Warren Stewart – Page 205 – The Voting News

New Jersey officials sought to tamp down concerns ahead of the state’s primary voting Tuesday, after criminal charges over alleged mail-ballot fraud marred a local election in Paterson, N.J. State officials emphasized that voter fraud is rare and said measures are being taken to protect mail-in ballots. The primary is being conducted mostly by mail and was delayed from its original date of June 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic. Security measures include verifying mail voters’ signatures against voter-registration records, cross-checking lists of mail and in-person voters to ensure no one votes twice, allowing voters to drop off their ballots at their county board of election in case they don’t trust the mail, and encouraging voters to alert officials if they notice anything suspicious, said New Jersey secretary-of-state spokeswoman Alicia D’Alessandro. Several counties also said that they placed their ballot drop-off boxes under security-camera surveillance. The state is voting in the presidential races and in down-ballot contests, including a Democratic primary to challenge U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew, who switched parties and became a Republican last year. The scrutiny comes after New Jersey’s attorney general announced voting-fraud charges in June against four men—including two winning candidates—over allegations involving mail-in ballots during a nonpartisan May election in Paterson, a solidly Democratic city. Those two candidates are registered Democrats, according to the local county clerk’s office. Several of the charges related to alleged improper collection of mail-in ballots from other voters.

New York: One Small Vote for Lockport, NY, One Giant Lesson for 2020 America | Jim Shultz/The New York Review of Books

The great debate over voting by mail has begun. President Trump has blasted it as an invitation to widespread fraud. He tweeted in June, “IT WILL BE THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” and has warned that Democrats plan to distribute ballots to undocumented immigrants, and that foreign governments will flood our mailboxes with false ballots. On the Democratic side, Senator Amy Klobuchar, taking stock of a potential new spike of Covid-19 infections just in time for November’s presidential vote, has declared: “In a democracy, no one should be forced to choose between health and the right to vote.” April’s Wisconsin primary already offered a chilling look at what happens when going to the polls runs into a pandemic. More than seven thousand poll workers refused to work because they feared getting sick, leaving thousands of mask-clad voters standing in line for hours. On the other hand, absentee balloting leapt from 140,000 voters in 2016 to more than a million in this election—but not without glitches that left almost ten thousand voters without the ballots they had legally requested. This November’s presidential election will certainly be the most heated and consequential in a generation. What we cannot afford is for that election also to become a democratic farce amid the ravages of a pandemic. In the rising national debate over voting by mail, somewhere between the claims of fraud on one side and of panacea on the other, lies a tricky middle ground called reality: What would a nationwide election-by-mail really look like? What bumps in the road should we prepare for?

Virginia: Elections Board Extends Filing Deadline for House Hopefuls | Brad Kutner/Courthouse News

The Virginia Board of Elections voted to extend a campaign filing deadline for several congressional candidates Tuesday afternoon, citing confusion caused by postponed conventions and primaries. “These requirements give certainty to the election calendar and give legitimacy to the election process,” Board of Elections Chair Robert Brink said in a meeting conducted virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic. “After the deadline everyone knows who the candidates will be… but we’re not getting legitimacy or certainty.” As with every other election around the country, the outbreak of Covid-19 was linked to the mix-up. Between an executive order from Governor Ralph Northam and an order from a Richmond City judge, conventions and primary dates were pushed back to accommodate virus-related concerns. They did not, however, change the deadlines for ballot paperwork as defined by state law. Still, a 2-1 majority of the state elections board won the day after hearing from the public and candidates during the nearly hour-long hearing, voting to give candidates 10 more days to file.

Wisconsin: Appeals court reverses Wisconsin voting restrictions rulings | Todd Richmond/Associated Press

A federal appeals court panel upheld a host of Republican-authored voting restrictions in Wisconsin on Monday, handing conservatives a significant win in a pair of lawsuits just months before residents in the battleground state cast their ballots for president. The three-judge panel —all Republican appointees— found that the state can restrict early voting hours and restored a requirement that people must live in a district for 28 days, not 10, before they can vote. The panel also said emailing and faxing absentee ballots is unconstitutional. The state’s photo ID requirement for voters wasn’t in question, although the panel did find that expired student IDs are acceptable at the polls. The court blocked an option to allow people to vote without an ID if they show an affidavit saying they tried to obtain one. Judge Frank Easterbrook, who wrote the opinion, noted that the restrictions don’t burden people in the state, where voters still enjoy more ways to register, long poll hours on Election Day and absentee voting options than in other states. “Wisconsin has lots of rules that make voting easier,” Easterbrook wrote. “These facts matter when assessing challenges to a handful of rules that make voting harder.”

National: Supreme Court says states may require presidential electors to support popular-vote winner | Robert Barnes/The Washington Post

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that states may require presidential electors to support the winner of the popular vote and punish or replace those who don’t, settling a disputed issue in advance of this fall’s election. Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court, and settled the disputed “faithless elector” issue before it affected the coming presidential contest. The Washington state law at issue “reflects a tradition more than two centuries old,” she wrote. “In that practice, electors are not free agents; they are to vote for the candidate whom the state’s voters have chosen.” Lower courts had split on the issue, with one saying the Constitution forbids dictating how such officials cast their ballots. Both red and blue states urged the justices to settle the matter in advance of the “white hot” glare of the 2020 election. They said they feared a handful of independent-minded members of the electoral college deciding the next president. The court considered cases from the state of Washington and Colorado. Washington moved to fine Peter Bret Chiafalo and two others $1,000 after they voted for Colin Powell when the electoral college convened after the 2016 election. They had pledged to vote for Hillary Clinton, who won the state’s popular vote.

National: Younger Americans embrace mail-in voting, if they can figure out how | Amanda Golden/NBC

Engagement among young voters is higher this year than it was in the 2016 and 2018 elections, and they’re enthusiastic about voting by mail in November, but access to information about registration and how to vote during the coronavirus pandemic could be an issue, a new poll shows. The poll by the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement, or CIRCLE, found that 83 percent of young voters said they believe young people have the power to change the country, with 60 percent feeling they’re part of a movement that will vote to express its views and 79 percent saying the pandemic has helped them realize that politics affect their lives. But the survey also highlighted the challenges to participating in the election because it’s being held during a national health crisis and young voters aren’t getting clear and accurate information about online registration and mail-in voting. A third said they didn’t know whether they could register to vote online in their states. Among those who said they did know, 25 percent were incorrect. In addition, only 24 percent of those polled had voted by mail before.

National: Conservative groups sue to make pandemic voting even harder | Nicholas Stephanopoulos/Slate

Until recently, litigation about voting during the COVID-19 crisis followed a predictable pattern. Voters would complain about states’ restrictive regulations, conservatives would rush to the laws’ defense, and courts would referee the disputes. Powerhouse right-wing lawyers, however, have now opened a troubling new front in the voting wars. They now claim that it’s unconstitutional for states to make it easier to vote while the pandemic rages. Relaxations of voting rules supposedly give rise to fraudulent votes that impermissibly dilute the ballots cast by law-abiding citizens. This novel argument should—but probably won’t—be laughed out of court. As it spreads across the country, it threatens to put states in an impossible position: exposed to liability not just if they ignore, but also if they try to alleviate, the pandemic’s effects on the electoral process. Before this new breed of cases began appearing, most suits about voting during the pandemic had the same setup. Some existing electoral regulation—an eligibility limit for voting absentee, say, or a requirement that mail-in ballots be notarized—would prevent certain people from voting. So they would go to court alleging an excessive burden on their constitutionally protected right to vote. In response, some state official would argue that the policy served an important interest, most often the prevention of fraud. In April, the Supreme Court decided one of the many such cases, involving the rules for absentee voting in Wisconsin’s primary election.

National: Senate Democrats urge Pompeo to ensure Americans living overseas can vote in November | Maggie Miller/The Hill

A group of Senate Democrats led by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Ron Wyden (Ore.), and Bob Menendez (N.J.) are urging the State Department to take steps to ensure military personnel and other Americans living overseas are able to vote in the November general election. In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent last week, the group of more than a dozen senators asked for details on the agency’s plan to ensure all Americans living overseas were able to receive and send back absentee ballots in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The pandemic continues to restrict travel and mail service in many countries around the world,” the senators wrote. “Without proper planning, this could jeopardize the ability for Americans overseas, including U.S. service members and diplomats, to vote in the November election.” They pointed to concerns around U.S. embassies and consulates, normally responsible for assisting with the voting process for those living overseas, not being fully staffed during the pandemic. The senators also questioned whether embassies were planning voting information campaigns, and what the process was for those living near embassies and consulates to drop off their ballots. “We recognize that there may be conditions in individual countries that are beyond the control of U.S. officials that could make voting more difficult, but we must take steps now to attempt to overcome those challenges,” the Democrats wrote.

National: Virus vs. voting: Behind the high-risk presidential primary elections | Katie Pyzyk/Smart Cities Dive

Milwaukee voters stood just inches apart in lines that stretched for blocks outside of voting centers on April 7, all waiting to cast ballots in the state’s presidential primary. On a typical Election Day, passersby wouldn’t bat an eye at this scene. But on this Election Day — and every that has passed since early March — the prevalence of COVID-19 has raised health and safety concerns that leave some voters weighing the value of health versus that of participating in the democratic process. The proximity of Milwaukee’s voters followed Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ last-minute attempt to postpone the primary, as other states had done. The effort was blocked by the state Supreme Court, and as a result, only 3% of Milwaukee’s polling sites opened to serve a population of nearly 600,000. Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the think tank American Enterprise Institute, told Smart Cities Dive there are many states with leaders who are “either ignoring the risks or deliberately trying to tilt the balance to suppress voters.” “We’ve seen that in Wisconsin, and I think we’re going to see it in other places as well,” he said.

Arkansas: Virus OK as excuse for voting absentee in Arkansas, Governor says | John Moritz/Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Any Arkansans who fear going to the polls this fall during the coronavirus pandemic can use their concerns as an excuse to vote absentee, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Thursday. The governor, who had not previously committed to expanding the use of mail-in or absentee ballots during the election, made the announcement alongside the chairmen of the state’s Republican and Democratic parties, as well as Secretary of State John Thurston. Arkansas law allows voters to request absentee ballots if they will be “unavoidably absent” on Election Day or if they have illnesses or physical disabilities. Thurston said last week in a news release that he believed the law will allow voters to choose whether to vote absentee during the pandemic, an interpretation with which Hutchinson said he concurred. “They just simply have a concern, a fear of going to the polling place because of the covid-19, that’s enough of a reason” to vote absentee, Hutchinson said.

Delaware: Vote by mail coming for fall elections; advocate reports confusion over presidential primary options | Sophia Schmidt/Delaware First Media

Gov. John Carney signed the vote by mail legislation Wednesday. It allows all voters to return their ballots by mail without a traditional absentee excuse through the end of this year. Under the legislation, the State Election Commissioner must mail an application to receive a mail-in ballot to every qualified, registered voter sixty days before the election. Each voter must then complete and return the application. They will then receive a ballot, envelope and instructions, to be returned by mail. No ballots can be tabulated until Election Day. Voters will still have the option to vote in person. Carney said at a virtual bill signing he sees the mail-in option as “critically important” for the elections this fall. State Rep. Valerie Longhurst sponsored the legislation in an effort to help Delawareans vote safely despite COVID-19. “This just makes it easier because we don’t know what’s going to happen in November with this pandemic, and we’re just thinking ahead and being proactive instead of being reactive,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

Georgia: Old voting machines mothballed at port, saving tax money | Mark Niesse/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgia’s old voting computers will be moved to a government warehouse at the Port of Savannah, saving taxpayers about $432,000 a year in storage costs. U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg recently approved the agreement, which resolves concerns about the expense of preserving 30,000 voting touchscreens for an election security lawsuit. Plaintiffs in the case want to inspect the computers to find out whether they were infected by viruses or malware. The 18-year-old computers, which recorded votes electronically, were replaced this year by a voting system that uses new touchscreens and also prints out paper ballots. The Georgia Ports Authority will store the obsolete equipment, which would fill 48 semi-trailers, at no ongoing cost to the state. The government will pay to transport the computers from rented warehouses to the port.

Kentucky: Coronavirus threatened to make a mess of Kentucky’s primary. It could be a model instead. | Zach Montellaro/Politico

Coronavirus has upended elections around the country since the pandemic landed in America, and last month, it was feared Kentucky would be the next disaster. National figures from Hillary Clinton to LeBron James warned of impending calamity in the state, focusing on a dramatic decrease in polling places, especially in Louisville. But after the votes came in, Kentucky earned measured praise from voting rights advocates for how it largely sidestepped the missing ballots, long lines and other problems faced by many states amid coronavirus. The Democratic governor and Republican secretary of state reached bipartisan agreement on a massive expansion of absentee voting, leading to the highest primary turnout in Kentucky since the hard-fought 2008 presidential primary. Now, voting rights experts say other states should be reaching out to Kentucky for advice, as a potential blueprint for scaling up pandemic-safe voting for the November elections. “I think Kentucky could be a model for states that have not done a lot of absentee voting prior, or they’ve had excuse absentee, in terms of scalability,” said Amber McReynolds, chief executive officer of the National Vote At Home Institute and a former elections director in Denver, Colo., when the state instituted one of the broadest vote-by-mail programs in the country. Just over 1 million Kentuckians voted in the primary despite the pandemic, the highest primary turnout in the state in 12 years. Roughly 75 percent of the votes were cast via absentee ballot, said Secretary of State Michael Adams. Kentucky’s size means the changes they made won’t be as easy to scale in some states, especially in a general election scenario, but the primary also went much better than other states’ so far this year.

Massachusetts: Voters will get applications to vote by mail now that voting reform bill is law | Steph Solis/MassLive

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker signed a bill that will allow residents to submit mail-in ballots to cast their votes in the state primary and general election because of the coronavirus pandemic. The $8 million voting reform bill allows people to vote by mail in a general election without needing to designate any reason the Sept. 1 primary and Nov. 3 general elections, a first for Massachusetts. But the expanded vote-by-mail provisions aren’t permanent: the measures expire Dec. 31. The voting law also allows early in-person voting for the state primary for the first time. Early voting for the state primary will take place between Aug. 22 and Aug. 28. For the general election, early voting runs from Oct. 17 and 30, making polling places available for two weekends. Secretary of State William Galvin’s office must must mail out applications to households by July 15 so voters can decide if they want to vote by mail for the primary. He must also mail out vote-by-mail applications for the general election by Sept. 14. The secretary’s office would have to conduct a public awareness campaign.

Ohio: Elections boards must email or call absentee voters who don’t provide identifying information | Rick Rouan/The Columbus Dispatch

Ohio elections officials must email or call voters who haven’t provided all the necessary information on absentee ballots for the general election in November, not just send them a notice in the mail. As the state prepares for a surge in voting by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose issued a directive Monday outlining that and other steps that the local boards of elections must take for the fall election. The secretary of state’s office will send absentee ballot applications to about 8 million registered voters in the state, and LaRose has said Ohio could see an unprecedented number of votes cast by mail. The state conducted its primary almost entirely through the mail after polls were shut down hours before they were set to open March 17 to prevent the virus from spreading. Instead, the primary ran through late April, with most voters required to cast absentee ballots. State lawmakers so far have preserved in-person voting, with LaRose’s support, but lingering fears about spreading the coronavirus are expected to drive more Ohioans to cast absentee ballots.

Pennsylvania: 2020 election lawsuits could shape who votes and how ballots are counted | Jonathan Lai/Philadelphia Inquirer

With four months until November’s election, a flurry of lawsuits in state and federal courts is seeking to change election rules in Pennsylvania and dozens of other states around the country. They could shape how people cast their ballots and whether those votes are counted. The latest salvo landed this week when the Trump campaign and Republican National Committee filed a federal lawsuit challenging Pennsylvania’s use of mail ballot drop boxes, its procedures for counting mail ballots, and restrictions on poll watchers. It marked a shift, with the GOP on offense in the state for the first time this election cycle instead of defending against Democratic and progressive groups’ legal challenges. That and other lawsuits are part of a national fight unfolding, particularly across swing states such as Pennsylvania, where small margins could decide who wins the presidency in November. And the fight comes amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has made voting more complicated than normal. “We are seeing a surge in litigation,” said Wendy R. Weiser, head of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “There’s been an increasing number of lawsuits around election administration and voting rights across the country.”

Vermont: Debate continues over mail-in voting | Pandemic 2020 | Keith Whitcomb Jr./Rutland Herald

While registered voters in Vermont likely will be mailed ballots for the General Election in November, the practice remains the subject of debate. Secretary of State Jim Condos stated in an email Monday that his office is working with town clerks on a directive that will be issued shortly — one that will create the process for mailing a ballot to every active registered voter for the General Election in November. Voters still can show up in person at the polls or use the existing absentee voting system. “The only major change we are planning for regarding the 2020 November General Election is the pro-active mailing of ballots to every active registered voter,” Condos stated. “Challenged voters will not be mailed a ballot, and would need to affirm their eligibility to register to vote with their Town Clerk, and request their ballot, vote early at the Clerk’s office, or vote at the polls on Election Day.” Changes to the voting process are being considered in states across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Vermont, Democrats and Republicans have been debating the issue in heated exchanges.

Wisconsin: Five largest cities awarded $6.3 million in effort to make elections safer amid coronavirus pandemic | Mary Spicuzza/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Wisconsin’s five largest cities are being awarded more than $6 million to help administer this year’s elections during the coronavirus pandemic. The cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Racine and Kenosha are set to receive a combined $6.3 million in grants from the nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life. The funding for the “Wisconsin Safe Voting Plan” comes as the state is expected to play a key role in this year’s presidential election. It also comes after some people in Milwaukee and Green Bay waited in line — sometimes for several hours — to vote in the state’s April election, and delayed or missing mail-in ballots frustrated people around the state. The grant aims to help election officials administer safe elections despite budget gaps that have worsened during the ongoing pandemic, and will be used to help the cities open voting sites, set up drive-thru and drop box locations, provide personal protective equipment (PPE) for poll workers and recruit and train poll workers. The grants have been approved by the nonprofit and will soon be awarded to the municipalities. Some of the cities require the Common Council to accept the grants. In Milwaukee, that vote could come as soon as tomorrow.

California: Smooth Vote-by-Mail Elections in Colorado, Utah Provide Model for California | Guy Marzorati/KQED

The primaries conducted in Colorado and Utah this week played out like a California election official’s dream: Record turnout. Voting centers without lines. And a robust election workforce with ample protective gear. “We were able to set a record turnout for a state primary, even during the pandemic,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The smooth administration of two largely vote-by-mail elections this week provides a model for California, where officials are preparing to send every voter a mail ballot in the fall. The smooth administration of two largely vote-by-mail elections this week provides a model for California, where officials are preparing to send every voter a mail ballot in the fall. Roughly three-quarters of California voters already receive a ballot in the mail. But with the spread of COVID-19 threatening the safety of in-person voting in November, Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators from both parties have moved to expand options for voters to cast their ballot at home.

Florida: Lawsuit seeks to force Florida counties to preserve digital ballot images | Allison Ross/Tampa Bay Times

A national nonprofit that advocates for election security has spearheaded a lawsuit against Florida Secretary of State Laurel Lee and several county elections officials in an attempt to force them to preserve images of ballots that are made when paper ballots are scanned into voting machines. The lawsuit, filed late Wednesday in Leon County Circuit Court, asks that the state issue instructions in time for the Aug. 18 primary election to require all county supervisors of elections to capture and preserve the images. The group of plaintiffs includes the Florida Democratic Party, three state legislators who are up for re-election and Dan Helm, a Democrat running for Pinellas County supervisor of elections. Other voters are also plaintiffs, including Susan Pynchon, executive director of the Florida Fair Elections Coalition. The suit names Lee, who oversees the state’e elections system, as a defendant, along with the state’s director of the division of elections and the supervisors of elections in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Broward, Orange, Lee, Duval, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.

National: Trump suggests delaying presidential election as dire economic data released | Ed Pilkington, Joanna Walters, Julian Borger and David Smith/The Guardian

Donald Trump has floated the idea of delaying November’s presidential election, repeating his false claim that widespread voting by mail from home would result in a “fraudulent” result. Trump made the incendiary proposal, which is not within his power to order, in a Thursday morning tweet that came as the country reeled from disastrous economic news and a coronavirus death toll that now exceeds 150,000 people. The suggestion prompted swift and fervent rejections from experts and critics, as well as high-profile members of his own party. Trump claimed without evidence that “universal mail-in voting” would lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”. The president also claimed the result would be a “great embarrassment to the USA”, and raised the prospect of a postponement. “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???” he tweeted. But the US constitution grants the power to set an election date to Congress, not the president. “No, Mr. President. No. You don’t have the power to move the election. Nor should it be moved,” Ellen Weintraub, a commissioner with the US Federal Election Commission, tweeted. “States and localities are asking you and Congress for funds so they can properly run the safe and secure elections all Americans want. Why don’t you work on that?”

National: States Step Up Cybersecurity Efforts Ahead of the 2020 Election | Adam Stone/StateTech Magazine

In the Buckeye State, officials are doing more than just keeping an eye on the upcoming national election. As the threat of cyber tampering looms large, state and local leaders are working diligently to ensure voting is secure. “We want to set the tone for the rest of the nation,” says Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who last year issued a 34-point directive to guide state, county and local efforts on election cyber strategies. It calls for the use of event logging and intrusion detection tools, along with segmentation — disconnecting voting apparatus from external networks. “We want to make sure our boards of elections aren’t leaving a door open by being attached to other, less secure assets,” LaRose says. Ohio may be out in front, but it is hardly alone. Authorities in all 50 states are taking steps not only to secure the vote but also to ensure that the public perceives that vote as valid. They are getting help from the federal government, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an operational component under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Experts say the aggressive action is justified, given the high likelihood that adversarial nations and other bad actors could try to tamper with the general election.

Editorials: We don’t have to have chaos when America votes this fall | Joshua A. Douglas/CNN

The predictions for Kentucky’s primary this year were dire: massive lines at the polls. A single polling place for over 600,000 voters in the state’s largest city, Louisville, with minority voters impacted the most. Lines lasting all night. The reality was much different: a relatively smooth day, with minuscule lines in most of the state and over a million votes cast, the most ever in a Kentucky primary. To be sure, there were a couple of significant problems, particularly with wait times of up to two hours in Lexington and a terrible initial poll closing in Louisville. Importantly, the Louisville voters who were still making their way from the parking lot to the vote center and were shut out at 6:00 pm when polls closed — and then were banging on the doors to be let in — were allowed to vote after a judge issued an injunction to keep the polls open an additional thirty minutes. Moreover, a single polling place for a large county makes it unjustifiably harder for some people to exercise their fundamental right to vote and is especially galling in a city with a large minority population. Opening just one polling place in Louisville, for example, surely disenfranchised voters who found the transportation hurdles insurmountable, with a disproportionate impact on minority voters. That said, the Kentucky primary was mostly successful. Over 75% of the vote was by mail, with thousands also taking advantage of two weeks of early voting. Kentucky normally requires an excuse to vote absentee and has very little early voting, so it was easier than ever to vote in this year’s primary.

Alabama: Splitting 5-4, Supreme Court Grants Alabama’s Request to Restore Voting Restrictions | Adam Liptak/The New York Times

By a 5-to-4 vote, the Supreme Court on Thursday blocked a trial judge’s order that would have made it easier for voters in three Alabama counties to use absentee ballots in this month’s primary runoff election. The court’s brief, unsigned order gave no reasons, which is typical when it rules on emergency applications, and it said the order would remain in effect while appeals moved forward. The court’s four more liberal members — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — said they would have rejected Alabama’s request. In March, Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, postponed the election in light of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, the official who oversees the state’s elections, John H. Merrill, Alabama’s secretary of state, a Republican, expanded the availability of absentee ballots to all voters who concluded that it was “impossible or unreasonable to vote at their voting place.” But Mr. Merrill did not relax two of the usual requirements for absentee voting: submission of a copy of a photo ID with a voter’s application for a ballot and submission of an affidavit signed by a notary public or two adult witnesses with the ballot itself.

Connecticut: Another suit seeks to expand absentee voting in an already litigious election year | Edmund H. Mahony/Hartford Courant

In what is shaping up as a litigious election season, a new lawsuit was filed Thursday to force the state to expand access to absentee ballots in the November election as a precaution against the coronavirus — a day after another suit argued that doing so would increase the likelihood of election fraud. Connecticut’s laws limiting the exercise of absentee ballots are among the country’s most restrictive, and the run-up to the next two elections — an Aug. 11 primary and Nov. 3 general election — has put COVID-19 at the center of the argument between those who want to expand access and those who don’t. The American Civil Liberties Union sued in federal court Thursday to force the state to make absentee ballots available to every eligible Connecticut voter in November. Failing to do so during a pandemic, when waiting in long poll lines could increase viral transmission, is a violation of the right to vote, the suit claims. The ACLU sued on behalf of a voting rights group, an elderly voter vulnerable to viral infection and the NAACP. The suit claims Blacks in Connecticut suffer disproportionately from health and voter access problems as victims of years of systemic racism. It filed similar ballot suits in Texas, Louisiana and Minnesota.

Florida: As elections go digital, Democratic legislators want state to preserve the images | Mary Ellen Klas/Miami Herald

Should Florida keep a digital image of every ballot that gets recorded on vote scanning machines? That is the question three Florida Democratic legislators want a judge to decide in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Leon County Circuit Court. They say it’s time the state stop the practice of destroying digital images of ballots after an election, especially with the state’s reputation for razor-thin election margins. The lawsuit, by Rep. Joseph S. Geller, D-Aventura, Rep. Geraldine Thompson, D-Windermere, Sen. Victor M. Torres, D-Kissimmee, Dan Helm, a candidate for Supervisor of Elections in Pinellas County, as well as eight voters and the Florida Democratic Party, asks a judge to require the state to order local election officials to retain the ballot images from optical scanning machines for 22 months. State and federal laws require that paper ballots be retained, but there is no requirement that the images used to verify the ballots be kept as well. The lawsuit asks that ballot images be treated as public records available for inspection and production. “We believe that local election officials want to follow the law, but they need clear direction from the Secretary of State, who is the chief elections officer for the State of Florida, and the courts,” said attorney Chris Sautter, who also serves as counsel to AUDIT Elections USA. The complaint was filed in the Second Judicial Circuit in Leon County.

Maryland: Officials exploring mail vendor options for November election after problems with ballots in primary | Talia Richman/Baltimore Sun

Maryland officials are looking at new vendors to potentially print and mail ballots for the November election after having several issues during the primary with the company the state used to handle sending out ballots. The June 2 election was Maryland’s first attempt at mostly mail-in voting, a move spurred by safety precautions related to the coronavirus pandemic. It used out-of-state mail vendor SeaChange. In Baltimore, some ballots were printed incorrectly, forcing election workers to manually transfer voters’ choices to new forms that could be scanned for correct results. Ballots also were delivered late to voters in the city and Montgomery County, which state election officials blamed on SeaChange. The vendor argued in turn that the state was late in sending it the necessary voter lists. Also, Prince George’s County voters initially were sent only Spanish-language instructions, while residents of Hagerstown didn’t get a court-ordered notice in their ballot packets. The state elections board issued a report Thursday to Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, summarizing how the last election went and outlining what steps would be taken in the future to ensure a smoother process.

Massachusetts: Vote-by-mail bill heads to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk | Steph Solis/MassLive

An $8 million voting reform bill that would allow residents to vote by mail in this year’s state primary and general elections because of the coronavirus pandemic is heading to Gov. Charlie Baker’s desk. Senators approved the legislation Thursday after it came out of a conference committee, where lawmakers reconciled the differences between the Senate and House versions of the bill. “For the first time ever in Massachusetts, voters can vote by mail and vote early in both the 2020 primary and general elections. In-person voting on election day remains an option and is made safer in this legislation,” Senate Election Laws Committee Chair Barry Finegold, an Andover Democrat, said in a statement Thursday night. “The bill equips clerks with the tools they need to count ballots expeditiously and adapt to these election advancements.” The House approved the final iteration of the bill on Tuesday. Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, a Boston Democrat who leads the House Ways & Means committee, said the legislation “will ensure that the voters of the Commonwealth have safe and easy access to the ballot box throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Ohio: Task force fears poll workers won’t return in November | Chris Stewart/Dayton Daily News

Whether Ohio poll workers — often in their golden years — will show up to work in November if the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage was a topic of concern at a state election readiness task force meeting Thursday. “We need to emphasize to our Election Day volunteers, our elections workers, our poll workers, is we appreciate their support, their health is great, but do not make this commitment and then break it,” said Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose. “Because just not showing up on Election Day morning is a highly irresponsible thing to do.” Some elections boards are conducting surveys of poll workers to find out if they remain willing to work if the virus continues to circulate. Elections boards and the Secretary of State’s office are also stepping up recruitment efforts to replace those who don’t return. Terry Burton, Wood County’s elections director and a guest speaker, told task force members the county surveyed workers to determine now if they will still serve if the pandemic worsens. “We’re trying to make sure that we figure out right up front what sort of numbers we’re looking at,” he said.

Texas: U.S. Supreme Court won’t fast-track Texas Democrats’ bid to expand mail-in voting during pandemic | Emma Platoff/The Texas Tribune