National: The Trump Administration’s Dismissal of Voting Rights Lawsuits | Chiraag Bains/Just Security

Congress created the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in 1957 and authorized the federal government to seek court injunctions against efforts to interfere with the right to vote. Further empowered by the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) and other laws, the Division has worked to eliminate racial discrimination and protect the right to vote for almost 70 years. It helped stop North Carolina from implementing restrictions that a court said targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision” and has compelled jurisdictions from New Jersey to California to provide bilingual ballot materials, among many other interventions over the years. Even with decades of progress, voter suppression persists today, making robust enforcement of these statutes critical to ensuring all eligible voters can participate fully in the political process. Under the Trump Administration, however, the Civil Rights Division has reversed course. On Jan. 22, 2025, Justice Department political appointees reportedly ordered a freeze on all new civil rights cases, stopping even the filing of complaints and settlements that had been approved internally after potentially lengthy investigations and negotiations. They later directed career attorneys to dismiss their pending cases, in most instances reportedly “without meeting with them and offering a rationale.” All but three career attorneys have resigned or been removed from the Division’s Voting Section. Read Article

National: Federal Election Assistance Commission cancels solicitation for PR contract | Noah Zuss/PR Week

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has canceled a solicitation seeking PR firms to provide comprehensive communications services. The agency search was canceled this month because the sole contracting officer is no longer working for the federal agency, according to solicitation documents from the government. There is no longer a “warranted contracting officer at the agency to process this procurement” as of May 12, the federal government said. The contract was set to run for one year, starting on September 1, according to solicitation documents, which did not include a budget. The contract sought PR and communications services in three sections: strategic media services, foundational collateral and content and social media. The RFP was released on April 24. Read Article

National: Trump administration begins cracking down on federal employees’ use of leave for voting | Eric Katz/Government Executive

With some key primary elections at the state level occurring in the coming weeks, the Trump administration has begun notifying employees they can no longer use paid administrative leave to vote. The reminder, so far sent out at least to various agencies within the Agriculture Department, complies with an executive order President Trump signed on his first day in office. That order revoked a bevy of previously issued presidential actions, including an order President Biden signed early in his term to allow the leave category for federal employees looking to vote. In March, Trump signed another executive order calling on agency heads to “cease all agency actions implementing” Biden’s order and, within 90 days, lay out what steps they have taken to implement the new directive. Read Article

National: Cyberdefense cuts could sap U.S. response to China hacks, insiders say | Joseph Menn/The Washington Post

As senior Trump administration officials say they want to amp up cyberattacks against China and other geopolitical rivals, some government veterans warn that such an approach would set the United States up for retaliation that it is increasingly unprepared to counter. Alexei Bulazel, senior director for cyber at the National Security Council, said earlier this month that he wanted to fight back against China’s aggressive pre-positioning of hacking capabilities within U.S. critical infrastructure and “destigmatize” offensive operations, making their use an open part of U.S. strategy for the first time. Read Article

Arizona: Ruling lets Cochise County throw out local election result over mail-ballot mistake | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

An Arizona judge is allowing Cochise County officials to throw out the results of a local tax election after challengers identified a requirement in state law that they said the county didn’t follow — one that applies only to a specific kind of election and that other counties haven’t followed in the past. The case involves the county’s May 2023 all-mail election on a proposed tax to fund construction of a new jail. The Arizona Court of Appeals found last year that the county erred by not sending ballots to its 11,000 inactive voters. Because of that error, the county supervisors’ plan to redo the election is reasonable and legal, visiting Judge Michael Latham of the Cochise County Superior Court ruled May 22. Arizona counties typically send ballots only to active voters, but the appeals court found that for local taxing district elections — such as the Cochise jail election — the law required officials to send ballots to inactive voters as well. Read Article

California: New Shasta County elections chief ‘terminates’ popular assistant registrar of voters | Damon Arthur/Redding Record Searchlight

Shasta County’s assistant registrar of voters was “terminated” from her position working for the County Clerk’s Office by the new head of the department, who was appointed to the post just two weeks ago. Joanna Francescut, who made the announcement Tuesday, worked in the elections department for the past 17 years and was passed over for the position twice in the past two years, this year in favor of a Florida attorney with no elections department management experience. “I am deeply disappointed that during his first week in office, the new county clerk and registrar of voters (Clint Curtis) did not make any effort to meet with me or provide an opportunity to work collaboratively,” Francescut said in a statement. Read Article

Georgia: High-profile lawyers face lasting consequences of election fraud claims | Rosie Manins/The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The consequences of supporting President Donald Trump when he cried foul over his loss in the 2020 election are still being felt by several high-profile attorneys with Georgia ties. Disbarment, imprisonment and legal sanctions are among the penalties doled out to Rudy Giuliani, McCall Calhoun, Sidney Powell and Lin Wood for their staunch support of Trump and his debunked 2020 election fraud theories. Wood, who gave up his law license in 2023, said the attacks and investigations he has faced around the country in association with the voting fraud allegations have not lessened his support of Trump. Read Article

Michigan: Common Cause: GOP-led citizenship requirement may upend voting protections | Ben Solis/Michigan Advance

Michigan has been fortunate to have few recent attacks on voting rights from the state Legislature, but a House Republican-led initiative calling for proof of citizenship to vote could curtail newly adopted constitutional protections, Common Cause Michigan said Thursday. The assessment of Michigan’s voter protections came during a virtual press call hosted by the national branch of Common Cause, which featured updates on legislative voting rights attacks in Florida, North Carolina, Michigan and Texas. Quentin Turner, executive director of Common Cause Michigan, said the fundamental right to vote in Michigan is mostly secure thanks to constitutional protections passed by voters in recent years. Those protections, however, could be at risk with House Republicans pushing for a constitutional amendment requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Read Article

Montana Sued Over Law That Rejects Absentee Ballots for Minor Date Errors | Yunior Rivas/Democracy Docket

Voting rights groups filed suit Friday to block a new law that forces Montana voters to include their date of birth on both their absentee ballot application and the ballot envelope, or risk having their vote tossed. The plaintiffs, including Disability Rights Montana and Big Sky 55+, call it unnecessary, burdensome and a solution in search of a problem. “HB 719 will disenfranchise voters without sufficient justification,” the complaint alleges. “It violates Montana’s Constitution, which guarantees Montanans the right to suffrage.” Read Article

North Carolina’s high court says elections board shift can continue while appeals carry on | Gary D. Robertson/Associated Press

A divided North Carolina Supreme Court confirmed Friday that it was OK for a new law that shifted the power to appoint State Board of Elections members away from the Democratic governor to start being enforced earlier this month, even as the law’s constitutionality is deliberated. The Republican majority on the court declined or dismissed requests that Gov. Josh Stein made three weeks ago to block for now the enforcement of the law approved last year by the GOP-controlled General Assembly shifting authority to Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. In late April, some trial judges hearing Stein’s lawsuit declared the law unconstitutional and said the law couldn’t be carried out. Read Article

North Carolina: Trump DOJ sues over election claims similar to Jefferson Griffin lawsuit | Will Doran/WRAL

North Carolina has failed to comply with federal law requiring accurate voter lists and isn’t doing enough to fix those deficiencies, the U.S. Department of Justice alleged in a lawsuit Tuesday against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. The lawsuit, filed by the administration of Republican President Donald Trump, says the state should’ve done more to verify the identity of voters in the state to ensure no fraud is occurring. It specifically homes in on thousands of people from whom the state’s database of registered voters doesn’t include a driver’s license number or Social Security number. Many of the DOJ’s demands are already underway, due to previous lawsuits over those voters with missing information, but the lawsuit says the state’s efforts to fix the problems haven’t been robust enough. It seeks to enforce a 30-day deadline for the state to contact all the voters in question and either get their information or remove them from the list of registered voters. Read Article

Oklahoma schools’ push to consider election denialism sparks battle | Justine McDaniel and Anumita Kaur/The Washington Post

A battle is roiling Oklahoma over new social studies standards that include teaching high-schoolers that there were “discrepancies” in the 2020 presidential election, as a legal fight unfolds over allegations that the state superintendent added the provision to the standards without notifying some education board members before they voted to pass them. An Oklahoma County judge is considering a request to block the standards from being enacted and heard arguments Wednesday in the lawsuit, which was filed against state education officials by a group of teachers and parents. Meanwhile, other parents opposed to the standards’ content are circulating opt-out forms to remove their children from the future lessons. Under the curriculum, high-schoolers would be asked to analyze debunked theories related to the 2020 vote and election security, such as “security risks” of voting by mail and “batch dumps” of ballots — references to the disproven theory circulated by President Donald Trump that he did not lose that election.

Pennsylvania tallies up votes for poll workers, amid shortage of candidates | Carter Walker/Votebeat

Pennsylvania voters went to the polls last week to help carry on a centuries-old practice that no other state does: elections to choose their election workers. “It was a great idea in the 1800s that they never got rid of,” said Thad Hall, Mercer County’s election director, who just oversaw a primary to select the Democratic and Republican candidates for more than 150 poll worker positions. Counties are still finalizing the results from the May 20 election. The counting includes the slow process of tabulating write-in votes, as many races don’t have candidates listed on the ballot. In Mercer County, roughly 50% of the positions did not have a nominated candidate, Hall said, and he suspects “a lot” of his open positions won’t have a candidate on the ballot in November, either. Read Article

Texas: Study Reveals the Lasting Voter Suppression Effects of Restrictive Voter ID Law | Kevin Morris and Coryn GrangeBrennan Center for Justice

New research shows that a restrictive voting law in Texas made people less likely to vote for at least two years after having a mail ballot application or ballot rejected. As we showed in 2022, the voters directly harmed by this law were more likely to be nonwhite, raising important questions about the long-term consequences of laws that fall more heavily on minority voters. The state enacted Senate Bill 1 in 2021, ostensibly to reduce widespread voter fraud — which in reality does not exist. The law made casting a ballot by mail more difficult, and it ended practices adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic to make voting easier, such as 24-hour and drive-thru voting. Read Article

Texas bill requiring voters to prove citizenship stalls | Natalia Contreras/The Texas Tribune

A high-profile bill that would have required documented proof of citizenship from Texas voters appears likely dead after it missed a key House deadline Tuesday, an unceremonious outcome for a Republican legislative priority. Senate Bill 16 had 50 Republican co-sponsors in the House, and supporters widely expected it to sail through the chamber. The bill passed the Senate last month along party lines and with little debate. Republicans and allied groups around the country have been aggressively pushing for such citizenship proof measures at the state and federal level. SB 16 and its companion, House Bill 5337, were among the most sweeping proof-of-citizenship proposals introduced anywhere in the country, applying not only to new applicants for voter registration but also retroactively to 18.6 million voters already registered in the state. Voting rights advocates warned that the bill would have disenfranchised eligible voters, and discouraged future voters by making registration and voting more burdensome. Read Article

Wisconsin communities are free to use paper ballots, elections commission rules | Mitchell Schmidt | Wisconsin State Journal

Wisconsin’s smallest communities do not need permission from the Wisconsin Elections Commission to stop using electronic voting machines, the agency ordered this week. Under the commission’s decision, Wisconsin towns, villages and municipalities still must provide at least one electronic voting machine at a polling location to accommodate voters with disabilities. But other than that, nothing prevents communities with fewer than 7,500 residents to stop using the machines. The decision stems from a complaint filed against the town of Thornapple, in Rusk County, alleging the community violated state law when officials shifted from using voting tabulators to hand-counting paper ballots in last year’s April and August elections. Read Article

Wisconsin election officials seek more flexibility in proposed early-voting mandate | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Republicans are proposing an expansion of early voting, with new requirements for municipalities statewide, but some local officials say the one-size-fits-all mandate wouldn’t make sense for Wisconsin’s smallest communities. The proposal would require every municipality in Wisconsin, regardless of its size, to offer at least 20 hours of in-person absentee voting at the clerk’s office, or an alternative site, for each election. The bill’s authors say they want to reimburse local governments for the added costs, though they haven’t yet clarified how they would do that. Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, a Republican, said she wrote the bill after noticing the stark difference in early-voting availability between rural and urban municipalities. Read Article

North Carolina: Foregone conclusion. Legal struggle over elections appointment power essentially ends with court ruling. | Sarah Michels/Carolina Public Press

Technically, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s lawsuit against Republican leaders over the transfer of his election appointment power to the state auditor could go on for a number of months. But practically, it’s over. Friday evening, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the North Carolina Court of Appeals did not break any rules by allowing the power shift to go into effect on May 1, when a new State Board of Elections was appointed by Republican State Auditor Dave Boliek. While the court did not technically rule on the state constitutional questions at play — does the power shift violate separation of powers or the governor’s duty to faithfully execute the law? — it clearly signaled its approval of the power shift in a 5-2 decision. Read Article

National: Trump targets ballot barcodes, long a source of misinformation | Charlotte Kramon/Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to overhaul how U.S. elections are run includes a somewhat obscure reference to the way votes are counted. Voting equipment, it says, should not use ballots that include “a barcode or quick-response code.” Those few technical words could have a big impact. Voting machines that give all voters a ballot with one of those codes are used in hundreds of counties across 19 states. Three of them — Georgia, South Carolina and Delaware — use the machines statewide. “I think the problem is super exaggerated,” said Lawrence Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice. Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that focuses on election technology and favors ending the use of QR and barcodes said “In the long run, it would be nice if vendors moved away from encoding, but there’s already evidence of them doing that.” Read Article

Russia-linked disinformation floods Poland, Romania as voters cast ballots | Daryna Antoniuk/The Record

Romania and Poland each reported increased Russian disinformation activity ahead of their presidential elections, with authorities warning the Kremlin-backed network Doppelgänger is actively attempting to influence voters. Romania’s Interior Ministry said on Friday that the group, which has been operating in Europe since at least 2022, launched a new disinformation campaign targeting the second round of the Romanian presidential election held on Sunday. Last year, the country annulled its presidential election results following revelations of Russian interference. Authorities said Doppelgänger used its typical technique of impersonating the official websites of public institutions, television stations, and press agencies. However, this time their actions were more overt, making them easier to detect, officials added. Read Article

National: Trump Has Taken a Renewed Interest in the Conspirators Who Infiltrated 2020 Voting Machines | Susan Greenhalgh/Slate

When President Donald Trump pardoned 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, he used the power of the presidency to protect convicted criminals whom he incited to stop the certification of his electoral defeat in 2020 and the peaceful transfer of power. Recently, in a blunt and ham-fisted attempt to again undermine the rule of law, he used his social media bullhorn to call for the release of Tina Peters. The former Colorado county clerk was last year convicted of crimes committed in 2021 in order to facilitate unauthorized access to Colorado’s voting system. This may be regarded as simply another instance of Trump’s immoral support for those who tried to help him steal an election. But the scheme Peters was involved in—to improperly access voting systems and make unauthorized copies of sensitive voting system software—has serious, ongoing implications for election security. Read Article

National: Attorneys general urge Congress to reject ‘irresponsible’ state AI law moratorium | Keely Quinlan/StateScoop

A letter signed by a group of 40 state attorneys general on Friday called on Congress to reject an “irresponsible” federal measure that would bar states from enforcing their own laws and regulations governing the use of artificial intelligence systems for the next 10 years. The letter from the National Association of Attorneys General said the “broad” state AI moratorium measure rolled into the federal budget reconciliation bill would be “sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI.” The AGs, who addressed the letter to majority and minority leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives, along with House Speaker Mike Johnson, said the moratorium would disrupt hundreds of measures being both considered by state legislatures and those that have already passed in states led by Republicans and Democrats. Read Article

National: Justice Department changes to civil rights division spark mass exodus of attorneys | Ryan Lucas/NPR

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is in upheaval amid a mass exodus of attorneys as the Trump administration moves to radically reshape the division, shelving its traditional mission and replacing it with one focused on enforcing the president’s executive orders. Some 250 attorneys — or around 70% of the division’s lawyers — have left or will have left the department in the time between President Trump’s inauguration and the end of May, according to current and former officials. It marks a dramatic turn for the storied division, which was created during the civil rights movement and the push to end racial segregation. For almost 70 years, it has sought to combat discrimination and to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans in everything from voting and housing to employment, education and policing. Read Article

Alaska Republican opposition kills bill intended to fix absentee voting problems | Jamesx Brooks/Alaska Beacon

A major elections reform bill, a priority of House and Senate leaders, is dead in the Alaska Legislature. Among the changes in the bill: Speedier ballot counting, better tracking of absentee ballots, ballot dropboxes across the state, free return postage for absentee ballots, a liaison to help fix voting issues in rural Alaska, permanent absentee ballot registration, a method to fix paperwork problems after an absentee ballot is cast, the elimination of the requirement that a “witness” sign a voter’s absentee ballot, and additional security audits. Many of the House’s Republicans objected to the bill, saying that they believe it did not do enough to address their concerns about election security. Read Article

Arizona: Maricopa County proposal to send out unsolicited mail ballots has a history | Jen Fifield/Votebeat

When Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap proposed sending mail ballots for a July election to a group of voters who hadn’t requested them, the suggestion seemed to come out of nowhere. Heap’s plan especially shocked his fellow Republicans, including the county supervisors, who have been clashing with him over election policy and who quickly voted to try to block it. GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda told Heap in a letter that his plan would be ill-advised and illegal. But Heap has defended his plan as a way to avoid disenfranchising rural voters who would otherwise have to drive unreasonably long distances to vote in person. And there’s some history that helps explain why Heap, who is aligned with the GOP’s arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and who campaigned on a platform of “election integrity,” would suggest such a move. Read Article

Arizona judge deals blow to case over 2020 Republican electors | Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Patrick Marley/The Washington Post

An Arizona judge has ordered state prosecutors to send back to a grand jury a case in which Republicans were charged last year for their alleged roles in trying to overturn the 2020 election, potentially jeopardizing the high-profile indictments. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam J. Myers sided with the Republicans and found that prosecutors failed to provide the grand jury with the text of an 1887 federal law that is central to the Republicans’ defense. The law, known as the Electoral Count Act, spells out how presidential electoral votes are to be cast and counted. “We are extremely pleased with the court’s ruling, and we think the judge got it exactly right,” said Stephen Binhak, the attorney who spearheaded the effort to get the case back to a grand jury. The decision is a major setback for Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), who promised to appeal the ruling so she could keep the prosecution going. Read Article

Kansas ends mail-in ballot grace period voting law. Why have other states followed? | Tyler Kirby/Kansas City Star

Once a bipartisan safeguard against postal delays and slow mail processing times, Kansas’ three-day mail ballot grace period is now gone — axed by lawmakers, challenged in court, and mirrored in a growing number of Republican-led states. Following the 2020 election, former President Trump promoted false claims of widespread voter fraud, targeting states that allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted after polls closed, many under temporary pandemic-era policies. Trump and his allies seized on mail delays and extended deadlines to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results. A law passed nearly unanimously by the Kansas Legislature in 2017 granted a three-day grace period for legally postmarked mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, responding to concerns that U.S. Postal Service delays were causing some ballots, especially from rural areas, to arrive late and go uncounted. Read Article

Michigan GOP lawmakers lose U.S. Supreme Court bid to void election laws | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a petition by 11 Republican Michigan legislators who sought to overturn expanded voting measures enacted through statewide ballot initiatives, bringing an end to the federal case known as Lindsey v. Whitmer. The federal case was always a longshot, experts told Votebeat when it was first brought before the Supreme Court, which hears only about 150 of the thousands of requests it gets each year. The justices denied the lawmakers’ petition without comment. But their attorney, conservative legal activist Erick Kaardal, told lawmakers that he’s not done trying to challenge the election measures, which include no-reason absentee voting, and straight-party voting, passed as part of 2018’s Proposal 3, as well as early voting and ballot drop boxes from Proposal 2 in 2022. Read article

Montana lawmakers tighten voting rules, signature-gathering laws. | Tom Lutey/Montana Free Press

Several bills passed during the 2025 legislative session change state election laws governing elections, including how late Montanans can register to vote. Senate Bill 490, sponsored by Sen. Mike Cuffe, R-Eureka, changes the deadline for registering to vote or changing voter information. Proponents said the bill would put an end to long lines of last-minute voters waiting, sometimes until after midnight on Election Day, to register and vote. The bill limits same-day registration to a four-hour period on Election Day, and ends the ability to register on the Monday before an election. Previously, anyone in line by 8 p.m. on Election Day could register to vote. Cuffe told lawmakers that county election officials across the state asked for the change. Read Article

After North Carolina Supreme Court Win, Democrats Lose Control of Board That Sets Voting Rules | Doug Bock Clark/ProPublica

Last week, North Carolina Democrats scored a victory when Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin, who’d lost a tight race for the state’s Supreme Court, finally conceded defeat after a six-month legal battle to throw out ballots that he contended were illegitimate. But that same morning, the party suffered a setback that may be more consequential: losing control of the state board that sets voting rules and adjudicates election disputes. The board oversees virtually every aspect of state elections, large and small, from setting rules dictating what makes ballots valid or invalid to monitoring compliance with campaign finance laws. In the Supreme Court race, it consistently worked to block Griffin’s challenges. Read Article