In a perfect example of reporting you won’t find anywhere else as the midterms kick into full gear, Jim Saksa guides you through the most pressing outstanding cases you need to know about among the more than 75 anti-voting lawsuits and 91 pro-voting cases we are tracking.
After that, Senior Legal Editor Andrew Childers breaks down all of the latest absurd scheming from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) as it sued California just moments after the 48-hour deadline it gave the state to review an unverified list of thousands of alleged noncitizens it claims are illegally registered to vote.
More on this and other must-know stories from the week below. Sally will be back next week!
Andrew Wyrich · Newsletter Editor
VOTING RIGHTS
As Election Day nears, these federal cases could still impact access to the ballot
By Jim Saksa
· Reporter
Thanks to Trump’s incessant attempts to take over the midterms, the legal landscape for collecting and counting ballots has been in a state of near-constant flux for months.
But things are settling into shape as the last few major federal lawsuits with far-reaching implications come to a close.
Courts have recently blocked many of the administration’s biggest suppression schemes, but plenty of other legal battles — like law enforcement at the polls, the DOJ’s massive election monitoring program or Trump’s demand for a national “citizenship list” — are still active and could affect access to the ballot for some voters this fall.
Trump administration sues California in bid to squash ballots it claims went to thousands of noncitizens
By Andrew Childers · Senior Legal Editor
First, the DOJ sent California a thumb drive with a hand-scrawled password on a sticky note, claiming it contained information about thousands of suspected noncitizens registered to vote. California election officials declined to insert that into any of their equipment, showing that somebody in the state paid attention during those mandatory phishing trainings we’ve all sat through.
Two days later, the Trump administration filed a lawsuit accusing California of knowingly abetting noncitizen voting and demanding that the state stop everyone on the list from casting a ballot — with voting already underway. Notably, the only statute the lawsuit cites is a federal law making it illegal for individual noncitizens to vote.
Legal deficiencies aside, Democrats are sounding the alarm that all of this could merely be a precursor to the Trump administration attempting to seize ballots in the nation’s most populous state — one that reliably votes blue.
Trump has erroneously claimed for years that noncitizens voting in elections is a widespread problem. It’s not. Still, this effort represents a stark escalation in the administration’s voter suppression campaign, as it moves from voter lists and databases to an attack on actual ballots.
BEHIND THE STORY
Andrew W.: What is one thing about this story that stands out to you?
Andrew C.: The DOJ gave California only 48 hours to comb through and verify 20,000 voters’ eligibility. A rough back-of-the-envelope calculation tells us that means California would have needed to verify 417 voters an hour to make the deadline. Or 1,250 per hour if the state kept to business hours only.
North Carolina early voting begins, with students targeted by suppression schemes
By Natalie Hausmann
· News Writer
To say there’s a lot going on with voting in North Carolina would be an understatement. A state board of elections meeting could yield anything from voter suppression justified by Chick-fil-A’s weekend hours to voter suppression led by partisan operatives to voter suppression manifesting in threats to arrest student meeting attendees.
Notice a trend? You aren’t alone. So did the nearly a dozen voters, experts and election officials I spoke to for this story marking the start of early voting in the Tar Heel state.
In short, hurdles to voting access are not one-off instances. For marginalized communities, they’re embedded in the very fabric of the state. This fall, the GOP-controlled elections board cut poll sites for students and majority-Black neighborhoods, slashed Sunday voting hours in half, sent out a slew of confusing letters asking for various levels of voter identification information, and made it easier to reject mail ballots.
Mail ballot restrictions are facing fierce litigation, and we’re awaiting a ruling any day now that would either block or uphold a rule that voters must seal an inner envelope tucked, as one voter described to me, “like an eighth of an inch” away from the outer envelope.
It’s a nearly impossible task for those with tremors or other mobility constraints. But it’s already spoiling ballots, according to multiple county election officials who spoke to me for this story. And we didn’t even get to the fact that North Carolina is a major battleground in this election.
Get a “Democracy Class” into a classroom in your community! Democracy Class is a free, nonpartisan curriculum that educates high school students about the importance and history of voting and pre-registers and registers them to vote. You can call on principals, teachers, administrators, community center leaders, elected officials and others to get Democracy Class in classrooms and community centers across the country. They can sign up here to receive the curriculum and training materials.
As always, if you know of a pro-democracy event happening soon near you, make sure to add it to our new bulletin board! The board is currently available to all subscribers; all you need to do is sign in.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Election Day is almost here. How are you getting involved?
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