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A legal fight over the fate of thousands of names on Wisconsin's rolls is now likely to linger beyond November. Here, Milwaukeeans waiting to vote in the Covid-troubled April primary.
One Midwest win for each side in the voter purge wars
Jul 02 2020
The partisan fight over how to maintain voter registration lists has delivered one victory for each side this week — both in Midwestern states central to the November election.
The top court in Wisconsin decided against fast-tracking a decision about removing from the rolls more than 100,000 people with potentially out of date registrations — a delay that benefits the cause of voting rights advocates. But in neighboring Michigan, a conservative group claimed victory and dropped its lawsuit against Detroit after the city took a group of dead people and duplicate names off the rolls.
The cases capture a debate that pitches those (mostly Democrats) who believe aggressive attempts to remove, or "purge," names from voter rolls are an attempt at voter suppression against those (mostly Republicans) who believe poorly maintained voter lists clogged with the names of the mortally or physically departed provide an opportunity for fraud.
<p>The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request to expedite a case that initially involved the proposed removal of more than 230,000 names from the rolls.<br/></p><p>Instead, the court said it would hear oral arguments in late September. The schedule makes it highly unlikely the court will rule before Election Day, when the state's 10 electoral votes could play a central role in the presidential contest.</p><p>Since the legal dispute began, about 100,000 of the voters facing potential removal have updated their information — still leaving in dispute 4 percent of the people on the rolls statewide.</p><p>Election rules in Wisconsin prohibit any change to the voter rolls within 30 days of an election, making it nearly impossible to remove any names before Nov. 3 even if the court rules that way.</p><p>In addition, a newly elected and progressive Supreme Court justice takes the bench in August, narrowing conservative control of the court.</p><p>The original suit was filed in November by a conservative think tank and law firm, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, claiming the elections commission was ignoring state law requiring the removal of people who don't answer a mailing sent to those who appear to have moved.</p><p>A trial court judge ordered the rosters culled but an appeals court unanimously overturned the judge in February.</p><p>In the Detroit case, the conservative. Indianapolis-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, which had sued city election officials in federal court in December, dropped its lawsuit on Tuesday after noting that officials had taken action to remove some of the out-of-date registrations.</p><p>The foundation claimed in its suit to have identified more than 2,500 dead people who remained registered to vote.</p><p>More than half had been dead more than a decade, nearly 900 have been dead more than 15 years and one was found with a birth date listed as 1823.</p><p>In addition, foundation researchers discovered what appeared to be duplicate and triplicate registrations for individuals, using different addresses.</p><p>The group repeatedly brought its findings to the attention of Detroit election officials but says the city did not take any steps to clean up the voting rolls.</p><p>Detroit election officials said the recent updates to voter rolls were largely the result of regular maintenance but conceded they had looked into a few specific claims in the lawsuit.</p><p>It turns out the listing for the voter with a birth date of 1823 caused by a typo.</p>
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Poll workers count mail-in ballots during the March primary election in Tallahassee, Fl. More than 18,000 mail-in ballots were not counted in the Florida primary, new research has found.
Small but significant number of mail-in ballots uncounted in Florida
Jul 01 2020
More than 18,000 ballots were mailed in but not tabulated in Florida's presidential primary, researchers have found. And the envelopes returned by young, first-time and Black voters were the most likely not to get counted.
The number of uncounted absentee ballots is one component of an analysis of the March 17 primary published last week by the Healthy Elections Project, created by experts at Stanford and MIT.
While the number of uncounted mail ballots is a tiny fraction — 1.3 percent — of the total number of mail-in ballots in the primary, it nonetheless represents a significant number of voters in a state renowned for its razor-thin election results.
<p>Researchers said the data they studied did not provide a breakdown of why the mail-in ballots were not counted. But they said the two most likely reasons were that the envelopes arrived after the deadline — when the polls closed on primary day — or there was some problem with the way the ballots were filled out. This could include everything from not signing the ballot to the signature not matching what is on file with election officials.<br/></p>
<p>The GOP-majority Legislature last year changed the process of signature matching in ways that voting rights advocates want to see nationwide. It sets out a more rigorous standard than in the past for rejecting a mail-in ballot, requires election officials to notify voterd if their envelopes have been rejected because of a perceived signature mismatch, and gives voters until two days after the election to persuade officials that their handwriting was legitimate.</p>
<p>The Healthy Elections Project analysis also found that voters 18 to 29 were almost three times as likely to have their mail-in ballots not counted (3.6 percent compared to 1.3 percent overall). </p>
<p>First-time voters were almost twice as likely to have their mail-in ballots not counted, while 2.3 percent of Black voters' mail-in ballots were not counted.</p>
<p>Experts say the results call for a public education effort to explain to people how to properly vote by mail.</p>
<p>Overall, the share of votes cast by mail increased dramatically for the presidential contest — to 46 percent, up from 29 percent four years ago — despite the fact that the coronavirus pandemic was still in its early stages when voters had to decide whether to vote absentee or in person.</p>
<p>Notably, the percentage of Republicans voting absentee outstripped Democrats, 55 percent to 40 percent — a sign that plenty of GOP voters in the third-most populous state disagree with President Trump's oft-stated view that mail-in voting should be sharply restricted because it promotes election fraud.</p>
<p>The president was one of those mail-in voters in March, however, even though he had been in his newly adopted hometown of Palm Beach during the period for in-person early voting in a primary. (He had to amend his initial registration application in September, because he originally listed his "legal residence" as 1600 Pennsyvania Avenue in Washington — the White House address — and Florida law requires voters to be legal residents of the state.</p>
<p>There's no way the uncounted ballots were dispositive. Trump was essentially unopposed and Joe Biden cruised to victory with 62 percent of the vote. But there are plenty of hard-fought campaigns underway for congressional, legislative, judicial and local office nominations ahead of the state primary in seven weeks. </p>
<p>And, of course, the state's 29 electoral votes will be intensely contested in November. Trump carried the state last time by just over 100,000 votes, or 1.2 percentage points, out of a 9.5 million ballots cast. President Barack Obama won the state by less than 1 point in 2012.</p>
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Efforts to expand mailed-in voting has spread through courtrooms and state legislatures. Advocates for expanding voting suffered three defeats recently.
Voting rights advocates suffer three losses
Jun 29 2020
After a string of recent successes, advocates for improving the fairness of elections and expanding access to voting amid the coronavirus pandemic have suffered three defeats in recent days.
The setbacks came in Texas, Arizona and Iowa — all states where the Democrats believe they can score big upsets, at the presidential and congressional levels, if the voting rules are easeds enough to allow significant turnout this fall — no matter the state of the coronavirus pandemic.
The way elections are conducted has been the subject of several dozen lawsuits in state and federal courts as well as battles in numerous state legislatures. Who wins the bulk of them could shape not only President Trump's chances of reelection but also whether the Senate stays in Republican hands or turns Democratic.
The recent decisions are:
<h3>Arizona<br/></h3>
<p>A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Democratic campaign committees that challenged the method for determining the order that candidates appear on the ballot.</p><p>Judge Diane Humetewa ruled that neither the individual voters nor the groups had shown that they were hurt by the state's system for placing names on the ballot. Under state law, names are listed in descending order according to the votes cast for governor in that county.</p><p>Republican Gov. Doug Ducey carried 11 of the 15 counties while winning his second term in 2018. That means the GOP candidate will be listed first in those counties this fall.</p><p>The lawsuit argued that this process was unfair because research has shown that the person listed first on a ballot gets an advantage of several percentage points.</p><p>The suit noted that other states have gone to a rotation system to determine the ballot order. There was no word yet on whether the decision would be appealed.</p>
<h3>Iowa</h3><p>On Thursday, GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a law that requires the secretary of state to get approval from legislative leaders before expanding absentee balloting.</p><p>Leading up to the June primary, Secretary of State Paul Pate, a Republican, extended the mail-in voting period and sent ballot request forms to all registered voters in the state. </p><p>Under the new law, the secretary of state must obtain approval before changing election procedures from the Legislative Council, a group composed of leadership and long-serving members of both parties.</p>
<h3>Texas</h3>
<p>The Supreme Court decided not to consider whether the state should allow all voters to cast ballots by mail.</p><p>The Democratic Party and several voters had asked the court to reinstate a district judge's ruling allowing all voters to submit their ballots by mail, not just those 65 years or older, arguing the regulations amount to age discrimination. Texas is the biggest state to take no action to ease voting during the coronavirus pandemic.</p><p>That ruling had been overturned by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.</p><p>The state's primary runoff election is scheduled for July 14.</p><p>The plaintiffs asked the high court for emergency relief, arguing that the appeals court ruling "forces millions of Texas voters to either risk their health at the polls or relinquish their right to vote."</p>
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Three years after being nominated to the FEC, Republican Trey Trainor was finally confirmed by the Senate last month.
FEC begins new chapter with Trainor at the helm
Jun 18 2020
The Federal Election Commission is back in business with a restored quorum and Republican Trey Trainor at the helm. Now all it needs is unanimity among its partisan commissioners.
Trainor was named chairman during the agency's public meeting on Thursday — its first since August 2019. Each commissioner is only intended to serve as chairman once during their six-year term, and since the other three members have already done so multiple times, the role went to Trainor.
His addition to the agency has not been without criticism. Since Trainor was first nominated to the FEC by President Trump in 2017, Democrats and good-government groups have been opposed to his confirmation due to his deregulatory approach to campaign finance laws.
<p>"I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse to be the new guy and then be responsible," Trainor said after he was named chairman Thursday.</p>
<p>Over the 262-day period without a quorum, cases piled up on the FEC's docket. At the end of March, <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/status_of_enforcement_2nd_qtr_2020_final_redacted.pdf" target="_blank">the agency reported</a> it had 333 cases pending. Of those, 160 are awaiting a vote from the commission and 90 are approaching the five-year statute of limitations.</p>
<p>But good-government groups have raised concerns about the FEC's ability to get through this huge backlog of cases due to the likelihood of partisan deadlocks. With only four commissioners, unanimous agreement will be required to do anything of consequence. And the addition of Trainor once again creates a partisan split, as he will likely side with fellow conservative Caroline Hunter.</p>
<p>Before joining the FEC, Trainor <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/trey-trainor-fec" target="_self">worked as an attorney in Texas</a>. He also worked for Trump's 2016 campaign and the Texas Republican Party. When serving as the lawyer for a conservative lobbying group, he fought the Texas Ethics Commission over donor disclosure requirements.</p>
<p>Trainor's nomination to the FEC was in limbo for three years until the Senate <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/campaign-finance/senate-confirms-trainor-fec" target="_self">finally confirmed him</a> on May 19. While his nomination was pending, Commissioner Matthew Petersen resigned, leaving the FEC one member short of a quorum and <a href="https://thefulcrum.us/what-the-fec-can-but-mostly-cannot-do-with-only-three-regulators-on-the-job" target="_self">unable to carry out </a>its watchdog duties.</p>
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