National: Supreme Court order unlikely to deter voting restrictions | Associated Press

The Supreme Court’s refusal to breathe new life into North Carolina’s sweeping voter identification law might be just a temporary victory for civil rights groups. Republican-led states are continuing to enact new voter ID measures and other voting restrictions, and the Supreme Court’s newly reconstituted conservative majority, with the addition of Justice Neil Gorsuch, could make the court less likely to invalidate the laws based on claims under the federal Voting Rights Act or the Constitution. The justices on Monday left in place last summer’s ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the law’s photo ID requirement to vote in person and other provisions, which the lower court said targeted African-Americans “with almost surgical precision.”

Editorials: Despite today’s Supreme Court ruling, the future looks grim for voting rights | Paul Waldman/The Washington Post

Democrats got a victory in a voting rights case at the Supreme Court today — but don’t get used to that headline. There are dark days ahead for voting rights. In today’s decision, the court didn’t actually judge the case on its merits. It declined to hear a case involving North Carolina’s vote suppression law, which had been struck down by a lower court. In the time since then, Democrats have taken over as governor and attorney general in the state and attempted to withdraw the case over the objection of the legislature, which is still in Republican hands. There’s no question that this is a victory for Democrats and anyone who cares about the right of all Americans to vote. But it’s important to understand that the North Carolina law differs from other voter restrictions Republicans have passed in that its discriminatory intent was so blatant.

California: There were serious problems in 2016 for some California voters who don’t speak English, new report says | Los Angeles Times

California voters with limited English language skills were too often left on their own when it came to getting help casting ballots last November, concludes a sweeping new survey based on eyewitness accounts logged by hundreds of election volunteers. The data raise significant questions about the effectiveness of a long-standing state election law designed to help those voters, and whether they will struggle more as counties are allowed to transition away from traditional neighborhood polling places. “We’re talking about huge chunks of the electorate that are in danger of being disenfranchised,” said Jonathan Stein, a staff attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-California.

Michigan: House Democrat wants ‘voter bill of rights’ added to the Michigan Constitution | MLive.com

A Democratic state lawmaker is reintroducing legislation he says would make voting easier and more accessible to Michigan citizens by changing the state Constitution to include a “voter bill of rights.” The bills, first introduced last session and brought to light again by Rep. Jon Hoadley, D-Kalamazoo, proposes adding several provisions to the existing Constitutional right to vote, including allowing no-reason absentee ballots, allowing people to vote in-person absentee up to 15 days prior to an election, automatic voter registration and automatically sending military and overseas voters a ballot at least 45 days prior to an election.

Texas: Pasadena, a voting rights battleground, prepares for pivotal elections | The Texas Tribune

When voters head to the polls here Saturday, their city council and mayoral picks could have repercussions well beyond this working-class Houston suburb. It will be the first election since a federal judge struck down the city’s 2013 redistricting plan as discriminatory, paving the way for a new balance of power at City Hall. It comes as Texas Democrats redouble their efforts on the local level after a 2016 election that gave them ample reason to be optimistic about their future, especially in Harris County. And it could offer a gauge of just how far down the ballot President Donald Trump, unpopular in even a deep-red state like Texas, is energizing Democrats.

North Carolina: Literacy requirement for voter registration could be removed from state constitution | News & Observer

Decades have passed since any North Carolina voters have been forced to take a literacy test to vote, but the requirement is still in the state constitution today. “Every person presenting himself for registration shall be able to read and write any section of the Constitution in the English language,” Article VI, Section 4 says. The N.C. House voted unanimously Tuesday night to start the process to repeal that line, which was often used to prevent African-American residents from registering to vote.

Georgia: Group files voting rights suit on hot Georgia run-off election | CNN

Civil rights and voting organizations filed a suit Thursday challenging a Georgia law that affects voting in a hotly contested special election runoff in June. The lawsuit alleges that a Georgia law prohibiting voters who weren’t registered in time for the special election from voting in the runoff violates federal voting law. The case could affect the heated race between Democrat Jon Ossoff and Republican Karen Handel, who are running to replace former Republican Rep. Tom Price, who joined the Trump administration. Ossoff finished in an election this week just shy of the 50% threshold against a crowded field of Republicans, meaning he and second-place vote-getter Handel advanced to a runoff election on June 20.

Kansas: Kobach seeks stay of order to hand over Donald Trump immigration meeting documents | The Kansas City Star

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach won’t hand over the documents from his November meeting with President Donald Trump just yet. Kobach filed a motion in federal court Wednesday to stay an order from a federal magistrate judge requiring him to share the documents with the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a lawsuit about voting rights in Kansas. Kobach met with Trump at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., weeks after the Republican won the presidency. Kobach was photographed carrying a stack of papers that was labeled as a strategic plan for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and that contained a reference to voter rolls. The ACLU has sought access to the documents and to a draft amendment to the National Voter Registration Act, which Kobach has crafted and shared with his staff, as part of a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn a Kansas law. That law requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as birth certificate, when they register to vote.

New Hampshire: House debates bill that would change voting rights | WMUR

Supporters of a voting-rights bill said Tuesday that it’s aimed at cutting down on voter fraud, but opponents called it a solution in search of a problem. Senate Bill 3 would change the definition of “domicile” for voting purposes. People living in New Hampshire for 30 days or fewer before an election wouldn’t be able to vote unless they could prove intent to stay longer. Anyone registering within 30 days of an election or on Election Day would have to fill out a form, and if they don’t have proof of residency that meets the bill’s requirements, they would have to present that proof to local officials later.

California: Lawmakers look to lower voting age | Associated Press

Donald Trump’s characterization of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists during his presidential campaign angered Heidi Sainz, whose family is from Mexico and who has close friends who are immigrants. She was also upset that she couldn’t do anything about it at the ballot box because she was a year shy of being able to vote. Sainz favors a bill in the California Legislature that would lower the voting age to 17, which she thinks would give a voice to more people affected by the outcome of elections. “Looking at all the protests throughout this year throughout all the high schools across the nation, we could see a lot of the minors were protesting because they felt as if they didn’t have a voice,” said Sainz, a senior at Inderkum High School in Sacramento.

U.S. Territories: Territorial Voting Rights Brief Filed in Seventh Circuit | Virgin Islands Consortium

Earlier today Plaintiffs from Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico filed their opening brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit challenging discriminatory overseas voting laws and making the case that where you live shouldn’t impact your right to vote for president. The brief comes just days after the Harvard Law Review published a special feature, “Developments in the Law: U.S. Territories,” addressing the unequal status facing the over 4 million citizens who live in the territories. “We are optimistic that the Seventh Circuit will recognize that the right to vote is ‘fundamental’ for all Americans, including those in U.S. territories,” said Neil Weare, President and Founder of We the People Project, a non-profit that advocates for equal rights and representation in U.S. territories. “We are pleased the Harvard Law Review is giving attention to how the courts and Congress have historically treated citizens in U.S. territories with a second-class status. This case represents an important opportunity for the Seventh Circuit to change that narrative.”

National: The Entirely Preventable Battles Raging Over Voting Rights | The Atlantic

In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts made a sweeping declaration about the state of voting rights in America. “Our country has changed,” he wrote in his majority opinion in Shelby County v. Holder, “and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.” With those words, Roberts and four other justices on the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a core provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a hammer of a civil-rights law that helped bludgeon recalcitrant states toward multiracial democracy. The majority concluded Congress was relying on out-of-date data when formulating which jurisdictions still had to receive federal approval to change their election laws and policies—a practice known as preclearance that’s meant to block discriminatory measures. Four justices, led by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, denounced the decision in stark terms. “Hubris is a fit word for today’s demolition of the VRA,” she wrote in dissent.

National: Gorsuch Arrives At The Supreme Court At A Crucial Moment For Voting Rights | TPM

Less then a week into the job, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch will have his first chance, behind closed doors at least, to weigh in on voting rights. When the justices meet Friday for their private conference, the first since Gorsuch’s confirmation, among the cases that they will be considering whether to take up is an appeal of a landmark ruling striking down North Carolina’s mammoth restrictive voting law. The moment is an anxious one for voting rights advocates, who had seen a number of lower court victories on key cases in the months since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and were cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court was about to flip their way in time for them to cement that progress at the highest court. While it is unclear how Gorsuch is likely to rule on the major questions bubbling up in voting rights litigation, if he does represent the second coming of Scalia, as he has been billed by his supporters, then some of those intermediary wins are now at risk.

Texas: Analysis: A law that lets political majorities cheat — and win | The Texas Tribune

Holy cow — now there’s another ruling against Texas election law. Once again, a federal judge has found that the state’s lawmakers intentionally discriminated on the basis of race when they were changing voting rules. If this happens enough times, the state might actually be forced to change its ways. In last month’s redistricting ruling from a three-judge federal panel in San Antonio, and in this week’s ruling on Voter ID, Texas was called out for intentional racial discrimination. The state seems to be doing everything in its power to prove that it cannot be trusted with voting rights. Maybe that’s no surprise. You know what political people are like: They’re the kind of people who bend and stretch the rules to make sure they’ll win. They cut corners when they think nobody is looking. They do every single thing they think they can get away with. The winners get to run the government.

Utah: Navajo Say Utah County Can’t Dodge Voting Rights Suit | Law360

The Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission told a Utah federal judge that Utah’s San Juan County can’t dodge its bid to find the county liable for failing to provide equal opportunities to vote to Navajo citizens, saying that a 2016 plan by the county didn’t provide equally accessible polling places to Navajo voters seeking to vote in person. The commission and a handful of Navajo citizens on Friday replied to the defendant’s opposition to their motion for summary judgment in a suit against San Juan County and some of its officials that claims the county’s voting procedures hinder Navajo citizens’ ability to participate in the political process on equal terms with white voters, in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the 14th Amendment.

Bulgaria: President Demands Curbs on ‘Foreign Interference’ | Balkan Insight

In an address to the nation on Tuesday, Radev called on the new parliament which will start work on April 19 to take steps to prevent the recurrence of what he called “significant problems” at snap elections last month. He said Bulgaria had witnessed “targeted attempt from abroad to influence the electoral results” – indirectly referring to Turkey’s agitation in favour of DOST, a recently-formed ethnic Turkish-dominated party, which resulted in the extradition of several Turkish officials by the Bulgarian authorities prior to the vote. “The problems remain after the election. They do not end with external interference, there are targeted attempts at deep and systematic infiltration and influence over society and political life in the country,” Radev said.

Georgia: Elections bill with 26-month voter verification deadline passes | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Georgians could continue to use federal tribal identification cards as proof of citizenship but would face a 26-month deadline to correct any discrepancies on their voter registration forms under a bill sent to Gov. Nathan Deal for his signature. House Bill 268, sponsored by state Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, is generally considered a cleanup of the state’s election code but has drawn the ire of some voter advocacy groups. They want Deal to veto the measure because they claim it violates the spirit of a recent legal settlement over how Georgia verifies voter registration information. A federal lawsuit last year accused Georgia of disenfranchising minority voters because of an “exact match” requirement used by the state on registration forms that critics said blocked thousands of them from voter rolls. Among concerns the suit cited was that the federal and state databases used to match the information may contain errors that cause applicants to be wrongly flagged in the system.

Texas: Pasadena officials question voting rights appeal | Houston Chronicle

In a sign of waning confidence in its legal position, the Pasadena City Council voted Tuesday to withhold payment from the law firm that’s trying to prove that the city’s redistricting plan doesn’t discriminate against Hispanics. The 7-1 vote, with Mayor Johnny Isbell absent, exposed the degree to which the mayor has unilaterally pressed for an appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that the plan was discriminatory. Council members complained they don’t fully understand the status of the lawsuit or of the work being done by Bickerstaff Heath Delgado Acosta LLP of Austin.

Editorials: Texas Needs a Remedial Lesson on Voting Rights | The New York Times

In Texas, which has for decades made an art of violating the voting rights of minorities, officials and lawmakers can’t seem to keep their hands clean. Now, the state may become the first to have its voting practices placed under federal oversight since the Supreme Court struck down a central part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. A Federal District Court in San Antonio ruled on March 10 that the state’s Republican-led Legislature redrew congressional district lines in 2011 with the intent to dilute the voting power of Latino and black citizens, who tend to vote Democratic. In two districts — one encompassing parts of South and West Texas, and the other in the Dallas-Fort Worth area — the court found that mapmakers used various methods that violated the Constitution or the Voting Rights Act. In the former, a Latino-majority district, they broke up cohesive Latino areas, pulled in Latino voters with lower turnout rates while excluding those with higher turnout rates, and included more high-turnout white voters.

National: Trump, Sessions, Gorsuch and the New Battle Over Voting Rights | US News & World Report

When the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act four years ago, it gave the green light to state lawmakers eager to restrict access to the polls and eliminated the Justice Department’s role as traffic cop on whether those laws were necessary or appropriate. Activists then turned to the courts, with some success: Last year, federal judges struck down a North Carolina law mandating voters present a valid, government-issued photo ID at the polls, along with cutbacks on early voting, and the Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal. While lawyers and civil rights leaders have won some big battles in fights over voter ID laws, diminished early voting and reductions in polling places, experts say the future of voting rights remains uncertain – due to changes in the political and legal landscape that swept in with President Donald Trump.

Nevada: Tribal voting rights case settled, Washoe County pays the most | Reno Gazette-Journal

The parties involved in a voter discrimination lawsuit between two Native American tribes and state and county officials was settled for almost half of what the tribes’ lawyers requested, with Washoe County paying the most. The Pyramid Lake and Walker River Paiute tribes won a case in federal court against Washoe and Mineral counties and Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office on Oct. 7 for early polling and Election Day voting sites on the reservations. The tribes’ lawyers initially requested $117,000 in costs, but the suit was eventually settled for $60,000. Washoe County is on the hook for $25,000 with the state’s split at $20,000 and Mineral County at $15,000.

Texas: Conclusion of Pasadena voting rights case could be anticlimactic | Houston Chronicle

The biggest upheaval in Pasadena politics in years has been driven largely by the decisions and actions of one man: Mayor Johnny Isbell. It was Isbell who, immediately after a U.S. Supreme Court decision made it possible, proposed the 2013 charter change creating a City Council election system of six district seats and two at-large seats, replacing an all-district seat system. Isbell said adding at-large positions would provide residents with better representation. It was Isbell who emptied his political account to fund a campaign urging support for the charter change and to oppose a council candidate seen as a potential threat. Isbell was the second named defendant, after the city itself, in a 2014 lawsuit claiming the new council structure intentionally diluted Latino voting strength.

Georgia: Hancock County agrees to restore black voters’ rights | ABC

Election officials in Georgia’s sparsely populated, overwhelmingly black Hancock County agreed Wednesday to restore voting rights to dozens of African-American registered voters they disenfranchised ahead of a racially divided local election. About three-quarters of the people they removed from the voting rolls — nearly all of them black — still live in the voting district and will be restored to the county’s registered voter list under the settlement. “We want to make sure that a purge program like the one that played out in the fall of 2015 never happens again,” said Kristen Clarke, executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, which sued the county in federal court.

Ohio: Homeless advocates ask U.S. Supreme Court to take up Ohio voter disenfranchisement case | Cleveland Plain Dealer

Advocates for the homeless who have waged a multi-year legal battle to challenge Ohio’s provisional and absentee ballot rules are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up their case. The Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless and the Ohio Democratic Party filed its petition Friday. The groups say large groups of minority voters have been disenfranchised solely because of technical errors and omissions on voter ballot forms for absentee and provisional ballots. The petition says a federal appeals court in Atlanta has ruled differently than the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on whether private citizens can sue to enforce a certain provision of federal law pertaining to voting. The provision prohibits denying the right to vote based on missing or incorrect information on applications that do not prevent election workers from confirming a voter’s eligibility.

Washington: Voting Rights bill moves forward on narrow vote in Washington Senate | The Spokesman-Review

Many Washington cities and counties could elect their council and commission members by district under a bill some senators described Thursday as a voting rights act and others denounced as a Band-Aid. The proposal, one of five “Voting Rights” bills introduced in the Legislature, passed on a 25-24 party-line vote. It would allow smaller cities and counties the ability to drop at-large elections in favor of districts with equal population. Many of Washington’s largest cities and home-rule counties already can do that, and Sen. Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, said it was only fair to let small cities do what Spokane and Seattle have already done. But critics of the bill said it doesn’t go far enough because it doesn’t ensure that minority groups will get an equal shot at fair representation when districts are drawn. They said a more comprehensive Democratic bill had more protections, but it didn’t get out of committee.

Guam: Crowdfunding a Century-Old Fight for Voting Rights | The Atlantic

Rodney Cruz was born an American citizen. He did a tour in Iraq during 10 years in the Army, and was wounded on the battlefield three times, eventually suffering a traumatic brain injury. His enlistment followed in the footsteps of many of his relatives, an unbroken line of military service. Five successive generations of his family have put their lives on the line for the country, but like four million other Americans in the U.S. territories, Cruz, as a resident of Guam, is constitutionally barred from voting in federal elections. But with some help from a brand-new legal platform, Cruz intends to change that. As the founder of the Iraq-Afghanistan Persian Gulf Veterans of the Pacific, Cruz is one of the lead plaintiffs in the Segovia v. Chicago Board of Elections Commissioners’ case, a lawsuit seeking to challenge the prohibition on residents of U.S. territories voting in federal elections. The suit is one of several recent legal challenges around the issue of voting rights, sovereignty, and citizenship in the U.S. territories. After the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled against the plaintiffs and denied a motion for summary judgment last year, the plaintiffs and a nonprofit voting-rights organization called We the People Project turned to crowdfunding to finance an appeal to the U.S. Seventh Circuit court.

Georgia: House to vote on bill that groups say hurts minority voters | Atlanta Journal-Constitution

An elections bill up for consideration in the state House Wednesday has raised the ire of voter advocacy groups, who say it could disproportionately hurt minority Georgians trying to join the state’s voter rolls. House Bill 268, which is scheduled to be considered by the state House, would create a 26-month deadline for voting applicants to correct discrepancies in what they submit to the state when they register. It is being opposed by the same groups who sued Secretary of State Brian Kemp last year, alleging the system disenfranchised minority voters because the requirement blocked tens of thousands of them from voter rolls. That suit was settled two weeks ago.

Ecuador: Transgender people vote for first time according to chosen gender | Reuters

Ecuadorean transgender people on Sunday voted for the first time according to their chosen gender, in what activists say are signs of progress in the socially conservative and Catholic Andean nation. In Ecuador, men and women wait in separate lines to cast their ballots, which for years created uncomfortable moments for transgender voters who had to queue up according to their biological sex. “The rumors would start, and the looks,” said LGBT activist Mariasol Mite, 32, who changed her ID description from “sex: male” to “gender: female” last year. Fears of harassment were such that voters would sometimes send their brothers or husbands to wait in line until they got close to the booth, according to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists. “This year, everything was different,” said Mite, adding that public officials and fellow voters were much more aware of the issue.

Arizona: Voting rights advocates see little change, but hope for future | Cronkite News

Arizona may have made headlines in 2016 when voters had to wait hours in the sun just to vote in the presidential preference election, but advocates in the state said problems with voting are nothing new to them. “Since we’ve been addressing it since 2012, there has been little to no action in actually fixing anything,” said Viri Hernandez, director at the Arizona Center for Neighborhood Leadership. Hernandez pointed to a mix-up on Spanish ballots in 2012 on ballot due dates, and then-Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell’s comment last year that voters turning out were partly to blame for polling lines being so long as just two examples of what she sees as systemic problems. Hernandez was in Washington this week with voting rights advocates from around the nation to take part in the America Votes State Summit, where voting advocates and mostly liberal groups planned strategy to reverse the “shocking” 2016 election results. The sessions were largely closed to the press, but Arizona advocates had plenty to say afterwards.

National: Trump’s Labor Pick Has a History of Attacking Voting Rights | The Nation

The essential battleground state of the 2004 presidential campaign was Ohio, and as the election approached, supporters of embattled President George W. Bush announced an exceptionally controversial scheme to station citizen “challengers” at polling places. As a Brennan Center for Justice report explained, “Only a few weeks before Election Day, the Ohio Republican Party announced its plan to deploy thousands of citizen challengers across the state, mostly in African-American voting precincts. The announcement led to multiple voting rights lawsuits and sparked a media firestorm.” The firestorm ultimately led Ohio Republicans to abandon their initial plan. But, as the Brennan Center analysts noted, “the ensuing controversy shined a national spotlight on the disruptions that partisan and discriminatory challenge efforts can cause.” It also shined a light on Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s latest nominee to serve as secretary of labor, and the first Latino to be tapped by the president as a cabinet pick. Acosta is an experienced government hand, who has a long history of working the conservative Republican side of the aisle. After finishing Harvard Law School, he clerked for future Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito, who was then serving as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and as a senior fellow with the right-leaning Ethics and Public Policy Center. Acosta served briefly as a Bush appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, and then was appointed by Bush as the assistant attorney general with responsibility for leading the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.