National: Supreme Court remade by Trump ushers in historic defeats for civil rights | Justin Jouvenal/The Washington Post

The sharply conservative Supreme Court that President Donald Trump’s three appointees remade is the first since at least the 1950s to reject civil rights claims in a majority of cases involving women and minorities, according to a detailed analysis conducted for The Washington Post. The shift brings to an end a streak of successive courts expanding such protections that began with the dawn of the civil rights era. But the historic nature of the current court is also evident in other key areas of the law over the five terms since the third of Trump’s appointees joined the bench. The analysis shows that in addition to civil rights, the court powered by Trump’s picks — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — has pushed to the right of any modern court on religious rights and voting issues. The court has also entered a new era of extreme partisanship. None over the past seven decades has been as starkly polarized. Read Article

National: ‘A logistical nightmare.’ Experts explain Trump’s mail-in ballot order | Josh Meyer/USA Today

“The EO is a logistical nightmare and clearly represents magical thinking – leaving aside constitutional issues,” said Charles Stewart III, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Election Data and Science Lab. “What’s important to note is that the federal system doesn’t have reliable and unique information about people on voter rolls,” Stewart told USA TODAY. To create such a vetted list, he said, would require mashing together many existing federal government databases – including from the Social Security Administration and the notoriously inaccurate Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) – that already have established problems even before anyone tries to combine them. Such an undertaking could take years, Stewart said, and require at the very least establishing pilot programs, creating and “debugging” entire new databases, getting congressional and public input – and, importantly, obtaining and spending a lot of federal funding. “If one were genuinely serious about implementation,” he said, “one would need not just rules but project management, funding streams, intergovernmental agreements, vendor capacity, testing cycles and a hierarchy for resolving conflicts between federal data, state voter files, and local election deadlines.” Read Article

Alaska: Anchorage election officials push back on ‘misleading’ claims about its mobile voting system | Sabrina Bodon and Bella Biondini/Anchorage Daily News

A company that’s been touting Anchorage’s mobile voting use has been told to stop. The Municipality of Anchorage in March sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Mobile Voting Project and its founder, Bradley Tusk, asserting the company has misrepresented the city’s mobile voting. As the municipality prepares for its April 7 election, it has had to contend with what its attorneys have called “false and misleading statements about the Municipality’s voting technology that risk undermining voter confidence in the integrity of our elections,” according to the cease-and-desist letter dated March 11. The New York Times on Nov. 13 published an article titled “Will People Trust Voting by Phone? Alaska Is Going to Find Out,” referring to Anchorage’s use of mobile voting as an “experiment with internet voting in local elections, betting that its ease and security will win over voters even in an era of election conspiracy theories.” The article prominently featured venture capitalist Tusk and the Mobile Voting Project. Municipal Clerk Jamie Heinz released a swift response to the article that evening, saying it was “an egregious misrepresentation of MOA Elections.” Heinz said the article made it seem like voting options had changed and that the municipality mainly uses mobile voting. Read Article

Arizona: Apache County will use vote center model after years of concern over ballot rejections on Navajo Nation | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

After years of lobbying by tribal officials, Apache County will move to a new voting model for the upcoming midterm election, a shift expected to reduce the number of tribal voters’ ballots rejected because they were cast in the wrong precinct. The county, located in the remote, northeastern corner of Arizona, oversees voting in large swaths of the Navajo Nation and the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. For years, it has used a precinct-based model in which voters are assigned polling places based on the voting district, or precinct, in which they reside. But tribal voters often don’t have standard street addresses, and county, precinct, and reservation lines often crisscross. That means a voters’ assigned polling place may not be the closest or most intuitive location, and the vast distances and lack of transportation on tribal land mean it often isn’t easy to redirect voters to the correct site. Read Article

California Supreme Court halts GOP sheriff’s voter fraud investigation | Jane C. Timm/NBC

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to pause his investigation into alleged fraud in last year’s special election. “To permit further consideration of this petition for review, real parties, their agents, employees, and anyone acting on their behalf are hereby ordered to pause the investigation into the November 2025 special election and preserve all seized items,” the court wrote, while agreeing to review the case itself. Bianco, a Republican who is running for governor in California, seized more than 650,000 ballots from election officials last month, saying he was investigating potential fraud in the special election. The sheriff said at the time that a group of citizens said they believed they’d found irregularities after they conducted their own “audit” of the results in Riverside County. Read Article

Georgia lawmakers end annual session without settling conflict on voting machines | Charlotte Kramon and Jeff Amy/Associated Press

The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state’s voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground. The lawmakers’ failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session. “They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature. Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes. Read Article

Kansas: A New Law Voids IDs of Transgender Kansans. It Also Threatens Their Voting Access. | Alex Burness/Bolts

Almost as soon as Kansas lawmakers passed a new law targeting transgender people in late February, state officials started invalidating some people’s driver’s licenses without warning. The law, which makes it illegal for people to use public restrooms that don’t match their assigned sex at birth, also prohibits people from changing the gender marker on their licenses—and retroactively cancels the licenses of some 1,700 trans Kansans who had already made the change following a long legal fight to obtain state IDs that matched their identity. Nearly overnight, the law became a new threat for trans Kansans in public spaces while also nullifying their freedom to drive, and thus their ability to legally participate in many aspects of daily life. It also threatens to impede or even outright block their access to another key aspect of democratic society: elections. Kansas has one of the narrowest voter ID laws in the U.S., requiring those voting in person or by mail to prove their identity, under a limited list of accepted documents. The state’s swift implementation of Senate Bill 244, which Republican lawmakers hastily passed with a provision to take effect almost immediately (unlike most other bills), left a large number of trans people suddenly without a valid ID to use at the polls. Read Article

Nevada: Storey County clerk-treasurer cracks top 10 in ‘most dangerous election deniers’ list | Matthew Mondschein/Nevada Current

Election denier and Storey County Clerk-Treasurer Jim Hindle placed eighth in a “America’s Top 10 Most Dangerous Election Deniers” list published by All Voting is Local, a nonpartisan organization that advocates for free and fair elections. Hindle, alongside Nevada State Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, James DeGraffenreid, Jesse Law, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice were indicted by Nevada Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford in 2023 for their role in Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election which he lost. The case was dismissed over jurisdictional issues, but then revived on appeal, and another evidentiary hearing is scheduled for April 10. All six have pleaded not guilty. Storey County voted for Trump in the 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, each by generous margins. Hindle was elected as clerk-treasurer in the county in June, 2022. As an elected official in charge of overseeing elections, Hindle must be “duty-bound to his constituents first and follow the Constitution and state law, not the whims and conspiracy theories of the president,” said Kerry Durmick, Nevada State Director of All Voting is Local. Read Article

New Hampshire: Student IDs no longer valid for voting under new law | Charlotte Matherly/Concord Monitor

College students in New Hampshire will no longer be able to use their student identification cards to vote, according to a new law signed by Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Championed by State House Republicans, House Bill 323 allows residents to vote only with a government-issued ID, building on a growing number of voting restrictions enacted over the past few years. College students with a U.S. passport or state-issued driver’s license will still be able to vote, but out-of-state students who consider the state their primary residence but lack official forms of ID won’t be able to cast ballots. Voting rights advocates decried the change, saying students who attend college here should have a say in who governs them. Read Article

Wisconsin updates election certification law; Evers vetoes HAVA complaint bill | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill bringing Wisconsin in line with a federal law seeking to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election. The Democrat also vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would have required the state election commission to hear administrative complaints against itself alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act, in line with a U.S. Justice Department demand for the state. That vetoed bill also would have required the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct audits for potential noncitizen voters. The bill Evers signed updates Wisconsin’s deadlines for certifying presidential election results and casting electoral votes to match federal timelines set by Congress in 2022, after President Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election and hundreds of individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent certification of President Joe Biden’s victory. Read Articlea>

Wyoming: Weston County Clerk Arrested On Felony Election-Related Charges | Clair McFarland/Cowboy State Daily

Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock was arrested Wednesday on felony charges, the local jail has confirmed. Her attorney, Ryan Semerad of Casper-based Fuller and Semerad LLC, also confirmed she’d been arrested Wednesday morning. She also had an initial appearance in court Wednesday, after which she was released on a $3,000 signature bond, a jail deputy said. The Newcastle Circiut Court confirmed those details. Hadlock faces two felony charges, Weston County Sheriff Bryan Colvard told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday. One is violation of the election code by an official, and the other is falsifying election documents. Each is punishable by up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines. Her case is ongoing. Read Article

National: Democrats sue to block Trump’s ‘unconstitutional’ mail ballot order | Jonathan Shorman/News From The States

Democrats sued over President Donald Trump’s executive order clamping down on mail ballots on Wednesday, signaling the start of another fight with the White House over elections. The order, which would create a national list of voting-age American citizens and directs the U.S. Postal Service to place limits on mail-in ballots, constitutes an extraordinary and illegal attempt by Trump to intervene in the voting process, election experts said. he order is a “structural inversion” of how mail voting works, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that promotes the responsible use of technology in elections. USPS delivers mail and isn’t involved in distributing ballots, she said.“It is not up to the Postal Service to have this gatekeeping role over ballot delivery,” Smith said. Democrats sue to block Trump’s ‘unconstitutional’ mail ballot order | News From The States

National: The actual danger of Trump’s phony vote-by-mail executive order | Richard L. Hasen/Slate

Sometimes it’s the chaos, not the cruelty, that’s the point. That certainly seems true of President Donald Trump’s second executive order on elections, issued on Tuesday. The order purports, among other things, to direct the United States Department of Homeland Security to create a list of all U.S. citizens over 18, to supply that list to states, and for the United States Postal Service to refuse to accept mailed-in ballots from voters unless that voter’s name appears on a list of the state’s eligible voters that it has given USPS months before the election (a list which presumably the state would have to match with the DHS’ list, though that part—among many others!—is unclear). The order will face multiple court challenges and likely will be found unconstitutional by courts. Even if courts did not intervene before November, the multiple rulemakings and new procedures for DHS, USPS, and state and local election officials envisioned by the order would be impossible to implement before November’s elections. Indeed, the order is so underwhelming that it suggests Trump’s real purpose was not its implementation but to create more confusion and litigation around elections, further undermining voter confidence in the integrity of American elections. The actual danger of Trump’s phony vote-by-mail executive order.

National: Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list | Seung Min Kim, Ali Swenson, Matt Brown, and Jonathan J. Cooper/Associated Press

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order to create a nationwide list of verified eligible voters and to restrict mail-in voting, a move that swiftly drew legal threats from state Democratic officials ahead of this year’s midterm elections. The order, which voting law experts say violates the Constitution by attempting to seize states’ power to run elections, is the latest in a torrent of efforts from Trump to interfere with the way Americans vote based on his false allegations of fraud. The president has repeatedly lied about the outcome of the 2020 presidential campaign and the integrity of state-run elections, asserting again Tuesday that he won “three times” and citing accusations of voter fraud that numerous audits, investigations and courts have debunked. The order signed Tuesday calls on the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to make the list of eligible voters in each state. It also seeks to bar the U.S. Postal Service from sending absentee ballots to those not on each state’s approved list. Trump signs order directing creation of a national voter list | AP NewsRead Article>

National: The Trump Administration’s Strategy for Reshaping Elections  | Michael McNulty/Just Security

The 2026 midterms will be a stress test for whether election outcomes are determined by the will of the voters or by who controls the machinery of elections. President Donald Trump and his allies have pursued a sequence of actions that, taken together, mirror strategies of democratic backsliding elsewhere, reshaping the rules, the referees, and the information environment to tilt the playing field before a single vote is cast. This playbook is not unique to the United States. I spent more than two decades working on elections in countries where – time and time again – democracy was eroded by those in power and where seizing control of elections was a key feature in the authoritarian playbook. For example, in Hungary, after decades of democratic norms, Viktor Orbán’s government gradually seized control of election administration, the courts, and the media — not in one dramatic move, but step-by-step. Independent election oversight bodies were weakened, the judiciary was stacked with loyalists, media outlets were consolidated under government-friendly ownership, and the rules governing elections were changed to favor the ruling party. Each change alone seemed small, but together they created a system where the playing field was heavily skewed toward the ruling party and voters’ voices were silenced. The warning from Hungary and other backsliding countries illustrates a consistent pattern: when leaders make their intentions explicit and begin coordinating an election takeover in public view, the window of time to defend democracy rapidly begins to shrink. Read Article

National: Trump’s anti-voting order will mean chaos for mail voters if left to stand, experts warn | Jim Saksa/Democracy Docket

President Donald Trump’s new executive order on elections would tie up millions of everyday Americans who vote by mail in tangles of red tape, experts in election administration said. And that’s assuming government officials could even implement it in time for the upcoming midterm elections. Implementing Trump’s diktat ahead of the November midterms is simply “not feasible,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting. “The order itself is so convoluted,” Smith added. “That’s not up to the Postal Service. You can’t make them the gatekeepers for ballot delivery. That’s not somehow refining an existing practice to make it better, or whatever — that just doesn’t work.” Trump’s anti-voting order will mean chaos for mail voters if left to stand, experts warn – Democracy Docket

National: Federal election observers once played a key role in securing voting rights for all − but times have changed | Allison Mashell Mitchell/The Conversation

President Donald Trump appeared on former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino’s podcast in February 2026, where he stated: “The Republicans should say, ‘We want to take over, we should take over the voting.’ The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.” Trump’s call to nationalize elections, to transfer the constitutionally mandated control of elections from local to federal authorities, drew bipartisan opposition and added to Democratic fears that the president may attempt to interfere with upcoming midterm elections. Despite Trump’s call to “nationalize the voting,” the U.S. Constitution clearly notes that states run elections – not the federal government. The federal government, however, has a role to play in national elections – as an observer. Federal observation ensures that Americans cast their votes on election day without reprisal. Initially dispatched to deter voter discrimination against Black Americans after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, election observers ensured that those qualified to vote could do so without trouble. Read Article

National: Privacy officer resigns as DOJ readies voter data for DHS | Jude Joffe-Block/NPR

As Justice Department officials are working to acquire sensitive voter registration data from states and have recently disclosed a plan to share it with the Department of Homeland Security, a key privacy officer in DOJ’s division tasked with enforcing civil and voting rights laws has resigned. Kilian Kagle was the chief FOIA officer and senior component official for privacy for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division before leaving his post in recent days. His resignation has not been previously reported. For nearly a year, the DOJ has been making unprecedented demands for sensitive voter data from most states – including voters’ driver’s license numbers, partial Social Security numbers, dates of birth and addresses – that some say violate privacy law. Read Article

National: Can you change your mind after you mail in your ballot? It depends. | Alexander Shur/Votebeat

When the U.S. Supreme Court last week took up the question of late-arriving mail ballots, the discussion turned to something more basic: when a vote becomes final. Justice Neil Gorsuch raised a hypothetical — whether a voter who has already mailed a ballot could change their mind and have a postal carrier cancel their delivery after learning new information about a candidate, even after Election Day. For Mississippi, the plaintiff in the case before the court, the answer was clear. The state’s Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart told the court that’s not possible there. Once a ballot is cast, it stays cast. The justices also spent significant time on the broader question of finality — whether voters ever get a second chance, or at least a way to undo a vote made too soon. In most states, they don’t, especially after a ballot has been received by election officials and tabulated. Read Article

Arizona voters can now show ID to get their mail ballots counted faster | Sasha Hupka/Votebeat

In Arizona, voters have long had the option of dropping off their mail ballots at polling places. Under state law, voters must show identification to cast ballots in person, but those dropping off ballots are allowed to skip that step — as well as any associated lines at the polls. Instead, they just have to sign the envelope that contains their ballot and place it in a secure box at the polling site. Trained staff later compare that signature to signatures the voter has on file before counting their vote. That process, called signature verification, is a key safeguard against fraud. But it also takes time — and as the state has morphed into a key electoral battleground, there has been increasing consternation with how long it takes to count so-called “late early” ballots dropped off in the final hours of voting. In 2024, state lawmakers passed legislation requiring election officials to offer a new option. Like Flahive, voters in the upcoming midterm election will have the option to wait in line and show a driver’s license, passport, or similar form of identification, instead of dropping their ballot off to go through signature verification. This option would allow their votes to be processed sooner and counted more quickly. Read Article

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