forth with shouting and gavel pounding. The outburst took place during a rare in-person meeting of the commission in Madison. Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe and vice-chairman Don Millis, who were sitting next to the arguing commissioners, stared straight ahead during the spat without showing any emotion. Read Article

‘The Most Extraordinary Attack on Voting Rights in American History’: How the SAVE Act Upends Over a Century and a Half of Protecting Voting | Matt Cohen, and Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The 15th Amendment banned racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act, a century later, finally made the amendment’s promise a reality for Black and Brown voters across the South. The 1993 Motor Voter law helped get millions of Americans onto the rolls and established the government’s responsibility to make registration accessible to all. For over a century and a half, the U.S. government has largely acted as a force to protect and expand voting rights — often in opposition to efforts by state or local officials to limit them. Until now, neither house of Congress had ever passed legislation to significantly restrict access to the ballot — except for rare symbolic measures, as when the House passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act last year despite Democratic control of the Senate and then-President Joe Biden’s pledge that he would veto it. But with the House’s approval of the same measure Thursday, that’s changed. Read Article

National: Challenges to Trump’s order on elections rest on a simple premise: the Constitution | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

I have been reading federal lawsuits about voting for the better part of a decade, and I am used to being buried in references to things like 52 U.S. Code § 20507(b)(2) or parsing whatever the Supreme Court recently decided Purcell v. Gonzalez means in practice for this election cycle. This week was different. Within days of President Donald Trump’s executive order to overhaul election administration, three lawsuits were filed in federal court to challenge it (a multistate coalition filed a fourth lawsuit on Thursday). And unlike the usual dense filings packed with obscure statutory citations, these complaints are startlingly simple. Think “Constitution 101” simple. These lawsuits quote the Constitution directly — no bells, no whistles. We’re talking Article I and II, with a heavy assist from the 10th Amendment. These are the kind of things that I used to teach high school debate students, who could argue them with more clarity than some members of Congress. No offense. (Some offense.) Read Article

National: House passes bill to require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections | Rebecca Shabad and Kyle Stewart/NBC

The House passed a bill Thursday that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections in an effort to codify one of President Donald Trump’s executive actions in his second term. Lawmakers approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act in a 220-208 vote, with four Democrats — Reps. Ed Case of Hawaii, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — joining every Republican present in support of the measure. Election officials, voting rights advocates and Democrats have warned that the SAVE Act could disenfranchise millions of eligible voters who don’t have easy access to identification documents, in addition to women who changed their last names after marriage. Read Article

National: Trump targets Dominion lawyers on same day judge finds Newsmax defamed voting software company | Justin Baragona/The Independent

On the same day a Delaware judge ruled that MAGA cable channel Newsmax had made false and defamatory statements about Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting the law firm representing the voting software company. Having already helped Dominion grab a landmark $787.5m settlement from Fox News over its election lies, Susman Godfrey is just the latest firm singled out for punishment by the president for assisting or employing Trump’s political rivals. In an executive order Trump signed at the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president is seeking to revoke the security clearances of the firm’s attorneys, slash federal contracts and limit their access to government buildings, making it extremely difficult for the agency to represent clients with any claims or business with the federal government. Read Article

National: Trump is dismantling election security networks. State officials are alarmed | Bob Ortega/CNN

Misha Pride, then the mayor of South Portland, Maine, was greeting voters early on Election Day when police cars suddenly swarmed outside the city’s community center with lights flashing. “Possible shooting,” the city manager texted Pride. Officers locked down the center. Authorities quickly determined the call to police was a hoax, one of hundreds of threats and cyberattacks last November aimed at disrupting the presidential election – some pushed by partisan zealots, others perpetrated by foreign state actors including Russia and China. Voting at the community center was delayed by only ten minutes. The attacks in Maine, and elsewhere across the US, had minimal impact because of strong preparation and quick work by an information-sharing and analysis network of hundreds of federal, state and local election, cybersecurity and law-enforcement officials. But now key parts of this network, much of it built over the past eight years, are being systematically dismantled by the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, a CNN investigation has found – leaving election offices across the country scrambling to protect against future threats. Read Article

‘Hands Off!’ protesters rally against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk | Alaa Elassar, Shania Shelton and Mina Allen/CNN

Over 1,400 “Hands Off!” mass-action protests were held at state capitols, federal buildings, congressional offices, Social Security’s headquarters, parks and city halls throughout the entire country – anywhere “we can make sure they hear us,” organizers said. “Hands Off!” demands “an end to this billionaire power grab.” “Whether you are mobilized by the attacks on our democracy, the slashing of jobs, the invasion of privacy, or the assault on our services – this moment is for you,” the event flyers state. “We are setting out to build a massive, visible, national rejection of this crisis.” Read Article

National: Election officials alarmed as Trump orders probe of former cybersecurity chief | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Trump issued a presidential memorandum Wednesday demanding an investigation by the Justice and Homeland Security departments into his former top cybersecurity official, escalating a campaign of retribution aimed at those who contradicted his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The memo directly names Christopher Krebs, former Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director; a second memo named Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official during Trump’s first term. Trump’s move shocked many who work in elections. While some current and former officials brushed off the order as political theater, others are taking it far more seriously — for example, hiring an attorney, scrubbing social media, and warning their spouse. The range of reactions reflects both the extraordinary nature of Trump’s use of executive authority to target individuals and a deep uncertainty about how far it might go. Read Article

Arizona voter citizenship rulings lead to disparate treatment for voters across state | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Arizona voters who haven’t proven their citizenship are being treated differently across the state as they try to update their voter registration, in some cases seeing their registration suspended entirely until they provide proof, Votebeat has found. The disparate treatment across county lines comes as election officials decide how to comply with recent court rulings on state laws governing proof of citizenship, according to the responses nine out of 15 county recorder offices provided to Votebeat. The confusion over how to treat these voter updates is the latest complication arising from Arizona’s unique laws, which require voters to document their citizenship in order to vote in state and local elections. Read Article

Colorado lawmakers back new election process for appointed legislators | Seth Klamann/The Denver Post

Colorado lawmakers on Monday backed a pair of bills to reform the much-maligned process that helped seat nearly a quarter of the legislature, while rejecting a competing proposal that would’ve required changing the state constitution. The two favored bills, which cleared an initial House committee, are essentially a package aimed at changing the vacancy-filling process: House Bill 1315 would allow lawmakers appointed via a vacancy committee to serve no more than a full session in the Capitol before standing for an election, while House Bill 1319 would enact similar election parameters for vacancy-appointed commissioners in large counties. Both bills are bipartisan, and they passed the House’s State, Civic, Military and Veteran Affairs Committee in succession. The often-criticized vacancy committee process is used when an elected official leaves office early. That official’s party then convenes a committee of party officials and volunteers to elect a new representative. Read Article

Georgia elections bill dies, leaving absentee ballot drop off before Election Day intact | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Georgia House let an elections overhaul bill die Friday night, failing to take a vote on proposals that would have withdrawn the state from a voter registration accuracy organization and banned absentee ballot drop-off the weekend before Election Day. The bill’s defeat marks the first year since Donald Trump’s narrow loss in 2020 that Georgia Republicans haven’t changed state election laws. House leaders never called the bill up for a vote before the General Assembly ended this year’s legislative session. Instead, the House created a study committee to review Georgia’s touchscreen voting equipment, a possible switch to hand-marked paper ballots and voter registration accuracy. Read Article

Michigan: With Trump’s executive order, thousands of military voters could see their rights curtailed | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Thousands of Michigan voters — including scores of military members and their families — could see their voting rights curtailed if President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on voting is allowed to take effect. The order, issued late last month, introduces major changes to how elections would be run. Among its most concerning provisions for those who serve in the military or live outside the U.S.: a requirement that all voters submit proof of citizenship and that all ballots, including those coming from abroad, must arrive by the close of polls on Election Day to be counted. Voters who live overseas or serve in the military are largely protected by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, known as UOCAVA. It guarantees that those living away from their home states or around the world can still cast their ballots. Reaqd Article

New Jersey: Territorialism, poorly trained poll workers contributed to Burlington County’s 2024 election ‘failures,’ report says | Alfred Lubrano/The Philadelphia Inquirer

In a pointed report released Thursday, a North Jersey law firm found numerous problems with how Burlington County conducted the 2024 election last November, which was characterized by “unacceptable” long lines and voting delays. The report, written by Connell Foley LLP, a law firm in Roseland, Essex County, outlines findings of “a culture of territorialism,” “partisan tension,” and “personality conflicts” among countywide election offices. The report also cited poll workers who refused to accept delivery of a new voting machine that would have alleviated delays; poorly trained poll workers who did not understand the voting process; and election officials who would “not work together at all,” among other problems. Read Article

Nevada: Federal appeals court dismisses lawsuit challenging election worker protection law | Gabby Birenbaum and Eric Neugeboren/The Nevada Independent

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has dismissed a challenge to a Nevada law to protect election workers, likely ending the effort to decriminalize their harassment. In a unanimous opinion released Monday, the three-member panel of judges unanimously dismissed the suit brought by four former poll and ballot counting observers, who were represented in the case by Sigal Chattah, the new interim U.S. attorney for the District of Nevada, the state’s highest federal law enforcement officer. The ruling comes one year after federal Judge Cristina Silva blocked the lawsuit over a lack of standing. Chattah appealed the decision one month later. Read Article

North Carolina Supreme Court Halts Voter Eligibility Review in Contested Judicial Race | Nick Corasaniti and Eduardo Medina/The New York Times

The North Carolina Supreme Court temporarily blocked a lower court’s order from taking effect on Monday that would have required tens of thousands of people who voted in 2024 to verify their eligibility. The higher court stayed that order while it considers an appeal in a long-running dispute over the election. The ruling on Monday is the latest twist in a five-month battle over a seat on the very same State Supreme Court. Justice Allison Riggs, the Democratic incumbent, won the election in November over Judge Jefferson Griffin, the Republican challenger, by 734 votes. Judge Griffin has challenged the result, seeking to dismiss the ballots cast by roughly 65,000 people. He has argued that a majority of them were ineligible to vote because they did not supply certain required identification data when they registered — though the omission was because of administrative errors and no fault of the voters. The race is the last 2024 statewide election in the nation that remains uncertified. Read Article

Oregon bill that would require county election clerks to livestream voting processes sparks concerns | Carlos Fuentes/The Oregonian

A proposed bill that would require every Oregon county election office to livestream its vote tabulation processes could improve trust in the state’s elections, its proponents say. But officials who’d have to implement the bill, which was introduced by a Republican senator, say it would be costly and logistically difficult. Senate Bill 1054 would require each of Oregon’s 36 county clerks to livestream footage of the rooms in which ballots are counted and from ballot drop sites during election seasons. It would also require those officials to store those recordings for two years. Read Article

Texas bill makes verifying hand-counted elections easier | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A year after Gillespie County Republicans hand counted thousands of primary ballots, a bill from a Republican Texas lawmaker whose district includes parts of the area could make it easier to verify the accuracy of hand-counted election results. State Rep. Ellen Troxclair of Lakeway filed House Bill 3113, which would require counties opting for hand counts to use a ballot that is capable of being scanned and tabulated by voting machines using optical scanning technology. By law, Gillespie County Republicans were allowed to design their own ballots, and they didn’t choose to use ballots that could be scanned. That meant their primary results could only be verified manually. Read Article

Wisconsin legislators seek to give candidates a way off the ballot besides dying | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

After two high-profile cases in which candidates were unable to remove their names from the ballot, Wisconsin lawmakers are weighing a change to one of the nation’s strictest withdrawal laws. Under current Wisconsin law, once candidates qualify for the ballot, they can only be removed if they die. The restriction received renewed attention in August 2024, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., running as an independent, unsuccessfully sought to withdraw from the Wisconsin presidential ballot — a request that ultimately reached the state Supreme Court. Read Article

National: New Trump order targets barcodes on ballots. Why? And what will that mean? | Jessica Huseman/Votebeat

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on regulating elections is striking for the way it asserts broad powers for the executive branch that go far beyond what’s prescribed in the Constitution or sanctioned by courts. Experts expect the order to face legal challenges for that reason. But what’s also striking about the order is how it seeks to dictate some arcane details of the way voting systems work in some of America: Specifically, it bans the machine-readable barcodes or QR codes that are sometimes printed on ballots to help speed up vote counting. According to Verified Voting, an organization focused on election technology, there are 1,954 counties spread across 40 states that use voting machines that print QR or barcodes. Some have only a small number for use only by voters with disabilities (and would therefore not have to get rid of them), while other jurisdictions use them for all voters. Read Article

Georgia election security lawsuit dismissed after 7-year battle | Mark Niesse and David Wickert/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A federal judge has dismissed an epic court case challenging Georgia’s touchscreen voting system, ending the seven-year lawsuit that uncovered election security vulnerabilities and a breach in Coffee County. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg closed the case Monday but cited “substantial concerns” about Georgia’s voting technology, which uses touchscreens to print paper ballots. The case was a major legal test of Georgia’s voting technology, manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems and installed months before the 2020 election. The lawsuit alleged that the voting technology is dangerously vulnerable to tampering, hacks or programming errors that could change the outcome of an election. Read Article

Trump’s election order creates much confusion before the next federal election in 2026 | Christina A. Cassidy/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to change how U.S. elections are run is creating uncertainty for state and local election officials and worries about voter confusion before the next federal election, the 2026 midterms. Trump’s order also targets voting systems in a way that could require some counties to change machines without offering additional money to help them pay for it. It directs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an independent and bipartisan agency created by Congress, to amend voluntary standards for voting systems to prohibit devices that use a barcode or QR code on ballots, with an exception for ones designated for voters with disabilities. While there are voting systems that do not use barcodes, the process for states to replace equipment takes time, said Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director with Verified Voting. Election offices must get approval to spend for new voting systems, go through a procurement process, wait for manufacturers to deliver the equipment and eventually train workers on how to use it. “It’s hard for any state to procure and obtain and test new voting systems, and if there was some mad rush for many states to replace their voting systems at once, we don’t know how many systems manufacturers could supply,” Lindeman said. Read Article

National: Democratic attorneys general from 19 states sue Trump over his executive order on elections | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

Democratic attorneys general in 19 states are together suing Trump over his sweeping executive order on elections, saying that it is an illegal attempt to usurp state control of elections that “would cause imminent and irreparable harm” if the courts don’t intervene. The March 25 order, which Trump wrote would protect the integrity of elections, would require people to prove their citizenship when registering to vote. It would also set a national mail ballot receipt deadline of Election Day, require the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to rewrite voting machine certification standards, withhold federal funds from states that don’t use compliant machines, and require states to share their voter rolls with federal agencies. The order “sows confusion and sets the stage for chaos in Plaintiff States’ election systems, together with the threat of disenfranchisement,” the states wrote in the complaint, which was filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Thursday. The attorneys general emphasized that Congress has never required proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections and that states have the authority to dictate the deadline for mail ballots. Read Article

National: Democrats Sue to Block Trump Bid to Control Elections | Jacob Knutson/Democracy Docket

The Democratic Party is suing President Donald Trump over his sweeping executive order last week that attempted to wrest control of elections from the states. Filed Monday by Elias Law Group on behalf of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), and four national Democratic committees – the DNC, DGA, DSCC and DCCC – the lawsuit alleges Trump’s order is an illegal attempt to control how elections are administered, a power the Constitution grants to the states and Congress. “In the United States of America, the President does not get to dictate the rules of our elections,” the lawsuit reads. “Although the Order extensively reflects the President’s personal grievances, conspiratorial beliefs, and election denialism, nowhere does it (nor could it) identify any legal authority he possesses to impose such sweeping changes upon how Americans vote.” Read Article

National: Lawmakers to vote on bill targeting noncitizen voting: ‘There would be extensive uncertainty’ | Rachel Leingang/The Guardian

The myth that noncitizens are voting in large numbers in US elections wasn’t quashed with Donald Trump’s victory last year. Instead, a Republican bill that would make voting more difficult for millions of eligible US voters based on this false premise is expected to come up for a vote in the coming weeks. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility act, or Save act, is aimed at eliminating rare instances of noncitizens voting in US elections. It could disenfranchise swaths of eligible voters – including people who changed their names in marriage, young voters, naturalized citizens and tribal residents – by requiring onerous identification to vote. The bill comes after the US president signed an executive order on 25 March calling for requiring documentary proof of citizenship to be added to federal voter registration forms. If states don’t comply, they face federal funding cuts. Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, called the order “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the country’s history. Lawsuits are expected – several states have said the order is an unconstitutional federal overreach. Read Article

19 states sue over Trump’s voting executive order | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

Nineteen states are suing over President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive order on voting that he signed last week, saying it is “an unconstitutional attempt to seize control of elections” that will create barriers to voting that could disenfranchise millions. The lawsuit, which is the fourth legal challenge so far against the executive order, calls on a federal district court in Massachusetts to block several provisions of the executive order, which the attorneys general argue “usurps the States’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat.” “We are a democracy — not a monarchy — and this Executive Order is an authoritarian power grab,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement. “With this Order, this President is prioritizing his own quest for unchecked power above the rights and will of the public.” Read Article

National: Experts urge Congress to reauthorize state and local cyber grant program | Sophia Fox-Sowell/StateScoop