New Mexico: Elections Bureau working to modernize voting system | Associated Press

It won’t be until after the 2016 general election that a revamped, more modern election management and voter registration system is fully implemented in New Mexico, according to the state’s top election officials. The secretary of state’s office briefed lawmakers on its progress during a meeting this week in Albuquerque. The agency already has updated the candidate filing system and streamlined the reporting of election results, but work has yet to start on revamping voter registration. Kari Fresquez, head of the elections bureau and the agency’s chief technology officer, said creating a one-stop shop for voters and integrating the numerous separate systems used by county clerks across the state marks the biggest step in the modernization process.

National: States are ignoring federal law about voter registration. Here’s why. | The Washington Post

What federal voting rights law, according to the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, is the election statute most often ignored? It’s the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), a law that each year helps millions of citizens with either updating their voter registration records or applying to vote for the first time. Below I explain what the NVRA is, its impact and the challenges it has faced in being put into practice. The NVRA is often referred to as “Motor Voter,” but it is more complex than this implies. The NVRA requires states, among other things, to accept voter registration applications by mail and to offer voter registration services at government offices providing state identification and drivers’ licenses (hence “motor”), armed forces recruitment centers, and government offices providing services to people with low incomes or disabilities. This post focuses on the requirement to register voters at health and social services agencies (or, simply “agencies” in this post). This is a requirement that many states are ignoring or implementing poorly.

New Jersey: Major changes to voting laws now in Christie’s hands | NJ.com

After working out some backroom squabbling, the state Senate on Monday gave final approval to a sweeping overhaul of the state’s election laws intended to expand access to the ballot and boost voter participation. The “Democracy Act,” passed 24-16, includes more early voting options, online voter registration and automatic registration at the Motor Vehicle Commission, and it would require pre-election materials to be printed in more languages. The bill (A4613) would also clear up the state’s contradictory U.S. Senate succession laws and curtail the governor’s power in appointing temporary senators by requiring them to be from the same party as the person who vacated the seat.

National: Court order slips quietly under radar | Boston Herald

It wasn’t the biggest headline-grabber in a week full of pivotal U.S. Supreme Court rulings, but an order issued by the court handed a victory to voting rights advocates who have been battling suppressive state-imposed laws as next year’s presidential election draws near. In an unsigned order, the justices on Monday declined to review a lower court ruling barring Kansas and Arizona from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms. The states can still impose the requirement on state-based voting forms, but they can’t force the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to do the same on registration forms for presidential and congressional elections in those states.

Wisconsin: Government Accountability Board Cleaning Up State Voter Registration Log | WBAY

The Government Accountability Board is reaching out to inactive voters as it tries to clean up the state’s voter registration roll. Postcards are being mailed out to nearly 100,000 inactive registered voters in Wisconsin. “State law says that after every major November election you have to look back and see who didn’t vote in the last four years and then you have to contact them like we do with this postcard,” says Reid Magney with the GAB.

Kansas: Supreme Court declines to hear Kobach appeal on proof of citizenship | Lawrence Journal World

People in Kansas can still register to vote in federal elections without showing proof of citizenship, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. But whether those people will be allowed to vote in state and local elections remains an open question. The court on Monday refused to hear Kansas Secretary of State Kobach’s appeal in a case in which he asked that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission provide a federal voter registration form that comports with state law, which requires voters to show proof of citizenship. Last year, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Kobach, saying the EAC did not have to provide a revised federal form for use in Kansas. The Supreme Court’s decision Monday not to hear Kobach’s appeal means the 10th Circuit’s ruling will stand.

New Jersey: S50: ‘Democracy Act’ Approved By Senate | NJPoliticker

Legislation that would provide a sweeping overhaul of New Jersey’s outdated voting rights laws was approved by the Senate on Monday. The bill, designated S-50 in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, includes plans to allow early voting, online and automatic voter registration, increased accessibility and protections, and an end to wasteful special elections. The legislation is sponsored by Senator Nia Gill (D-Essex/Passaic), Senator Ronald Rice (D-Essex), Senate President Steve Sweeney (D-Gloucester) and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen). Already approved by the Assembly, the measure now goes to the governor following the Senate vote of 24 to 16.

Massachusetts: MassHealth settles lawsuit with voting rights organizations | MassLive.com

A coalition of voting rights organizations has reached a settlement with the state, in which public assistance organizations including MassHealth will provide voter registration forms to their clients. The settlements with Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders, Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin and Director of the Office of Medicaid Daniel Tsai, signed on Tuesday, mark the conclusion of a lawsuit that was partially settled with the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance in March.

California: California elections chief proposes making voting easier | Los Angeles Times

California’s top elections officer on Wednesday expanded his proposed overhaul of the way citizens vote, aiming to make it easier for them to cast ballots. Secretary of State Alex Padilla wants the state to mail all voters a ballot and allow them to use it at any of several voting centers during a 10-day period before elections. That would allow people to vote near their jobs or other convenient locations rather than limit them to visiting polling places near their homes on election day or mailing in their ballots. Voters also would be able to drop ballots off 24 hours a day at secure locations during a 14-day period before elections.

Illinois: New unfunded mandate adds $1.9M to Kane County Clerk’s budget | Chicago Tribune

Kane County Clerk John A. Cunningham is rallying colleagues and county officials to amend a newly enacted bill requiring clerks extend the grace period for voter registration to early registration and Election Day at all precincts, which would cost taxpayers $1.9 million. “It puts us in a bind,” Cunningham said Wednesday. “We have been working quite diligently and doing everything in our power to reduce the cost. We are trying to come in the back door and get an amendment,” the clerk said.

Editorials: The Mysterious Number of American Citizens | Nathaniel Persily/Politico

Many Americans believe that someone, somewhere in Washington, must be in charge of tracking who is and who isn’t a citizen of the United States. Apparently, so does the U.S. Supreme Court, which just accepted a voting rights case that turns on the government’s ability to count the number of citizens in each voting district. But despite all the talk these days about government and Big Data, the justices, like the rest of us, might be surprised to learn that the most basic information as to who is an American citizen cannot actually be found in any publicly available government data set — anywhere. The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, poses a question: whether the Constitution’s long-standing “one person, one vote” principle requires equal numbers of voters per district instead of equal numbers of people, as is current practice. Most commentary on the case has focused on its implications for political parties and racial groups. But focusing on the politics, or even on the merits of the constitutional argument, ultimately distracts from a much bigger problem: The data necessary to draw districts with equal numbers of eligible voters does not exist. We have no national citizen database that tells us how many citizens live in each district around the country.

North Carolina: Advocates warn North Carolina on missing DMV voter registrations | Charlotte Post

Voting rights activists are threatening to sue North Carolina for failing to adhere to federal registration law. Attorneys for Action NC, Democracy North Carolina, the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute, and North Carolina residents forwarded a pre-litigation notice letter on Monday to State Board of Elections Executive Director Kim Strach, N.C. Secretary of Transportation Tony Tata and Commissioner of Motor Vehicles Kelly Thomas alleging that the state Department of Motor Vehicles isn’t meeting voter registration obligations set by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. The legislation, commonly known as the “Motor Voter Law,” requires voter registration services whenever a resident applies for, renews, or changes their address on a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. DMVs are then required to transmit the information to the appropriate election official within 10 days, or five days if the change of information is within five days of the close of registration.

North Carolina: State Put On Lawsuit Notice Over Declining Voter Registration | Huffington Post

A slate of civil rights groups put North Carolina on notice Monday, writing in a pre-litigation letter that the state must meet its voter registration obligations or risk a lawsuit. The letter alleges that the state’s motor vehicle and public assistance agencies are violating legal requirements set out in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to provide voter registration services to citizens and transmit registration information to election officials. The legislation, signed in 1993 by former President Bill Clinton and commonly referred to as the “motor voter” law, delineates that state motor vehicle agencies must provide voter registration services whenever a person applies for, renews or changes his or her address on a driver’s license or government-issued identification card. It also requires public assistance, disability and military recruiting offices to facilitate voter registration.

Texas: Passing the Buck on the Motor Voter Law, Texas Style | Texas Election Law Blog

This week, the law firm of Waters and Kraus LLP sent a demand letter to the Texas Secretary of State, informing him of his failure to meet the legal requirements of the National Voter Registration Act, and of his legal liabilities under that federal law. The law in question is Section 20504(a) of Title 52, Chapter 205, United States Code (text taken from uscode.house.gov):

(1) Each State motor vehicle driver’s license application (including any renewal application) submitted to the appropriate State motor vehicle authority under State law shall serve as an application for voter registration with respect to elections for Federal office unless the applicant fails to sign the voter registration application.

(2) An application for voter registration submitted under paragraph (1) shall be considered as updating any previous voter registration by the applicant.

Easy enough to understand, right? If you get a driver’s license, or renew a driver’s license, you get registered to vote, or you get your registration updated, assuming that you are legally eligible to vote.

Texas: Voting group alleges Texas keeping thousands from registering | MSNBC

Thousands of Texans are being disenfranchised thanks to chronic failures in the state’s voter registration system, a Democratic group alleges based on government records and extensive additional evidence. The charges raise serious questions about Texas’s commitment to making the ballot box accessible to new voters, and about its compliance with federal voting law. In a letter sent Wednesday to Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos, lawyers for Battleground Texas, which works to register voters in the state, wrote that the state government’s “voter registration failures are widespread and systematically undermining the right to vote in Texas.”

California: Disabled man’s desire to vote leads to probe of alleged state violations | Los Angeles Times

Stephen Lopate was just a boy when he first mentioned he wanted to vote someday in a presidential election. It was 2008, and he told his mother he liked Hillary Clinton because she was a smart woman. Years later, when he turned 18, Lopate’s mother sought a court guardianship of her severely autistic son so that she could oversee his medical affairs and other legal matters. But she and Lopate were horrified and confused when they discovered that the move would result in her son being stripped of his right to vote. “I have always made sure … that he knows his opinion matters,” said Lopate’s mother, Teresa Thompson. “It was just awful.”

Arizona: Yavapai County Supervisors weigh how to pay for vital election equipment | The Prescott Daily Courier

Yavapai County Supervisors working through dozens of decisions with the new fiscal year budget have a critical decision hanging over the Elections Department’s inserter, which prepares ballots for mailing. A decision must be made before the Prescott Election this year, and they have delayed the decision for another day. The Microsoft XP software that drives the equipment becomes obsolete Oct. 1, with about a $1 million replacement cost looming. At the same time, the supervisors are looking to cut some of each of various departments’ budget requests to adopt a balanced budget for 2015-16 beginning July 1. County Recorder Leslie Hoffman, who administers Voter Registration and Early Voting, says her department has been anticipating the change for as long as three years and pricing out the options.

North Carolina: Paper trail indicates DHHS aware of voting issue despite response | WRAL

When a group of voting rights advocates notified the state Department of Health and Human Services recently that North Carolina may not be living up to federal requirements that social services agencies help their clients register to vote, a spokeswoman indicated the department was surprised. “This administration has always supported increasing voter registration and will fully review any alleged variance along with our processes to determine if the Department needs to revise its procedures,” Alexandra Lefebvre, a DHHS press assistant, emailed Friday in response to both verbal and emailed requests for comment. “Given the gravity of this issue, we wish these activist organizations had approached the Department sooner when they first had concerns about the registration process.” That profession of surprise is a much different response than WRAL News received from the North Carolina State Board of Elections on Friday, where officials indicated that they were not only aware of the problem but said they had been prodding DHHS for years to address the issue.

North Carolina: Suit threatened over voting access; DHHS, Elections Board say they’ll investigate | News & Observer

Four national and state voting-rights organizations are threatening to sue North Carolina for what they contend are Gov. Pat McCrory administration’s violations of a federal law that requires the state to help poor people register to vote. The coalition gave written notice to the State Board of Elections and the state Department of Health and Human Services on Friday, triggering a 90-day period for the state agencies to comply with the law or face a lawsuit.

Editorials: Register Minority Voters in Georgia, Go to Jail | The New Republic

In the weeks leading up to the 2012 election, Helen Ho, an attorney who has worked to register newly naturalized immigrants to vote in the Southeast, made an alarming discovery. Some new citizens that her group, then known as the Asian American Legal Advocacy Center, had tried to register in Georgia were still not on the rolls. Early voting had begun and polling places were challenging and even turning away new citizens seeking to vote for the first time. After more than a week of seeking answers from the office of Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, which oversees elections, AALAC issued a sharply worded open letter on October 31 demanding that Georgia take immediate action to ensure the new citizens could vote. Two days later Ho received her response. In a letter, Brian Kemp, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, offered few specific assurances about the new voters in question and informed Ho that his office was launching an investigation into how AALAC registered these would-be voters. Kemp’s office asked that AALAC turn over certain records of its registration efforts, citing “potential legal concerns surrounding AALAC’s photocopying and public disclosure of voter registration applications.”

South Dakota: Court Says Sioux Voting Rights Suit Will Proceed | Courthouse News Service

A lawsuit alleging that Jackson County has impaired Native Americans’ right to vote on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota will move forward, a federal judge ruled on May 1. Plaintiff Thomas Poor Bear, Vice President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, filed the lawsuit in September 2014, alleging that Jackson County’s refusal to open a satellite voter registration office on the reservation amounted to discrimination against Native American voters, many of whom did not have transportation to the county seat for voting. The defendants – Jackson County, County Auditor Vicki Wilson, and County Commissioners Glen Bennett, Larry Denke, Larry Johnston, Jim Stillwell and Ron Twiss – responded by filing a motion to dismiss, arguing “the complaint contains no facts showing that the plaintiffs were unable to vote absentee or vote by regular ballot.”

Uganda: Electoral Commission extends voters registration again | New Vision

After the initial extension of the deadline for updating the national voters register, the Electoral Commission (EC) has re-extended the exercise by seven days, ending on May 11. The update process which started on 7th April 2015 up to 30th April was extended to the end of Monday but before the close of business, EC considered re-extending with the aim of generating a fresh voter’s register, ahead of the 2016 polls. EC deputy spokesperson Paul Bukenya while confirming to New Vision said that the move is meant to capture more legible voters to update their details ahead of the elections.

Arizona: Federal court upholds election law | Arizona Daily Star

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a 2011 Arizona law designed by Republicans to slow the tide of people not registering with their party. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the statute says voter registration forms can specifically list the names of only the two parties with the highest number of members, and list them in the order of most adherents. That means the Republicans and Democrats. And anyone who wants to register as a Libertarian or otherwise has to fill in that party’s name on a line that’s less than an inch long. But Judge Wallace Tashima, writing for the three-judge panel, said that differentiation was not enough of a burden on minor parties — or those who want to sign up for them — to make it illegal.

New Hampshire: State Supreme Court hears arguments on law linking voter registration to motor vehicle rules | Concord Monitor

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in a case challenging language that would tie voter registration to motor vehicle laws. A law passed in 2012 sought to amend the state’s voter registration forms that required those registering to vote to also affirm, among other things, that: “In declaring New Hampshire as my domicile, I am subject to the laws of the state of New Hampshire which apply to all residents, including laws requiring a driver to register a motor vehicle and apply for a New Hampshire’s driver’s license within 60 days of becoming a resident.”

New Hampshire: State Supreme Court hears arguments on voter bill | Associated Press

The New Hampshire Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday about whether a 2012 law amending the language of voter registration forms discourages out-of-state college students and others living in the state temporarily from voting. Assistant Attorney General Stephen LaBonte told the justices the language merely clarifies that New Hampshire residents must abide by state laws requiring them to obtain driver’s licenses and register their cars in the state. Attorney Bill Christie, representing the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union, urged the justices to uphold two lower-court rulings that deem the law’s language to be confusing and unconstitutionally restrictive on a person’s right to vote.

New Hampshire: Supreme Court declines to weigh in on voter eligibility legislation | Concord Monitor

The New Hampshire Supreme Court is declining to weigh in on the constitutionality of a bill that would tie a person’s voting domicile to motor vehicle law – for now, at least. In March, the New Hampshire House asked the state Supreme Court to weigh in on the constitutionality of House Bill 118, one of several bills introduced this session that attempts to change voting eligibility requirements. This change in particular would link voting registration with motor vehicle law, stating: “A person who declares an address in a New Hampshire town or ward as his or her domicile for voting purposes shall be deemed to have established his or her residence for motor vehicle law purposes at that address.”

Minnesota: Electoral process raises concerns | Grand Rapids Herald-Review

The next presidential election is looming, and those on both sides of the political spectrum are voicing anxieties about the modern electoral process. Through the course of the legislative session, several lawmakers have raised concerns about the changes they see in all elections. When Rep. Tom Anzelc, DFL-Balsam Township, weighed in on recent legislation that would allow high school students to pre-register to vote, he elaborated on the larger political implications of legislation around the country having to do with voter registration. In particular, Anzelc criticized Republican bills aimed at preventing voter fraud. “We just concluded a period where the Republican-leaning members of the Legislature have been interested in making it harder for people to vote because they’re hung up on what they think is voter fraud in the state,” said Anzelc. “I’ve concluded based upon the data I’ve seen there isn’t the level of voter impropriety that they thought there was. So now we may be going into a period where people are promoting voting.”

Nevada: Bill calls for check of noncitizen driver cards against voter rolls | Las Vegas Review-Journal

An Assembly committee Tuesday considered a bill setting up procedures to check whether noncitizens who obtain Nevada driver authorization cards show up on voter registration rolls. Assembly Bill 459 as originally proposed would require the Department of Motor Vehicles to forward information on driver authorization card holders who did not provide proof of citizenship to the secretary of state and county election officials, who would then determine if the person is registered to vote. “We’re just trying to make sure that those who do vote are citizens of the United States,” said Assemblyman Lynn Stewart, who presented the bill.

National: The Voting Law That’s Being Ignored | Bloomberg View

A few weeks ago, a Massachusetts government agency you’ve probably never heard of settled a lawsuit over what kinds of forms it has to hand out to people who apply for welfare. That might sound dull, but it’s the backdrop for a fight against growing political and economic inequality. The lawsuit, brought by a coalition of nonprofit voting-rights groups, charged that the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance was in violation of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which requires agencies that offer public assistance to help their clients register to vote. The coalition claimed the department wasn’t handing out voter-registration forms or taking other steps to ensure that people who wanted to register did.

North Dakota: Senate approves voter registration study | INFORUM

A bill requiring a study of voter registration in North Dakota will soon be on its way to Gov. Jack Dalrymple for his signature. The Senate voted 28-19 Monday to approve House Bill 1302, which requires legislative management to study policies to implement a system of voter registration, including provisions necessary to allow same-day voter registration. North Dakota is the only state without voter registration. But Rep. Corey Mock, D-Grand Forks, who offered the study as an amendment to his original bill that sought to reverse changes made to the state’s voter identification law in 2013, said he believes the state has created a de facto voter registration system through its central voter file.