Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Democrats earn another court victory on voter rights

Mailed ballots

Democrats have won a legal victory in Georgia, where election officials have agreed to be more careful about how they decide whether to reject a mailed-in ballot.

Bill Oxford/Getty Images

Democrats' strategy of using the courts as another front in this year's campaign has paid off again — this time in Georgia, where the state has agreed to back off its aggressive rejections of mailed ballots over signature problems.

Settlement of a lawsuit brought by the party marks the third big victory for the Democrats' strategy of spending tens of millions suing for voting rights in 2020 presidential or congressional battlegrounds, compelling the Republicans to set aside at least as much defending state laws and regulations their opponents say are all about ballot suppression.

Other recent victories include getting rid of South Carolina's requirement that people reveal their entire Social Security number on voter registration applications and making it easier in Michigan for college students to vote at the campus where they attend school.


Pending cases challenge rules that put Republican candidates on the ballot first in several states and ones that forbid straight-ticket voting.

Democratic congressional campaign committees and the state Democratic Party filed the Georgia lawsuit last fall, arguing the state laws governing the process of matching signatures was unconstitutional.

Democratic officials said 68,000 voters nationwide had their ballots rejected in 2018 because an election official, who had received no training, concluded the voter's signature on the ballot return envelope did not match a signature on file.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

In many cases, people were never notified their votes had been tossed — or if they were, it happened long after the election — thus denying them the chance to challenge the rejection.

Under the settlement, filed Friday, the state Election Board will adopt a new rule requiring officials to notify voters by mail, email or telephone if their absentee ballots have been rejected — by the next business day if the rejection occurs close to Election Day.

Regarding signature matches, the settlement calls for local election officials to try to match the signature on the ballot envelope with all of the signatures for that person on file. If none are thought to match, the election official must get two other election officials to agree with that judgment before the ballot can be rejected.

Finally, election officials in Georgia agreed to consider including in their election training materials new guidelines for comparing voters' signatures, to be drafted by the handwriting expert hired by those filing the lawsuit.

The Democratic groups also settled a related suit filed against Gwinnett County over the absentee ballot envelope's design. The text on the envelope was small and hard to read, causing people to make errors that disqualified their votes.

Under the settlement, the county adopted a new ballot envelope design which is easier to read.

Read More

House chamber

Rep. Scott Perry objects to Pennsylvania's certification of its Electoral College vote during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 7, 2021.

Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

What voters need to know about the presidential election

It is quite clear that the presidential election is going to be incredibly close. In each of the seven swing states, the margin of error is less than 2 percent.

As citizens, this is not something to fear and it is critically important that we all trust the election results.

As part of our ongoing series for the Election Overtime Project, today we present a guide explaining in detail what you, as a voter, need to know about the role of state legislatures and Congress in a presidential election. The guide was prepared by the Election Reformers Network, a nonprofit organization championing impartial elections and concrete policy solutions that strengthen American democracy.

Keep ReadingShow less
cheering crowd
Nicholas Green/Unsplash

Voters, activists set to rally for open primaries ahead of historic elections

Griffiths is the national editor of Independent Voter News, where a version of this story first appeared.

The 2024 election cycle is already a historic year for election reform. Six states plus the District of Columbia have measures on the Nov. 5 ballot that open taxpayer-funded primary elections to voters outside the Republican and Democratic parties.

It is the first time in U.S. history that this many statewide primary reform initiatives have been offered up in the same election, something reform leaders are celebrating as they rally citizens to show their support for open primaries.

Keep ReadingShow less
People protesting for voting rights in front of the Capitol

The Supreme Court eliminated provisions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013.

Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

The voter fraud conversation is the wrong one to be having right now

Rajasekar is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Illinois Springfield and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.

For the past decade, America has been mired in a repetitive, pointless conversation about “voter fraud,” helped in no small part by Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine voters’ faith in the electoral process.

During the presidential debate with Kamala Harris in early September, Trump insisted that he was the true winner of the 2020 election, and he has repeatedly hinted that he will not accept the election results this November if they are not in his favor. Since then, Trump and other GOP politicians have continued to put forward baseless arguments about voter fraud, including claims that Democrats are registering non-citizens and undocumented migrants to purposefully skew election results.

Keep ReadingShow less
A roll of stickers that read "I registered to vote today!"
Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images

Become an informed voter – it’s the best way to fight voter suppression

Harris is director of media engagement at Stand Up America.

This is National Voter Education Week, when activists and organizations across the country mobilize to educate voters on how to make their voices heard in November. This year, that mission is more important than ever. While voting rights advocates are hard at work helping voters find their polling location and voting options, learn what’s on their ballot, and make a plan for voting, MAGA politicians are ramping up efforts to make it more difficult to vote and even purging voter rolls in battleground states.

Keep ReadingShow less
Georgia voting stickers
Megan Varner/Getty Images

Experts pan Georgia’s hand-count rule as we prep for Election Overtime

On Sept. 17, Georgia’s election board voted to hand-count all ballots cast at polling places across the state’s 159 counties on Election Day, contrary to the legal opinion of the Georgia attorney general and the advice of the secretary of state.

Attorney General Chris Carr, a Republican, challenged the validity of the decision in a letter to the elections board:

"There are thus no provisions in the statutes cited in support of these proposed rules that permit counting the number of ballots by hand at the precinct level prior to delivery to the election superintendent for tabulation. Accordingly, these proposed rules are not tethered to any statute — and are, therefore, likely the precise type of impermissible legislation that agencies cannot do."
Keep ReadingShow less