Editorials: Eric Holder goes to the mat for voting rights | Zachary Roth/MSNBC

The Obama administration’s interventions last week in two major voting rights cases gave a big boost to efforts to challenge restrictive voting laws in two crucial swing states. But they did something else, too: They offered more evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder is determined to match his tough talk about the need to protect voting with action. Indeed, when Holder steps down as the nation’s top law enforcement officer—which could happen as soon as this year—his commitment to ensuring access to the ballot for all eligible Americans could stand out as his most important achievement. In his rhetoric, Holder has left little doubt that he sees the issue of voting rights as a defining moral question for the country, raising the topic again and again in speeches and interviews over the last few years . “This comes down, in some ways, to a fundamental question of who we are—who we are as a people,” he told The New Yorker for a profile published in February. “The history of this nation has always been to try to expand the franchise. Whether it’s freed slaves, women, young people, we’ve always found ways to make it easier to vote…To turn our backs on that history is inconsistent with who we say we are as a nation.”  And for a man with a reputation as a cautious and soft-spoken bureaucrat, he’s often used surprisingly pointed language to call out Republicans for making voting harder.

Virginia: Elections board will not allow IDs expired more than 12 months | Richmond Times-Dispatch

The State Board of Elections on Wednesday backed a new policy that eliminates for voting purposes any form of photo identification that expired more than 12 months before Election Day. Critics believe the new rule will confuse and make it harder for some Virginians to vote. The board’s 2-1 vote reverses a more lenient policy decision from June that would have accepted at the polls expired but otherwise valid forms of identification permitted under the new voter ID mandate, which took effect July 1. After Sen. Mark D. Obenshain, R-Harrisonburg, the sponsor of the new law, expressed concerns, the board reconsidered. It reopened the public comment period for an additional 21 days to explore whether the agency has legal authority to determine what forms of ID are valid. Initially, the board wanted to invalidate expired IDs entirely as an acceptable form of voter identification. But it adopted the alternative policy after reviewing public comments and a legal analysis by Attorney General Mark R. Herring, who concluded that some of the language in the policy could create confusion at the polls and lead to unequal treatment of voters or even prevent voters from casting a ballot.

Virginia: Election board makes voter ID requirements more stringent | The Washington Post

Inflaming a contentious debate over voter identification laws, the Virginia State Board of Elections decided this week that, to cast a ballot, voters will have to present a current photo ID or one that expired within the past year. The Republican-controlled board voted 2 to 0 Wednesday — with the Democratic member absent — to narrow the definition of valid identification, a move that one board member said would streamline and simplify the rules. “We believe it’s a compromise and gives people a reasonable grace period,” said Donald Palmer, who was appointed to the board by then-Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R). But Democrats and voting rights advocates said the new rule will confuse voters less than two weeks before a special election in which the rule is expected to apply. “The board’s decision today makes it that much more difficult for voters to participate in our democracy,” said Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of Virginia New Majority. “Our elections should be free, fair and accessible. Needlessly restricting the forms of voting ID only makes it more difficult.”

Virginia: Board of Elections to allow some expired IDs for voting | Daily Press

Virginians who let their driver’s licenses, passports or other photo IDs expire will still get a chance to vote, as long as those documents aren’t too old. The State Board of Elections struck a compromise Wednesday between those who argued that an expired ID was not valid and those who said a photo ID should be valid no matter how long ago it expired. “The board tried to take a middle ground … we wanted to have a grace period,” said Secretary Don Palmer. It decided that photo IDs that expired within 12 months of an election day were valid for voting purposes, as long as they look genuine.

Virginia: Attorney General warns voter ID definition may be unconstitutional | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Attorney General Mark R. Herring has warned state election officials that their new definition of what constitutes a valid photo ID, as proposed by the State Board of Elections, would likely lead to unconstitutionally unequal treatment of voters. “The language as drafted by the Board of Elections could cause confusion at the polls, lead to unequal treatment of voters in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and potentially prevent qualified voters from casting a ballot,” Herring said in an email today. The attorney general’s assessment was part of the regulatory review to ascertain that proposed regulations are in compliance with the law. The board is scheduled to meet Wednesday to further discuss the new definition following a 21-day public comment period on the issue, which has sparked comments from hundreds of citizens.

Wisconsin: Van Hollen Seeks Revival of Photo ID Law for Fall Election | Bloomberg

Wisconsin’s attorney general asked a federal appeals court to revive the state’s suspended voter identification law in time for the November elections. The law, which requires would-be voters to present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot, was blocked in an April ruling by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee. He concluded after a trial that the measure illegally makes it more difficult for minority voters to cast ballots. Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, in his request filed today with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, cited two rulings handed down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last week, upholding the measure enacted by Republican Governor Scott Walker in 2011.

Wisconsin: Court Ruling Leaves Voter ID Procedure in the Hands of the Wisconsin DMV | WUWM

The Wisconsin Supreme Court stirred some confusion last week, with its Voter ID ruling. It indicates that the DMV must set the standards for obtaining free identification. The high court upheld the state law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls. But the court added – that the law cannot require people to spend money, to obtain the necessary documents. The document some justices seemed to have in mind, when considering Wisconsin’s Voter ID law, is birth certificates. They can cost $20 or more, and people may need them in order to obtain government identification to vote. The court apparently thought the Voter ID law would then amount to a poll tax, so it implemented what’s called a ‘saving construction’ to keep the law constitutional. Justices left it up to the Wisconsin Division of Motor Vehicles to decide how to accommodate people who can’t obtain a free birth certificate. That’s where confusion and perhaps long lines, enter the picture, according to UW-Madison Political Scientist Barry Burden.

North Carolina: Despite budget squeeze, lawmakers poised to step up anti-voter fraud spending | Facing South

This week, North Carolina state lawmakers put forward a budget plan that calls for tens of millions of dollars in program cuts — sacrifices that Republican leaders say are necessary since the state will be collecting $1.57 billion less in revenues through 2015 due to hefty tax cuts approved last year. But at least one program is getting a boost in the plan proposed by the Senate: a request from the N.C. State Board of Elections, led by Kim Strach, to add three new investigators to tackle alleged voter fraud. While the Senate’s budget eliminates at least 12 positions from the Department of Health and Human Services, the latest budget plan released Thursday [pdf] calls for $201,657 in new funding “for three new positions to investigate fraud in elections, discrepancies in voter registration information, including duplicate registrations, and to pursue prosecution for violations of election law.” According to news reports, Strach had asked for five new investigators to focus on voter fraud. This was addition to the state board’s May 2014 hire of former FBI agent Chuck Stuber, who has been tasked with investigating voter fraud and campaign finance issues.

Wisconsin: State court’s voter ID ruling has experts confused | Associated Press

creating confusion and may even open the door to the very type of behavior Republican lawmakers were trying to prevent. Policy makers, attorneys and voter ID experts were struggling Friday with how to interpret a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling from a day earlier, which mandated a change to the law in order to make it constitutional. The court said the state can’t require applicants for state-issued IDs to present government documents that cost money to obtain, such as a copy of a birth certificate. The court left it to the Division of Motor Vehicles to come up with a solution. “We don’t know how that’s going to work,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Thursday shortly after the ruling. When asked whether obtaining photo IDs without having to present government-issued documents verifying a person’s identity could result in fraud, Vos said: “It’s got a potential for it.”

National: Justice Department backs challenges to voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin | The Washington Post

The Justice Department on Wednesday supported legal challenges to voting laws in Ohio and Wisconsin as part of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to challenge state legislation it believes unfairly affects the ability of minority voters to cast ballots. In Wisconsin, the department filed an amicus brief supporting a ruling by a federal judge that struck down a law that requires voters to show photo identification at the polls. In Ohio, Justice officials filed a “statement of interest” in a challenge by a civil rights group to a state law curtailing early voting and same-day registration. “These filings are necessary to confront the pernicious measures in Wisconsin and Ohio that would impose significant barriers to the most basic right of our democracy,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement. “These two states’ voting laws represent the latest, misguided attempts to fix a system that isn’t broken. These restrictive state laws threaten access to the ballot box.”

Editorials: Voter Discrimination Just Got Easier | Steven H. Wright/New York Review of Books

For almost fifty years, the US government has had an especially effective tool for ensuring fair elections: sending teams of federal observers to polling stations across the country. Though relatively little known, the program has been crucial in dismantling the discriminatory practices that disenfranchised voters of color. In the program’s early days, federal monitors risked their lives to collect evidence courts needed to outlaw the electoral mechanisms of Jim Crow. And as recently as the 2012 presidential election, the Justice Department dispatched more than 780 federal employees to 51 jurisdictions across 23 states. As a result of a 2013 Supreme Court decision, however, the program is now being quietly curtailed. In 2013, the Supreme Court hobbled the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which for decades had provided safeguards to prevent unfair voting practices, including special oversight for jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Court found that Congress created a flawed formula to select those special jurisdictions. Last week, the Justice Department revealed that, in light of the Supreme Court decision, it has concluded that the Attorney General no longer retains the statutory authority to send observers to those jurisdictions.

Kansas: Kobach challenges church leaders who oppose voter ID law | Topeka Capital-Journal

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said in a radio interview Wednesday that he will continue to move forward with voter identification requirements and questioned the religiousness of church leaders who have opposed the law. While a guest on Topeka radio station WIBW 580, Kobach was asked to respond to religious leaders and other critics of the voter ID requirement. “We’re absolutely going to keep fighting back, and Kansans overwhelmingly approve it,” Kobach said. “I don’t know what churches — and I would put churches in quotation marks — because the vast majority of church leaders I’ve spoken to are fully in favor of our photo ID law.”

Editorials: Hypocrisy on Wisconsin Supreme Court: Why voter ID decision is wrong | Joshua A. Douglas/Journal-Sentinel

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday issued two decisions that had the effect of upholding the state’s  strict voter ID requirement. Crucial to the court’s decisions was its finding that, once it modified a different rule, the voter ID law did not impose too substantial of a burden on qualified voters who do not otherwise have the necessary identification. The split decisions entail both breathtaking judicial activism and ignorance regarding the difference between the federal and state constitutions. First, the conservative-leaning majority found that the voter ID law imposed a severe burden on voters because it would cost money for voters to gather the underlying documentation they might need — such as a birth certificate — to obtain the “free” voter ID. But the majority then forges ahead to adopt a “saving construction” of a state administrative rule to conclude that the law does not, really, require voters to pay money to obtain the documentation. It rewrites the administrative rule so that the voter ID law does not become an unconstitutional poll tax. To justify this maneuver, the court cites a U.S. Supreme Court decision that states “where a saving construction is ‘fairly possible,’ the court will adopt it.” But that U.S. Supreme Court case said no such thing; it instead noted that if a saving construction of the very statute at issue is possible, then the court should avoid the constitutional question and decide the case under that statutory ground.

Wisconsin: Divided court upholds Wisconsin’s voter ID law | Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

A divided state Supreme Court on Thursday tweaked a provision of Wisconsin’s voter ID law to put it in keeping with the state constitution, making it easier for people to get identification cards without having to pay along the way. Despite Thursday’s rulings in two challenges of the law, the requirement to show photo identification at the polls remains blocked because a federal judge in April found Wisconsin’s voter ID law violates the U.S. Constitution and federal Voting Rights Act. That decision is now under review by the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, who defended the law, said he believed Thursday’s rulings strengthened his hand in the federal litigation and he would use them to try to reinstate the voter ID requirement in time for the Nov. 4 election. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in two cases, upholding the voter ID law 4-3 in one and 5-2 in the other. In one case, the court majority crafted a “saving construction” of the voter ID law to keep it from being unconstitutional. That was aimed at preventing the state from requiring voters to pay any government fees to get a state-issued ID card.

Wisconsin: Voting rights advocate on Supreme Court voter ID ruling: ‘We feel we have already won’ | The Cap Times

With the Wisconsin Supreme Court set to release decisions Thursday on cases challenging the state’s voter ID law that was filed nearly three years ago, the executive director of the Wisconsin League of Women Voters said, in many ways, “we feel we have already won.” The law that requires voters to show a picture ID prior to voting was passed in May of 2011. That October, the league became the first of four organizations to file a lawsuit. The law, which quickly became the most restrictive of its kind in the country when it passed, was in place for one election cycle in February 2012. It was subsequently blocked under a Dane County Circuit Court ruling issued by Judge Richard Niess in March of 2012. For the next seven elections, voters did not have to show their ID’s, said Andrea Kaminski, the league’s executive director.

Wisconsin: Early Voting Begins in Wisconsin, With New Limits on Hours | WUWM

Early voting begins Monday in city clerks’ offices across Wisconsin. Voters who can’t make it to the polls on Election Day will be able to cast ballots during the two weeks prior to the August 12 primary. It’s the first election since Republicans who control the state legislature put limits on the process. Under the changes, in-person absentee voting can only be conducted during the two business weeks prior to an election. Voting is limited to 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, with no weekend hours allowed. Supporters say the changes create a uniform process, while opponents argued the limits pose a challenge in large cities such as Milwaukee. … [S]everal activist groups remain upset about the changes to early voting, and are weighing whether to take action. Scot Ross, Executive Director of One Wisconsin Now, believes the changes amount to a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise certain voters.

New Hampshire: 2012 voter registration law null — for now | New Hampshire Union Leader

The Secretary of State’s Office said Friday the decision by Strafford County Superior Court Judge Brian Tucker means there will be no change in the current voter registration forms. Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan said the disputed language change for voter registration forms — passed by the Legislature in 2012 and challenged in court by four University of New Hampshire students and the League of Women Voters as unconstitutional — was never implemented. A preliminary injunction was granted by a different Strafford County judge, and the state Supreme Court let the ruling stand in October 2012. …  Then-House Speaker Bill O’Brien had supported changing the registration law primarily to prevent students from outside New Hampshire but attend college in the state from being allowed to vote in New Hampshire college towns.

Virginia: Voter Registrars Tackle New Voter ID Law | Charlottesville Newsplex

Registrars spent two days in Richmond this week at an annual training session put on by the Virginia Department of Elections. They discussed changes they are making to the voting process, and looked at the how those changes will impact voting experiences come November. “The system for creating photo ID’s at voter registration offices seems to be working very well. There haven’t been a great flood of people who have come in and asked for them,” said Albemarle County General Registrar Jake Washburne. … Another law now in effect for exactly a year is getting positive reviews.The Department of Elections says statewide voter online registration has been a success with tens of thousands of new voters signed up.

Texas: Democrats look to get in front of voter ID issue | Houston Chronicle

Texas Democrats are renewing their opposition to the state’s voter-identification law, rolling out a program to educate voters ahead of a decisive few months that could see the controversial statute become a top issue in the governor’s race. The law is considered one of the toughest of its kind in the country, requiring voters to show one of a few types of identification cards at the polls. Those whose actual names do not match the names on their IDs must sign an affidavit attesting to their identities. The gubernatorial campaign of state Sen. Wendy Davis, Battleground Texas and the Texas Democratic Party on Wednesday announced a “voter protection” program to tackle the issue by dispatching more than 8,000 volunteers to help with voter registration and making sure voters know what the law requires.

National: NAACP worries that low November turnout could lead to voter ID expansion | Associated Press

Civil rights leaders at the NAACP annual convention in Las Vegas on Tuesday worried that dwindling African-American turnout in November could lead to the expansion of voter-identification laws that makes it harder for that community to vote in subsequent contests. In 2012, blacks turned out at a higher rate than whites for what is believed to be the first time in American history and helped re-elect President Obama. But in the prior midterm election, in 2010, blacks turned out at a much lower rate, and Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and many state and local offices.

Kansas: Transgender Kansans fear voter ID roadblock | Topeka Capital-Journal

Jordan Hanson, of Lawrence, is afraid that when she goes to the polls for the Aug. 5 primary, she will be turned away without being able to vote. Hanson is a resident of Kansas who is older than 18, has registered to vote and has an official, government-issued photo identification card. The problem? The photo and the “sex” field on the ID, a Kansas driver’s license, identify her as a man. Hanson, a transgender Kansan, said she is loathe to let her gender identity be vetted by a random poll worker. “My identification and my ability to vote should not be up the subjective interpretation of anyone,” Hanson said. Tom Witt is the executive director of Equality Kansas, the state’s main lobbying group for gay, lesbian and transgender Kansans.

Editorials: The clear sin of contracting North Carolina’s voter participation | Gene Nichol/NewsObserver.com

North Carolina’s new voter ID law, currently being litigated in federal court in Winston-Salem, is an election lawyer’s dream. Ending same-day registration, cutting early voting from 17 days to 10, eliminating a popular high school civics program encouraging students to register before they turn 18, expanding poll “observers” and instituting the country’s toughest photo ID requirement, the statute is a cornucopia of voter restriction. Small wonder we’ve been sued by the federal government. Winston Churchill once rejected a dessert by saying: “Take away that pudding; it has no theme.” The same cannot be said of our voter ID bill. It changes election law in dozens of disparate and intersecting ways. The principal features have only this in common: Each makes it harder to vote than it was before. Such is life, here, at the leading edge of American voter suppression. Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that one of the potent challenges to the statute hasn’t been seen in our voting rights jurisprudence before. Seven college students from across the state argue that the oddly constructed identification measure violates the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. You remember it, the provision that reduced the voting age from 21 to 18 and says, interestingly, that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged … on account of age.”

Australia: Compulsory ID a first for Queensland vote | SBS News

The state Liberal-National Party government said it introduced the law in May to reduce voter fraud. Opponents said it will deprive some of the most marginalised groups, including Indigenous and ethnic communities, of their democratic right. “Voter fraud has been an issue in the past and there does continue to be an issue of people voting multiple times or voting as other people,” said the LNP Stafford candidate Bob Andersen. “It’s not too much to ask just to produce ID and verify who they are and then give their one vote and make it count.” The LNP has presented no evidence of systematic fraud in Queensland elections. “The last time this was thoroughly looked at, the court of Disputed Returns in Chatsworth went through 20,000 votes and the instances they found of double voting were very, very minor,” said Labor’s Queensland state secretary Anthony Chisholm. “So there is no justification for this and they’re just trying to advantage themselves and stop people voting and they’re the people that need a voice the most.”

Editorials: North Carolina Will Determine the Future of the Voting Rights Act | Ari Berman/The Nation

In 1940, 19-year-old Rosanell Eaton took a two-hour mule ride to the Franklin County courthouse in eastern North Carolina to register to vote. The three white male registrars told her to stand up straight, with her arms at her side, look straight ahead and recite the preamble to the Constitution word-for-word from memory. Eaton did so, becoming one of the few blacks to pass a literacy test and make it on the voting rolls in the Jim Crow era. Eaton, a granddaughter of a slave, is one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement. She’s devoted her life to expanding the franchise, personally registering 4,000–5,000 new voters before losing count. “My forefathers didn’t have the opportunity to register or vote,” she said. “It is my intention to help people reach that point when they could do something.” Now, as a result of North Carolina’s new voting restrictions—widely regarded as the most onerous in the country—the 93-year-old activist could be disenfranchised by the state’s voter ID requirement because the name on her driver’s license does not match the name on her voter registration card.

Editorials: Voter ID lawsuits are the last chance to prove the laws are intentionally racist | Ana Marie Cox/The Guardian

This week, the US Department of Justice and the state of Texas started arguments in the first of what will be a summer-long dance between the two authorities over voting rights. There are three suits being tried in two districts over gerrymandering and Texas’s voter identification law – both of which are said to be racially motivated. In its filing, the DoJ describes the law as “exceed[ing] the requirements imposed by any other state” at the time that it passed. If the DoJ can prove the arguments in its filing, it won’t just defeat an unjust law: it could put the fiction of “voter fraud” to rest once and for all. These battles, plus parallel cases proceeding in North Carolina, hinge on proving that the states acted with explicitly exclusionary intent toward minority voters – a higher standard was necessary prior to the Supreme Court’s gutting of Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) back in January. Under Section 3, the DoJ had wide latitude to look at possible consequences of voting regulation before they were even passed – the “preclearance” provision. Ironically, because the states held to preclearance had histories of racial discrimination, some of the messier aspects of the laws’ current intentions escaped comment.

North Dakota: Got Tribal ID? North Dakota Natives May Not Be Able to Use Theirs to Vote | ICTMN

In a news conference on Thursday, July 10, North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger defended his strict reading of North Dakota voting law. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom Resource Center, representing those with disabilities, had called on Jaeger to rethink his interpretation, which allows voters to use a small number of forms of identification. The rights groups say this has unfairly burdened tribal and disabled voters. Heather Smith, the ACLU’s North and South Dakota director, said Jaeger’s interpretation had created the “strictest voter ID law in the nation.” She claimed it violates the Voting Rights Act and flies in the face of federal-court decisions striking down such laws.

Texas: Feds taking ‘prime role’ in Texas voting maps case | Associated Press

Efforts by the Obama administration to wring protections out of a weakened Voting Rights Act begin Monday in Texas over allegations that Republicans intentionally discriminated against minorities when drawing new election maps. A federal trial in San Antonio comes a year after the U.S. Supreme Court made a landmark ruling that Texas and 14 other states with a history of voting discrimination no longer need permission from Washington before changing the way elections are held. The Justice Department and minority rights groups now want a three-judge panel to decide that Texas still needs that approval under a historically obscure portion of the Voting Rights Act that has drawn new attention since the heart of the 1964 civil rights law was struck down.

National: College Students Claim Voter ID Laws Discriminate Based on Age | New York Times

Civil rights groups have spent a decade fighting requirements that voters show photo identification, arguing that this discriminates against African-Americans, Hispanics and the poor. This week in a North Carolina courtroom, another group will make its case that such laws are discriminatory: college students. Joining a challenge to a state law alongside the N.A.A.C.P., the American Civil Liberties Union and the Justice Department, lawyers for seven college students and three voter-registration advocates are making the novel constitutional argument that the law violates the 26th Amendment, which lowered the voting age to 18 from 21. The amendment also declares that the right to vote “shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age.” There has never been a case like it, and if the students succeed, it will open another front in what has become a highly partisan battle over voting rights.

Texas: Voter ID law must stand trial, judge rules | MSNBC

It’s far too soon to make any predictions. But a recent decision by a federal judge in the challenge to Texas’s harsh voter ID law may augur well for the chances of getting the law struck down when it goes to trial in September. Overturning the law would be a massive win for the Obama administration, which is spearheading the challenge, and could boost Democrats’ long-term hopes of competing in Texas. It would be an embarrassing defeat for Gov. Rick Perry and for Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is highlighting his defense of the law as he runs to succeed Perry as governor. The law, passed in 2011 with strong support from Perry, imposes the strictest ID requirement in the nation. It requires that Texans show one of a narrow range of state or federal IDs. Gun licenses are accepted, but student IDs, and even out-of-state driver’s licenses, aren’t. Finding that it would disproportionately affect minority voters, a federal court blocked the law in 2012 under the Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which required the state to get federal approval for its voting laws. But hours after the Supreme Court invalidated Section 5 last year, Abbott announced that the law would go into effect.

Arkansas: Secretary of state asks judge to keep voter ID law in effect | Arkansas News

A judge’s stay of his ruling that Arkansas’ voter ID law is unconstitutional should remain in place, Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office argued in a filing Wednesday in Pulaski County Circuit Court. Pulaski Circuit Judge Tim Fox ruled May 2 that Act 595 of 2013, which requires voters to show photo identification at the polls, is unconstitutional because it imposes qualifications for voting in Arkansas that go beyond the qualifications set out in the state constitution. Fox stayed his ruling, however, so Act 595 remained in effect in the May 20 primary election and the June 10 runoff election.