Votebeat

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ voter suspense list

2026-08-31T18:37:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Multiple headlines recently have fueled confusion among Texas voters who have been placed on the state’s suspense list.

Voters on the suspense list can still vote. Despite its name, being placed on the suspense list does not mean a voter’s registration was suspended, canceled, or that the voter was removed from the voter roll.

The list is made up of registered voters whose local election officials have reason to believe they may no longer live at the address they used to register to vote. Texas voters move every day, and they often don’t update their address on their voter registration record.

Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the number of voters on the suspense list now — 1.2 million out of more than 18 million registered voters — is consistent with what the state has seen in previous election cycles.

Voters on the suspense list can confirm their address by contacting their local voter registrar ahead of the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline and filling out a new voter registration form with their updated address. Voters can also update their address at the polls.

Here’s what you need to know about Texas’ suspense list and what to do if you’re on it:

What is the suspense list?

It’s an address verification list. By law, if a county voter registrar “has reason to believe that a voter’s current residence is different from that indicated on the registration records,” the voter registrar “shall deliver to the voter a written confirmation notice requesting confirmation of the voter’s current residence,” according to the secretary of state’s office guidance.

How are voters placed on it?

Every two years, each county voter registrar mails a new voter registration certificate to all active voters, a move required by law to keep the voter roll up to date.

If the U.S. Postal Service returns the certificate as nondeliverable, the voter registrar must then confirm that the voter still lives at that address.

That’s when a voter is added to the suspense list.

A voter registrar mails a notice of address confirmation to voters when:

The voter’s registration certificate has been returned as nondeliverable.
A jury summons or any mailing sent to the voter was returned as nondeliverable.
The voter registrar has received information indicating the voter no longer resides at the address on file. For example, parents can notify their voter registrar if their children have moved, or a voter themselves can call the voter registrar to say they no longer live at that address.

Although some county election officials had trouble mailing voter registration certificates in December due to issues with the state’s voter registration and management system, the certificates were mailed out ahead of the primary election earlier this year.

How can I check my voter registration status?

You can check your voter registration status at VoteTexas.gov. But county voter registration lists are managed by county election officials, who have the most up-to-date information about your voter registration record. When in doubt, contact your county voter registrar directly. You can find a list and contact information by county here.

I’m on the suspense list; can I still vote?

Yes, you can still vote. Just make sure you update your address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline.

How do I update my address on my voter registration record?

Fill out a voter registration application before the Oct. 5 deadline. You can find a form here. Print it, sign it, and mail it to your local voter registrar or turn it in in person.

If you have a state ID or a driver’s license, you can also update your information online here.

If you have questions, contact your local voter registrar — the election official in charge of your county’s voter registration list. You can find a list of voter registrars by county here.

What if I didn’t update my address before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline?

That depends on where you’ve moved.

If you moved to a different county, you may be able to vote using a limited ballot — which may include only state and federal races, but no local races — during early voting. A poll worker will instruct you on how to obtain one at the county’s main early voting polling place. On Election Day, however, limited ballots are not available for voters who moved from a different county and did not update their registration on time.

If you moved within the same county, you can vote during early voting and on Election Day by filling out a statement of residence form to update your address. If on Election Day, your county does not use the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county, you may be asked to go to your assigned precinct to update your address and cast your ballot there.

If you’re running into further voter registration issues, we want to hear from you. Please send us an email at community@votebeat.org.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

What we know about Galveston County’s redistricting and what it means for voters

2026-08-25T09:44:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Galveston County’s decision to redraw local precinct lines this year between the primary and general elections means some voters could cast general election ballots in contests where they had no say in the primary, unless the courts intervene.

Election experts say they’re not aware of any prior instance where this has happened. Galveston County’s latest round of changes is adding new complications to a long-running lawsuit over the maps the county had adopted in 2021, and voting rights advocates say the new maps could further dilute Black and Latino voting power in the county.

When the county redistricted in 2021, county leaders openly said their goal was to draw lines that would be friendly to electing a commissioners court with a Republican majority. Voting rights groups and the U.S. Department of Justice subsequently filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Galveston County voters, claiming the map was unconstitutional and violated the Voting Rights Act because it eliminated the only majority-minority commissioners court precinct. The challenge before the court now alleges the county intentionally dismantled that precinct because of race. That case is still pending.

Then, this past June, commissioners voted to redraw precinct boundaries throughout the county for commissioners, constables, and justices of the peace — once again citing partisan aims behind the change. Voting rights advocates again sued, this time on behalf of three county residents in Texas state courts, saying the move to redistrict between a primary and a general election violates state and federal laws. That case is now pending before the Texas Supreme Court.

Here’s what we know:

Why are Galveston County commissioners redrawing lines now?

Galveston County Judge Mark Henry in June told the Houston Chronicle that the latest map accomplishes his goal of turning Galveston County Republican. Henry did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat.

But the unusually timed change could serve another purpose for the county too, coming as it continues to argue against legal challenges to the 2021 map. A day after Galveston County commissioners approved the newest map, the county told the federal judge overseeing the federal case over the 2021 map that the changes rendered the lawsuit over that map moot, according to court documents.

“This Court no longer has jurisdiction to consider declaratory or injunctive relief relating to implementation of the 2021 Map,” Galveston County lawyers said in their court filing.

Earlier this month, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Brown of the Southern District of Texas rejected that argument. In an order that effectively kept the 2021 challenge alive, he described the timing of the new maps as “highly suspicious.” Brown noted that the county could have redrawn lines to accomplish their partisan aims at any time since the 2021 map was issued, but chose to do so between the 2026 primary and general elections even though the change was unlikely to shift partisan outcomes until the 2028 election.

“If the defendants really cared about improving Republican partisan performance, they would have changed the 2021 map before the primary election to encourage a Republican to run for Justice of the Peace in that now-Republican-leaning precinct in 2026,” he wrote.

Is the commissioners’ move to redraw precinct lines after a primary election and about 70 days ahead of the November midterm election legal?

That question is now before the Texas Supreme Court. The plaintiffs say that it isn’t legal, but Galveston County officials argue that it is.

What do the Galveston County residents suing the county argue?

Plaintiffs argue that the county cannot hold the March primary under one set of precinct boundaries and then conduct the November midterm election under another.

The plaintiffs say the county should be required to hold a new primary because otherwise, some voters who can vote for an office in November would never have had the chance to vote for that same office in the primary election. In addition, they argue some candidates would not have had the chance to run for office because they weren’t in the correct precinct at the time of the primary. Plaintiffs say moving forward with the new map violates state and federal laws requiring all voters to be treated equally and fairly.

“This is a matter of federal equal protection. You have to run your elections in a manner that allows equal access to them,” said Mark Gaber, Campaign Legal Center’s senior director of redistricting litigation. “Galveston County is just dispensing with that part of the process and just deciding who the candidates are.”

What do Galveston County leaders say?

Galveston County officials did not respond to a request for comment.

But in an Aug. 10 filing with the Texas Supreme Court, the county argued that state law does give them the authority to redraw precinct lines between a primary and a general election. They also argue that redrawing the lines doesn’t mean that the county must conduct a new primary in order for voters to cast ballots in November. County attorneys in the filings said that state law does not “freeze precinct boundaries in place once a primary occurs.”

What’s the status of the lawsuit?

The latest case filed in state court has followed a convoluted legal route, but is now pending a decision in the Texas Supreme Court. The court could request additional information, or rule based on the existing record.

What are the implications for voters?

The shifting boundaries have confused voters who aren’t sure who their candidates are or which district they’ll belong to come November, said Sarah Chen, senior supervising attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. And depending on how the court rules, they could shift again.

“I think people are still even trying to understand what the impact is because it happened so quickly and so just like out of the blue,” Chen said.

Which Galveston County communities are most affected?

Under the 2021 redistricting, county commissioners redrew Precinct 3, historically a predominantly Black and Latino district that was the county’s only majority-minority district, significantly but did not change the justice of the peace and constable boundary lines within it. The 2026 map does, and likely eliminates the only remaining majority-minority justice of the peace and constable districts that remained.

Brown, the federal judge overseeing the 2021 case, in his order described that as “the primary partisan change under the new map,” but said it likely wouldn’t kick in until the 2028 election.

“People in our community are enraged. It doesn’t make any sense why they keep doing this to Precinct 3,” Lucille McGaskey, a resident of the precinct who isn’t one of the plaintiffs in either lawsuit, told Votebeat in an interview. “For years we’ve built a coalition of Black and Latino voters to have a seat at the table, and now it feels like we can’t even have that. We only have this precinct, Precinct 3.”

Administratively, is redrawing precinct lines now doable for election officials?

Galveston County Clerk Dwight Sullivan, who oversees the county’s elections, did not respond to a request for comment. But other Texas election officials have told Votebeat that redistricting is a time-consuming task that requires a lot of attention to detail to make sure that voters’ addresses are aligned with the correct boundaries. Redistricting now, in the midst of ongoing legal challenges and on a tight timeline, could create more opportunities for errors — a concern Texas election officials are already familiar with, as the state’s mid-cycle congressional redistricting and ensuing legal challenges left them scrambling.

The first deadline election officials are up against ahead of the November election is coming up on Sept. 19, when ballots must be mailed to military and overseas voters who have already requested them. By then, election officials must know which precincts voters will be assigned to.

Has this been done before?

Gaber and Chen said they had never heard of something like this happening anywhere else, and if allowed to go ahead, it could set a new precedent.

“I think it’s such a dangerous precedent for something far worse than just gerrymandering. It’s like changing the rules in the middle of the election to discard the votes of the voters and to prevent candidates from running,” Gaber said.

Could other places also decide to redraw lines before the November election?

Yes, it’s a possibility, if the courts don’t step in.

Chen pointed to the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that weakened Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Prior to the decision, plaintiffs could prove a claim under Section 2 by showing evidence of a disparate impact on minority voters, regardless of whether the mapmakers intended it. Now, they must be able to show a “strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred,” the high court’s conservative majority declared, a much higher bar.

Earlier this year when the ruling came out, experts warned that it could undo decades of progress that expanded the voting power of Black and Latino voters in Texas and elsewhere.

“We all knew there was going to be this wave of local redistricting,” following Louisiana v. Callais, Chen said. “And we’re preparing for that. We just didn’t expect it to happen so soon. It is like, mindfully disruptive and illogical according to the norms of our democracy to try to redistrict in June and after a primary election.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Supreme Court lifts 1 of 2 blocks on Trump’s mail-voting executive order

2026-08-24T22:37:11+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted one of two injunctions against President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting mail voting, but additional legal hurdles and practical considerations could make it difficult to implement it in time for the quickly approaching November elections.

The unsigned ruling, which cut along ideological lines, focused on a relatively narrow legal question: whether the lower court’s injunction was premature. The majority made it clear that it was not deciding on the legality of Trump’s order as a whole, which is certain to be quickly challenged again in court as the administration moves to put its provisions in place.

“The court’s disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful,” the majority wrote. “On that score, time will tell.”

The ruling, made in response to an emergency request, didn’t specify which justices had joined it. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who dissented, warned that the ruling would create a “Kafkaesque nightmare” that “needlessly injects chaos and uncertainty into the upcoming midterm elections.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a separate dissent, joined by Justice Elena Kagan.

What’s the dispute?

Shortly after Trump issued his executive order in March, states, nonprofit organizations, and Democratic Party committees filed multiple lawsuits seeking to block it. In June, in the case brought by states, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that some key provisions of the order were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections.

Talwani issued an injunction specifically preventing the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit. The list included most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

The Trump administration appealed, arguing the judge’s order was issued prematurely, before the Postal Service and other relevant agencies had finalized their plans to carry out the order’s provisions. The administration also argued that the injunction prevented it from implementing the order in the unaffected states because of the logistical impossibility of a bifurcated mail-voting system.

The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Talwani’s order in late July, prompting the administration to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the order and allow the agencies to act in time for the November election. In filings, the states warned that “the consequences of allowing such transformative changes to take effect so close to this fall’s elections would be extreme” and would disenfranchise voters.

On Aug. 11, Talwani issued a separate injunction against the order in the lawsuit brought by nonprofit groups, led by the League of Women Voters. The decision made it clear that her ban on implementing the law extended to all states, not just the 24 jurisdictions that brought the other lawsuit. That ruling again rejected the Trump administration argument that it was too soon to address the underlying issues.

The Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to issue a ruling and make it clear that it would also apply to the Aug. 11 court order. If not, Solicitor General D. John Sauer warned in a court filing, it would require prolonged legal battles that would “effectively run out the clock” on the government’s ability to implement its plans.

On Friday, while the administration’s request was still pending before the Supreme Court, the Postal Service issued its final rules for implementing the order, which it said it would not put into effect for this November’s election unless and until the Supreme Court cleared the way.

The Supreme Court’s ruling addressed neither the second injunction nor the fact that the Postal Service had issued final rules, leaving observers to wonder about how those developments might affect what happens next.

“I expect that the trial court will now amend [the second] injunction and issue a new injunction that will stop USPS from implementing its now final rule. And that too may end up at the Supreme Court within a week,” wrote Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, on the Election Law Blog shortly after the ruling.

What happens now?

The Supreme Court’s ruling Monday will not be the final word on Trump’s executive order. The question before the Supreme Court was a relatively narrow one about whether Talwani issued her order prematurely, before the government had taken final action to carry out the executive order. The states and voting rights groups are likely to go back to court quickly to challenge the Postal Service and the final rules it issued last week.

Talwani has also not yet ruled on whether the order can go into effect for future elections, which she found would be premature. A parallel case involving consolidated challenges brought by nonprofit groups and Democratic Party committees is pending in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Should Trump’s executive order go into effect, it would mandate the creation of a series of lists. The Department of Homeland Security would be required to send each state a list of citizens over the age of 18. States using mail ballots would be required to send the federal government a list of all registered voters to whom they are sending mail-in and absentee ballots in key federal elections. The Postal Service’s final rule states that it will decline to deliver mail-in ballots in states that do not provide that list.

The order would also create new design standards and ballot-tracking requirements for mail ballots. Creating such a complicated process before November presents a huge challenge for the cash-strapped Postal Service.

Read more Votebeat coverage of Trump’s executive order on elections:

Trump issues second executive order on elections, giving U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail voting, March 31, 2026
Trump administration sued by states over mail voting executive order, April 3, 2026
One line in Trump’s order would reshape how long states have to store election records, April 6, 2026
We still have questions about Trump’s new executive order on elections, April 6, 2026
Two reminders that the rules of the 2026 election are still in flux, May 11, 2026
Federal judge refuses to block Trump executive order on mail voting — for now, May 28, 2026
USPS proposal to carry out Trump’s executive order could create new barriers to mail voting, May 29, 2026
Trump’s moves to erect voting hurdles face race against the clock, June 15, 2026
Federal judge blocks key pillars of Trump executive order restricting mail voting in 2026 election, June 25, 2026
Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions, July 2, 2026
Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms, Aug. 3, 2026
Federal judge blocks Trump’s efforts to restrict mail-in voting nationwide, Aug. 11, 2026

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

A state election law in Minnesota faces a surreal test

2026-08-24T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Can Hamas members from the Gaza Strip walk in and vote in Minnesota elections?

A group of disguised conservative activists armed with hidden cameras set out to test that claim during the state’s recent primary election. The Election Day exploit put a spotlight on Minnesota’s election laws, and has now triggered investigations.

The furor centers on a Minnesota law allowing what is often referred to as “vouching.” It permits a registered voter to clear the way for up to eight other eligible voters to register and cast ballots on Election Day by signing a sworn statement affirming that those people live in their precinct.

The rarely used law has been on the books in Minnesota since 1973. It’s most typically used for residents of nursing homes who have moved out of their longtime houses but haven’t yet changed their addresses.

The activists decided to test the law at Minneapolis polling places during the August 11 primary.

One of the men, Cam Higby, dressed as a conservative Muslim woman with his face hidden by a black veil and said he misrepresented himself as a registered voter to see if he could game the vouching system. Another, James O’Keefe, dressed in traditional Muslim clothing, appeared to impersonate at least two registered voters at different polling places, and said he wanted to vouch for prospective voters. Another activist, Anthony Rubin, walked into a polling place saying he wanted to vouch for several people he claimed were newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip.

None of the activists said they went so far as to try to cast a ballot in the election. But they did release a series of carefully edited videos suggesting that the Minnesota vouching system is so lax that it makes it possible for virtually anyone to vote in an American election, creating a furor on social media.

What is vouching and how does it work?

So, how does the Minnesota law work, and is it unusual? To use the system, the person doing the vouching has to be either a registered voter in the precinct or an employee of a residential facility — such as a nursing home — vouching for a resident of that facility. That person must sign a sworn statement saying that they know that the people they are vouching for live in the precinct. This can serve as proof of residency for eligible voters looking to register to vote on Election Day, in lieu of documentation such as a state ID or utility bill.

The person being vouched for doesn’t have to show a physical ID to verify their identity, but must still fill out the standard voter registration application, which requires them to affirm that they are a U.S. citizen and eligible to vote in Minnesota. It also asks them to provide a Minnesota driver’s license number, a state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. That information is checked later by elections officials to make sure it’s legit. Lying on a voter registration form is a felony carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.

In Minnesota’s 2024 general election, about 19,000 voters used the vouching system, about 0.6% of the 3.2 million people who cast ballots that year. Of that 19,000, the vast majority were already registered voters updating existing registrations on Election Day with information such as a new address. Around 5,500 people were voting for the first time.

Minnesota’s vouching law has become a prime target for conservative activists who say the process exposes the vulnerabilities of a system that doesn’t require voters to show an ID. A registered voter can vouch for up to eight people. Someone working in a nursing home can vouch for an unlimited number of residents.

“With tens of thousands of voters registering through vouching across recent cycles, without basic verification safeguards, the vouching policies and practices leave Minnesota’s elections vulnerable and risk Americans’ votes being canceled by fraudulently registered voters,” Will Scolinos, an attorney at conservative nonprofit America First Legal, said in May.

Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon has publicly defended the law. In a letter earlier this year to the U.S. Department of Justice, he pointed out that other states also allow some forms of vouching. For example, Alaska allows state voter identification requirements to be waived if the election official knows the identity of the voter, Iowa allows registered voters to vouch for someone from the same precinct without documentation on Election Day, and Arkansas permits staff members to vouch for residents of long-term or residential care facilities.

Simon denounced the activists’ Election Day operation as “outrageous and totally unacceptable.”

The videotaped incidents were reported by poll workers on Election Day and are under investigation by elections officials and local law enforcement, Simon said.

“The conduct was disturbing,” Simon told Votebeat. Simon said the law has long had bipartisan support in the state as a way to expand voter access, especially for elderly residents.

“This is America,” he added. “Do what you want. If you want to dress up as someone, look no further than Borat and Sacha Baron Cohen. But we have to draw the line.”

Could those people claiming to be newly arrived Hamas members from the Gaza Strip have voted?

To do so, the prospective voucher would have had to break several laws by impersonating a registered voter and signing an affidavit falsely claiming that the other people lived in the precinct. Then the fake Hamas members would have had to break the law by providing false information about their identity and their eligibility to vote in Minnesota.

It is unclear from the videos released by the activists if the poll workers detailed the other steps they would have to go through before they could vote. Anthony Rubin declined to comment or release the raw footage from the incidents. O’Keefe did not respond to a request for comment.

Higby said the group was trying to expose shortfalls in the state election system.

“The goal was never to vote, it was never to touch a ballot, it was never to obtain a ballot,” Higby told Votebeat. “It was simply to test the system and see if poll workers would be prepared to allow me to vote.”

But Simon said in his 11 years as Minnesota’s top elections official, he’d never seen a single case of someone trying to game the vouching system to illegally vote.

“Could someone scam the system?” he asked. “Anything is possible. But you have to look at what is probable.”

Simon said he’d also never before seen a case of someone impersonating a voter.

“There is no end to the creativity of people who are looking to do wrong,” he said. “You have to look at the track record and the incentive structure. There’s a high likelihood that someone is going to get caught.”

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Here’s when to expect results in Wisconsin’s primary election

2026-08-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Tuesday, Aug. 11 is Election Day in Wisconsin, and we will soon learn the results of the closely watched Democratic primary for governor and other important primary races. But how soon, exactly?

The unofficial winners of some close races may not be known until late Tuesday, or even early on Wednesday.

But results coming in late at night aren’t indicative of problems.

Over the past several years, Wisconsin voters have come to rely more and more on absentee voting. Absentee ballots take more time to process on Election Day than in-person ballots because they have to be removed from their envelopes and officials need to check that they have valid signatures and a witness address. That can add hours to poll workers’ nights on Tuesday, especially because election officials can’t process absentee ballots until Election Day.

Here are the answers to some common questions about when to expect primary election results.

When do polls close?

Wisconsin polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day and close at 8 p.m. Absentee votes must be received by election officials by that 8 p.m. deadline. But election officials aren’t done working when the polls close.

In-person polling sites will stay open past that time if any voters who were in line before 8 p.m. still have yet to vote. Additionally, election officials often process and count absentee ballots for hours after polls close.

When will results be released?

Municipalities start releasing vote totals shortly after polls close and continue to count throughout the night. How long it takes them to finish can depend on factors like how many ballots they have to count and how well staffed they are.

Many municipalities should be able to finish counting by around 9 p.m. But it’s common for some municipalities — like Milwaukee, the state’s largest election jurisdiction — to take a few more hours to count all their ballots and transmit their results.

Why do Wisconsin election results sometimes arrive late at night?

Wisconsin is one of only six states that don’t allow absentee ballots to be pre-processed. While other states’ officials may spend days before Election Day processing and verifying absentee ballots, Wisconsin officials have to do all of that on Election Day.

As of Friday, 235,000 absentee ballots were already returned statewide, and that number will surely grow by Tuesday. That’s a ton of ballots to go through in just one business day. So the count often has to stretch late into the night.

In addition, some municipalities, including Milwaukee, upload their absentee ballot results all at once, at the end of the night. Those tens of thousands of votes are sometimes enough to affect preliminary statewide vote totals. They’re sometimes critically referred to as “late-night ballot dumps,” but despite the lateness of when they’re reported, it’s important to remember that all those ballots were legitimately received before 8 p.m.

Where can I find Wisconsin election results?

Wisconsin’s elections are run at the municipal level, so it takes compiling votes from each of the state’s 1,850 municipalities to have a full accounting of results.

There’s no statewide system for reporting results on election night, but counties are required to post unofficial results on their websites. You can either navigate webpages county by county, or use media outlets like the Associated Press, which typically have landing pages with aggregated election results.

But regardless of what source you use, just remember that the data you see on Election Day is unofficial. It takes weeks to finalize an election.

When will election results be final?

Wisconsin has a multi-step process to certify elections. Municipalities certify their results and send them to the county. Then counties certify their results and send them to the state.

Those steps allow for weeks of double-checking: making sure the count is accurate and that the number of votes cast is equal to the number of checked-in voters.

Aug. 21 is the deadline for county clerks to send primary election results to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The commission chair must then certify the results by Aug. 26.

When should I expect to know the winners?

Several media outlets, like the Associated Press, may project race winners on election night. That may happen even before all votes are tabulated. Those calls are based on what the outlets know about the votes cast, the political makeup of the places where votes haven’t yet been reported, and more.

Don’t confuse those race calls with official results. Only government officials can officially declare winners, and that only happens weeks afterward. But reputable media outlets’ race calls are typically an accurate projection of the eventual winner.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Fracas over reducing Tarrant County polling locations highlights public distrust over how the county runs elections

2026-08-06T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Tuesday’s chaotic public meeting over the number of voting sites in Tarrant County for the upcoming November election highlighted public distrust in election administration decisions and the people making them in the state’s most populous purple county, experts and voting rights advocates said.

Hundreds of people showed up at the Tarrant County Commissioners Court meeting to oppose a proposal to significantly reduce the number of polling sites on Election Day, from 316 used in the 2022 midterm elections to 176. At least one person, a former Democratic state representative, was arrested after Tim O’Hare, the county’s executive and a Republican, kicked everyone out of the chambers, saying that people clapping and speaking loudly were disruptive.

O’Hare also called multiple recesses during the meeting, prolonging it as people waited to speak.

Speaker after speaker described the effort to reduce the number of locations as the latest in a series of efforts by O’Hare and the majority-Republican commissioners’ court to make it harder for residents to vote, something commissioners said wasn’t true. O’Hare and Commissioner Manny Ramirez, also a Republican, are both on the ballot in November.

“People are suspicious. We don’t trust them to perform their duties in a way that is helping the voters or serving the voters of Tarrant County,” said Janet Mattern, president of the League of Women Voters of Tarrant County. “We see them more as self-serving of themselves and trying to keep themselves in power.”

However, the commissioners —– both Republicans and Democrats — said at the meeting that they didn’t suggest the plan.

“The notion or the idea that this is some conspiracy … is utter and complete and total nonsense,” O’Hare, who did not respond to requests for comment, said.

The proposal came from Tarrant County’s elections administrator, Clint Ludwig, whose role is nonpartisan, and who said the reduction in locations was aimed at increasing efficiency and saving money, since the county now lets voters go to any polling location rather than a single assigned site. Ludwig, who didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, said at the meeting the proposal would let him eliminate some sites that serve very few people. “Instead of having two polling locations, now you can have one,” he said.

The commissioners court ultimately tabled the vote, telling Ludwig the number of voting sites he proposed was too low and to return after revising the proposal to include a larger number of sites.

Especially with critical U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races on the ballot in Texas this November, the political stakes are extraordinarily high in swing counties like Tarrant, and this week’s fracas over the number of voting sites shows how closely residents — and politicians — are monitoring election administration plans there.

Democratic lawmakers, state Rep. Vikki Goodwin , who is running for lieutenant governor, and state Sen. Nathan Johnson, who is running for Texas attorney general, hosted a rally Tuesday ahead of the meeting to speak against the county’s proposal to reduce the voting sites. After the commissioners court meeting, Goodwin sent out a fundraising email about it. “Tarrant is the third largest (and most competitive) county in Texas,” she wrote. “The GOP knows their days are numbered, so they decided holding power was worth more than your ballot.”

Some experts say what happened in Tarrant on Tuesday shows how politicized the environment has become in Texas, and why the role of nonpartisan election administrators is key.

But that faith in independent election administration “sometimes falls away when you have this hyperpartisan environment where people aren’t sure if they can trust that the elections are going to be fairly run if it’s run by a party that is in power and is on the other side of that voter’s preferences,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Tarrant County officials have been accused of partisan motives for election administration decisions

One by one over six hours on Tuesday, people went up to the microphone, many addressing O’Hare directly.

“You could be honest. You could just go ahead and say that you are closing these election polling locations because you don’t want people to vote. It’s not about saving money,” one resident said.

Others carried signs that read “We will vote u out!”

This was the latest in a series of controversial election administration issues in Tarrant. In 2024, O’Hare unsuccessfully pushed to close polling locations on college campuses, again drawing allegations of partisanship. That same year, O’Hare and the three other Republican commissioners on the court also cut funding to provide free bus rides to the polls for low-income residents.

Last summer, the commissioners, led by O’Hare, voted along party lines to redraw county precinct lines midcycle, a rare move that followed state Republicans’ choice to also redraw congressional district lines mid-decade. O’Hare said the goal of the redrawn precinct maps was to benefit Republican candidates. And in the fall, the court also voted along party lines to reduce the number of available polling locations.

“The decisions the commissioners have made over the past two years have really eroded that sense of trust from the community,” said Nina Oishi, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project. Oishi also raised concerns about the way the commissioners court has handled public meetings, such as restricting people’s speaking time to one minute, kicking people out of the chambers, and arrests.

“They are the residents. They are supposed to be the ones getting to make their voices heard, and it just never feels that way there.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Nonpartisan groups can resume registering newly naturalized citizens to vote at USCIS sites

2026-08-04T20:28:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

What happened?

A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services rule that had prohibited the League of Women Voters and other groups from registering voters at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s offices.

In his ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Adam Abelson said the government’s ban was a potential free speech violation under the First Amendment and that it likely had a discriminatory intent that breaches Fifth Amendment protections.

In a statement, League of Women Voters CEO Celina Stewart celebrated the decision and emphasized the organization’s history of supporting new citizens as they prepared to vote.

“Today’s ruling protects that fundamental democratic principle, and we will continue fighting to ensure every eligible voter can participate freely and fully in our democracy,” she said.

What’s the dispute?

USCIS announced in August 2025 that only state and local election officials can register new citizens to vote at ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities. In issuing the ban, the agency cited the “administrative burden” it faced in making sure that nongovernmental organizations providing those services were truly nonpartisan.

The League of Women Voters and several of its local chapters, along with the Greater New Orleans chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, filed a lawsuit in November 2025, alleging that the federal rule violated their constitutional rights and a federal law related to agency rulemaking.

The USCIS rule doesn’t apply to naturalization ceremonies held at federal courthouses, so much of the LWV’s work has continued. But the ban on registering people at USCIS facilities caused the voting rights group to cancel 166 planned events where members and volunteers “planned to register roughly 10,000 new voters,” according to the November complaint.

The LWV said in court filings that it has registered more people at naturalization ceremonies than any other organization.

In the complaint, the LWV points out that many state and local election officials — who would still be allowed to register voters at USCIS facilities under the ban — are elected in partisan races, and that the government hasn’t shown any evidence of the group being partisan.

But the group’s core argument is that the ban violates its First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of assembly in public places. It also claims that the USCIS violated a federal law by creating the rule without an opportunity for public comment, and that the rule itself is “arbitrary and capricious.”

The League “made a very strong showing” that it’ll prevail on the merits of its argument that the ban unconstitutionally restricts its free speech rights, Abelson wrote in the ruling.

Separately, the National Council of Jewish Women argued that the ban was a Fifth Amendment violation because it was put in place with discriminatory intent.

Highlighting federal officials’ recent critical statements about immigration and the USCIS decision to replace the term “naturalization candidate” with “alien” in its materials, Abelson said that a discriminatory intent was likely a motivating factor for the ban.

What happens now?

The court case is likely to continue. The Monday ruling was preliminary, and the federal government could appeal. A USCIS spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more Votebeat coverage about the ban on voter registration at some naturalization ceremonies here:

Some of America’s newest citizens may face an extra barrier to the ballot box Sept. 15, 2025

Clarification, Aug. 5: This article has been updated to specify that USCIS announced its ban on nonprofit groups at naturalization ceremonies held at the agency’s facilities last August.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Green Bay explains how voters got sent multiple absentee ballots in two straight elections

2026-08-03T19:49:50+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys sent some voters multiple ballots for the August primary after she reprinted absentee envelope labels that she mistakenly thought were missing from an outgoing batch of ballots, the city said in a Friday email to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

The email was the first of two sets of documents that the commission ordered the city to provide after the city sent duplicate ballots to voters two elections in a row. The commission also asked the city for an explanation by Aug. 14 on how it will prevent sending duplicate ballots in the future.

The document sheds light on how the city sent out duplicate ballots in both the April Supreme Court election and the August partisan primary. City officials had already detailed the breakdowns that led to the first error, but until now it was unclear just how central Jeffreys was to the mistake.

Still, the explanations fell short to at least one member of WEC.

“I don’t know that it answers the questions of how on earth this happened.” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic commissioner, told Votebeat.

Jeffreys, whose position is nonpartisan, was placed on administrative leave on July 9. Stacy Menke, previously the city’s deputy clerk, is serving as interim clerk for the August election. City spokesperson Michael Bergman said city officials won’t be providing additional comments on the documents at this time.

Green Bay sent first duplicate ballots in March

The first time Green Bay sent out duplicate absentee ballots was in March, when 152 voters received multiple absentee ballots for the April 7 state Supreme Court election. Although the incident sparked concerns about double voting, only one voter returned two ballots, and the city voided them.

City officials largely explained the causes of this error in response to an administrative complaint filed in April with the election commission. But Friday’s email revealed Jeffreys’ central role.

Typically, after mailing labels — featuring voters’ names and addresses — are placed on absentee envelopes, Green Bay election officials put a copy of regular paper with the same label information in a folder to be retained for recordkeeping purposes, Logan Wood, an attorney for Jeffreys, said in an April response to the complaint.

In March, Jeffreys photocopied a printed batch from regular paper copies to sheet labels and then gave them to a staff member to be placed into a ballot packet assembly, City Attorney Lacey Cochart wrote in Friday’s email.

But for the duplicated batch of labels, Jeffreys either failed to clip the original printing and the sheet labels together before giving it to the staff member, resulting in the paper copy of the labels not being filed in the right place, or for some reason reprinted the entire batch without inquiring with staff, Cochart said.

She then passed the duplicate labels for the second time to another staff member, Cochart said.

The April explanation of the error, which Wood filed on behalf of Jeffreys, said an election worker thought the batch hadn’t been completed and duplicated it. The latest explanation makes clear that Jeffreys was that election worker.

Jacobs said she didn’t understand why city officials were printing labels onto regular paper and then photocopying them rather than printing them directly onto labels.

Second error resulted from another Jeffreys oversight

The second error happened after Green Bay officials, preparing to send out absentee ballots for the Aug. 11 primary, sent a document containing the mailing labels for 1,734 voters to a printing shop in late June. After Jeffreys reviewed the labels the shop sent back, she came to believe some were missing Cochart said.

It’s unclear why Jeffreys thought the labels were missing or whether any actually were. But, either way, she reprinted the labels she believed to be missing directly from the PDF that was sent to the printing shop. That reprinting was the source of the duplicate ballots, Cochart said.

It remains unknown how many voters received duplicate ballots as a result of the second error. Jeffreys didn’t respond to a request for comment.

In both March and June, Jeffreys appeared to sidestep safeguards built into WisVote, the state’s voter registration database and election management system, to prevent the sending of duplicate ballots. WisVote does not allow officials to generate duplicate labels, but it doesn’t prevent someone from copying or reprinting an already-generated physical or digital label sheet. Cochart’s email confirmed that WisVote was the only software used to generate the labels.

Asked whether the latest batch of documents reveal that the city was using WisVote in a way it was not intended to be used, Jacobs said, “It’s hard to say because it’s really not clear what they’re saying.”

Don Millis, the Republican chair of WEC, had asked the city for a plan detailing how it will ensure that the voters mailed duplicate ballots won’t vote twice. The city’s response to that request was relatively brief. It outlined that election officials should contact the clerk and the voter if they discover a duplicate ballot.

Millis didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Trump is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow new mail ballot restrictions in the 2026 midterms

2026-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Elections are back before the U.S. Supreme Court: The Trump administration is asking the justices to quickly lift an order blocking its efforts to put new restrictions on mail-in voting for the fast-approaching midterm elections.

It’s unclear how the justices will rule, but the case focuses on a narrow question of whether or not the lower courts issued premature rulings rather than the broader questions about the legality of the executive order.

But no matter what the court decides this time, a series of practical and legal challenges make it increasingly unlikely that the federal government can impose new rules giving the U.S. Postal Service the power to block Americans from voting by mail in November’s elections.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the justice designated to handle emergency appeals from the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ordered the plaintiff states to respond by Monday to the Trump administration’s filing, and a decision could come any time after that. But there are already fewer than 100 days left until the election, and the U.S. Postal Service itself said in July court filings that it is running out of time to carry out the changes the president is demanding in time for this election.

The heart of the matter is President Donald Trump’s March 2026 executive order, which attempts to restrict mail-in voting by requiring creation of a series of lists of people eligible to vote, including one it requires the U.S. Postal Service to secure from states listing all voters eligible to use mail ballots. The order attempts to give the postal service unprecedented new power to prevent delivery of mail ballots to anyone who is not on these lists.

States, nonprofit groups, and Democratic party committees quickly sued over the order, which they argued was unconstitutional because the president has no authority over elections. Federal courts have since issued conflicting orders on the question of whether blocking major provisions would be premature because government agencies hadn’t yet taken final action to carry out Trump’s orders.

A judge in federal court in Washington, D.C. declined to block the challenged provisions, but last month, in a case brought by states, a federal judge in Massachusetts prevented the Trump administration from moving ahead with the plans, putting the whole issue on hold. Separate appeals courts have now upheld both rulings, leaving the Massachusetts injunction in place for now, which is what prompted the Trump administration to file its emergency appeal last week with the Supreme Court.

Still, “I think everyone agrees that it’s not going to be implemented for 2026,” said Derek Muller, an elections specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School. “The logistics are so horrific.”

To be clear, the issue the court is now being asked to decide isn’t about the legal merits of the executive order itself, or whether Trump has the authority to issue it. The Trump administration is arguing that the federal courts blocked the executive order prematurely because the government is still drafting the rules, which haven’t been finalized. Until the rules are final, the Trump administration argues, the states can’t prove that there is any harm that should be blocked by the courts, or that agencies won’t carry out the order in a way that complies with the law.

The Massachusetts court’s injunction “is especially indefensible because the agencies are still deliberating over how (if at all) to implement the Order, yet the district court preemptively decided that whatever the agencies may choose to do will necessarily be unlawful,” the Trump administration argued in its 116-page filing.

That’s essentially what the other panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded in a ruling Tuesday when it upheld a lower court’s decision not to block the executive order — though the plaintiffs in that case are nonprofit groups and party committees rather than states.

“The scope of the issues at play” before the Supreme Court “are really, really narrow,” said Danielle Lang, vice president for voting rights and rule of law at the Campaign Legal Center, one of the lawyers involved in bringing the Washington, D.C. case.

And like Muller, Lang said it appears unlikely that the government would have the time to push through the changes before November.

“The kinds of dramatic changes they are asking for in election administration are not the kinds of things that you get done in a few months’ time,” Lang said. “As a practical reality, I don’t think they can do this in any non-chaotic way.”

If the Supreme Court were to side with the Trump administration this time, an army of lawyers across the country is prepared to again ask the courts to step in as soon as the new rules are finalized.

Even the appeals court judges in Washington that agreed the legal challenges were premature also suggested that they had some qualms about the executive order.

“Plaintiffs have identified a number of serious questions concerning the lawfulness of proposed actions if implemented on the threshold of the upcoming federal election,” the court said in its ruling.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Texas confirms some flagged as potential noncitizens on voter rolls had provided DPS proof of citizenship

2026-07-30T19:11:21+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Election officials across the state should immediately reinstate some voters who were incorrectly flagged as potential noncitizens through a federal program, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told county officials Wednesday.

Christina Adkins, the state elections director, told county officials the state had reviewed Texas Department of Public Safety records confirming the citizenship of some of the 2,724 registered voters who were flagged as potential noncitizens, according to an audio recording of her comments obtained by Votebeat and The Texas Tribune, as well as election officials who heard them. The voters were flagged after the state checked its voter roll through a federal program called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, used to verify the citizenship of people registered to vote.

Adkins said the state is still working through the data and that she couldn’t yet say how many of the 2,724 people had provided proof of citizenship to DPS and should thus be reinstated if they were already removed from the voter roll. She characterized SAVE as having “some inaccurate information” but added that “most of the data that we got out of SAVE was consistent with what DPS had.”

According to election officials, the secretary of state’s office said it plans in the coming days to send voter registrars additional information from DPS showing some of the flagged registered voters had in fact provided proof of citizenship to DPS while registering to vote or obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

There isn’t yet an exact number of how many U.S. citizens’ registrations were actually canceled or how many were canceled in total by counties after being flagged by SAVE, said Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

“Counties are following appropriate list maintenance procedures under Texas law, and will ensure eligible voters whose registrations were cancelled are reinstated, and that only U.S. citizens remain on the voter rolls,” Miles said in an emailed statement.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the audio recording of the meeting with election officials, Adkins told election officials that once they receive the new information and review it, the state believes reinstating voters who had provided proof is “a very important thing to do to make sure that these individuals are not further impacted now that we have more information at our disposal.”

The state used a federal tool to flag potential noncitizens on the voter rolls

Texas officials last fall sent counties information on the 2,724 potential noncitizens generated by checking the state’s voter roll of more than 18 million registered voters through SAVE, something the Trump administration has vigorously urged all states to do since it overhauled SAVE shortly after Trump came back into office last January.

Counties mailed notices asking those registrants to provide documented proof of citizenship.

Some voters responded to the letters from voter registrars and confirmed they were U.S. citizens, although a total number of how many is not yet available. The registrations of voters who did not respond to notices within 30 days were canceled. It isn’t clear how many were confirmed to be noncitizens. In some counties, officials said some people on the list had submitted an application to their local county voter registrar that accurately noted they were not U.S. citizens but were nonetheless added to the voter roll in error by county officials, and those have since been removed.

Under state law, if a voter’s registration is canceled for failing to respond to a request for proof of citizenship, their registration can be immediately reinstated by providing proof of U.S. citizenship to an elections office or at a polling location. The new information by DPS would immediately trigger the reinstatement without requiring further action from the voter.

Through their investigations, election officials also found that hundreds of the flagged voters had registered through DPS. The agency requires proof of citizenship or proof of lawful presence, such as a work visa or green card, to obtain a state driver’s license or state ID, and keeps copies of such documentation on file.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in December told Votebeat and the Tribune that it did not initially check the registrants flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to investigate. That decision prompted a March lawsuit from voting rights groups and some Texas voters who said the state should have done so. The lawsuit is still pending in federal court.

Votebeat reported that the secretary of state’s office later asked DPS to check the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the SAVE program against its records to verify whether any of them had already provided proof of citizenship. Email communications between secretary of state and DPS officials obtained by Votebeat via a public records request show the secretary of state’s office made the request on May 4, with DPS completing its review June 16.

Election officials in multiple states have raised questions about SAVE’s accuracy

Experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE program’s accuracy, and officials in multiple states have said it incorrectly flagged at least some citizens.

In April, former Secretary of State Jane Nelson sent a letter to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services raising concerns about the accuracy of the SAVE program after county election officials found citizens had been wrongly flagged as noncitizens. Adkins in May also told county officials that her office had found “discrepancies” with the data, though she stressed that it was generally fairly accurate.

States’ use of the revamped SAVE tool is currently in limbo in the wake of multiple court rulings. In June, a federal judge blocked the overhaul of the SAVE program, saying it violated privacy and voting rights. That ruling prompted the Trump administration to pause certain features in the SAVE system to comply. However, last month a different federal judge ordered Homeland Security to restore access to the revamped system for four states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa and Indiana — due to an earlier settlement agreement.

The rulings also do not prevent Texas or other states that previously used the revamped program from continuing to investigate the status of any potential noncitizens it flagged on the voter roll.

The Trump administration has focused intently on searching for noncitizen voters. The Department of Justice asked all 50 states to turn over their voter rolls, seeking discrepancies and ineligible voters, and sued 30 states that declined to do so. Federal judges have so far ruled against the department in 18 of those cases.

Texas, though, is among the states that voluntarily agreed to share its unredacted list of more than 18 million registered voters, including personal information such as dates of birth, driver license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

In April, at least three Texas counties received subpoenas from DOJ seeking individuals’ voter registration information and voting history.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Amid USPS delays, Wisconsin officials tell voters to mail their ballots ASAP and voters sue for more options

2026-07-28T09:30:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, Wisconsin elections officials are planning for the potential of mail ballot delivery delays by encouraging voters to mail back absentee ballots as soon as possible or return them some other way.

And on Friday, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission, arguing voters should be able to cast provisional ballots on Election Day if they don’t think their mail ballot will arrive on time.

Unlike many other states, which allow ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by that day and arrive by a set cutoff time, Wisconsin requires mail ballots to arrive by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

Historically, the USPS and Wisconsin Elections Commission advised voters that mailing back a ballot a week ahead of Election Day would suffice. Now, the commission and municipal clerks are calling on voters to allow more time.

Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez reported receiving only 20 mail ballots on Election Day in April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election — a low number even for a small election — but more than 269 late ballots on the day after, which Gutiérrez said was a high number for an election of that size. Seeking to avoid such a high number of late-arriving ballots in the future, Gutiérrez told Votebeat that for the upcoming August election, the city opened its ballot drop boxes four weeks sooner than it would have in the past.

“We are encouraging voters to use our dropboxes or drop off their absentee ballot at [early in-person voting sites],” she said.

If they’re unable to do either, Gutiérrez said voters should mail back their ballots at least two weeks ahead of Election Day.

In Madison, which received more than 100 late ballots in April — also more than what’s typical — City Clerk Lydia McComas told Votebeat that drop boxes open three weeks ahead of the August election.

“We emphasize this is a convenient and far faster option than returning an absentee ballot via USPS,” she said.

Many election officials observe mail delays

These concerns are shared by election officials across the state.

In a recent survey, two-thirds of Wisconsin election officials said they observed problems with absentee ballot mail delivery in the April election. About one-third of officials said voters had complained to them about mail delays.

Nearly 40% said that mail performance in the election was somewhat or much worse than mail performance in past elections.

That experience isn’t universal. Vernon County Clerk Jerry Pedretti, who’s also clerk of the separate town and village of Genoa, told Votebeat that rural USPS workers recognize absentee ballots from the envelopes and make “every effort to make sure that they’re getting them delivered.”

Similarly, Buffalo County Clerk Lisa Schmitt said a couple of ballots arrived after Election Day in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election but problems weren’t major. That was likely a result of postmasters keeping the mail local rather than sending it out via Minnesota for processing, which she said is the typical procedure for non-election mail.

Nonetheless,commissioners at the Wisconsin Elections Commission are concerned about the delays. On MyVote, a website for voters to request ballots, the commission still includes the USPS recommendation for voters to return mail ballots at least seven days before Election Day. But in June, the commission’s new election manual and guidance to voters went further, suggesting at least 10 days before Election Day.

At a meeting in early July, commissioners discussed this updated guidance. “I’m concerned about us just saying 10 days is enough,” Democratic commissioner Mark Thomsen said at the meeting.

USPS spokesperson Desai Abdul-Razzaaq said that he is confident the Postal Service will perform well in the upcoming elections. While he said the USPS takes officials’ concerns from the April election seriously, he said “the overwhelming majority of Election Mail was processed and delivered within established service standards.”

Voters sue for ability to cast provisional ballots

Amid these delays, voters are challenging commission guidance prohibiting voters from casting in-person ballots on Election Day if they think their mail ballot might arrive too late to be counted.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin said the commission’s guidance violates the right to vote enshrined in the Wisconsin Constitution, and is calling on a Dane County Circuit Court judge to allow voters to cast provisional ballots if they think their ballots might arrive late.

Unlike standard in-person ballots, which generally go directly from the person casting them to a tabulator, provisional ballots are segregated and verified and counted later on, once election officials determine they are validly cast. The league is asking for mail voters to be able to cast provisional ballots, and only have them counted if their mail ballots don’t arrive on time.

State law says that a voter who mails or delivers an absentee ballot to a clerk isn’t permitted to vote in person in the same election on Election Day. But the league said the commission is too narrowly interpreting that law in its rule prohibiting voters from casting ballots if they suspect their ballot will arrive late.

“This rule risks denying Impacted Voters their right to vote — the right most preservative of all others,” the lawsuit states.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Everything you need to know about how to vote in the Wisconsin primary

2026-07-28T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin’s primary election is two weeks away, and early voting is already underway in municipalities across the state.

Whether you plan to vote early in person, by mail, or on Election Day, here’s everything you need to know about how to make your voice heard in the upcoming election.

When is Wisconsin’s primary election?

Election Day is Aug. 11, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. that day. You can also vote early in person beginning July 28.

What offices are on the ballot?

The Democratic primary for governor is perhaps the highest-profile race for the August primary, but depending on your district, there may also be competitive congressional, legislative, and other primary elections. Click here for a full list of what’s on your ballot.

Who can vote in the Wisconsin primary?

Any registered voter can cast a vote in the primary. You can click here to find out whether you’re registered.

Wisconsin has an open primary system, so you don’t need to be registered with a political party to vote a certain way. But you can only vote within one party. If you’re choosing a Republican congressional candidate, for example, you can’t select a Democrat anywhere else on your ballot.

What if I’m not registered to vote yet? Is it too late?

The deadline to register to vote online or by mail was July 22, but you can still register in person.

You can register at your local clerk’s office or at an early voting location through Friday, Aug. 7. If you miss that window, you can also register at your polling place on Election Day itself.

Where is my polling place?

You can find your polling place here. On Election Day, you can only vote in person at your designated polling location. However, your early in-person voting location may differ from your Election Day polling place. You can contact your municipal clerk here to learn more early voting details specific to your community. The League of Women Voters has also assembled a list of early voting sites in dozens of Wisconsin’s biggest municipalities.

What should I bring to vote?

If you’re already registered to vote, all you need to bring is an acceptable photo ID. That can include a driver’s license, passport, military identification card, a free Wisconsin ID issued for the purposes of voting, and several other options. Click here to view all acceptable IDs.

If you are registering to vote at the polling place, you’ll need to bring a proof of residence that includes your name and current mailing address, which could include a driver’s license or other government ID, a residential lease, or a utility bill.

What is early voting?

Early voting, often called in-person absentee voting, allows voters to go to their municipal clerk’s office or a designated early voting location to cast a ballot up to two weeks before Election Day. That ballot is then stored by the city and counted on Election Day.

The availability of early voting varies widely across the state. Some clerks do it by appointment only. Some cities, including Madison and Milwaukee, operate multiple early voting sites that are open multiple hours each day. But by law, early voting can’t be offered later than the Sunday before the election; after that, you must vote on Election Day.

How does early voting work?

Once you arrive at an early voting site, you must first request an absentee ballot. Election officials will also check that you have an acceptable photo ID before issuing you a ballot.

Election officials should then let you mark your absentee ballot in private, but let them know if you require assistance. Clerks or designated officials will also have to sign the envelope that you put your absentee ballot in.

Can I vote absentee by mail?

In Wisconsin, you can also request that an absentee ballot be sent to you by mail. The deadline to request absentee ballots is Aug. 6 by 5 p.m. for regular and overseas voters, but Aug. 7 by 5 p.m. for indefinitely confined and military voters. For your absentee ballot to count, it must arrive back at the clerk’s office by primary day, Aug. 11.

However, if you want to vote this way, you should request and return your ballot as soon as possible; mail delays have recently led to some absentee ballots getting delivered too late to count. To avoid this, consider dropping your ballot off at the clerk’s office, a drop box, or an early voting location instead of mailing it.

What if I vote absentee and then my preferred candidate drops out?

Under current guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission, you can’t void an absentee ballot after you return it to an election official. That guidance is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court, but as of July 27 the court hasn’t ruled in the case.

That means — for now — that your absentee votes are final once you return the ballot to the clerk. If you make a mistake while casting the ballot, though, or spill something on your ballot, you can request a replacement from an election official.

Who should I contact if I have trouble voting or have any questions?

Please contact your municipal clerk, whose information you can find here. We at Votebeat would also like to hear about any problems you notice. You can contact us at wisconsin.tips@votebeat.org.

If you have disability-related voting questions or concerns, you can also contact the Disability Rights Wisconsin Voter Hotline at 844-347-8683.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Can Wisconsin voters void a returned absentee ballot? Issue heads back to court

2026-07-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Update, July 29, 3:00 p.m.: A Dane County Circuit judge upheld the Wisconsin Elections Commission guidance banning absentee spoiling after voters already returned their ballots, saying state law was unambiguous in prohibiting the practice.

Update, July 23, 1:30 p.m.: This story has been updated to incorporate a new lawsuit filed by three voters against the Wisconsin Elections Commission over its absentee ballot guidance.

Wisconsin election officials have reignited a legal battle over absentee voting with July guidance stating that voters cannot void a returned absentee ballot and cast a new one, even if Election Day is weeks away or the candidate they supported has dropped out.

Three Democratic residents in Dane County on Thursday sued the Wisconsin Elections Commission over the guidance, which was adopted by the commission on July 9, calling it an unconstitutional violation of the state’s absentee voting laws. All three plaintiffs voted for a gubernatorial candidate who have since dropped out of the primary, and under the commission guidance they cannot change their votes, even though those votes have not yet been counted. The legality of spoiling ballots just to change a vote has long been disputed.

The lawsuit says WEC’s guidance means the plaintiffs “will all be disenfranchised from meaningfully participating in this August election unless this Court steps in.”

Thursday’s lawsuit is the latest development in a legal dispute that began in 2022 and was reopened by an appeals court decision earlier this year. It was filed two days after the Democratic Party of Wisconsin sent the commission a letter urging it to rescind the guidance. The letter raised many of the same concerns later cited in the suit, including that the policy could disenfranchise voters and was adopted after early voting in the primary had already begun.

The July 9 guideline for clerks reverses the Wisconsin Elections Commission’s previous position and Attorney General Josh Kaul’s legal arguments on the agency’s behalf that voters should be allowed to replace absentee ballots they have already returned as long as they comply with statutory deadlines.

The WEC spent years arguing in court in favor of that broader definition of ballot spoiling, but its latest guidance effectively restores the rule imposed by a 2022 court ruling that banned the practice.

The commission adopted the guidance after clerks had already mailed ballots for the August 11 primary and, notably, after multiple candidates in the crowded Democratic gubernatorial race dropped their bids.

“It seems to me exceedingly likely that this is something that people are going to keep fighting about,” Jeff Mandell, founder of the liberal law firm Law Forward, said ahead of the lawsuit.

He added that the timing of the guidance was unusual: Typically courts are skeptical of efforts to change rules close to an election. Some absentee voters in this election cycle probably cast their ballots under the assumption that they could spoil their ballot and cast a new one if their preferred candidate dropped out or they just wanted to change their vote, Mandell said.

Even if the commission’s guidance is in line with Wisconsin law, it creates a clear discrepancy between in-person Election Day and absentee voters, said Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk.

Election Day voters can receive up to three ballots at the polls if they make a mistake, he pointed out. On the other hand, he said, absentee voters now get no second chance once they return their ballots, even if Election Day hasn’t arrived yet.

“The inconsistency is hard to ignore,” he said, and it presents a policy question for the Legislature — or maybe the courts.

Spoiling controversy blew up amid similar political dynamics in the 2022 primary

The WEC’s more permissive August 2022 guidance on ballot spoiling was prompted by similar dynamics as that of the present: highly contested primaries with candidates dropping out throughout the race and at the last minute.

In September 2022, GOP voter Nancy Kormanik sued over that guidance allowing absentee ballot spoiling, arguing that clerks can only reissue an absentee ballot if a voter returns their absentee ballot in a “spoiled or damaged” condition. Voiding a ballot that’s already been submitted and getting a new one over a voter’s own mistake or a candidate dropping out didn’t fall under that category, she argued.

Kaul, the state’s Democratic attorney general, saw the issue differently. A few different laws allow ballot spoiling, he said in a court filing, and “none requires the elector to explain how or why the ballot is ‘spoiled.’”

Siding with Kormanik, a lower court banned the practice of spoiling absentee ballots in October.

The ban stood until February of this year, when an appeals court vacated the lower court ruling. But the new ruling wasn’t on the merits of the case. Rather, it came because the court said Kormanik didn’t properly serve documents to a legislative committee at the start of the suit.

After the February ruling, clerks sought the commission’s updated guidance about how to deal with spoiling. They didn’t receive it in time for the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, and some municipalities offered instructions on how to spoil ballots. But with midterm primaries coming up — and particularly as rumors of gubernatorial candidates dropping out swirled — clerks were especially eager to know if the commission planned to stand by its earlier interpretation of the law and allow absentee ballot spoiling again.

On July 9, the commission provided an answer: It voted 4-2 that absentee ballot spoiling is prohibited after a voter returns an absentee ballot. Democratic commissioner Carrie Riepl, a former clerk, voted with the three Republicans in favor of the guidance. Democratic commissioners Mark Thomsen and Ann Jacobs voted against it.

The guidance came just one day after Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, dropped out of the race and endorsed Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez for governor. Just over a week later, Rodriguez dropped out of the race and Crowley reentered.

Over 36,000 Wisconsin voters had already returned ballots by the day the commission issued its guidance, commission data shows. Voters had returned nearly 68,000 ballots by the time Rodriguez dropped out.

At the July meeting, commission chair Don Millis, a Republican, argued that voters should only be able to void — or spoil — ballots before they return them to the clerk.

“Once you’ve turned your ballot in, that’s it,” he said.

Meanwhile, Thomsen noted that in-person voters on Election Day can mark a ballot and receive a replacement ballot if they make an error, as long as the first ballot isn’t tabulated yet. But under the new guidance, an absentee voter couldn’t spoil a returned ballot even if it’s weeks from being tabulated.

“Why are we treating people that use mail differently than me if I show up?” he said.

On one hand, voters can argue that the inability to spoil ballots effectively disenfranchises them if they vote for a candidate that has since dropped out, said Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

On the other hand, she said, others can cite the Wisconsin law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right, and argue that voters who exercise that right accept some risk in casting an absentee vote that can’t be taken back.

“The issue of whether ballot spoiling is or is not allowed under Wisconsin statutes hasn’t been definitively resolved,” she said.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Michigan voters can still change their primary vote if their candidate dropped out

2026-07-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

You did everything right: You voted early, putting that absentee ballot in the mail or dropping it in a local drop box to ensure your vote was counted.

Then your candidate dropped out.

What on earth are you supposed to do now?

Many Michigan voters may be asking that question this month after Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Cox both suspended their campaigns. Mail ballots for the Aug. 4 primary have been available since late June, so there are almost certainly McMorrow and Cox supporters who have already voted.

If you’re one of those people, all is not lost. Michigan law gives you the right to cancel (or, in legal parlance, spoil) your ballot and cast a new one. You don’t even need to give a reason why — so it doesn’t matter if it’s because your candidate dropped out or because you realized too late there was some other problem with your ballot.

How to spoil your ballot depends on whether you’ve already submitted it.

If so, you’ll need to sign and submit a written request to your township or city clerk (not your county clerk!) by the end of the day on Friday, July 24. That’s the day your request needs to be received by the clerk — not the day it needs to be postmarked.

That date may seem kind of early, but it makes sense when you consider other parts of Michigan election law. Statewide early voting begins Saturday, July 25. And communities with more than 5,000 people are allowed to start preprocessing absentee ballots eight days before the election, which for the primary is Monday, July 27. Preprocessing allows for everything but the actual counting of the votes — taking in the ballots, verifying signatures, opening the envelopes, and even putting ballots in the tabulator, which will eventually scan and count them.

As soon as your absentee ballot is removed from its envelope, it is no longer tied to you, so it can’t be taken back or changed. Clerks largely appreciate the option to process ballots before Election Day, because it means faster results, but it does limit your window to request a new ballot.

If you’ve already filled out your ballot but not yet turned it in, you have a few more options. You can go in person to an early voting location or to your polling place on Election Day and surrender your absentee ballot, at which point election workers will spoil it and give you a new one to vote there and then.

Alternatively, you can go to your local clerk’s office and fill out the same written, signed request to spoil your unsubmitted absentee ballot and get a new one.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Green Bay clerk’s office faces investigations after duplicate ballot errors in a second consecutive election

2026-07-15T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Green Bay and state officials over the last month have authorized separate investigations to better understand how city election officials accidentally sent voters duplicate absentee ballots in two consecutive elections this year, including for the upcoming August 11 primary.

This set of investigations marks an unprecedented level of scrutiny for Green Bay Clerk Celestine Jeffreys, who has repeatedly come under fire for election administration mistakes and was placed on leave by Mayor Eric Genrich on July 9.

Jeffreys, whose job is nonpartisan, has served as clerk since 2021, running elections in the state’s third largest city. City spokesperson Michael Bergman said in a statement that the latest errors in the clerk’s office “are unacceptable.”

On Monday, city elected officials and nearby residents weighed in at a public meeting.

“I would hope that when you go through this process, you really evaluate how things are done, because you may not have the right person in that job,” former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, a Republican, said at the Monday meeting.

Others raised concerns that Jeffreys’ suspension could hurt the city’s preparedness for the upcoming primary election.

“I worry that Celestine is now sitting at home when she’s not able to prepare for the August 11th election,” said Jane Benson, a Suamico resident and a longtime poll worker. “This is a really busy time for any clerk, and I feel like we’re hamstringing the city from having more reliable elections by sending her home.”

Investigations arose quickly after second error

Before the Wisconsin Supreme Court election in April, Jeffreys’ office issued 152 duplicate absentee ballots, an error that drew scrutiny and prompted the Wisconsin Republican Party to file an administrative complaint with the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Election officials at the time made an effort to explain to voters how the state’s system prevents double votes from being counted.

When it happened again, though, officials on all sides became more critical of the Green Bay clerk.

“I am really concerned that, first of all, it happened once,” Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting, before commissioners voted to investigate the clerk’s office. “But then for the exact same error to happen a second time weeks later is unconscionable.”

Jeffreys, who didn’t respond to a request for comment, sought to explain the first error in an April response to the administrative complaint filed against her, describing it as the downstream result of a printing error.

Typically, after absentee ballot certificate labels — featuring voters’ names and addresses — are placed on absentee envelopes, Green Bay election officials put a copy of regular paper with the same label information in a folder to be retained for recordkeeping purposes, Logan Wood, an attorney for Jeffreys, said in a response to the complaint.

But in the April instance, Wood said, that sheet of paper wasn’t placed in a folder after the ballots were sent out — it’s unclear why. An election worker then mistakenly thought the batch of labels hadn’t been printed at all and made a duplicate copy, Wood said. The duplicate batch of labels was then affixed to envelopes and sent out to voters.

In late June, Jeffreys announced that election officials had again printed and mailed out duplicate ballots for the midterm primary election in August due to a certificate label printing error.

“I regret the printing error occurred,” she said in the June statement, without elaborating on how such an error happened again or how many duplicate ballots were sent out. She noted that affected voters will also receive instructions by mail on submitting only one ballot.

Jacobs said the errors can likely be attributed in part to city election officials using a tool other than WisVote, the state’s voter registration database and election management system, to print labels for absentee ballots. WisVote doesn’t allow officials to generate duplicate labels, she said, but other systems can lack that failsafe.

She said it would be helpful to know which system Jeffreys used, how workers exported the labels, who printed them, and why the duplication wasn’t caught.

“We can’t fix it if we don’t know how it happened, and I don’t think we can give proper direction to the clerk of Green Bay without knowing how this happened,” she said.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission probe, unanimously authorized at the July 9 meeting, seeks a response from the clerk’s office by July 31 explaining how the office accidentally sent duplicate absentee ballots to voters in two consecutive elections and how the city will ensure that only one ballot gets cast per voter.

The commission told the clerk’s office to come up with a plan by Aug. 14 to outline how the city plans to prevent another repeat error. The commission will separately investigate whether the city clerk’s office violated any laws. Meanwhile, city officials announced on July 9 that they’re also conducting an internal review into the mistakes.

It’s unclear if or when Jeffreys will return to her post. Bergman, the city spokesperson, said the city won’t comment on the matter until the city and state finish investigating the errors. Green Bay Deputy Clerk Stacy Menke is running elections in the meantime.

Jeffreys previously came under fire for assorted complaints

The sending of duplicate ballots isn’t the first election administration issue that Jeffreys has faced in Green Bay since transitioning in 2021 from being the mayor’s chief of staff to the clerk.

In late 2023, the Wisconsin Elections Commission stated that Jeffreys’ office’s policy of letting a third party return ballots for somebody who is “sick” but not disabled likely violated state law.

In 2024, Jeffreys admitted that, for several elections in a row, she had not followed the state’s legal requirement to deactivate the voter registrations of Election Day registrants after postcards sent by clerks to their stated mailing addresses were returned as undeliverable. Lindsay Mather, an attorney representing Jeffreys at the time, said the city clerk had also not been referring those voters to the district attorney, as required.

“The failure to do so was inadvertent and due to a lack of awareness of the statutory requirements, and not the result of any willful violation of state law,” Mather said.

Juno, the former Brown County clerk, said at the commission’s July 9 meeting that when somebody makes as many errors as Jeffreys has, that person doesn’t have the skills to be a good clerk.

But Sam Liebert, a former municipal clerk who served in nonpartisan roles, said that while accountability is important, highly publicized investigations could further increase clerk turnover in Wisconsin and dissuade other people from becoming clerks. He said the commission shouldn’t create an expectation for clerks to be perfect 100% of the time.

“Frivolous lawsuits and politically charged attacks over human error do not strengthen the systems that ensure our freedoms to vote,” he said. “They undermine confidence in these very systems that successfully prevented any improper votes from being counted.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

How inconsistent standards led to dozens of disenfranchised voters in a Wisconsin city

2026-07-06T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

For years, Mequon election workers employed an unusually strict standard for judging the validity of witness addresses on absentee ballot envelopes — a standard not apparently used elsewhere in Wisconsin and that the Wisconsin Elections Commission has now said is illegal.

Under that standard, Mequon officials rejected absentee ballots if the witness address did not include a state or ZIP code and the municipality name was not unique nationwide. That’s despite the fact that Wisconsin’s absentee ballot envelope no longer specifically asks witnesses to provide the information Mequon treated as essential: a state or ZIP code.

But a Votebeat review of hundreds of April 2026 absentee ballot envelopes, the dozens of ballots Mequon at least initially rejected since 2024, and scores of city records found that the city’s strict standard was applied unevenly — and, in some cases, resulted in the initial rejection of ballots that did not appear ambiguous at all.

In April, election workers accepted several ballots with the same missing witness-address information as ballots they moved to the reject pile. In one case, poll workers appeared to override the city’s own recommendation to reject a ballot. And of the ballots Mequon rejected because officials said the witness address listed a municipality name shared by other places in the country, about a third were actually from uniquely named municipalities. All the rest had unique combinations of street number, street name, and municipality, even without a state or ZIP code.

Across several recent elections between 2024 and 2026, the city rejected at least 27 absentee ballots while allowing others with the same missing witness-address information to count. In the Wisconsin Supreme Court election this April, Mequon initially intended to reject five more ballots before the commission ordered city officials to count them — and to stop applying the unusual standard in elections moving forward.

Mequon followed the commission’s order to count the votes in April. But when Votebeat asked whether the city would abandon its practice in future elections, the city attorney was less definitive, leaving open the possibility that it could return.

Mequon officials have defended the rejections by saying voters are responsible for following the rules. Nancy Martin, a chief inspector at a Mequon polling place, said that she is unequivocally supportive of the city’s witness-address policy. She invoked a state law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right.

Because of that law, she said, “you need to make sure that you’re doing your job as a voter, and I don’t think that sending incomplete information is doing a complete job as a voter.”

How Mequon’s standard clashed with state practice

Wisconsin law requires absentee voters to have a witness sign the ballot envelope and provide an address. But state law does not define how complete that address must be. In a lawsuit filed by Rise, Inc., a nonprofit advocacy organization, a court in 2024 sided with the group’s more lenient view, ruling that an address is sufficient as long as a clerk can reasonably discern where the witness lives.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has since said that means clerks should not reject ballots simply because the witness address does not include a state or ZIP code. In fact, the WEC-approved state absentee ballot envelope doesn’t specifically designate spaces for a witness to provide their state or ZIP code. Mequon has taken a stricter view than WEC in rejecting ballots that do not provide that information.

Around August 2024, Mequon officials discussed the state commission’s witness-address standard at a training for chief inspectors. City records pertaining to that meeting show that City Attorney Brian Sajdak expressed that he disagreed with the commission on what constitutes a valid address. Since then, the city has repeatedly rejected ballots the commission deemed properly witnessed.

Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk, said it’s normal for city attorneys to be in touch with clerks to decide or interpret election policies.

“But in Mequon, it is pretty alarming and jarring that an attorney would so blatantly not be in agreement with WEC’s interpretation of the Rise ruling,” he said.

Sajdak and Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment about who came up with the controversial policy, though a letter from a chief inspector endorsing the policy says they both played a part.

Inconsistencies within polling places that rejected ballots

The unevenness showed up even within the same polling places.

Mequon officials at the same polling places who initially rejected the five ballots from the April election counted six others in that same election — three from Cedarburg, one from Waukesha, one from Rib Lake, and another from Shorewood — even though their witness addresses were also missing ZIP codes and states, and the municipality names were not unique nationwide.

In this rare instance, Mequon poll workers appeared to override a suggestion to reject a ballot.

In one instance, poll workers even appeared to override a city official’s instructions to reject a ballot from Shorewood that didn’t list a ZIP code or state. It arrived at the precinct with a handwritten note affixed to it saying “Reject — multiple ‘Shorewoods’ in US.” There is a Shorewood near Mequon and others in Illinois and Minnesota.

In different handwriting, an election worker wrote that the street name listed on the address, Farwell Avenue, was in the nearby Shorewood, and accepted the ballot.

Mequon’s controversial practice came to light in April 2026 as a result of a letter to Fochs from Law Forward, a liberal law firm, warning that the city’s policy may be wrongfully disenfranchising absentee voters.

In response, Sajdak said the city’s ballot rejection practice is a “policy of last resort utilized only when all other reasonable attempts have failed.”

But it appears that city officials did not use simple techniques that would have shown that the witness address provided on each of the rejected ballots was unique.

All rejected ballots did have unique address

Of the 32 ballots Mequon initially rejected in recent elections, about a third did not meet even the city’s own standard for rejection: They came from uniquely named municipalities, like Fox Point and Chicago.

All the rest were also traceable to unique addresses. Even without a state or ZIP code: The street number and street name on those ballot envelopes pointed to only one location in the United States, even though the municipality name wasn’t unique.

Votebeat sought to better understand the process by which Mequon officials rejected those ballots, which the city has described as extensive. But the city has provided little transparency about what specific steps are actually taken to verify witness addresses.

In response to a records request for election workers’ online searches, Mequon initially said it had no responsive records. After Votebeat explained how to export browser history, the city produced records showing that Mequon officials searched Google on April 6 and 7 — Election Day and the day before it — for whether there were multiple cities in the United States named Baltimore and Verona.

The records do not show that the searches went further. Had city officials entered the complete street names and numbers, they would have found that both addresses were unique to just one of those cities. Ballots from both cities were rejected before the commission ordered Mequon to count them.

Fochs did not answer follow-up questions about whether she took other steps to determine whether the addresses were sufficient.

“I do what I can, and we do go through a lot of hoops,” Fochs said in an earlier April interview, saying the clerk’s office contacts voters with insufficient witness addresses when time allows.

But Liebert, from All Voting Is Local, saw it differently: “It does seem sort of just like a lack of due diligence.”

Mequon election workers appear split on city policy

Alisha Campbell, who was an assistant chief inspector at a Mequon polling place in April, said that every absentee ballot went through the clerk’s office before being delivered to an individual ward. The general instruction from her chief inspector, Campbell said, was to reject the ballots that the clerk’s office suggested rejecting.

She also said she was told by her chief inspector that ZIP codes were paramount, and that if a ballot is missing a ZIP and the municipality name isn’t unique, poll workers could not count it. While Votebeat found instances in which pollworkers overrode a decision by the central election offices, Campbell said most were generally just following the instructions of the city clerk’s office rather than making decisions on the fly.

Campbell would not say whether she agreed with the city policy.

“What you think independently isn’t always what you are told to do,” Campbell said. “I will leave that at that.”

Martin, the Mequon chief inspector who defended the city’s policy, took a different view. In her letter supporting the policy, which five other Mequon chief inspectors signed, Martin expressed hope that the election commission would “correct their position” by calling for a state and ZIP code in the witness address field.

Instead, the commission did the opposite. In its new manual, published in June, the commission said using the same witness address standard that Mequon employed would constitute “an abuse of discretion.”

Martin said she was disappointed in the commission’s new language and plans to write to her local legislators asking them to change the law to require ZIP and state. She was noncommittal on how she would handle the address standard moving forward, but said she will largely rely on the clerk’s office’s guidance.

Liebert questioned whether other cities and towns in Wisconsin were implementing policies that don’t follow state law or court decisions. Wisconsin has the most decentralized election system in the nation, with 1,850 municipalities each running elections at the local level.

But he said the commission’s intervention in Mequon this year shows a silver lining. While Mequon had rejected ballots against WEC guidance in several recent elections, the commission went further by ordering the city to count the initially rejected ballots from the April election. All five were included in the final results.

“It’s disappointing what happened in Mequon, but I think also at the end of the day, the system shows that it works,” Liebert said, adding that the commission vote to count those ballots was bipartisan. “That should give voters confidence in the system and that people are looking out for them.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

What 250 years of voting rights battles tell us about today

2026-07-04T12:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Happy Fourth of July, on this 250th anniversary of the United States. We’re living through extraordinary times in American democracy, as President Trump presses for greater federal control over elections and redistricting slips loose from its once-a-decade rhythm. As always, Votebeat is focused on an essential part of it: who gets to vote, who makes the rules, and what those votes are worth.

That question has loomed over the nation from the beginning. Voting history is often framed as a steady expansion from white male landowners to everyone else. The truth is messier. States have always experimented with expanding the franchise, retracting it, and expanding it again.

Voting rights have long varied from state to state

The Constitution has never contained a broad, affirmative right to vote, which helps explain why voting in America has always depended so much on where you live.

Some states expanded the vote earlier than we typically remember. Vermont, for example, adopted a broad franchise before the federal Constitution existed. Others expanded the franchise and later narrowed it: Revolutionary Pennsylvania extended voting rights to taxpaying men before limiting the vote to white men in 1838. Taken together, these examples show that American voting rights have never moved in one direction for everyone at once.

Let’s start with Vermont, one of the earliest examples of a state taking an unusually expansive view of who should have the vote. In 1777, before the federal Constitution existed, Vermont adopted its own, eliminating both property and taxpaying requirements for voting. Why? Because of a man whose name you’ve probably heard before: Ethan Allen.

A painting depicts Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys demanding the surrender of British forces at Fort Ticonderoga on May 10, 1775. Allen’s militia is better remembered for its Revolutionary War exploits, but its fight against New York’s authority also helped create the breakaway political community that adopted Vermont’s unusually broad early voting rules.

Allen led what historian Alexander Keyssar describes in his book “The Right to Vote” as an “unruly political—and military—process” involving his militia group, the Green Mountain Boys. Allen’s men roamed what ultimately became Vermont back when New York still claimed the territory, resisting New York’s authority by stopping sheriffs, intimidating New York-backed settlers, burning buildings, and sometimes flogging opponents.

Their campaign was not specifically about expanding the franchise. It began as a fight over land, sovereignty, and New York’s authority in the territory that became Vermont. But by helping create a breakaway political community outside New York’s control, the Green Mountain Boys also helped create the conditions for a very different constitution — one that rejected New York’s property-based voting system and allowed any adult man who took the Freeman’s Oath to vote.

Then came the U.S. Constitution. The 1787 document did not grant anyone the right to vote, instead deferring to states to determine the makeup of their own electorate. Whoever a state allowed to vote for its own legislature could also vote for members of Congress from that state. States, not the federal government, were left to decide who “the people” were. Vermont, therefore, could continue to coexist with neighboring New York despite radically different approaches to the franchise.

That flexibility produced inconsistency. In 1780, Massachusetts dropped racial exclusions for voting but kept property ownership at the center of political rights. That meant a free Black man who met the property requirement could vote while a poor white man who did not meet it could not. Property, race, gender, dependency, and local law interacted unevenly in the early American electorate.

Some states also gave voting rights and then took them away. In New Jersey, the state’s 1776 Constitution and a 1790 election law allowed some property-owning women and Black men to vote. That changed in 1807, when the Legislature limited voting to “free, white male” citizens.

An 1808 article in the Trenton Federalist said the new law “restricted all that has made our elections disagreeable, contentious and corrupt; all Females and Negroes being now deprived of a vote, who, not being eligible to nor much acquainted with the affairs of government, need not any longer be made use of to answer a party purpose.”

The same state-by-state experimentation complicates another assumption we often make now: that citizenship and voting have always been inseparable.

For much of American history, they were not. Some territories and newer western states used the franchise as an inducement to settlers. If they wanted people to move west, build towns, work land, pay taxes, and bind their futures to a new place, the vote was often part of the offer.

Wisconsin became the clearest example. In 1848, it allowed immigrants to vote if they had lived in the United States for two years and filed papers declaring their intent to become citizens. Michigan and Indiana soon followed, as did the Oregon and Minnesota territories. Later, similar rules spread across parts of the South and West.

But here, too, societal pressures prompted change. States began repealing noncitizen voting laws in the late 19th century. The backlash accelerated around World War I, amid rising xenophobia and suspicion of immigrants’ loyalty. Arkansas was the last state to end the practice, doing so in 1926.

Which brings us to the arguments over voting that Votebeat covers now.

Today, the fight for voting rights revolves around equal representation

For much of American history, the central question around voting rights was who could get through the door: who could register, who could cast a ballot, and who was excluded by law. But there is another question on the other side of the franchise. In 1976, legal scholar Gerhard Casper argued that American debates had long focused on “the right to be a voter,” rather than the harder problem of representation. Voting, he wrote, “is supposedly performed with a goal in mind — representation; but voting does not in itself necessarily entail representation.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 tried to answer both problems. It gave federal force to the principle that citizens could not be denied the ballot because of race, and Section 2 later became one of the main tools for challenging election rules and maps that diluted minority voters’ ability to turn votes into representation.

That issue is at the core of the modern fights over gerrymandering. A voter can be eligible, registered, and able to cast a ballot, and still live under maps that weaken the political power of that vote.

Louisiana is the latest example. After years of litigation over whether Black voters in the state had a fair opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, the Supreme Court’s Callais decision struck down Louisiana’s second majority-Black congressional district and narrowed how Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act applies to redistricting. Many voting rights scholars and advocates have described the decision as a major rollback — not because it removes anyone from the voter rolls, but because it changes what legal protection remains when votes are diluted by district lines.

That is not the same thing as states limiting or even taking away voting rights based on property requirements, gender, or citizenship status. But it belongs in the same history. The rules change. The line moves. And sometimes, as American history keeps reminding us, it moves backward.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Trump administration asks federal judge to quickly lift ban on planned mail voting restrictions

2026-07-02T17:29:31+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The Trump administration is asking a federal judge to quickly lift her recent ruling against major provisions of a presidential executive order on elections, arguing in an appeal that the court’s action will effectively prevent the government from putting new voting restrictions in place before the November election.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani halted President Donald Trump’s efforts to create centralized lists of adult citizens and give the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented authority over who can vote by mail. Her 37-page ruling concluded that the president did not have the constitutional authority to regulate state elections, as his March executive order tried to do.

The executive order directed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to create a nationwide list of verified U.S. citizens over 18, and thus presumably eligible to vote in federal elections. It also called on the U.S. Postal Service to create a system to handle and accept mail-in ballots only from voters on preapproved lists.

Talwani’s order prevents the federal government from enforcing those provisions of the order against the 24 jurisdictions (23 states and the District of Columbia) whose attorneys general and governors brought the lawsuit in federal court in Massachusetts. The list includes most Democratic-led and swing states, including Arizona, California, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

This week, the Trump administration appealed Talwani’s ruling to the First Circuit Court of Appeals and said it is still proceeding with its efforts to set up the new system for the rest of the states. But it warned that the judge’s order will make it impossible for the U.S. Postal Service to create a bifurcated system for the November election, even if the administration ultimately prevails on appeal. Government attorneys asked Talwani to lift her ban by Monday.

The request for a quick decision suggests that the Trump administration may be trying to speed things up so the case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as possible.

“Operationally, it would not be possible for us to put a two-tiered system in place where one set of rules apply to the ballot mail of the Plaintiff States, and another applies to the remaining states,” Steven Monteith, the Postal Service’s chief customer and marketing officer and executive vice president, said in a court filing. “Doing so would cause operational confusion and significantly increase the complexity and efficiency of implementing any final rule.”

But the Trump administration’s nationwide efforts to use the Postal Service to regulate who gets ballots also hit a separate legal roadblock this week when another federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the executive order violates a years-old agreement requiring the federal government to ensure voters who request mail-in ballots get them in time to ensure they can be counted.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan concluded that the Trump administration’s plans to send ballots only to voters on preapproved lists breached a 2021 agreement between the Postal Service and the NAACP meant to ensure that the agency prioritized ballot delivery. In contrast to Talwani’s ruling, Sullivan’s decision applies nationwide.

“These proposed rules directly undermine commitments that the Postal Service made to ensure mail-in ballots are delivered and counted,” said Anthony Ashton, senior associate general counsel for the NAACP, in a statement.

The U.S. Postal Service and Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Supreme Court allows states to accept mail ballots after Election Day, rejecting Republican challenge to voting access

2026-06-29T16:38:52+00:00

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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can count mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, as long as they are properly postmarked — a key victory for voting rights advocates and another setback to President Donald Trump’s efforts to crack down on absentee voting.

In an uncommon 5-4 ruling, the justices found that nothing in federal law prevents states from enacting grace periods for absentee ballots to be received, as long as they are actually cast and mailed by Election Day. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia currently have such grace periods.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, centered on a Mississippi law that allowed ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted as long as they arrived up to five business days later. The national and state Republican parties challenged the law in 2024, arguing that, because Election Day is set by federal law, states should not be about to count ballots received after it.

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A federal judge initially upheld Mississippi’s law, but an appeals court sided with the Republicans who challenged the ballot rules. Mississippi then brought its case to the Supreme Court in March.

The high court eventually sided with Mississippi. “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion. “The election-day statutes say nothing about ballot receipt, and we cannot add to the words Congress chose.”

The ruling crossed ideological lines, with conservatives Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joining liberal Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor in the majority.

The status-quo ruling was good news for those who worried that eliminating the absentee-ballot grace period would disenfranchise voters. A Votebeat analysis of data from 11 of the 15 jurisdictions with grace periods found that more than 745,000 absentee ballots arrived after Election Day in 2024, representing no more than roughly 3 percent of the total vote in any state.

“The Court’s decision is a direct message to all voters who rely on mail ballots, including military and overseas voters, rural voters, seniors, and people with disabilities: Your voices matter equally to voters who can easily access a polling place,” said Pamela Smith, president of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan voting security group. “This ruling ensures that a postal delay outside of any voter’s control does not erase a lawfully cast ballot and supports election officials’ ability to capture the will of voters.”

Carolina Lopez, executive director of the Partnership for Large Election Jurisdictions, said she was pleasantly surprised by the court ruling. She said the decision would come as a relief to election administrators who weren’t sure when the absentee ballot receipt deadlines would be in their states.

“For election offices, this clarity matters,” she said.

Republicans, however, criticized the ruling. “Democrats are inviting chaos at the ballot box by allowing elections to drag on for days and weeks after voters cast their ballots,” Joe Gruters, chairman of the RNC, said in a statement. “Republicans are not going to be deterred by this decision, and the RNC will keep fighting to have elections end on Election Day as Americans want.”

In a post on social media, Trump called the ruling a “tremendous loss” and said it should be a catalyst for Congress to pass his long-stalled election overhaul, the SAVE America Act.

“There is only one reason to oppose — CHEATING!” Trump wrote. Studies show that mail voting fraud is exceedingly rare, accounting for only 0.000043% of total mail ballots cast, on average, in the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections.

Trump has long criticized mail-in ballots, blaming them for delayed election results and arguing unsuccessfully in court that they cost him the 2020 presidential election.

“We should know the result of the election on Nov. 3, the evening of Nov. 3,” Trump said on the campaign trail in 2020. “That’s the way it’s been and that’s the way it should be.”

As post-Election Day vote tallies in key states that year showed a swing toward Democrat Joe Biden, Trump called for a halt to counting ballots. The late swing reflected timing, not fraud: Studies show misinformation made Republicans more wary of mail voting in 2020, so later-counted mail ballots skewed Democratic.

“STOP THE COUNT!” Trump wrote on social media two days after Election Day. “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”

Last year, Trump issued an executive order that gave the federal government power to withhold federal funding to states that allowed ballots to be counted if they arrived after Election Day. Several states sued over the order, and federal courts have largely blocked it from taking effect.

On Monday, conservative Justice Samuel Alito embraced Trump’s arguments in his dissent. Alito argued that the ruling “creates a serious risk of further undermining public confidence in our elections and our system of self-government.”

In the wake of the ruling, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general urged the state legislature to eliminate the state’s grace period anyway.

“I am hopeful that the Mississippi Legislature will take this opportunity to amend the law and require absentee ballots be received on the same day ballots are cast at the polling place,” said Attorney General Lynn Fitch. “President Trump is right to prioritize improving public trust in our elections.”

During two hours of oral arguments in March, some conservative Supreme Court justices pressed the lawyers about whether late-arriving ballots could create the perception of voter fraud. At the time, Alito asked whether “confidence in outcomes can be seriously undermined if the apparent outcome of the election on the day after the polls close is radically flipped by the acceptance later of a big stash of ballots that flip the election.”

“We don’t have Election Day anymore,” Alito said. “We have election month, or we have election months.”

The more liberal justices questioned the impact that nullifying Mississippi’s law could have on voting by Americans and soldiers living overseas.

“You believe that absentee voting by the military and overseas voters, the… federal laws under which states have proceeded with respect to those votes are illegal?” asked Sotomayor.

Dion Nissenbaum is a senior national reporter for Votebeat and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Legal ruling blocking Trump hunt for noncitizen voters may not help those already flagged

2026-06-29T09:00:00+00:00

A few days ago, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s use of a revamped immigration database to identify noncitizens who have registered to vote across the country.

The pointed 75-page ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Sparkle Sooknanan said the federal government’s actions threatened Americans’ privacy and voting rights.

But what does it mean for the estimated 24,000 registered voters that the Department of Homeland Security said it has already identified for further investigation using the revamped system that’s now been deemed a threat to Americans’ privacy?

Sooknanan’s ruling doesn’t put a halt to any of the investigations that have been carried out in more than two dozen states that used the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, better known as SAVE, over the past year to identify potential noncitizens on their voter rolls.

“The ruling turns the spigot off of a broken system, but it doesn’t go backwards in time,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. “The reality is that the thousands of people that are caught up now in the system are still at risk.”

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Texas, for example, flagged more than 2,700 people as potential noncitizens using the SAVE database. Last fall, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had sent lists to county elections officials and asked them to investigate. As Votebeat previously reported, hundreds of the voters flagged for investigation had likely already proven their citizenship when registering to vote.

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said most Texas counties had already completed their investigations. County officials sent out letters to those on the list and gave people 30 days to provide proof they were eligible to vote.

“Most of our jurisdictions went through the process and, I hate to say, kind of wiped their hands of it,” McGinn said. “As far as the counties are concerned, they completed their part of the process.”

While the exact number of people removed from voter rolls because of the check has not been made public, McGinn estimated that 75% to 80% of those in smaller counties have already been taken off the lists because they did not respond within the 30 days.

“Candidly, I think it was more political than practical in Texas,” he said. “You have 19 million registered voters in Texas and 2,700 is a small percentage. We still can’t consistently find evidence that ineligible voters are having an impact on elections, which speaks to how secure our elections process is.”

Dan Vicuña, the senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause, which filed a legal brief in support of the League of Women Voters’ lawsuit, said the judge’s ruling would at least give people who had been improperly removed from voter registration lists because of states’ use of SAVE a chance to challenge the decisions.

“It will provide some strong avenues for people who have been tossed to challenge that,” he said. “Obviously it would have been better if they had never had to deal with it in the first place.”

Vicuña said other lawsuits could provide more help to individual voters. Common Cause is currently suing several Texas counties that removed voters from their rolls based on the revamped SAVE system.

Other states using SAVE so far have flagged much smaller numbers of potential noncitizens registered. Louisiana said it identified about 400 potential noncitizen voters on its rolls (out of nearly 3 million registered voters) and found 83 who had voted in at least one election since the 1980s. In 2024, Georgia identified 20 potential noncitizen voters on its rolls (out of more than 8 million registered voters).

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger said in a statement that he was disappointed with the judge’s ruling and said he was still proceeding with a new check of its voter rolls to ensure no noncitizens were on the lists.

A top election official in Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, recently referred more than 200 cases of potential noncitizen voters to the state and local prosecutors for potential prosecution.

Initially, Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap said in February that his office had used SAVE to identify 137 potential noncitizens on the rolls and found 60 of those had voted in prior elections. That’s about 0.2% of the 60,000 voters it ran through the system, and a tiny fraction of the county’s total 2.5 million voters. Heap’s office and the state attorney general’s office did not respond to requests for comment on how the legal ruling might impact ongoing investigations.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

USPS proposal to carry out Trump’s executive order could create new barriers to mail voting

2026-05-29T23:25:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The U.S. Postal Service proposed new rules Friday that detail in part how the Trump administration intends to carry out its contested mail-ballot executive order — revealing a plan that, if it survives legal challenges, would create new barriers for mail voting and new burdens for election officials.

Under the proposal, all states would be required to send the federal government a list of all registered voters to which they are sending mail-in and absentee ballots in key federal elections. The proposal appears to give the postal service new power to block delivery of ballots to people that are not on the list and allow the agency to refuse delivery of ballots that do not meet new federal standards outlined in the proposed rule.

Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former Colorado election administrator, said that the proposal would create onerous new regulations that could be difficult and costly for local elections officials to follow, especially in rural counties which do not currently have the technology to produce the required barcodes. Such systems cost thousands of dollars.

Morrell said the rules represent an unnecessarily broad attempt to crack down on extremely rare examples of voter fraud.

“This proposal would fundamentally change the rules to address a problem that is extraordinarily rare,” she said. “This is adding significant complexity and new administrative burdens that can add additional costs with little-to-no evidence the current system is failing.”

Release of the proposed rules created widespread confusion among local elections officials unsure how they would work, and sparked broad condemnation from voting rights advocates and Democratic leaders who accused the Trump administration of trying to take unconstitutional steps to deny Americans their right to vote.

“Tens of millions of eligible voters could be prevented from voting by mail if states do not fully submit to this new federal mandate being rushed ahead of the 2026 election,” said U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat who previously served as California’s secretary of state. “Serious and consequential questions remain over how this new list will work with the Trump Administration’s ongoing illegal effort to create a national voter list.”

Friday’s proposed regulations, which require a 30-day comment period before moving forward, are the latest step by the Trump administration to overhaul election rules and impose unprecedented new federal oversight on the voting process.

Since returning to the White House last year, President Donald Trump has directed his administration to take sweeping new steps to alter an election system he has accused, without evidence, of cheating him out of the 2020 election. The Federal Bureau of Investigation in January seized ballots in Fulton County, Georgia as part of a probe of the 2020 election. He has issued two executive orders that attempt to assert broad presidential control over elections, though the Constitution gives authority over elections to the states and Congress. Both orders were quickly challenged in the courts, which froze major provisions of the first order, ruling the president exceeded his authority.

Release of the rules came one day after federal judge refused to block the most recent executive order on mail-in ballots because the Postal Service had not yet released its proposed new regulations. Another challenge to the order is pending in Boston, where a federal judge is scheduled to hear arguments June 2 in cases brought by voting-rights groups and a coalition of states.

Counties face steep compliance questions

Local election officials and experts said the proposal raised urgent operational questions about whether existing ballot envelopes comply with the new standards, whether counties and vendors can produce unique barcodes for outgoing and return ballots, and whether USPS could reject ballot mailings if voter data is missing, late, or mismatched.

“I don’t know how the states would potentially interpret what they need to do in order to comply, and what happens if the state doesn’t?” said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer for the Election Center, which represents state and local election officials. “Does that mean the postal service will reject the ballots? I don’t think so. The postal service will deliver any mail provided to them so what happens if a state doesn’t do it?”

In addition, Patrick added, “I haven’t seen much here that is giving me much confidence this can be done by the fall without creating a lot of confusion and potential chaos.”

Patrick said many of the Postal Service’s proposed standards are best election-mail practices, many of which she worked on for years. But turning them into federal mandates could collide with state laws and leave local officials with no clear way — or funding — to comply.

“Some of these things are actually really good,” Patrick said, though election officials have been unable to adopt them in the past, and there’s no funding in the executive order to help.“Who is going to pay for it?”

Kathy Boockvar, a former Pennsylvania secretary of state, said implementing the changes before the 2026 midterms would place another burden on election officials who are already underfunded and understaffed.

“Especially in situations like this, where there is no funding being provided and no time for election officials and voters to absorb the required changes, this means that voters will bear the brunt of a poorly planned, last minute attempt to upend electoral processes,” said Boockvar, a Democrat. “You can’t just snap your fingers and change how elections are run overnight.”

A technical rule with major implications

Among the most concerning pieces of the 20-page proposal, voting rights advocates and election officials said, is a new requirement that every ballot envelope — both the one sent to the voter and the one used to return the ballot — carry a unique Postal Service barcode.

Election officials would have to send those barcodes to USPS along with voters’ names and addresses, allowing the agency to check whether outbound ballot mailings match the state-submitted list before accepting them. The postal service said the new rules wouldn’t apply to primary elections or to military and overseas ballots, but critics said it could force some jurisdictions to redesign envelopes, update vendor contracts, and build new ballot-tracking systems before the next federal election in November.

That could be difficult. For example, Thad Hall, the election director in Pennsylvania’s Mercer County, said that while some of his outgoing mail envelopes have intelligent barcodes, not all do. Officials in other Pennsylvania counties have in the past said their vendors do not use intelligent barcodes.

Gideon Cohn-Postar, director of federal affairs at the Institute for Responsive Government, a nonpartisan think tank, characterized the proposal as a confusing attempt to comply with Trump’s recent executive order.

“The executive order they are trying to fulfill is incoherent in and of itself,” he said.

Cohn-Postar said the proposals could have the biggest impact on small jurisdictions that may not have the funding to comply. In a small jurisdiction of about 2,500 voters, ordering new envelopes costs about $10,000 — a significant expense that requires them to learn entirely new technology.

For those jurisdictions, he said, the proposal could be a “big change.”

“Right now, in the heat of the midterm election cycle, election officials should be given the space and resources to focus on critical work like improving cyber and physical security,” he said. “More bureaucracy only pulls them away from those mission-critical priorities.”

Correction, May 29: An earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed a quotation to Mercer County Election Director Thad Hall.

Dion Nissenbaum is Votebeat’s senior national reporter and is based in Houston. Contact Dion at dnissenbaum@votebeat.org.

Lawsuit seeks to require Wisconsin clerks to let voters fix problems with their absentee ballots

2026-05-26T17:01:43+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin is challenging the state’s law governing voters’ ability to fix missing information on their absentee ballots, alleging that the law violates the Wisconsin Constitution by giving clerks a vast amount of discretion over whether to reject ballots.

The group is asking a Dane County judge to require all clerks to provide voters notice when an absentee ballot certificate is lacking necessary information — such as a signature or the address of a voter or the person who witnessed the ballot’s casting — and give them an opportunity to add that information before rejecting the ballot, a process known as “curing” the ballot.

Right now, the law tells clerks that they “may” return incomplete absentee ballots to voters. That results in some municipal clerks sending voters prompt notice about faulty ballots, while other clerks put those ballots in the rejected pile without informing the voter at all, the lawsuit states. Municipalities also treat absentee ballots differently depending on when they receive them, the lawsuit alleges, and those that arrive closer to Election Day often have a lesser chance of getting cured.

The lawsuit, which names the Wisconsin Elections Commission as the defendant, argues that, without a blanket curing requirement, “mail-in absentee ballots are jeopardized by the lack of mandatory notice and curing opportunities across the state.”

This case, which comes a few months ahead of Wisconsin’s 2026 primary election, is the latest in a long line of lawsuits over what to do when information is missing on absentee ballot certificates. In recent years, courts have allowed clerks to use their discretion to determine what constitutes a proper witness address but taken away their ability to fix missing information on the address form.

“Right now, we have ballots that come in weeks ahead of the election, and they’re being set aside for rejection with no attempt by the clerk to contact the voter,” Debra Cronmiller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, told Votebeat.

“If even one clerk is not curing ballots, that’s one clerk too many in a democratic system where voting is an absolute right,” Cronmiller said, adding that the number of clerks who fail to follow the practice could reach into the hundreds.

While the lack of uniformity could create legal issues, clerks say a blanket curing requirement could be difficult to implement if courts maintain the state’s 8 p.m. Election Day deadline for receiving ballots as the deadline to cure those ballots, too.

In 2024, Milwaukee received about 150 mail ballots just minutes before polls closed. At that late hour, it would have been virtually impossible for officials to notify those voters about any deficiencies with their ballots — much less give them a chance to cure them before the polls closed.

Size and resource disparities between Wisconsin’s many municipalities would also present challenges to a uniform curing system.

A part-time clerk working from home in a small rural town operates with dramatically fewer resources than election officials in Milwaukee, where thousands of absentee ballots can arrive on Election Day. Resources in both settings would be stretched by a uniform curing requirement, depending on how courts ultimately require it to be implemented. If courts grant the league some version of the relief it is seeking, questions about how the process would work in practice could also be settled in court.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, said another complicating factor for clerks is that Wisconsin’s voter registration form doesn’t require registrants to provide their email addresses and phone numbers.

Trueblood said she already tells the 60 municipal clerks in the county to try to cure ballots, but that process is harder when voters don’t provide contact information or when ballots are returned on Election Day. Requiring voters to provide their contact information would make a curing requirement a lot easier to comply with, she said.

If such a requirement were imposed ahead of this year’s midterms, Trueblood said, bigger villages and cities would likely have the staff and resources to contact every voter, but for town clerks who work a different full-time job and spend just a few hours working as a clerk on weekends and evenings, “it could be a little more challenging.”

Curing lawsuits play out in Wisconsin and across the nation

Ballot curing practices vary widely across the country. Some states don’t allow curing at all. Others allow voters to cure absentee ballots well after Election Day if they’re missing a date, signature, address or something else. As arguments over voting practices increasingly head to court, lawsuits over ballot curing have played out across the nation.

In Pennsylvania, for example, ballot curing is neither required nor prohibited under state law. Similar to Wisconsin, different counties have different curing practices — some allow voters to cure their ballots, while others don’t.

In North Carolina, a robust curing process was created as the result of a lawsuit that mirrors the one in Wisconsin. It was brought by the League of Women Voters of North Carolina, among other groups, and relied on a similar allegation: that the lack of a statewide-mandated procedure to cure absentee ballots amounted to a denial of voters’ right to due process under the U.S. Constitution.

The lawsuit resulted in a settlement that created a curing requirement in every county. Now, voters have up to three days after Election Day to cure issues on their ballot.

The ballot rejection rate has dropped dramatically as a result of the case, said Joselle Torres, a spokesperson for Democracy North Carolina, a voting rights group that joined the state’s league chapter in the case. But she added that state and local funding is crucial to educate poll workers, voters, and other election officials about the changes — “and that’s no small fee.”

Marc Meredith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who researched ballot curing in North Carolina in the wake of the settlement, said he had initially expected under 50% of voters to fix their ballot or vote a new one. But ultimately, about 82% of the 26,000 voters eligible to cure their ballots did so. Many opted to vote a new ballot in person rather than fix their old one, he said.

Curing has potential benefits but also challenges in Wisconsin

The drastic increase in the number of voters curing their ballots in North Carolina may not be replicated in Wisconsin, where many municipalities already have curing notifications and procedures in place.

Another difference is that North Carolina has 100 counties running elections, whereas Wisconsin has about 1,850 municipalities doing so. That could complicate implementation, Meredith said, because the same procedures would need to work in places ranging from Milwaukee to towns with 100 residents.

“In the places that aren’t currently curing,” he added. “I would expect lots of voters would take opportunities to make corrections.”

That issue of municipalities not curing ballots is especially pronounced in rural Wisconsin, Cronmiller said. There, part-time clerks don’t always have the bandwidth to return ballots to voters ahead of Election Day, she said. If courts call for a more stringent curing requirement, Cronmiller added, “it would force all municipalities to give resources sufficient to their clerks so they could do this work.”

A requirement for clerks to tell voters can create practical issues in bigger cities, too, especially those that can receive thousands of ballots on Election Day.

To get every last ballot cured, Wisconsin would likely have to implement a cure deadline after Election Day, Meredith said.

“You don’t want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, is my opinion on these things,” Meredith said. “There are going to be some things that will slip through the cracks, but … don’t let the fact that a few might slip through the cracks prevent you from putting that system in that way that would help the rest.”

At the highest level, the League of Women Voters is seeking a declaration that Wisconsin’s discretionary ballot-curing law violates the state constitution, said Nina Beck, a counsel at the Fair Elections Center, which represents the league in Wisconsin and also represented the North Carolina league chapter in its lawsuit to create ballot-curing there.

What’s required under the due process clause of the Wisconsin Constitution, Beck said, is adequate notice and the ability to cure a defect if clerks are otherwise denying people their fundamental right to vote. Instead, right now, clerks are dealing with curing in many different ways and may even be treating voters within the same municipality differently, she said. “That’s fundamentally unfair.”

If the court sides with the league, the group will ask the court to set a uniform procedure for all clerks to follow, Beck said, adding that the current system is “kind of a free-for-all.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

What Americans think about election policy and how the 2026 elections will go

2026-05-18T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Earlier this year, we asked a group of election experts about what worries they had about the administration of the 2026 midterms. Now, let’s check in on how the American people are feeling.

Several polls in recent months have asked about people’s confidence in the election, the likelihood of voter fraud, and how — if at all — election laws should be changed. Their responses defy easy categorization: Many are concerned about fraud and support efforts to weed it out, but they’re also worried about voter disenfranchisement and oppose federal intervention in elections.

Polls: Many Americans are concerned about voter fraud

With President Donald Trump continuing to spread fear about widespread voter fraud in the midterms — despite his claims about past elections being repeatedly debunked — about half of Americans say they have concerns along these lines. According to an Ipsos/Reuters poll conducted April 15-20, 46% of American adults agreed with the statement that noncitizens cast a large number of fraudulent ballots in U.S. elections, and 50% were very or somewhat concerned about ineligible voters casting a ballot in the midterms.

Trump’s invections against mail voting have also trickled down to the general public: The same survey found that 53% of adults were concerned about fraudulent mail-in or absentee ballots in the midterms.

More generally, a Marist University/NPR/PBS News poll conducted March 2-4 found that 50% of adults thought it was likely that there would be voter fraud in the November elections. By contrast, none of the experts in Votebeat’s informal survey thought it was likely that a significant number of ineligible voters would cast ballots in 2026. Studies have repeatedly shown that noncitizen voting and voter fraud by mail are exceedingly rare.

It’s important to look at polls in the aggregate, and not every survey agrees that such a large percentage of Americans have been convinced by Trump’s claims. In a YouGov/CBS News poll conducted March 16-19, only 23% of adults said they thought noncitizens vote “a lot” in federal elections, although an additional 27% said they do so “sometimes.” And just 32% thought voter fraud and irregularities were generally widespread in U.S. elections; 57% thought they occurred only in a few isolated incidents, and only 11% said there was no voter fraud or irregularities whatsoever.

Still, 38% of YouGov/CBS News’ respondents thought “a lot” of fraud takes place when ballots are cast by mail, compared to just 13% who said the same of ballots cast in person, and 42% said ineligible voters casting ballots was a “major problem” — not quite half, but a meaningful minority.

Unsurprisingly, the slice of the populace that is most likely to fret about fraud is Republicans. For example, 54% of Republicans thought there were widespread fraud and irregularities in U.S. elections versus just 14% of Democrats and 28% of independents. And 69% of Republicans said that ineligible voters were a major problem, compared with 20% of Democrats and 39% of independents.

Americans are also worried about voter access, federal troops, and attempts to overturn election results

Fraud isn’t the only concern that Americans have about elections, though. In fact, all three polls found that more people are worried about disenfranchisement than fraud. In the Ipsos/Reuters poll, 57% said they were very or somewhat concerned about eligible voters being prevented from voting, and 44% of respondents to the YouGov/CBS News poll identified that as a major problem. And according to Marist, 58% of adults think it’s likely that many people will show up to vote in 2026 and be told they’re not eligible.

When it comes to the tradeoff between voting access and security, Americans are slightly more likely to prioritize access. When Marist asked respondents what concerned them more, 59% said “making sure that everyone who wants to vote can do so,” while 41% said “making sure that no one votes who is not eligible.”

That also comes across in Americans’ opposition to stationing federal agents at voting locations. According to Ipsos/Reuters, people disagree with the idea that federal law enforcement should be present at polling places, 55% to 40%, and they disagree with sending National Guard troops there by an even wider margin: 67% to 28%. However, in the Marist poll, only 54% of adults opposed having the National Guard at polling places, while 46% supported it. The difference might be explained by the fact that Marist specified that they would be there “to monitor November’s election” — a reminder that how pollsters word their surveys matters.

What really keeps Americans up at night, though, is what could happen after votes are cast. In the YouGov/CBS News poll, 47% of adults said “votes not being counted properly” is a major problem with U.S. elections, and 55% said “attempts to overturn official election results” are. Similarly, 69% of Ipsos/Reuters’ respondents said they were very or somewhat concerned about attempts to overturn official election results — by far the highest share of any scenario posed to them.

Americans have mixed views of Trump’s election agenda

So people are plenty worried about how the midterms will go — but what, if anything, do they think should be done about it? Well, the polls found that Americans have complicated, even contradictory, views on that.

First — as Trump has boasted many times — Americans strongly support many of Republicans’ plans to tighten election rules. About 80% of adults support requiring voters to show ID, according to both YouGov/CBS News (which asked specifically about photo IDs) and Ipsos/Reuters (which just asked about “official ID”). And per YouGov/CBS News, 66% of adults favor requiring people to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. Respondents said, 43% to 29%, that such a requirement would do more to prevent illegal voting by noncitizens than to prevent legal voting by citizens (28% said it would do both things equally).

There is, of course, pending federal legislation to implement a proof-of-citizenship requirement, but interestingly, the YouGov/CBS News poll found that people narrowly oppose one of those bills, the SAVE Act, 31% to 28%. However, the important number there is the 41% who weren’t sure where they stood on it — probably a symptom of the fact that many Americans aren’t closely following the debate over the bill in Washington. Indeed, 36% of adults told YouGov/CBS News that they don’t even know what’s in it!

On the other hand, Americans clearly aren’t on board with Trump’s movement to end mail voting. According to YouGov/CBS News, 49% of adults believed that mail voting should be available to all voters who want it, while 39% thought it should only be allowed for voters who can’t vote in person. Only 12% thought it should never be permitted.

The same poll also found Americans are skeptical of the Trump administration’s efforts to get more involved in election administration. Only 41% of respondents thought there should be more federal oversight of elections than there is now. An identical 41% thought the current level of oversight was sufficient, and 18% thought there should be even less than there is now.

Similarly, when YouGov/CBS News asked who should have the final say in how states administer their elections, only 29% said the federal government. A whopping 71% said it should be up to the individual states.

Americans trust local election officials

The public’s preference for local election administration reflects a broader truth: For all their anxieties on a national level, Americans still largely feel good about how the midterms will be run in their neck of the woods.

In the Marist poll, 66% of adults said they were confident that their state or local government would run a fair and accurate election this November, although that was slightly lower than the share who thought that ahead of the 2020, 2022, or 2024 elections. And per YouGov/CBS News, 35% of adults have “a lot” of confidence in their local election administrators, 39% have “some,” and only 26% have “not much” or “none at all.”

Finally, about 70% of respondents to the YouGov/CBS News and Ipsos/Reuters polls said they were confident that their own vote would be counted correctly. And Marist found that 63% had either “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence that ballots cast in the election would be counted accurately.

Notably, these questions were the only ones in this article without a significant partisan split: For example, 68% of Democrats had confidence that 2026 ballots would be counted accurately, and 67% of Republicans did.

Overall, Americans’ views on election administration can seem to be all over the map. They’re worried about elections getting overturned, but also think vote-counting will be accurate. They take fraud seriously and support election-security measures, but they’re concerned that voters will be disenfranchised.

It doesn’t necessarily make for a cohesive narrative, but it’s possible to reconcile all the data above: It’s not unreasonable to want both fraud-free elections and full voter access; to support federal laws but feel they should be implemented on the state level; and to worry about worst-case scenarios but acknowledge they are unlikely to happen. The partisan debates over voting that we’ve all grown accustomed to don’t leave a lot of room for nuance, but arguments made by politicians and activists are often merely archetypes; Americans’ actual beliefs are considerably more complex.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

23 late-arriving Madison absentee ballots must be counted, judge rules

2026-05-14T23:32:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission was wrong to order Madison to remove 23 late-arriving absentee ballots from its count, a Dane County judge ruled Thursday, ordering the city to count them in the soon-to-be-certified Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

The ruling comes in response to a lawsuit brought by two of those 23 voters, who alleged that the Wisconsin Elections Commission unconstitutionally ordered Madison not to count the ballots. The absentee ballots at issue arrived at the polls after 8 p.m., a delay city officials say was caused by election administrator error. State law requires that absentee ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” on Election Day, but the lawsuit alleged that it would be illegal to disenfranchise properly cast votes over election officials’ errors.

“Voters who comply with every element that is required for them to vote a special absentee vote, and then not being allowed to have the votes count, is contrary to what good law in Wisconsin has been,” Dane County Judge Everett Mitchell said from the bench.

The ruling came after an hour-long back-and-forth between attorneys for the Wisconsin Elections Commission and the plaintiffs over the rights of voters when election officials commit errors.

In briefs and in court, lawyers for Law Forward, who represent the plaintiffs, referenced several past rulings in the state that they say established a long-running precedent that voters can’t be deprived of their constitutional voting rights due to election officials’ errors.

In court, Charlotte Gibson, a Wisconsin Department of Justice lawyer representing the Wisconsin Elections Commission, argued that the precedent wasn’t that simple — and that the onus was on both voters and election officials to ensure ballots are counted on time.

In ordering Madison and Dane County not to count the ballots weeks after the election, the Wisconsin Elections Commission argued that state law simply does not permit late-arriving ballots to count, even as some commissioners expressed ambivalence about that rule and reluctance about disenfranchising voters in the process.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said in a statement after the ruling that she was pleased Mitchell reversed the WEC decision and ordered the ballots counted. Jacobs had voted to exclude the ballots, arguing the commission was bound by state law, but said at the time that she hoped a court would overturn the decision.

“As I have indicated previously, as an administrative agency we are bound by the language of the state statutes which precluded counting those ballots,” Jacobs said in a statement. “That said, it has been my firm belief that voters should not be penalized by the actions of a clerk as these 23 voters were. The right to vote should not be predicated on a clerk failing to deliver properly and timely submitted ballots.”

Mitchell’s decision means the votes removed in response to the WEC order will now be added back to the count. Those aren’t necessarily the exact 23 ballots that were delivered late, though. Due to poll workers not heeding Madison Clerk Lydia McComas’ request to uniformly mark the late-arriving ballots, Madison officials conducted what’s known as a drawdown to remove 23 random voters’ ballots from the count.

It remains unclear why there was such a delay between the ballots’ arrival at the elections office on Monday and their delivery to the precincts for counting.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission faces lawsuit, criticism over order not to count late-arriving Madison ballots

2026-05-06T22:38:02+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is facing criticism from local officials and a lawsuit filed Wednesday after it ordered Madison not to count 23 absentee ballots that arrived late to the polls in the state’s recent Supreme Court race, a delay city officials say was caused by election administrator error. City officials also say the commission initially offered little guidance but later faulted them for making the wrong decision.

As Madison officials discussed what to do with the late-arriving ballots the day after Election Day, Madison City Attorney Mike Haas reached out to Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe for advice. Wolfe sent the relevant statute the following day, and told Madison officials to “decide, within their statutory discretion” whether the 23 ballots should be counted. Madison decided to count them.

Three weeks later, WEC’s commissioners decided Madison made the wrong choice, ordering them to remove the 23 affected ballots from the count. The commissioners didn’t mince words. Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said Madison committed an “absurd error,” and GOP commissioner Don Millis called it an “epic failure.”

The dispute has exposed a breakdown between state and local election officials with consequences beyond the 23 ballots at issue. Madison officials say they followed guidance from the commission when they chose to count the votes, only to be publicly rebuked and overruled weeks later. Now, a lawsuit argues that not counting the votes would disenfranchise voters whose ballots were delayed by election officials — and local clerks warn the episode could make them less likely to act decisively when problems arise in future elections.

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, said the turnaround from the commission was puzzling and could demoralize clerks.

“Why would anybody ask WEC for an opinion about how to handle a situation?” he said. “Here they are attacking clerks for having to make a decision because they couldn’t get advice.”

Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe said that the agency was limited in how much advice it can provide for local election officials, but said the commission remains “dedicated to supporting their efforts within the scope of our administrative role.”

Lawsuit alleges removing the 23 votes would be unconstitutional

The liberal law firm Law Forward’s lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court alleges that the commission illegally ordered Madison not to count 23 absentee ballots that arrived at the polls after 8 p.m.

The group says the two voters it’s representing — Margaret and Robert Honig — along with the other voters, would be unconstitutionally disenfranchised “through no fault of their own” and asks the court to strike down the WEC order not to count the ballots.

The lawsuit references several past rulings in the state as establishing a precedent that voters can’t be deprived of their constitutional voting rights due to election officials’ errors.

This is the second recent Law Forward lawsuit involving Madison’s failure to count ballots due to administrative error. The legal group sued the city for disenfranchising 193 voters in the 2024 presidential election for a separate series of failures.

It remains unclear why there was such a delay between the ballots’ arrival at the elections office and their delivery to the precincts for counting. State law requires they be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” in order to be tallied.

Dane County authorized a separate lawsuit on Tuesday, and then filed it Wednesday early evening, as county election officials said they want clarity in the future on whether late-arriving ballots can count if they were only delayed because of election official error.

That same day, Madison complied with WEC’s demand to remove the ballots from the count, but instead of removing the specific ballots at issue, the city selected 20 ballots at random and removed those. Called a “drawdown,” the controversial practice was necessary because poll workers apparently failed to follow Madison Clerk Lydia McComas’ instructions to clearly mark the late-arriving ballots so they could be identified if necessary. Only three were appropriately marked.

Officials criticize the election commission for lack of direction

Local election officials say the Wisconsin Elections Commission has become less willing to provide clear guidance in difficult situations — a practice that commissioners and staff say reflects the limits of the agency’s role.

Haas, the Madison city attorney, has firsthand experience on the commission: He preceded Wolfe as the commission’s administrator. Her initial response to the city’s request for advice on how to handle the late-arriving ballots — which provided little direction — was in line with the commission’s tendency in recent years to “intentionally avoid giving definitive responses to specific questions,” Haas wrote in a May 6 letter to the commission obtained by Votebeat.

“This has caused local clerks and their legal counsel to feel frustrated that the WEC is abdicating its responsibility under the Statutes to administer the election laws and provide guidance and advice to local election officials,” he continued.

Haas also questioned why Wolfe’s response and the commissioners’ eventual order were so out of step with one another. The city relied on Wolfe’s initial guidance, Haas said, only to have the commission “contradict its Administrator without even an acknowledgment of her guidance.”

That dynamic, he added, discourages local election officials from being transparent with the agency and damages the commission’s credibility.

He also said that the commissioners were contradicting themselves. In its investigation into the 193 ballots that went missing in Madison until several days after the November 2024 election, the commission concluded that the missing ballots never arrived at the polling places but still could have been counted.

Haas said it was “difficult to sustain” the commission’s conclusions that “a municipality should count ballots that are discovered in the Clerk’s Office days after the election but not ballots that were delivered minutes after the 8:00 p.m. deadline.”

To McDonell, the Democratic Dane County clerk, the commission’s “real reticence to give advice” is undermining election officials’ trust in the state election agency.

McDonell said that in the past he used to get specific advice from the commission, but now “we get a game of ‘gotcha’ instead.”

In a statement, Wolfe told Votebeat that the commission provides guidance to clerks when the issues are clear. But when state law is ambiguous or unprecedented situations arise, she said, “it’s been our long-established policy to direct clerks to their respective legal counsel for interpretation.”

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has six commissioners, three Democrats and three Republicans. Decisions must be made by a majority of the commission, needing at minimum a 4-2 vote. Although Wolfe — whose role as administrator is nonpartisan — is often referred to as Wisconsin’s top election official, she does not have a vote.

Wolfe added that the commission can exercise its authority to issue determinations on election matters and that it’s her role to adhere to those directives, “even when I don’t always agree with those decisions.”

Jacobs, the commission chair, said the commission provides clerks plenty of help, from designing election manuals and creating administrative rules to adjudicating administrative complaints.

“We are doing everything we can to provide guidance to clerks on how to do things right,” she said. “We are not their 1-800-GET-HELP number for individual clerks’ every single legal need.”

One of the other reasons the commission can’t provide specific legal advice, Jacobs said, is that the commission acts as a judicial body that could ultimately evaluate whether election officials comply with the law.

“If you’ve got a court case, a personal injury lawsuit on a car accident, you don’t get to call the judge up and say, ‘Hey, am I doing this right?’” she said. “It cannot be our job to do their jobs for them.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Mequon includes ‘incorrectly rejected’ votes in state-ordered certification redo

2026-05-05T21:01:41+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

MEQUON, Wisc. — The Mequon canvassing board on Tuesday complied with a Wisconsin Elections Commission order to count five absentee ballots from the April state Supreme Court election that City Clerk Caroline Fochs had initially rejected using an unusually strict standard for assessing the validity of a witness address.

But City Attorney Brian Sajdak stopped short of committing to abiding by the commission’s additional order to stop employing that standard in the future, saying the city was still considering its options.

The city’s decision to count the ballots that the commission said were “improperly rejected” came one day after the Ozaukee County Board of Canvassers on Monday ordered the city to revise its totals, and several days after the commission said Fochs’ standard for judging the validity of absentee ballots was illegal.

A Wisconsin court ruled in 2024 that a witness address is valid so long as the clerk can reasonably assess where the witness lives. Fochs previously told Votebeat that she thinks the courts need to revisit the ruling.

WEC has instructed clerks to count ballots even if the witness address lists only street name, number, and municipality. The envelope that a witness fills out and signs does not specifically designate spaces for state or zip code.

Despite that, Fochs has for several elections applied a standard of not counting ballots that didn’t include the state or ZIP code unless the municipality was uniquely named nationwide — a policy that the election commission said is not legal.

The commission told Fochs that if she applies requirements beyond the normal standard of accepting ballots that provide only a street name, number, and municipality, she must evaluate the validity of the address based on the full address, not just whether the municipality is unique.

The street name and number in three of the rejected ballots were unique to just one of the municipalities with the same name, a Votebeat analysis found. The other two were from Fox Point, which is a uniquely named municipality despite Mequon election officials’ claims otherwise.

In Tuesday’s meeting, Fochs continued to describe Fox Point as not uniquely named, despite Votebeat reporting that it is.

During the Board of Canvassers meeting on Tuesday, one of the three board members appeared confused by absentee rules, asking whether out-of-state residents could serve as witnesses. Fochs confirmed that they can. The question arose over a ballot whose witness listed a Baltimore address. Though there are a few Baltimores across the country, the street name and number are unique to the one in Maryland.

City still weighing options for future elections, attorney says

Although the city canvassing board decided to count the five disputed ballots in this instance, Sajdak, the city attorney, said the city won’t necessarily follow the more lenient standard suggested by WEC in future elections.

At the same time, he said it’s “not likely” that the city will appeal the current WEC order in court.

The battle over what constitutes a proper witness address has been playing out in courts for years. State law requires witnesses to include an address on the absentee form but doesn’t clarify the details Republicans have argued in court that an address must include a street name, number, municipality, ZIP code, and state, but that argument was rejected by the court in 2024.

The current standard allows a witness address to be considered valid if the clerk can reasonably assess where the witness lives. In the past, Fochs told Votebeat that standard leads to different outcomes in different places.

Sajdak reiterated that concern on Tuesday, saying “the problem” was that every community can weigh ballots differently.

“It should be a consistent standard for everybody,” he said. “All of this rigmarole and hassle could be easily solved by the Legislature or WEC adopting an administrative rule or changing the statute.”

Sajdak added that while Mequon complied with WEC this time, “Whether we continue to do that in future elections, we’re still weighing what that looks like and how that’s going to play out.”

Ann Jacobs, the Democratic chair of the elections commission, said that if the city disagrees with the order, they should appeal it rather than ignore it. If they appeal it, she said, “then we’ve got to sue them, and I don’t know that the taxpayers of Mequon want to pay to defend a lawsuit that tells them to conform their conduct to applicable law.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

The Supreme Court’s voting rights decision could reshape local government across Texas

2026-05-05T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Guillermo Ramos remembers seeing few elected leaders who looked like him while he was growing up in the 1980s in Farmers Branch, a fast-growing affluent suburb northwest of Dallas.

Over the years, Latino representation continued to lag, he said. In 2015, after he had become a lawyer, he decided to do something about it.

Ramos stepped forward as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Carrollton-Farmers Branch Independent School District, alleging that its at-large system of electing board members violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by denying Latino voters the right to elect representatives of their choice. At the time, Latino voters made up 56% of the district, but every Latino school board candidate had lost since at least 1995, the lawsuit said.

The case settled, and as part of the agreement, Ramos was appointed as the board’s first Latino trustee. The settlement also replaced the at-large system — in which every seat was filled by districtwide vote — with what’s known as cumulative voting. The new system lets voters cast as many votes as there are seats on the board, but allows them to stack their votes on a single candidate or spread them across multiple candidates.

Ramos, now 51, won the next election to keep his spot on the board, which he said created a ripple effect that drew in more Latino candidates.

“They felt at this point that if they throw their hat in the ring, that they’re going to have actually a shot at getting elected. And that’s what happened,” Ramos said.

Changes like those in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch School District played out over decades on local governing bodies all over Texas, enabling representation of Latino and Black voters. Those changes were a direct result of claims brought under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits voting practices or electoral maps that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or language minority status.

But a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last week weakened that key provision, and Ramos and others say it could make it harder and more uncertain for other candidates of color to follow the path he took to local office.

The effects of the decision, which struck down Louisiana’s congressional map, are reverberating around the country and setting off a new cycle of redistricting for partisan advantage. Experts say there is still a lot of uncertainty about how the decision will play out, especially at the local level and when it comes to nonpartisan local governmental bodies such as Texas school boards and city councils.

“The judges in the opinion are discussing congressional elections, not school board elections, even though that’s where Section Two has been applied probably more frequently,” said Christian Grose, director of the Democracy and Fair Elections Lab at the University of Southern California.

But whether it’s after the 2030 Census or sooner, he added, “I do think there are going to be challenges, even in nonpartisan elections, saying that Section 2 doesn’t need to be enforced anymore.”

Prior to the decision, plaintiffs could prove a claim under Section 2 by showing evidence of a disparate impact on minority voters, regardless of whether the mapmakers intended it. Now, they must be able to show a “strong inference that intentional discrimination occurred,” the high court’s conservative majority declared.

With the court having previously authorized maps to be drawn for partisan aims, dissenting Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the new standard under Louisiana v. Callais gives plaintiffs virtually no recourse under Section 2, as long as a mapmaker declares a partisan motive and leaves “no smoking-gun evidence of a race-based motive.”

FARMERS BRANCH, TX - NOVEMBER 13: Elizabeth Villafranca (L) speaks to a crowd of protesters outside the city hall November 13, 2006 in Farmers Branch, Texas. Later in the evening, council members unanimously voted to pass the legislation that would make English the official language of the city and approving fines for landlords and businesses who do business with illegal immigrants. (Photo by Brian Harkin/Getty Images)

Going back in time

The decision could quickly become a factor in ongoing litigation.

Though most local elections in Texas are nonpartisan, county commissioners courts are an exception, and last week’s opinion will likely give a boost to counties that are already citing partisan motives in defending their maps. Last year, for example, the Republican-majority commissioners court in Tarrant County redrew its district lines, prompting a challenge from a group of voters who alleged the new map illegally diluted the power of Black and Latino voters by packing them into a single precinct. But Republican commissioners argued they’d drawn the lines for partisan gain, and earlier this year, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the maps.

But Bill Brewer, the Dallas lawyer whose firm handled Ramos’ case in Farmers Branch, said he believes the ruling could actually help advocates win some challenges involving nonpartisan races.

Brewer, whose firm has filed at least 18 lawsuits against school districts and city councils in Texas under the Voting Rights Act, is representing a parent who sued the Keller Independent School District under Section 2, claiming the school district’s at-large system dilutes the votes of Latinos. The lawsuit was dismissed earlier this year and Brewer filed an appeal hours after the ruling to renew his push for a switch to cumulative voting. Brewer said the Callais ruling’s emphasis on intentional discrimination strengthens his claim for access to emails, meeting recordings and other evidence that could show intent.

“If they’re refusing to change because they intend to dilute opportunities for Hispanics or Blacks or Asians at the voting box, well, then you still have a claim under Section 2,” he said.

Keller ISD did not respond to a request for comment.

Ramos’ suit against the school board wasn’t the only Section 2 case brought in Farmers Branch. Its city council, too, was forced to switch from at-large to single-member districts in 2012, and the first Latino council member was elected in 2013. Council Member Elizabeth Villafranca, who was first elected last year, eventually became one of many Latino candidates to win a seat. The impact of the Voting Rights Act in the city has been “immeasurable,” she said.

But after the decision from last week, “I’m just horrified at the thought of having to go back in time,” Villafranca said. Still, she believes the community has come too far to revert to its old system. “You can see the incredible pride that there is when our residents see someone that looks like them, that speaks like them, that can represent them, and ultimately, that benefits everyone.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

How the Voting Rights Act reshaped Texas’ electoral maps

2026-05-04T19:28:03+00:00

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

In 2002, U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, a Republican, nearly lost his South Texas seat to Democrat Henry Cuellar. So when the GOP used its newfound majority in the state Legislature to redraw the voting maps the next year, they sawed through Cuellar’s hometown of Laredo and scattered Latino voters, who tended to vote Democratic, into other districts.

Latino advocacy groups sued under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the cornerstone provision of the law that prevents government bodies from diluting the voting power of specific groups. The Supreme Court found Texas lawmakers had taken away Latino voting power “because they were about to exercise it.”

“Latino voters were poised to elect their candidate of choice,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The State not only made fruitless the Latinos’ mobilization efforts but also acted against those Latinos who were becoming most politically active.”

Bonilla’s 23rd Congressional District was redrawn, and he lost to a Democrat. Just five years later, Latino voters flipped it back to Republican control; the seat was held most recently by GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales, who resigned last month.

Nina Perales, who argued that case at the Supreme Court, sees that district as an enduring testament to the power of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“A lot of the districts that we see in the map today were created to make sure that minority communities were not accidentally chopped up, and that minority communities could have a voice in some parts of the state,” Perales said. “In CD-23, when a majority of Latino voters support Gonzales, they get to elect Gonzales, and it’s irrelevant what Gonzales’ political party is.”

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court gutted Section 2, raising the bar for voter dilution claims so high as to make the statute a “dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent. Partisan gerrymandering, like the type used to try to keep Bonilla in power, is a defense against allegations of vote dilution, the conservative majority ruled. Under the new standard, plaintiffs will have to prove mapmakers intentionally set out to discriminate against voters on the basis of their race.

Even as it diminishes in power, the legacy of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is deeply woven into Texas’ political maps, reflected in districts carefully drawn to ensure voters of color could have a say. The landmark 1965 law also gave rise to a new generation of leaders, elected from Black, Hispanic and Asian communities. From that point on, both parties would have to look out for voters of color when drawing their maps — and if they didn’t, voters would have legal recourse.

Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth, said his career has been “defined” by the Voting Rights Act. As a young Black state representative, he was elected in 2012 to a congressional district drawn to right what a court found to be a legislative wrong: Texas had divided communities of color in North Texas across multiple majority-white seats designed to elect Republicans. Fourteen years later, Veasey is now departing Congress after GOP lawmakers redrew the district out from under him last summer.

With Section 2 of the VRA now significantly weakened, it will be harder to make the legal case that this redraw had an improper racial, rather than partisan, intent.

The recent hollowing out of the Voting Rights Act created a disconcerting full circle moment for Veasey, who recalled that his district was originally drawn for Willow Park GOP Rep. Roger Williams. Under the new lines, Veasey noted, Williams “will end up representing my neighborhood after all.”

How Section 2 remade Texas’ maps

In 1965, when Texas’ favorite son, President Lyndon B. Johnson, signed the Voting Rights Act into law, he said the vote “is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.”

The law included two pillars with significant implications for Texas — Section 2, which prohibits voter discrimination based on race, and Section 5, which requires jurisdictions with histories of racial discrimination to get preapproval from the Department of Justice for any voting changes, including new electoral maps.

Before the law went into effect, Texas had just two people of color in its congressional delegation — Reps. Henry Gonzalez of San Antonio and Kika De La Garza from the Rio Grande Valley, both of whom were Mexican-American. They each voted for the Voting Rights Act that would enable the ranks of Hispanic lawmakers to swell significantly.

In the 1970s, Barbara Jordan became the first Black member of Congress from Texas. As a state senator, Jordan helped draw the district she would soon be elected to, a seat that provides Black Houstonians the opportunity to elect their candidate of choice to this day. Three new representatives of color joined Texas’ congressional delegation in the 1980s. By the 1990s, there were 13 members of color who served at any point during the decade. With two more election cycles to go, the 2020s have already reached a peak of 22 members of color, some of whom have represented white-majority districts.

During her sophomore term, in 1975, Jordan got Texas added to the list of states that needed preclearance for its maps. In 1982, Congress reinforced the law with an amendment that said maps ran afoul of the law if they had the effect of diluting racial or ethnic groups’ vote, even if that wasn’t the intent. These new provisions, the second of which overruled a Supreme Court decision to the contrary, opened the floodgates to litigation against Texas’ maps, at every level of government.

In each decade since the law’s passage, at least one of Texas’ maps has been found to have violated the law, and courts have ordered at least one new district to be drawn. The maps drawn in 2021 and 2025 are still under active litigation.

In the 1980s, plaintiffs successfully sued over the congressional, state Senate and state House maps under the Voting Rights Act, compelling redraws of legislative seats that were found to have diluted Black and Hispanic voting strength through packing them into just a few districts in the state’s urban counties — and into a single district in South Texas. Through preclearance, the Department of Justice also ordered Texas to redraw districts that diluted Black and Hispanic voters’ strength. The effects of those redraws can still be seen in today’s maps.

“You had charges and claims against the South Texas district, because they were packed down against the border,” said Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist and founder of the Lone Star Project who has been involved in Texas redistricting cases for decades. “That’s why now, you see South Texas districts running north and south instead of along the bottom. It’s because [of] the court rulings under the Voting Rights Act, that you couldn’t pack those districts down against the border.”

More subtle, but just as important, was the way the Voting Rights Act pushed Texas lawmakers to proactively consider voters of color when drawing their electoral maps, Perales said. In the 1990s, for example, the majority-Hispanic 28th and 29th Congressional Districts “were born out of an understanding that the state needed to comply with Section 2,” she said.

Having grasped that it would be better to comply on the front end than be hauled into court later, the Legislature used to bring MALDEF and other groups in around the decennial census to train legislators on how to draw maps that met the law’s requirements.

“Part of that legal training was always on the obligation to avoid discriminating against minority voters under Section 2 the Voting Rights Act,” she said. “The guidance was, don’t inadvertently chop up minority communities when you’re drawing lines, because even if it’s inadvertent, it could be a legal problem.”

In 2013, the Supreme Court eliminated preclearance for most jurisdictions, including Texas. The state immediately reinstated a voter ID law that had been caught up under Section 5. The decision also freed Texas’ 2011 electoral maps from preclearance, though some parts of the map were later redrawn over Section 2 violations.

“A pre-1965 posture”

The centerpiece of the court’s redrawn map was the new 33rd Congressional District, crafted to allow voters of color to elect their preferred candidate in fast-growing Dallas and Tarrant county. The new lines were later upheld after a trial, in which the court concluded that lawmakers had “acted at least in part with a racially discriminatory motive … with regard to the districts in DFW in particular.”

Veasey was a state representative planning to run for reelection — and on his way to see a pre-Thanksgiving movie with his family — when he got a call that changed his career.

“I heard, hey, they’re gonna draw a new map, and there’s probably going to be an opportunity for you to run,” Veasey said. “You’ve got to make up your mind quick over whether you’re going to do it.”

He ran, and won, giving him a chance to represent a district that was as diverse as the state of Texas — one that would last about a decade and a half before falling victim to the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting.

Several other congressional districts that were shaped by the Voting Rights Act were subsequently dismantled by Republicans last summer. Among them are Hispanic-opportunity districts in South Texas, such as the 28th District represented by Cuellar, who rebounded from his loss to Bonilla to become one of Texas’ longest-tenured members of Congress.

The VRA also helped create Houston’s 9th Congressional District, where more than four in five residents are Black or Hispanic.

Last summer, lawmakers redrew it to a “bare majority” — 50.3% Hispanic — as they did several other districts.

Early last week, the Supreme Court allowed that map to go into effect while a trial proceeds. Just two days later, the court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that the results-based test that had been used for decades should be replaced with a new, higher bar that allows for an easier partisan defense.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said lower courts had applied Section 2 “in a way that forces States to engage in the very race-based discrimination that the Constitution forbids.” Under the new framework Alito laid out in the decision, a Section 2 claim must prove that the state “intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race.”

Angle said Texas’ most recent rounds of redistricting demonstrate what a post-Section 2 future may look like.

“You’ve got a situation in which a state that’s over 60% people of color is only going to have somewhere between 20% and 30% of the districts where voters of color’s vote matters at all,” Angle said.

State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Republican from Plano, said the U.S. had a long history of vote suppression that made the Voting Rights Act necessary.

“But we’ve moved on from that, clearly, and I think people recognize minority voters are entitled to equal representation but not certain election outcomes,” Shaheen said. “It really is more of a colorblind society, and elections are very much driven now by principles and policies, and not so much on skin color.”

Shaheen is among several GOP lawmakers who say they hope Texas takes up redistricting anew during the 2027 legislative session, this time with a focus on the state House and Senate lines.

Perales agrees that the Voting Rights Act is not about specific electoral outcomes. But she disagrees that the country is ready to move on from ensuring racial and ethnic voters have the opportunity to elect a candidate of their choice, regardless of political party or the ethnicity of the candidate.

“As much as Justice Alito wanted to make it seem like a case about partisanship, it isn’t,” she said. “It’s about dismantling something much more historic and much more deeply needed in our country, which is equal opportunity for everybody.”

For Veasey, the ruling was not a surprise. But now that his district has been chopped up and the VRA’s core provision has been kneecapped, the retiring congressman sees a bleak future for the representation of Black and brown voters.

“It’s going to go back to a pre-1965 posture,” he said. “We just won’t have nearly as many voices pushing. It’s just be [like] when we had one or two voices that were pushing back before the VRA was passed — that’s what it’s going to be like now.

Judge strikes down rule requiring counties to aid voters who go to wrong polling place

2026-05-02T01:06:36+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes can’t force election officials to provide a way for voters who show up at the wrong polling place to cast a valid ballot, according to a new court decision striking down a key provision of the state’s election rulebook.

In 2023, Fontes wrote a policy into the state’s election procedures manual directing counties that assign voters to polling places to allow out-of-precinct voters to cast their ballots on accessible voting devices, which state and federal law requires must be available at every polling place for voters with disabilities. Before that, voters had no way to cast a valid ballot if they showed up at the wrong polling location.

Weeks before the 2024 election, Fontes, a Democrat, sued Pinal County, a bright-red jurisdiction sandwiched between Phoenix and Tucson, for failing to comply with the new policy. A Pinal County Superior Court judge ruled that the county was violating state law by not following the rule, but declined to force it to comply in that election. Later, the Arizona Supreme Court similarly ruled that it was far too close to the election to compel the county to change course. Since then, the two sides have continued to fight the issue in court.

In Friday’s decision, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Scott Blaney ruled that the policy usurped counties’ authority and threatened to disenfranchise disabled voters, who may be forced to wait in line to use an accessible machine. He noted it would place administrative burdens on local election officials, requiring them to “substantially rework” poll workers’ training and load all of the county’s ballot styles onto its accessible voting devices. He also found that precinct-based voting was not a form of disenfranchisement.

“Requiring a person to identify their polling place and then travel there does not deprive anyone of the right to vote — this is, in fact, a ‘usual burden of voting,’” he wrote, citing prior case law.

Pinal is one of two counties in the state that assigns voters to polling places based on their precinct. Nine other counties in the state use vote centers, which allow voters to cast their ballots at any polling location within county limits. The state’s four remaining counties use a hybrid model that combines vote centers with precinct-based voting locations. The ruling applies to all counties that use precinct-based polling places.

Calli Jones, a spokesperson for Fontes, called Blaney’s decision “disappointing.” She said the ruling would “make it harder for voters with a disability to vote in Pinal County than in any other county in Arizona.”

“However, while our office looks to our next steps, we recognize that this ruling affects only one very small provision in a manual that gives the counties very clear guidance on election administration issues,” she said, adding that the rulebook would serve as a “sound guiding light as we head into the election season.”

In Pinal County, officials celebrated the decision. Board of Supervisors Chair Jeffrey McClure said in a statement that the issue was “a matter of principle.”

“Pinal County has always utilized the precinct-based voting model, and our voters tell us they want to keep it that way, primarily for reasons of security and control,” he said. “State statutes are very clear — it’s only the Board of Supervisors that has the authority to move to a voting center model, which is effectively what this provision was.”

Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis said the ruling was an important victory for local election control.

“Voters, through their locally elected leaders, retain the right to make these decisions,” she said. “That right is not erased by administrative overreach, no matter how ambitious the effort.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Tensions mount as Michigan and Antrim County clerk threaten legal action against each other

2026-05-01T19:11:08+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections has formally demanded that Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop stop trying to change or cancel voters’ registrations in her county.

If she doesn’t, she could face criminal charges, Jonathan Brater, the bureau director, wrote in a letter dated Thursday and obtained by Votebeat. She could also lose her ability to help administer elections in her northern Michigan county.

“You do not have unlimited authority to conduct any action you see fit simply because you were elected to office,” Brater wrote, a direct response to a press release Bishop put out last week.

Bishop declined to comment and hung up on a Votebeat reporter when reached by phone Thursday.

Bishop, a Republican, has previously claimed that Antrim County’s voter roll is cluttered with people who are dead or no longer live in the county. In March, she sent postcards out to many voters warning them that if they did not confirm their address and registration, they could be deregistered. Records obtained by Interlochen Public Radio show that about 1,800 people received such notices — 8% of the county’s total registered voters as of November 2025.

The state Bureau of Elections sent Bishop a letter on April 14 warning Bishop that her actions were illegal and fell outside her authority as a county clerk. In Michigan, municipal clerks — those at the city and township level — are in charge of maintaining voter registration lists.

The notices have confused voters and municipal clerks alike. For instance, Banks Township Clerk Julie Chellis pointed out that a state guideline says unless a clerk has indication that a voter has moved or died, they should not be removed from the roll unless it’s been more than 20 years since they last voted — but many of the affected people are still active voters.

“The list doesn’t make sense to me, because there are 18-year-olds on that list. Where did you get that list from?” she said. “There are people that are voting absentee, as we speak, that I have ballots coming for, who are on that list.”

Relations between the bureau — which creates guidelines for clerks of all levels across the state — and Bishop have significantly deteriorated as a result of the controversy. The same day the state sent its latest letter, Bishop’s husband, a radio host known as Trucker Randy, spent much of his morning show raising money for Bishop to sue Brater as well as Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.

It appears no suit has been filed yet. But a fundraising website set up by Bishop suggests that she is not planning to sue over the letters from the bureau, but rather over rules Benson and the Michigan Department of State have implemented or proposed on how to run elections.

Trucker Randy said during his show Thursday that the decision to file suit came after God told Bishop to “pick up the sword.” They are working with Kevin Kijewski, a former Republican candidate for attorney general who provided the legal defense for one of President Donald Trump’s electors who allegedly submitted a false certificate of election to Congress in 2020. Kijewski told Votebeat on Friday that he did not comment on “potential client matters.”

“Vicki just made the decision,” Trucker Randy said Thursday. “She says, ‘Somebody’s got to stop [Benson]. Somebody’s got to stop her.’ I said, ‘Well, why not you?’”

In its April 14 letter, the Bureau of Elections asked Bishop to answer several questions about her actions by April 23. It appears she tried to respond to some of the questions on April 20 but had multiple typos in the email address to which she sent her answers. In its Thursday letter, the bureau said it had not received an official response from Bishop, although it acknowledged her April 19 press release. However, Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Department of State, said Friday the Bureau of Elections had finally received Bishop’s response and was reviewing it.

Benander also confirmed that the Bureau of Elections’ letter was already being prepared before Bishop announced her intention to sue.

“This is unrelated,” she said.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission overruled ballot-counting decisions in Madison and Mequon

2026-04-30T23:03:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday overruled controversial ballot-counting decisions in Mequon and Madison, ordering the cities to revise final tallies in their Wisconsin Supreme Court election results.

Madison counted 23 late-arriving ballots that the commission voted should not have been included, while Mequon threw out five ballots the commission said should have been counted. The commission voted 6-0 to investigate both city clerks’ offices and ordered changes to the counts — voting 5-1 to require Madison and Dane County to exclude the 23 ballots, and 6-0 to require Mequon and Ozaukee County to count the five.

The deadline for the state to certify the election is May 15, but some commissioners acknowledged the likelihood that lawsuits over today’s decisions could come before then.

In Madison, poll workers on Election Day counted 23 absentee ballots that arrived at four polling places after 8 p.m. Tuesday, despite a state law requiring that absentee ballots be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” in order to be tallied.

There was some debate ahead of the Madison vote because Commission Chair Ann Jacobs and Commissioner Mark Thomsen, both Democrats, said they felt uncomfortable disenfranchising the 23 voters. But Jacobs said she was following the law in ordering Madison to redo its count, adding that she hoped “those voters will perhaps appeal this decision.”

“We’re going to disenfranchise 23 people,” said Thomsen, the lone no vote. “I don’t think the law requires us to do that.”

Voting in favor, Don Millis, a Republican commissioner, said the commission is bound by state law not to count those ballots.

“There has to be some accountability,” he added, “for the failure to get these ballots to the polling places in a timely manner.”

Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, told Votebeat that he’s considering suing over the agency’s order. McDonell previously voted to count the late-arriving ballots during the county’s canvass.

“It’s disappointing that the Wisconsin Election Commission’s directive is to reject ballots that were properly cast by voters,” Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said in a statement.

This marks the second significant error from the Madison clerk’s office in recent elections. In 2024, officials didn’t count 193 ballots that arrived at the city well ahead of Election Day, leading to investigations and a lawsuit.

Mequon redo comes amid confusion over clerk’s standard

The decision to investigate Mequon came after City Clerk Caroline Fochs decided not to count five ballots under an unusually strict standard for the witness address field on absentee ballot envelopes. Commissioners and staff found that decision to be an abuse of discretion.

For years, Fochs has used a standard contrary to the commission’s guidance, which is to consider a witness address valid if it includes a street name, number, and municipality.

Instead, if a witness lists a municipality that shares a name with another elsewhere in the country and does not include a ZIP code or state — even though the absentee envelope doesn’t call for them — Fochs told Votebeat she does not count the ballot. If the municipality name is unique, she will count it without a ZIP code or state.

In this latest election, those municipalities were Baltimore, Fox Point, Verona and Houston.

“The idea that someone would Google to find out whether or not there’s multiple Veronas in the United States, but not Google the witness’s address to confirm where they were located just strikes me as an odd choice, and contrary to the applicable law,” Jacobs said.

A Votebeat review of Mequon ballots rejected since 2024 found that Fochs in some cases appeared to have misapplied her own standard — rejecting ballots from municipalities that didn’t share a name with any other city, like Chicago and Fox Point.

Referencing Votebeat’s reporting, Jacobs said those people’s votes “were not counted for any good reason.”

Fochs and her city attorney have defended the city’s standard as a proper use of discretion despite coming under fire for it. Fochs didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Speaking with Votebeat after the votes, Millis said that although mistakes happen from time to time, clerks need to understand that there can be consequences for errors “if you don’t follow the law and take reasonable efforts to make sure that all ballots are counted.”

Pointing out that he was a Republican commissioner, Millis said he also has a partisan interest in making sure votes in Mequon, a traditionally GOP city, are counted.

“We shouldn’t be doing things to make it difficult for anyone to vote, but here, from just even a partisan standpoint, on average, it’s hurting Republicans more than Democrats,”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Political parties in Texas choose how to run their primaries. Here’s how that causes headaches for voters.

2026-04-29T14:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

By all accounts, the administration of the 2026 primary election in Williamson County was calamitous.

Voters did not know where to vote. Lines were long and chaotic. Election workers made errors and misplaced ballots.

Nearly everyone seems to agree on who’s to blame: the Williamson County Republican Party, which last fall decided to eliminate countywide voting and, for the first time in more than a decade, force all voters to cast ballots at assigned precincts instead. Republicans in Dallas and Eastland counties made the same decision.

The moves set off a chain reaction of problems.

“It was a mess, and I’m not going to deny that it was a mess,” said Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, at a county commissioners court meeting days after the March election, though she said Republicans weren’t the only ones responsible. The meeting, inside the county courthouse in downtown Georgetown, an affluent suburb of Austin, was packed with upset voters and poll workers, who applauded a line of unhappy speakers.

“I think that the constituents of this county deserve free and fair elections. I’m actually just kind of upset. I can’t believe that I have to sit here and say these things,” one speaker said. “I think we all deserve better.”

Russ Boles, a Republican county commissioner, said neighbors and friends reached out on Election Day, frustrated and frantic because they couldn’t vote.

“I tried explaining to them that this was the parties’ election,” not a decision made by the county, he said during the meeting, still confounded.

“They don’t buy it.”

Believe it or not, it’s true. Texas is the rare state that still gives county political parties the authority to administer primary elections more or less as they please, with taxpayers paying for it. Although early voting is administered by county governments, on Election Day, the parties, under state law, are allowed to decide where voters cast ballots, how they cast them, and how those ballots are counted.

That means that when the executive committee of the Williamson County GOP decided to go back to precinct-based voting, county election officials who saw problems coming could and did warn them — but couldn’t stop them.

Party control of primaries has been the law in Texas for more than 100 years. But experts and officials say it’s caused more problems lately, including the ones that marred last month’s election. They point to changes demanded by some Republicans, influenced by unfounded conspiracies about election technology and practices. Some of those changes, they say, have made elections in some counties less secure, results less accurate, or conditions worse for voters. And those voters have few options to hold the parties accountable.

Residents walk out of Jaycee Zaragoza Recreation Center on primary Election Day in Dallas. During early voting, the site was a vote center where anyone in Dallas County could vote, regardless of address or party. But on Election Day, only voters assigned to that site could cast ballots there, and many people showed up only to learn that they would need to travel elsewhere to vote.

In Dallas County, where Republicans also forced a switch back to precincts, at least 12,674 confused voters went to the wrong precinct, creating chaos on Election Day. Dozens of voters in Eastland County were also confused by the switch to precincts, and some complained about the party’s decision to switch to hand-marked paper ballots. Meanwhile, hand-counting GOP primary results in Eastland took until deep into the day after the election, and Calhoun County Republicans missed a state-mandated deadline to report results.

Republicans’ decision to count primary results by hand and to eliminate all use of electronic election equipment in Gillespie County has led to errors, and at least two instances where the county’s elections administrator believes some people were permitted to vote twice. And within the past five years, county party officials from both major parties have been charged with misusing the money allocated to them by the state to pay for election costs.

Republicans, though, are pressing for even more power over Texas primaries. In late 2025, they sued the state’s top election official, Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, seeking to close the primary and even to create their own voter registration system.

Lawmakers unlikely to intervene in party control

Party control of primaries is enshrined in state law, and only Texas lawmakers can change it. But it’s unlikely that they will. “I’d rather see the parties learn from their mistakes than have the state come in and take any decision-making away from them,” said State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Republican from North Texas who chairs the House elections committee.

State Rep. John Bucy, an Austin Democrat and the vice chair of the committee, said he is planning legislation that would let each party make independent decisions about countywide voting, so one party can’t force the other into precinct voting against their will.

Taking primary election administration decisions away from the county parties “is a much harder hurdle,” Bucy said. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t have those conversations moving forward so that this doesn’t happen again, but in most counties, both parties work well together and get this done efficiently.”

The current system was created as a response to Jim Crow-era efforts to keep Black Texans from voting in wholly party-controlled primaries. Those efforts ultimately led to three U.S. Supreme Court decisions ruling that primaries are not private activities, but instead, public functions, and therefore, keeping Black voters from participating in them was unconstitutional.

After those rulings, party and county officials began to run the primaries together. For years, parties paid for the costs of the primary with funds from candidate filing fees. Years later, the state began allocating some public money, and by the 1990s, it was paying up to 60% of the costs, with the rest coming from filing fees. In the handful of other states where state law permits parties to run their own primaries, they rarely do it because the laws also require the parties to also pay the expenses if they do.

Danielle Diaz Clark, right, running for Judge of the 301st Family District Court, talks through the assigned precinct locations to electioneers and a voter that was turned away from Disciple Central Community Church in Dallas on March 3, 2026.

But in Texas, state law continues to describe primary elections as party-run elections, even as they are now mostly funded by the public. Under this system, lawmakers allocate funding and parties must follow state-mandated requirements, such as providing the required number of workers at polling locations and turning in results no later than 24 hours after polls close.

Outside of this, parties have wide leeway for how to run their elections. Parties can choose whether to run a joint primary with the opposing political party or not. They can also choose whether to contract with the county elections department to run the election, or some aspects of it, or run it entirely on their own.

In a state with 254 counties, that means that by law, on Election Day, the primary can be administered up to 508 different ways across the state.

For a long time, local officials were happy to let the parties take on the chore of running the primaries, particularly as it represented yet another task for county clerks until the 1980s, when a new law allowed counties to create election departments, said Glen Maxey, a former Democratic state lawmaker and lobbyist. These days, more counties have hired professional election administrators, but whether or not they handle administering the primary elections is still up to the parties to decide.

Maxey in the early 2000s helped craft legislation creating the state’s countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county. The polling locations used under the program are also known as vote centers, and can reduce election costs and staffing needs while offering voters more flexibility in where they can cast ballots.

In order to use the countywide polling place program for the primary, both political parties have to agree, a compromise Maxey said was necessary for the legislation to pass. Otherwise, by law, both parties must use the assigned precinct locations on Election Day.

That’s why, when Republican parties this year in Dallas, Williamson, and Eastland counties rejected countywide polling places after years of using them, Democrats, too, were forced into assigned precincts, sparking mass voter confusion.

Still, “I don’t think there’s any way in hell” state lawmakers will change party control of primaries, Maxey said.

“It would take somebody at the top, the governor, or somebody asking for election reform, or it would take one of their races being affected by a hand count or something,” he said.

Republicans in all three counties have since said they’ll use countywide voting for the May 26 runoff election. But in Dallas County, the decision to switch back sparked a messy backlash that led to the resignation of the party chair and a lawsuit — which was dismissed by the courts — to try to avert the switch.

Ultimately, GOP party chairs said they believe Texas should keep the current system of party control, though some want a few tweaks.

Two election workers transfer early voting ballots from Eastland County Courthouse to the Judge Scott Bailey Event Center to be counted by hand on March 3, 2026.

Evans, the GOP chair in Williamson County, took responsibility for the problems there, but also told Votebeat that county election offices should have been more prepared to contend with any choice the county parties make, since they’re within their legal rights to make them.

The GOP chair in Gillespie, Bruce Campbell, also said he believes parties should keep control. But he wants the Legislature to require an audit for hand counts. Under current state law, only machine counts must be audited.

For their part, some Democratic leaders also say the parties should remain involved in their candidates’ nominations and in how primary elections are administered. But Kardal Coleman, the Democratic chair in Dallas County, said he’s open to improvements and learning from other states.

“Everything we do should be for the benefit of voters and to make the process more seamless and easier for them to participate in,” Coleman said.

Parties’ changes have risked election security

Republicans have repeatedly said their election administration choices are aimed at making elections more secure. But it doesn’t always work out that way.

In Gillespie County, home to Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country, where Republicans have now chosen to count ballots by hand in the past two primaries, county officials found that some voters cast ballots twice in 2024.

Jim Riley, the county elections administrator, had tried for months ahead of the 2024 primary election to convince Republicans that the county’s electronic voting equipment was secure.

But Republicans didn’t want to use it. And in addition to declining to use the tabulation equipment, the party asked Riley to assemble paper poll books, a substitute for the electronic poll books the county typically uses.

In June, not long after the 2024 runoff election, Riley was manually updating the voting history of voters who’d cast ballots in the election, as required by law.

He saw something that didn’t look right. He paused when he noticed that a voter on one of the lists had been marked as having voted in both the Democratic and Republican primaries on Election Day. Then, he found another one. He also spotted one who’d voted in the Democratic primary and subsequently cast a ballot in the Republican runoff, which is prohibited under state law.

“It should have all been caught,” Riley told Votebeat. But it wasn’t, because Republicans were not using electronic poll books — the equipment that election officials use to quickly check whether a voter has already voted or not. Instead, they were relying on the more cumbersome paper system.

Riley reported what he found to the county sheriff’s office and the county’s district attorney’s office. The sheriff’s office said its investigation is still ongoing.

This year, when Republicans changed longtime election practices in Williamson and Eastland counties, it led to misplacement of some ballots and tally sheets that are necessary to complete election results. In both instances, a court order was necessary to resolve the issue and finish reporting election results.

Public dollars, party choices

Texas taxpayers spend millions on the primaries. The Legislature in 2025 allocated about $21 million in funding for the 2026 primary, and the state expected an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees that would also go toward the costs.

As recently as a decade ago, the state reimbursed party chairs for primary expenses with very little oversight. In 2017, lawmakers approved a change in state law meant to prevent party chairs’ misuse of state funds intended for administering primary elections.

The state now has more oversight over the expenses parties get reimbursed for, such as ballot printing costs, election supplies, polling location rental fees, election worker pay. When the parties choose to contract with county election officials to administer the primary, the state pays the county and voting equipment vendors directly. If the parties choose to handle it themselves, the state pays the party directly. Both county officials and county party chairs are required to submit expense reports with receipts and invoices for state approval.

Still, in recent years, party officials have been accused of stealing thousands of dollars from their party’s primary accounts.

And even funds used for election activities can add up. Gillespie County Republicans’ choice to hand count ballots in 2024 meant that primary cost more than double the 2020 primary, according to public records obtained by Votebeat. That year on Election Day, county Republicans paid more than $40,000 for 355 workers who spent nearly 24 hours hand counting. In the 2020 primary, when the party used the county’s voting equipment to tabulate results, the party employed 45 workers and spent less than $7,000.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office last year warned party officials multiple times that it wouldn’t cover higher-than-normal costs for the 2026 primary compared with previous years.

Campaign greeters look up as birds fly over the voting center at Oak Lawn Brach Library on primary Election Day in Dallas on March 3, 2026.

Frustrations, but no veto power

At that March meeting in Williamson County, poll worker after poll worker said they were embarrassed and frustrated on Election Day as voters from both parties showed up at the wrong polling location and had to be turned away. Some are now worried that the problems will affect upcoming elections in the county.

“I know how difficult it is to recruit poll workers, and this chaos just made future elections that much more difficult to staff,” one told commissioners at the meeting.

Another demanded answers from county leaders, “Why was the option given to the parties for single-precinct voting? Could the commissioners have stopped it or vetoed it?”

The answer is no.

Michelle Evans, Williamson County Republican Party Chair addresses the county commissioners court during a meeting on Tuesday, March 24, 2026, inside the county courthouse about the March 3 primary election.

Shaheen, the chair for the House Elections Committee, said he doesn’t want the state to step in, though he told Votebeat he expects the push by some local GOP parties to eliminate countywide voting and to get rid of voting machines to count ballots by hand won’t last much longer.

Some of those county parties, he said, “are experiencing the pain of some of their decisions and they’re going to learn their lessons.”

“What we need to do is do a better job of explaining to people that our elections in Texas are secure,” he said. “If this is because people are concerned about election integrity, then we need to do a better job at addressing that.”

The Dallas Free Press contributed photos to this article. Visit their site here.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin clerk rejects five absentee ballots over address info, raising legal questions

2026-04-28T19:57:04+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Mequon City Clerk Caroline Fochs rejected five absentee ballots in April because they did not include a ZIP code or state in the witness address — information that is not specifically requested in the address field on the ballot or specified as a necessary component by the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Her approach, which differs from how other clerks interpret the rules, has drawn intense internal scrutiny and could ultimately be tested in court.

Two weeks ago, Ozaukee County canvassing officials declined to reverse course, leaving the ballots uncounted in the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election. Republican Party attorneys told county officials they lacked the authority to overturn a local official’s judgment call, while the liberal election law firm Law Forward said rejecting the ballots may have disenfranchised voters who had followed all requirements.

Even the county clerk, a Republican, said she believed the ballots should have been counted.

The ballots listed a street name, number, and municipality in the witness address field, but no ZIP code or state. The Wisconsin Elections Commission instructs clerks that a street name, number, and municipality are sufficient. Under state law, absentee ballots must be signed by a witness who is a U.S. citizen and not a candidate on the ballot.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission redesigned the absentee ballot certificates in August 2023, during litigation about what constitutes a valid witness address, removing any reference to ZIP code and state in the witness address field. Now, the certificate only explicitly asks for street number, name and municipality.

Fochs rejected the ballots anyway, using her own system for deciding when a witness address is clear enough.

Fochs has served as clerk since 2016 in the traditionally GOP city, which has become more liberal in the Donald Trump era — emblematic of the leftward political changes in other nearby Milwaukee suburbs in Waukesha, Washington and Ozaukee counties.

The dispute in Mequon didn’t have the potential to swing any race. But it highlights two unresolved questions that election lawyers say are all but certain to land back in court sooner than later: how much latitude clerks have to impose their own standards on absentee ballots, and whether county canvassing boards can intervene when they think a municipal clerk got it wrong.

Situations like the one playing out in Mequon often arise when there’s a flexible rule rather than a bright-line rule, said Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA. Flexibility, he said, can result in disparate treatment for voters. “Maybe the legislature needs to change the law,” he said.

“It can tend to be more enfranchising to have a rule that gives discretion, but there’s a flip side to that,” he said. “These are things that courts and legislatures have to consider when they write their rules or interpret the rules.”

Statewide races in Wisconsin can sometimes be decided by several thousand votes or less, and the outcome of this conflict could have implications for the midterms in the event of a close race.

Ballots at issue had elements requested on absentee form

The battle over what constitutes a proper witness address has been debated in court for years. In 2024, a circuit court rejected Republicans’ push to require witnesses to list their ZIP code and state. The current standard allows a witness address to be considered valid if the clerk can reasonably assess where the witness lives, but the underlying lawsuit is ongoing.

Fochs said that’s not a workable standard.

Clerks across the state are “obviously doing things differently,” she said. “We don’t agree that it’s been decided. You can’t, on one hand, tell me it’s up to me to discern and then tell me exactly what I’m going to discern.”

Rather than following WEC instructions in the Election Day manual, Fochs for the past several elections has adopted her own system. She compiled a list of municipalities witnesses have used in their address fields in recent years, identifying which names are unique nationwide and which are shared.

If a witness lists a municipality that shares a name with another elsewhere in the country and does not include a ZIP code or state, Fochs said she does not count the ballot. If the municipality name is unique, she will count it even without a ZIP code or state.

She said she typically sends absentee ballots with insufficient witness addresses back to the voter for correction. But this time, she said, the five ballots in question arrived too late to be sent back, corrected, and returned in time for tabulation.

Two of the rejected ballots were from Fox Point. Despite a handwritten note on the rejected ballots saying there are multiple municipalities named Fox Point in the United States, there appears to be just one: the municipality just a couple miles away from Mequon.

Told there appears to be only one municipality named Fox Point in the United States, Fochs said her Google search showed multiple results. She said that even if only one exists, she does not believe the ballots were wrongfully rejected because “the search” indicated otherwise, though she declined to explain what that search includes. “If the search came up with multiple Fox Points, then we reject it,” she said.

The three other rejected ballots came from Baltimore, Houston, and Verona. Although there are multiple municipalities with each of those names, the street names and numbers are unique only to one such named municipality in the United States.

Though a court established the current standard in 2024, Fochs said she believes the issue needs to be taken up again. “There has to be an answer to this,” she said.

Jeff Mandell, founder and general counsel of Law Forward, said that Fochs should have at least checked to see whether the street addresses used in the witness address form were unique to one of the multiple municipalities with the same name before deciding what to do about the ballots. He said she was wrongfully disenfranchising voters.

But Fochs said she shouldn’t have to jump through multiple hoops to figure out where a witness lives.

“If you give me incomplete information, that’s not my fault, and it’s not up to me to correct it,” she said.

In Rock County, on the other hand, County Clerk Lisa Tollefson, a Democrat, gives municipal clerks a help sheet to determine whether a signature is sufficient. Similar to the election commission’s manual, the sheet says a street number, name and municipality is sufficient — without stipulating whether a municipality is uniquely named.

County decides not to count ballots amid GOP urging

When the fight moved up to the county, it split in two. Ozaukee County officials had to decide not only whether the five ballots should have counted — but whether they had any authority to do anything about it.

Ozaukee County Clerk Kellie Kretlow, a Republican, said the ballots should have been counted by the city. “I, in no way, want any voter to ever feel like we’re disenfranchising them,” she told Votebeat.

Kretlow said that the Wisconsin Elections Commission told her that, if the county canvassing board determines that the disregarded ballots make the election return defective, she may send the “arguably defective” election results back to Mequon for the city to correct, according to emails obtained by Votebeat that outline her communications to attorneys for the Wisconsin Republican Party.

That position seems to align with the more liberal stance on the issue. For example, Law Forward said the county does have the power to count the votes or instruct Mequon officials to do so, under a statute that allows counties to return results to a municipality if its election returns are “so informal or defective that the board cannot intelligently canvass them.”

Republican attorneys disagreed. Nicholas Boerke, counsel for the state GOP, told Kretlow the county had no authority to send the ballots back or count them itself without a recount, and warned that doing so would set a “dangerous precedent.” The GOP lawyers did not weigh in on whether Fochs was right to reject the ballots in the first place. Boerke declined to comment for this story.

In the end, Kretlow said, she decided not to count the ballots — not necessarily because she agreed with the Republican lawyers on the legal question, but because the five votes wouldn’t have changed the outcome of any race.

Issues of discretion unsolved going into November midterms

Barring a lawsuit and a quick judgment, the question over how much discretion municipal clerks and county canvassing boards have may go unanswered ahead of the midterms. Some election officials said that discretion can pose a danger if it’s abused, but others said that latitude can come in handy.

“I believe that things can be vague, but they’re vague for a reason,” Kretlow said, saying that while she wished the ballots were counted in this latest instance, more open-ended rules give clerks wiggle room for scenarios that nobody foresees.

Recent court rulings in election lawsuits have started to define the scope of clerks’ discretion over standards for accepting absentee ballots, potentially shaping how future cases will be decided.

One appeals court judgment in July 2024 gave an open-ended definition of what constitutes a proper witness address, saying that the standard “involves the perspective of each local, municipal clerk performing their duties in a reasonable manner,” and acknowledging that clerks have discretion in some of the many tasks they perform in administering elections.

A July 2024 Wisconsin Supreme Court judgment, which led to the legalization of drop boxes, said that giving clerks discretion on many local matters is “consistent with the statutory scheme as a whole, under which Wisconsin’s 1,850 municipal clerks serve the ‘primary role’ in running elections via our ‘decentralized’ system.”

TR Edwards, a staff counsel at Law Forward who attended the Ozaukee County canvass board meeting, said those court cases were right in giving clerks latitude, but they should have clarified that the discretion should be used “to affect the will of the voter, not to craft their own policy for disenfranchising people — stuff like this.”

Mandell, the founder of Law Forward, said the group was still evaluating its options and did not commit to a lawsuit.

But Wisconsin courts have been hearing a growing number of election law disputes. Whether it’s over the most recent dispute in Mequon or a similar incident in another election, disputes like these are all but certain to end up in court.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Antrim County voters confused after clerk attempts to cancel hundreds of voter registrations

2026-04-23T18:38:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Update, April 27, 10:30 a.m.: This story has been updated to reflect that Bishop did not respond to the state by the deadline.

Hundreds of voters have reportedly been affected by Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s attempt to cancel voter registrations in the small northern county, leaving voters confused and local clerks frustrated.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections sent a letter to Bishop last week accusing her of improperly changing and canceling voter registrations. Such changes “fall outside the scope” of her authority as a county clerk, the bureau wrote, and failed “to comply with the law.” Michigan law puts municipal clerks, not county clerks, in charge of voter list maintenance.

Bishop did not meet the Thursday deadline to respond to the state with an explanation of why she made the changes and lists of the affected voters.

Antrim County voters confused about cancellation notices

Meanwhile, the affected voters are left to wonder why they were targeted for deregistration. Barbara Mullaly, a voter in Elk Rapids, received a notice in mid-March from Bishop’s office informing her that her registration was at risk of being canceled.

Such notices are supposed to be sent only when a municipal clerk receives reliable information that a voter has moved. But Mullaly said she’s voted from the same address for years, missing only a single small election.

“Yes, voting is a privilege and a right, but I do not have to vote,” Mullaly said. “If I don’t want to vote for four years, that shouldn’t negate my voter registration.”

The notice of cancellation she received said that if she didn’t vote “by the second November general election following this notice,” her registration would be canceled. It also included a postcard that Mullaly was supposed to send back to Bishop confirming her personal information, such as her driver’s license number.

Mullaly called Bishop to ask why she’d received the card and was told she hadn’t voted in the past two elections.

“I said, ‘Well, obviously you have this information wrong,’” Mullaly told Votebeat. “The arrogance was pretty astounding.”

Mullaly said she didn’t feel comfortable sending the card back to Bishop, so she turned it in to her township clerk instead.

“If she wants it, she can get it from my local clerk,” Mullaly said.

Mullaly is far from the only voter who received such notices in Antrim County. The deeply conservative county on the shores of Lake Michigan has about 24,700 people living in it, but each of the individual townships and villages within it have only a few thousand people at most.

That’s why it was a surprise that 250 voters in Banks Township received notices that their registrations were on the line — 19% of the township’s 1,300 registered voters. Banks Township Clerk Julie Chellis told Interlochen Public Radio that a number of those people were 18-year-olds who hadn’t voted in previous elections because they weren’t old enough to be eligible.

She told IPR it was “more frustrating than anything” and created more work for her as she tried to ensure voters’ registrations didn’t get canceled.

It’s unclear if cancellation notices went out to voters in every community in Antrim County or if some were unaffected. Mancelona Township Clerk Mike Biehl and Central Lake Township Clerk Judy Kosloski both told Votebeat on Wednesday that they hadn’t heard of any of their voters getting such notifications.

The first Biehl had heard of the concerns at all, he said, was seeing it reported on the news Wednesday morning.

“I try to stay away from all that,” he said.

Janet Beebe, Milton Township clerk, said Thursday she proactively asked Bishop to not send any notifications to her voters after hearing they were going out to other communities. Bishop seemed to respect that, Beebe said.

She first learned about the notifications in conversations with fellow clerks. County clerks aren’t always particularly close with their local counterparts, Beebe said, but Bishop’s predecessor would have at least given her a heads up, she said.

“We were blindsided,” Beebe said of the notifications going out across the county. She’s been looking for patterns in which voters received notifications, but there don’t appear to be any. In some cases, people in other communities who had cast ballots as recently as last year got the notices, Beebe said.

She hasn’t heard anything from her voters, but she’s not sure if that will remain the case. At the end of March, Bishop promised to send Beebe a list of voters in Milton Township that Bishop was considering notifying. Beebe has asked repeatedly for that list and not yet received it, she said.

Bishop argues Antrim County voter roll is bloated

Bishop has not responded to multiple requests from Votebeat to respond to the state’s letter or the concerns of voters. Her office, however, put out a public statement earlier this week that called her actions a “corrective audit” based on federal laws such as the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

“In a high-stakes administrative environment, the risk of an over-inclusive and inaccurate voter roll poses a greater threat to public confidence than the risk of aggressive verification,” Bishop’s release said.

The release argues that she was “addressing local-level inaction” for local officials who didn’t have the money or staff required to maintain the rolls. It also disputes the state’s assertion that she should have independently verified voters’ statuses before sending the notices, arguing instead that the notices are “the trigger for verification.”

Bishop’s actions — which could lead to criminal penalties, according to the state’s letter — come after her 2024 campaign, in which she promised to clean up the county’s voter rolls. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.

Bishop’s statement suggested she did not feel chastened by the Bureau of Elections’ letter. The statement argued her election “represented a decisive directive from the electorate to prioritize the stewardship and accuracy of the democratic process.”

“Victoria Bishop will ensure the 2026 electoral cycle is governed by a voter roll that is both accurate and beyond reproach after forwarding the information discovered to her local clerks for their review, determination, and final actions,” the release said.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said on Wednesday that they did not consider the statement a response to the state’s letter. Bishop did not meet the state-imposed deadline, a state official confirmed Monday morning. What comes next will be up to the Bureau of Elections.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

New lawsuit seeks to force Dallas County to use precinct voting again for runoff after messy primary

2026-04-21T19:24:57+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Update, April 25, 2026: The Texas Fifth Court of Appeals on Friday, April 24, dismissed the lawsuit. The court ruled that plaintiff, Barry Wernick, lacked legal standing and that the court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case.

Some Dallas County Republicans on Monday sued the county elections department in a bid to require voters to cast ballots for the May 26 primary runoff at specific polling places in their precincts rather than any location in the county. That precinct-based voting system on primary election day in March created chaos.

Local party leadership is trying to reverse a decision made by its former chair, who resigned last week after facing backlash for agreeing to use countywide voting on election day in the runoff. But early voting for the runoff election starts May 18, and Dallas County election officials say it’s too late to change course.

The lawsuit, filed in the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals by Barry Wernick, a Republican precinct chair and a candidate for Dallas County Commissioner District 2, is asking the court to require the county to use precinct polling places for the runoff election.

Wernick is arguing the former party chair, Allen West, didn’t have the authority to agree to the use of countywide voting. Thirty-one party members signed declarations supporting the lawsuit, according to the filing. In addition, the county party’s executive committee voted Monday night in favor of using precinct polling places for the runoff election.

With countywide sites, voters can cast their ballots anywhere in the county on Election Day. Using precincts means voters would instead have to go to assigned polling places, though early voting would still take place using countywide sites.

But Dallas County election officials are already deep into preparations for the election.

“We’re going to continue preparing for the election under the contract that we have, and that’s the countywide vote center model, unless otherwise directed by a court,” said Nic Solorzano, a spokesman for the Dallas County Elections Department. “We are equipping more than 200 Election Day locations, training thousands of poll workers — all of that is a massive operation that’s already underway.”

The office has already programmed voting equipment in accordance with the plan to use countywide vote centers, Solorzano said. Logic and accuracy testing — a public test required by state law to check the accuracy of election equipment — has been done and would have to be done again if the plan changes. And mail ballots have been sent out, which means election officials are tied up handling those and other necessary tasks.

Wernick’s attorney, Warren Norred, said he doesn’t believe that the county isn’t easily able to change course, and that county election officials shouldn’t have taken West’s decision as valid.

“They have created this problem,” Norred said, referring to the county elections department. “If it’s a mild inconvenience, and they’re going to have to really convince the court of appeals that they can’t do it.”

For the March 3 primary, Republicans in Dallas County chose to require voters to report to precincts instead of countywide vote centers, a switch permissible by state law that forced the county Democrats to do the same. The switch caused chaos and confusion across the county.

More than 12,000 voters from both parties showed up at the wrong polling location on Election Day.

In the wake of that, then-party chair Allen West said on March 17 that he had agreed to use countywide polling sites for the runoff election because using precinct sites would cause “large-scale disruption.” West signed an amended contract agreeing to use countywide vote centers on March 18, Solorzano said.

The decision sparked a backlash, and ultimately led to West’s resignation last week.

Following that resignation, members of the Dallas County Republican Party pushed to reverse the decision to use countywide sites. In the lawsuit, Wernick asserts that the contract amendment West signed isn’t valid because it requires the approval of the party’s executive committee. The lawsuit asks the court to require the county elections department to follow the original contract, which says voters must cast ballots at assigned precincts.

Signing the amendment “directly contradicted the authority given to him… regarding the election process,” according to Wernick’s court filing. West declined to comment.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Legal case over access to sensitive voter data returns to Wisconsin Supreme Court

2026-04-20T11:00:00+00:00

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. It was made possible by donors like you.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case brought by a conservative group that could determine whether sensitive information about people judged mentally incapable of voting is a public record.

It’s the second time justices will hear arguments in this case, which previously had been caught up in conflicting opinions issued by two of the state’s appeals court districts. It also became an attack point used by liberal Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor in the most recent Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which she won by 20 points. Her opponent, Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, wrote an opinion supportive of the conservative group’s position, which was unusual because it contradicted another appeals court ruling in a separate case on the same issue.

The key question before justices on Tuesday is whether the information in Notices of Voting Eligibility should be publicly accessible. Courts send those forms to election officials after a judge in a guardianship case determines someone is not competent to cast a ballot. State law says “the fact that an individual has been found incompetent … is accessible to any person who demonstrates to the custodian of the records a need for that information.”.

The Wisconsin Voter Alliance is a conservative group led by Ron Heuer, who worked on the state’s partisan review of the 2020 presidential election results conducted by former Justice Michael Gableman. The alliance filed lawsuits in 13 counties arguing that access to the information about voters who have been judged incompetent would show inconsistencies with the state’s voter rolls. Gableman’s investigation ended ignominiously, and he’s now facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct.

Heuer said he “never expected” the high court to take the case back on appeal.

“We are well within our bounds here to have access to that data,” he said.

In 2023, a review conducted by the Dane County clerk at the request of Wisconsin Watch found 95 individuals who previously cast ballots despite a court declaring them unable to do so, though administrative error and people moving to different municipalities explained many of those cases, rather than any kind of intentional voter fraud. Election officials and state lawmakers previously identified a need for a legally binding process to track adjudicated incompetent voters, though no bill has passed to fix the holes in the system.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also conducted a review of adjudicated incompetent voters, which was completed in 2023, and communicated with local register in probate offices to make sure records were accurate ahead of the 2024 elections, said spokesperson Emilee Miklas.

Miklas declined to comment on the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, but noted the commission has previously asked for legislative changes to better track those voters.

Republicans this session proposed a bill that would have required circuit courts to notify the Wisconsin Elections Commission by email about a determination of voter incompetency and then the commission would have had three business days to update that person’s voter status and notify a local clerk. The bill passed the Assembly in November, but died after it did not receive a hearing in the Senate. Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a bill with similar language and other provisions during the 2023 legislative session because other elements in the bill could cause ballots with minor errors to be discarded.

Disability advocates remain concerned that the details on Notices of Voting Eligibility forms, if made public, can put already vulnerable populations at risk of exploitations or scams. The forms sought by the WVA can include a person’s name, address and date of birth.

“We already know more about them from the fact that they’ve been found incompetent than you know about the average person you pass on the street,” said Polly Shoemaker, an attorney with the Wisconsin Guardianship Support Center. “So there’s that, and then there’s the fact that it’s these folks who can be very easily taken advantage of.”

How we got here

The high court last held oral arguments in September 2024 following conflicting opinions issued in separate but similar cases in the Madison-based 4th District Court of Appeals and the Waukesha-based 2nd District.

Justices in January 2025 only reached an opinion on the 2nd District’s decision, which was released after the 4th District’s ruling was published as precedent. The high court did not rule last year on whether the Notices of Voting Eligibility are accessible as public records.

The 4th District in November 2023 affirmed a Juneau County decision that the sensitive information about those voters is not open for public disclosure. A judicial committee on Dec. 21, 2023, published the 4th District’s opinion as precedent.

Then, on Dec. 27, 2023, the 2nd District ruled that the WVA had a right to the records, overturning a Walworth County court’s decision and clashing with the precedent set in the 4th District case. Lazar and Appeals Court Judge Shelley Grogan made up the majority with liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer dissenting.

The 2nd District revised the appeals decision in March 2025 after the state Supreme Court’s opinion, and the WVA petitioned for justices to hear the case again.

But the 2nd District opinion, written by Lazar, became a point of attack in the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race. In the only debate ahead of the election, Taylor used the case to support her claim that Lazar “brought an extreme right-wing agenda to the bench.”

“She has refused to follow precedent,” Taylor said. “She ruled to release personal, private voting information to a right-wing group that tried to overturn our election. Thank goodness she was reversed by the state Supreme Court.”

In addition to the Wisconsin Voter Alliance case, the high court is also hearing oral arguments on Tuesday in another case on whether a child who was injured during birth has the right to pursue legal action against a doctor.

New voting requirements? Troops at the polls? We asked 37 election experts what could disrupt the 2026 elections.

2026-04-17T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

There are always unanswered questions heading into any election. But usually those questions are more along the lines of “who’s going to win?” and less “will the federal government interfere with the election?”

But here in 2026, President Donald Trump’s broadsides against the legitimacy of U.S. elections and efforts to overhaul election laws have generated lots of uncertainty — and anxiety — about whether this will be a normal election year. Election officials and voters alike are left to wonder whether there will be new requirements for voters, physical interventions at the polls, or attempts to overturn results after the fact.

Despite seemingly endless speculation, no one knows for sure how likely any of these things is. But to get the most well-informed assessments, we turned to the people who spend the most time thinking about elections.

We asked 37 experts in the field of election administration — academics, lawyers, former election officials, etc. — to answer 26 questions about the likelihood of various scenarios coming to pass in the 2026 midterms.

Their answers reflect a general sense of cautious optimism about the most dire scenarios — such as an election getting overturned — and skepticism that the federal government will successfully change voting rules. But they also still believe the election will face serious challenges, including federal agents potentially showing up at polling places.

Election experts say new federal laws are unlikely, but split on state laws and court intervention

Since retaking office in 2025, Trump has pushed aggressively for the federal government to set more rules around how elections are run, promoting legislation that would require registering voters to prove their citizenship with documentation and issuing two election-related executive orders. (The first executive order has largely been blocked in court, though the administration has appealed. The second is currently under litigation, and the conventional wisdom is that it will be halted as well.)

However, experts were skeptical that these measures would ever take effect. Thirty-four of our 37 respondents said it was unlikely that the federal government would successfully require new registrants to prove their citizenship for the midterms, and 32 said it was unlikely that the federal government would successfully require all voters to show an ID or restrict the use of no-excuse absentee or mail ballots. (They provided their answers before Trump issued his second executive order, which sought to regulate mail voting through the U.S. Postal Service.)

Likewise, virtually all respondents thought it was unlikely that the federal government would restrict the hours or locations of in-person voting or limit or eliminate the use of voting machines to tally ballots in the midterms.

However, experts were more open to the possibility that some of these policies could take effect in individual states. Although none thought it was likely that a significant number of states would limit or eliminate the use of voting machines, about a quarter of respondents thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would restrict the use of no-excuse absentee or mail ballots in the midterms. About one-third thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would strengthen their voter ID requirements or restrict the hours or locations of in-person voting.

Even more respondents, 15 of the 37, thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of states would pass proof-of-citizenship requirements before the election — perhaps unsurprisingly, given that such laws were working their way through several state legislatures at the time. Those laws have since passed in Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah, although Florida’s does not take effect until 2027 and Mississippi’s is limited in scope.

Overall, though, most experts didn’t expect states to significantly change their election laws this year. Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, pointed out that many states have part-time legislatures that won’t be in session between now and the election. “I expect new legislation in the months ahead that might affect the 2026 election to be negligible,” Muller said.

If there are going to be major election-law changes before the midterms, experts expect them to come from the third branch of government: the judiciary. Seventeen experts said it was at least somewhat likely that pre-election court rulings would significantly alter election rules shortly before the midterms, although 19 still said that was unlikely.

In follow-up interviews, those who thought this was likely said that they were keeping an eye both on currently pending cases — such as a U.S. Supreme Court case that could require all mail ballots to arrive by Election Day — and those that have not yet been filed. That said, a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year will probably encourage litigants to bring any cases challenging election rules well before the election, making last-minute rule changes less likely.

Experts expect federal agents to disrupt the 2026 election

For many election officials and voting advocates, the nightmare scenario for the 2026 midterms is if federal agents, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, attempt to disrupt voting or the counting of ballots. It’s already illegal for armed troops to visit voting locations, and the Trump administration has repeatedly said that it will not send ICE agents to polling places this year. However, new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin has declined to absolutely rule it out, and a majority of the experts we surveyed expected something like this to happen.

Twenty-seven of the 37 respondents said it was at least somewhat likely that the federal government would deploy some form of military or law enforcement at or near polling places in the midterms. A slight majority said it was likely that Trump would ask the National Guard or federal agents to seize voting equipment during the election, and over three-quarters said it was likely that Trump would ask them to seize voting equipment after the election. (It’s worth noting that respondents gave these answers just a few weeks after the FBI raided an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, and Trump said that he regretted not asking the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election.)

Multiple respondents told Votebeat that the seizure of voting equipment was more likely after the election because the election results will be known at that time. “Before the election, no one will know where seizing equipment or ballots could shift pivotal races,” said Christopher Mann, the research director at the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “After the election, a bad actor will have a better picture of where seizing voting equipment or ballots can shift the overall outcome.”

Twenty-eight experts said it was at least somewhat likely that there would be physical threats to voters or polling places in the midterms, including 11 who said it was very likely. (They were perhaps recalling 2024, when a string of bomb threats forced some polling places to close temporarily, though election officials were able to minimize disruptions to voting.) However, experts were divided on whether these threats would deter people from voting. Twenty-one experts said it was unlikely that a significant number of voters would decide not to vote because of threats or physical intimidation, while 16 said that was likely.

Notably, experts were not very confident about their predictions about armed intervention in the midterms. Some also pointed out that, even if it’s likely that Trump might order federal agents to interfere in the election, that doesn’t mean they will succeed. “Election officials, courts, and other state and local officials are going to stop any attempt to seize voting equipment or ballots,” Mann predicted.

And some experts emphasized that even if there are incidents at specific polling places, they expect the election overall to run smoothly. “I’m an optimist, which probably led to many of my answers,” admitted Jeff Greenburg, a retired election official in Pennsylvania and a senior adviser at the Committee of Seventy, a Philadelphia-based government watchdog group. But Greenburg said he doesn’t expect that physical threats to voting “will significantly impact elections nationwide. I have faith and trust in our election officials, as well as the rule of law, and believe in the end every vote cast will be counted.”

Losers may claim fraud, but it’s unlikely an election gets overturned

Election experts of all stripes are confident that U.S. elections are secure. All 37 respondents said it was unlikely that a significant number of ineligible voters would cast ballots in the midterms, including 35 who said it was not at all likely. Experts also unanimously said that it was unlikely that voter fraud would influence the outcome of a 2026 congressional race.

However, that isn’t expected to stop candidates from questioning the election results. Almost three-quarters of experts thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of losing candidates would claim fraud influenced the outcome of the election. All 37 thought it was likely that at least one congressional or statewide election would be legally challenged, with 30 calling it very likely.

At the same time, though, most experts don’t expect those challenges to succeed. Thirty-one of the 37 respondents thought it was unlikely that any congressional or statewide elections would be successfully overturned.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

Dallas County GOP chair Allen West resigns after backing countywide voting for runoff

2026-04-16T00:57:29+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Allen West, the Dallas County Republican Party chair, resigned Wednesday, according to Dallas County Elections Department officials.

The announcement comes after West said on March 17 he agreed to use countywide polling sites for the May 26 runoff election, a decision that drew opposition from some party members.

Dallas Republicans initially planned to hand count primary ballots before scrapping the plan due to lack of staffing. Instead, they chose to require voters to report to precincts instead of countywide vote centers for the March 3 primary, causing chaos and confusion across the county. More than 12,000 voters from both parties showed up at the wrong polling location on Election Day.

West’s resignation, however, was not tied to the Election Day confusion but followed his later decision to support a return to countywide voting for the May runoff.

West did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the Dallas County Elections Department said West informed county elections administrator Paul Adams of his resignation Wednesday afternoon. The department declined to comment further.

West had for months supported the use of precinct-based sites for the primary and the elimination of the countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast ballots anywhere in the county and had been used for years. But in a March 17 statement he said that using assigned precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion.”

“To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large-scale disruption,” West said in that statement in March.

West expected pushback from his own party for that decision.

In a blog post on the party’s website April 6, he said that continuing to use precinct-based voting for the runoff election would expose the county party to “a most dangerous course of action.” He said the party would face a lawsuit “alleging willful and intentional voter disenfranchisement.”

“The decision that I made was one rooted in years of understanding leadership and its responsibilities, namely, protecting your Troops,“ West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran, wrote. “If there are those who do not see this as noble and honorable, that is fine with me. I have stated my position and under my watch as Chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party will not expose this organization to potential damaging legal efforts.”

Some Republicans in Texas have for years pushed to eliminate the countywide polling place program to eliminate the use of electronic voting machines and instead hand count ballots. It’s a push that began soon after the 2020 election and the lies President Donald Trump spread about the outcome.

Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people“to double or triple vote, though there’s no evidence that countywide voting is less secure. Texas election officials use procedures to prevent double voting, including the use of technology that tracks in real time who has voted and where.

Texas election officials say the countywide voting program, which has been in use in Texas for more than 20 years, allows counties to save money by operating fewer, centralized polling locations with fewer workers and less equipment.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin GOP advised officials not to count late-arriving ballots, raising possibility of legal challenge

2026-04-14T13:28:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

An attorney for the Republican Party of Wisconsin told local officials ahead of a key vote last week that Madison should not count 23 absentee ballots from last week’s Supreme Court election that arrived at polling places after they had closed — a dispute that could set up a legal challenge.

The GOP weighed in hours before the Madison Board of Canvassers voted unanimously on Friday to count the affected ballots. On Monday, the Dane County Board of Canvassers followed suit, voting 2-1 to count the ballots.

Election officials make these judgment calls all the time, and, historically, courts have allowed them. Officials are routinely called upon to address whether a witness address is complete, whether a damaged ballot can still be counted, or the like. These issues are usually resolved locally and without controversy.

But disputes like this — over how to interpret the law and whether late-arriving ballots should count — are harder to contain. Experts say leaving those decisions to individual counties risks inconsistent outcomes across Wisconsin, especially in a high-stakes election season.

Rick Hasen, an election law professor at UCLA, said that kind of patchwork approach is a recipe for conflict.

“This is not tenable in the current political atmosphere,” Hasen said.

Dane County votes to count ballots despite GOP opposition

The kind of disagreement worrying Hasen was on full display at Monday’s meeting of the Dane County Board of Canvassers. Two canvassers said there was a clear answer about what to do with the ballots — but they arrived at different ones.“I don’t think this is hard,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said.

“I don’t either,” said canvasser Mike Willett, a former Dane County supervisor and a Republican appointee on the board.

McDonell voted to count the ballots, while Willett voted against it, saying the board had previously rejected late-arriving ballots and he didn’t want to create exceptions.

Erik Paulson, the other Democrat on the board, sided with McDonell to count the ballots.

Republican opposition was already taking shape before the vote. Emails obtained by Votebeat show that Nicholas Boerke, an outside attorney for the Wisconsin GOP, urged city and county officials on Friday not to count the ballots.

“We recognize this situation may have resulted from an unfortunate logistical failure. However, administrative error does not create statutory authority that otherwise does not exist,” he wrote.

“Voting absentee is a privilege granted by the Legislature that comes with inherent risks and the election day deadline for the receipt, processing, tabulation, and counting is mandatory,” he continued.

The canvass, Boerke told officials, was a “ministerial process, not a vehicle for processing absentee ballots” that weren’t received by the time dictated in law, “nor a mechanism to conduct an unauthorized recount.”

Amber McReynolds, an assistant attorney for Madison, responded that counting the ballots was in line with court decisions and past Wisconsin Elections Commission recommendations.

Boerke responded, telling officials the GOP maintains “that the statutory language is clear—absentee ballots that are not timely delivered to polling locations before 8 p.m. may not be counted.”

Boerke didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the GOP would sue Madison.

Error led to 23 Madison absentee ballots arriving late

The ballots at issue arrived at the city clerk’s office on Monday, April 6. The absentee ballot courier carrying the ballots left a city facility at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 7, to deliver ballots to 17 different polling places, but the courier did not make it to the last few polling places until after the 8 p.m. deadline.

Officials said these 23 ballots were correctly, legally cast and checked into the pollbooks just like any other absentee ballot — the only problem was that that happened after polls formally closed.

Madison Clerk Lydia McComas said it was a critical error to put just one person in charge of delivering ballots to so many polling places. Madison is the largest city in Wisconsin that still chooses to count absentee ballots at individual precincts rather than at a central location — a decision that requires ballots to be transported across the city on Election Day.

It remains unclear, however, why the ballots departed from the city’s facility so late in the day. Across the state, clerks design their Election Day logistics to ensure ballots are delivered by that cutoff. McComas said it was her and her staff’s understanding that the law required ballots to be delivered to polling places by 8 p.m.

There appears to be little appetite among clerks to formally extend that deadline.

“I do not plan to take advantage of whatever ruling comes here tonight,” McComas said ahead of the county vote, implying that she wouldn’t take advantage of the canvassing board’s leniency and plan for future late deliveries accordingly.

McDonell said rejecting the ballots would penalize voters for something outside their control. “And I think that’s very problematic,” he said.

Disagreement over Wisconsin election law is ripe for legal challenges

The statute at issue in this situation says ballots must be returned so that they’re delivered to polling places “no later than 8 p.m. on election day.”

“If the municipal clerk receives an absentee ballot on election day,” the law continues, “the clerk shall secure the ballot and cause the ballot to be delivered to the polling place serving the elector’s residence before 8 p.m. Any ballot not mailed or delivered as provided in this subsection may not be counted.”

At the county-level meeting on Monday, county attorney David Gault, arguing that the ballots should be counted, took the position that the law does not apply here because the ballots were received before Election Day.

“The clear intent of everything in the statutes,” he said, is not to punish the voter for mistakes made by election officials.

“That’s certainly an interpretation,” said Willett, the conservative member of the county canvassing board. “When we start making these exceptions, these exceptions just grow.”

What’s clear to Bryna Godar — a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative — is that the statute is “ambiguous about this type of situation.” She said one part of the law appears to govern voters returning ballots on time, while another addresses ballots received on Election Day — leaving situations like this unclear.

“Because there is no voter fault here from what we know so far, there would be good reason to still count those ballots,” she said, adding that rejecting them could raise constitutional concerns.

At the city meeting on Friday, McReynolds noted that courts ruled in the 1970s and 1980s that ballots should be counted as long as there’s “substantial compliance” with election laws and no evidence of “connivance, fraud, or undue influence.”

In 1985, however, the Legislature passed a law emphasizing that absentee voting is a privilege exercised outside the usual safeguards of the polling place and that ballots not meeting legal requirements “may not be counted.”

Boerke cited that law in his exchange with the city and county, as conservatives have done repeatedly in issues of absentee ballot missteps and controversies.

Still, the courts have continued to show flexibility. In a 2004 dispute, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that “the failure on the part of the election officials to perform their duties should not deprive the voters of their constitutional right to vote.”

Lawyers often say that it’s more important for a law to be certain than for it to be right, said Hasen, the UCLA professor. Uncertainty — especially when there are good-faith arguments on either side — is one of the most dangerous situations in election law.

“That just creates all kinds of issues of equal protection and due process and election fairness,” he said. “So the more that these issues can be resolved one way or the other, not in the heat of a very close election, the better it is.”

If an election hinges on ballots like these, he said, a lawsuit is all but inevitable.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Apache County will swap to a new voting model after years of concern over rejected ballots

2026-04-08T20:49:30+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

After years of lobbying by tribal officials, Apache County will move to a new voting model for the upcoming midterm election, a shift expected to reduce the number of tribal voters’ ballots rejected because they were cast in the wrong precinct.

The county, located in the remote, northeastern corner of Arizona, oversees voting in large swaths of the Navajo Nation and the Fort Apache Indian Reservation.

For years, it has used a precinct-based model in which voters are assigned polling places based on the voting district, or precinct, in which they reside. But tribal voters often don’t have standard street addresses, and county, precinct, and reservation lines often crisscross. That means a voters’ assigned polling place may not be the closest or most intuitive location, and the vast distances and lack of transportation on tribal land mean it often isn’t easy to redirect voters to the correct site.

The system has long led to proportionally more rejected ballots in Apache County. Nearly 1,300 provisional ballots were rejected there in 2024, or about 3.9% of all ballots cast, according to data tracked by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Of those, about 34% were rejected for being cast in the wrong precinct.

That’s not a new problem. In 2020, voters in Apache County saw a higher percentage of provisional ballots rejected than any other county in the state, according to a Votebeat analysis of federal data. That year, about 35% of the provisional ballots not counted there were rejected because registered voters had voted in the wrong precinct.

Now, the county will adopt a voting model used by most others in Arizona — and already in place in all of the other counties that cover portions of the Navajo Nation, which spans three states and is the largest reservation in the country by both geographic size and population.

The Apache County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to switch to a vote-center model, according to a county board meeting action agenda and a recording of the meeting obtained by Votebeat from All Voting is Local, a national organization that advocates for legislation and policies that increase voter access.

Under the new system, voters will be able to cast ballots at any polling site in the county. In other jurisdictions, the switch has essentially eliminated the need to use provisional ballots when voters go to the wrong precinct — including in Coconino and Navajo counties, the other two jurisdictions containing parts of the Navajo Nation in Arizona.

“This is democracy in action, and it’s very exciting to see,” said Jaynie Parrish, executive director of Arizona Native Vote, a group that aims to expand civic engagement among tribal and rural voters. “We know it won’t solve everything, but it’s a very good first step.”

Tribal officials, advocacy groups long lobbied for change

In Arizona, it’s up to counties to offer vote centers or stick to a precinct-based voting model.

In 2020, Navajo Nation Attorney General Doreen McPaul said in congressional testimony that during the 2014 and 2016 general elections, Native American voters were vastly overrepresented in the share of voters who had to cast provisional ballots.

Since then, tribal leaders and activists have been pushing for changes. In Apache County, the issue came to a head during the 2024 election, after voters stood in line for hours in cold weather amid widespread equipment failures on Election Day.

The Navajo Nation filed an emergency lawsuit, and an Apache County Superior Court judge ultimately ordered select polling places to stay open for two hours past the originally scheduled closing time.

Attorneys with the Navajo Nation Department of Justice noted in their subsequent lawsuit that tribal voters in Apache County “must vote at assigned polling locations for their ballots to be valid and counted,” unless they cast their ballots using accessible voting machines that are legally required to be available at every voting location. Those devices are designed to assist voters with disabilities and contain all of the ballot styles used countywide, rather than just ballot styles for the precincts assigned to that polling place.

In that lawsuit, the tribe unsuccessfully sought to force county officials to “accept and count out-of-precinct ballots that were not cast on accessible voting devices due to the machines not being operable for part of the day.” The 2024 problems added urgency to tribal groups’ push for vote centers.

In a Feb. 5 letter, Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren, Council Speaker Crystalyne Curley, and other tribal leaders stressed that they strongly supported a vote-center model in Apache County.

“Most Navajo voters drive a very long distance to cast their votes on Election Day,” the letter read. “If they drive to the wrong precinct — a frequent and easy mistake to make on the Navajo Nation — they may not have time, transportation, or fuel funds to then drive another long way to get to their sole precinct polling place.”

They weren’t the only ones putting pressure on county officials. Tonia Tunnell of the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office said on Tuesday that she had been working with county officials to facilitate the change.

Parrish, of Arizona Native Vote, said her group helped more than 50 voters submit statements in support of the move prior to the county board’s vote. She said she was “very pleased” by its decision.

“There’s much more to do,” she said in a text message, adding that her organization was focused on helping tribal voters obtain IDs, submit proof of citizenship to state officials, and arrange transportation to the polls for the upcoming midterm election. “But [I] will take a moment today and be happy and excited about this update.”

Sasha Hupka is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Sasha at shupka@votebeat.org.

Disenfranchised Madison voters sound off on city, lawsuit

2026-04-01T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Months before becoming one of the nearly 200 Madison voters in 2024 whose absentee ballots were never counted, Nathan Haimowitz did what he thought he was supposed to do.

As a journalist living in Spain and out of the habit of voting, the 26-year-old former poll worker said he wanted the 2024 presidential election to “be the thing that would spur me to vote more consistently.” To make sure everything was in order, he emailed Madison officials to confirm they had received his absentee ballot application. They told him they had, so he filled out his ballot, sent it in, and assumed his vote would be counted.

It wasn’t.

The mistake that disenfranchised Haimowitz and nearly 200 other voters set off a chain of consequences: the longtime city clerk resigned, state and local officials launched investigations, a lawsuit was filed, and the city began overhauling its voting procedures.

Haimowitz hasn’t cast a ballot since.

“It was definitely a deterrence,” he said. “I didn’t know why my vote hadn’t been counted.”

Nathan Haimowitz

Early signs suggest the error is already reshaping how many of the disenfranchised voters engage with elections — pushing some away from absentee voting and, in some cases, out of the electorate altogether. Interviews with affected voters also reveal a broader disconnect: Many say they are dissatisfied both with how the city handled the mistake and with the high-profile lawsuit filed in its wake to seek damages for the disenfranchised voters. The city, they say, has not been appropriately responsive and the lawsuit does not reflect their values.

Until now, the public conversation has largely reflected the perspectives of the eight voters who joined the lawsuit as named plaintiffs. But others Votebeat spoke with described a different perspective — one that questions whether financial compensation is the right remedy at all.

Mark Ediger, a recently retired chemistry professor at UW-Madison, for example, said he found the lawsuit “pretty bewildering,” adding that as a Madison taxpayer, it would be people like him footing the bill.

The 193 voters range from dozens of students who are only in Madison for a few years to some of their professors and other long-time city residents. Their responses to the error are just as varied.

Some, like Haimowitz, stopped voting entirely. Others, like Ediger, say the incident was a one-off mistake that hasn’t impacted their voting behavior. Notably, Ediger is the only voter among the disenfranchised group who has voted absentee in both of the two elections following the error, according to election data obtained by Votebeat.

“It was definitely a deterrence,” said Nathan Haimowitz, one of the disenfranchised voters. “I didn't know why my vote hadn't been counted.”

“The incident has not diminished my trust in elections,” Ediger told Votebeat, adding that he’s satisfied the city has appropriately addressed its cause. “I don’t see how this should change my voting behavior moving forward.”

But other voters said their experience will change how they vote in future elections. “I’m definitely going to prioritize in-person voting,” Joanne Fairbotham, one of the disenfranchised voters, told Votebeat.

“There’s growing evidence that when someone tries to vote and they are prevented from doing so for one reason or another, it makes them less likely to vote in the future, and it can change their behavior,” said Kevin Morris, a senior research fellow and voting policy scholar with the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program. “You can lose a lot of trust very easily, and it can be very difficult to build that trust.”

All of the disenfranchised voters cast absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election. But, among the 22 who cast ballots in the February 2025 primary for state superintendent and city council, nearly all did so in person. Two months later, two-thirds of the 132 who voted in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race did so at the polls, a share similar to how the same group voted in previous April elections.

Disenfranchised voters question city follow-up

Shortly after learning that her ballot hadn’t been counted, Fairbotham — a 35-year-old medical coder who lives in Madison — wrote to City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, saying the error was “beyond devastating as an American who prides herself in voting in every election.”

“This is how people lose faith in their government that their rights will be protected,” she said in the letter, calling on Witzel-Behl to resign.

Fairbotham said she never received a response from Witzel-Behl, who has since resigned — or anyone else employed by the city.

“Not hearing a peep,” she said, is the most frustrating part. Fairbotham’s vote in the 2024 presidential election was the first time she cast an absentee ballot since the peak of the pandemic in 2020. She has only cast in-person votes since, and said the incident “still makes her angry.”

Madison City Attorney Mike Haas disputed the characterization that the city didn’t communicate the seriousness of the error, pointing to a city and state investigation and a public apology from the mayor.

Still, some voters said the city’s outreach fell short after such a significant error. Haimowitz, for example, didn’t hear from the city when most of the voters did — a separate oversight by city officials meant overseas voters did not receive the same notice as those living locally. Until speaking with Votebeat, Haimowitz said, he didn’t know whether the mistake that kept his ballot from being counted was his or the city’s, nor what steps officials had taken to prevent it from happening again.

An absentee ballot goes into a ballot drop box.

Election administration experts say direct, proactive communication can be critical in rebuilding trust. After a mistake like the one in Madison, jurisdictions should reach out to affected voters, review what went wrong, and clearly explain how it will be prevented in the future, said Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group and a former Colorado election administrator.

The city has completed the first two steps, Morrell said, but it did not fully follow through on the third.

After sending an initial notice telling voters they could reach out with questions, the city held no further public hearings, said Haas, a longtime election lawyer and former administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Few of the disenfranchised voters followed up, he added.

Some disenfranchised voters find lawsuit ‘bewildering’

The divide among disenfranchised voters extends to the lawsuit filed in the aftermath of the error.

Last March, the liberal group Law Forward filed a claim seeking $34 million from the city and Dane County over the error, later turning it into a lawsuit. In February, a circuit court judge ruled that the city could be held liable for monetary damages.

A small group of affected voters has joined the case, arguing it’s one of the only ways to hold the city accountable for failing to count their ballots.

But others see it differently. “In an era where the reliability of elections is being challenged by some groups in completely spurious ways, it seems to me that this lawsuit just adds to that noise,” Ediger said.

Lawsuits seeking monetary damages for disenfranchisement are now rare, but were more common in the late 1800s and 1900s, when Black voters were intentionally and repeatedly disenfranchised by election workers. Then, the fines forced the government to think twice, said Ediger. But there’s no similar pattern of errors or intentionality here in Madison, he added, which makes him doubt the lawsuit’s purpose.

Haimowitz said he also opposed the lawsuit, despite how much it has shaken his confidence.

“I’m not sure that the city should pay such a heavy price for this,” Haimowitz said, adding that at a time when some Republicans are peddling “Stop the Steal” narratives and casting doubt on election integrity, especially in battleground states like Wisconsin, the Law Forward letter unnerved him.

“That kind of money could be debilitating to a city elections board that is already under immense scrutiny and pressure to get it all right,” he said.

Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson pushed back on comparisons between the case and post-2020 lawsuits filed by Republicans, including one that sought to throw out over 200,000 absentee ballots in Wisconsin.

“That cavalier attitude towards votes that we saw in 2020 is simply unacceptable, and not compatible with democracy,” he said. “And so what do we do with that? Well, I can tell you what we will not do: We will not stand idly by if hundreds of people in a community lose the right to vote because their ballot simply wasn’t counted.”

He said that lawsuits often make people uneasy, but that their perspective may change when a fundamental right is taken away. He declined to directly comment on some of the disenfranchised voters’ issues with the case.

For some disenfranchised voters, financial damages are part of accountability. Precious Ayodabo, a named plaintiff, wrote in a Cap Times column that her disenfranchised absentee vote “is worth enough” to warrant compensation.

“It’s worth enough that I waited for hours in line to cast it. It’s worth enough that politicians spend millions of dollars to receive it. It’s worth enough that people have put their lives on the line and died to protect it,” she wrote.

Thompson declined to make Ayodabo and the other plaintiffs available for interviews. Of the 193 voters, eight are plaintiffs in the case, he said.

Others who support the lawsuit say it’s less about personal payment and more about forcing systemic change. Fairbotham said she’s grateful the case is pushing the city to take the error seriously, particularly after the Wisconsin Elections Commission found the city violated state law.

Thompson said the lawsuit isn’t about making sure the government knows “every single jot and tittle” of absentee voting procedure, but to ensure election officials count every vote, which he defined as “the absolute most basic obligation.”

Still, some election experts warn the case could have unintended consequences. Morrell said the lawsuit could become one of many elements that dissuade election officials from staying in administrative roles.

“If we’re setting an unrealistic expectation that any mistake made by an election administrator opens you up to a lawsuit, that feels like an impossible situation to be in,” she said. “Election administrators take this so seriously and do everything they can to ensure mistakes don’t happen,” she added, “but they do.”

For Haimowitz — a voter who has helped others register to vote and served as a poll worker — the question isn’t just whether the city fixes the problem. It’s whether he can move past having his ballot go uncounted.

“It was something that made me think it’s clearly not that easy to vote,” he said.

Can you change your mind after you mail in your ballot? It depends.

2026-03-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

When the U.S. Supreme Court last week took up the question of late-arriving mail ballots, the discussion turned to something more basic: when a vote becomes final.

Justice Neil Gorsuch raised a hypothetical — whether a voter who has already mailed a ballot could change their mind and have a postal carrier cancel their delivery after learning new information about a candidate, even after Election Day.

For Mississippi, the plaintiff in the case before the court, the answer was clear. The state’s Solicitor General Scott G. Stewart told the court that’s not possible there. Once a ballot is cast, it stays cast.

The justices also spent significant time on the broader question of finality — whether voters ever get a second chance, or at least a way to undo a vote made too soon.

In most states, they don’t, especially after a ballot has been received by election officials and tabulated.

“I’ve never heard of a state allowing you to, after Election Day, go in and cancel your vote,” said John Lindback, a fellow at the Institute for Responsive Government and former executive director of the Electronic Registration Information Center, a multistate coalition dedicated to cleaning voter rolls. Lindback and other election officials filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court case arguing against the federal government regulating mail ballot deadlines.

Lindback similarly said he’d never heard of voters recalling their ballots through the mail after Election Day.

In most states, Lindback said, a ballot is considered final once it’s cast, including by mail, though he said all states have laws outlining how to replace ballots.

The USPS allows for package recall, but election officials told Votebeat that it’s highly unlikely that canceling ballots happens in any large quantity, especially after Election Day. Outside of this process, voters in a handful of states can void and replace a ballot they’ve already returned by mail through a process often called ballot spoiling — but only under limited conditions and within narrow timeframes before Election Day.

In Wisconsin, for example, the legality of spoiling a returned ballot has gone back and forth in the courts. The issue gained prominence in 2022, after several Democratic U.S. Senate candidates — for whom voters had already cast ballots — dropped out of the primary. Ultimately, those ballots were counted as they were cast unless voters spoiled them within the set deadline, canceling their vote altogether or casting a new one.

Days before the primary election, the Wisconsin Elections Commission issued guidance outlining the process for ballot spoiling, which required voters to contact their clerk about it at least two days ahead of Election Day. Courts then banned the practice in early October 2022, after the primary election but after clerks started sending out ballots for the general.

Most recently, an appeals court in February rejected the case that challenged the practice on procedural grounds, meaning ballot spoiling is once again allowed. Even so, the state requires mail ballots to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted, placing a firm cutoff well before the scenario raised at the Supreme Court.

Michigan law more clearly defines the limits. Voters who return an absentee ballot by mail can request to spoil their absentee ballots by the second Friday before the election. Ballots that have already been tabulated can’t be spoiled.

Minnesota sets an even earlier deadline: Voters can ask to cancel their returned ballot until the close of business 19 days before Election Day.

Together, these laws point in the same direction. While some states allow voters to void and replace a mailed ballot, they do so only within narrow, pre-election windows and before ballots are processed or counted. None allows a voter to retrieve or cancel a ballot after Election Day, once it has been accepted by election officials.

In general, every voter can get a new ballot if a dog eats their old one or if they accidentally throw their ballot away, said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer of the National Association of Election Officials. But across the board, she added, nobody gets to vote more than once, and nobody votes after the polls close.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

How many Republicans and Democrats went to the wrong polling locations in Dallas County? Here are the numbers.

2026-03-24T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

At least 12,674 Dallas County voters trying to cast ballots in both party primaries showed up at the wrong polling locations March 3 after the county GOP forced the elimination of countywide polling sites on Election Day, county data shows.

Democrats had more than double the number of primary voters in Dallas County as Republicans so, unsurprisingly, a larger number of Democratic voters had to be redirected to the correct site, according to a Votebeat analysis of data provided by Dallas County election officials. But similar percentages of voters from both parties were affected by the change.

Out of the total voter turnout on Election Day, at least 6,641 voters, or 7.7%, seeking to cast ballots in the Democratic primary, and 2,369 voters, or 6.4%, seeking to cast ballots in the Republican primary, went to the wrong voting site. Those voters subsequently received texts from county representatives stationed at polling sites to redirect voters to the correct places, according to the county data, which was obtained by Votebeat via a public records request.

Those numbers don’t reflect the full number of affected voters, either. The county couldn’t determine a party for at least 3,638 additional voters who also received texts because they were redirected to voting locations used by both parties, county officials said. And for 26 other voters in the data, the county had no information. Poll workers also redirected other voters who chose not to receive texts and aren’t reflected in the data, according to Paul Adams, the Dallas County elections administrator.

Allen West, the chairman of the Dallas Republican party, had suggested in a statement on March 4 that the change had affected Democratic voters more than Republican ones.

“Yesterday Republican voters in Dallas County evidenced their ability to adapt and overcome proving that precinct level voting can be accomplished on primary Election Day,” West said in a statement the party posted on social media. “It’s apparent that Democrats struggled with grasping basic civics.”

West, who declined to comment on Votebeat’s findings for this story, has since said Republicans will agree to use countywide voting sites for the upcoming May 26 runoff election, citing the potential for confusion. It’s not clear whether West has signed a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department to make the move official. The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kardal Coleman, the Dallas County Democratic Party Chair said the new findings were not surprising. “In every conversation we said that this type of irresponsible pursuit was going to result in disenfranchisement of all voters, not just Democratic voters, and the data speaks just to that,” Coleman said.

Change to precinct voting sites created confusion for Dallas County voters

Dallas County Republicans decided to ditch the state’s countywide polling place program, which allows voters to cast their ballot at any polling location in the county. Because both parties have to agree to use countywide sites, this forced voters from both parties to cast ballots at assigned precincts.

Dallas County officials said they spent $1 million to notify voters of the change, but it nevertheless created chaos and confusion on Election Day.

Republicans in Eastland County, west of Fort Worth, and Williamson County, north of Austin, made similar decisions to switch to precincts, which also led to voter confusion. Republicans in Williamson County have now also said they’ll return to countywide voting for the runoff election. Eastland County Republicans have yet to make a decision, according to county election officials

The Dallas County Elections Department in collaboration with the county’s League of Women Voters, dispatched volunteers across the county’s polling sites on Election Day to assist voters who needed help identifying their correct polling location.

Dallas County has used the countywide program for years and the two major parties had held joint primary elections since 2022, sharing polling locations, voting equipment and poll workers.

Although West has agreed to use countywide voting sites for the runoff election in May, he said the parties still won’t share poll workers and voting equipment — so runoff voters will likely still see separate lines for Republicans and Democrats. Coleman said that for his part, he’s ready to sign an agreement for a joint runoff election, because “that’s the best use of our resources.”

Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people “to double or triple vote,” though there’s no evidence that countywide voting is less secure. In addition, Texas election officials have procedures in place to prevent double voting, including the use of technology that helps officials know in real time who has voted and where.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

What to know about Supreme Court oral arguments in late-arriving mail ballots case

2026-03-23T20:33:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

The Supreme Court justices peppered lawyers with probing questions Monday during oral arguments over whether states should be able to decide whether to count mail ballots postmarked by Election Day but received afterwards.

The case before the court arises from state and national Republicans’ challenge of a Mississippi law that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day up to be counted as long as they arrive five business days later. The justices must rule on whether Election Day is the deadline for voters to cast their ballots, or whether federal law instead requires ballots to be received by elections officials by that date.

Much of the argument turns on whether federal statutes defining Election Day as “the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November” means that’s the deadline for election officials to to receive voters’ ballots, rather than allowing ballots that were mailed by that date.

Some of the conservative justices asked questions meant to probe the limits and implications of what states could permit.

Justice Samuel Alito said the state’s position raises “some difficult line-drawing problems.” He and others also raised questions about whether the justices should consider concerns that late-arriving ballots could shift the outcome of an election and create a perception of fraud.

The liberal justices, though, said the question is whether Congress has specifically preempted states from allowing post-Election Day grace periods, noting that the text of the federal statutes gives them little to go on. And many of the justices also asked how it’s possible to construe the law as prohibiting states from counting ballots received after Election Day but not, for example, prohibiting early voting, which the Republicans’ lawyers said they do not seek to challenge and believe differs.

If the court were to rule that ballots must be received by Election Day, it could force an abrupt shift for this year’s closely watched midterm elections, potentially confusing voters and affecting whether hundreds of thousands of mail-ballot votes are counted. Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked lawyer Paul Clement, representing Republicans, whether a June ruling would be so close to the November elections as to create problems, and Clement said it would not, since mail ballots would not yet have been sent out.

Currently, 14 states and the District of Columbia allow grace periods for late-arriving mail ballots, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. A Votebeat analysis of data from the 2024 election found that at least 750,000 ballots eligible to be counted arrived after Election Day that year. Groups representing military and overseas voters have warned they could be disproportionately affected, and election experts have also said tightening the receipt deadlines could disenfranchise voters affected by slow postal service through no fault of their own.

It’s difficult to predict the effects of changing the deadline, and there’s little data on the partisan breakdown of the late-arriving ballots. Voters from both parties use mail ballots, though in 2024, Democrats reported doing so more often than Republicans. If the receipt deadline were to change, at least some voters would likely cast their ballots early enough to meet the earlier cutoff.

Clement said the federal statutes apply only to federal general elections, not primaries or other elections, so a ruling in their favor would leave open the possibility that states would allow grace periods for late-arriving mail ballots in other elections.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against the counting of late-arriving ballots and pushed for strict new limitations on mail ballots in federal elections. He and other Republicans have said such ballots are a vehicle for fraud. Numerous academic studies have found no increased risk when compared to other types of voting.

In an executive order a year ago, Trump ordered the U.S. Justice Department to “take all necessary action” against states that count ballots received after Election Day, and said federal funding should be conditioned on states agreeing not to do so. At least 15 states sued over those provisions, and federal courts have so far largely blocked them from going into effect.

The case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, began in 2024, when the national and state Republican parties and other plaintiffs sued Mississippi. The plaintiffs claimed Mississippi’s statute didn’t comply with federal law. A federal judge sided with the state, but the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled for the plaintiffs, prompting Mississippi to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Dallas County GOP will agree to use countywide voting sites for May 26 runoff election

2026-03-17T21:39:54+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Dallas County Republicans will agree to allow voters to cast ballots at countywide voting sites for the May 26 runoff election after a switch to precinct-based voting sites caused chaos, the county party chair said Tuesday.

Dallas County Republican Chairman Allen West supported the use of precinct-based sites earlier this month, but said using precincts again for the runoff would expose the county party to “increased risk and voter confusion” because the county is planning to use countywide sites for upcoming municipal elections and early voting.

“To then shift for the one day runoff election to precincts would bring about large scale disruption,” West said in a statement.

That’s what critics say resulted from the Dallas GOP’s decision to use precinct sites on Election Day for the primary on March 3.

Under Texas state law, county political parties have the authority to choose how they administer their elections. During the primary, Dallas County Republicans wouldn’t agree to participate in the countywide polling place program, which the county has used for years.

Because both parties must agree in order for countywide sites to be used, both Democrats and Republicans in the county instead had to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood precincts on the day of the election, though the county was still able to offer countywide sites during the early voting period.

Experts and election officials warned the change was likely to confuse voters, and on Election Day, hundreds, potentially thousands, of voters had to be redirected after finding out they were at the wrong polling locations. As polling hours were extended in the wake of the confusion, at least 1,756 Democratic primary voters in Dallas cast late ballots that ultimately weren’t counted. It’s not clear how many Republican primary voters were impacted by the shift. West did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Republicans still want a separate primary — which means the parties won’t share poll workers and voting equipment — so runoff voters will likely still see separate lines for Republicans and Democrats, according to West’s statement. West said he plans to sign a contract with the county elections department this week to make the change official. He also signaled it isn’t permanent, saying the party successfully executed the primary and can assess lessons learned “and improve upon the process and procedures for March 2028.”

The move by Dallas Republicans and other county parties to eliminate the countywide polling place program for the primary follows a years-long push by Republicans to ditch it entirely.

The countywide voting program, which has been in use in Texas for more than 20 years, has allowed counties to save money by using fewer polling locations (and fewer workers and equipment) that are centralized for all voters to use.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Primary voters frustrated and confused after Dallas County switches to precinct-based voting

2026-03-04T02:56:26+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

This story was published in partnership with Dallas Free Press, a nonprofit newsroom focused on community and civic issues in Dallas. Sign up for Dallas Free Press’ texts and newsletters here.

DALLAS, Texas — Veronica Anderson walked 2½ miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote.

When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct — one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options.

“I walked up here because I want to vote so, so bad,” she told a reporter for the Dallas Free Press and Votebeat, adding that it felt like “your self-esteem and everything is torn down.”

Anderson was one of hundreds of voters across Dallas County on Tuesday who went to the wrong voting location as they tried to cast ballots in the state’s high-turnout primaries, with closely watched contests for U.S. Senate at the top of the ticket.

Under state law, political parties have wide authority to decide how to run county primaries. The confusion stemmed from a decision by the Dallas County Republican Party to abandon the use of countywide vote centers — which allow voters to cast a ballot at any location — and return to a system of precinct-based assigned polling places for Election Day, a decision that forced Dallas Democrats to do the same. Voters were still able to cast ballots at countywide sites during early voting.

Dallas County Democrats had objected to the decision and warned it would confuse voters. After reports of hundreds of confused voters being redirected after going to the wrong polling place Tuesday, Democrats obtained a court order extending voting hours for Democrats in Dallas County until 9 p.m., with ballots cast after 7 p.m. counted provisionally. (The Texas Supreme Court later stayed the order, and said ballots cast by voters who weren’t in line by 7 p.m. should be separated pending a final ruling.) For their part, Republicans did not request an extension of voting hours.

Dallas County has used countywide vote centers since 2019. Local Republican leaders — in Dallas and in other counties making similar changes, including Williamson — said the shift would boost voter confidence.

Dallas County Election Navigator Edwin Hightower Jr., right, helps a voter who arrived at the wrong polling station find her correct voting location in Dallas, Tuesday, March 3, 2026.

County and party officials said they had warned voters ahead of time that Election Day rules would be different. The Dallas County Elections Department sent text messages, mailed notices, and ran social media and streaming ads urging voters to cast ballots early and reminding them they would need to vote at their assigned precinct if they waited until Election Day, according to Nicholas Solorzano, a spokesperson for the Dallas County Elections Department.

The county also stationed nonpartisan “election navigators” outside at least 75 polling locations to redirect voters who showed up at the wrong site. Dallas County Republican Party Chair Allen West said the party had publicized the changes as well and framed the return to precinct-based voting as a matter of trust in the process. Kardal Coleman, chair of the Dallas County Democratic Party, told Votebeat that Democrats have “called, texted, we’ve sent mailpieces. We’ve run a full campaign.”

‘There are a lot of infuriated voters’

At the Anita Martinez Recreation Center in West Dallas, election navigator Juston Marine stood outside with a county-issued tablet, stopping voters before they entered.

“Are you here to vote?” he asked. “Can I see your driver’s license? Can you choose your party? I’m just trying to make sure you’re in the right location.”

Marine said he was redirecting every second or third voter who approached. He lost count of how many people he had sent elsewhere.

“There are a lot of infuriated voters,” he said. Some cursed at him. Others had driven across the county only to learn they were in the wrong place — including one example of a voter who traveled from Balch Springs to West Dallas and was then redirected to Cedar Hill.

Ashley Feldt, who recently moved to West Dallas from East Dallas, arrived at the site with her fiancé. Marine told her she was actually assigned to vote at Hexter Elementary, miles away. Unsure she would have time to get there before polls closed, she told her fiancé — who was assigned to the recreation center — to go ahead and vote without her.

James Crolley, an Election Day inspector assigned to 12 locations ranging from downtown Dallas to Trinity Groves and West Dallas, said that voters were also surprised to find that voters assigned to the same precinct, but who vote in different parties, often weren’t voting at the same sites.

“If you had always voted at Mockingbird Elementary as a Republican, and you go there today, and you’re like, ‘Why am I not able to vote? This is my spot,’” he said, “that caused a little bit of conflict.”

The problems were not confined to Dallas.

Williamson County Republicans also returned to precinct-based voting and adopted a different counting process for their primary. Instead of using precinct scanners to tabulate votes throughout the day, Republican ballots were to be placed into separate boxes by precinct and scanned centrally after polls close, according to Connie Odom, a spokeswoman for Williamson County.

Odom said in an email that reconciliation rules and manual review of some ballots mean few, if any, Election Day results are expected before midnight. The Democratic primary there is using the county’s traditional scanner system.

In Eastland County, which moved away from vote centers to enable hand-counting of ballots, election workers at the county courthouse said they had told about 68 voters by late morning that they were at the wrong location.

Jennie Trejo and Keri Mitchell of Dallas Free Press and Carrie Levine, Nathaniel Rakich, and Natalia Conteras of Votebeat contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

In appeal, Madison warns disenfranchisement ruling could trigger wave of election lawsuits

2026-02-26T21:14:17+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Update, March 13, 2026: A Wisconsin appeals judge on Friday rejected Madison’s request to appeal a ruling that allows the city to be held liable for disenfranchising nearly 200 voters whose absentee ballots were never counted in the 2024 election. Given the decision, the case will continue in Dane County Circuit Court, where a scheduling conference is set for March 20.

The City of Madison on Monday appealed a ruling that allows it to be sued for monetary damages for disenfranchising nearly 200 voters in the 2024 election, arguing the decision would unrealistically require “error-free elections” and expose municipalities across the state to liability for mistakes.

The appeal comes after Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Conway Feb. 9 ruling that Madison could face potential financial liability for disenfranchising 193 voters whose absentee ballots were unintentionally left uncounted. Notably, the city did not specifically contest the judge’s rejection in that ruling of its earlier argument that absentee voting is merely a “privilege” under state law — a claim that would have shielded it from damages.

Instead, the appeal centers on who has the authority to enforce election laws and whether voters can sue for negligence. The city argues that such complaints must go first to the Wisconsin Elections Commission and asks higher courts to revisit a landmark 1866 case that allowed damages against election officials who deprive citizens of the right to vote.

“It is not difficult to imagine how the circuit court’s ruling may be perceived as an opportunity by partisan actors to influence the election,” attorneys for the city, former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick wrote in the filing.

A permanent path to sue for damages over accidental election errors without going first through the commission could “chill the willingness of individuals to volunteer to assist with elections, and the willingness of voters to participate in the political process,” they wrote.

Madison asks court to revisit landmark voting case

Much of Madison’s appeal asks the court to revisit a key finding in the landmark 1866 case that secured the extension of the franchise to Black Wisconsinites, Gillespie v. Palmer. In that case, the court held that state law allows plaintiffs to sue election officials for damages if they “negligently deprive citizens of the right to vote.”

The case arose after Ezekiel Gillespie, a Black man, was turned away from the polls in 1865. While voters had ratified a measure extending the franchise to Black residents 16 years earlier, it went largely unenforced, as state officials still disputed whether the change was valid. Gillespie sued, and courts ultimately ruled in his favor, concluding in 1866 that Black Wisconsinites had been wrongfully disenfranchised for 17 years.

Although Gillespie was intentionally barred from voting, the court’s ruling established negligence — not just intentional misconduct — as a basis for disenfranchised voters to seek damages. The Dane County Circuit Court relied on that broader standard in allowing the Madison lawsuit to proceed.

Madison officials in their latest appeal argue the lower court misapplied the precedent. In their view, Gillespie was about protecting the right to cast a ballot — a right that they say isn’t disputed in this case. No election official in Madison denied that the 193 Madison voters had a right to vote, they wrote. Rather, they contend, the voters’ ballots were unintentionally left uncounted after being cast.

If Gillespie is extended under these circumstances, the defendants argue, Wisconsin would be the first state to allow “any voter whose ballot is accidentally uncounted a right to sue for monetary damages,” a premise that they say requires immediate review by higher courts given the impending 2026 midterms.

They also contend the 1866 ruling predates Wisconsin’s modern election system, and relying on “such an archaic interpretation of Constitutional rights in Wisconsin is grossly in error and requires intervention before the case proceeds further.”

Madison’s filing “seeks to erode the protections” guaranteed in Gillespie, said Scott Thompson, staff attorney for Law Forward, which filed the case. “This argument follows the city’s failed attempt to throw out this case by arguing that the right to vote does not protect absentee voters from disenfranchisement. The right to vote has value, and the voters the City of Madison disenfranchised look forward to having their day in court.”

Bryna Godar, a staff attorney at the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative, clarified that a court wouldn’t need to overturn the historic Black voting rights case entirely to rule that it doesn’t apply in the lawsuit against Madison.

“You could potentially read that case in a more narrow way, as applying only to intentional deprivation of the right to vote, as opposed to negligence and deprivation,” she said, adding that it’s likely that only a higher court could reinterpret Gillespie in such a way.

Law Forward’s response to Madison’s appeal is due on March 9. Then the Madison-based District IV Court of Appeals is expected to determine whether the appeal may move forward.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

How many voters could be affected by earlier mail ballot deadlines? We ran the numbers.

2026-02-11T18:24:24+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping attempts to overhaul the way U.S. elections are run have mostly run into dead ends in the courts. But his administration and allies have successfully tightened rules around at least one of his biggest pet peeves: the counting of mail ballots that are received after Election Day.

Since the 2024 election, four states — all Republican-controlled — have changed their election laws so that they no longer accept mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. And while 14 states and Washington, D.C., still do so as long as those ballots are postmarked by Election Day, more of those ballots could be rejected in future elections due to recent changes to U.S. Postal Service procedures. To top it all off, a pending U.S. Supreme Court case could make it illegal for any jurisdiction to count ballots that arrive after Election Day, period.

Taken together, these changes have the potential to impact, and even disenfranchise, thousands of voters. At the same time, the share of voters whose ballots may be affected constitute only a small fraction of the overall electorate, according to a Votebeat review of data on mail ballots arriving after Election Day.

Votebeat contacted the 19 jurisdictions where voters in the 2024 general election could return their ballots after Election Day and still have them counted. Across the 13 that provided information, more than 750,000 ballots were received after Election Day, representing 0.1-3.1% of the total turnout in those states.

However, voting patterns in 2026 may not look the same as they did in 2024. Voter-education efforts are already underway in some states to urge mail-ballot voters to return their ballots earlier in the future, likely shrinking the number of voters who could be harmed by these changes.

4 red states have already changed their mail ballot deadlines

In the 2024 election, several states allowed mail ballots to arrive after Election Day as long as they were postmarked by then. But in 2025, in line with Trump’s executive order, four of those states — Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah — reversed course and enacted laws making Election Day the deadline for ballots to be received. Other states are considering similar changes. A bill to eliminate the grace period recently passed the state House in West Virginia.

All four states that changed their laws are fully controlled by the GOP. Republicans control both legislative chambers and the governorship in North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah, and they have supermajorities in both chambers in Kansas, allowing them to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.

Despite Democratic objections to these changes, the number of voters affected should be very low. Data is not available on the number of ballots that arrived after Election Day 2024 in North Dakota and Utah, but in Ohio and Kansas, relatively few voters took advantage of this grace period.

In Ohio, just 7,579 mail ballots were received after Election Day and counted, representing just 0.1% of the state’s total votes cast that year. An additional 1,944 mail ballots were received after Election Day but didn’t count, either because they arrived too late after Election Day or for some other reason.

In Kansas, only 2,110 ballots were received and accepted after Election Day, or 0.2% of the total vote. An additional 603 ballots arrived too late to count, and 104 ballots that arrived after Election Day were also rejected because they lacked any postmark whatsoever.

As low as they are, these numbers could decrease even further in future elections. Election officials are already working to inform voters in these states of the new deadline, which will hopefully lead to them returning their ballots earlier. For instance, officials in Wyandotte County, Kansas, told a local news outlet they would be telling voters about the new rules via postcard. In Utah, election officials are advising voters to make use of dropboxes if they are worried their ballot will not be delivered in time via the mail.

But the changes are causing issues in at least one state. Local election officials in Ohio are warning that that state’s new deadline could put additional strain on election offices and require that they hire more workers to process ballots.

Postmark delays could affect mail ballots

Even with the above changes, there are still 15 jurisdictions, representing 43% of 2024 voters, that allow mail ballots to arrive “late” — as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. But late last year, the U.S. Postal Service caused a stir when it issued new guidance declaring that mail might not be postmarked on the same day it is dropped off.

In other words, even if a voter mails their ballot on Election Day, it may not be postmarked until the next day — which would lead to its rejection.

The Postal Service clarified that the new guidance “does not change any existing postal operations or postmarking practices”; it has long been the case that mail is postmarked only once it reaches a processing facility, not necessarily on the day that it’s dropped off at a mailbox or post office. However, the Postal Service did say these lags have become more common following 2025 changes to its collection procedures.

It’s difficult to say how many ballots will be affected by these changes in 2026. Votebeat doesn’t have data on how many ballots were dropped off in 2024 on Election Day itself, and it’s unclear how many more of those ballots might receive delayed postmarks than in 2024. But the number of ballots that arrived after Election Day but were still counted in 2024 can serve as a reasonable ceiling for the number of ballots at risk.

In some places, that number was very small, according to data from state and local officials. For instance, in Mississippi, 1,140 ballots arrived after Election Day that were postmarked on time and accepted. That was just 0.1% of the total votes cast in the state that year. In Washington, D.C., that number was 1,062 ballots, or 0.3% of the total votes cast. In Oregon, it was approximately 13,000 ballots, or 0.6% of the total vote. In West Virginia, it was a tiny 449 ballots, or 0.1% of the total vote.

Barring major changes to voters’ ballot-delivery habits in 2026, the postmark changes should have only minuscule effects on elections in these places.

In other states, these numbers are higher, but they’re still relatively small. In Illinois, 106,521 ballots arrived after Election Day that were postmarked on time and accepted, or 1.9% of the total votes cast in the state. In California, 373,116 ballots arrived after Election Day with valid postmarks (although some of those were rejected for other reasons, like a bad signature), or 2.3% of the state’s total vote. Washington had the highest share of its ballots arrive after Election Day properly postmarked: 3.0%, or approximately 120,000 ballots.

So if voters in these states return their mail ballots in 2026 on the same schedule as they did in 2024, around 2-3% of their voters are at risk of being disenfranchised due to the new postmark rules. But that doesn’t mean they will definitely be disenfranchised. Some of these ballots were certainly mailed before Election Day, meaning they would still likely be postmarked on time even if not the day they were dropped off. And, of course, even some of the ballots mailed on Election Day may still be postmarked on time, given that the new policy doesn’t preclude ballots from being postmarked on the day they are mailed.

There’s one more big caveat: Voters in 2026 probably won’t return their mail ballots on the same schedule as they did in 2024. Many of them will likely hear about the new postmark guidance and decide to return their ballots earlier, use a ballot drop box or bring them to a post office and request a manual postmark (which remains an option for voters afraid of processing delays).

States have also started educating voters about the changes. For instance, Oregon updated its guidance in October to tell voters to mail their ballots a week ahead of time, or else to use a drop box. Many states that do not accept ballots after Election Day, such as Pennsylvania, engage in voter-education campaigns each cycle to make sure voters return their ballots on time

(There’s one other possibility here too. Because the new postmark guidance isn’t actually a change in how post offices operate, it’s possible that many of the ballots that will be rejected as a result of it have already been going uncounted due to late postmarks. Thankfully, this does not appear to be a major issue based on the limited public data available from 2024. Only a few states keep track of how many mail ballots are rejected because of invalid postmarks, but in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, those numbers were just 0.04%, 0.22%, and 0.12% of the electorate, respectively.)

The Supreme Court could require ballots to arrive on Election Day

Finally, it’s also possible that the 15 remaining jurisdictions that accept mail ballots after Election Day will be forced to join Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio, and Utah in discarding the practice by the 2026 midterms. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to Mississippi’s law allowing properly postmarked ballots to be counted if they are received within five business days of Election Day.

Opponents of the state law, which include the Republican National Committee, argue that allowing the ballots to be counted conflicts with federal law, which says that federal elections are to be held the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and that counting ballots that arrive after this date risks “chaos and suspicions of impropriety.”

Mississippi argues an “election” is the “conclusive choice” of voters, and voters make that choice by Election Day, even if election officials don’t receive the paper evidence of that choice until a few days later.

Arguments in the case are expected on March 23, with a ruling by early July.

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules against Mississippi, it could ban the counting of all ballots received after Election Day nationwide as well, regardless of postmark date. As detailed above, that would still impact only a small percentage of ballots — between 0.1% and 3%, depending on the state. But it would, on average, be more than in Kansas and Ohio, as well as more than would be affected by the new postmark guidance alone.

Officials in the 15 jurisdictions that could be affected are concerned about how voters would adapt.

“Such a ruling would impact our [military and overseas] voters, who have had that additional mailing time for decades, and our Legislature would need to choose how to reconcile that with our absentee ballot laws,” said Debra O’Malley, director of communications for the secretary of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Spokespeople for both the Illinois State Board of Elections and Washington secretary of state’s office said their respective states were monitoring the case. A ruling that bans the acceptance of ballots that arrive after Election Day would likely require election officials to undertake a large-scale voter reeducation campaign in the states where the practice is still allowed.

“We’re aware of that potential but at this point there’s not a concrete plan for adapting to the ruling,” Matt Dietrich, the Illinois spokesman, wrote in an email. “But we’re certainly prepared to help our election authorities and voters adapt should the ruling affect General Election mail deadlines.”

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Court says Madison can be liable for disenfranchising voters

2026-02-09T19:03:18+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Update, Feb. 9, 2026: Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan said the city is reviewing the decision and considering its next steps. Brogan stressed that the city “has a long history of promoting and protecting absentee voting and that policy has not changed,” but said monetary damages for unintentional errors would mean money and resources “would be diverted to pay for this human error.”

A Dane County judge on Monday rejected the city of Madison’s claim that absentee voting’s characterization in state law as a “privilege” precludes damages against the city for disenfranchising 193 voters, and ruled that Madison can face potential financial liability for the error.

In rejecting motions by the city and other defendants to dismiss the case, Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Conway said that a state law describing absentee voting as a privilege does not mean absentee ballots receive less constitutional protection than votes cast in person.

“That right to vote,” Conway wrote, “would be a hollow protection if it did not also include the right to have one’s vote counted.”

Conway also rejected former Madison Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl’s legal argument that there is a meaningful legal difference between intentionally not counting votes and mistakenly failing to count them due to human error. He held that state law allows for people to seek damages against election officials who “negligently deprive citizens of the right to vote.”

“When an election official fails to count a valid absentee ballot, whether by negligence, recklessness, or malice, he or she deprives the absentee voter of that constitutional right,” he wrote.

The city and Witzel-Behl’s legal argument, made in response to a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of 193 Madison voters disenfranchised in the 2024 election, drew sharp rebukes from legal experts, Gov. Tony Evers, and the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which filed its very first friend-of-the-court brief opposing the rationale.

Conway dismissed the Madison clerk’s office from the case after arguments that it could not be sued separately from the city, but allowed the case to proceed against the city, Witzel-Behl, and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick. The voters are represented by a liberal election law firm, Law Forward.

“At the dawn of another election season, the message is clear: the right to vote protects Wisconsinites whether they vote in-person or absentee,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “We are pleased the Court agreed with our arguments and that this case will proceed.”

Matt O’Neill, the lawyer representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment, and Madison spokesperson Dylan Brogan didn’t immediately comment.

Madison mayor says ‘nonsensical lawsuit’ could weaken elections

In an interview with Votebeat last week, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she didn’t like the state law calling absentee voting a privilege, not a right. But she said that critics should direct their concerns at the Legislature, rather than at the city.

Rhodes-Conway said the city’s argument “literally repeat[s] what’s in state law.” Legal experts have disputed that characterization, saying the city advanced a novel interpretation of a long-standing statute. Rhodes-Conway said she wasn’t sure those critiques were relevant.

“It shouldn’t be in the law,” she said. “And the state Legislature should take action to correct that and better protect voting in this state.”

The 1985 state law describes absentee voting as a privilege exercised outside the safeguards of the polling place. Another provision requires absentee voters to comply with laws regulating the practice for their votes to count. The law has been cited in lawsuits seeking to restrict absentee voting, but it had never before been used to shield election officials from liability for failing to count valid ballots.

In his Monday ruling, Conway dismissed the city’s interpretation of the law without questioning the statute itself.

“Just because the absentee voting process is a privilege does not mean that those who legally utilize it do not exercise their constitutional right to vote,” he said.

Rhodes-Conway said that, despite using that legal argument in court, the city has consistently promoted absentee voting and will continue to do so.

Rhodes-Conway criticized the lawsuit as a whole, saying that the solution for the city disenfranchising 193 voters in the 2024 presidential election “is not to charge the city of Madison millions of dollars because our clerk’s office made a mistake.”

“That’s not achieving anything. It’s not making elections better,” she continued. “It’s simply taking money that could be invested in basic services and in election protection and election services, and paying it to the plaintiffs. It’s just nonsensical to me.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Why many Texans are still waiting for their voter registration cards

2026-02-05T19:16:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas’ unusual mid-decade redistricting and problems with the state’s new voter registration system have delayed the mailing of voter registration certificates, the documents that give voters information about their polling place and their assigned districts, state and local officials say.

Under state law, the certificates should have been issued by Dec. 6, though there’s no penalty for a late mailing. With early voting for the March 3 primaries set to begin Feb. 17, the delay has confused some voters who were expecting to have received the certificates by now, and multiple election officials said they have been fielding calls and questions about the missing certificates for weeks.

The certificates are small postcards that counties send to registered voters every two years, listing the voter’s local voting precinct, their congressional, state Senate and House districts, county precincts, and city and school districts.

Voters don’t need the cards to vote, but election officials say the cards can serve as an additional form of ID and help voters identify their new congressional or legislative district if it has changed. They also help election officials conduct voter list maintenance: When a card is returned as undeliverable, it signals that the voter may have moved.

Redistricting puts added strain on TEAM

Most of the state’s 254 counties rely on the Secretary of State’s free election and voter registration management system, called TEAM, to produce the certificates. Local election officials have for months complained that they are struggling with the system, which was overhauled in July, and several election officials said that is contributing to the delay.

State election officials said they also didn’t anticipate the system needing to handle the unexpected mid-cycle redistricting lawmakers undertook last year, and the redrawn boundaries are creating additional complications. Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said the state is still working with “several counties” to upload redistricting data, including Harris and Tarrant counties, which could not begin the process until they completed special runoff elections Jan. 31.

The system has lagged in producing reports containing large amounts of data and images that county officials need to print the certificates. Those reports are reviewed by both state and local election administrators to ensure voters’ information, including street addresses, cities, precincts, and districts, is accurate.

“This involves a massive upload of data to our system and then a careful review of voter data and validations at the county level to ensure accurate voter lists,” Pierce said. She did not respond to specific questions about election officials’ comments about TEAM.

Counties that use an outside vendor instead of TEAM to manage their voter rolls, including Collin County in North Texas and Nueces County in South Texas, mailed out the certificates to voters in late January.

Time is short for updating voter rolls

In Brazos County, which uses TEAM, election administrator Trudy Hancock counts on having time to update her voter lists after the initial mailing of voter registration cards. She typically gets more than 10,000 of them returned to her office as undeliverable. Brazos is home to College Station and Texas A&M University, and voters there are constantly moving either within the county or elsewhere.

The returned cards help election officials identify voters who may have moved and can be placed on the suspense list. Those voters have a chance to update their registration at the polls before they can vote.

But as of Wednesday, Hancock hadn’t been able to mail the certificates to her voters yet. She doubts she’ll have time to process returned certificates in time to flag voters before the March 3 primaries.

“Even if voter certificates went out this week, we’re not going to get that done in time to update the pollbooks,” Hancock said.

Tandi Smith, the Kaufman County elections administrator, also has not yet been able to mail out certificates to voters and said she doesn’t know when she’ll be able to. Kaufman has more than 117,000 registered voters.

“For us, especially in a growing county with a smaller staff, we’re having to adjust when a system should be functional and meeting our needs,” Smith said. “So we’re just trying to work through those growing pains until there’s a better way.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin Elections Commission steps in to challenge Madison’s argument on absentee voting

2026-02-04T20:12:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, filing its first ever friend-of-the-court brief, challenged Madison’s controversial legal argument that it should not be financially liable for 193 uncounted ballots in the 2024 presidential election because of a state law that calls absentee voting a privilege, not a right.

The argument presented by city officials misunderstands what “privilege” means in the context of absentee voting and “enjoys no support in the constitution or case law,” the commission wrote in its filing Tuesday, echoing a similar rebuke by Gov. Tony Evers last month.

“Once an elector has complied with the statutory process, whether absentee or in-person, she has a constitutional right to have her vote counted,” the commission said.

That both the commission and the governor felt it was necessary to intervene in the case should underscore “both the wrongness and the dangerousness of such a claim,” commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, told Votebeat.

The dispute over the city’s legal defense stems from a lawsuit filed in September by the liberal election law firm Law Forward in Dane County Circuit Court against the city of Madison and the clerk’s office, along with former clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities. It seeks monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose absentee ballots were never counted in the 2024 presidential election, alleging that their constitutional rights were violated.

Attorneys for Witzel-Behl — and later the city — argued that by choosing to vote absentee, the disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege,” citing a 1985 state law that describes absentee voting as a privilege exercised outside the safeguards of the polling place.

Law Forward called the argument a “shocking proposition,” and Evers filed his own friend-of-the-court brief last month, warning that the city’s position could lead to “absurd results.”

Some legal experts said the argument could run afoul of the federal Constitution.

Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.

No statute can override the constitutional right to vote, the commission stated, adding that the Wisconsin Supreme Court decided in 2024 that state law the defendants invoked does not allow for a “skeptical view” of absentee voting.

The argument has also drawn negative reactions from a range of political voices.

On Wednesday, six Wisconsin voting groups — Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, Common Cause Wisconsin, ACLU of Wisconsin, All in Wisconsin Fund, and All Voting is Local — released a scathing statement saying they were “deeply alarmed” by the city’s argument.

“We call on the City of Madison to immediately abandon this dangerous legal argument, take responsibility for disenfranchising voters, and work toward a remedy that respects voters’ constitutional rights,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, Rick Esenberg, the founder of the conservative group Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty — which cited the same 1985 law in its 2021 effort to ban ballot drop boxes — said on social media that Madison’s legal argument was likely going too far.

“Madison is correct in noting that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right in the sense that the legislature has no obligation to permit it at all,” Esenberg said. “BUT if it does and people choose to cast their ballot in the way specified by law, it doesn’t seem crazy to say that Madison has a constitutional obligation to count their legally cast vote.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Texas attorney general acted in bad faith against Latino civic group Jolt Initiative, judge rules

2026-01-29T23:17:12+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton failed to offer “any plausible proof” that Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is violating the law, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Paxton had filed a lawsuit in state court accusing Jolt of submitting “unlawful voter registration applications,” specifying in a press release that the group was “attempting to register illegals, who are all criminals.” The suit, which seeks to revoke Jolt’s nonprofit charter through a legal mechanism known as a quo warranto petition, was put on ice by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who said in his ruling that Paxton appears to be operating in bad faith.

The attorney general’s case against Jolt “supposes absolutely no wrongdoing,” and indicates that the attorney general may be “harassing [Jolt] and fishing for reasons to investigate its organization.”

This is not the first legal back-and-forth between Jolt and Paxton’s office. Last year, the organization successfully sued to stop the state’s investigation into its voter registration efforts. In the new suit, Jolt’s lawyers argue Paxton’s efforts to shut it down are retaliation. The attorney general’s office has also in recent years targeted other organizations aiding Latinos and migrants, such as the effort to investigate and shut down El Paso-based Annunciation House.

“For over a year, we have faced a relentless campaign of harassment designed to completely crush our organization and silence our community,” Jolt Executive Director Jackie Bastard said in a statement. “Judge Pitman’s finding that AG Paxton acted in bad faith confirms what we have known all along: this was never about election integrity, it was about political retaliation.”

The background: Case spurred by Maria Bartiromo’s debunked claims

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering migrants to vote outside state driver’s license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into organizations including Jolt.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization as well as put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office now said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

In addition, Paxton announced earlier this year that his office is investigating cases of “potential noncitizens” casting more than 200 ballots in 2020 and 2022, which would be around one-thousandth of 1% of the votes cast during these periods.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 registered voters who were flagged as “potential noncitizens.” At least six of them have been confirmed to be U.S. citizens.

Voters also recently approved a constitutional amendment adding language to the state’s constitution saying that a person who is not a U.S. citizen cannot vote in Texas. Noncitizen voting was already illegal prior to this update.

Why Texas sued: Paxton claims ‘unlawful motive’

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a DMV location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar still instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

Paxton’s filing didn’t provide evidence of Jolt registering noncitizens to vote. Instead, it said the group’s decision to hold voter registration drives near DMV locations “illuminates its unlawful motive.”

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

In November, Paxton filed a quo warranto suit in Tarrant County, seeking to revoke the group’s charter and shut it down. Paxton claimed a “substantial part of the events” underlying the case took place there; Jolt requested that the suit be moved to Harris County.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” Paxton said in a news release at the time. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

Jolt points to provision of election code

In response to Paxton’s suit seeking to shut them down, Jolt leaders filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to stop Paxton’s case in state court because it infringes on their rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

In particular, Jolt said in a court filing that its volunteer didn’t do anything wrong because Texas’ election code does allow for a person to appoint their parent as “an agent” to “complete and sign a registration application” for them. The parent must also be a qualified voter or must have submitted a registration application and be eligible to vote, according to the code.

Pitman, an Austin-based judge appointed by former President Barack Obama, agreed, saying Paxton’s office did not produce evidence of any wrongdoing. He took the unusual step for a federal judge of intervening to stop a state court proceeding, which he said was warranted because Paxton was acting in bad faith.

“The court does not come to this conclusion lightly,” Pitman wrote. “Given multiple opportunities to assert his good faith by pointing to any credible evidence of illegal activity or even general wrongdoing … Defendant could not.”

What you need to know before voting in Texas’ March 3 primary elections

2026-01-28T11:00:00+00:00

This story was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Texans will have more of a say over who their state elected officials will be during the 2026 primaries.

Texas Republican and Democratic voters will pick which candidate they want to represent their interests and their party on the ballot for the November general election. In a state where Republicans dominate state government and where many legislative and congressional districts often are drawn to favor them, the primaries are often very significant. Yet, only a fraction of citizens in Texas vote in primary elections.

There are more than 18 statewide elected officials up for election, along with Texas’ members of Congress, state lawmakers, district-based judges, and local elected officials. With the new congressional maps redrawn to boost the number of Texas Republicans in Congress, some Texans will have to vote in new congressional districts.

Here’s what you need to know about primaries and the voting process. Stay tuned for more guides about candidates in the following weeks. In the meantime, you can use this tool to see how state lawmakers — some of whom are up for election this year — voted on major bills in the past legislative session.

What to do if you still don't have your Texas voter registration card

What’s on the ballot?

Here’s a quick glance at the federal, state, and local elected offices that are up for election this year, according to the Texas Secretary of State.

Federal

1 U.S. senator (John Cornyn’s seat)
All U.S. representatives under new congressional maps after they were redrawn in 2025

State (statewide races)

Texas governor
Lieutenant governor
Attorney general
Comptroller of public accounts
Commissioner of General Land Office
Commissioner of agriculture
One Railroad Commission member (Jim Wright’s seat)
Four members of the Texas Supreme Court
Three members of the Court of Criminal Appeals
Three members of the 15th Court of Appeals

State (regional district-based races)

Eight members of the State Board of Education
Sixteen state senators for districts
All 150 state representatives
Several chief justices of Courts of Appeals
Various regional Courts of Appeals judges

Depending on where you live, lower-level judges and local county offices could also appear on the ballot, including:

County judges
County Courts at Law
Justices of the peace
District clerks
County clerks
County treasurer
County surveyors
County commissioners (precincts 2 and 4)
Various district judges, including on criminal and family courts.

See all the 2026 primary candidates here.

What about third party and independent candidates?

The Libertarian and Green parties have their own nomination process at conventions that typically take place later in the spring. The Libertarian Party of Texas’ state convention is scheduled for April 10-12. The Green Party of Texas has said its county and district conventions will take place in March, followed by a state convention on April 11.

Independent candidates, such as Mike Collier, who announced he is again running for lieutenant governor but not within the Democratic Party, will appear on the ballot in the November general election.

What dates do I need to know?

Feb. 2 is the last day to register to vote and to submit an address change for the midterm election.

You can report an address or name change online. You should do this if you’ve moved since the last time you voted, especially if you have moved to a different county or political subdivision or have legally taken a different name.

How do I check if I’m registered to vote?

You can check to see if you’re registered and verify your information through the Texas Secretary of State’s website.

You’ll need one of the following three combinations to log in:

Your Texas driver’s license number and date of birth.
Your first and last names, date of birth and county you reside in.
Your date of birth and Voter Unique Identifier, which appears on your voter registration certificate.

Read more about voter registration requirements further down in this story.

Feb. 20 is the last day to apply to vote by mail.

When do I need to drop off or mail an application to vote by mail?

Applications for mail ballots must be received by the early voting clerk in your county — not postmarked — by Feb. 20. Applications can also be submitted by fax or email, but the county must receive a hard copy within four business days. They can also be dropped off in person.

You can download an application here or request one be mailed to you here.

If you’re looking to vote by mail, give yourself as much leeway as possible. You’ll need to budget for the time it will take your county to get your ballot to you in the mail after you apply.

What is the deadline to mail my completed ballot?

The deadline for mail-in ballots to be returned to the county is Election Day, March 3. If a ballot is postmarked by 7 p.m. locally on Election Day, it’ll be counted if the county receives it by 5 p.m. on March 4. The U.S. Postal Service recommends mailing your ballot at least one week before the deadline, if not sooner.

Absentee ballots can also be delivered in person to the county elections office with a valid form of ID while polls are open on Election Day.

Completed ballots from military or overseas voters are accepted if they’re received by March 9. (Military and overseas voters can go through a different ballot request and return process.)

Read more about vote-by-mail requirements in this section.

Early voting in person runs from Feb. 17-27. If you can’t vote inside of a polling place because of an illness or disability, curbside voting may be available to you. Read more about what qualifies as a disability and about curbside voting options here.

Who is eligible to vote early?

Anyone registered to vote may vote early, but it must be done in person unless you qualify to vote by mail.

Where am I allowed to vote early?

Voters can cast ballots at any polling location in the county where they are registered to vote. Check your county elections office’s website for early-voting locations.

Election Day is March 3.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Election Day.

Are polling locations the same on Election Day as they are during early voting?

Not always. Check where polling locations are open in your area before you head to cast your ballot. In some counties, Election Day voting may be restricted to locations in your designated precinct. Other counties allow voters to cast their ballots at any polling place on Election Day.

Read more about voting options for those who can’t vote in person in this section.

What dates do I need to know for the primary runoff election?

Runoff elections will take place on May 26. The deadline to register to vote in the runoff election is April 27. The deadline for counties to receive applications to vote by mail is May 15. Early voting will occur from May 18-22.

Who can register to vote in Texas?

U.S. citizens in Texas can register to vote if they are 18 or older or if they will be 18 by Election Day.

Citizens in the state cannot register to vote if they have been convicted of a felony and are still serving a sentence, including parole or probation, or if they have been deemed mentally incapacitated in court. Here are more specifics on eligibility.

Eligible people experiencing homelessness can vote, as long as they provide on their registration an address and description for where they are residing, such as a shelter or a street intersection. If needed, their mailing address can be different, but a P.O. Box address is usually not considered a residence address in Texas.

Students studying in Texas who are from other states can also choose to register to vote in the state with their dorm or Texas address.

How do I register to vote?

You must complete and submit a paper voter registration application by Feb. 2.

You can find this at county voter registrars’ offices and some post offices, government offices, and high schools. You can also print out the online application and mail it to the voter registrar in your county. Download your application here. You can also request a postage-paid application through the mail, but this will take some time to receive.

Applications must be postmarked by Feb. 2. You can request the postmark at your local post office.

If you’re worried about the registration deadline, you can also complete or deliver an application in person to your county’s elections administrator. Find yours here. You can also register through organizations that have volunteer registrars like the League of Women Voters, which often hold voter registration events.

Additionally, you can register to vote through the Texas Department of Public Safety while renewing your driver’s license. You may be able to register to vote online if you’re also allowed to renew your license online. This is the only form of online registration in the state.

After you register to vote, you will receive a voter registration certificate within 30 days. It’ll contain your voter information, including the Voter Unique Identifier number needed to update your voter registration online. If the certificate has incorrect information, you’ll need to note corrections and send it to your local voter registrar as soon as possible.

The voter registration certificate can also be used as a secondary form of ID when you vote if you don’t have one of the seven state-approved photo IDs. More information on that here.

Do you have to reregister to vote?

Once you register to vote, you generally remain registered, but there are various reasons why you may want to verify your registration status. For example, you need to update your registration after a name or address change. You can make those updates online here.

What does it mean if my voter registration is ‘in suspense’?

If a county receives a nondeliverable notice after sending a voter registration certificate or suspects an address change, a voter is placed on a “suspense list” and asked to confirm their address. Voters on the suspense list can update or confirm their address before the voter registration deadline to ensure their ability to vote. Voters marked as “in suspense” can also fill out a Statement of Residence when voting by mail or at the polls if they still live in the same county where they registered. (See the next question for options for voters who have moved to a different county.)

If no action is taken by a suspended voter, they are removed from the voter rolls after about four years, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office.

Federal law prevents the state from removing registered voters within 90 days of a federal election unless the voter has died, been convicted of a felony, or been declared mentally incapacitated.

If you’re concerned about your voter registration, you can verify it online here.

What if I moved after the voter registration deadline?

You must reside in a Texas county by the voter registration deadline to vote in the upcoming election unless you qualify for absentee voting. You can read more about absentee and mail-in voting here.

You can vote at your previous polling location if you moved within the same county or political subdivision. Or you can vote at your new polling location on a ballot limited to the elections you would qualify to vote in at both polling locations, such as federal and statewide races. Limited ballots are available only during early voting at a “main early voting polling place,” which is usually the office of the election administrator or county clerk who runs elections in your county. The main early voting polling place should be noted in a county’s list of early voting locations.

What if I run into issues with my voter registration?

If you have questions or concerns about your registration, you can find your county’s voter registration contact here.

Inside polling locations, there are typically “resolution desks” where poll workers can address registration issues.

You can also find frequently asked questions from the Secretary of State’s office at votetexas.gov.

How do I know if I’m eligible to vote by mail?

This option is fairly limited in Texas. You’re allowed to vote by mail only if at least one of the following applies:

You will be 65 or older by Election Day.
You will not be in your county for the entire voting period, including early voting.
You cite a sickness or disability that prevents you from voting in person without needing personal assistance or without the likelihood of injuring your health.
You’re expected to give birth within three weeks before or after Election Day.
You are confined in jail but otherwise eligible (i.e., not convicted of a felony).

College students who are registered at a residence in Texas, such as a parent’s home, but are studying out of state can apply for absentee ballots.

If you are voting absentee and want to see what will appear on your ballot, you can get a sample ballot from your county. In most cases, sample ballots can be found on your county’s election website.

What identification do I need to vote by mail?

Texas rules for voting by mail require voters to provide an ID number on both their application for a ballot and the carrier envelope used to return a completed ballot. This must be one the following ID numbers:

A driver’s license number
A state ID number
The last four digits of their Social Security number
Texas election ID certificate number (this is a photo ID issued by DPS and is different from the number found on your voter registration certificate)

If you don’t have any of these, you can also check a box indicating you haven’t been issued this identification.

This identification rule was added by the Texas Legislature in 2021. Some voters have had their ballots or applications rejected because they didn’t provide an ID number or the number they provided did not match the one the state had for them.

If you don’t have a license number on file or are unsure about which ID number you provided, the secretary of state has previously suggested contacting your local voter registrar to ask about how to add one of the required numbers to your voter registration record.

Other voting advocates have suggested voters include both their driver’s license or state ID number and the last four digits of their Social Security number, if they have both, to avoid issues.

What counts as a disability to qualify to vote by mail?

The Texas election code’s definition for disability is broader than other federal definitions. A voter is eligible to vote by mail if they have a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents them from voting in person without the likelihood of “needing personal assistance or of injuring the voter’s health.”

What kind of postage do I need to return my mail-in ballot?

Some counties may pay postage for you. Local elections offices should have the specifics once ballots are finalized. That said, if you don’t have enough postage, your ballot is not supposed to be returned to you. Instead, the Postal Service said its practice is to deliver the ballot and bill your election administrator.

What if there’s an issue with my mail-in ballot?

Texas will allow voters to correct their mail-in ballots if the ballots are at risk of being rejected for a technical error, including missing information or signatures. This also applies to issues with the applications for those ballots. County officials are responsible for alerting voters if there is a defect with their application or ballot.

Voters can use a new online ballot tracker to check the status of both their application to vote by mail and their ballot. The tracker can be used to make corrections and is available here. The deadline to correct mail-in ballot applications is Feb. 20. The deadline to correct the envelope of a mail-in ballot is March 9. Corrections may also be submitted by mail – if election officials determine there’s enough time to do so – or in person at a county’s early voting clerk’s office.

How does primary voting work?

During primary elections, you’ll be selecting candidates from the same party. At the polls, you’ll choose whether you want to vote in the Republican or Democratic primary. Some counties will host what’s known as a joint primary, which means everyone checks in at the same desk and uses the same voting machines. In other counties, there will be separate check-in stations and lines for either party.

How can I find which polling places are near me?

By Feb. 11, county election offices should post on their websites information on polling locations for Election Day and during the early-voting period. The Secretary of State’s website will also have information on polling locations closer to the start of voting. However, polling locations may change, so be sure to check your county’s election website before going to vote.

What form of ID do I need to bring?

You’ll need one of seven types of valid photo ID to vote in Texas:

A state driver’s license (issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety)
A Texas election identification certificate (issued by DPS)
A Texas personal identification card (issued by DPS)
A Texas license to carry a handgun (issued by DPS)
A U.S. military ID card with a personal photo
A U.S. citizenship certificate with a personal photo
A U.S. passport

Check out this story for more details.

What if I don’t have a valid photo ID?

Voters can still cast votes if they sign a form swearing that they have a “reasonable impediment” from obtaining a proper photo ID. Those voters will also have to present one of the following types of supporting identification documents:

A valid voter registration certificate
A certified birth certificate
A court-admissable document that confirms your birth and establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
A current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other document that shows the voter’s name and address. This can be the original document or a copy, except for government documents that contains a voter’s photo, which must be the original.

If you have a valid photo ID but forgot it, you can cast a provisional ballot but will have to visit the local voter registrar’s office by March 9 to present an acceptable ID or documentation in order for the ballot to be counted. A registered voter without a valid photo ID or any of the supporting documents can also cast a provisional ballot.

Are there rules at the polls?

Cellphones, cameras, computers, and other devices that can record sound or images cannot be used within 100 feet of voting stations (where ballots are marked). There are usually traffic cones or signs indicating this. Campaigning, including wearing clothing or other items that publicize candidates, political parties, or measures on the ballot, is also banned beyond this point.

A new law also bans the use of wireless communication devices, like cellphones, in the same room where voting is taking place. Voters are allowed to use written notes to cast their ballot at the discretion of election officers, who determine if the material counts as campaigning.

Firearms, including handguns, are also prohibited at polling places, according to Texas law.

What are my rights as a voter?

If a registered voter’s name does not appear on the list of voters because of an administrative issue, they have the right to cast a provisional ballot.

Voters are entitled to get written instructions about how to cast a ballot or to ask a polling place officer or worker (they can not ask who or what to vote for).

If a voter makes a mistake while marking their ballot, they have a right to use up to two additional ballots to make corrections.

Voters generally have the right to cast their ballots in secret and should not be subject to intimidation.

Voters with disabilities or limited English proficiency can also get interpretation, assistance or other accommodations to vote.

A state law passed in 2023 also allows voters with disabilities or mobility problems to skip the line at their polling location and requires each polling location to have a designated parking spot for curbside voting.

Texas law says voters have the right to vote during work hours without being penalized or losing pay, but this may not apply if a worker has two hours before or after their shift is done to vote.

On Election Day, voters have the right to cast their ballot as long as they’re in line by 7 p.m.

At the polls, voters can talk to election officers or poll workers if they run into issues.

The Secretary of State’s office has a helpline at 1-800-252-VOTE (8683) where state attorneys are available to assist voters and election officials with questions.

A coalition of voting rights groups runs voter protection hotlines in several languages. Disability Rights Texas also offers a helpline for people with disabilities.

What if I was planning to vote in person but can no longer do so?

If you didn’t apply to vote by mail but are unable to go to a polling place, consider requesting an emergency early voting ballot or using curbside voting. Contact your county elections office for more details.

Emergency ballot: These ballots can be requested if you become sick or disabled close to an election and are unable to go to a polling place on Election Day. To qualify, you must designate a representative to submit an application in person on your behalf and have a certified doctor’s note. The application must be received by your county’s early voting clerk before 5 p.m. on Election Day.

Your ballot must be returned by the same designated representative before 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. Read more about the process here.

Emergency ballots are also available, through a different process, for individuals who cannot vote on Election Day due to the death of a close family member. Read more about that process and requirements here.

Curbside voting: You can contact your county elections office to determine if you’re eligible for curbside voting, which must be made available at every polling place for voters with disabilities who are unable to enter a polling location. A new law requires curbside voters to fill out a form attesting that they are physically unable to enter a voting location.

How do I know if my provisional ballot was counted?

If you voted with a provisional ballot because of an administrative issue or photo ID problem, you should receive a notice by mail saying whether your ballot was counted in the local canvass, which is the final tally of votes. These notices must be mailed by March 23, according to the state’s election law calendar.

What about regular ballots?

Counties keep track of when people have voted but a voter’s choices are anonymous once ballots are submitted and added to the official count of votes. To ensure vote counts are accurate, counties test election equipment multiple times, including in a public test conducted before an election.

What voter data is public?

Voting history is public. This includes primary election history, meaning the primary you voted in may be disclosed in the rosters of voters that counties are required to post. Your ballot choices are not public.

Disclosure: The Texas Secretary of State has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Early-voting period in Houston area’s 18th Congressional District extended

2026-01-26T22:08:37+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

A district judge has ordered Harris County to extend the early voting period for the runoff election in Texas’ 18th Congressional District, after polling stations were closed Sunday and Monday due to severe weather.

The Texas Civil Rights Project on Sunday filed a lawsuit against the county on behalf of organizations Houston Justice and Pure Justice, asking to add Jan. 28 and Jan. 29 to early voting.

“While understandable in light of severe weather and safety concerns, these closures will make it impossible for some of Plaintiffs’ members and other voters in Congressional District 18 … to exercise their right to vote in this important special runoff election,” the lawsuit said.

On Monday, Judge Latosha Lewis Payne granted the groups’ request. According to her order, the county is required to operate the same early voting locations that were set for Monday on Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Meanwhile, the Sunday polling places would have to be open from noon to 7 p.m. on Thursday.

Harris County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth’s office didn’t immediately respond to a comment request.

The runoff election is between former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, both Democrats. Both support the lawsuit.

“Folks in TX-18 have already gone nearly a year without a voice in Congress,” Menefee said in a Sunday post on social media. “We shouldn’t have to settle for just five days to vote early in such an important election.”

He subsequently called the judge’s order “a big win for voter access.”

The district hasn’t had representation in Congress since the March 2025 death of U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner.

“This district has gone without its voice, without its vote, without anyone to advocate on its behalf of federal funding for far too long,” Edwards told The Texas Tribune Sunday. “We are finally on the cusp of it getting its voice back and we want to make sure that as many people in this 18th Congressional District as possible have the opportunity to participate in this process.”

The winner will hold the seat through the end of this year, but will have little time to prepare for the primary election on March 3, which will effectively decide who represents the heavily Democratic district starting in 2027. The primary also includes U.S. Rep. Al Green, who is changing districts after his district was redrawn in the recent mid-decade redistricting, and Gretchen Brown, a candidate with defense policy experience.

In the Nov. 4 special election to replace Turner, Menefee finished first with 28.9% of the vote, while Edwards was second at 25.6%, out of 16 candidates.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers disputes Madison’s argument that absentee voting is a privilege

2026-01-26T20:01:40+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers criticized an argument by Madison and its former city clerk that they shouldn’t be held liable for losing 193 absentee ballots because absentee voting is a “privilege,” writing in a court filing that accepting such an argument would “lead to absurd results.”

The argument is key to the city’s defense against a lawsuit that seeks monetary damages on behalf of the 193 Madison residents whose votes in the November 2024 election weren’t counted. It was first presented by the former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, citing a provision of state law, and then adopted by the city.

If courts accept the argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a right, the Democratic governor said in a friend-of-the-court brief, election officials would be free to treat absentee ballots in ways that diminish people’s right to vote. For example, he wrote, they would be under no obligation to send voters replacement ballots if ballots they left in a drop box were damaged, and clerks could effectively disqualify ballots from politically disfavored precincts by intentionally not signing their initials on the ballot envelopes.

Experts say that for a governor to intervene in such a local matter is rare and underscores how seriously Evers views the potential implications. In an earlier communication with the court, the governor said the argument from the city and Witzel-Behl “ignores longstanding state constitutional protections.”

Barry Burden, a political science professor at UW-Madison, said Democrats are likely conflicted by the case, seeking to prevent election administration failures like those in Madison while also resisting arguments that could weaken protections for absentee voting in Wisconsin.

“They’re in a weird place to be criticizing absentee balloting in Madison, one of the most Democratic cities in the state,” he said, adding that he thinks the governor “is speaking for the Democratic Party in getting involved in this case” to convey that it is an “isolated incident,” and that the party does not share the position that “absentee voting should be treated any differently in terms of the protections that are given to voters than people who vote in person.’”

In his filing Friday, the governor noted that about 45% of ballots in the 2024 presidential election were absentee.

“The constitutional right to vote,” Evers wrote, “would mean little if close to half of all voters in Wisconsin were deprived of it because they chose to legally cast an absentee ballot.”

Witzel-Behl, former clerk, stands by the ‘privilege’ defense

The lawsuit against Madison officials is a novel type of case in seeking monetary damages over the loss of voting rights. A liberal law firm called Law Forward filed the case against the city and the clerk’s office, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, alleging that through a series of errors that led to 193 absentee ballots getting lost in the November 2024 election, election workers disenfranchised the voters and violated their constitutional rights.

As part of their defense, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right,” and that she therefore couldn’t be held financially liable for the lost ballots. Madison later joined that argument.

Law Forward rejected the argument in a response filed in late December, calling it a “shocking proposition.”

Attorneys for the city and the former clerk submitted their own briefs last week.

Attorneys for Witzel-Behl reiterated their argument that absentee voting is a privilege and not a constitutional right, adding that “an error in the handling or delivery of an absentee ballot is not the constitutional equivalent of barring the door to the voting booth.”

While absentee ballots should normally be counted, they argued, not counting them because of an unintentional error isn’t a constitutional violation that they should be financially liable for.

Rather than following court precedent, they said, the plaintiffs seek to create a “new, foundationless doctrine allowing monetary damages for the mishandling of an absentee ballot.”

Other defendants zero in on novel monetary claim

In a separate brief, Verbick, the deputy clerk, said he “does not, of course, dispute that Plaintiffs have a right to vote” but rather alleges that there’s no path for the plaintiffs to seek monetary damages for the city’s error.

The city, in another brief, similarly said that no court case cited by Law Forward allows plaintiffs to seek damages for ballots that are unintentionally mishandled.

Allowing such claims, outside attorneys for the city warned, would push courts into “dangerous, untested waters.”

“As other courts have cautioned,” they said, “exposing local election officials to financial liability for unintentional disenfranchisement would thrust courts into the minutia of any given election, a role for which courts are unsuited.”

In a separate statement, the city said it believes that all forms of voting, including absentee voting, should be “encouraged, promoted and protected.” But it argued against attaching a dollar amount to a mishandled vote.

Doing so, it said, “would end up regularly costing cities, towns and municipalities hundreds, thousands — or in this case millions — of dollars that could otherwise be spent improving voter access and elections processes.”

Absentee voting has changed substantially since law’s enactment

The law cited by Witzel-Behl’s attorneys labeling absentee voting a privilege — one that may require more regulation than in-person voting — dates back to 1985. It was enacted after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of absentee voting rules. While it has previously been used to invalidate absentee ballots on which voters did not follow procedure, it has so far not been used in support of a locality failing to properly count votes.

“Absentee voting has changed so radically in the 40 years since the law was written,” Burden said. “It was used by a very small number of voters, it was more difficult to use, there were more witness requirements at the time, and clerks were not really as amenable to absentee voting as they are today.”

Today, absentee voting is an expected and routine part of elections.

“So to treat it as kind of a special class with different rules or rights, maybe in the 1980s that made more sense,” Burden said. “But now it’s as important as any other kind of voting and so it seems more peculiar, I think, to treat it in some different way.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Postal Service changes mean Texas voters shouldn’t wait to mail voter registrations and ballots

2026-01-21T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texans seeking to register to vote or cast a ballot by mail may not want to wait until the last minute, thanks to new guidance from the U.S. Postal Service.

The USPS last month advised that it may not postmark a piece of mail on the same day that it takes possession of it. Postmarks are applied once mail reaches a processing facility, it said, which may not be the same day it’s dropped in a mailbox, for example.

The new policy means that even if a voter drops their mail ballot in a box by Election Day, it could be rejected if it’s not postmarked on that day. A voter registration application also could miss being postmarked by the Feb. 2 deadline.

That means it’s important to mail voter registration applications and mail ballots early, or bring election mail to a post office and request a manual postmark.

In Texas, there’s no way to register to vote online. The state requires voters to submit a voter registration application to county voter registrars in person or by mail. Mailed applications must be postmarked by Feb. 2 in order for a voter to be eligible to cast a ballot in next month’s primary election.

Mail ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and received by 5 p.m. on the following day in order to be counted.

Here’s what you need to know about the deadlines and procedures for registering and voting by mail:

When is the Texas voter registration deadline for the primary?

In order for a voter to be eligible to vote in the March 3 primary election, their voter registration application must be submitted to the county voter registrar or postmarked by Feb. 2.

Voters can register to vote at any time prior to the deadline. You can print out this form, sign it, and submit it.

What is the Texas mail-in ballot application deadline?

If you qualify to vote by mail, you must first fill out and submit a mail ballot application. For the coming March primary, all mail ballot applications must be received by the end of business on Feb. 20. That time of day varies by county.

What’s the deadline to mail in my ballot?

Election officials can tally mail-in ballots that are postmarked before 7 p.m. on March 3, which is Election Day, and received by 5 p.m. on March 4.

Can I drop it off in person instead?

Yes, but only on Election Day, when voters are permitted to drop off their mail ballot in person at the elections office. Voters are allowed to deliver only their own ballot, and must bring a photo ID. Mail-in ballots cannot be dropped off in person during the two weeks of early voting or any other time prior to Election Day.

What if I live abroad or I am a member of the military overseas?

The deadline to receive ballots from overseas voters is Monday, March 9. The carrier envelope must have a postmark showing it was in the mail by 7 p.m. on March 3 (Election Day).

For military voters who mailed ballots domestically or from overseas and who submitted a Federal Post Card Application, the deadline is also March 9. The carrier envelope does not need to have any postmark.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Trump regrets not calling up troops after the 2020 election. What stops him in 2026?

2026-01-19T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Regrets — we’ve all had a few. One of President Donald Trump’s, apparently, is not directing the National Guard to seize voting machines after the 2020 election in search of evidence of fraud.

That revelation, part of a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times on Jan. 7, commands particular attention in a world where Trump has already sought to push the boundaries of his power, deploying the National Guard to multiple U.S. cities to crack down on protests and crime. The November midterms will be the first federal general election with Trump as president since that 2020 contest, and even before his comments to the Times, plenty of people were already worried that Trump would attempt to deploy the National Guard around the 2026 election.

The National Guard isn’t necessarily the problem here; the Guard actually has a history of helping with election administration, such as when troops in civilian clothing helped fill in for absent poll workers during the pandemic in 2020. But many Democrats and election officials are worried that Trump could, say, send them to polling places to interfere with voting on Election Day. If troops were to take possession of voting machines or other equipment, it could break the chain of custody and invalidate scads of ballots. And if troops just show up outside polling places, even if they don’t try to impede the administration of the election, their presence could still intimidate voters.

That’s a worst-case scenario. However, there are significant legal and practical barriers to Trump doing this.

First, it’s clearly illegal: Federal law prohibits stationing “troops or armed men at any place where a general or special election is held, unless such force be necessary to repel armed enemies of the United States.” It’s also illegal for members of the military to prevent, or attempt to prevent, an eligible voter from voting and to interfere “in any manner with an election officer’s discharge of his duties.” That could include taking possession of voting machines.

Even the Insurrection Act — which grants the president wide leeway to use the military for domestic law enforcement in emergencies, and which Trump threatened to invoke just last week in Minneapolis — wouldn’t give troops the right to break these laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Second, courts have so far significantly reined in Trump’s existing National Guard deployments — raising questions about whether he’d even have control of the Guard in key states. In December, the Supreme Court signed off on a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from deploying troops to Illinois, whose Democratic governor had challenged his authority to do so. (National Guard troops are usually under the command of their state’s governor.)

The Supreme Court’s order for now functionally limits Trump to deploying the National Guard in states where he has the governor’s consent. And the 2026 midterm elections are likely to be decided in states whose governors mostly aren’t the type to let Trump deploy troops there. Of the 60 U.S. House seats currently listed as “in play” by Inside Elections, an election handicapping website, 38 are in states with Democratic governors.

And while the path to the U.S. Senate majority does mostly run through red states, and Republicans have, on the whole, not shown much interest in standing up to Trump, it’s not a given that every Republican governor would acquiesce to Trump sending in troops — especially for as norm-shattering a reason as to police an election.

The New York Times also reported this week that multiple Republican politicians privately criticized Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And plenty of sitting Republican governors have had their differences with Trump publicly as well:

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio (home to three competitive House seats and a pivotal Senate race) is very much an old guard Republican who has objected to Trump’s most controversial behavior.
Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa (also home to three competitive House seats and a potentially interesting Senate race) endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries and is not running for reelection this year.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire (home to two competitive House seats and a vulnerable Democratic-held Senate seat) is a moderate Republican who disavowed Trump in 2016 and waited a conspicuously long time to endorse him in 2024.
Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia (home to another vulnerable Democratic Senate seat) famously rebuffed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election result in his state.

The Trump administration has thrown cold water all over the idea that it will mobilize the National Guard this November. A White House spokesperson told NPR in November that concerns about troops at polling places were “baseless conspiracy theories and Democrat talking points.” And in an interview with Vanity Fair late last year, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said that “it is categorically false, will not happen.”

But given Trump’s avowed interest in using the National Guard to subvert an election, many officials aren’t taking any chances. At a conference of local election administrators earlier this month in Virginia, attendees were already gaming out what to do in a scenario where armed troops arrive at a polling place.

Any attempt to use the military to influence the election — even if it’s quickly extinguished by a court — would be one of the most brazen acts of election interference in modern times. Whether or not it ultimately affected the outcome of the election, it could still shatter many Americans’ belief in the sanctity of the voting booth.

Nathaniel Rakich is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Nathaniel at nrakich@votebeat.org.

New federal ruling is latest defeat to Trump administration’s election agenda

2026-01-13T20:10:57+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

A federal judge on Friday became the third one to block key provisions of President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at revising election rules nationwide, ruling that the Constitution gives states and Congress —not the president— the authority to exercise power over elections.

The administration signaled it is likely to appeal the decision, the latest blow to Trump’s agenda on elections.

His March executive order sought to require proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form, mostly ban the use of machine-readable codes when tallying ballots, and prohibit the counting of ballots postmarked Election Day but received afterwards.

The administration has appealed two earlier rulings in other cases against the executive order. The cases could ultimately reach the U.S. Supreme Court, but election law experts told Votebeat the president faces long odds.

The White House has said the president is planning a second executive order on elections, though it’s unclear what will be in it, and federal court rulings so far show the approach has limitations.

“The court is very clear that the Constitution gives no authority to the president to do any of these things, and that federal law doesn’t either,” said Derek Clinger, a senior staff attorney with the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative.

The president has also pushed for congressional action to change federal election laws, though federal legislation so far has stalled. He’s called on state lawmakers to advance his policy goals and some states, including Ohio, have repealed grace periods for mail ballots postmarked by Election Day but not received until afterwards.

In rulings in the two related elections executive order cases last year, federal judges struck down provisions of the order requiring those who registered to vote using the federal voter registration form to provide documentary proof of citizenship and requiring federal voter registration agencies to “assess” the citizenship of individuals who receive public assistance before providing them a voter registration form.

“It keeps getting worse for him,” David Becker, an election lawyer who worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and now leads the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, said about Trump. “The more courts look at this executive order, the more they come to the conclusion that the president vastly exceeded his constitutional authority.”

Court ruling meant to ‘restore the proper balance of power’

In his Friday ruling, U.S. District Judge John Chun sided with the states of Oregon and Washington in his ruling against provisions of Trump’s order. He ruled against aspects of the order that require documented proof of citizenship on a federal voter form, call on the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to revise certification guidelines to prohibit certain voting machines, and stop absentee ballots arriving after Election Day from being tallied, even if they are postmarked by Election Day.

He also struck down provisions of the executive order tying federal election funding to complying with the proof-of-citizenship provisions and the one banning ballots arriving after Election Day from being processed.

Chun, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, cited a long history of federal authorities — courts, politicians, and the Founding Fathers — recognizing the potential dangers in giving the president unilateral presidential powers of elections.

The intent of his decision, he said, was to “restore the proper balance of power among the Executive Branch, the states, and Congress envisioned by the Framers.”

Chun specified that his rulings blocking provisions denying election funding and banning ballots arriving after Election Day would apply only to Oregon and Washington, states that primarily rely on mail voting and which brought the lawsuit. But he barred the U.S. EAC from altering the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship and altering the agency’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines to exclude machines that tally ballots using barcodes or quick-response codes.

The Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Executive order fails in court but inspires some action elsewhere

There are just two available constitutional paths for people in the federal government to change election policy in the states, Becker said: an act of Congress or persuading a state Legislature to change state election law.

Outside of some Republican-majority states banning mail-voting grace periods, he added, Trump’s desire to change state-level voting policy has been largely ineffective — states have hardly changed their practices.

Clinger said that the executive order is having a more tangible impact within the federal government.

For example, he said, the order instructed the U.S. Department of Justice to prioritize violations of election laws. The agency has filed 23 lawsuits so far against states unwilling to provide unredacted voter data to the government, which the Justice Department said it needs to make sure federal election laws are properly followed, and many of those lawsuits cited Trump’s executive order.

“Even if the executive order isn’t accomplishing its goals, it does come off as marching orders to the rest of the federal government to pursue related goals,” he said.

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University who advised President Joe Biden’s administration on democracy and voting rights, said Trump’s election agenda boils down to “project power that he doesn’t have,” in hopes that the public will lose confidence in election results “even if the rules don’t change one bit.”

Levitt said doesn’t think the public will buy the hype, mostly because Trump and his allies don’t appear to have an actual plan for advancing their agenda. As he has in the past, he likened it to a South Park episode in which gnomes steal underpants as part of a three-step scheme — except they can’t explain the step between collecting the underpants and turning a profit.

A strategy missing the middle, Levitt said, “encapsulates quite a bit of the Trump administration’s approach to elections.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Dallas and Williamson counties switch to precinct-level voting for primary election day

2026-01-09T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

In an about-face, Dallas County Republicans last week decided against hand-counting ballots in Texas’ March primary, saying they weren’t able to line up enough workers, among other hurdles.

That leaves just two counties where Republicans will hand-count their primary ballots: Gillespie County, west of Austin, and Eastland County, southwest of Fort Worth.

But Republicans in Dallas and Williamson counties are planning another major change for the March 3 primary election that will also require more election workers, and will affect how voters cast their ballots: They intend to eliminate the use of countywide voting sites on Election Day.

That means voters in these counties — Republicans and Democrats — would be required to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood polling places instead of at more centralized polling locations that can accommodate any voter from anywhere in the county.

Under state law, the parties have wide authority to decide how to run their primaries, but they must agree on whether to use countywide voting. If the Republicans don’t want to offer it, Democrats can’t offer it either.

Michelle Evans, the chair of the Williamson County GOP, said that having voters cast ballots at their assigned polling location brings “a higher level of confidence that the people that are coming in are people that are registered voters in that area, because that is their community.”

Democrats in those counties say they’re struggling to find enough locations to support neighborhood-level voting. “We don’t even have all the locations locked down,” said Kim Gilby, the Democratic Party chair in Williamson County. “To me, this is going to be a nightmare.”

Democrats also worry the change will confuse voters from both parties who have for years been used to countywide sites on Election Day. The move, they say, could potentially disenfranchise voters who go to the wrong location and aren’t able to cast a ballot.

In response to questions, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said all voters receive registration cards that list their precinct. “I would hate to believe that we have devolved to a point where we feel the voting electorate is too incompetent to read their own voter registration card,” West told Votebeat in a text message.

Here’s why the shift is happening, and what you need to know:

Who decides where voters can cast ballots on Election Day during a primary election?

Under state law, for Election Day voting, it’s up to political parties to determine whether voters should cast ballots at their assigned neighborhood precinct or at a countywide vote center.

This applies only to primaries. For general elections (which include any election called by the governor), that decision is made at the county level by the county commissioners’ courts.

What about early voting during a primary election?

County officials, not the political parties, manage the two weeks of early voting. Under state law, during early voting, voters can cast ballots in person at any polling location available in their county.

Can’t Democrats split with Republicans and stick with countywide vote centers on Election Day?

No. In order for a county to offer countywide polling places in the primary election, under Texas law, both parties must agree to use them. So the Republicans’ decision to use assigned polling locations in some counties requires Democrats in those counties to do the same, even if the party prefers countywide polling sites.

Why do Republicans favor assigned neighborhood voting sites over countywide voting?

Republican critics of countywide voting claim it makes elections less secure because it could allow people “to double or triple vote,” though there’s no evidence that this can happen. Texas election officials have procedures in place to prevent double voting, including the use of voting equipment that helps officials know in real time who has voted and where.

Some Republicans also say countywide voting makes it easier to pierce ballot secrecy by allowing the public to piece together different pieces of data from public records to figure out what choices certain people made on their ballots.

Votebeat and the Texas Tribune last year reported that it was possible, in limited instances, to link some ballots to the voters who cast them, but the problem wasn’t just tied to voters using countywide voting sites and eliminating it doesn’t fix risks to ballot secrecy. The problem with linking ballots stems from Texas’ push to make almost all election records public, which allowed researchers, in some cases, to cross-reference different public records and find a specific voter’s ballot image.

Republican lawmakers have proposed eliminating the use of countywide voting across the state.

What are Democrats’ concerns with assigned neighborhood-level polling locations?

Using assigned precincts requires, in some cases, twice as many polling locations as countywide voting. Each polling place has to be staffed with workers and furnished with materials and equipment. Texas law requires each polling location to have a minimum of three election workers, who must be paid at least $12 per hour.

Party and county officials say it’s difficult to find enough election workers and enough polling locations that comply with security and accessibility requirements.

Although some public buildings are free to use, they’re not always available, which requires leasing of spaces, at an additional cost.

The countywide polling place program eased some of those costs by allowing officials to use fewer, and more centralized locations, while offering voters flexibility on where to cast ballots.

Democrats are also worried that voters who show up at the wrong polling location on Election Day may be turned away without casting a ballot. Although a voter can ask to cast a provisional ballot if their name is not on the precinct’s voter list, if it’s found to have been cast at the wrong voting location, it won’t ultimately be tallied.

Who pays for the primary elections in Texas?

The costs of primary elections are covered mostly by taxpayers, as well as candidate filing fees.

Political parties in each county have funds generated from local candidate filing fees, fundraisers, and donations that they can use to pay for primary elections and their own administrative costs. The costs for the primary are then reimbursed by the state.

The Texas Legislature allocated about $21 million for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.

How can voters in Dallas County and Williamson County find out their assigned polling location?

Every registered voter should receive their voter registration card this month from the county elections office. That card has voters’ precinct information.

Voters can also visit their county’s elections website or reach out to their voter registrar to find their assigned precinct.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Madison’s defense in missing-ballot case: Absentee voting is a ‘privilege,’ not a right

2026-01-08T21:06:12+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

The city of Madison, Wisconsin, and its former clerk are arguing in court that they can’t be sued for failing to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election, in part because a Wisconsin law calls absentee voting a privilege, not a constitutional right.

That legal argument raises questions about how much protection absentee voters have against the risk of disenfranchisement — and could reignite a recent debate over whether the law calling absentee voting a privilege is itself unconstitutional.

That law, which appears to be uncommon outside of Wisconsin, has been cited repeatedly in recent years in attempts to impose more requirements and restrictions on absentee voting, and, at times, disqualify absentee ballots on which the voters have made errors. It does not appear to have been invoked to absolve election officials for errors in handling correctly cast ballots.

Nonetheless, the law has become central to the defense presented by Madison and its former clerk, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, in a novel lawsuit seeking monetary damages on behalf of the voters whose ballots went missing.

The suit, filed by the law firm Law Forward, names the city and the clerk’s office as defendants, along with Witzel-Behl and Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick in their personal capacities, and cites a series of errors after the 2024 election that led to the ballots not being counted in alleging that they violated voters’ constitutional rights.

In defending against that claim, attorneys for Witzel-Behl argued in a court filing that by choosing to vote absentee, the 193 disenfranchised voters “exercised a privilege rather than a constitutional right.”

Witzel-Behl’s filing argues that the 193 disenfranchised voters did, in fact, exercise their right to vote, but chose to vote absentee and therefore place the ballots into an administrative system that “can result in errors.”

“The fact that Plaintiffs’ ballots were not counted is unfortunate,” the filing states. “But it is the result of human error, not malice. And that human error was not a violation of the Plaintiffs’ constitutional right to vote.”

Matthew W. O’Neill, an attorney representing Witzel-Behl, declined to comment.

The city’s attorneys have now adopted the same argument, filings show.

Asked about the city’s legal defense, Madison’s current clerk, Lydia McComas didn’t address the argument directly but told Votebeat that the city is committed to counting all eligible votes “regardless of how they are cast.”

Phil Keisling, a former Oregon secretary of state, said he wasn’t aware of other states with similar laws. He said he found the city’s argument wrong and offensive.

“The right to vote, if there is a state constitutional right to vote, should have nothing to do with the form that a voter chooses,” he said.

Law passed to clarify absentee voting requirements

The law that Madison cites in its legal defense was enacted in 1985, long before absentee voting became widespread. The stricter language about the regulation of absentee voting came after judges in a series of Wisconsin court cases called for more liberal interpretation of those regulations.

The law states that while voting is a constitutional right, “voting by absentee ballot is a privilege exercised wholly outside the traditional safeguards of the polling place.” A subsequent provision states that absentee ballots that do not follow required procedures “may not be counted.”

The law appears similar to a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court decision that drew a distinction between the right to vote and the right to receive absentee ballots. That decision has since been interpreted — and misinterpreted — in a “number of ways by a number of people wanting to trim back mail voting,” said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University.

After the Wisconsin law was enacted, the state election board clarified the Legislature’s position that failing to comply with procedures for absentee ballot applications and voting would result in ballots not being counted. The board did not suggest the law could be used to excuse municipalities that improperly discard legally cast ballots.

Absentee voting has long been available in Wisconsin but surged in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been extensively litigated since then.

The law calling absentee voting a privilege was central to a lawsuit that resulted in a 2022 statewide ban on ballot drop boxes; another lawsuit to prohibit voters from being able to spoil ballots and vote a new one; and President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election outcome in Wisconsin.

A later lawsuit led to the reinstatement of drop boxes in 2024. In that case, plaintiffs argued that the law “unconstitutionally degrades the voting rights of all absentee voters by increasing the risk of disenfranchisement.” The court, then led by liberal justices, declined to overturn the statute but disagreed with an earlier interpretation that absentee voting requires heightened skepticism.

Experts say Madison’s defense misinterprets the law

Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law School and expert on election law, said he didn’t think the law itself was problematic, adding that states have various laws controlling absentee voting. The U.S. Constitution, he noted, doesn’t require any state to offer absentee voting.

But “once the state gives someone the opportunity to vote by mail,” he said, “then they can’t — as a matter of federal constitutional law — deprive that person of their vote because they chose a method that the state didn’t have to offer.”

The city and Witzel-Behl’s use of the law in this instance “seems to be wrong,” said Hasen.

Attorneys for Law Forward in a court filing called Witzel-Behl’s argument a “shocking proposition.”

“There is no right to vote if our votes are not counted,” Law Forward staff attorney Scott Thompson told Votebeat. “And this is the only case I’m aware of where a municipal government has argued otherwise.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Dallas County Republicans abandon plan to hand-count ballots in March primary

2025-12-30T22:22:13+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

After months of laying the groundwork to hand-count thousands of ballots in the March 3 primary, the Dallas County Republican Party announced on Tuesday it has decided not to do so, opting instead to contract with the county elections department to administer the election using voting equipment.

The decision spares the party the pressure it likely would have faced if a hand-count had delayed results beyond the state’s 24-hour reporting requirements in the state’s closely watched GOP primary for U.S. Senate, among other offices.

In a statement posted on social media, Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West said he decided to work with the county to “conduct a precinct-based, community, separate Election Day electoral process.” The move, he said, “reduces the liabilities” of the party. “In this case, discretion is the better part of valor.”

The decision reverses months of statements suggesting the party was seriously preparing to count tens of thousands of Election Day ballots by hand — a move that would have affected all Dallas County voters, regardless of party.

Under Texas law, if one party hand-counts ballots, both parties must abandon countywide Election Day voting at vote centers and require voters to cast ballots at assigned neighborhood precincts. Democrats had planned to use voting equipment to tabulate their results, but would have been forced into precinct-only voting if Republicans proceeded with a hand count. It’s unclear if the GOP’s intention to use precinct-based voting would lock Democrats into the same arrangement; the Dallas County Elections Department has not responded to requests for more information.

Republicans in Dallas County and elsewhere have pushed in recent years to count ballots by hand as President Donald Trump and others have decreased trust in voting machines by spreading unfounded claims about their reliability. However, election officials and voting experts have repeatedly warned that hand-counting ballots at scale is costly, labor-intensive, slower to produce results and more prone to human error than machine tabulation. State law also does not require audits of hand-counted ballots and severely limits public observation of the counting process.

In early December, West said the party had raised more than $400,000 toward a hand-count effort and recruited more than 1,000 workers. But there were still unresolved concerns about staffing, training, security, facilities, and funding, particularly as the Texas Secretary of State’s Office warned counties it may not have enough money to reimburse unusually high primary costs if many jurisdictions choose to hand-count.

Hand-counting would also have required significantly more polling locations and workers than recent primaries. In elections that are hand-counted, Texas law requires ballots to be cast and counted at assigned precincts, and in all elections, the law mandates that counting continue without interruption once polls close. Election workers must be paid at least $12 an hour, and large hand counts can stretch late into the night or beyond.

In an interview on Tuesday, West said the party would need at least 3,000 hand-counters but had recruited fewer than half that number. “We cannot take that risk of not being able to have the appropriate amount of counters because it would put our election judges in an untenable legal position,” he said. “We’ve got 63 days to go — early voting will start the 16th of February.”

Under Texas law, political parties control how ballots are counted in primaries but must report results within 24 hours after polls close. Party chairs have been warned that court orders could be required if hand-counts delay reporting.

By contracting with the county, Dallas County Republicans would avoid those logistical hurdles and allow both parties to continue using voting equipment and established election procedures. According to West, the Dallas County GOP is currently working on a contract with the county and expects it to be signed on Wednesday.

Managing Editor Nathaniel Rakich contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin town will use accessible voting machines after federal lawsuit

2025-12-19T19:10:45+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

A small Wisconsin town whose leaders chose not to use federally required accessible voting machines in two federal elections in 2024 has agreed with the U.S. Department of Justice to use that equipment going forward, the agency announced on Dec. 12.

The town board of Thornapple, a town of 700 people in northern Wisconsin’s Rusk County, made the decision in 2023 but previously declined to elaborate on the reasons behind the decision. Distrust of voting machines, which has grown on the right following false claims about the 2020 election, has fueled a movement to ban them. The Thornapple case, however, shows that municipalities still have obligations under federal law to allow voters with disabilities to cast ballots on electronic machines.

The Justice Department, under then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, sued the town in September 2024, arguing that its decision violated the Help America Vote Act. The law requires accessible machines be available in every precinct, allowing voters with disabilities to hear the options on the ballot and use a touch-sensitive device to mark it.

The town initially fought the case, arguing that it wasn’t subject to the federal law’s accessibility provision because its use of paper ballots didn’t constitute a “voting system.”

Thornapple officials lost an appeal in July, after the court heard testimony from Thornapple Chief Inspector Suzanne Pinnow about a blind woman who relied on her daughter’s assistance to fill out a ballot, and from a man who had a stroke and who needed Pinnow to guide his hand so he could mark a ballot.

The town settled the case by agreeing to use an accessible voting machine in every federal election. The town also agreed to certify to Justice Department officials after each election that it continues to follow the settlement agreement.

Since President Donald Trump, a Republican, took office in January, the DOJ has withdrawn from multiple voting-related cases and shifted its priorities to suing states, including Wisconsin, for access to unredacted versions of their voter lists, which it has said it needs to ensure compliance with federal law. The department remained in the Thornapple case, however.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Here’s why Milwaukee elections are always viewed with suspicion

2025-12-19T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

For nearly two weeks following Election Day in 2024, former U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde, a Republican, refused to concede, blasting “last-minute absentee ballots that were dropped in Milwaukee at 4 a.m., flipping the outcome.”

But, just as when Donald Trump blamed Milwaukee for his 2020 loss, Hovde’s accusations and insinuations about the city’s election practices coincided with a surge of conspiratorial posts about the city. Popular social media users speculated about “sabotage” and “fraudulently high” turnout.

Hovde earlier this year told Votebeat that he believes there are issues at Milwaukee’s facility for counting absentee ballots, but he added that he doesn’t blame his loss on that. He didn’t respond to a request for comment in December for this article.

In Wisconsin’s polarized political landscape, Milwaukee has become a flashpoint for election suspicion, much like Philadelphia and Detroit — diverse, Democratic urban centers that draw outsized criticism. The scrutiny reflects the state’s deep rural-urban divide and a handful of election errors in Milwaukee that conspiracy theorists have seized on, leaving the city’s voters and officials under constant political pressure.

That treatment, Milwaukee historian John Gurda says, reflects “the general pattern where you have big cities governed by Democrats” automatically perceived by the right “as centers of depravity [and] insane, radical leftists.”

Charlie Sykes — a longtime conservative commentator no longer aligned with much of the GOP — said there’s “nothing tremendously mysterious” about Republicans singling out Milwaukee: As long as election conspiracy theories dominate the right, the heavily Democratic city will remain a target.

Milwaukee voters and election officials under constant watch

Milwaukee’s emergence as a target in voter fraud narratives accelerated in 2010, when dozens of billboards in the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods showed three people, including two Black people, behind bars with the warning: “VOTER FRAUD is a FELONY — 3 YRS & $10,000 FINE.”

Community groups condemned them as racist and misleading, especially for people who had regained their voting rights after felony convictions. Similar billboards returned in 2012, swapping the jail bars for a gavel. All of the advertisements were funded by the Einhorn Family Foundation, associated with GOP donor Stephen Einhorn, who didn’t respond to Votebeat’s email requesting comment.

Criticism of Milwaukee extends well beyond its elections. As Wisconsin’s largest city, it is often cast as an outlier in a largely rural state, making it easier for some to believe the worst about its institutions — including its elections.

“One of the undercurrents of Wisconsin political history is … rural parts versus urban parts,” said University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee political scientist and former Democratic legislator Mordecai Lee. As the state’s biggest city by far, “it becomes the punching bag for outstate legislators” on almost any issue.

“People stay at home and watch the evening news and they think if you come to Milwaukee, you’re going to get shot … or you’re going to get run over by a reckless driver,” said Claire Woodall, who ran the city’s elections from 2020 to 2024.

Election officials acknowledge Milwaukee has made avoidable mistakes in high-stakes elections but describe them as quickly remedied and the kinds of errors any large city can experience when processing tens of thousands of ballots. What sets Milwaukee apart is the scrutiny: Whether it was a briefly forgotten USB stick in 2020 or tabulator doors left open in 2024, each lapse is treated as something more ominous.

Other Wisconsin municipalities have made more consequential errors without attracting comparable attention: In 2011, Waukesha County failed to report votes from Brookfield when tallying a statewide court race — a major oversight that put the wrong candidate in the lead in early unofficial results. In 2024, Summit, a town in Douglas County, disqualified all votes in an Assembly race after officials discovered ballots were printed with the wrong contest listed.

“I don’t believe that there is anywhere in the state that is under a microscope the way the City of Milwaukee is,” said Neil Albrecht, a former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Black Milwaukeeans say racism behind scrutiny on elections

Milwaukee grew quickly in the 19th century, built by waves of European immigrants who powered its factories and breweries and helped turn it into one of the Midwest’s major industrial cities. A small Black community, searching for employment and fleeing the Jim Crow South, took root early and grew substantially in the mid-20th century.

As industry declined, white residents fled for the suburbs, many of which had racist housing policies that excluded Blacks. That left behind a city marked by segregated schools, shrinking job prospects, and sharp economic divides. The split was so stark that the Menomonee River Valley became a shorthand boundary: Black residents to the north, white residents to the south — a divide Milwaukee never fully overcame.

The result is one of the most segregated cities in the country, a place that looks and feels profoundly different from the overwhelmingly white, rural communities that surround it. That contrast has long made Milwaukee an easy target in statewide politics, and it continues to feed some people’s suspicions that something about the city — including its elections — is fundamentally untrustworthy.

The Rev. Greg Lewis, executive director of Wisconsin’s Souls to the Polls, said the reputation is rooted in racism and belied by reality. He said he has a hard enough time getting minorities to vote at all, “let alone vote twice.”

Albrecht agreed.

“If a Souls to the Polls bus would pull up to [a polling site], a bus full of Black people, some Republican observer would mutter, ‘Oh, these are the people being brought up from Chicago,’” he said. “As if we don’t have African Americans in Milwaukee.”

After former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes — a Black Milwaukeean and a Democrat — lost his 2022 U.S. Senate bid to unseat U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, Bob Spindell, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, emailed constituents saying Republicans “can be especially proud” of Milwaukee casting 37,000 fewer votes than in 2018, “with the major reduction happening in the overwhelming Black and Hispanic areas.”

The message sparked backlash, though Spindell rejected accusations of racism. Asked about it this year, Spindell told Votebeat he meant to praise GOP outreach to Black voters.

Milwaukee organizer Angela Lang said she finds the shifting narratives about Black turnout revealing. “Are we voting [illegally]?” she said. “Or are you all happy that we’re not voting?”

History of real and perceived errors increases pressure on city

The scrutiny directed at Milwaukee falls on voters and the city employees who run its elections.

Milwaukee’s most serious stumble came in 2004, when a last-minute overhaul of the election office contributed to unprocessed voter registrations, delayed absentee counts, and discrepancies in the final tally. Multiple investigations found widespread administrative problems but no fraud.

“It was hard coming in at that low point,” said Albrecht, who joined the commission the following year, saying it gave Milwaukee the reputation as an “election fraud capital.”

In 2008, the city created a centralized absentee ballot count facility to reduce errors at polling places and improve consistency. The change worked as intended, but it also meant Milwaukee’s absentee results — representing tens of thousands of votes — were often reported after midnight, sometimes shifting statewide margins.

That timing is largely a product of state law: Wisconsin is one of the few states that prohibit clerks from processing absentee ballots before Election Day. For years, Milwaukee officials have asked lawmakers to change the rule. Instead, opponents argue the city can’t be trusted with extra processing time — even as they criticize the late-night results all but unavoidable under the current rule.

That dynamic was on full display in 2018, when former Gov. Scott Walker, trailing in his reelection bid, said he was blindsided by Milwaukee’s 47,000 late-arriving absentee ballots and accused the city of incompetence.

Proposals to allow administrators more time to process ballots — and therefore report results sooner— have repeatedly stalled in the Legislature. The most recent passed the Assembly last session but never received a Senate vote, with some Republicans openly questioning why they should give Milwaukee more time when they don’t trust the city to handle the ballots with the time it already has.

“The late-arriving results of absentee ballots processed in the City of Milwaukee benefits all attempts to discredit the city,” Albrecht said.

Without the change, to keep up with other Wisconsin municipalities, Milwaukee must process tens of thousands of absentee ballots in a single day, a herculean task. “The effect of not passing it means this issue can be kept alive,” said Lee, the UW–Milwaukee political scientist.

Some Republicans acknowledge that dynamic outright. Rep. Scott Krug, a GOP lawmaker praised for his pragmatic approach to election policy, has long supported a policy fix. This session, it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

Krug said a small but influential faction on the right has built a kind of social network around election conspiracy theories, many focused on Milwaukee. Because the tight counting window is part of the fuel that keeps that group going, he said, “a fix is a problem for them.”

2020 marked the shift to ‘complete insanity’

Albrecht said that while Milwaukee had long operated under an unusual level of suspicion, the scrutiny that followed 2020 represented a shift he described as “complete insanity.”

That year, in the early hours after Election Day, Milwaukee released its absentee totals, but then-election chief Woodall realized she’d left a USB drive in one tabulator. Woodall called her deputy clerk about it, and the deputy had a police officer take the USB drive to the county building. The mistake didn’t affect results — the audit trail matched — but it was enough to ignite right-wing talk radio and fuel yet more conspiratorial claims about the city’s late-night reporting.

The scrutiny only intensified. A joking email exchange between Woodall and an elections consultant, taken out of context, was perceived by some as proof of fraud after Gateway Pundit and a now-defunct conservative state politics site published it. Threats followed, serious enough that police and the FBI stepped in. Woodall pushed for increased security at the city’s election office, saying that “there was no question” staff safety was at risk.

Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, has faced conspiracy theories over some Milwaukee voting practices.

A similar dynamic played out again in 2024, when workers discovered that doors on absentee tabulators hadn’t been fully closed. With no evidence of tampering but anticipating backlash, officials zeroed out the machines and recounted every ballot. The fix didn’t stop Republicans, including Johnson, from suggesting something “very suspicious” could be happening behind the scenes. Johnson did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, errors in other Wisconsin communities, sometimes far more consequential, rarely draw similar attention. Take Waukesha County’s error in 2011 — a mistake that swung thousands of votes and affected which candidate was in the lead. “But it didn’t stick,” said UW–Madison’s Barry Burden, a political science professor. “People don’t talk about Waukesha as a place with rigged or problematic elections.”

In recent years there was only one substantiated allegation of serious election official wrongdoing: In November 2022, Milwaukee deputy clerk Kimberly Zapata was charged with misconduct in office and fraud for obtaining fake absentee ballots.

A month prior, she had ordered three military absentee ballots using fake names and sent the ballots to a Republican lawmaker, an effort she reportedly described as an attempt to expose flaws in the election system. Zapata said those events stemmed from a “complete emotional breakdown.” She was sentenced to one year of probation for election fraud.

“We didn’t hear as much from the right” about those charges, Woodall said.

More recently, the GOP has raised concerns about privacy screens — a curtain hung last November to block a staging area and, earlier this year, a room with frosted windows. Republicans seized on each, claiming the city was hiding something.

Paulina Gutiérrez, the city’s election director, told Votebeat the ballots temporarily kept behind the curtain “aren’t manipulated. They’re scanned and sent directly onto the floor,” where observers are free to watch the envelopes be opened and the ballots be counted.

But the accusations took off anyway. Even Johnson, the U.S. senator, suggested the city was “making sure NO ONE trusts their election counts.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Texas flagged some voters as ‘potential noncitizens’ but they had already provided proof of citizenship

2025-12-18T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas officials have now determined that 11 registered voters in Travis County flagged as potential noncitizens actually provided proof of citizenship while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID at the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to county leaders.

Votebeat earlier this month reported that hundreds of individuals the Texas Secretary of State’s Office identified as potential noncitizens had registered to vote at DPS, which requires proof of citizenship or legal presence.

State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making it free for states to use and easier to search, and it has urged election officials around the country to use it to search for potential noncitizens on their voter rolls.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it had not initially checked the list of 2,724 potential noncitizens flagged by the federal database against DPS records. State officials in October sent the list to county officials and directed them to investigate the citizenship status of those flagged registrants.

Many election officials and advocacy groups have questions about the accuracy of the results SAVE cross-checks generate. Advocacy groups including the League of Women Voters have sued over the changes to SAVE, and the lawsuit is pending in federal court.

Celia Israel, the Travis County’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the verification that the 11 Travis County registrants had already provided proof that they were U.S. citizens is “confirmation that SAVE is not a reliable resource.”

In an emailed statement that stressed the need to “ensure that only eligible citizens participate” in elections, Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, described SAVE as “the preeminent data source on citizenship.” She noted that it is “a new tool for us. We are treating it as we would any data source, incorporating our normal checks and balances.”

DPS and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the SAVE database, did not respond to requests for comment.

Israel and her staff had for weeks asked both state agencies for help in verifying the flagged registrants’ citizenship status, hoping to prevent the removal of eligible voters from the rolls.

Earlier this month, DPS confirmed to Votebeat that the Secretary of State’s Office had requested information on 97 voters, matching the number flagged in Travis County, and Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, recently forwarded the results to county officials.

Adkins also told Israel that her office will run the list of 97 Travis County registrants initially identified as potential noncitizens through the SAVE database again “to see if there have been any updates to any individual statuses,” according to emails Votebeat obtained in response to a public records request.

“It would have made sense to have this from the beginning,” Israel said in an interview with Votebeat on Tuesday.

The Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to a question from Votebeat about whether it plans to check the entire list of 2,724 potential noncitizens against the DPS records.

Election officials are worried database is flagging eligible citizens

Votebeat sought information from 24 counties and to date, election officials who have responded confirmed they have collectively identified at least 33 U.S. citizens on the list. At least 218 people flagged, and potentially more, registered at DPS and should have been required to provide proof of citizenship that the agency should have on file, according to officials from 11 counties.

Israel said the new findings from the state raise questions about the accuracy of SAVE but also about DPS’s voter registration processes.

Her office initially found that 26 out of the 97 individuals had registered to vote at DPS. But the new information provided by the state shows that only eight out of the 26 who registered at DPS provided proof of citizenship to the agency.

The three other registrants on the Travis County list who had documented proof of citizenship on file with DPS had not registered to vote through the agency, Israel said, and 18 people who had registered through DPS nonetheless did not have documented proof of citizenship on file.

Israel said it’s not clear from the findings, when the registrants provided proof of legal presence to DPS. There’s a chance that some may have naturalized since. She said she is now seeking more details from the state, including dates of when the individuals provided their documents to DPS.

In October, when the Texas Secretary of State’s Office sent each county a list of voters it had identified as potential noncitizens, election officials were required to mail out notices to them seeking additional proof of citizenship. After 30 days, if there was no response, the registrations would be canceled. However, if proof is provided later to county officials, by law the registration must be reinstated immediately.

Responses to counties have been sparse, and at least one county official said that reports of arrests of U.S. citizens by federal immigration officials across the country could be a factor.

Remi Garza, the election administrator in Cameron County in the Rio Grande Valley, said he got a call from a family member of a registered voter who was hesitant to walk into a county building to turn in proof of citizenship documentation, even though they are an American citizen.

“They were afraid that there were going to be federal officers that would approach them while they were trying to resolve this,” Garza said.

The state flagged 68 potential noncitizens in Cameron County. Garza said multiple individuals had registered at DPS but declined to say exactly how many, citing his office’s ongoing investigation about the registrants’ eligibility. Garza said he plans to reach out to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to ask for help confirming whether any of the individuals flagged have already shown proof of citizenship.

His office is also sending out additional notices to the individuals that were flagged in the county who have yet to respond, he said.

“We’re going to do everything we can to restore an eligible voter’s right to cast a ballot,” Garza said. “Hopefully, if they see that we’re working diligently on their behalf, that they’ll understand that we’re there to facilitate the process, not to become a barrier or obstacle.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

A big question looming over future redistricting: Who should count?

2025-12-11T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

The impacts of the latest fight over Texas’ political maps are still reverberating around the state, but there are other debates on the horizon.

Future political representation could hinge on President Donald Trump’s renewed push to exclude at least some noncitizens from the population counts that help determine how political power is distributed in the U.S.

In Texas, where Republicans pushed through a rare midcycle redistricting this year to try to maintain their advantage in Congress after the 2026 midterm elections, experts say that excluding noncitizens when drawing districts could open another way for the GOP to tighten its grip on the state Legislature and congressional delegation.

In addition, many experts and critics worry it could ultimately place some Texas communities into larger, less cohesive districts, while diluting the political influence of Latinos and other minority groups who have accounted for much of the state’s population gain in recent decades. Adding questions about citizenship to the U.S. census could also lead to more undercounting of Latinos, they warn, a problem that has plagued previous censuses.

Read the full story.

Dallas County Republicans’ plan to hand-count primary ballots moves forward

2025-12-09T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Dallas County Republicans say they’re planning to go ahead with hand-counting tens of thousands of Election Day ballots cast in the upcoming March 3 primary after raising more than $400,000 towards the effort.

The county GOP party also said more than 1,000 people have signed up to count the ballots in an effort that would make the county the largest jurisdiction in the country to hand-count results on Election Day. Other large jurisdictions in the country have hand-counted ballots, but they’ve done so after an election and to verify the accuracy of machine counts, including as part of an audit.

“Not only are the eyes of Texas upon us, but the eyes of America,” said Dallas County Republican Party Chairman Allen West, a former congressman, in a social media statement Friday. West said the effort is meant to “restore confidence in our electoral process.”

That decision means all Dallas County voters will have to cast ballots at their assigned precinct rather than at countywide vote centers on Election Day. By law, if one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same. And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations. During the 12-day early voting period, voters will still be able to cast ballots anywhere in the county.

In Texas, political parties have the authority to decide how they’ll administer primary elections and how they want to count ballots on Election Day. State law requires the party to report election results within 24 hours after polls close. Failure to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

The Republican primary ballot in 2026 will include a hotly contested and closely watched U.S. Senate primary for the seat currently held by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

The Republican party has yet to sign a contract with the Dallas County Elections Department locking in the plan, something West said he now plans to do this week.

Voters in the Democratic primary will still use voting equipment to cast their ballots. But Dallas County Democratic Party Chairman Kardal Coleman said the requirement to vote in precincts rather than countywide vote centers means the party will now need to secure more than the usual 450 locations for Election Day and the additional workers to staff them.

“Not just for Democratic voters, but this is going to adversely affect every voter who may show up in the wrong location,” Coleman said. “It’s already causing chaos and confusion.”

The county Republican party also must secure a minimum of 360 polling locations with the required space needed to conduct the hand count — fewer than the Democrats because Republicans are the minority party in Dallas County. The GOP will have to find enough money for all needed supplies, including everything from ballot boxes to printing tally sheets to the tables and chairs needed for counting. It isn’t clear how much of that has been done.

In a brief text message Monday, West clarified the party does not plan to hand-count absentee ballots or ballots cast early in person — only Election Day ballots.

According to a 2024 primary election final cost report Votebeat obtained from the Texas Secretary of State Office through a public records request, Dallas County Republicans employed more than 1,400 workers on Election Day at a cost of more than $248,000. Polling place rental fees cost nearly $50,000. Those costs are certain to increase, because hand-counting requires more people to count and additional locations.

Limited transparency with a hand count

In September, Dallas County Republicans voted to hand-count the primary ballots if they could raise enough money and recruit enough workers. A similar effort by the party in 2023 was shut down after the party failed to raise the expected $1 million it would need.

In 2024, the Dallas County parties conducted a joint primary. Voters were able to cast ballots anywhere in the county because both parties agreed to use the state-approved countywide polling place program. The program is aimed at reducing the costs of conducting an election for counties and easing voter confusion.

The method of hand counting has proven to be inaccurate and costly. In Texas, hand-counting has fewer transparency requirements than other methods.

The only people permitted in the area where the hand count is happening are precinct judges, who are in charge of supervising the polling locations, the election clerks counting ballots, and poll watchers appointed by candidates or political action committees.

And unless a candidate requests a recount or the party decides to do so, no provision in state law requires a recount or an audit of hand-counted election results to check for accuracy.

When Republicans in Gillespie County hand-counted more than 8,000 ballots during the March 2024 primary, the party days later found they’d made errors in the tally of 12 out of 13 precincts’ totals.

And they spent more than double of the costs of the 2020 primary, public records show.

Taxpayers foot some of those costs. After the primary, the state reimburses local parties for some of their primary election expenses, including administrative costs, election worker hourly rates, and election supplies. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has already warned party officials that it won’t cover higher-than-normal costs for the primary compared with previous years.

According to the 2024 primary final cost report, Republicans in Gillespie paid more than $40,000 for 355 workers who spent nearly 24 hours counting. In the 2020 primary, when the party used the county’s voting equipment to tabulate results, the party employed 45 workers at a cost of nearly $7,000. Gillespie County Republicans plan to hand-count ballots again in 2026.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Hundreds of Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens may have already proven their citizenship

2025-12-02T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

County election officials investigating the eligibility of 2,724 Texas voters flagged as potential noncitizens have so far found that hundreds of the voters registered through the state Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote while obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

DPS keeps copies of the proof of citizenship that registrants provide, such as birth certificates or passports. The agency also keeps copies of proof of lawful presence in the U.S., such as green cards, provided by immigrants.

But the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told Votebeat and The Texas Tribune it did not check the voters flagged as potential noncitizens against DPS’ records before sending the list to county election officials to verify citizenship.

And at least one county election official has asked Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson and DPS for help checking DPS’ records but has yet to obtain access to them, according to documents obtained by Votebeat through a public records request and an interview.

When Celia Israel, who oversees voter registration for Travis County, asked the state for help determining voters’ citizenship, Nelson’s office directed her to DPS, according to a letter Israel sent Nelson’s office last month. But that agency said it couldn’t help her directly, citing state law, records show.

Israel then wrote to Nelson and DPS officials, asking for help obtaining the records. Nelson responded to Israel Nov. 21 saying her office would “continue collaborating” with DPS.

Nelson’s office did not respond to a request for comment from Votebeat Monday asking whether it would seek to obtain DPS’ proof-of-citizenship records. But on Monday, DPS responded to a request for comment from Votebeat and said it had “recently received” a request from Nelson’s office for information on 97 people — also the number of potential noncitizens the state had asked Travis County to investigate. The agency didn’t confirm whether the request concerned those voters.

In an interview with Votebeat on Monday, Israel said she believes officials have a responsibility to check that data before placing a burden on voters. “These are tools that are at our disposal to ensure accuracy, and I think it’s our responsibility to use those tools before we ask a voter to demonstrate citizenship,” she said.

SAVE flagged several voters who registered at DPS

State officials generated the list of potential noncitizens by checking the state’s voter roll — more than 18 million registered voters — against a federal database used to verify citizenship. The Trump administration overhauled the database, known as SAVE, this year, making the database free for states to use and easier to search.

But experts and election officials have raised concerns about the SAVE database’s accuracy and reliability, and advocacy groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the changes and how SAVE is being used.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office in October forwarded the results of the SAVE check to county election officials and instructed them to investigate the eligibility of the flagged voters.

Votebeat contacted 24 counties regarding the results of their investigations, and counties that responded said they have so far collectively confirmed the citizenship of 16 voters.

Several counties also reported significant numbers of voters who registered via DPS. In Collin County, 59 of the 109 people flagged by the state had done so. In Bexar County, the state flagged 201 voters; 39 had registered at DPS. And in Brazoria County, nearly half of the 48 flagged had registered at DPS.

In Denton County, the state flagged 84 registered voters. Frank Phillips, the county’s election administrator, told Votebeat that 12 of the flagged voters have confirmed their citizenship. Of the remaining flagged voters, 14 were registered by county officials in error, even though they had disclosed they were noncitizens and ineligible on the voter registration form. None of those individuals had voted, and their registrations have been canceled, he said.

Phillips said 37 of the flagged voters registered via DPS. Phillips also confirmed that the county has now canceled the registrations of 58 flagged voters who either failed to respond to the county’s notices or had the notices returned as undeliverable. Under state law, county officials must immediately restore the registrations if the voters later provide proof of citizenship, even if they do so at the polls on Election Day.

State officials want counties to investigate matches

In her response to Israel’s letter, Nelson said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ SAVE database “is the most current and accurate data set available to states when it comes to determining a voter’s citizenship.” Nelson said her office searched the SAVE database using voters’ first names, last names, dates of birth, and full Social Security numbers.

“Even though the data we received from SAVE is considered a strong match, we directed counties to treat them as weak matches in order to ensure that counties conducted their own investigation,” Nelson wrote, according to a copy of her letter obtained by Votebeat.

Alicia Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, said an example of a strong match that would result in county officials removing someone from the rolls without further investigation or notice would be a confirmed death record. In contrast, she said, in instructing the counties to treat the SAVE results as weak matches, the state is ensuring further investigation before voters’ registrations are canceled.

Texas is one of more than two dozen states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and North Carolina, using or planning to use the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ overhauled SAVE database to check voters’ eligibility. The USCIS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Texas has struggled to identify noncitizens before

Every year, millions of Texans register to vote or update their voter registration information while obtaining a driver’s license or ID at DPS. In 2024, 3 million people registered to vote through the agency.

DPS began requiring proof of citizenship and lawful presence to obtain a driver’s license or state ID beginning in 2008. In 2011, Texas legislators made the requirement state law.

Israel and other election officials have raised concerns about the accuracy of the list of potential noncitizens forwarded by the Texas Secretary of State, citing issues in the wake of the state’s past attempts to flag noncitizens on the voter rolls.

Last year, months before the November 2024 election, Gov. Greg Abbott announced that 6,500 noncitizens had been removed from Texas voter rolls. A joint investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune, and ProPublica later found Abbott’s numbers were inflated and, in some instances, wrong.

In 2019, the Secretary of State’s Office announced that it had identified 95,000 registered voters as potential noncitizens and said that more than half of them had previously cast ballots. But many of the voters in question turned out to be naturalized citizens flagged due to outdated data, and the state ultimately settled a related lawsuit by agreeing to new procedures.

Those new procedures, which were codified into law in 2021 through the sweeping Senate Bill 1, require that DPS share data monthly with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office in connection with individuals who provided proof that they were not U.S. citizens — such as a green card or work visa — when obtaining a driver’s license or state ID.

State officials run that data against the voter roll and identify individuals “who registered to vote before they presented documents at a DPS office indicating their non-citizenship,” according to a 2021 advisory from the office to counties.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with The Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Wisconsin election officials skeptical of proposed early-voting mandate for municipalities

2025-11-18T19:00:28+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

A Republican proposal to require every Wisconsin municipality to offer early-voting hours has divided groups representing voters and election officials, with voters calling the proposal a net gain for voting access, and some clerks calling the requirements onerous, especially for small municipalities.

The bill originally required every municipality to offer at least 20 hours of in-person early voting at the clerk’s office or an alternate site. It was amended Tuesday, based on clerk feedback, to allow for fewer required hours in some smaller municipalities.

Municipalities that can’t hold their own early-voting hours would be able to offer it in a neighboring municipality or the county clerk’s office under the bill. A separate measure would provide $1.5 million to municipalities extending their early-voting hours — lowered from an originally proposed $10 million — but that would be available only for the 2025-26 fiscal year, while the early-voting requirements appear to be indefinite. The proposal would apply to the April and November elections.

Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara, a Republican, previously told Votebeat she wrote the bill after noticing the stark difference in early-voting availability between rural and urban municipalities. Cities such as Milwaukee and Madison offer multiple days for early voting, while some rural municipalities offer just a couple of hours, or do it by appointment only.

Cabral-Guevara didn’t directly answer a follow-up question from Votebeat on Tuesday about whether the Senate would fund the measure, but said she’s hoping it passes. Rep. Scott Krug, a Republican who wrote the bill with her, told Votebeat he hopes the Senate will pass the measure since he lowered the amount of proposed funding.

“It’s only going to create more opportunities for voting,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin. “That for us is always the key. It should be funded for more than one year.”

The amended bill would set the minimum early voting period at 10 hours in municipalities with fewer than 600 voters,15 hours in municipalities with between 600 and 799 voters, and 20 hours in towns with 800 or more voters.

But some clerks said any hourly requirement would be too burdensome — and could have the unintended consequence of decreasing voter access. Because Wisconsin’s elections are run at the municipal level, a small number of clerks serving only a few dozen voters would still be required to adhere to the minimum hours.

Omro Town Clerk Dana Woods called this “too drastic of a measure,” and said the requirements may lead to “honorable public servants” choosing to leave their jobs.

Most Wisconsin clerks work part-time, with some scheduled only a few hours per week. Woods, for example, is scheduled to be in her office just seven hours per week and serves 1,800 registered voters.

Lisa Tollefson, the Rock County clerk, acknowledged that the proposal could increase voting across the state but said it still doesn’t make sense in the smallest municipalities, where voters typically choose to vote on Election Day.

Joe Ruth, government affairs director at the Wisconsin Towns Association, said at a public hearing for the proposal that clerks would likely stop offering early voting by appointment if they have to fulfill the proposed hourly requirement. And if they do so, he added, the voters who can’t come during the set hours would lose their opportunity to vote early in person.

Ruth didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about whether the amendment alleviated his concerns.

In an Assembly Elections Committee executive session, the five Republicans on the committee voted in favor and the two Democrats voted against it. It is scheduled for an Assembly floor vote on Wednesday.

Rep. Dave Maxey, who chairs the Assembly Elections Committee, called the bill a great idea and questioned why people would vote against a funded mandate that would expand voting. He said there would be a mechanism to fund early voting in future years through the budget.

Rep. Lee Snodgrass, a Democrat, told Votebeat that she voted against the bill because it allows a county board to decide whether a municipality can hold early voting hours at the county clerk’s office. She said county boards shouldn’t have oversight over elections. The latest tweak to the bill now requires consent from both the county board and clerk.

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

May-November advance: Why moving the timing of an election matters

2025-11-17T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

On Wednesday, the Dallas City Council voted unanimously to move city elections from May to November. It might sound like a small procedural change, but it’s a big deal. Dallas has some of the lowest voter turnout in local elections of any large city in the country — typically 29th or 30th out of 30 — and city leaders hope this shift will help change that.

Like many cities, Dallas has long held its local elections “off cycle,” in May of odd-numbered years, when attention to voting typically ebbs. Research shows those elections draw a smaller, older, wealthier slice of the electorate. Moving them to November — alongside state constitutional amendments the Legislature might propose — brings in a broader cross-section of voters and makes the results more representative. It also gives voters and election officials one fewer election date to track.

And by combining its elections with the November contests, Dallas can tap into the existing election infrastructure — more polling places, longer hours, experienced poll workers — instead of running a separate, smaller, and costlier operation every two years. The city expects to save about half a million dollars every other year.

This change has been years in the making. Local activist David de la Fuente has pushed for it since 2021, teaming up with Councilmember Chad West, who said David “has been like a dog on a bone for years — making it a data-driven and not emotional decision.” When the final vote came this week, even longtime skeptics backed the measure, persuaded by overwhelming public support. In November 2024, 63% of Dallas voters approved the change via a ballot measure, and the Texas Legislature gave the city permission earlier this year. Wednesday’s vote from the nonpartisan council was the final step.

Afterward, de la Fuente said he was at a loss for words. “If you identify a problem and take it upon yourself to fix it — not just for yourself but for your neighborhood and city — you can make a difference,” he said. If he’d gone it alone, he added, he would have “failed spectacularly.”

Like Dallas, cities and states across the country are rethinking when they hold elections — and seeing higher engagement from voters. California led the way in 2015, passing a law that required cities with chronically low turnout to move their municipal elections to even-numbered years. The result? Cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco had local races on the ballot in November elections that had double, and sometimes triple, the turnout of the previous off-month elections. Arizona followed suit in 2018, aligning its local elections with statewide contests after years of dismal participation in cities that held off-cycle elections. Citing the same reasons, Virginia moved all local elections to November in 2021.

In Michigan, officials are now considering similar changes. As Votebeat Michigan recently reported, lawmakers want to move school board elections and local primaries away from the sleepy summer months and into elections when voters are already paying attention. And in New York, legislators have debated consolidating most local elections into even years, citing studies that showed participation could rise by as much as 50%.

Everywhere it’s been tried, the pattern holds: Combining elections increases participation, saves money, and leads to election outcomes that better reflect the full electorate, not just the handful of people who remember to vote in an off-month election.

In Dallas, the next City Council election will be in November 2027, and for once, a lot more Dallas residents might actually have a say in who runs their city.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Voters in Texas’ 18th District waited months for an election. They’ll soon have two more.

2025-11-14T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Voters in Texas’ 18th Congressional District, who have been without representation in Congress since March, now face back-to-back elections for the seat, to be held only weeks apart next year.

Voters this month finally got to vote in a special election to decide who would finish the term of Rep. Sylvester Turner, a Democrat who died eight months ago. But none of the candidates won a majority, so the top two candidates — acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, both Democrats — must now go to a runoff.

Under deadlines in state law, Gov. Greg Abbott could schedule the runoff for no later than the end of January. His office told Votebeat only that he would announce the timing “at a later date.”

But a new race for the seat would open up on Feb. 17, 2026, when early voting begins for the March primary election, and candidates for Congress will once again be on the ballot.

What’s more, since the state recently redrew its congressional district maps in a rare midcycle redistricting, many voters who vote in the runoff are likely to be in a different district for the primary, with a different field of candidates.

The timing could turn into a confusing deterrent for voters, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“Turnout for runoffs is already pretty low, but the fact that this is such a temporary, kind of placeholder election means that you may have very low voter interest,” he said.

Before Abbott can announce the date for the runoff, he has to conduct the canvas for the Nov. 4 constitutional amendment election, which he can do on Nov. 19. The runoff has to be held between 70 and 77 days after the canvas, Rottinghaus said.

That would put the runoff date at the end of January. Because those deadlines are in state law, Abbott would not be able to postpone it, as he was permitted to do for the special election, Rottinghaus said. That period of time between the election and the runoff is required as part of a federal law that gives election officials time to count military and overseas ballots.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Jolt Initiative hits back at Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in fight over voter registration

2025-11-11T20:52:54+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Jolt Initiative, a nonprofit that aims to increase civic participation among Latinos, is suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block his efforts to shut the organization down.

Paxton announced Monday that he was seeking to revoke the nonprofit’s charter, alleging that it had orchestrated “a systematic, unlawful voter registration scheme.”

“Jolt is simply the latest target of his unlawful campaign to undermine and silence civil rights groups in Texas,” said Mimi Marziani, a lawyer representing the nonprofit.

The origins of Paxton’s investigation of Jolt

In August 2024, Fox News host Maria Bartiromo said on X that a friend had seen organizations registering immigrants to vote outside state driver’s license facilities in Fort Worth and Weatherford. But local officials, including the Parker County Republican chair, said there was no evidence backing the post or showing that anything illegal was happening.

Bartiromo’s debunked claims still prompted an attorney general investigation into whether organizations including Jolt were involved in registering noncitizens to vote.

Jolt then sued for a temporary restraining order, saying that Paxton’s probe would harm the organization and put its workers and volunteers at risk. In October 2024, both sides agreed to pause their legal fight, and Jolt was allowed to continue its work, while the courts addressed a different lawsuit involving the legal tool used by Paxton to investigate the group. The attorney general’s office said in its recent court filing that it has agreed to not issue another subpoena, instead opting to launch a new lawsuit.

Meanwhile, Texas counties are looking into more than 2,700 people on the voter rolls who were flagged as “potential noncitizens” after a search through a federal database. At least six of them have confirmed that they are U.S. citizens. Others were mistakenly added to the voter rolls by election officials, but had never voted, counties found.

Why Texas sued Jolt

Following Bartiromo’s claims, the attorney general’s office sent an undercover agent to a Department of Motor Vehicles location near San Antonio to investigate by attempting to register a fake daughter — who wasn’t physically with him — to vote, according to Paxton’s Oct. 23 court filing. It said a Jolt volunteer deputy registrar instructed the agent on how to register his daughter, despite her absence.

But when the agent asked for a form to take his daughter, the Jolt volunteer said he could not let the agent have one. The agent said the volunteer then implied that he could register his daughter to vote, according to the filing.

“I stated in a question format that I couldn’t have one, and (the volunteer deputy registrar) replied that since I have her information, I could register her to vote, alluding to being a parent and that I had that right,” the agent wrote. “This was inferring that I could sign her voter registration card, and while (the VDR) made this statement he overtly looked away. This is not only incorrect but illegal per election code.”

Jolt disputed this claim about legality in its court filing.

“This is because U.S. citizens can already register to vote at any DMV with proof of citizenship,” the court document said. “Thus, there is no need for a VDR at such locations.”

Paxton brought the lawsuit in Tarrant County, saying that a “substantial part of the events” underlying its claims took place there.

“JOLT is a radical, partisan operation that has, and continues to, knowingly attempt to corrupt our voter rolls and weaken the voice of lawful Texas voters,” he said in a news release. “I will make sure they face the full force of the law.”

What Jolt says in its lawsuit

The nonprofit filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday, asking a judge to stop Paxton’s state lawsuit on the grounds that it infringes on its rights under the First Amendment and the Voting Rights Act.

“Here, the State provides very few particularized factual allegations in its Petition to support its Motion for Leave, instead relying upon sweeping but unsupported claims about Jolt’s motives, beliefs and activities,” the group said in its initial response to Paxton’s lawsuit.

Jolt also said it will fight to defend its mission, adding that Paxton is “abusing his authority” in order to stop its voter registration drives.

“This is a systematic effort to dismantle the infrastructure of Latino civic engagement in Texas,” ⁨Jackie Bastard⁩, Jolt’s executive director, said in a news release.

Casting a provisional ballot in Chester County, Pennsylvania? Here’s what you need to know.

2025-11-04T17:01:15+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Pennsylvania’s free newsletter here.

UPDATE 6:20 P.M.: Voting has been extended to 10 P.M. in all polling locations in Chester County.

Election Day pollbooks in Pennsylvania’s Chester County omitted the names of third-party voters, which could force up to tens of thousands of people there to cast provisional ballots in Tuesday’s municipal elections.

Pollbooks are the lists of registered voters that pollworkers use to check in voters at the polling place. The county said it is sending supplemental pollbooks to its 230 polling places, but until they arrive, it said, registered voters whose names aren’t in the pollbook will have to cast provisional ballots or come back later.

“Chester County Voter Services will conduct a formal review to determine how third-party registered voters were omitted from the poll books and will take action to ensure this error does not occur again,” the county said in a statement.

There are roughly 75,000 third-party or unaffiliated voters registered in Chester County.

Here is what voters using a provisional ballot need to know:

Provisional voting carries more risk of rejection

When a regular ballot is voted at a polling place, it is fed into the precinct’s tabulator and retained in the ballot box; once the tabulator accepts it, that is the end of the voter’s interaction with the ballot. At that point, the voter’s selections cannot be removed from the final count.

But for provisional ballots, there are additional steps that must occur before the ballot is counted.

Provisional ballots are a failsafe voting method intended for when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility, and there are additional steps the voter and election officials must properly execute for the ballot to be counted.

Voters must place their provisional ballot in a secrecy envelope, and then place that envelope in an outer envelope. The outer envelope includes several fields which must be filled out by the voter and election official.

A Votebeat and Spotlight PA analysis found that ballot rejections for missing information in these fields, which do not relate to the voter’s eligibility, have been increasing in recent years.

Hoping to cut down on such rejections, the Department of State announced a redesign of the outer envelope earlier this year, starting with today’s election. Adoption of the new envelope by the counties was voluntary. A spokesperson for Chester County said it is using the new version.

What to do if you are asked to cast a provisional ballot

If you are casting a provisional ballot, be sure to place your ballot in the secrecy envelope before placing it in the outer envelope. Make sure you fill out all of the information on the outer envelope marked to be filled out by the voter.

Pay close attention to where it directs you to sign the envelope. Missing signatures are one of the most common reasons provisional ballots have been rejected. Be sure the appropriate poll worker also fills out their required sections on the envelope before you leave the polling place.

After you have finished voting with the provisional ballot, the poll worker should hand you a receipt with a number that will allow you to track your ballot. The county board of elections will hold a hearing in the coming days to decide which provisional ballots can be counted. Check with your county election office after Election Day for details on the meeting.

More information about provisional ballots and how to track them can be found on the Department of State’s website.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

If federal election monitors in New Jersey and California do their job, they pose little threat

2025-11-03T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

The U.S. Justice Department recently announced it would send monitors to polling sites in California and New Jersey during the upcoming elections, following requests from state Republican parties. Given today’s political tensions, and President Donald Trump’s comments and actions on elections, it’s understandable that the news of federal intervention made many people uneasy.

But the presence of federal monitors at polling sites isn’t new, isn’t necessarily alarming, and doesn’t mean things will go wrong.

The Justice Department has been monitoring elections this way for decades, under Democratic and Republican administrations. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the department’s Civil Rights Division has had the authority to send trained staff to observe elections to ensure that everyone can cast ballots freely and without intimidation. They are not there to run the election or count ballots, and federal law doesn’t intend or allow for them to interfere.

A lot of good things have happened as a result of federal monitoring, and these monitors have also been integral in ensuring that laws intended to protect voters were enforced. Cities like St. Louis, which was the subject of litigation over voting access for disabled people, have seen monitors to ensure that terms of legal settlements were followed. Monitors performed a similar function in Alaska, ensuring language access for voters in Alaska’s native-language jurisdictions.

Court orders also play a role. Union County, New Jersey, for example, is currently eligible for federal observers as a result of a court order under the Voting Rights Act, after the county was found not to have provided adequate voting materials in Spanish.

That’s not one of the places where the Justice Department is sending monitors this year. They will be sent to polling sites in Passaic County, New Jersey, as well as Kern, Riverside, Fresno, Orange, and Los Angeles counties in California.

California officials are criticizing the Justice Department’s decision to send monitors, and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said the state will be sending observers to watch the federal observers. California’s U.S. senators, both Democrats, have sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking her to withdraw the observers “due to the Department’s blatantly partisan motivations.”

California, of course, is far from the first state to object over the years, though dynamics often shift based on politics. In 2024, some red states, including Texas, said they wouldn’t allow the observers in; Texas ultimately agreed to do so.

This kind of monitoring happens regularly. Sometimes monitors are assigned to a location because of specific complaints about accessibility, and sometimes it’s because of a history of voting rights violations. Sometimes, local officials request them.

In short, they are intended to be safeguards, not sirens. The elections in California and New Jersey are some of the biggest contests on the calendar this year, so it makes sense to station monitors in those places.

I’m not naïve about the potential risks here. This administration has said some truly wild things about voting, and it’s impossible to forget the attack on the U.S. Capitol. There are reasons to be cautious and to keep a close eye on how this unfolds. But historically, these monitoring efforts have been routine and uneventful — a normal part of how our democracy safeguards itself. In theory, this round should go the same way. At the very least, we know what the historical standard of behavior looks like, and we’ll be able to judge current actions against it in real time.

So if you see these monitors in your community, don’t assume they are there because a scandal is brewing, and don’t let them deter you from exercising your right. Simply vote. In the unlikely event that they do interfere in any way with your voting experience, alert a poll worker, who can ask the county for help.

Years of false claims about elections have done real damage to public trust, and the possibility of voter intimidation is a growing concern. Many voters, advocates and officials worry that the Justice Department’s action may be in bad faith. But historically, the presence of these monitors at the polls is less a sign that democracy is crumbling, and more a reminder that it stands.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson fights Republican lawsuit seeking closed primaries

2025-10-31T19:26:22+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texas’ top election official is opposing a GOP lawsuit that seeks to close the state’s primaries, arguing in new legal filings that a decision to restrict voting to registered party members should be up to lawmakers, not the courts.

Quoting from an earlier court decision, Republican Secretary of State Jane Nelson wrote in her filing that a court ruling on the GOP lawsuit now, just before the March primaries, threatens to “confuse voters, unduly burden election administrators, or otherwise sow chaos or distrust in the electoral process.”

In her filing, Nelson also took aim at Attorney General Ken Paxton, a fellow Republican who has sided with the Texas Republican Party in court, calling a joint motion he filed with the party “brazen and misguided.” The motion asked the court to require Nelson to close the primary.

Texas Republicans say the state’s open primaries violate their constitutional right to freedom of association, alleging in their legal filings that some Democratic and independent-leaning voters are casting ballots in Republican primaries and boosting more moderate candidates.

The party sued Nelson in federal court in September, asking the court to close primaries and restrict voting to registered Republicans only.

State law doesn’t require voters to register with a political party, though election officials have a record of which party primary voters choose to participate in for any given election.

In its filing, the state Republican Party said it wants to “be able to create its own registration system” and “work with election officials to ensure they will use Party registration information to limit primary elections to registered Party members.”

The party “seeks to define party membership more restrictively than” the current legal standard, it said.

Closing the primaries in Texas would not be an easy undertaking.

Experts say it would require an overhaul of the state’s voter registration system. It would likely require changes in state law and take years to implement. The state would need to redesign voter registration applications and also find a way for existing registered voters — the state has more than 18 million — to declare their party affiliation.

Given those hurdles, the party said it needs the court to intervene so it can be prepared to hold a closed primary in 2028.

Paxton, the state’s top lawyer, typically defends state laws when challenged, in election and voting-related lawsuits. But in this case, he joined the Republican Party of Texas in a motion asking the court to find Texas’ open-primary law unconstitutional, grant the GOP request, and resolve the case without a trial. Paxton will be on Republican primary ballots in March as he and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston each seek to unseat U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.

Instead of “fighting this lawsuit with expensive out-of-state lawyers, the Secretary of State’s office should respect the will of Texas voters and defend their freedoms by creating a process that will allow the RPT to immediately close its primaries,” Paxton said in a news release.

In her filings Thursday, Nelson said a ruling now declaring the state’s open primary system unconstitutional could lead to confusion for voters ahead of the 2026 primary. She reminded the court that mail ballots for that election must be sent less than four months from now. Early voting begins Feb. 17.

“Even if heroic efforts by state and local authorities are enough to avoid chaos and confusion and the open primaries are held, the proposed judgment would cast a pall on the results, because they would be the product of a system that a federal court declared unconstitutional,” Nelson’s filing says.

According to Nelson’s filing, lawmakers filed at least six bills in 2025 to close the primaries, but the proposals failed.

Nelson added that state lawmakers can take up the matter in the 2027 legislative session.

Republicans included a proposition on their 2024 primary ballot to close primaries that voters approved. That didn’t have any effect on state law, though the party later adopted new rules calling for the change.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas counties look into ‘potential noncitizens’ on voter rolls. Here’s what they’re finding.

2025-10-31T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Election officials across Texas are investigating the eligibility of 2,724 registered voters flagged as “potential noncitizens” after the Secretary of State’s Office checked the state’s voter rolls against a federal database used to verify citizenship.

The inquiries are still in the early stages, and county officials have not yet confirmed the citizenship status of the vast majority of the flagged voters.

But at least six people listed as potential noncitizens have confirmed that they are, in fact, U.S. citizens, election officials told Votebeat: four in Denton County, and one each in Bexar and Brazoria counties.

Votebeat has so far contacted 24 counties, including the state’s most populous, seeking details about the flagged voter registrations, and has gotten responses from nine counties.

Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told Votebeat that election officials across the state want more information on the federal database’s sources and how it works.

“A lot of counties don’t feel comfortable just blindly canceling voters without really knowing how names have shown up on the SAVE database,” McGinn said, referring to Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, the search tool that states use to check residents’ eligibility for public benefits.

The Department of Homeland Security recently overhauled SAVE to make it easier for states to use it to screen their voter rolls for potential noncitizens. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Alicia Pierce, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson, said in a statement that counties have been able to prove citizenship “for a handful of these voters, which means the process is working exactly as it should.” She said that flagged voters have 30 days to respond to a notice from their county, and this process “will not affect anyone’s ability to vote in Tuesday’s election.”

Registrations submitted through Texas DPS are flagged

Election officials said that at least 193 of the flagged voters — across seven counties that together had a total of 565 — submitted their registration applications through the Texas Department of Public Safety. The agency requires proof of citizenship from anyone who wants to register to vote there, so some election officials said they are wondering how any noncitizens could have successfully registered through DPS.

Pierce referred questions to DPS, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. During a legislative hearing in March, a DPS official told lawmakers that in order to register to vote at the agency, applicants must be a U.S. citizen and be at least 17 years, 10 months old.

“These requirements are actually programmed into our system, and they can’t be bypassed by an employee,” the DPS official said. “So if you don’t meet those requirements, you don’t get presented with the voter registration question.”

In a declaration filed Wednesday as part of a federal lawsuit challenging the overhaul of SAVE, Chris Davis, the voter registration director for Travis County, said that a quarter of the 97 people flagged there had registered at DPS.

County officials are required by law to mail notices to the flagged registrants seeking their citizenship documentation, and some have already sent the notices. If there’s no response after 30 days, the person’s registration is canceled. Pierce said counties have been advised to treat the voters flagged by SAVE as they would “any other data set.”

If county officials receive the documentation, they must send a copy to the state to be shared with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Secretary of State’s Office told counties, according to a document filed in federal court as part of the lawsuit.

The election officials in Denton, Bexar, and Brazoria counties said the six voters whose citizenship they confirmed had responded to notices by showing a U.S. passport or naturalization documents.

Davis said Travis County is investigating each person flagged and has yet to mail out notices. In his court declaration, he said he’s concerned that the list his county received “is flawed” and that voters could be improperly dropped from the voter rolls.

Frank Phillips, the Denton County elections administrator, told Votebeat that one of the four flagged voters he checked on had become a U.S. citizen a month ago, but three others were naturalized between 2020 and 2023.

He added that he fears the mailed notices won’t be delivered or that voters won’t respond to them. “If they are citizens, their registration is going to get canceled, but it shouldn’t be,” he said.

Some added to the voter rolls in error by county officials

Texas has a paper-based voter registration system, which requires that election officials manually enter the information from each application they receive by mail or in person. Data entry errors are common.

In at least seven counties — including Bexar, Dallas, Collin, and Denton — election officials said people who submitted an application had accurately noted on the form that they were not U.S. citizens, but were nonetheless added to the voter roll in error by county officials. Those registrations have been canceled, and none of the 94 people involved had cast ballots, county officials said.

Aside from the people who attested that they weren’t citizens, officials in Bexar and Denton counties have confirmed that so far, they found one person in each county who was not a U.S. citizen and canceled their registrations. Those two people had never voted, the officials said.

Changes make SAVE free and easier for states to use

States have used SAVE for years to help determine whether people are eligible for benefits. However, access to the data for states was costly and required using a person’s immigrant ID number, which election officials don’t often have access to.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration revamped SAVE so that states could use it more easily to check their voter rolls for noncitizens using Social Security numbers, and could submit requests in batches instead of one at a time. States don’t have to pay to use it anymore.

But some experts have questioned the accuracy and reliability of the data, pointing to how quickly the changes to SAVE were made. They’ve also raised concerns about how the federal government is using the data uploaded by states, and whether using the tool puts people’s privacy or voting rights at risk. In addition, multiple audits and analyses have shown that the Social Security Administration’s citizenship information, one of the sources that SAVE calls on, is often outdated or incomplete, especially for people who became naturalized citizens.

Texas obtained access to SAVE in March, and said in May that, through SAVE, it had identified 33 potential noncitizens who had voted in the November 2024 election and referred them to the Texas Attorney General’s Office for investigation.

Last week, on the first day of early voting for the constitutional amendment election, Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced her office had run the state’s entire voter roll through it, or more than 18 million registered voters.

In the announcement, Nelson directed counties to conduct “rigorous investigations to determine if any voter is ineligible.” She said SAVE “has proven to be a critically important data set and one of many that we will continue to use in Texas to ensure that only qualified voters cast a ballot in our elections.”

Days later, Nelson touted a letter from President Donald Trump recognizing her as one of the first secretaries of state to “step up and protect the integrity of our elections by using the federal SAVE database.”

On Monday, Texas filed a motion seeking to intervene in the lawsuit challenging the use of SAVE, saying it needs continued access to comply with state and federal requirements for maintaining its voter list.

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Trump administration proposal for online voter registration form raises concerns

2025-10-27T23:33:47+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

State election officials are raising legal and practical concerns about a new Trump administration plan to create a digital version of the existing federal voter registration form.

Under the proposal, the federal government would both verify voter identity and check citizenship against a system run by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security before making the applications available to states.

The proposal — discussed on recent calls between the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, federal officials working to design the new tool, and state officials — would for the first time allow the federal voter registration form to be filed online. Currently, voters must submit the form on paper. Most states are required to accept the federal registration form, just as they would their own state-specific forms.

Notes summarizing a Oct. 17 call for members of the National Association of State Election Directors said association members “representing states of both parties expressed serious concerns with this project not complying with state law” and also that “the developers do not seem to want to spend the time to understand election official concerns.”

A very small percentage of voters use this form to register, noted Leslie Reynolds, executive director of the National Association of Secretaries of State in an Oct. 23 call, something election officials confirmed. “We’re coming into a federal election year, and if this goes awry, that could be a big deal,” Reynolds said.

Among the concerns raised in the call, notes and recordings show, were how the proposal would align with federal and state laws, what information the federal government would retain about applicants, and whether people could be inadvertently disenfranchised.

Users of the digital form would be required to verify their identity via a federal website that requires a passport, driver’s license or state identification, or a Social Security number, federal officials told state officials during calls this month, according to a recording of one call and notes summarizing the other that were obtained by Votebeat, as well as people who were on the calls.

EAC Chairman Donald Palmer said the agency “is facilitating discussion with state election officials on modernizing an accessible tool to provide a verifiable digital registration option with a new online experience to registrants using the Federal Form,” and stressed that the existing form option would remain available.

The U.S. General Services Administration, which helps the government with technology needs, referred a request for comment to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond before publication.

Trump administration asserts authority over voter registration

The federal government’s goal is to modernize the form and make it easier to use, said Akash Bobba, the federal developer who spoke on the Oct. 23 call organized by NASS, according to the recording. Bobba said the project is part of the National Design Studio, which President Donald Trump launched through an executive order earlier this year.

The EAC’s executive director, Brianna Schletz, “emphasized that the EAC is not trying to replace what the states are already doing, they’re just trying to make it easier for those who do want to use the federal form,” according to the NASED notes summarizing the Oct. 17 call.

State and local election officials usually oversee voter registration. States have historically resisted federal efforts to expand control over elections, including former President Joe Biden’s order directing federal agencies to engage in voter registration, which drew fierce opposition from Republicans.

But the Trump administration has been more aggressive in targeting voter registration procedures as part of a sweeping overhaul of how elections are run. It has pushed for requiring documentary proof of citizenship for all applicants, and scrutinized states over their management of voter rolls, though federal courts have blocked some efforts.

It revamped a DHS tool known as SAVE to allow state election officials to more easily check their voter rolls against immigration records. Several states, including Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas, are already doing so, while others have pushed back on the administration’s efforts.

Election officials press for details and answers

Election officials who heard the proposal for the online voter registration form asked numerous questions about how it would align with state laws, according to the recording and notes. Previous efforts to create a universal registration form have faltered over the same challenge: complying with a patchwork of state requirements.

They also pressed for details about the new tool, many of which Bobba and EAC officials said they couldn’t immediately provide, according to the recording and notes, though they did say that states would receive all the information included on the paper registration form now.

Bobba couldn’t immediately say how much information the EAC or other federal agencies would retain, according to the recording of the NASS call. He said “clear data retention policies” would be given to the states ahead of implementation, and that he couldn’t offer information immediately about how SAVE would store the information. “I don’t know what they retain and what they are logging,” he said.

David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, called the efforts “an absolute and complete waste of time.” Very few people use the federal form to register, he said, and he would be “extremely surprised” if any state — “even Trump-aligned states” — promoted a registration method they don’t control.

Michelle Tassinari, director and legal counsel for the Massachusetts elections division in the secretary of state’s office, asked whether such a program would require a change to federal law. “The voter is no longer submitting an application to the state — which is what the NVRA allows them to do,” she said, according to the recording. Reached for comment, she said in an email that the proposal would require states to obtain the applications from the EAC, rather than requiring the voter to submit the application to the appropriate election office.

A federal official said they would take that under advisement.

Camden Kelliher, the EAC’s general counsel, told attendees on the Oct. 17 call that the online form, which would require the additional verification steps, would not replace the existing paper version, according to notes summarizing the call, but would provide voters a new way to fill it out. Schletz noted that the online tool would need disclaimer language about those steps “as well as to accommodate usage of SAVE.”

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, confirmed in an interview with Votebeat that she had been on the NASS call and said she has “serious concerns” about whether Maine could accept the online federal form.

The proposal, as outlined, she said “is not an appropriate role for the federal government under the Constitution and may lead to disenfranchising people because of the lack of coordination with state requirements and deadlines.”

Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Amy Gulli said that Congress had made clear “that voters, who must be citizens, must be permitted to register with the Federal Form without providing documentary proof of citizenship.”

Could voters be misled?

The recording and notes also show that election officials are concerned that any delays in federal identity checks through login.gov or SAVE could lead voters to think they’re registered when they have actually missed the deadline. They also asked whether vote.gov, the federal government website that would host the tool, could prioritize directing users to state voter registration options.

Officials raised further concerns about state requirements for “wet signatures” rather than digital ones, saying the online form might not satisfy those laws. States often rely on that signature over time for other purposes, such as validating absentee ballot requests. In 2023, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Texas’ wet-signature requirement after a nonprofit group challenged it in hopes of creating such a national form.

All but eight states permit online voter registration, but many restrict it to people who have a state driver’s license or ID, and they rely on signatures on file with other state agencies. Some states allow digital signatures; others don’t. On the Oct. 23 call, according to the recording, Bobba and others said they were still working on how to handle such requirements, but signaled that they understood all states might not be able to accept the form.

In such cases, and in six states that aren’t required to accept the federal form — Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming — users would be directed to other registration options, they said.

Bobba said during the NASS call that developers are still working with DHS on how the tool will interface with SAVE, but hope to pilot it with some states within months. Heather Honey, a deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at DHS, was also on the NASS call, NASS officials said on the recording. DHS did not respond to an email requesting comment before publication.

Schletz told attendees on the Oct. 17 call that current discussions are “informal,” and that EAC commissioners will later vote on whether to stay involved.

Maria Benson, a spokeswoman for NASS, said via email that the organization will invite those working on the project to another call with the association’s elections committee “in the near future. Until then, we will continue to urge the EAC to closely collaborate with Chief Election Officials as this project progresses.”

Editorial Director Jessica Huseman contributed to this article.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s editor-in-chief and is based in Washington, D.C. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

What Texans need to know about Prop 16, the ballot question on citizenship and voting

2025-10-24T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Texans’ ballots for next month’s election include 17 proposed amendments to the state constitution, including one clarifying that a voter must be a United States citizen.

Republicans in Texas and across the country have for years been raising alarm about the possibility of noncitizens casting ballots, even though such cases are rare, and people who vote illegally risk serious consequences, including deportation.

The amendment wouldn’t have much practical effect, as it essentially restates what’s already in state law. But it would “make it crystal clear under the state constitution that if you’re not a U.S. citizen you’re not allowed to vote in Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a social media post.

An effort to require all Texas to show proof of citizenship to register to vote failed to pass in the legislature this year.

Constitutional amendments are the only state measures voters in Texas will see on their ballot this year. They will appear at the top of the ballot and above any local races or measures.

Early voting will run until Oct. 31, and Election Day is Nov. 4. The deadline for counties to receive applications to vote by mail is Oct. 24. Mail ballots must be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

Here’s what you need to know about the citizenship proposal:

What does the proposed constitutional amendment look like?

You’ll see it as Proposition 16 on your ballot. It was introduced as Senate Joint Resolution 37 and written by Sen. Brian Birdwell, a Republican from North Texas. The Legislature approved its addition to the ballot during the regular session.

It says, “the constitutional amendment clarifying that a voter must be a United States citizen,” and voters can select yes or no.

What would it do?

It would amend Article 6 of the Texas Constitution, which lists groups that aren’t allowed to vote in Texas. Article 6 currently prohibits voting by people under 18 years old; anyone who has been deemed incompetent by a court; and anyone who has been convicted of a felony. The proposed amendment would add to that list “persons who are not citizens of the United States.”

However, being a U.S. citizen is already a requirement to vote in federal elections under federal law, and state law says that only U.S. citizens and Texas residents are eligible to vote. That’s why Texans are asked to attest whether they are U.S. citizens when filling out a voter registration card. Anyone who attests on the form that they are not citizens would not be allowed to register.

Noncitizens who vote face state and federal criminal charges and could be at risk of deportation.

Even if it’s approved by voters, the measure would not require voters to show documentary proof – such as a birth certificate or a U.S. passport — to register to vote.

What are the arguments for and against the amendment?

Birdwell said during a public hearing on the proposal earlier this year, that the language in the state constitution would affirm citizenship as a requirement for voting and complement federal law.

Some voting rights activists opposing the amendment said at the time that it would be redundant, since the citizenship requirement is already in place. Others worried the language may mislead voters into believing noncitizens are voting en masse.

There’s been little campaigning over the amendment on either side.

Have other states considered similar measures?

Yes. South Dakota, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Oklahoma recently passed similar constitutional amendments, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

And last fall, voters in Wisconsin overwhelmingly approved a GOP-backed measure to change constitutional language that says “every” U.S. citizen 18 or older has a right to vote. The new wording says “only” a U.S. citizen 18 or older can vote in national, state, and local elections, effectively closing the door to any local ordinances that would allow noncitizens to vote. The amendment passed with roughly 70% of the vote.

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Dallas County Republicans want to hand-count ballots next year. What would that mean?

2025-10-10T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Republicans in Dallas County, one of Texas’ largest voting jurisdictions, say they want to count ballots in their coming March primary by hand, if they can afford to, a change that could delay the reporting of election results and have far-reaching consequences for all of the county’s 1.5 million voters.

The decision could force Dallas Democrats, as well as Republicans, to return to casting ballots at their assigned local precincts, rather than countywide vote centers, which would require finding scores of additional polling locations and hundreds more workers. It could also vastly increase the cost of holding both primaries, an increase that the parties would have to be prepared to cover on their own.

Cost is one reason why Dallas County Republicans decided in 2023 against hand-counting ballots. At the time, Jennifer Stoddard Hajdu, then the county GOP chair, estimated the party would need more than $1 million to hand-count the more than 70,000 ballots cast in the 2024 primary.

Two years later, Hajdu is still skeptical. “I just think there are so many parts to this that it’s going to be very difficult to get it done,” she said.

But Allen West, a former Florida congressman and Army veteran who is the new chairman of the Dallas County Republican Party, said that the size of the challenge shouldn’t deter the party. He said that party members distrust electronic voting equipment, and that the county’s problems with some of its electronic pollbooks last year contributed to the renewed push to hand-count ballots.

The Dallas County Republican Party’s executive committee voted in September to hand-count primary ballots, and set a goal to raise $500,000 to get it done, West said.

“Let’s not forget this is the way it used to be done,” West said, referring to hand-counts and precinct-based voting. In the Army, he said, “we don’t take that excuse of anything being too hard.”

Other counties consider hand-counting ballots

Calls for hand-counting ballots have grown in recent years amid skepticism and misinformation campaigns about machines used for voting and tabulating ballots. But experts agree and studies show the method is time-consuming, costly, less accurate, and less secure than using machines.

In Gillespie County, in the Hill Country about 80 miles west of Austin, Republicans spent months training hundreds of workers to hand-count ballots in 2024. Republicans also designed ballots that couldn’t be tabulated by machines, and paid the printing costs.

On Election Day that year, 350 workers spent nearly 24 hours counting more than 8,000 ballots. In 12 out of 13 precincts, the party found errors in their tallies. And since state law does not require a post-election audit of ballots that are counted by hand, those results have yet to be checked for accuracy.

Even so, Gillespie County Republicans are planning to hand-count their primary ballots in 2026.

In Austin, Travis County Republicans hand-counted 2,000 mail-in ballots in 2024, which was a fraction of the total ballots cast. The group reported discrepancies in its own count that had to be corrected. Officials there told Votebeat that they have yet to decide if they’ll do so again in 2026.

In Williamson County, north of Austin, Republicans considered hand-counting for the 2026 primary, but have now decided against it. The county is home to about 450,000 registered voters.

“Once the logistics started to get fleshed out a little bit more, that’s when reality hit,” said Michelle Evans, the Williamson County Republican Party chair. Evans said requirements in state law mean it’s difficult to do a hand-count “without an extreme amount of manpower and a budget that we may not be able to fulfill.”

How much more would a hand-count cost?

It’s up to county parties to decide how their primaries will be administered. But by law, in order to use countywide vote centers for the primary, both parties have to agree on it. If one party wants to use precinct-based voting, then the other must do the same.

And by law, any hand-count of ballots has to be done at each of the county’s polling locations.

Dallas County Republicans have shared polling locations and election workers with Democrats for the past two primaries, but aren’t planning to do so next year. According to the Dallas County Elections Department, neither party has signed a contract agreeing to either a joint or split primary or specified the voting method they’ll use. Dallas County Democratic Chair Kardal Coleman said Democrats are still considering their options.

West said his party estimates it’ll need to secure at least 360 polling locations to manage a hand-count. That means the party would have to recruit and train at least 2,160 workers — at least three to manage each polling site and at least three more to hand-count ballots at each site.

The cost for election workers alone at the Republican polling sites would amount to more than $300,000. That includes workers’ $12-per-hour wage for a 12-hour shift on Election Day, plus 12 hours of pay for the teams counting up the votes on ballots that are expected to have more than two dozen races on them. Any time beyond that would cost even more.

That dollar figure doesn’t include the cost of materials, including ballot boxes, voting booths, paper and ballot printing costs.

At that rate, the cost of hand-counting the GOP primary ballots would likely outstrip the $500,000 the party says it can afford to spend.

State may not absorb the added costs

The state, which reimburses local parties for some of their primary election expenses, has already warned county party chairs that it won’t absorb higher-than-normal costs for the primary compared with previous years, even if there’s a switch from a joint primary to separate party primaries. That means county parties that decide to hand-count would have to prepare to cover these extraordinary costs out of their own pockets.

The Legislature allocated about $21 million in funding for the 2026 primary, and the state expects an additional $5 million from candidate filing fees. However, those funds also help cover expenses such as postage for voter registration, operational costs at the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, and other administrative costs.

Texas Secretary of State officials have also warned county chairs that by law, election results have to be in within 24 hours after the polls close. Failing to do so could result in a misdemeanor charge.

West defended his party’s vote for hand-counting as an effort to “return to a system of voting that was the successful standard for decades.”

Dallas County has actually used some kind of machines for voting and vote counting for most of the past century, starting with mechanical lever machines in the 1930s and later punch cards and optical scan machines, said Bruce Sherbet, who served as the county’s election administrator from 1987 to 2011. He said it’s possible smaller jurisdictions such as cities and school districts may have hand-counted their ballots, but he couldn’t immediately identify any. Today’s voting machines tabulate votes electronically but use paper ballots for auditing purposes, and tabulating equipment is tested prior to and after an election for accuracy.

Reversing course by hand-counting, “is just completely irresponsible,” said Coleman, the Democratic Party chair. “I would hate to see the Republican Party do something that would ultimately harm voters, confuse the electorate, and change our process, which has shown and proven that it works for every voter in our county,” he said.

What the state is telling proponents of hand-counting

Paul Adams, the newly appointed Dallas County elections administrator, said the department’s goal will be to respect the parties’ legal right to determine how to run their primaries, and also make sure “that the voters are being protected and the voters are going to be getting the best possible service.”

Although there’s no explicit deadline for the parties to reach an agreement with the county, or decide whether they’ll run their primaries together or separately, there are deadlines looming.

Months before the March primary, the parties have to secure polling locations and sign any lease agreements for them. They have to hire and train election workers, design ballots, test equipment, and complete other administrative duties by January, when voters can start applying for a mail-in ballot.

At a gathering of hundreds of local party chairs in Austin last month, Christina Adkins, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office elections division director, reminded party chairs who might be skeptical of machine counts that hand-counting is already part of the election process.

To verify the accuracy of machine counts after every election, a bipartisan group of officials hand-count a sample of ballots — from 1% of precincts, or three precincts, whichever is greater — with races selected at random by the state. The process has been legally required for years.

If party chairs like the idea of a hand-count but find that it isn’t feasible, Adkins suggested that they consider getting involved in these post-election hand-count audits, which poll watchers are now allowed to attend. The results of the audit must also be posted on the county’s website.

“It is a way to get your community involved. It’s a way to validate the accuracy of your vote totals,” Adkins said. “I strongly encourage you all in this room as leaders in your community to participate in this.”

Evans, the Williamson County Republican chair, said party members in her county are opting for that route.

“The stakes are really high,” Evans said. “If we were to upend everything, go back to hand-marked paper ballots, a full hand-count, precinct-level, and the primary is complete chaos, then everyone is going to be left with the impression that none of this can be done.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She’s based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Texas redistricting trial: Plaintiffs say new map was drawn with race-based motives

2025-10-02T20:17:19+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

EL PASO, Texas — When Texas first proposed redrawing its congressional map earlier this summer, critics decried it as a political power grab to appease the president, while state leaders claimed it was necessary after the Department of Justice raised concerns about some majority non-white districts.

But now that the map is in federal court, the two sides have swapped stances.

The state now claims it acted for purely partisan gain, which the U.S. Supreme Court has said is lawful, while a group of individuals and advocacy organizations argue the Department of Justice’s involvement reveals an unconstitutional racial motivation.

These plaintiff groups, who are also suing over the 2021 maps, have asked a district court in El Paso to block the maps from being used in the 2026 election. The nine-day hearing kicked off Wednesday, with state Rep. Joe Moody, a Democrat from El Paso, testifying that his Republican colleagues absolutely had partisan goals.

“But how you get there matters,” he said. And in this unusual mid-decade redistricting, the Legislature’s path to gain more Republican seats in Congress “depressed the ability of Black and Hispanic voters to elect their candidates of choice,” he said.

Moody testified alongside state Sen. Carol Alvarado, a Houston Democrat who spoke about the impact of the changes on her city’s historically Black and Hispanic neighborhoods. Other state legislators are expected to testify for the plaintiffs’ side over the next four days, before the state presents its witnesses.

Justice Department letter is a point of contention

The plaintiffs claim that state lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans by breaking up majority non-white districts at the urging of the Department of Justice.

This letter from the DOJ, which came after President Donald Trump began pressuring Texas to redraw its congressional map, has become a major conflict point. In the letter, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon directed Texas to redraw four “coalition districts,” in which multiple racial groups together form a majority.

Dhillon cited a 2024 ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said an individual racial or ethnic group must make up a majority of a district to bring a voting rights lawsuit. The ruling did not direct states to redraw their existing districts where multiple racial groups combine to make up a majority. In fact, to do so would potentially violate the Constitution, several legal experts told the Legislature at various points during the process.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Steven Loomis, an assistant attorney general representing the state, rejected the letter as irrelevant, noting that Dhillon is not a lawmaker, that she didn’t play a role in drawing the maps, and that her claims “don’t bind the Texas Legislature.”

But Gov. Greg Abbott said in several television interviews that this letter, and the court ruling, was what pushed him to add redistricting to the special session agenda — interviews that the plaintiffs’ lawyers played repeatedly at the hearing. Moody testified that it was his understanding that the letter from the DOJ was “what set the special session,” as it gave state leaders the “checkbox” they needed to proceed.

The state maintains that it was motivated entirely by pressure from Trump’s team to add more Republican seats, and that race wasn’t a factor. Loomis pointed to statements from Democratic lawmakers who called the process “pure politics” and a “fascist power grab” to show they agree this was motivated by GOP goals.

The plaintiffs are also arguing that the state racially gerrymandered, meaning race was the predominant factor in how it drew some of the districts. They pointed to several districts that are now just barely over 50% of one race, claiming the state moved some people into certain districts based on their race to meet a performative threshold.

These districts were drawn as “window dressing,” to allow lawmakers to claim they were helping voters of color while actually diminishing their ability to elect their candidate of choice, Moody said.

Who drew the maps?

Throughout the summer, Republicans lawmakers again and again claimed that the entire process was race-blind, hoping to sidestep any concerns about unconstitutionally considering race in the redraw.

But the plaintiffs’ lawyers questioned the validity of those claims at Wednesday’s hearing, and homed in on a central question that’s hung over the entire process: Who drew Texas’ new congressional map? And did they consider race while doing so?

Adam Kincaid, the executive director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust, drew Texas’ 2021 maps. Many assumed he would draw the 2025 map as well, but early on, Republican leaders sidestepped questions about his role in the process.

Rep. Todd Hunter, the Corpus Christi Republican who carried the House version of the map, told colleagues he didn’t know whether Kincaid had drawn the map, while committee chair Rep. Cody Vasut said he didn’t know who Kincaid was.

Senate redistricting committee chair Sen. Phil King, a Weatherford Republican, faced blowback when he revealed toward the end of the process that he and Kincaid had chatted three times in recent months.

“We visited a few minutes,” King told lawmakers. “I specifically told him: ‘Don’t tell me anything you’re doing with regard to map drawing. Don’t tell me about the details of any map if you’re involved in it.’”

Moody and Alvarado both expressed frustration over not knowing who was drawing the map or what data they consulted in doing so. In the 2021 redistricting process, the state demographer and the attorney general’s office were on hand at all the hearings to answer questions, but no similar services were offered this time, they said.

Nina Perales, a lawyer with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who is representing some of the plaintiffs, said it was a “legislative shell game” to figure out who had drawn the map.

These questions may soon be answered: The state has said it will call Kincaid as a witness next week.

Texas counties struggle to process voter registrations using state’s new TEAM system

2025-09-25T09:45:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Darcy Hood mailed her voter registration application to the Tarrant County elections department in July, after she turned 18.

Months later, her application still hasn’t been processed. And it’s unclear when it will be.

With the Oct. 6 deadline to register to vote in the November constitutional amendment election approaching, tens of thousands of Texans are in the same situation, waiting in suspense for their applications to go through, a process that normally takes a few days or weeks.

In interviews, private conversations, and emails, county elections officials from across the state point the finger at the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, which has long had functionality problems. They say that after the software was overhauled in July, the problems began proliferating: Voters’ previous addresses override their new ones, their voting precincts don’t populate correctly, and sometimes the registration information doesn’t save at all.

“One day it works and we can get stuff done, and the next day it doesn’t and nothing gets done,” said Pam Hill, the elections administrator in San Patricio County. “That’s the trend right now.”

The executive board of the Texas Association of County Election Officials met on Sept. 2 with Christina Adkins, the state’s elections division director, and Deputy Director Kristi Hart to discuss the problems. In an email sent afterward to association members and obtained by Votebeat, the board said it “unambiguously stated the level of frustration from our members” regarding the need for clear guidance and training, the absence of which “has placed unexpected burdens and stress on our members.” The board said it would begin offering some training and peer support itself.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it anticipated some technical issues with this “once-in-a-decade upgrade.” Adkins told election officials this month that many of the problems stem from county officials not knowing how to use the updated system.

But several county election officials said the system didn’t work well during training sessions earlier this year, which limited opportunities for hands-on testing.

Meanwhile, the unprocessed registration applications keep piling up. Hood’s application is one of around 13,000 that Tarrant County election officials say are pending state verification. Travis County says it has more than 12,000 applications that need to be processed, and Bexar County has more than 40,000. A Texas voter whose application was received on time but not processed by the time of the election can still cast a provisional ballot, but there’s a risk those ballots won’t be counted.

“I hate that our voters are going through this, and it’s through no fault of their own,” said Clinton Ludwig, the Tarrant County elections administrator. The voters are doing what they’re supposed to do, and we’re also trying to do what we’re supposed to do.”

Heather Hood, Darcy’s mother, told Votebeat that for weeks she has called Tarrant County and state officials seeking answers about her daughter’s application. An official with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told her last week “to be patient.”

“It’s so frustrating to be placated, and they’re telling me to be patient when they are the ones who have put this system into place and it is not working correctly,” Heather Hood told Votebeat in a phone interview.

State officials say they’re responding to concerns

State officials have pushed back on some of the counties’ complaints. “There is a difference between a county saying this doesn’t work and a county saying, I don’t know how to do this,” Adkins, the state election director, said in a Sept. 17 video call with local election officials that was recorded by the state and shared with Votebeat. “We want to really make sure that we’re drilling down on the things that are issues versus areas where you need more training.”

In statements to Votebeat, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office said that the rollout of the updated version of TEAM is a multi-stage process, and that the office has “planned accordingly.”

The task involves “migrating more than 20 million records and training more than 2,500 users,” the office said. “Technical issues are to be expected with a rollout of this size, and that is why we chose this constitutional election cycle for this transition.”

“We are working long hours to help our counties prepare for the November election and upgrade to a new version of TEAM that will ultimately result in more efficiently managed elections,” the office said.

The state and the vendor that developed the system “continue to respond to issues and concerns,” the office said.

The Secretary of State’s Office has assigned 30 employees to work directly with counties to train them and answer technical questions about the new system, the agency said, three times as many as it had in the previous TEAM update.

“As we are in the middle of a once-in-a-decade upgrade of the state’s voter registration system, our focus right now is on supporting counties in preparation for the upcoming election,” the agency added. “Any verdict on the new system is far too premature at the moment.”

Counties have long had issues with TEAM

TEAM — the Texas Election Administration Management system — has been around since the early 2000s, and earlier iterations prompted many complaints from election officials. The state improved the system over the years and launched a complete overhaul in July, but election officials say it is falling short of the promises that officials from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office made to election officials and state lawmakers.

The system was developed by Louisiana-based vendor Civix. All but 15 of the state’s 254 counties rely on TEAM to plan elections and maintain their voter rolls. Even counties that use software from one of two state-approved private vendors to manage their voter rolls are required by state law to sync their data with TEAM daily, and have to use TEAM to verify a voter’s identity and their eligibility to cast a ballot.

Election officials across the state have been complaining for months about struggles with the latest TEAM iteration, and at least 10 county election officials interviewed by Votebeat said the issues are preventing them from completing essential tasks.

“Some of (the problems) get corrected, and then a few days later, they’re not working again,” said Hill, the San Patricio County elections administrator.

She said her staff in the South Texas county, which has roughly 40,000 registered voters, hasn’t been able to process about 600 voter registration applications initially submitted through the Texas Department of Public Safety. To do so, her staff must use the system to make sure the voters are not already registered somewhere else, plus double-check street addresses to ensure the voter gets the correct ballot, among other tasks.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials surveyed its members Sept. 2 and found that county officials struggled with the system, but noted that TEAM representatives were helpful and responsive. Around 114 of the association’s 600-plus members responded to the survey.

“A substantial portion of users find the TEAM system’s core functionalities, particularly Voter Registration and related sub-features, to be difficult or not functioning,” says the survey summary, which Votebeat obtained through an open records request.

Chris McGinn, the association’s executive director, declined to comment on how the state has responded to complaints about the system. But he said the association is continuing to work with the Secretary of State’s Office and that the agency “has been very willing to listen to our concerns and address them as efficiently as they can.”

At least two dozen messages from 15 county officials regarding concerns about TEAM were sent to an email list of county election officials between July and September, according to records obtained by Votebeat, though some of those officials say their issues were subsequently fixed.

“Would it help if everyone just logged off until they fix everything? Thoughts?” Harrison County elections administrator Donald Robinette wrote earlier this month.

Civix, the vendor that developed TEAM, declined to comment for this story. According to public records, its contract with the state is for $17 million. The Secretary of State’s Office said it’s paid by a mix of state funds and federal funds allocated under the 2002 Help America Vote Act, aimed at improving election administration.

Migrating to TEAM from private systems

While the state uses TEAM and counties must sync with it, the local offices can use a state-approved private vendor to maintain voter registration and conduct other vital tasks. But such contracts can be costly, creating an incentive for counties to use TEAM, which is free for them. Some counties switched to TEAM in the last year after becoming concerned about the viability of Votec, one of the two state-sanctioned vendors.

“Our team is systematically addressing any issues as they arise in support of the 254 counties who are adjusting to the new system,” the Texas Secretary of State’s Office’s statement said. “At the same time, we are attempting to onboard counties whose privately contracted vendor just went out of business, leaving them without a functioning voter registration system. This is an unprecedented situation.”

The struggles county election officials are having with TEAM have deterred others from making the switch away from outside vendors.

Nueces County used Votec for voter registration until August and considered switching to TEAM. But after hearing from his counterparts around the state, Kevin Kieschnick, the county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, said the county decided instead to contract with the other state-approved vendor, VR Systems.

Kieschnick said he concluded that the county wouldn’t be able to transfer large files of voter registration applications, voters’ signatures, and geographical data of voters’ addresses. “There were enough issues that I heard about from a bunch of other counties that made me think, ‘Nope, we’re not going to do that,’” he said.

The state’s contract with Civix requires the Texas Secretary of State’s Office to address any poor performance, and by law, it must report information about the vendor’s performance to a state tracking system. The office did not respond directly to questions about whether it has reported any problems yet, but said it’s working closely with Civix to resolve them.

Hill, the elections administrator from San Patricio County in South Texas, said she believes the state will fix the problems, but she expects it’ll take time.

“Six months from now, I might tell you that TEAM is working great and we really like the new TEAM,” Hill said. “I hope we get there.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Some of America’s newest citizens may face an extra barrier to the ballot box

2025-09-15T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

In Milwaukee this week, dozens of new Americans filed into the federal courthouse to take the oath of citizenship. The scene was joyful, emotional, and for many, the culmination of years of waiting. Outside the ceremony, volunteers from the League of Women Voters of Milwaukee County stood ready with electronic tablets to register interested voters.

By the end of the second of three ceremonies that day, more than 20 people had already registered to vote — each one of them a fully documented citizen of the United States.

Linda Neubauer, who leads those efforts, has watched this scene before. “Some of them were never allowed to vote in their own home countries, so it’s a very big deal for them,” she told Alex Shur, our Wisconsin reporter. “It makes it very special for us. I get my share of hugs from new citizens.”

This is the work that League volunteers have been doing for decades: welcoming brand-new Americans into democracy by making sure they don’t leave their ceremony without the tools to vote. And here’s the important part — that hasn’t stopped.

So why do we bring this up? At the end of August, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that from now on, only state and local election officials can register new citizens at ceremonies held in USCIS facilities. Nonpartisan volunteers, such as those from the League are out. The agency says it’s worried about the “sporadic” nature of volunteer participation and whether it can guarantee nonpartisanship. Critics say this is a solution in search of a problem — and one that could make it harder for new citizens to register.

But here’s the thing: Many naturalization ceremonies don’t happen at USCIS facilities. They happen in courthouses and are overseen by judges. That’s why the joyful scene in Milwaukee played out as usual. The new guidance simply doesn’t apply there.

It also doesn’t change much in many other places. In Arizona, for example, League members already work as deputy registrars through county election departments, so they’re operating under official authority. In Texas, the same is true, and most ceremonies are judge-led, so little changes there either.

“We’ve instructed our Leagues to continue conducting naturalization ceremonies as they always have, until an official directive changes this practice,” said Joyce LeBombard, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas.

What the new directive really does is complicate voter registration at the set of ceremonies that are directly managed by USCIS — ceremonies that often don’t have state or local election officials on hand. USCIS says voter registration applications and information “will continue to be provided by state or local election officials, or USCIS staff at the end of naturalization ceremonies.” Still, it means those new citizens won’t necessarily have the same warm experience as the ones in Wisconsin.

“By shutting out the League and other civic partners, USCIS is making it harder for new citizens to register to vote, which is yet another intimidation tactic and attack on the immigrant community,” Celina Stewart, CEO of the League of Women Voters, said in a statement. “Our democracy is stronger with the voices of new citizens.”

And that’s where the politics come in. The Trump administration has been loudly and rapidly changing immigration policies since January, each time making it a little harder for new citizens and immigrants working toward citizenship. Cutting back voter registration at naturalization ceremonies sends the message that full participation in civic life isn’t meant to be easy or welcoming.

An email from USCIS to Colorado officials, released to Votebeat by the Colorado secretary of state’s office, shows, in part, how this is playing out. In it, USCIS asked officials from the state and from Jefferson County, outside of Denver, for voter registration information to distribute to new citizens, and invited local government representatives to attend naturalization ceremonies to help register voters.

But the email said USCIS staff are “not permitted to work with the City of Denver currently due to Denver’s sanctuary city status.” USCIS has not responded to questions about this policy.

In places like Wisconsin, meanwhile, the USCIS policy makes headlines, but it doesn’t make much difference. The courthouse is still full of hugs, clipboards, and first-time voters ready to make their voices heard.

Votebeat reporters Alex Shur, Jen Fifield, and Natalia Contreras contributed reporting.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Trump leans on voter ID politics as he tests the limits of his power

2025-09-08T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

President Donald Trump is promising another executive order on elections — this time to make voter ID a national requirement. Voter ID requirements have always been popular with Republicans, but now Trump is hinting at imposing one using federal power, in ways even conservatives used to reject.

Elections — I know, I know, I am repeating myself — are managed by the states, with oversight from Congress. There’s a whole clause about it in the Constitution that you can read yourself. Sure, he lacks constitutional authority over elections, but the point may not be policy alone — it’s also politics, and possibly a dangerous power grab.

Democratic leaders typically oppose voter ID requirements as an unnecessary barrier to voting, but the politics around voter ID have always been really good for Republicans. “If you persuade people that you are the party trying to make sure elections are controlled by American citizens and that Democrats are doing everything they can to make sure that illegal immigrants can vote by the busload, that’s a good position to be in,” former Texas state Rep. Todd Smith, a Republican, told me back in 2016, after he was booted from office for not writing a strict enough voter ID bill.

A Gallup poll conducted in October 2024 found that 84% of U.S. adults backed requiring a photo ID to vote. Nearly every Republican (98%) is on board, but even two-thirds of Democrats support it. It’s one of the rare voting policies with such broad bipartisan agreement.

That’s not to say it’s a simple proposition. The logistics of implementing a nationwide requirement would be messy: 36 states currently have some type of ID requirement for voters, but they vary widely on what types of IDs are accepted, for example, and what to do if a voter doesn’t have an ID. How ID requirements are enforced when it comes to mail ballots is even more confusing.

Trump’s social media posts don’t speak to the full details of the policies he plans to put in place.

As for the authority he plans to cite, that’s not clear, either. In a social media post on Aug. 18, he said that “states are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.” That’s false, but it’s revealing.

In an interview on the Sept. 2 episode of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” Cleta Mitchell, the founder of the Election Integrity Network and an advocate for citizenship checks of voters and strict restrictions on mail ballots, among other things, acknowledged that the president’s authority over elections is limited.

But she hinted at a possible path forward: The president can intervene, she said, when “there is a threat to the national sovereignty of the United States, as I think that we can establish.” She went on to say that the president could be considering exercising emergency powers “to protect the federal elections going forward.”

Since returning to office earlier this year, Trump has repeatedly issued emergency declarations to justify sweeping executive actions in other arenas — including tariffs, immigration measures, and policing the streets of large, Democratic-led American cities. He appears poised to take the same approach to elections, a space where conservatives have long warned about the threats posed by “national ID cards” and federal overreach.

Trump could normalize that, all in the name of “election integrity.”

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

A guide to understanding the debate over keeping voter rolls ‘clean’

2025-09-04T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up to have Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

The federal government’s demands that states turn over their voter rolls and related information highlights longstanding conflicts over how to ensure that only eligible voters are registered without endangering voting rights.

The U.S. Justice Department has sent letters to several states — and plans to send many more — asking them for copies of their voter lists and for detailed information about how they maintain them. The department has said it’s seeking to enforce requirements in federal law that President Donald Trump has ordered it to prioritize.

It has already sued North Carolina, alleging that the state has not been properly verifying voter identity, and sued Orange County, California, for refusing to provide full records for 17 people who have been removed from the rolls in connection with a probe of potential noncitizen voting. And it has threatened to sue or withhold federal funding from other states if they do not comply with their requests for information.

Everyone agrees that a “clean” voter list — cleared of people who have died or moved out of the jurisdiction, or who otherwise aren’t eligible to vote — is good practice. But they differ on how aggressively election officials should move to remove potentially ineligible voters, what exactly federal law requires election officials to do, and how to balance election security with the risk of wrongly removing and disenfranchising eligible voters.

Rhetoric and false claims can make the debate harder to follow. Here’s a guide to understanding the issues and arguments.

What does the law require?

There are two key federal laws that govern the maintenance of voter rolls.

The National Voter Registration Act requires election officials to make a “reasonable effort” to remove voters who become ineligible to vote because they move or die, a process known as list maintenance. The Help America Vote Act, enacted about a decade later, requires states to use a computerized statewide list of every registered voter and assign them a unique identification number. It also requires them to remove duplicated names.

Beyond that, it’s up to state and local governments to set their own policies for how and when to perform list maintenance, and it’s up to federal courts to decide what is “reasonable.” That term isn’t defined in the law, and it’s often where voting rights groups and advocates for stricter list maintenance disagree.

In a recent case in Michigan, for example, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the state’s actions to remove the names of thousands of dead voters from the rolls were sufficient, even though the plaintiff, the Public Interest Legal Foundation, claimed to have identified thousands more on the rolls.

Logan Churchwell, research director at the foundation said in an interview that the court’s decision amounted to giving Michigan an “E for effort.” He said his organization believes there should be a higher standard that would reduce the risk of fraud and administrative error.

For her part, Lata Nott, director of voting rights policy for Campaign Legal Center, said the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement for a “reasonable effort” at maintaining lists is designed to set a floor, but it doesn’t prevent states from creating extreme policies that lead to eligible voters being mistakenly removed.

What is the central issue in the debate?

The main disagreement is over how aggressive list maintenance should be. A recent congressional hearing highlighted the differences between Democrats and Republicans on this question.

House Republicans claimed dirty voter rolls enable fraud, and said ensuring that only eligible voters are on the list increases election security and voter confidence. They dismissed the idea that their efforts are meant to purge certain types of eligible voters from the rolls, such as people of color.

“This is not and should never be a partisan issue,” said Rep. Laurel Lee, a Florida Republican and former secretary of state. “Maintaining accurate voter rolls is fundamental to election security and public trust.”

House Democrats made it clear that they, too, don’t want ineligible voters, such as dead people or noncitizens, on the list. But they questioned why Republicans would want to take any actions that could potentially disenfranchise eligible people, citing recent incidents of state list maintenance actions that led to eligible voters being removed.

“What we do want is every eligible voter gets the chance to vote and their constitutional rights are not infringed upon,” said Rep. Julie Johnson, a Texas Democrat. “And that seems to be a huge distinction.”

Why is it hard to keep voter rolls updated?

It is difficult partly because of the decentralized nature of voting.

The U.S. doesn’t have a national database of eligible voters or citizens. Under federal law, states maintain their own lists. They assign voters the ID number that’s required under the Help America Vote Act, but that number doesn’t have to be connected to any existing federal identification, such as a Social Security number.

To remove voters who were eligible, but aren’t anymore, election officials must have ways to find out when a voter dies, moves to another state, is convicted of a felony, or otherwise becomes ineligible to cast a ballot.

Many election officials get data on address changes from their state’s motor-vehicle department and the U.S. Postal Service, and get death reports from state and federal agencies. Some states allow or mandate the use of other sources, such as obituaries and responses to jury duty summonses.

But there are po1tential gaps and time lags in these systems. When people move, for example, they don’t often tell the election office for their old address to remove them from the rolls.

It’s fairly easy for officials to track in-state moves, because people carry the same state-assigned voter ID number when they go to register in a new location in the state. But it’s harder for officials to find out when someone moves out of state. That requires coordination between states, or more detailed searches through government records.

Many states are members of the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a consortium that collects state voter roll data and alerts its members to potentially duplicate registrations across state lines. But two of the largest states, California and New York, are not members. And several Republican states have withdrawn from ERIC in recent years, citing concerns about the program, including about how the organization shares some of its data with researchers.

Do some states have more registered voters than residents?

Statistics like this are often used to back up claims of voter fraud or poor state practices. But there’s a legitimate explanation for this that’s tied to federal and state laws.

In some instances, state laws allow election officials to remove voters from the rolls quickly, such as when they die, or if they respond to a jury duty summons by saying they are not a U.S. citizen.

But when a state finds out a voter may have moved, federal law requires election officials to send a confirmation mailing before removing that person from the rolls. If the voter doesn’t respond, they remain on the roll of registered voters, but are moved to the “inactive” list, and their names must stay there for two federal election cycles before they are removed, unless the state hears from them.

That four-year wait, and a large number of voters on the inactive list, can make the voter roll appear bloated at any given time.

But another reason for the disparity is that population estimates themselves are imprecise, said Chris Fowler, a professor of geography and demography at Penn State University who studies voter rolls and census data.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Communities Survey is currently our best measure of population changes from year to year, Fowler said. But the uncertainty in the national population count is about 10 million residents, he said — roughly equal to the population of Michigan.

Some use the disparities between the numbers to cast doubt on the accuracy of elections and raise alarm about voter fraud, such as Elon Musk with his misleading claim that Michigan had “more registered voters than eligible citizens.” His numbers included inactive voters as if they were eligible voters. But before those voters could cast a ballot, they would have to correct their voting record to prove eligibility, most commonly by showing documentation proving they still live in the jurisdiction.

How ‘dirty’ are the voter rolls?

Some of the most cited data available on this comes from more than a decade ago, and has helped inspire efforts at improvement since then. But those efforts have run into challenges.

In 2012, a research study by the Pew Center on the States found that more than 2.75 million people were registered to vote in more than one state, and there were more than 1.8 million dead people whose names were still on the voter rolls. These and other findings “underscore the need for states to improve accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency,” Pew said.

There have been multiple attempts to create systems allowing states to share data to help with voter list maintenance. That’s a difficult task, because any such effort must comply with state and federal laws governing data use and privacy. Officials must also cross-check data from various sources, using enough different data points to ensure that the matches are accurate, and that a person with the same name as another isn’t mistakenly removed as a duplicate.

One prior program, the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, was ultimately shut down under a court settlement because it did not do enough to protect sensitive voter data. It was also found to be highly inaccurate, often incorrectly identifying registrations as duplicates because of poor matching techniques.

After Pew’s study, the nonprofit provided funding to help launch ERIC, to try to screen out duplicate voter registrations across state lines. Since then, ERIC has helped states identify hundreds of thousands of voters each year who have moved across state lines, and tens of thousands of voters who died. But in part because some Republican states have left the program, only half of states now participate, leaving a lot of gaps.

Some states use more data sources and perform checks more frequently than others. In the latest federal survey of election officials, for example, about 30% of states said they do not use National Change of Address reports from the U.S. Postal Service or data from motor vehicle agencies to identify potentially ineligible voters.

Do poorly maintained voter rolls allow for more fraud?

Generally speaking, removing a voter who has moved prevents them from wrongly voting in their old voting jurisdiction, and removing a voter who has died prevents another person from fraudulently casting a ballot in their name.

That said, prosecutions for double voting and voting for others are rare, and Votebeat could not find any studies showing that states that do a better job of cleaning voter rolls have less voter fraud.

The Heritage Foundation’s database of voter fraud across all states since 1982 includes 174 convictions for duplicate voting, 99 cases of noncitizen voting, and two cases of someone voting under a dead person’s name.

But Churchwell, of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said the number of prosecutions does not properly measure how much fraud occurs. Rather, he said, it indicates the state’s propensity to prosecute. “I doubt you’ll find research showing where a state is simultaneously terrible at list maintenance yet zealous with prosecutions,” he said.

Are there noncitizens on the voter rolls?

Yes, but states that have looked have not found them in large numbers.

Audits in multiple states have found small numbers of noncitizens on the rolls, few of whom had actually cast ballots, and there are no known instances of noncitizens voting in large enough numbers to influence the outcome of an election.

The threat of noncitizen voting has become a prominent talking point for Republicans, driving their efforts to pass proof-of-citizenship requirements for voters. But even in Republican-led states, officials who have recently tried to find noncitizens on the rolls have reported only small numbers.

In an audit last year, for example, the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office found 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million registered voters. Nine of them had voted in prior elections, the office found. In Ohio, only one of the 641 cases of noncitizen voting that Secretary of State Frank LaRose referred for prosecution resulted in a voter fraud charge.

In Texas, which has more than 18.6 million registered voters, the Secretary of State’s Office identified 581 noncitizens from 2021 to August of 2024. The state referred 33 potential noncitizens who voted in the 2024 election to the attorney general for investigation. The state also is investigating potential cases from the 2020 and 2022 election cycles.

In Michigan, where activists are working to get a proof-of-citizenship requirement enacted, a review this year by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office found 15 noncitizens who voted in the November 2024 election.

In Arizona, which requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, Jesse Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, identified at least 2,331 registered voters who he believes are highly likely to be noncitizens. He studied the state’s voter rolls as an expert defense witness for a case challenging the state’s proof of citizenship laws. Richman said those people could have become naturalized citizens since last updating their license, but the ID they used when registering to vote or updating their registration was a noncitizen ID.

On Aug. 28, the U.S. Justice Department announced the indictment of a Canadian citizen charged with registering to vote and voting in federal elections in North Carolina in 2022 and 2024.

Are there dead people on the voter rolls?

Yes, there are voters who have died but whose names are still on the rolls.

But claims about the number of such voters often turn out to be inaccurate.

In 2012, for example, South Carolina’s State Election Commission reviewed 207 cases that the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles had referred to as potential cases of ballots being cast in the names of dead voters. Of those, the commission was able to conclude that 197 did not involve dead voters — instead, they were either clerical errors, or identified through bad matches. There wasn’t enough information on the remaining 10 cases to make any determination.

States that are members of ERIC receive reports about voters who may have died while out of state, and the service has identified about 644,000 voters who died over the last 13 years and whose names needed to be removed from the list. But some state laws may limit how states use that information.

Pennsylvania, for example, is an ERIC member, but state law allows officials to remove the names of dead voters only if they learn of it through the state’s health agency or an obituary. Election officials in the state, including Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt, have advocated for that to change.

Can list maintenance measures lead to eligible voters being purged?

Yes. In Texas, some of the people removed from the rolls last year were eligible citizens who did not respond to a mailed notice seeking more information about their status, an investigation by Votebeat, The Texas Tribune, and ProPublica found.

And that’s the concern that voting rights advocates have about states that take aggressive steps to clean their lists, especially close to an election. Two of the most recent cases were in Alabama and Virginia, just before the November 2024 election.

Alabama inactivated the registrations of 2,074 eligible voters whom it had flagged as noncitizens based on whether they had been issued federal immigration ID numbers. And Virginia also removed eligible voters from its rolls as it attempted to purge noncitizens based on information from its motor vehicle department, CNN and NPR found.

This is why federal law has safeguards on when states can remove potentially ineligible voters, such as the rule that election officials cannot conduct systematic voter removals within 90 days of an election, Nott with Campaign Legal Center said.

“The more aggressive your list maintenance laws are,” she said, “the more likely you are probably going to be purging people who are eligible to vote.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Texas lawmakers pass election bill to retain limits on same-day registration changes

2025-09-03T19:21:16+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Update, Sep. 3: Lawmakers in the Texas House and Senate approved a bill to enact a proposal sought by Gov. Greg Abbott, and it’s now headed to his desk. Under the bill, which revokes a change that was scheduled to take effect Sept. 1, voters can update their address at the polls, but have to wait 30 days for that change to take effect. Meanwhile, they can vote a ballot with races tied to their old address.

Updated, Aug. 27: This story was updated to include new information from Gov. Greg Abbott’s office.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called on lawmakers Monday to prohibit same-day voter registration, in an apparent attempt to reverse a measure passed earlier this year that relaxed rules for voters who made last-minute updates to their addresses.

Texas does not allow same-day registration for new applicants (23 other states do), but under the legislation passed this year with bipartisan support, Senate Bill 2217, voters could update their addresses and immediately cast a ballot based on their new precinct or district, as long as the move was within the county. That law was scheduled to go into effect Sept. 1.

Shortly after Abbott’s announcement, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Republican from East Texas, announced on social media that he had filed a bill that would effectively prevent that measure from going into effect.

Abbott clarified late Tuesday in a message to lawmakers that he was seeking legislation about “accepting a voter with an address that is not current” and about a voter’s registration taking “immediate effect” after election officials receive a change-of-address notice.

Cain’s bill would maintain the status quo, in which voters can update their address at the polls, but have to wait 30 days for that change to take effect. Their ballot would include races tied to their old address, the one on file in the state voter registration system before the update.

Abbott’s office didn’t immediately respond to questions about why he added the issue to the agenda for the ongoing special legislative session.

Senate Bill 2217, which aimed to make election data reporting and reconciliation consistent across the state, was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican from East Texas, and enacted during this year’s regular legislative session.

But the provision allowing voters to cast ballots immediately based on same-day address changes was added through an amendment proposed by Republican state Rep. Matt Shaheen of North Texas, who chairs the House Committee on Elections. It passed the full House with bipartisan support.

Earlier this month, during an election law training for election officials hosted by the Texas secretary of state, some election administrators said they were worried about the new requirement.

Trudy Hancock, head of the elections department in Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University, said students move constantly, and her workers handle change-of-address and statement-of-residency forms at every election. Given the volume of changes, she said, processing them immediately would require her staff to work longer hours each day the polls are open. That’s because the voter’s record has to be updated right away before the information can be uploaded to the state’s registration database, as the new law requires.

“We have to come up with some kind of process to go to each early voting location, pick up those statements-of-residence forms, get them back to the office, process them all before we can upload the history — all before 10 o’clock the next morning,” Hancock said.

And since the voter’s address would be changed by election workers at the polling location, without additional address and mapping verification steps that election officials typically take, Hancock said there’s a risk that voters could get the wrong ballot.

“Our election workers are experienced, but they can make mistakes,” she said. “Not all of them are familiar with every single area of the county.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

What to expect at the voting booth as Texas officials respond to Trump’s executive order

2025-09-02T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

After years of using a touchscreen machine to mark their ballots, voters in at least three Texas counties will be asked instead to make their selections directly on the paper ballots, by hand, starting in November.

Election officials in Collin, Williamson, and Bastrop counties said they’re proactively changing their voting procedures and equipment in response to an executive order from President Donald Trump in March that sought to mostly ban voting equipment that uses barcodes or QR codes on paper ballots to speed up vote counting.

Some other provisions in the executive order have been blocked by the courts, but this one has not. The order instructed the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which crafts the certification guidelines that most states rely on for their voting equipment, to amend the guidelines to prohibit such systems and “take appropriate action” to review and rescind previously issued certifications based on prior standards.

U.S. EAC Commissioner Donald Palmer told state election directors at a July conference that “there won’t be mass decertification of systems” in the near future. Still, Trump’s order has sparked questions from the public and uncertainty about the use of different kinds of voting machines.

Election officials have concerns, too, about the potential cost and complexity of having to switch voting systems. Some Texas counties, and officials in states including Ohio, California, and West Virginia, are opting to make changes now, in a year without a federal election, hoping to prevent disruption closer to the 2026 midterms.

“Every election is important, but you would never want to try such a big change for a primary election,” said Kaleb Breaux, election administrator in Collin County, north of Dallas, which is spending $2.3 million on the switch. “You want it to be a known process that your voters and people in your county trust.”

His department is planning to host events next month to give voters a chance to familiarize themselves with new equipment.

Touchscreen voting machines, barcodes and the Trump order

In most Texas counties — including the most populous — voters make their selections on touchscreen machines known as ballot-marking devices. At check-in, they receive a blank paper ballot that is inserted into the ballot marking device. Once a voter makes their selections on screen, the machine prints them out on the ballot for the voter to review. Then the voter inserts the ballot into the tabulation machine to be counted.

The counties potentially affected by Trump’s executive order use ballot-marking devices made by Elections Systems & Software, one of two state-certified voting system vendors. In addition to marking the ballots with the voter’s choices, the ES&S equipment prints a machine-readable code reflecting those choices that is used to speed up tabulation.

Critics of such systems have argued for years that voters have no way of knowing whether the code accurately reflects their choices, even though the results are audited.

ES&S told Votebeat that it is developing new equipment to meet the latest iteration of federal guidelines, and that it won’t use codes. Equipment from Hart Intercivic, the other state-certified vendor, doesn’t use machine-readable codes.

Both vendors also give counties the option of using paper ballots that voters mark by hand. Those systems still use tabulator machines to scan the ballots and count the votes.

Last month, Texas Elections Director Christina Adkins told a group of election officials that she’s waiting to see what action the federal EAC takes on certification of voting equipment in response to Trump’s executive order. Any change to the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines would immediately affect Texas’ certified voting systems, which must follow the federal guidelines under state law.

Adkins said voters across the state have been speaking at public meetings and have asked legislators about the part of the president’s executive order on machine-readable codes and paper ballots. She asked election officials to be prepared to answer questions from voters in their communities with accurate information about the order and how the state plans to respond.

Meanwhile, a Republican-led push to ditch all electronic voting equipment — including the tabulators — and hand count ballots instead, has made inroads in Texas. Gillespie County in the Texas Hill Country hand-counted thousands of ballots in the 2024 primary, but had to fix a series of errors in the results, which couldn’t easily be audited for accuracy because the ballots couldn’t be scanned by machines.

Different methods of voting in Texas

About 80% of Texas’ 254 counties use machines to mark voters’ choices on paper ballots. In the rest, including Denton County in North Texas and Cameron County in South Texas, voters mark the paper ballots by hand, and then put them in the tabulator for counting. (Even these counties must make at least one electronic voting machine available in each voting location to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.) .

Two small Texas counties — Limestone and Foard — don’t use paper ballots at all, but state law will require them to by next year.

Paper ballots, whether marked by a hand or a machine, are typically considered the gold standard for election security. They allow voters to check their selections before casting their ballot, and create a physical record for audits and recounts.

But is one way of marking ballots better than the other? Some election officials say that with hand-marked ballots, it’s harder to determine voter intent if there’s a doubt, or for a scanner to read the voter’s selections. On the other hand, some say hand-marked ballots allow voters to check for errors right away, rather than having to wait until they’re done voting and their ballot is printed out. And lines can move faster if people don’t have to wait for a machine.

Collin County prepares for the changes

In Collin County, a Republican-led community with 750,000 registered voters, the switch away from ballot-marking devices follows years of lobbying by activists urging the commissioner court to eliminate voting machines, even though the system has gotten high marks from the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

A measure to make the change failed last year, but county officials approved a new one in June.

Trump’s executive order “was a bit of a catalyst for the court to revisit this move,” said Kaleb Breaux, the Collin County elections director.

As a result, 1,500 ballot-marking devices, which the county has used since 2019, will be put in storage. The county will still use about 300 of them at polling locations to comply with federal law on disability access. Trump’s executive order allows leeway for that, as long as the machines produce a voter-verifiable paper record.

The $2.3 million the county is spending includes the purchase of voting booths, printers, laptops, and other election materials. Breaux said the voting booths take up less space than the voting machines, so polling locations can accommodate more voters than before.

However, he wants to encourage voters to take their time marking their ballots in November to avoid problems tallying later. “Make sure they’re bubbling everything in completely,” he said. “And if they mess up their ballot, don’t be afraid to ask for another one.”.

Breaux said he hopes the new method of voting can help boost voter trust.

“I think what we had worked well,” he said, “but I also think this is going to work just as well for our voters and our workers.”

Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Special election for Michigan’s 35th Senate District to be held next year

2025-08-29T18:31:23+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Friday scheduled a pair of special elections for Michigan’s 35th Senate District, nearly eight months after the swing seat became vacant.

The primary and general elections for the district — which includes Midland, Saginaw and Bay City — will take place next year, she said, meaning the seat will remain vacant for at least another eight months.

Candidates will have to file to run for the office by Sept. 30, 2025, with the primary scheduled for Feb. 3, 2026, and the general election May 5. The winning candidate will hold office for the final seven months of the four-year term unless they are reelected in November 2026.

“We have a lot of good work to get done before the end of next year,” Whitmer, a Democrat who will be forced out of office by term limits at the end of 2026, said in a statement.

“Michiganders want us to create jobs and grow the economy, invest in schools and boost literacy rates, and, of course, fix those damn roads,” she said. “I look forward to working with the next state senator from this district to tackle these issues and more.”

Balance of power in the Michigan Senate is at stake

Republicans have accused Whitmer of playing politics with the vacant seat in a district they believe they could flip. Former state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat, won the seat by roughly 7 percentage points in 2022 but resigned to join Congress on Jan. 3 — 238 days ago.

If a Republican won the seat, it could effectively shift the balance of power in the Senate and potentially stop all legislation without Republican support from advancing in the chamber.

“After months of unrelenting pressure from Republicans, Gov. Whitmer has come to her senses and realized denying the people of her state the right to vote is not going to help with her presidential aspirations,” Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, who is running for governor, wrote on social media.

“The days of a Democrat majority in the Michigan Senate are coming to an end,” he predicted.

Democrats, meanwhile, said they welcome the chance to defend the seat.

“It’s an opportunity to show our Republican colleagues, from Donald Trump down to Lansing, that their agenda is out of step with Michigan families,” Sen. Darrin Camilleri, a Trenton Democrat who chairs the caucus’ campaign arm, said in a statement.

At least three candidates have already filed to run for the post, including State Board of Education Chair Pamela Pugh and Saginaw County Democratic Party Chair Brandell Adams.

State Rep. Bill G. Schuette, a Midland Republican, has previously acknowledged he’s considering a state Senate run.

Four elections in 2026 for 35th District residents

The new elections will mean voters in the 35th Senate District will go to the polls as many as four times next year: the special election primary in February, the special general election in May, the statewide primary in August, and the November general election.

That schedule adds to what is already shaping up to be a busy election year for Michigan’s local clerks.

Katie Zanotti, Bay County clerk, told Votebeat earlier this year that she wished the election had been scheduled sooner, in part because special elections create a lot of additional work for clerks. Almost all of Bay County falls into the 35th Senate District, meaning clerks there will shoulder much of the burden.

Clerks and their teams must design ballots, run logic and accuracy testing on all their machines, secure polling places, and more each cycle. It can be expensive for local governments and difficult to pull off — and now, there will be almost no break for clerks in the district between each election. There won’t be a required early-voting period for the special election, as it isn’t a statewide race, but clerks told Votebeat they still expect a lot of effort to go toward these new races.

But Rebecca Grzegorczyk, elections coordinator for the Bay County Clerk’s office, said she felt it was probably the best timeline the governor could have chosen at this point. It’s already going to be a busy year, she said, and that specific timeline means officials can pace themselves.

“It’s going to be a full workload,” Grzegorczyk said, “but at least now we know.”

Election won’t help Republicans in budget negotiations

The timing of Whitmer’s call is significant. With the next fiscal year starting in one month, and the Legislature yet to agree on a budget, Democratic control of the Senate remains crucial for the party’s ability to mitigate the deep cuts proposed by the GOP-controlled House. Democrats also hope their electoral prospects will improve as the 2026 midterm elections near.

Republicans had hoped to use the special election to upset the Senate’s Democratic control and force more budget concessions from Democrats. The timing of the election effectively ends that possibility, unless there’s a historically long government shutdown.

A group of residents earlier this month sued Whitmer for failing to call a special election, arguing that the 270,000 people in the district deserve representation as quickly as possible.

Whitmer’s attorneys on Thursday asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the court “does not have the authority to compel the governor to act.”

Some local Democrats have also complained about the prolonged Senate vacancy.

Simon D. Schuster is a Capitol reporter for Bridge Michigan. He can be reached at sschuster@bridgemi.com. Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Lawsuit challenges Texas’ mid-decade redistricting as racially discriminatory

2025-08-27T18:02:08+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Hours after the Texas Senate approved a new congressional map early Saturday morning that more heavily favors Republicans — legislation Gov. Greg Abbott plans to “swiftly” sign into law — a lawsuit against the governor was filed, alleging that the redrawn districts are racially discriminatory.

The 67-page complaint against Abbott and Secretary of State Jane Nelson supplements legal action filed by the civil rights group LULAC in 2021 challenging the state’s original maps and argues that redrawing districts mid-decade is unconstitutional.

Redistricting usually happens at the start of the decade after U.S. census data comes out. The complaint argues that because the new map was drawn based on the same data used for the initial map passed by the Legislature in 2021, the measure was a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

“Even if racial and partisan considerations are an unavoidable part of redistricting, there is no need for legislatures to take those considerations into account a second time in a single decade,” the complaint reads.

Republicans defend partisan motives behind new map

The complaint, which is expected to be followed by others targeting House Bill 4, was filed by two law firms on behalf of 13 Texas residents collectively called “the Gonzales plaintiffs.” The bulk of their argument is that the new congressional map “dismantles majority-minority districts” by prioritizing Republican representation in Congress.

The NAACP, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Mexican American Legislative Caucus joined LULAC in two additional supplemental suits against Abbott on Monday and Tuesday, also calling the maps unconstitutional and “intentionally discriminatory.”

Abbott’s office defended the maps. They allow “more Texans to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Andrew Mahaleris, the governor’s press secretary, said Monday in a prepared statement.

“Voters, especially Hispanic Texans, are increasingly moving away from Democrats and deserve to vote for candidates who better align with their values,” Mahaleris added, later calling claims that the maps are discriminatory “absurd.”

On the Senate floor Friday, Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, who carried HB 4 in the upper chamber, said that the plan “meets the critically important goals of legality, of political performance for Republicans and of improved compactness,” and that he did not consider racial population data while crafting it.

Republicans pushed for the new map with their eyes set on gaining five more seats in Congress after pressure from President Donald Trump, who wants to preserve the GOP’s slim U.S. House majority in the 2026 midterms. But the complaint says that effort came at the cost of Latino and Black communities, which have largely supported Democratic candidates.

The new lines squeeze more Democratic voters in Houston and Dallas into districts the minority party already controls — a strategy known as “packing.” The Republican-backed map also “cracks” left-leaning communities by splitting voters who supported Democrat Kamala Harris in 2024 into Republican districts, according to an analysis by The Texas Tribune.

Lawsuit points to dilution of Latino political power

The complaint was filed by two law firms, The Law Office of Max Renea Hicks and the Elias Law Group, the firm of prominent Democratic attorney Marc Elias. They also allege that the new maps violate the Voting Rights Act for not creating enough Latino-majority districts to match the growth of Texas’ Latino population.

For example, the complaint points to Harris County, where the new map carves out only one district that’s majority Latino, although the county is nearly half Latino, according to the latest U.S. census.

The census also confirmed that Latinos make up the largest share of Texas’ population, and that Texans of color made up 95% of the state’s population growth in the last decade — but that’s not reflected in the new congressional map, the complaint alleges.

With the new district lines, the lawsuit charges, lawmakers are “intentionally destroying majority-minority districts and replacing them with majority-Anglo districts.”

Democratic lawmakers have waged a lively battle to fend off the GOP’s proposed map since Abbott announced that the first special session in July would include redistricting. House Democrats fled the state halfway through the first session, breaking the lower chamber’s quorum and halting all operations. But the members returned to Austin at the start of the second session.

And on Friday, state Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, signaled her intention to filibuster the map well into Saturday. Republicans, however, ended the debate on HB 4, killing her effort. Lawmakers also listened to hours of hearings from Texans across the state who pleaded with them to leave their districts alone.

The complaint and others that are sure to follow are a sign that Democrats and civil rights groups will continue to fight the implementation of the maps ahead of the 2026 election.

The National Redistricting Foundation, which brought LULAC’s initial lawsuit, is also directing this new case.

“Texas’s existing map already dilutes the voting power of communities of color,” Marina Jenkins, the foundation’s executive director, said in a news release.

“In spite of that, the state has doubled down with an even more extreme racial gerrymander that goes even further to pack and crack communities of color and minimize the number of congressional districts where minority voters have the ability to elect candidates of their choice,” she later said. “The court has already agreed to consider expediting this case, and we are confident that justice will be delivered for Texans.”

Do you have questions about ranked choice voting? Share them with us.

2025-08-22T18:53:40+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter to get the latest.

Most Americans are accustomed to a fairly simple election system — a plurality system — where voters pick a single candidate on the ballot, and whoever gets the most votes wins. But a growing number of jurisdictions are adopting or considering a different system called ranked choice voting.

In this system, voters rank the candidates on the ballot according to preference, and the rankings help determine the winner.

New York City has used ranked choice voting for local primary elections since 2021. Alaska and Maine use ranked choice voting for statewide offices, and several counties and municipalities across the country use it for specific offices. This year, an advocacy group in Michigan is working to get a referendum on the 2026 ballot for a constitutional amendment to allow ranked choice voting.

But ranked choice voting is still a new, unfamiliar concept for most Americans, and it involves a counting process that’s more complicated than in a plurality election.

Votebeat is working on a project to better explain how ranked choice voting works, why people support or oppose it, and what to expect if your state, county, or municipality adopts it.

But first, we want to know what you’re wondering about when it comes to ranked choice voting. What parts are unclear to you? Do you have questions about a specific recent election that used ranked choice voting, like New York City’s Democratic primary?

Use the form below to tell us what you want to know, so we can get answers to your questions. You can also reach out to us at community@votebeat.org.

If you don’t see the form, head to this link to open it in a new window.

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How Texas’ mid-decade redistricting could affect voters in one Houston community

2025-08-19T18:30:08+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

Adrian Izaguirre grew up in Houston’s South Park neighborhood, a historically low-income community tucked between Interstates 610 and 45, south of downtown. He still calls that place home.

For years, he has seen his neighbors struggle to find affordable housing and access to quality education. On any given day, Izaguirre and other residents in the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood would have a hard time quickly accessing a local hospital. There are few nearby.

If a disaster were to happen, “the community would have a hard time trying to recover,” the 31-year-old said in an interview.

This is why he says it’s crucial that voters in the community, which is part of the state’s 18th Congressional District, have someone to represent them in Congress. But that seat has been vacant for months. Gov. Greg Abbott has called a Nov. 4 special election to fill the seat, but a mid-decade redistricting that Texas lawmakers are considering could force the winner of that race to run again in March — or leave voters in an entirely different district.

“It’s very discouraging to see it happen, and it also makes me feel powerless, like I have no say in how I get represented,” said Izaguirre, who’s been an active voter since he turned 18 and works for the NALEO Educational Fund, a nonprofit organization that seeks to elevate Latino political participation.

Some voting rights advocates are concerned about the prospect that a mid-decade redistricting, new district lines, and back-to-back elections will together lead to disaffection or confusion for low-income and minority voters in areas like the 18th District. They warn that such disruptions could diminish voter turnout and effectively disenfranchise some of the state’s most vulnerable voters.

18th District was shaped by legacy of Voting Rights Act

The 18th Congressional District, which includes inner Houston and surrounding Harris County areas, is home to more than 760,000 people. It was shaped by redistricting that followed the 1965 Voting Rights Act — signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson — and deliberately crafted to strengthen minority representation in Houston. Its creation and preservation over decades are themselves reflections of battles over race-based redistricting.

After her election in 1995, Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee carried forward Johnson’s legacy, making the seat a hub of Black political influence nationally.

After Jackson Lee died last year, Rep. Sylvester Turner won election to the seat. But Turner died in March. Abbott set a special election to fill the seat for Nov. 4, leaving the seat vacant for months and giving Republicans an advantage in Congress in the meantime.

The 18th District is the only congressional seat on the ballot that would also be affected by the mid-decade redistricting that Republicans are pushing through now in a special legislative session. It’s one of the districts that would be reconstituted as Republicans aim to flip five Democratic-held seats in their favor following a push by President Donald Trump’s advisers to shore up the GOP’s advantage in the U.S. House after next year’s midterms.

The latest map proposal moves its boundaries east and south of Houston and shifts more Democratic voters into the district, giving Republicans an advantage in a neighboring district.

In the typical redistricting cycle that happens once a decade after the census, the process of creating, reviewing, and approving new maps takes six to nine months. That timeline takes into account weeks of debate among lawmakers from both political parties and public input during multiple hearings. And even then, court challenges can extend the process and force more changes.

For this year’s proposed mid-decade redistricting, Republicans, who dominate both houses of the Legislature, are driving to compress that timeline to the 30-day length of a special session.

Democrats tried to stall the GOP effort by leaving the state for two weeks and breaking quorum. But they returned to Austin Monday after Abbott called another special session and threatened to keep doing so until the redistricting passed.

If lawmakers agree on new maps in coming weeks, the 18th District winner in November could be on the ballot again during the March primary election.

Candidates for the seat have led public town halls in the past few weeks to hear from voters, and hundreds of other voters have gathered at the capitol to testify in front of lawmakers in opposition to the proposed maps. But lawmakers have moved quickly to approve them anyway

That type of response to the public feedback is likely to lead to voter apathy, warned Joyce Lombard, president of the League of Women Voters of Texas, which has been mobilizing to educate the public about redistricting and how people can voice their opinions.

“We’re not taking the voters into account with this process,” Lombard said. “We’re taking the politics into account. It can’t help but to disenfranchise communities of color.”

How redistricting creates new divisions

In a place like the 18th District, a politically driven redistricting would change more than just the boundaries on a map, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

“Communities can really take a hit” when tight-knit groups are split through redistricting, Rottinghaus said. “Social capital that has been built up over all of these years” is dismantled.

For instance, he said, members of a community advocacy group who have long histories working together for a common solution could end up in different districts, or individual families who may live in close-by communities could be split apart in separate districts and lose voting power.

The risk is especially acute in the 18th District, which is now entering its fifth month without representation in Congress. Communities there have struggled to recover from various natural disasters and threats to public health such as the COVID-19 pandemic and, more recently, Hurricane Beryl, a Category 1 storm that left parts of Houston underwater last year.

Izaguirre, the activist in South Park, said some of his neighbors are still trying to rebuild their homes and the damage left from that storm. That’s why he wants federal and state elected officials to consider the potential effects of the mid-decade redistricting battle on communities.

“It’s more than just a political party’s advantage,” Izaguirre said. “They literally have people’s lives on the line in different ways.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She is based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@votebeat.org

Trump’s call for a new census: Could it happen? Would it be constitutional?

2025-08-14T09:05:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

Just as he did during his first term in office, President Donald Trump is trying to reshape the census to serve his political goals.

This time, he’s calling for an extraordinary mid-decade population count that would be used for apportioning congressional seats, and that would explicitly exclude undocumented immigrants. He announced his intentions where many of his policy pronouncements start out, on social media.

It’s another effort by his administration to influence redistricting and congressional apportionment in ways that could benefit the GOP, though it’s not clear what the outcome of such a census would be. Democratic-leaning states like California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois have large numbers of undocumented immigrants, but so do some Republican strongholds like Texas and Florida.

Trump’s previous attempt to change census procedures involved the scheduled 2020 census, and ran into a wall at the Supreme Court. This time, he’s trying to do it mid-decade, and for the purposes of apportionment, which would run into many more obstacles.

Here, we address some key questions about Trump’s proposal: the legality, the logistics, and the political strategy driving it.

Can a president order a mid-decade census?

Not unilaterally. The 1790 Census Act governs the census and gives authority over this process to the secretary of commerce and the Census Bureau. Certainly, the president has influence over this part of the executive branch. But Congress still controls the pursestrings and decisions over timing. A process like the one Trump is proposing must be authorized by law and funded through congressional appropriation, which Trump doesn’t control.

What does the constitution say about excluding undocumented residents?

There’s not a lot of ambiguity in the Constitution’s language about the census, or the way the Supreme Court has interpreted it: A census used to determine congressional seats needs to count everyone.

The 14th Amendment requires that the “whole number of persons” residing in the United States should be counted — it doesn’t mention immigration status, or any other condition. The phrase “whole number of persons” was written to replace the Three-Fifths Clause in Article 1 (which said enslaved persons were to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of apportionment), and was deliberately written to be inclusive, experts say.

Historical interpretations of this amendment reaffirm that. In 2016, Texas residents challenged the state’s use of total population, rather than just citizens, in deciding how to draw districts of roughly equal size, the process that follows the census and reapportionment of seats among states. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld a ruling that total population was the correct standard, based on the 14th Amendment, saying it “promotes equitable and effective representation.”

“What constitutional history and our prior decisions strongly suggest, settled practice confirms,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court. Switching to apportionment based on eligible voters “would upset a well-functioning approach to districting that all 50 States and countless local jurisdictions have followed for decades, even centuries.”

How feasible would a new census be at this time?

It would be very expensive, if it could be done at all, and especially difficult to pull off on Trump’s timeline for influencing next year’s midterm elections. Election administrators, campaigns, and parties have already begun preparations for those elections based on figures from the previous census.

It’s difficult to pull off even when both parties want to do it.

In 1975, there was bipartisan interest in conducting a mid-decade census in order to provide better data for federal programs. Congress passed legislation authorizing a census for data collection only, not for congressional apportionment. But it didn’t get done. It proved too expensive, and the Census Bureau lacked the time and the infrastructure.

Getting Trump’s politically motivated proposal would have a tougher time just getting through Congress. And any attempt to politicize the census would be fraught. The data collected and compiled by the Census Bureau informs not just apportionment and redistricting, but many other public and private endeavors, from emergency planning and housing construction to wildlife conservation and school lunch programs. People and institutions that depend on census data want the most complete picture possible, not one clouded by political motives.

What legal obstacles does Trump face?

Beyond the statutory and constitutional limitations we’ve already talked about, the Census Act limits the White House’s ability to do what Trump is trying to do. And the president has no authority to compel states to draw new maps even if he’s successful at forcing a new census.

Along the way, judging by past disputes, we should expect a deluge of lawsuits that would diminish any chance of a census, reapportionment, and redistricting all getting done in time for next year’s midterms.

Is this related to the current redistricting effort in Texas?

Both reflect efforts by Trump to manipulate regularly scheduled democratic processes for partisan motives.

Redistricting after the census every 10 years has long been a politically driven process, where the party in charge at the state level typically tries to solidify — and perpetuate — its advantage. Texas Republicans did so in 2021, and as we’ve reported, Trump wants them to do it again this year, midway through the cycle, in an attempt to create five new Republican-leaning congressional districts. That way, Trump and his allies figure, Republicans would have a better chance of retaining their narrow majority in the U.S. House after the midterms, when the party in power typically loses seats.

Other states are threatening to do the same, to either help Republicans or try to thwart them.

A midcycle census would effectively broaden this battle for political power to all states. The carve-out for undocumented immigrants in population counts would shift political influence away from large Democratic strongholds, like California, New York, and Illinois, though it could also affect some GOP-dominated states that have large and growing populations of undocumented immigrants.

Hasn’t Trump tried something like this before?

During his first administration, Trump sought to influence the 2020 Census by calling for it to include a citizenship question. His explanation then was that the data was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. But others saw it as a first step toward ultimately excluding noncitizens from the population counts used to apportion congressional seats and diminishing the power of states with large immigrant populations.

The Supreme Court ultimately blocked the administration’s effort, ruling that it lacked the authority to push through the change, and the 2020 census went out without the citizenship question. But immigrant rights groups complained that the publicity over that dispute may have compromised the data anyway. They raised concerns that noncitizens, whether they were in the country legally or not, would be afraid to respond to the census. The court battle also compressed the preparation time for the census, leaving less time for people to complete the surveys.

In July 2020, while the census was underway, the White House issued a presidential memorandum directing the Census Bureau to exclude noncitizens in the count it issues for apportionment, even though it had no citizenship question from which to sort out this number. Multiple Democratic-led states sued, arguing that the policy was unworkable and unconstitutional. The courts agreed, and blocked the plan from moving forward.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

As Arizona adopts new system for overseas voters, some officials sound alarm

2025-08-08T23:18:07+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Overseas voters who are registered in Arizona are receiving their ballots this week in a new way for the state’s special congressional election — but at least a few county officials are worried that the new system isn’t ready, and say they didn’t have enough time to notify voters of the change.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes announced the launch of the new system on Friday for military and overseas voters who are registered to vote in Arizona and eligible to vote through the federal Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA. These voters will now cast their ballots through a web portal run by an outside vendor, technology company Enhanced Voting, rather than using an in-house system.

Fontes’ office is promoting the change as a long-needed upgrade that will allow overseas voters to cast their ballots anonymously and fully electronically for the first time. “This new system is a leap forward in ensuring that every eligible voter, no matter where they are in the world, can easily cast a ballot that is both secure and truly anonymous,” Fontes wrote in a news release.

But recorders are concerned that the rollout of the system has been rushed. Pinal County Recorder Dana Lewis said she didn’t find out until Wednesday that recorders would not be able to use the state’s old system to send ballots for the congressional election.

“The timing is not right,” Lewis said.

Recorders will send out ballots on Friday and Saturday to overseas voters registered in the state’s 7th Congressional District for the special general election to replace late Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who died earlier this year. That election is on Sept. 23, but the federal deadline to send out absentee ballots to military and overseas voters is 45 days before an election — which is this Saturday.

There are 680 of those voters eligible for the congressional election across six southern Arizona counties.

Under the new system, overseas voters registered in Arizona log in to a website where they can fill out their ballot and either submit it electronically or print it out and mail it in. Under the old, in-house system, voters had to print out their ballot and either mail it back, or email a scanned image of the printout. The new system will make voting possible for voters without access to a printer.

The news release said that launching the new system for the special congressional election “allows for only a limited number of voters to be impacted.” The initial rollout, it said, would be “treated as a pilot program to allow for flexibility and learning during this election.”

Several county recorders told Votebeat they’ve been trying for months to get Fontes to pump the brakes on the system. On Wednesday, the leaders of the Arizona Association of County Recorders, which represents recorders in all 15 counties, met with Fontes to express their concerns about outstanding problems.

Lewis said the main concerns were that recorders had so many unanswered questions, and that there wasn’t enough time to educate voters on the change.

Yuma County Recorder David Lara said the state should have held off until next year’s elections to launch the system, which would have allowed time to work out any kinks.

“Because we have this special election in CD7, we are basically the guinea pigs,” he said.

Aaron Thacker, communications director for the Secretary of State’s Office, said counties have known about the new system since 2023, and knew the launch was coming. He said it was technically necessary to shut down the old system to launch the new one.

There was extensive testing of the systems, he said, “with counties actively involved.”

“We believe that all of the questions raised have been addressed,” he said. “The system has been well tested and validated, and it is ready to go.”

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Federal appeals court upholds ID requirements for voting by mail

2025-08-06T01:35:21+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletter here.

A federal appeals court has upheld Texas’ requirement that potential voters must list their identification information in their application for a mail-in ballot.

In Texas, voting by mail is only available for certain groups of people, including elderly voters and people with disabilities. Under Senate Bill 1 passed in 2021, voters must also include an ID number — such as a driver’s license number — on both the vote-by-mail applications and the mail-in ballots and both numbers need to match. Opponents of the law said this provision discriminated against voters with disabilities and that it would not meaningfully cut down on voter fraud.

In a Monday ruling, a panel from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the updated requirement does not violate federal law. It also reversed a lower court’s decision.

“We have no difficulty concluding that this ID number requirement fully complies with a provision of federal law known by the parties as the materiality provision of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” wrote Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee.

Judge Patrick Higginbotham and Judge Don Willett, who were appointed under the Reagan and Trump administrations, respectively, joined Ho’s ruling.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton lauded the ruling Tuesday.

“Voter ID is one of the most crucial tools in the battle against election fraud, and I’m pleased to see the court affirm our fundamental right to defend the integrity of our democratic process,” he said in a news release.

Prior to this decision, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas had ruled in 2023 that the requirements infringed on the Civil Rights Act. Though later that year, Paxton’s office was able to stop that decision from going into effect.

These voter ID requirements were also the target of legal challenges from several civil rights groups, along with other provisions of SB 1.

Groups that were part of this case — including the League of Women Voters of Texas, OCA-Greater Houston and Rev Up Texas — didn’t immediately respond to comment requests from The Texas Tribune Tuesday.

A recent study from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School found that the state’s requirements pushed many voters whose mail ballots or vote-by-mail applications were rejected during the 2022 primary to change their method — or not vote at all.

After 2020’s mail-ballot blip, many Americans are embracing in-person voting again

2025-07-21T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

After years of speculation about the “death” of in-person voting, the latest national data shows a bit of a rebound: Americans are returning to the polls in person.

According to a new MIT report titled “How We Voted in 2024” — released exclusively to Votebeat — more than 7 in 10 voters showed up to a polling place to vote, either early or on Election Day. And while voting habits are still shifting after the pandemic, some clear patterns are emerging.

Voting by mail, which surged to 43% of ballots cast in 2020, dropped to 29% in 2024. That’s still above the 21% seen in 2016 and 13% in 2012, suggesting that voting from home remains more popular than it once was. At the same time, in-person voting made a comeback. In 2020, just 31% of voters cast their ballots on Election Day, down from at least 60% in previous presidential election years. In 2024, the figure rebounded to 40%. Early in-person voting also continued its slow rise, reaching 31% last year.

Together, these trends show that while some pandemic-era habits are sticking, many voters are returning to the polling place — either early or on Election Day, said Charles Stewart, a political scientist who heads the MIT Election Lab and wrote the report.

Other things are leveling out as well. The partisan divide on vote by mail is narrowing, Stewart said. “Election administration continues to be very salient to Republicans,” he said, while Democrats have “kind of gone back to their business.”

What’s driving the shift to in-person voting?

The drop in mail voting was largely driven by Democrats reverting to in-person voting. In 2020, 60% of Democrats voted by mail; in 2024, that number dropped to 37%. Republicans remained less enthusiastic about mail voting, with 24% using the method in 2024, down from 32% in 2020.

Stewart said the shift likely stems from Republican messaging. GOP leaders resisted expanding early and mail voting during the pandemic, but that’s changing. The ultimate goal is voter turnout, and GOP consultants and strategists were “worried about being hamstrung by Democrats” when it came to getting voters to the polls, he explained. While Donald Trump remains skeptical of mail voting, Stewart said, many Republican political consultants actually favor early voting because it lets them “focus on the voters who actually need to be delivered to the polling place on Election Day.”

Also notable: even though more people resumed voting in person, fewer voters had to endure long wait times. Only 11% of Election Day voters waited more than 30 minutes, down from 14% in 2020. Early voters fared even better, with just 15% experiencing such wait times.

Stewart has been studying lines and wait times for years, and said he was worried that as states began to offer fewer polling locations, problems with long wait times might grow. That the opposite happened suggests to Stewart that fewer people are voting on Election Day than in many past elections, and that states have reduced the number of polling places accordingly. States like Georgia and South Carolina that once had infamously long lines apparently no longer do.

New hubs for voting

Public schools, once the archetypal backdrop for Election Day news photos, are falling out of favor as polling places. In 2024, just 22% of Election Day voters cast their ballots at a school, down from 28% in 2020. Community centers are now the most common polling places, used by 32% of Election Day voters and 26% of early voters.

That shift has been happening over many years, driven in part by security concerns and access challenges at schools, particularly after COVID, and increased attention to school safety. The trend could make it harder to find enough polling sites in some places that don’t have other large, accessible community spaces.

A quiet comeback

The return to in-person voting has not led to chaos at the polls. On the contrary, voters largely reported positive experiences:

98% had no issues with registration or equipment.
83% said their polling place was “very well-run.”
86% of Election Day voters observed no disruptions.

That’s not to say everything went perfectly. Some voters did report confusion finding polling places, and there were more incidents of improper photo-taking inside polling locations. But overall, voters seemed to like what they saw when they got there.

As we head toward the 2026 midterm elections, these trends are worth watching. The in-person voting infrastructure, strained and overhauled in 2020, is now being called back into service. And if the 2024 data is any guide, voters may be just fine with that.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.

Thornapple, Wisconsin, loses federal appeal over its ban on electronic voting machines

2025-07-16T10:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

What happened?

A federal appeals court ruled Monday against a Wisconsin town that disavowed electronic voting machines, siding with the U.S. Justice Department’s argument that this would unfairly harm voters with disabilities.

What’s the dispute?

Leaders of Thornapple, a town of 700 people in northern Wisconsin’s Rusk County, voted in 2023 to stop using electronic voting machines, in favor of allowing only hand-marked ballots. They did without the machines for two elections in a row, in April and August 2024.

The DOJ, under the Biden administration, sued the town in September 2024, arguing that its decision violated the Help America Vote Act, which requires every “voting system” to be accessible for voters with disabilities. Accessible voting machines allow voters with disabilities to hear the options on the ballot and use a touch-sensitive device to mark it.

The town argued that it wasn’t subject to the federal law’s accessibility provision because its use of paper ballots didn’t constitute a “voting system.”

A district court judge rejected the town’s argument last September, and ordered it to use electronic voting machines for the November presidential election. The town appealed that order, but did use a machine in November.

On Monday, a three-judge panel on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower-court order, finding that “individuals with disabilities would lack the opportunity to vote privately and independently if they only had access to a paper ballot.”

The court based that finding partially on Thornapple Chief Inspector Suzanne Pinnow’s testimony about a blind woman who relied on her daughter’s assistance to fill out a ballot, and a man who had a stroke and who needed Pinnow to guide his hand so he could mark a ballot.

Who are the parties?

The DOJ had sued two northern Wisconsin towns and their officials in September after both decided not to use electronic voting equipment for at least one federal election. One of the towns, Lawrence, immediately settled with the Justice Department, vowing to use accessible voting machines in the future.

Thornapple officials decided to fight the case. They’re currently represented by an attorney with the America First Policy Institute, a group aligned with President Donald Trump.

Why does it matter?

The case reaffirms what has long been election practice in Wisconsin: Every polling place must have an electronic voting machine that anybody can use but is especially beneficial for voters with disabilities.

Distrust of voting machines, which has grown on the right following misinformation about the 2020 election, has led to a movement to ban them across Wisconsin. But the Thornapple case shows that for now, municipalities still have obligations under federal law to allow voters to cast ballots on electronic machines.

The case is relevant nationally, too. Since Trump took office in January, the U.S. Justice Department has withdrawn from multiple voting-related cases. But the Justice Department forged ahead in this lawsuit, signaling that, at least for now, it is not backing the movement to forgo electronic voting equipment entirely.

What happens now?

Thornapple is “considering our options,” said Nick Wanic of the America First Policy Institute. The case could get appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or proceed in the lower federal court.

Although the order that required Thornapple to use accessible voting machines applied only to the November 2024 election, at this point, two federal courts in this case have ruled that towns must have accessible voting machines for people with disabilities.

“Voters with disabilities already face many barriers in the electoral process, and making sure they have access to a voting system which allows for basic voting rights to be met is a minimum — and legal — standard that they should not be worried about when exercising their right to vote,” said Lisa Hassenstab, public policy manager at Disability Rights Wisconsin.

Read more of Votebeat’s recent coverage about the dispute over electronic voting machines in Wisconsin:

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Alexander at ashur@votebeat.org.

Republicans target voting rights of U.S. citizens who have never lived in the country

2025-07-16T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

The Republican Party is challenging the voting eligibility of some U.S. citizens who have always lived abroad, in what they’re calling a broader strategy ahead of next year’s midterms to clean up voter rolls and improve voter confidence.

But Democrats see the effort as a blatant attempt to disenfranchise eligible Democrats in key swing states.

The GOP terms the voters they are targeting as “never residents” because they are U.S. citizens but haven’t lived in the United States. Most frequently, they are children of U.S. citizens who have been in the military, or lived overseas for other reasons. Three-quarters of states have laws on the books allowing such citizens to vote by absentee or mail ballot in the same state where their parents or other relatives last lived or are registered.

Arizona is one of these states, and allows such expatriates to vote in federal, state, and local elections.

Republican lawmakers tried to change the law this year to disqualify citizens overseas who haven’t lived in Arizona, but Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, vetoed the proposal in May. Now, the Republican National Committee and Arizona Republican Party have filed a lawsuit alleging that the current law conflicts with the state constitution’s residency requirements for voting.

The lawsuit, filed June 30, claims that, because the state’s overseas and military voters are more Democratic than the voter roll as a whole, the law gives Democrats an unfair advantage. It asks the court to declare the law illegal and stop Arizona from registering any more voters who have never lived in the U.S.

Arizona does not track the total number of overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S., but local data suggests there aren’t many. The state’s second largest county, Pima County, for example, has around 670,000 registered voters, but only three who meet the definition.

Arizona Republican Party Chair Gina Swoboda said that for her, it’s not about the number or even the politics. She said she believes the law conflicts with the state constitution, and that citizens who have never lived in the U.S. or Arizona should not be able to vote in the state, because they “don’t have skin in the game.”

Republican state lawmakers debating the bill that Hobbs vetoed in May made similar comments, and described allowing these citizens to vote in Arizona as a “loophole” in state law.

Martha McDevitt-Pugh, the international chair of Democrats Abroad, an arm of the Democratic National Committee, disagrees, saying these overseas citizens have a stake in what happens here, and often have not only a “very American identity, but also an Arizona identity.”

“They are proud of their heritage,” she said.

Additional challenges likely ahead of midterms

A federal law called the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, or UOCAVA, permits U.S. citizens living overseas, as well as U.S. military members and their families, to vote. But under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government leaves it up to states to determine the rules for conducting their elections, including setting residency requirements.

The Arizona lawsuit is the latest of several challenges Republicans have made to the eligibility of overseas voters, and more are likely.

Just weeks before the November 2024 presidential election, Republicans filed lawsuits in three other swing states that allow citizens who have never lived in the U.S. to vote — North Carolina, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. The North Carolina and Michigan lawsuits, like Arizona’s, argued that the state laws violated the states’ constitutions. In Pennsylvania, the challenge was based on how the state verifies overseas voters’ eligibility.

In North Carolina, a local court ruled that overseas voters who have never lived in the state cannot vote in state and local elections, and the state has now changed its law. The Pennsylvania case was dismissed, and the Michigan case is pending at the state appellate court.

More cases are likely to follow the Arizona lawsuit. Such lawsuits “are absolutely part of our strategy heading into the midterms,” Kiersten Pels, the RNC’s national press secretary, wrote in an email.

“Allowing individuals who have never lived in the United States to register to vote dilutes the voting power of lawful Arizona voters,” Pels wrote.

In Arizona, the constitution says that to be eligible to vote, a person has to have “resided in the state for the period of time preceding such election as prescribed by law.” State law sets that period at 29 days prior to the election, which is the voter registration deadline. But since 2005, a different state law has also allowed a U.S. citizen to vote in the state even if they have never lived there, as long as their parent is a U.S. citizen who is registered to vote in the state. The 2005 bill was sponsored by a Republican lawmaker and received bipartisan support in the Legislature before being signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.

The lawsuit argues that the 2005 statute conflicts with the constitution’s requirement that the voter must have resided in the state to be eligible. Swoboda, who is also the RNC’s election integrity chair, said she would encourage the party to sue every state that has a similar law.

Alex Gulotta, Arizona director of voting rights group All Voting is Local, questioned why a U.S. citizen who is, for example, the adult child of a U.S. military member should not have the right to vote.

Both he and McDevitt-Pugh said they see the Republican lawsuit as another tactic to go after the rights of legal U.S. citizens. Gulotta called it “un-American.”

“What a waste of resources,” Gulotta said of the Republican challenge. “Do something valuable to help voters. Do not continue trying to undermine and disenfranchise voters.”

Who are the ‘never residents’?

Thirty-eight states and Washington, D.C., permit U.S. citizens who have never resided in the U.S. to vote if they have a relative who last domiciled in the state or who is still registered in the state, according to the Federal Voting Assistance Program. Typically, under these laws, the relative has to be a parent. But in a handful of states, it can be a spouse. In Washington state, it can be any “family member.”

Some states permit these voters to cast ballots in presidential and congressional elections only, while others, including Arizona, allow them to vote in federal, state, and local elections.

Democrats and Republicans stress different examples of the types of voters included in this category.

McDevitt-Pugh said these voters are often young adults with parents tied to the U.S. military, likely people who just turned 18 and are still living with or dependent on parents based overseas.

Swoboda said that might be true for many such voters, but not all. If a voter is 60 years old and has never lived in Arizona, she said, “why the hell should this person have any choice in policy that is not affecting them?”

Statewide data on these voters and their ages isn’t available, because counties aren’t required to track which of their voters check the box on the federal registration form saying they have never lived in the U.S.

Maricopa County, by far the state’s most populous county, said it does not track that.

But the state’s second and third largest counties, Pima and Pinal, do.

In Pima County, the three overseas voters who have never lived in the U.S. are in their 30s, according to county data. And of the 21 overseas voters registered in Pinal County who have never lived in the U.S., one is nearly 80 years old, while the rest are all between ages 19 and 36.

McDevitt-Pugh said such voters are U.S. citizens with voting rights regardless of their age. They often pay U.S. taxes, she said, and typically have strong ties in the state where they are registered.

“It really is an attack on the families themselves,” she said.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Voter turnout was up during Michigan’s 2024 election. Figuring out exactly why may be tough.

2025-07-10T17:50:44+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Michigan ranked third in the country in voter turnout percentage last year, an achievement the state credits to major election reform and a strong voter education campaign.

In a first-of-its-kind “turnout report,” the Department of State highlights the effect of recent voter-approved constitutional amendments, noting an increase in turnout between 2020 and 2024, hundreds of thousands ballots cast by first-time voters and the more than 1.2 million who took advantage of the state’s new early-voting laws.

But some experts say the true driver of the gains was likely local election officials.

Corwin Smidt, interim director of Michigan State University’s Institute for Public Policy and Social Research, said that research typically held that early voting laws often don’t improve turnout much. About 255,000 early voters in Michigan hadn’t voted in 2020, the report found. But studies have found those who vote early typically planned to vote in their election anyway, and keeping an early-voting option open adds a significant burden on election officials.

Measuring the impact of any one state-level program is difficult, Smidt said, because Michigan’s elections are more decentralized than in most states. In Michigan, it’s up to city or township officials to run elections, rather than county leaders.

Local and county clerks did great work to educate voters, he said, but it’s difficult to know how much of that came out of local budgets and how much was state-supported. Livingston County Clerk Elizabeth Hundley said that she wasn’t aware of any statewide campaign, but that local clerks in her county worked hard to educate voters.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson talks about voting during a Detroit Pistons game in 2024.

“They were on social media, in publications, on people’s water bills, doing whatever they could to make sure people knew what their rights were,” Hundley said. It paid off — Livingston had the second-highest turnout rate in the state: 86.4% of active registered voters.

Angela Benander, spokesperson for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, said the state’s efforts included partnerships with hundreds of local and national groups, including the Detroit Lions, Detroit Pistons, business partners, a college student task force, and more.

The data in the Department of State report is still helpful, Hundley said, because it helps clerks figure out where to focus their effort in future elections. But as the county’s lead election official, she already had access to local and county-level data.

Some observers saw the report — and its timing — as a move to raise the profile of the Department of State and Benson, who is a Democratic candidate for governor. Benson, who is leading some polls, has run up against attempts from Republican lawmakers to paint her as a lawbreaker who has run flawed elections, and has cited the conflict in her fundraising appeals.

“If they’re releasing a report like this, it’s probably much more targeted to primary voters and external stakeholders, people outside the state who would instantly accept this sort of assessment,” Smidt said.

Michael Miller, associate professor of political science at Barnard College, said it is not common for states to release these kinds of reports, particularly so many months after an election.

But Benander, the Benson spokesperson, said it was “quite a stretch to claim a political motive” for the timing of the release.

“When dealing with so many different data points, it takes time and effort to make sure everything is accurate,” Benander said in an email. “Last year around this time, we released a similar county-by-county report on 2022 youth turnout. We’re always looking for ways to share election data and information in ways that are accessible to Michiganders.”

One possible reason Michigan’s had higher participation in 2024 while other states saw a decrease from 2020’s record turnout is that swing state voters believe their votes matter more, Miller said. Michigan is often important in determining who wins the presidency, and the close 2020 result likely reinforced that view.

“If you live in West Virginia or North Dakota, you have a pretty good inkling of how the election is going to go,” he said.

Turnout was also likely up because Michigan got a lot of attention from both major presidential campaigns, in terms of visits and advertising, Miller said.

“Battleground voters love to bask in attention,” he added.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Here’s what Maricopa County voters should do if they get proof-of-citizenship request

2025-07-09T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Maricopa County voters who recently received letters from the Recorder’s Office about their registration status may be confused by the two separate mailings, including one that’s incorrect. But no matter what, they will need to act soon to make sure they are able to continue to vote in state and local elections.

The Recorder’s Office sent the first letter in error to 83,000 voters, telling them the office had gotten notice they had moved out of state and they would be removed from the active voter rolls if they didn’t act. Flummoxed voters began receiving those mailings on June 26.

The office then sent out the mailing that the voters were supposed to get, with an added explanation in bold at the top explaining that the initial mailing was a mistake. This letter told voters about how they would need to provide documentation proving their U.S. citizenship, because of a separate error that affected 200,000 voters statewide.

In Maricopa County these voters will have 90 days to respond with a birth certificate, passport or other document. If they do not, they will be classified as federal-only voters, and permitted to vote only in presidential and congressional races.

The letters prompted widespread confusion among recipients and demands for an explanation. After the incorrect letter went out, average wait times at the county’s call center jumped from just seconds to 10 minutes or more for three days, and peaked at more than 40 minutes, according to data Votebeat obtained through public records requests.

The Recorder’s Office did not make a public statement about the incorrect letters for more than a day after voters began to receive them, which meant public officials and residents searching for information from the office could not find any. Votebeat first reported the incorrect mailing on June 26, and many voters said that story provided the only information they were able to obtain.

Many voters later told Votebeat that they believed the letter was a sign of something nefarious.

“My wife and I both got one and thought someone had used info of ours from a data leak to take out fraudulent IDs,” said Shane Watson, of Phoenix.

Kristopher Bliznick of Phoenix said he “thought it was some sort of voter suppression.”

“I thought they were trying to passively push people off the voter rolls,” he said.

Why some longtime Arizona voters are being asked to prove their citizenship

The letters to voters are part of the effort underway in all Arizona counties to correct a state record-keeping error that was disclosed last summer. For 20 years, the state said, it had failed to collect documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for some voters when they first registered to vote or updated their registration after moving across county lines. About 200,000 voters, or roughly 5% of the state’s voter roll, were caught up in that error, including the 83,000 Maricopa County voters who received the letters from the Recorder’s Office.

These voters are all longtime residents, and some have lived in Arizona and been registered to vote for decades. But because state law requires proof of citizenship to vote in state and local elections, these voters will now need to provide that proof to continue to vote a full ballot.

Federal law does not require documentary proof of citizenship. It requires voters to attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury. Arizona voters who do not provide citizenship proof can still vote in federal elections, because they have already attested to their citizenship when registering to vote.

What Maricopa County voters should do if they receive the letters

In Maricopa County, the second letter — which is dated June 27 at the top — explains how affected voters can resolve the problem.

The voters can use the return envelope provided to send back their name, address, and a copy of a document proving their citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport. The voters can also send the documentation by email to voterinfo@maricopa.gov, or bring the documentation to the Recorder’s Office at 301 W. Jefferson Street in Phoenix.

Voters in other counties who have received similar letters should contact their recorder’s office to learn how to fix the problem.

The Secretary of State’s Office initially provided a way for voters to check online whether they were on the list of affected voters, but isn’t doing that anymore. Voters who have questions about their record can contact their county recorder’s office.

Why incorrect letters went out

Maricopa County Recorder Justin Heap and his staff at first blamed Complete Print Shop, a vendor the office hired to send the letters, for the incorrect mailing. The office said in its first statement that the vendor “has taken full responsibility for the mistake.”

But emails first reported by 12 News on June 30 showed an employee of the Recorder’s Office had approved a proof of the incorrect letter. And in an email sent a few days after the error was uncovered, a Complete Print Shop employee told a county staff member looking into the issue that “the proof using the wrong template was sent and approved by the recorder office.”

Nonetheless, the emails showed that Complete Print Shop said the mailing of the incorrect letter constituted a mistake on its part, and confirmed that it would mail a corrected letter at its own expense.

After those emails were publicly released, Heap put out a second statement confirming that his office had erroneously approved the proof of the incorrect letter.

Complete Print Shop did not respond to phone calls and emails requesting comment.

Longtime voters outside of Maricopa County are also being asked to prove citizenship

The 83,000 Maricopa County voters who received the letters are among the 200,000 voters in the state who are being asked to prove their citizenship because of the state error.

Counties are notifying voters on their own timelines, with their own processes to collect the documentation.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes at first mentioned creating an online portal where voters could securely upload their documents, but that did not occur, and counties instead are left to collect the documents through whatever methods they can.

The requests for documents have confused voters across the state. And the consequences for voters who don’t provide the documents will depend on the county they live in. Maricopa County is making them federal-only voters, while other counties currently plan to eventually take the voters off of the rolls entirely, or make no change to their voter status at all.

Attorney General Kris Mayes is expected to issue a formal opinion on how counties should resolve the registration status of people who don’t provide citizenship proof in time.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

Many Michigan voters could benefit from a ballot in Arabic, but the law isn’t on their side

2025-07-07T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

When Lama Ali Ahmad became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2021, she was eager to become a voter, too.

In Lebanon, where she’s from, elections were often derailed by crises. But here, she had faith in the process. She registered and voted in a municipal election the same day. That night, she gathered her family at her Dearborn home for a special dinner of steak, chicken, and tabbouleh, and told them how good it felt to finally be heard.

“That was the moment where I really felt that I am an American citizen,” she said.

Last year, she celebrated another civic triumph: Voting on a ballot printed in Arabic, her first language.

The experience wasn’t perfect, said Ali Ahmad, who also speaks English and French. The Arabic translation of instructions and ballot questions was more formal than familiar and even awkward in places. But the impact on her was profound.

“I felt like I was at home when I voted in Arabic,” she said.

The translated ballot was available because of a local measure passed in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a high concentration of Arabic speakers. Hamtramck, another Detroit-area city with a large Arab-American community, has a similar local law requiring voting materials in Arabic.

But while Arabic is spoken all over Michigan, and is one of the most commonly spoken non-English languages in the U.S., there’s no Michigan or federal law that requires ballot translation into Arabic for people who would benefit from it. Federal voting rights laws do require ballot translations for many other languages, but they emerged at a time when Arabic wasn’t yet widely spoken in the U.S., and they were written restrictively to include only a narrow list of language groups.

A 2024 primary ballot in Arabic at a polling place at Edsel Ford High School in Dearborn, Michigan. The city has a large population of Arab Americans and a local law requiring that ballots be available in Arabic.

That means that in communities across the state and country, Arabic speakers are excluded from the kind of voting access that people of other language groups are entitled to. In Michigan — where Arabic is the third most common language after English and Spanish, spoken by more than 171,000 people (with more than 80,000 of those who report speaking English less than “very well”) — it’s up to individual municipalities to decide whether to require Arabic translations, and then they have to figure out how to arrange them. Translations are costly and difficult to produce, especially in a way that’s familiar enough for everyday speakers to understand.

Dearborn Deputy Clerk Megan Lizbinski said the city has seen voters ask for an Arabic ballot, only to return and request the English version instead because the text in Arabic proves too confusing.

Experts say that if more cities begin doing the translation work together — sharing resources, translators, and templates under state leadership — the process could become cheaper, better, and more accessible for everyone.

Section 203: Voting rights law leaves Arabic out

The federal laws on ballot translations are contained in Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act, a part added in 1975. The section aimed to protect millions of people considered to have been “effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process” because of language, and initially covered a finite set of language groups: Spanish, Asian languages, Native American languages, and Alaskan Native languages.

How Arizona tackles a language barrier to provide Navajo voters a ballot they can listen to

Section 203 was a breakthrough for a country where many states had long used literacy tests to bar certain groups from voting. But over its 50 years, the law has retained its narrow eligibility criteria, and hasn’t always kept pace with demographic changes.

For a community of non-English language speakers in a particular area to qualify for a translation requirement under Section 203, they must be below certain thresholds for English proficiency and educational attainment, based on U.S. Census data. The list is updated every five years — the next revision comes in 2026 — and most communities don’t make the cut.

In Michigan, just four areas are subject to federally required translations: Clyde Township near Port Huron, and Fennville and Covert Township in the southwest, must translate into Spanish. Hamtramck is required to translate its materials into Bengali.

There’s little political will to broaden the federal criteria, experts say. But state and local governments have more room to act — and more recent success. Experts and advocates hope that will be the path forward for Michigan to adopt a translation policy that better reflects its current voter base.

Inas Ismail of the National Network for Arab American Communities speaks with students at ACCESS about their voting rights on June 4, 2025. The Michigan Secretary of State’s website offers information on voting in 19 different languages, but legislation to expand the availability of translated ballots stalled in 2024.

Michigan Voting Rights Act called for expanded translations

State lawmakers have tried. Last year, Democratic legislators introduced the Michigan Voting Rights Act, a package of bills aimed at expanding ballot access. Among other things, it would have changed the criteria for a guaranteed translation, requiring many more communities to provide election materials in additional languages.

Coldwater, for instance, a city of around 14,000 in south central Michigan’s Branch County, would have had to offer its election materials in three languages, clerks testified at a House hearing. The city currently provides no non-English materials.

Local election officials didn’t oppose the idea of more translation. But they worried about the potential cost. State officials said the Department of State would pick up most of the tab, but there was no funding guarantee in the bills.

Coldwater budgeted around $33,000 for elections this fiscal year. Printing in two additional languages would have cost thousands more — and that’s before paying translators, running security tests on each version of the ballot, and other related expenses.

But the legislation ultimately died when Democrats failed to pass the package before the session — and their control of both chambers of the legislature — ended. The conversation about expanded language access largely died with it. Rep. Rachelle Smit, the Martin Republican who now chairs the House Election Integrity Committee has made it clear she has no interest in reviving the legislation.

Michigan does provide other language support for voters. The Secretary of State’s website offers information on voting in 19 different languages — the voter registration form alone is available in Spanish, French, Somali, Vietnamese, Russian, Dari, Arabic, Pashto, Bengali, Amharic, Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean. Voters are allowed to bring support (including translators) into the voting booth with them, and some communities use phone hotlines for live language help. Others rely on bilingual poll workers, often hired with state assistance.

But other states go further. California, for instance, requires translated ballots for any precinct where more than 3% of voting-age residents are of the same non-English language, compared with the federal standard of 5%.

In Los Angeles County, the largest voting jurisdiction in the country, that includes the languages covered by the federal requirement — Cambodian, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Filipino and Vietnamese — as well as Armenian, Bengali, Burmese, Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Khmer, Mongolian, Persian, Russian, Telugu, and Thai for certain precincts under state requirements. Other communities across the state are translating election materials into Urdu, Syriac, and Arabic.

A new poll finds that most Californians want the state to go even further, with 87% of respondents who spoke limited English saying they would be more likely to vote if they had a ballot available in their preferred language.

In Hawaii, where all elections are conducted by mail, mail ballots must include instructions on how to access translation services in Hawaiian and at least five other non-English languages.

Minnesota state law requires voting instructions at all polling places to be translated into the three most commonly spoken non-English languages: Spanish, Hmong, and Somali. The state also requires translators at precincts with significant language minorities, meaning voters can get assistance in German, Russian, and other languages.

“As I see it, it’s not about English proficiency really,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon told Votebeat, explaining that his mother, who was from Austria, spoke English fluently but still preferred to read complicated material in her native language.

“I think most humans are that way. It’s not that she lacked English knowledge, and it’s not as if Hmong speakers or Spanish speakers or Somali speakers or Russian speakers can’t read English. The opposite is often true,” he said. “But when it comes to technical instructions, you want to convey information in a language that best connects with a person.”

People don’t always immediately know that information is available in another language or even think to ask. But when those materials are consistently offered, they help drive civic participation. The translations bring voters closer to truly understanding what they’re weighing in on.

It’s why Lizbinski, the deputy clerk in Dearborn, believes the benefits of offering translation into Arabic “far outweighs the costs.” Those costs are significant: typically around $32,000 for a general election, and closer to $87,000 for a presidential primary, where there are three distinct ballot types. (Those costs, officials say, are likely to rise in future elections.)

How a statewide model could help in Michigan

Between 1980 and 2021, the number of people in the U.S. who speak Arabic at home grew nearly sevenfold — outpacing most other language groups — according to Pew Research Center, and the community continues to grow rapidly in Michigan, beyond the major hubs like Dearborn, said demographer Kurt Metzger.

As long as that pace continues, local election officials will have a tough time meeting the language needs of Arabic-speaking voters. Shams Al-Badry, civic engagement manager at the Dearborn-based Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, said that history shows that clerks are willing to make the changes but hesitant to shoulder the cost alone.

But experts agree that if the state served as a kind of linguistic clearinghouse, offering ballot translation through a statewide system, rather than relying on individual communities, that problem could be eased.

And if the state covered the expense, Al-Badry said, local officials could focus on delivery: getting translated ballots into the hands of the voters who would benefit the most.

Even native English speakers may have a hard time understanding complex ballot measures. “Now bring in someone who doesn’t fully understand the language … and expect them to vote their conscience,” she said. “That’s really difficult.”

That’s what motivates Ali Ahmad, the Dearborn resident, who is still navigating what it means to be an American citizen. She jokes that she’s not 100% sure what a county treasurer does all day, or why she has to vote on one.

But she’s helping others navigate the system as lead community organizer for the National Network for Arab American Communities. She translates voter guides, educates new citizens, and urges her eligible family members to vote as well.

She appreciates the state’s recent changes to expand voting rights, such as early voting and less restrictive absentee voting.

And “this seems like the next good step in making voting accessible,” she said, “making sure everyone can vote in their language.”

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

Proposed Arizona settlement recommends more warnings for voters coming off early-voting list

2025-06-26T13:28:48+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here.

Arizona election officials would be instructed to provide more notice to voters who are at risk of being removed from the state’s early-voting list, under a conditional legal settlement with voting rights groups.

The settlement, which was filed in court Monday and is still subject to final approval, would resolve a longstanding challenge to a 2021 law that eliminated the state’s Permanent Early Voting List. The agreement says voters who face removal should be notified two additional times before they are taken off the list, and once afterward.

The agreement does not appear to impose any new notification requirements on county recorders, who manage county voter rolls. What it would do is provide suggested best practices for how the recorders should implement the law, including the schedule of notices. Because the additional notices wouldn’t be required, voters across the state could face unequal treatment as recorders begin implementing the law for the first time in 2027.

Still, the additional notices would give voters a greater opportunity to remain on the early-voting list and continue to receive ballots by mail for each election, said John Bonifaz, president of Free Speech for People, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization that served as co-counsel for the organizations that sued.

For nearly two decades, Arizona voters could sign up to be on the Permanent Early Voting List and automatically receive a ballot in the mail for all elections they were eligible for. Under the new law, Senate Bill 1485, the list is now called the Active Early Voting List, and starting in January 2027 a voter will be removed from the list if they don’t cast their mail ballot for two consecutive general election cycles — a four-year period. That includes statewide general and primary elections, as well as local candidate elections.

People who are taken off the early-voting list will still be registered to vote, but will need to ask to be added back, or request a one-time ballot, in order to get a ballot in the mail automatically for future elections.

About 75% of Arizona’s registered voters are on the Active Early Voting List. They can return their mail ballots by mail or by dropping it off at a ballot drop box or voting location.

Mi Familia Vota, Living United for Change in Arizona, and other organizations had sued the state in 2021, claiming that the new law was intentionally discriminatory against minority voters — especially Native American, Latino and Black voters — and violated federal voting rights laws.

The organizations reached the conditional settlement earlier this week with the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, along with the Republican National Committee and Republican Senatorial Committee, which had intervened in the case to defend the law. The settlement was reviewed Wednesday by a committee run by the Secretary of State’s Office that includes county recorders. The committee will discuss the final language on the best practices next month.

Under the draft language, the Secretary of State’s Office would provide formal guidance to recorders telling them that voters at risk of being removed should be notified 30 days before Election Day that they need to cast their mail ballot in that election or they will be marked for removal. The guidance says that the “best practice” will be to include the language in the notice in uppercase letters warning the voter of the risk of removal.

Under the new law, counties were already required to send a notice by Jan. 15 of each odd-numbered year to voters marked for removal. If the voter did not return the notice and confirm in writing their wish to remain on the list, they would be removed.

The new proposed guidance says counties should send a follow-up reminder by March of that year to voters who haven’t responded. And then, if a county recorder removes a voter for not responding to the notice, the guidance says, they should notify the voter within 60 days.

Jen Fifield is a reporter for Votebeat based in Arizona. Contact Jen at jfifield@votebeat.org.

More 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. Could this become the norm?

2025-06-23T09:00:00+00:00

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S.

Amid all the worries about the perennially elusive youth vote, there’s a promising trend to talk about: In a growing number of towns and cities across the U.S., 16- and 17-year-olds are gaining the right to vote. The numbers are still small, but the momentum is real. Advocates say it’s about nurturing lifelong voters.

Take Newark, New Jersey, which allowed 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in its school board election in April. Teen turnout was only about 3%. But that was better than the adults managed. Besides, as Sam Novey from the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement puts it, the city “started from nothing.”

Indeed, adding younger teens to the voter rolls involves building a lot of things from scratch. After Newark passed its ordinance last year allowing youth voting, officials had to rewire voter registration systems and launch a full-scale education campaign. It was about 14 months before 16- and 17-year-olds could cast their first ballots.

“Comparatively lightning fast,” Novey said.

And there’s a payoff to look forward to.

“Research shows that those who are allowed to register and begin voting at 16 are more likely to vote later in life than their peers,” said Joshua Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky. “It’s an important way to increase participation.”

In short: Get ’em young, and they’ll keep coming back. The act of voting becomes normal, even expected. And school, Douglas said, is an ideal environment for that first civic nudge — with teachers and peers available to discuss the issues.

The research Douglas cited looked at Scotland, which allowed 16-year-olds to vote in its 2014 independence referendum. The decision was initially controversial, but “nothing bad happened,” said Jan Eichhorn, a political science professor at the University of Edinburgh who studies youth participation and cowrote the study. “Adults realized teenagers were paying attention, often more than adults.”

Public support for youth voting soared in Scotland after that.

The U.S. has been slower to move. Nationwide, the U.S. Constitution guarantees voting rights only for people 18 and older. But at the local level, things are heating up.

Right now, Maryland leads the way. Several municipalities there have already lowered the voting age for local races, taking advantage of state law that makes it easy for municipalities to accommodate registration and ballots for 16- and 17-year olds. A local council vote is enough to change quite a lot of election rules, including, for example, allowing noncitizens to cast ballots.

Compare that with Oakland, California, where voters approved youth voting back in 2020 — only to have to wait four full years for Alameda County to get around to updating its registration systems, a much longer delay than Newark.

In other words, even when the people say yes, the bureaucracy can say, “We’ll get to it eventually.”

That’s what Novey wants everyone to know: that lowering the voting age isn’t just a matter of changing policy. “It touches on a lot of different systems and issues,” he said. Some cities might be able to handle the transition in-house, but others may need new tech, new training, and a lot of patience and support.

In Newark, one of the biggest forces behind the policy was the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice. Attorney Micauri Vargas, the associate counsel for the institute’s Democracy & Justice program who drafted the ordinance, said supporters “knew it wasn’t going to get done statewide,” despite Gov. Phil Murphy mentioning it in his last two State of the State speeches. So they went local, to the state’s largest city, where the mayor and City Council were supportive — and, notably, where the movement had been “started by the students.”

Not everyone was cheering. “People still just don’t feel comfortable with young people having a say in what they think are only money matters, but they aren’t,” Vargas said.

Even some teenagers were skeptical. “But then other young people would ask them if they trusted themselves, and they always said they did,” Vargas said. “They changed their minds.”

This question is about more than voting rules. It’s about trust — not just in systems, but in young people’s ability to shape them. And like Eichhorn said, some adults might just need to spend more time with teenagers to see what they’re capable of.

Of course, there are critics of expanding the franchise this way. Some argue that it’s a slippery slope, or that teenagers are too immature or uninformed to handle voting responsibly. But Douglas points out that we don’t typically take voting rights away from adults on that basis — “even ones who may be legally incompetent. Yet bright, informed 16-year-olds can’t vote.” Fair point.

For now, youth voting in America is a patchwork, enabled by quirks in local laws, driven by ambitious students, and supported by researchers like Novey and his Vote 16 Network, which offers best practices for cities.

And it’s still far from mainstream. But so was same-day registration once. So was voting by mail. So was early voting. All of those ideas sounded radical at some point — until they didn’t.

Chalkbeat Newark Bureau Chief Catherine Carrera contributed.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.