Votebeat

How Wisconsin Democrats want to transform election law after flipping the legislature

2026-11-06T10:00:00+00:00

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For the first time in 17 years, Wisconsin Democrats will have complete control over state government in 2027, and with it the ability to modify or undo many of the election laws that Republicans spent years passing.

Fresh off victory, Democrats say their plans are still in the early stages, but the party’s leaders on election policy in both legislative chambers told Votebeat that they’ll be looking carefully at the state’s entire election code, and will be quick to act on their top election administration priorities.

Rep. Lee Snodgrass and Sen. Mark Spreitzer have spent years being the Democratic point-people on election administration, sitting on legislative election committees as they developed relationships with clerks and forged policy proposals that often sat on the backburner under Republican majorities. Come early next year, they’re likely to be the most influential lawmakers on election legislation.

Both told Votebeat that a top priority will be a bill that would allow election officials to process ballots on the Monday before an election. Most states allow some early processing of absentee ballots, but Wisconsin election workers can’t begin that process until the morning of Election Day — a restriction that often delays unofficial election results, especially in high-turnout elections.

“There’s a pretty clear consensus on most of the topline things,” among Democrats, Spreitzer said. “Monday processing should be really easy.”

Spreitzer and Snodgrass both said increased election funding is another top priority, though neither offered specifics where the money would come from or where it should be directed.

Snodgrass was reluctant to discuss other election policies, saying she hasn’t hadn’t talked in depth about top priorities with her Assembly Democratic colleagues. She said, though, that bills that previously had “bipartisan support from the campaigns and election committee” could lay the groundwork for future action.

“I’m excited for the many possibilities to shore up our democracy and voter rights,” she said.

Spreitzer was more willing to discuss his priorities. In addition to those mentioned by Snodgrass, Spreitzer said he wants to expand the list of eligible photo IDs that can be used for voting, and to once more allow voters to spoil absentee ballots after returning them if they change their minds. He said he’d also entertain mandating that clerks print a minimum number of ballots — a mandate he said the state should fund.

Another top priority for Spreitzer, he said, is to repeal a law that requires election officials in municipalities that count absentee ballots at a central facility to write unique identifiers on the back of each ballot — a law that critics say risks ballot secrecy. An effort to repeal the law has had bipartisan support in the past.

Spreitzer said Democrats will likely address absentee ballot drop boxes, whose legality has swung back and forth in the courts. Drop boxes aren’t mentioned anywhere in state law, though a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for them in 2024. Spreitzer said he wants to update state law to include drop boxes, and would consider offering grants to expand drop box coverage or perhaps require cities of a certain size to make them available.

Another Democratic priority that Spreitzer wants to implement is automatic voter registration, a policy that would register eligible voters when they receive or renew a state-issued ID card or driver’s license.

Outside groups, Republicans say bipartisan legislation is important

Sam Liebert, the Wisconsin state director of All Voting is Local and a former municipal clerk, said he supports many of those proposals, including Monday processing, expanding the list of eligible IDs, and automatic voter registration.

He said he hopes there’s bipartisan buy-in to as many proposals as possible.

“We’ve just had so many ups and downs with trust and faith in our election administration system the last decade,” he said. “When you pass something that has bipartisan support, it helps everyone have more trust and faith in the process.”

Rep. Scott Krug was the Republican point-person on elections for years; he chaired the Assembly Election Committee from 2023 to 2024, and was vice chair after, and built relationships with clerks across the state.

He said that he could get on board with some Democratic priorities, like Monday processing, but encouraged Democrats to include a specific requirement in the bill for Milwaukee to follow required checklists and trainings in exchange for that extra day of ballot processing. The city has a history of Election Day errors at its absentee ballot counting facility.

Some other Democratic priorities, he said, may not survive future Republican majorities, depending on how they’re written.

For example, he said that if Democrats codify the legality of drop boxes such a law would likely only survive a future GOP majority if it included security requirements for the ballot return receptacles.

Democrats’ expanded list of eligible photo IDs may not survive either, he said.

“It all comes down to details, and that’s my worry sometimes about a caucus who’s never been in the majority before,” Krug said. “Yes, you’ve got control. You can do whatever you want, but you really got to dig deep into some of the unintended consequences of things to make sure you’re doing them right.”

Democrats pledge to include clerks in crafting policies

Clerks have long supported many of the potential proposals that Spreitzer endorsed. But, more broadly, clerks have also dreaded the idea of rapidly changing election laws that require them to learn and implement new policies.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican and the co-chair of the Wisconsin County Clerks Association’s legislative outreach committee, told Votebeat that she would prefer for Democrats not to change a large number of election policies at once.

Legislators told Votebeat they would include clerks in their conversations about policies.

“We’re never, at the end of the day, going to make everybody happy,” Snodgrass said. “But the bottom line is just to make sure that everything is clear.”

Trueblood said that she has every confidence that Snodgrass and Spreitzer will work with her.

Trueblood supports some of the key Democratic priorities, like offering more election funding, Monday processing and eliminating the requirement to write unique numbers on absentee ballots.

She said she was open to other ideas mentioned by Democrats too, and may support them if changes better accommodate the realities of administering elections. Spoiling ballots after they’ve been cast, for example, could only work if the deadline to do so came prior to Election Day, she said.

Liebert noted there was a “ticking clock” between now and the 2028 presidential election two years from now. It would help the state’s 1,850 municipal clerks if legislators passed new policies sooner than later, he said.

“We want to make sure that clerks at the county and the municipal level are prepared and trained and have adjusted for any changes,” he said.

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

Alaska voters could face a long wait for election results

2026-11-04T19:06:31+00:00

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While elections across America were decided fairly quickly Tuesday night, the country is probably going to have to wait weeks to learn the outcome of one of the most hotly contested and controversial U.S. Senate races: Alaska.

That’s because of some idiosyncrasies in the state aptly known as the Last Frontier. Alaska is the biggest state and one of the most remote. Its roughly 600,000 registered voters are spread out across an area twice the size of Texas, with many areas accessible only by plane or boat. The state builds in a long grace period after Election Day for ballots to make their way to election offices.

John Lindback, a former elections official who oversaw the processes in Oregon and Alaska, said Alaska is “a very, very difficult place to conduct elections” and needs extra time to ensure all votes from remote areas are counted.

“If you’re a control freak, the director of the division of elections job in Alaska is not for you because the place is so huge,” he said. “They have their own schedule for counting, and they don’t deviate from that, and they don’t make apologies for it.”

Alaska stands out because it is one of two states in the nation (along with Maine) to use ranked choice voting to regularly choose congressional representatives.

The origins of the ranked choice voting stretch back to the 1800s in Europe, when Denmark embraced it as a way to choose leaders. The first place in America to use it was Ashtabula, Ohio, in a 1915 election to select city council members, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Election Data and Science Lab.

Hawaii uses it for special federal and county elections, according to the MIT lab. Three counties and 36 cities also use it.

In some states, if no candidate wins a majority of votes on election night, there must be a subsequent runoff election. With ranked choice voting, the idea is that the runoff happens within the same election because voters have already ranked the candidates by preference. Advocates say it allows for better representation and an outcome that most closely resembles what people want. Critics say it is confusing to voters.

Voters in Maine narrowly approved the switch to ranked choice voting in 2016, with 52% support, and the state became the first to use the system in statewide races in 2018. In 2020, Alaska voters also narrowly approved the shift, with 50.6% of the vote, and started using it in 2022. (An effort to repeal ranked choice voting in Alaska fell just 743 votes short in 2024. This year, another measure to repeal the system is too close to call, but those in favor of keeping it in place held a narrow lead as of Wednesday.)

Alaska allows voters to rank candidates by preference. If no candidate gets more than 50% of first-choice votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are redistributed based on the voters’ second choices. The process continues until one candidate gets a majority.

The state’s primary system selects the top four vote-getters for the general election, regardless of political affiliation. That means there were four U.S. Senate candidates on the November ballot: incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, Democratic challenger and former congresswoman Mary Peltola, retired schoolteacher Daniel J. Sullivan, and Republican Gerald Heikes, a drywall contractor who has unsuccessfully run for office several times.

This race catapulted into the spotlight in the waning days of the campaign after The New York Times linked Peltola aides to an effort to recruit the retired schoolteacher to join the race in hopes of fracturing the Republican vote by putting another candidate on the ballot with the same name as the incumbent. Peltola has denied involvement in the effort, which has triggered state and federal investigations. There are only a small number of scenarios under which the second Dan Sullivan’s presence on the ballot would make a difference in the outcome.

The race appeared on Wednesday to be heading for ranked choice tabulation. Peltola held a narrow lead over the incumbent senator, but had less than 50% of the vote. Heikes had more than 4,800 votes — about 2% of the total. And the second Sullivan was in last place with 3,500 votes, about 1.6% of the total.

If Heikes voters ranked the incumbent senator as their second choice, it could be enough to secure Sullivan a third Senate term.

Alaska’s vast geography also complicates the timeline for counting votes. The state allows certain absentee ballots to arrive up to 10 days after Election Day, creating a lag in declaring winners. If needed, Alaska officials say they will start using the ranked choice process on Nov. 18, more than two weeks after Election Day.

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

Could voter confusion affect the outcome of a key Senate race in Alaska? Probably not.

2026-11-02T22:32:18+00:00

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The unsettled controversy over dueling Dans running for the U.S. Senate seat in Alaska overlooks one underlying truth in the race: there are very few scenarios in which voter confusion over the two candidates with the same name could decide the outcome.

The winner of the Alaska race is expected to be pivotal to which party controls the U.S. Senate. Democrats are looking to flip the seat and topple two-term Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan. Polls show Sullivan in a tight race with Democrat Mary Peltola, the former congresswoman who became the first Alaska Native elected to Congress in 2022.

Republicans assert a third candidate, retired teacher Dan Sullivan, could act as a spoiler and confuse voters who intend to vote for the incumbent with the same name. The Justice Department filed a lawsuit that seeks to block certification of the U.S. Senate race if the incumbent senator loses because of votes cast for the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot. It sought to block certification of the election if the incumbent narrowly lost, and requested a court order requiring the state to segregate ballots cast for the non-incumbent Dan Sullivan and permitting the federal government to investigate the intent of those voters.

A federal judge threw the case out on Sunday and said the federal government had failed to outline a realistic way to address the problems it said existed, or to investigate voter intent without violating ballot secrecy. U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason also warned that setting aside ballots for a federal investigation just days before Election Day could confuse voters and depress turnout.

The swirl of legal challenges obscures the underlying fact that there are very narrow circumstances in which voter confusion in this race could affect the outcome. Part of that is because Alaska is one of two states, along with Maine, to use a ranked choice voting system in federal races.

That means voters can rank their preferences. If a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote on the first ballot, they win the election. If no candidate wins an outright majority, Alaska election officials will turn to the ranked choice voting process. In that case, the candidate with the smallest number of votes will be eliminated and their votes will be reapportioned to the other candidates based on the voter rankings. The process continues until one person wins a majority.

The ranked choice process means that if any potentially confused voters rank the Dans as their top two choices, their vote will likely ultimately favor the incumbent senator. The way the non-incumbent Dan has a major impact is if voters decline to use the ranked choice process and he earns more votes than the gap between the incumbent senator and his Democratic challenger — and that assumes voters didn’t intend for that to happen.

Sarah John, a ranked choice voting researcher and executive director of the nonprofit Doctors of Democracy, said it was extremely unlikely that the second Dan Sullivan on the ballot would impact the final outcome.

“I’d say that there’s less than a 1% chance of Decoy Dan being a spoiler” if Republicans rank their preferences, John said.

The Alaska ballot seeks to distinguish the two Sullivans. The incumbent is listed on the ballot as Dan S. Sullivan, the Republican incumbent. The second Sullivan is listed as Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., and includes no party affiliation or other identifying information.

Alaska election officials initially threw the retired schoolteacher off the ballot, but the state Supreme Court rejected that effort and put his name back before voters this past summer.

The ranked choice voting process gives voters who may be confused by the two Sullivans on the ballot a chance to make sure their choices aren’t wasted. If voters rank the retired school teacher first and the incumbent senator second, their votes will shift to the two-term Senator if, as expected, the former teacher is eventually eliminated from consideration.

John said the best Republican strategy would be to “encourage their voters to rank candidates and perhaps delight in ranking Peltola last.”

In that case, she said, “if the race is tight, every single exhausted ballot for Daniel J. Jr. that was intended for Dan S. has the potential to flip the result” in the incumbent’s favor.

The scenario where the second Dan Sullivan would make the most difference would be if Republican voters who meant to vote for the incumbent senator mistakenly cast their ballot for the retired schoolteacher without ranking any other candidates.

In the 2024 November general election, 60% of voters chose only one candidate and did not use the ranked choice voting system.

To make a case for voter confusion affecting the outcome, the number of Alaskans who cast a vote only for the retired schoolteacher would have to top the margin of a narrow Peltola victory.

John Lindback, who oversaw elections in Oregon and Alaska, said widespread attention on the two Dans should neutralize most voter confusion.

“I’m not seeing any evidence thus far that the second Dan Sullivan is going to have a big impact on this race, in part because there’s been so much publicity about it,” he said. “All of that just suggests to me that this will be not as great a factor as people suggest it will.”

In addition to the Justice Department lawsuit, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy and federal prosecutors have launched eleventh-hour criminal investigations into Daniel J. Sullivan’s candidacy following a New York Times story last week that reported operatives working with Peltola’s campaign and Democratic leadership worked to recruit the second Dan in an effort to dilute the Republican vote for the incumbent Alaska senator.

“Anyone who tries to illegally deceive voters and interfere with the election will answer for it,” U.S Attorney Michael Heyman, Alaska’s top federal prosecutor, said.

Alaska’s embrace of ranked choice voting created problems for any kind of voter dilution scheme.

“Assuming Republican voters use RCV then, yes, the plan was doomed to fail,” John said.

Efforts to split the Republican votes were premised on key flaws, John said, including a dubious belief that Sullivan voters would be prone to confusion.

“The plan was pretty stupid and risks undermining confidence in elections,” she said.

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

Los grupos de derechos electorales, por temor a sanciones penales, redujeron la ayuda a algunos de los votantes más vulnerables de Texas.

2026-11-02T22:22:43+00:00

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Lea este artículo en inglés aquí.

Read this article in English here.

ALAMO, Texas – Eustorgia Santos de Torres vive aquí desde hace cuatro décadas. El año pasado, acudió a una organización sin fines de lucro de confianza en el Valle del Río Grande para recibir ayuda con el proceso de solicitud de ciudadanía. Esa misma organización, La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) posteriormente la ayudó a registrarse para votar, y ella emitió su primer voto como ciudadana en las elecciones primarias de marzo pasado.

Santos de Torres, de 67 años, está jubilada después de haber trabajado durante años limpiando casas y como auxiliar de atención médica. Habla principalmente español y es la cuidadora principal de su esposo, Nemorio, que es ciego. “Yo soy sus ojos”, dijo Santos de Torres.

Pero el mes pasado, Santos de Torres, una nueva votante, tuvo dificultades para ayudar a Nemorio, un ciudadano nacido en los Estados Unidos, a entender y completar su boleta de votación por correo para las elecciones de noviembre. Toda la información de la boleta está en inglés, señaló, y las letras son pequeñas.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, de 67 años, a la derecha, ayuda a su esposo Nemorio Torres, de 79 años, a entrar a su casa en Alamo, Texas, el 18 de octubre de 2026. Su esposo es ciego y requiere de su asistencia.

Por ello, Santos de Torres ayudó a Nemorio a subir al auto y recorrió, como tantas otras veces, los siete minutos de camino hasta la sede de LUPE, en la vecina localidad de San Juan, para pedir ayuda con la boleta de su esposo.

Esta vez, sin embargo, los trabajadores de LUPE, a su pesar, rechazaron a la pareja.

En 2021, la Legislatura estatal de Texas, dominada por los republicanos, aprobó una reforma integral y controvertida de las leyes electorales, conocida como SB1. Entre otros cambios, la SB1 prohibió que cualquier persona reciba una compensación por ayudar a los votantes a completar sus boletas electorales.

Esto no solo prohíbe que el personal remunerado de las organizaciones sin fines de lucro asista a los votantes, sino que también criminalizó algunas prácticas habituales, como cuando las organizaciones proporcionaban dinero para gasolina o estipendios a los voluntarios. Las infracciones constituyen un delito grave castigado con hasta 10 años de prisión y una multa de hasta 10.000 dólares.

A raíz de la ley, el fiscal general de Texas, Ken Paxton, un republicano que actualmente compite en la contienda por un escaño en el Senado de los EE. UU. —la cual es objeto de atención a nivel nacional—, investigó y procesó a grupos de defensa de los derechos de los votantes y a organizadores en comunidades predominantemente latinas en todo el estado.

Grupos como LUPE afirman que se han visto obligados a modificar o suspender algunas actividades de difusión electoral por temor a infringir la ley. LUPE solía enviar a sus trabajadores a recorrer las cuadras a pie para ayudar a los votantes. Ahora, en cambio, tiene que pedirle a voluntarios que realicen esas actividades de manera más limitada.

Los votantes latinos y otros que no hablan inglés serán clave para el resultado de las contiendas de alto perfil por escaños en el Senado y la Cámara de Representantes de Estados Unidos de este año en el estado. Sin embargo, la ley significa que dichos votantes, así como aquellos que son mayores o tienen discapacidades, tienen menos opciones de ayuda.

Tania Chávez Camacho, directora ejecutiva de La Unión del Pueblo Entero, se dirige a los asistentes de una capacitación electoral en San Juan, Texas, el 9 de octubre de 2026.

LUPE es conocida por brindar asistencia personalizada a las personas de la comunidad latina, por lo que las restricciones a la asistencia electoral representan un problema importante para la organización, afirmó la directora ejecutiva Tania Chavez Camacho. Texas tiene reglas estrictas que limitan quiénes son elegibles para usar boletas por correo, pero las personas mayores de 65 años pueden hacerlo. LUPE ayuda a unas 30,000 personas al año, señaló, incluyendo a personas con discapacidades y a muchos adultos mayores que, cada año, “quieren votar por correo y vienen buscando ayuda”.

Ahora, según afirmó Chavez Camacho, cuando el grupo organiza reuniones comunitarias abiertas al publico para instruir a los residentes sobre cómo votar, si un votante saca su boleta por correo para pedir ayuda, los organizadores deben pedirle que se retire para que los empleados remunerados no estén cerca de la boleta.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, de 67 años, posa para una foto con su esposo Nemorio Torres, de 79 años, en su casa en Alamo, Texas, el 18 de octubre de 2026. Su esposo es ciego y necesita ayuda para votar.

Y si los trabajadores del área de defensa de los derechos de LUPE están haciendo campaña puerta por puerta para los candidatos y un votante les muestra una boleta por correo y les pide ayuda para llenarla, los trabajadores han sido capacitados para decir que no pueden y retirarse, afirmó Chavez Camacho.

“Literalmente tenemos que rechazarlos”, expresó Chavez Camacho. “Hemos tenido que capacitar intensamente a nuestro personal durante los últimos tres años porque estaban muy acostumbrados a brindar asistencia personalizada a la gente, y ahora no pueden hacerlo”.

Santos de Torres hizo lo que pudo para ayudar a su esposo, quien envió su boleta por correo hace aproximadamente un mes.

“Pero no está bien que LUPE no nos pueda ayudar”, comentó. “Esa ley no está bien. Está excluyendo a las personas que necesitan ayuda”.

“¿Qué pasaría”, añadió, “si mi esposo no me tuviera a mí?”.

‘Una persona que no sabe leer tiene que hacerlo por su cuenta’

El Valle del Río Grande, donde tiene su sede LUPE, abarca aproximadamente 4.300 millas cuadradas a lo largo de los condados de Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr y Willacy, en la frontera con México, en el extremo sur de Texas. Es una comunidad diversa cuyos residentes hablan principalmente español. Las generaciones más jóvenes alternan con facilidad entre el inglés y el español en sus conversaciones.

Muchos hogares están integrados por familias cuyos miembros tienen distintas situaciones migratorias, incluidos algunos que han vivido en la región durante generaciones. El Valle también cuenta con un historial de activismo, al ser la cuna del movimiento de trabajadores agrícolas de Texas en la década de 1960. Los trabajadores agrícolas —quienes cosechaban algodón, verduras y frutas— se organizaron y marcharon cerca de 400 millas desde el Valle hasta Austin para exigir salarios justos y mejores condiciones laborales. En la actualidad, la mano de obra de los trabajadores agrícolas de origen mexicano-estadounidense sigue siendo fundamental para el crecimiento y la economía agrícola de la región.

Un vecindario en San Juan, Texas, el 23 de octubre de 2026.

Pero debido a la escasez de viviendas asequibles, los mexicano-estadounidenses compraron durante años terrenos que podían pagar en zonas rurales fuera de los límites urbanos, que a menudo carecían de infraestructura básica y servicios públicos. Esas comunidades se conocen hoy en día como las colonias.

Alamo, donde vive Santos de Torres, y San Juan, donde tiene su sede LUPE, son ciudades vecinas. El paisaje varía según la zona. En los sectores del sur de las ciudades, más cerca de la frontera con México, casas residenciales modestas con jardines delanteros verdes adornan las calles bordeadas de palmeras. Los centros comerciales, las cadenas de restaurantes, los estadios y los desarrollos comerciales se encuentran al norte de las ciudades, a lo largo de la Carretera Interestatal 2, lo que refleja la transición de lo que alguna vez fue una comunidad principalmente agrícola a un creciente centro metropolitano. El Valle ha dependido durante años de su comercio de bienes y servicios con México. Cuenta con una población de más de 1,4 millones de habitantes y el 90 % de ellos son hispanos o latinos, según datos del Censo.

Alrededor del 24 % de las personas en el Valle viven por debajo del umbral de pobreza, lo que representa más del doble de la tasa nacional. Asimismo, cerca del 30 % de los residentes del Valle no tienen seguro médico, una de las tasas de personas sin seguro más altas del país. La región también registra una de las tasas de diabetes más altas de la nación; la ceguera de Nemorio Torres es una complicación de esta enfermedad.

Un mural que anuncia a La Unión del Pueblo Entero en San Juan, Texas, el 10 de octubre de 2026.

LUPE y otras organizaciones de defensa de derechos han trabajado durante mucho tiempo con los residentes de las colonias y de todo el Valle, brindando recursos para encontrar viviendas asequibles y tratamiento médico, o ayudando con procedimientos complejos como la declaración de impuestos. La educación de los votantes y el alcance electoral para fomentar la participación electoral eran parte de su misión.

Ahora, en lugar de brindar asistencia personalizada, LUPE organiza sesiones grupales con un proyector de pantalla que muestra cómo son las solicitudes de voto por correo y las boletas electorales. Los facilitadores señalan la pantalla para indicar lo que dicen las instrucciones y explicar cómo se deben completar los formularios.

Las limitaciones son frustrantes, señaló Chavez Camacho, especialmente “si una persona no sabe leer”. “No importa que estemos haciendo esas sesiones porque una persona que no sabe leer tiene que hacerlo por su cuenta y no podemos ayudarla a saber dónde marcar”, explicó.

En cambio, los trabajadores y voluntarios de LUPE se enfocan ahora en informar a la gente que se aproximan fechas límite clave. También cuentan con menos voluntarios dispuestos a orientar y servirles de intérpretes a los votantes en los centros de votación, afirmó, porque la ley ahora exige que estas personas declaren bajo juramento que el votante cumple con los requisitos para recibir ayuda por tener una discapacidad o necesitar un intérprete, además de detallar su relación con el votante. También deben declarar bajo juramento que no reciben un pago por parte de un candidato o comité político, lo cual sería ilegal. Los voluntarios temen que cualquier error al asistir a los votantes podría meterlos en problemas, concluyó Chavez Camacho.

“Realmente sentimos que las personas no están recibiendo el apoyo que necesitan”, expresó Chavez Camacho.

Un cactus en San Juan, Texas, el 23 de octubre de 2026.

Los expertos en derecho electoral y del voto señalan que los tribunales han interpretado que la “compensación” prohibida para los voluntarios según la ley SB1 incluye cualquier tipo de beneficio. Esa interpretación es tan amplia que dificulta a las organizaciones de participación electoral saber si están violando la ley, afirmó Zachary Dolling, director de litigios del Proyecto de Derechos Civiles de Texas, el cual trabaja con agrupaciones para diseñar capacitaciones de participación electoral que cumplan con la legislación.

Dolling mencionó que, históricamente, algunas organizaciones proporcionaban a los voluntarios no remunerados cena, camisetas o bolígrafos, mientras que otras otorgaban créditos universitarios por su labor.

“Todas esas cosas son cosas que tienen valor” y podrían considerarse una compensación, advirtió.

Defensores alertaron a los líderes estatales sobre las cargas adicionales para personas con discapacidad

Los republicanos de Texas aprobaron la SB1, la reforma radical de la ley electoral, respondiendo en parte a afirmaciones falsas y teorías de conspiración sobre las elecciones de 2020.

Los republicanos afirmaron que la ley aumentaría la confianza pública en las elecciones. Los demócratas argumentaron que la legislación perjudicaría de manera desproporcionada a los votantes de color y a las personas con discapacidades, y abandonaron el pleno en dos ocasiones y llevaron a cabo un filibusterismo de 15 horas en el Senado en su intento fallido por derrotar el proyecto de ley.

Un timbre para solicitar asistencia para votar en un centro de votación en el primer día de votación anticipada en Alamo, Texas, el 19 de octubre de 2026.

A pesar de las demandas de organizaciones de derechos al voto, incluidas LUPE, la Liga de Ciudadanos Latinoamericanos Unidos y agrupaciones que representan a tejanos con discapacidad, un tribunal federal de apelaciones ratificó finalmente las disposiciones clave de la SB1, incluidas las restricciones a la asistencia al votante.

Mientras tanto, otros intentos de ampliar la ayuda para votar a las personas con discapacidades no tuvieron éxito.

En 2023, el gobernador Greg Abbott, republicano, vetó un proyecto de ley bipartidista que habría ampliado el acceso al voto por correo para personas con discapacidades, específicamente personas ciegas o paralizadas que necesitan ayuda para marcar su boleta, al permitir que dichos votantes soliciten una boleta electrónica y usen una computadora para marcar sus opciones. Alternativas similares en Texas ya están disponibles para votantes militares en el extranjero y astronautas, pero no para votantes con discapacidades.

Los desafíos que han enfrentado Santos de Torres y su esposo son un ejemplo de lo que preocupaba a los defensores bajo la SB1, señaló Lydia Nunez Landry, coordinadora estatal de REV UP Texas, una organización que trabaja para promover la participación electoral de las personas con discapacidad.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, de 67 años, celebra después de votar durante las elecciones de mitad de término mientras miembros de La Unión del Pueblo Entero la animan afuera de un centro de votación en Alamo, Texas, el 19 de octubre de 2026.

“Ese era nuestro peor temor y ahora está sucediendo”, dijo. Nunez Landry tiene distrofia muscular, utiliza una silla de ruedas motorizada y necesita ayuda para realizar tareas básicas como abrir el refrigerador.

“El estado ha hecho que votar sea sencillamente tan imposible y tan arduo para la gente, y ahora las personas también tienen pánico de ayudarnos”, dijo.

Una mayor ‘sensación de ansiedad’

Los grupos en todo el estado han estado modificando sus labores de captación de votantes para cumplir con la SB1.

Asian Texans for Justice realiza actividades de participación electoral en comunidades asiáticas, enfocándose en San Antonio, Houston, Austin y el norte de Texas.

Las reglas más estrictas asociadas con el voto por correo bajo la SB1 han creado “una sensación de ansiedad” en esas comunidades, afirmó la directora ejecutiva Nabila Mansoor. Ella señaló que el proceso es ahora mucho más complicado para los votantes de edad avanzada, quienes deben proporcionar una de las dos formas de identificación permitidas en su solicitud y prestar mucha atención a páginas de instrucciones que están escritas en un tipo de letra que es pequeño y difícil de leer para ellos. Además, un error podría obligarlos a reiniciar todo el proceso de solicitud de una boleta.

“Esa ansiedad proviene de esta clase de miedo a hacer algo mal”, afirmó Mansoor. “Cada vez que tienes ese tipo de miedo, es una barrera más para que esa persona realmente vaya a votar”.

Ahora que Asian Texans for Justice ya no puede brindar ayuda personalizada, han pasado a proporcionar listas de verificación para los votantes, señaló ella, lo cual considera menos efectivo cuando algunos votantes pueden necesitar ayuda para leer y entender la boleta y las instrucciones.

Mansoor afirmó que considera que el objetivo de la SB1 era hacer que fuera más difícil para la gente votar.

María Gómez, de 78 años, "Doña Mary", a la izquierda, y su amiga Teresa Corona Garza, de 80 años, conversan en la casa de Corona en San Juan, Texas, el 9 de octubre de 2026.

“Significa que tenemos que ser más cuidadosos. Significa que tenemos que cuidar hasta el más mínimo detalle. Significa que tenemos que llevar buenos registros. Significa que tenemos que ser muy minuciosos en lo que respecta a la capacitación de nuestros voluntarios”, afirmó ella, agregando que la organización también formó un equipo legal para defenderse de los cuestionamientos a su trabajo.

Mientras tanto, los voluntarios de LUPE y de otras agrupaciones afirman que están haciendo todo lo posible para cubrir ese vacío.

María Gómez, mejor conocida como Doña Mary, de Pharr, fue trabajadora agrícola durante años en el condado de Hidalgo y ha sido miembro de LUPE desde que se fundó la organización. Gómez, de 78 años, estuvo involucrada en el movimiento de trabajadores agrícolas hace años. Ahora se asegura de que sus amigos y vecinos de la tercera edad estén al tanto de los plazos electorales, sepan dónde votar y tengan transporte a las urnas si lo necesitan.

Después de dejar a sus nietos y bisnietos en la escuela, hace sus rondas por las colonias de San Juan en su pequeña camioneta SUV roja. Conversa con sus vecinos y les pregunta en qué necesitan ayuda o si necesitan recursos o transporte. Siempre está atendiendo llamadas.

“La gente no vota porque a veces no pueden salir de su casa y porque puede que no tengan acceso al papel que necesitan firmar para que les llegue su boleta”, dijo Gómez, refiriéndose a los formularios de registro de votantes y a las solicitudes de voto por correo.

Una de sus amigas, Teresa Corona Garza, de 80 años de San Juan, ha dependido de Gómez para que la lleve a las urnas desde hace algún tiempo. Corona Garza tiene dificultades para estar de pie por largos períodos de tiempo y no puede ver muy bien de su ojo izquierdo. A pesar de que califica para votar por correo, prefiere ir a las urnas en persona.

María Gómez, de 78 años, camina desde un centro de votación con los hijos de familiares y amigos en Alamo, Texas, el 19 de octubre de 2026.

“Hay mucho que tienes que llenar ahí, y las letras están muy chiquitas”, dijo Corona Garza. “No, yo mejor voy, yo quiero ver que mi voto cuenta”, expresó.

Las leyes se han vuelto tan complicadas y estrictas que a Gómez le preocupa que los líderes estatales puedan incluso intentar evitar que los voluntarios como ella lleven a las personas a votar.

“No sé qué va a pasar, no se si van a seguir haciendo esto más difícil para la gente”, manifestó, “pero me gustaría ver que las personas que quieren votar puedan votar”.

Natalia Contreras cubre la administración de elecciones y el acceso al voto para Votebeat en colaboración con el Texas Tribune. Natalia reside en Corpus Christi. Puedes comunicarte con ella a través de su correo electrónico: ncontreras@votebeat.org.

Election officials express fears and anxiety amid wave of federal threats, court filings show

2026-11-02T20:14:15+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.

Election officials heading into Election Day describe widespread stress and anxiety over the Trump administration’s ongoing threats against election officials and efforts to challenge state voting laws amid the key midterm contest.

The Justice Department’s flurry of legal actions in the waning days of the campaign have created a climate of fear in election offices around the country, causing additional stress as they prepare for a highly-charged midterm election this week.

“The federal government’s conduct has had and continues to have a severe chilling effect on my staff and me,” said Matt Moreles, the registrar of voters in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, in a declaration filed as part of a lawsuit filed against the Justice Department by a union representing California election workers and its allies. “They and I are worried about retaliation and harassment—including through civil litigation and criminal prosecution—for simply carrying out our jobs.”

That lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in northern California, asked the courts to stop the Trump administration from threatening election officials. In response, U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson issued an extraordinary nationwide restraining order over the weekend that says federal officials cannot “threaten, intimidate or coerce” election workers “to demand that they halt processing the ballots of any registered voter solely on the basis that the ballot belongs to an individual alleged by Defendants to be ineligible to vote.”

It also bars the federal government from threatening election workers with criminal prosecution for failure to comply with such demands.

“In the lead-up to the election, high-ranking DOJ and DHS officials have engaged in a campaign to intimidate, threaten, and coerce state and local officials and employees who are engaged in administering the ongoing midterm 2026 election,” Thompson wrote in directing Trump administration officials to stop.

The order comes as the Justice Department has been actively pressuring officials in California to set aside ballots of up to 20,000 individuals who the administration claims may be noncitizen voters. The department this weekend also mailed letters to officials in all 50 states warning of criminal prosecution for violating election record-keeping laws

The Justice Department is expected to ask the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift Thompson’s order, arguing that describing the law isn’t a threat. In court filings, the Trump administration lawyers said the ban could impede lawful investigations of the unfolding election.

“An order that places a civil court in supervision of grand jury subpoenas, search warrant applications, and prosecutors’ public statements inflicts a structural injury that cannot be remedied after the fact,” Justice Department lawyers wrote.

California governor says he has ‘grave concerns’ about federal interference

The widespread anxiety comes as election officials are dealing with attempted intimidation efforts and all the normal pressures of administering the closely watched midterm elections under intense White House scrutiny.

Ahead of Election Day, California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent off an unusual alert warning federal judges that federal prosecutors might request authorization to seize ballots or voting equipment after Election Day.

“I have grave concerns federal agents will seek search warrants to seize ballots and ballot materials before the election results are certified,” Newsom wrote to the four U.S. District Courts that cover California. “The tactics and rhetoric federal officials are using strongly suggest that, having lost repeatedly in federal civil proceedings thus far, they will quickly pivot to the criminal forum.”

Newsom’s concerns come as the Trump administration is trying to compel California election officials to set aside as many as 20,000 ballots in the ongoing midterm race. Two courts have already ruled against the Justice Department in that case, but election officials say that federal agents have been turning up at their offices to try and get them to set aside ballots.

Kristin Connelly, clerk-recorder for the San Francisco Bay Area’s Contra Costa County, said in a court declaration that two Department of Homeland Security officials turned up unannounced at her office on Oct. 23 with a demand that she set aside as many as 407 ballots they said might be from suspected noncitizens. The Trump administration gave Connelly 48 hours to comply.

“I had never had an interaction like this with federal officials before,” Connelly said. “In my experience, federal threats have been a substantial distraction for California election officials.”

Connelly said she felt trapped.

“The stress of being asked by the federal government, under threat of prosecution, to potentially violate federal civil rights law by not tallying presumptively lawful votes weighs heavily on me as a registrar,” she said.

David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on election administration, said in a court declaration that election officials across the country are anxious about the federal threats.

“Election officials report being scared and exhausted by the onslaught of threats,” Becker said in the filing. “They are caught between, on the one hand, following state and federal legal requirements regarding maintaining voter rolls, ensuring every registered eligible voter has their vote counted, and maintaining the chain of custody over election records, and on the other hand, placing themselves in the crosshairs of federal prosecutors, putting themselves in personal jeopardy as they simply seek to do their jobs.”

Tammy Patrick, chief program officers at the Election Center, told Votebeat that election officials across the nation have been voicing such concerns for months.

“It should surprise no one that, in this moment, they have grave concerns about what is happening, but they have a job to do, and they will do it while drowning out the noise and distractions to the best of their ability,” Patrick said.

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

Mail delays are leading to more early voting. That shift is especially clear in rural Wisconsin.

2026-10-30T22:05:00+00:00

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

In recent elections, the Namakagon town clerk has received multiple calls from voters asking whether the ballots they returned by mail had arrived. Town Clerk Laura Bjork had to break the news to voters in the 300-person town that they hadn’t.

“I’m like, ‘I cannot tell you why, and I apologize. I’m not in control of that mail,’” she said. “It made me very upset because I do push for people to vote.”

As the mail has slowed down, Bjork said there has been a shift to early in-person voting.

“I like it when people do come and [vote in person] because you know for sure that you’re getting that ballot back,” she said.

In Namakagon, in southern Bayfield County, 27 voters had cast in-person absentee ballots as of Thursday, a 35% increase from the same point in 2022. Meanwhile, the number of absentee ballots returned through other methods, including by mail, fell from 31 to 23.

That shift mirrors a dramatic change unfolding across Wisconsin. Statewide, in-person absentee voting has surged 54% compared with the same point in 2022, with more than 344,000 ballots cast that way. Every Wisconsin county has seen an increase, and in 16 counties, the number has at least doubled. In-person voting now accounts for more than half of all returned absentee ballots statewide, up from about 38% at this point in 2022.

The changing voter behavior comes as ProPublica found that mail delays have soared in rural counties as a result of U.S. Postal Service cost-cutting measures, often adding a day or longer to delivery times. The Postal Service has reduced mail pickups from twice daily to once daily in many communities, particularly those far from major processing facilities. Data ProPublica shared with Votebeat shows that, as of the 2026 midterm elections, those mail changes had been implemented across nearly all of Wisconsin, except for the Milwaukee metro area and a small portion of northwestern Wisconsin near Minneapolis.

In Wisconsin, absentee ballots must reach election officials by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted, regardless of when they were mailed. That means even a short postal delay could prevent an otherwise valid ballot from being counted.

Namakagon is in one of the ZIP codes where ProPublica found mail slowdowns. So is Manitowish Waters, a lakeside town 70 miles to the east.

There, clerk Heather Suffron said early in-person voting is higher than usual. As of Thursday morning, 48 people in the 600-person town had voted in person, a 37% increase from 35 at this point in 2022.

Voters have given her multiple reasons for voting early in person, including worries that a mail ballot wouldn’t arrive at their house or back at the clerk’s office in time.

Suffron offers three hours of early voting per day, as she has since her tenure started a few years ago. But this year she added five additional hours on the last Friday of early voting.

“If I can make it easier for people who are trying to vote, then I’m happy to do that,” she said.

All 16 Wisconsin counties where early in-person voting has at least doubled from this point in 2022 are outside the state’s major urban centers. Those counties stretch across Wisconsin, from Florence County, along the border of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to Iowa County in the thick of the state’s scenic driftless region and Trempealeau County, which touches the Mississippi River.

The largest increases in actual ballot numbers came from Wisconsin’s most populous counties. Milwaukee, Dane and Waukesha counties together accounted for nearly 40% of the statewide increase in early in-person voting. But early in-person voting has grown fastest in smaller, rural counties, where changes to Postal Service operations have raised concerns about mail reliability.

In Clark County, in central Wisconsin, in-person absentee voting has increased 180%, from 67 ballots at this point in 2022 to 188 as of Thursday. Clerk Christina Jensen told Votebeat she wasn’t exactly sure what was driving the increase, but said voting early in-person is often easier and more convenient for voters than casting ballots another way.

With mail delays now present across the state, Bjork, in Namakagon, said she now favors early voting.

“Mail service is just unreliable as of late, and if anyone would ask my opinion, I would say in-person is definitely more reliable,” Bjork said. “You’re handing it right to somebody.”

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

Apache County’s 2024 election was worse than reported, records show. Now, it faces another test at the polls.

2026-10-30T15:59:00+00:00

This story was published by Votebeat in partnership with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration. AZCIR is a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting. Sign up for Votebeat Arizona’s free newsletter here and AZCIR’s free newsletter here.

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.

APACHE COUNTY, Ariz. — As Arizona readies itself for a contentious midterm election, voters in remote, windswept Apache County are hoping this time will be different.

The mammoth county is known for pine-topped mountains and rolling high desert hills. It’s also home to a large swath of the country’s largest Native American reservation — the Navajo Nation, which makes up its northern half.

Voters there have been let down many times before. In the 2020 and 2022 elections, the Nation filed emergency lawsuits against Apache County to extend polling hours — a result of voting sites opening late, per court records.

Then, in 2024, the county experienced an election meltdown on an entirely different scale.

A Navajo Nation building is pictured in Window Rock, Ariz., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. A large swath of the reservation, which is the largest in the country, falls into cash-strapped, remote Apache County.

It started less than half an hour after polls opened. Rita Vaughan, then the county’s elections director, wrote what would prove to be a consequential email to her team at 6:27 a.m.: “All printers are not working with poll books.”

Within hours, the voting process had slowed to a crawl — and, in some cases, appeared to halt entirely. There were reports of two- to three-hour lines at some polling places.

In public statements and, later, in court, the county blamed malfunctioning ballot printers for the fiasco. They maintained that voters could still vote via backup options like emergency, preprinted ballots and accessible voting machines. They said that staff fixed the problems expeditiously and voting never paused across the reservation.

There’s just one problem with their explanation: It’s not what actually happened.

The issue that day stemmed from the county’s electronic pollbooks, not its printers — and it caused a complete breakdown, according to an investigation by Votebeat and the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Records show a combination of technical glitches, communication shortfalls, understaffing, and poor preparation disenfranchised voters in Apache County.

To reconstruct what happened, Votebeat and AZCIR examined thousands of pages of court documents, voting records, and county emails — some of which the county took 16 months to hand over. Reporters also interviewed voters and witnesses and repeatedly attempted to interview multiple county officials, all of whom either didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined to talk on the record.

The investigation found that the cash-strapped, rural county appeared fundamentally unprepared for the 2024 election — and raises concerns about the county’s readiness for another high-stakes election now just days away.

Campaign signs crowd a corner in Lukachukai, Ariz., on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. Voters there are preparing to vote in the first major election since 2024, when widespread technical issues threw voting into chaos in Apache County.

A previously unreported letter sent to county officials by Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes in March 2025 confirms that finding, documenting a series of failures that state officials described as preventable. Among them: The county loaded final voter rolls onto its electronic pollbooks — devices used to check voters’ registration status, confirm they haven’t already voted, and issue the correct ballot to them — before Election Day, but failed to test them before shipping them across the county. It also lacked adequate plans and resources to respond when equipment malfunctioned.

With pollbooks failing, workers couldn’t print ballots on demand or reliably verify voters’ registrations. As the machines broke down, AZCIR and Votebeat found, so did communication. Records show poll workers didn’t know when a technician would be out to fix things or exactly what had gone wrong. Preprinted emergency ballots kept in reserve in case of technical glitches began to dwindle before noon. At some locations, accessible voting machines, essential for tribal elders who only speak Navajo, also malfunctioned. And voters couldn’t just go to other polling places — the county assigned them to specific sites.

Throughout the day, emails show that a small group of staffers worked desperately to try to fix the issues across the county, the sixth-largest in the country by area. Technicians drove hours on treacherous roads, crossing mountains and desolate mesas to deliver pollbook fixes to small communities. Still, records show the county’s Navajo precincts — those farthest from Apache’s white-majority county seat — were among the last to be fixed.

Until they were, voting was impossible or near impossible at many sites. Low temperatures, work, and family obligations began to pull Navajo voters away from the polls — and, in some cases, records and interviews show people were turned away by overwhelmed poll workers. The secretary of state’s office also received reports of voters being improperly turned away during a court-ordered extension of polling hours, according to Fontes’ letter.

The problems continued after Election Day. The county was so busy dealing with the fallout from in-person voting that it fell behind on verifying signatures on mail ballots. As a result, around 30 voters with signature deficiencies weren’t given the chance to fix the issue until just two days before the deadline to do so. Many of those ballots were never counted.

Katherine Belzowski, an assistant attorney general for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, watched the election play out from afar. She said she was initially heartbroken and horrified. Later, she said, those emotions gave way to frustration as a lawyer for the county claimed in court that the average voter was still able to cast their ballot.

Katherine Belzowski, an assistant attorney general for the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, is pictured in Window Rock, Ariz., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. In 2024, Belzowski was triaging election problems from her sister’s house on the East Coast on Election Day.

That attorney said her comments were made in “good faith.” But when Votebeat and AZCIR repeated her assertion to voters and representatives of the Navajo Nation, the reactions ranged from eye rolls to full-bodied laughter. The underlying sentiment was largely the same: The “average voter” referenced in court did not include the Navajo people.

“People were denied the right to vote left and right,” Belzowski said. “And then they were told it’s not a big deal.”

Since 2024, Apache County has instituted some changes to its election operations, including adopting a more flexible vote center model and replacing outdated voting equipment. Shortly after early voting began this year, Belzowski said she believed the county may have “turned a corner.” Fontes said the primary election had run smoothly in Apache County and described its progress as a “story of success.”

But Votebeat and AZCIR’s findings raise larger questions about what it will take to solve the region’s long history of disenfranchisement, and how long it has taken to address problems. In a 2018 federal lawsuit, the Navajo Nation claimed state- and county-level election practices had long disenfranchised its voters. That suit was settled the following year. And a report released earlier this year by the Native American Rights Fund found that voters in Indian Country face barriers during nearly every stage of the electoral process, particularly in Apache County and neighboring Navajo County.

Asked whether Apache’s recent changes would be enough to address the broader problems facing Navajo voters there, Fontes offered no guarantee.

“The answer is, [it’s] better in 2026 than it was in 2024,” Fontes said. “But it’s a fool’s errand to say that you’re going to be able to solve all the problems.”

Amos Johnson, a member of the Navajo Nation, uses an accessible voting device to listen to instructions in Navajo at the Navajo Voters Coalition Conference at Twin Arrows near Flagstaff, Arizona, on June 18, 2026. Similar devices were glitching at some voting sites in Apache County in 2024, which may have left voters with no way to cast ballots until technicians fixed the county’s malfunctioning pollbooks.

6 a.m.: County offered little communication as machines went down

Frances Sjoberg was among the first to realize that something was wrong.

A lawyer with the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, Sjoberg had been assigned to observe the polls in Rock Point, a small village located about 20 miles south of the Arizona-Utah border. Within minutes of the community’s senior center opening its doors to voters, word began to spread that the printers inside weren’t working. A line began to grow.

Sjoberg promptly called the problem in to her colleagues and Arizona State University’s Indian Legal Clinic, which often represents tribes in voting cases. Her call was the first of several from observers and voters to the clinic, based hundreds of miles away in Phoenix.

Torey Dolan, who’d helped with the clinic’s voter hotline since 2018, wasn’t surprised to hear that something was going wrong in Apache County, given its history of election issues. She and other attorneys had even begun sending observers to the polls with blank affidavits, prepared to document any irregularities.

Before considering litigation, though, Dolan wanted to contact Vaughan to determine exactly what was happening and what she and observers on the ground should tell voters.

That proved difficult. Dolan called Vaughan at 6:33 a.m., according to court documents. She hit Vaughan’s voicemail, which was full and not accepting messages, according to a court affidavit. She then called the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office and notified Belzowski, who also began making inquiries.

Meanwhile, records show Vaughan was beginning to grasp the scale of the problem with the county’s pollbooks.

She didn’t immediately share what she’d learned with Dolan or the Navajo Nation Department of Justice. But she did tell her team — a skeleton crew of herself, her executive assistant, and five IT techs.

“IT IS A POLL BOOK ISSUE,” she emailed at 7:27 a.m.

To fix it, the techs would have to travel across the county’s 11,198-square-mile expanse, an area roughly the size of Maryland. They’d need to stop at each of its 40-plus voting sites, manually updating each pollbook by plugging in a USB drive preloaded with corrected software.

The first report of techs leaving to deploy the corrected software came at 9:09 a.m., when one went to a voting site in Concho, a non-Navajo community located about 20 minutes west of St. Johns, the county seat.

But a new problem was emerging. Vaughan’s techs were becoming increasingly concerned that polling locations would run out of emergency ballots before the techs arrived to fix their pollbooks. Already, some sites were reporting that they were running low. Without emergency ballots, voters at those polling places would have to rely on the county’s outdated and glitchy ExpressVote machines, accessible voting devices required by federal law to assist voters with disabilities.

None of that, however, was in an update sent to Belzowski by the county’s attorney, Emily Craiger, at 10:12 a.m. — the first email from the county to tribal officials that day, according to records reviewed by Votebeat and AZCIR.

Craiger said people could keep voting because emergency ballots were available. They also could use the ExpressVote machines, she said.

Vaughan, who resigned as elections director in the weeks after the 2024 election and has since moved into a new role as the county’s human resources manager, did not respond to multiple requests for comment sent both through the county and to her directly.

Craiger said her comments on Election Day were based on information she received from the elections department.

10 a.m.: Voters walked away amid election chaos

As county officials scrambled to fix the problem, voters started to leave.

There was little that Carl R. Slater could do about it. As an elected delegate on the Navajo Nation Council, he was acting as a poll observer in Lukachukai, a small farming community nestled in mountain foothills almost three hours north of St. Johns. Slater was also informally monitoring other chapters in his council district. What he saw was a cascade of failures.

People gather for a chapter meeting in Lukachukai, Ariz., on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. Multiple people told reporters that they recalled what happened in 2024, when technical issues caused hourslong lines and resulted in some voters being turned away.

With pollbooks down, voters were relying on emergency ballots and ExpressVote machines. But in Round Rock, the ExpressVote machine froze in the morning, leaving emergency ballots as voters’ last resort. In St. Michaels, the polling site ran out of emergency ballots around 10 a.m., leaving voters at the mercy of the unreliable ExpressVote machine. Fort Defiance ran out of emergency ballots soon after.

When would-be voters saw the line at Lukachukai wasn’t moving, they grew restless. Eventually, people started to leave.

“At this point, we’ve probably turned away more people than decided the last elections,” Slater texted the Navajo Nation’s attorneys around 10:30 a.m.

In Rock Point, Sjoberg begged people to stay in the long line that now stretched into the plaza between the chapter house and the local senior center.

The day had begun deceptively sunny, but temperatures soon dropped and the wind sharpened. A blizzard was on the horizon, and people began to leave. Sjoberg went into triage mode.

“I started kind of hustling,” she said. “I was primarily focused at that moment to say, ‘Will you come back to vote?’”

Some voters did. Crystalyne Curley, the speaker of the Navajo Nation Council, was initially told she could not vote at the precinct closest to Window Rock, the reservation’s seat of government. Instead, poll workers told her she’d have to go to Cottonwood, the precinct closest to her home community of Fish Point, an hour and 15 minutes away. It’s unclear why they did so; voters were supposed to be allowed to cast ballots outside their assigned precincts using ExpressVote machines.

Curley made the drive, but when she got to Cottonwood, she was again told they didn’t have her ballot. Workers there directed her to return to Window Rock.

Back where she started, minus a few gallons of gas, Curley insisted on voting and presented her ID. She was given a provisional ballot — a type of ballot that is used when there’s a question about the voter’s eligibility.

Curley wrote down the ballot’s tracking number. Two weeks later, she followed up with county officials to check if her ballot had counted.

“It didn’t,” Curley said. “They had no tracking of what happened.”

Crystalyne Curley, speaker of the Navajo Nation Council, speaks with an attendee at the Navajo Voters Coalition Conference on June 18, 2026, at Twin Arrows near Flagstaff, Arizona. Curley said she was directed to polling sites in Window Rock and Cottonwood before being issued a provisional ballot on Election Day in 2024. She does not believe it was ever counted.

Others, like Wava White, couldn’t wait.

White, now 69, arrived at Fort Defiance mid-afternoon. Voting held a special significance to White, whose uncle died in the Vietnam War. As she viewed it, her family had bled for the right to vote, so she was initially undeterred by the line ahead.

But hours began to go by, and the line wasn’t moving. The sky grew dark. Even if White could make it to the voting booth, she still had an hour-long drive to her mother’s house.

When she asked a poll worker how much longer it would take before she could vote, she was given an estimate of another three hours.

Dejected, she walked away.

Lukachukai, Rock Point, and Fort Defiance were three of the nine precincts a judge would ultimately order to remain open until 9 p.m. that evening. All of those voting locations were on the Navajo Nation, in the northern part of the county, where records suggest equipment fixes were delivered later than in the predominantly white precincts to the south.

White wouldn’t learn until the next day that returning later to vote had been an option. Speaking with reporters inside a small coffee shop in Window Rock nearly two years later, she said she is still gutted by the experience.

“Every four years, we vote,” White said, referring to the presidential election cycle. “And they can’t get this right.”

7 p.m.: Court extends voting hours, but it’s too late for some voters

An hour before the polls closed, a handful of officials and attorneys joined a virtual court hearing on the day’s voting problems.

Earlier in the day, the Navajo Nation had notified Apache County that its lawyers planned to sue to extend voting hours due to the chaos. Craiger had called that “unnecessary,” and in an email sent just before noon, suggested that the county would have any outstanding voting sites fixed by the early afternoon.

Hours later, though, some sites still were experiencing problems. Around 5 p.m., the Navajo Nation filed its lawsuit asking Apache County Superior Court Judge Michael Latham to extend voting by two hours across the reservation. But Vaughan and Craiger pushed back.

“An average voter who wanted to vote today would have the opportunity to do it,” Craiger said to the court. She was based in the Phoenix area, along with most of the other lawyers on the call, and admitted that she was unfamiliar with the geography of Apache County. Still, she maintained that voters could use ExpressVote machines while technicians fixed the pollbooks and that they’d already had several hours to vote after those problems were resolved. “We acknowledge that there were longer lines than usual in Apache County, but that all voters had the ability to vote today and continue to have that ability right now,” she said.

Yet as Craiger spoke, records show pollbooks were still malfunctioning at Canyon de Chelly, a precinct in the heart of the Navajo Nation. Emails indicate county techs had visited the site, a county office, in the morning but returned shortly after 6 p.m. to fix two pollbooks. It’s unclear whether the return visit was prompted by the same pollbook issues as that morning; records suggest no other precincts experienced further pollbook problems.

One technician, Matt Lovell, noted in emails to Vaughan that the location had a “huge line” that evening and that he’d observed poll workers attempt to turn away voters not found in the system. Lovell, who now heads the county’s IT department, declined an interview with Votebeat and AZCIR.

Craiger also said in court that emergency paper ballots remained available while IT staff crisscrossed the county to fix pollbooks and that “additional paper ballots were deployed to the voting locations so that voting could continue.” Vaughan would not speak with Votebeat or AZCIR to clarify the chain of events; Craiger said she was relaying information from the elections department and declined to comment further.

Craiger further argued that spotty cell service would make it nearly impossible to quickly notify Navajo Nation polling sites about extended hours, while the reservation’s vast distances would complicate delivery of additional provisional ballots, which must be used any time polling hours are extended.

Latham ultimately ordered a two-hour extension at only the nine sites where the day’s technical issues were most clearly documented.

In a recent interview, Sjoberg acknowledged that the extension of hours was an imperfect solution. She described it as the best they could do under the circumstances.

“I do not think that it redresses the issues,” she said. “I do not know that voters who left when they left came back to vote.”

The hearing ended about 10 minutes before polls were originally scheduled to close.

Minutes later, Canyon de Chelly’s pollbooks were finally fixed. But unlike neighboring Chinle, the site was not granted an additional two hours of voting.

After Election Day, Apache County struggled to keep up with ballots

Even in a normal election, a disproportionate number of voters cast provisional ballots in Apache County. There are often more questions about voters’ eligibility on tribal lands, where voters frequently lack residential addresses and might describe where they live using physical or natural landmarks, making their exact locations difficult to verify.

But due to the chaos, the 2024 election saw even more provisional ballots cast than usual — more than 3,500. That type of ballot requires the county recorder’s office to later verify voters’ eligibility and precinct. With only a handful of full-time employees, the office quickly became overwhelmed in the days following the election.

Keely Varvel, chief of staff at the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office, sent a handful of staffers to assist Apache County. But processing the mound of provisional ballots delayed yet another critical task, she said: verifying signatures on mail ballots.

A home is pictured after heavy rain near Chinle, Ariz., on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. Chinle’s voting site was among those ordered to extend voting hours after the Navajo Nation filed suit on Nov. 5, 2024, over widespread technical glitches that resulted in hourslong lines and some voters being turned away.

In Arizona, voters can drop mail ballots off at the polls on Election Day. But state law gives only a five-day window for those ballots to be verified and for voters to fix, or “cure,” any issues with their signatures and ensure their votes are counted. That means election officials are typically under immense pressure to process mail ballots quickly and do as much voter outreach as possible before the cure deadline.

In Apache County, records show about 30 voters were first contacted on Nov. 8, just two days before the cure deadline. Court testimony suggests that some others may not have been contacted until Nov. 9. Records show 14 voters contacted late subsequently saw their ballot rejected.

Some likely didn’t know that the county was trying to reach them at all, as records indicate the recorder’s office lacked up-to-date contact information for many voters. When officials hit dead phone numbers, they had no way to leave a voicemail or send a text message, and no time to mail a letter.

The recorder’s office declined to speak with Votebeat and AZCIR for this story, citing staffing limitations.

The curing scramble led the Navajo Nation to file yet another lawsuit, this time requesting that the county extend its cure period by three days. Patty Ferguson-Bohnee, an attorney representing the Nation, said in court that tribal members had been “denied their fundamental right to vote on equal footing with Arizona citizens.”

Craiger countered in court that the county had made “reasonable efforts” to reach voters. She called the lawsuit “speculative,” noting that lawyers hadn’t identified any voters who claimed to be disenfranchised — though Ferguson-Bohnee noted many voters “probably do not know if they are on that cure list.”

In the end, Latham ruled for the county, finding that voters were “properly notified, pursuant to statutory requirements” of inconsistent signatures.

But he went on to detail infrastructure challenges that might interfere with Navajo Nation voters’ ability to cast a ballot — including dirt roads, poor internet connectivity, and limited mail service.

Latham acknowledged that additional protections could help rural and tribal voters, but he laid that responsibility squarely at the feet of state lawmakers.

“The court lacks authority to craft legal remedies beyond what the law allows even though certain remedies may assist rural communities,” he wrote. “That is something the Arizona State Legislature has the power to address.”

But it hasn’t.

Years later, are changes enough to prevent another 2024?

Much has changed in Apache County since Nov. 5, 2024.

Earlier this year, the board of supervisors voted to start using vote centers instead of precinct-based polling places, a change long pushed by tribal and state officials that will allow voters to cast ballots at any polling site in the county. The secretary of state’s office had provided equipment that could have supported such a model in 2024 — and likely mitigated at least some of the problems voters faced there — but the county declined to use it, according to Fontes’ March 2025 letter.

The county’s elections department, using federal grant funds, replaced its outdated ExpressVote devices. It also hired a new elections director, Megan Hill, who declined to discuss the changes made by the department. An individual familiar with the changes said the county also adopted an informal policy restricting pollbook programming updates shortly before elections, except for security purposes.

Connette Blair poses for a portrait at the chapter house in Lukachukai, Ariz., on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. Blair, the chapter’s vice president, said her mother had been distraught after being turned away from the polls in 2024. “She kept saying, ‘I have a right to vote. I have a right to vote,’” Blair said.

In the recorder’s office, officials have worked to update voter records in an effort to cut down on provisional ballots and rejected mail ballots. The office also gained a new temporary employee through a state fellowship program.

Questions about the state’s response persist. In an initial interview with Votebeat and AZCIR, Fontes recalled only that Apache’s problems appeared to involve a faulty pollbook software update. His office later provided the March 2025 letter documenting a much broader set of failures.

In a subsequent interview, Fontes attributed his limited recollection to the volume of issues his office had dealt with since the election, noting that “so much has happened since then.” He said the letter showed that his office had thoroughly followed up with the county.

Still, during the initial interview, Fontes acknowledged that he hadn’t pressed for every detail of the pollbook problems.

When asked whether he should have, he paused.

“Maybe.”

Fontes emphasized how far the county has come, saying it has progressed “miles and miles and miles” from where it was in 2024. He also said it was worth considering whether his office should require counties to test pollbooks and limit programming changes before elections, with carveouts for critical security updates.

Yet for all the changes Apache County has made, its longstanding staffing and funding challenges remain. In his letter, Fontes warned that the state could not continue sending employees to help Apache County process provisional ballots after elections. He urged county officials to provide adequate personnel and resources, noting the difficulty of administering elections across a vast county with a limited tax base.

Deseree Yazzie pets her dogs in Lukachukai, Ariz., on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026. Yazzie recently turned 18 and said she is excited to vote in her first election on Nov. 3, 2026.

Arizona law prohibits counties from accepting private funding, including grants, for election administration, even as state lawmakers have increased the responsibilities of local election officials. The law, passed in 2021 by the Republican-controlled legislature, was described as a voter confidence and election integrity measure. Sjoberg, with the Navajo Nation Department of Justice, said repealing or amending it could help counties pay for more accessible voting machines and poll workers.

The legislature has also imposed new proof-of-residency requirements, shortened the period for curing mail ballots, and expanded automatic recounts in recent years, among other changes. Starting in 2027, county recorders will be required to remove voters from the state’s early voting list if they fail to cast a mail ballot in federal, state, or certain municipal elections over a four-year period.

“There are so many hoops that the election directors have to jump through, and the county recorders have to jump through, that it just makes it unrealistic for any county that doesn’t have a certain amount of income,” said Belzowski, the Navajo Nation’s assistant attorney general.

Fontes was more pointed in his criticism.

“The legislature does not want to fund elections administration,” said Fontes, a Democrat. “They want to complain about it a lot, but they don’t want to fund it, and that’s the core of all of the issues we’ve had over many, many, many years.”

State lawmakers could also address some of the barriers Navajo voters face at the polls. Arizona could adopt protections similar to those in neighboring New Mexico, for instance, where Native American communities have a say in polling locations, ballot box placements, and precinct boundaries. Belzowski said the voting landscape there is far easier for underresourced counties and tribal voters to navigate.

“I think New Mexico wants to encourage people to vote,” Belzowski said. “I think Arizona is more interested in keeping people from voting.”

Republican and Democratic leaders in the Arizona Legislature did not respond to a request for comment on whether they’d support changes to state law that could improve voting in Apache County, particularly on tribal land.

Dolan, who now researches voting access in Indian Country at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, said she no longer directs all of her frustration toward Apache County. She described the 2024 election as a failure on the part of the state as a whole and said it will take more than changes at the county level to solve the continuous disenfranchisement of Navajo voters.

“I realize that these are people who are working under impossible circumstances, and my frustration is dispersed amongst the institutions that made this this way,” Dolan said.

Window Rock, Ariz., sits below cloudy skies on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2026. The town is the seat of government for the Navajo Nation. Officials there have been working with Apache County to push for better elections for the reservation’s voters.

For Navajo voters, election problems are so common they’ve become “part of the living memory there,” she added. “So, no one’s ever indignant,” she said. “They’re frustrated, but they’re not shocked.”

That history led White, of Fort Defiance, to make a different plan for voting this year. This time, she arranged to receive her ballot by mail and said she would drop it off at a county office.

She told Votebeat and AZCIR she would be watching what happens on Election Day.

“If there’s a glitch, fix it,” she said, adding that she was “sure something would have been done really quick” if pollbooks failed en masse in Phoenix.

AZCIR reporter Molly Bohannon and former Votebeat Arizona senior reporter Jen Fifield contributed reporting.

Graphics by Thomas Wilburn.

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

Adriana Navarro is a reporter for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Contact Adriana at adriana.navarro@azcir.org.

Voting rights groups, afraid of criminal penalties, cut back on helping some of Texas’ most vulnerable voters

2026-10-30T10:55:00+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.

This story was produced with support from the Pulitzer Center.

Lea este artículo en español aquí.

Read this article in Spanish here.

ALAMO, Tex. – Eustorgia Santos de Torres has lived here for four decades. Last year, she turned to a trusted Rio Grande Valley nonprofit for help navigating the citizenship application process. The same nonprofit — La Unión del Pueblo Entero, or LUPE — then helped her register to vote, and she cast her first ballot as a citizen in the primary election last March.

Santos de Torres, 67, is retired after years cleaning houses and working as a healthcare aide. She speaks mainly Spanish and is the primary caretaker for her husband, Nemorio, who is blind. “Yo soy sus ojos,” Santos de Torres said — I am his eyes.

But last month, Santos de Torres, a new voter, struggled to help Nemorio, an American-born citizen, understand and cast his mail ballot for the November election. All the information on the ballot is in English, she said, and the letters are small.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, 67, right, helps her husband Nemorio Torres, 79, get in their home in Alamo, Texas on Oct. 18, 2026. Her husband is blind and requires her assistance.

So Santos de Torres helped Nemorio to the car and made the familiar 7-minute drive to LUPE’s headquarters in the neighboring town of San Juan to ask for help with her husband’s ballot.

This time, though, LUPE workers reluctantly turned the couple away.

In 2021, Texas’ GOP-dominated state Legislature passed a sweeping and controversial overhaul of election laws known as SB1. Among other changes, SB1 made it illegal for anyone to receive compensation for helping voters fill in their ballots.

That not only makes it illegal for paid nonprofit staff to help voters, but also criminalized common past practices, such as organizations giving volunteers gas money or stipends. Violations are a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

In the wake of the law, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican currently running in the state’s nationally watched U.S. Senate race, investigated and prosecuted voting rights advocacy groups and organizers in heavily Latino communities across the state.

Groups such as LUPE say they have been forced to alter or stop some voter outreach as they worry about running afoul of the law. LUPE used to send workers out walking blocks to help voters. Now it has to instead ask volunteers to do more limited versions of that work.

Latinos and other non-English speaking voters will be key to the outcome of the state’s high-profile U.S. Senate and House races this year. But the law means such voters, as well as those who are disabled and elderly, have fewer options for help.

Tania Chavez Camacho, executive director of La Unión del Pueblo Entero, addresses attendees of a poll training in San Juan, Texas on Oct. 9, 2026.

LUPE is known for providing one-on-one assistance to people in the Latino community, so the restrictions on helping with voting are a real pain point for the organization, Executive Director Tania Chavez Camacho said. Texas has strict rules limiting who is eligible to use mail ballots, but people over 65 may do so. LUPE helps around 30,000 people a year, she said, including people with disabilities and many older people who, each year, “want to vote by mail and they come in wanting help.”

Now, Chavez Camacho said, when the group holds public town halls for residents to instruct them on how to vote, if a voter pulls out their mail ballot to ask for help, organizers must ask the voter to leave so paid employees aren’t near the ballot.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, 67, poses for a photo with her husband Nemorio Torres, 79, at their home in Alamo, Texas on Oct. 18, 2026. Her husband is blind and needs help to vote.

And if workers for LUPE’s advocacy arm are canvassing for candidates and a voter shows them a mail ballot and asks for help filling it out, workers have been trained to say they can’t and walk away, Chavez Camacho said.

“We literally have to turn them away,” Chavez Camacho said. “We’ve had to do a lot of training with our staff for the past three years because they were so accustomed to helping folks one-on-one and now they can’t.”

Santos de Torres did what she could to help her husband, who mailed back his ballot about a month ago.

“But I don’t think it’s right that LUPE can’t help us,” she told a reporter in Spanish. “That law is not right. It’s excluding people who need help.”

“What if,” she added, “my husband didn’t have me?”

‘A person who doesn’t know how to read has to do it on their own’

The Rio Grande Valley, where LUPE is based, covers roughly 4,300-square-miles across Hidalgo, Cameron, Starr, and Willacy counties along the Mexico border at Texas’ southern tip. It’s a diverse community with some residents who primarily speak Spanish. Younger generations of residents easily switch between English and Spanish in conversation.

Many households are made up of families whose members have mixed legal statuses, including some who have lived in the area for generations. The Valley also has a history of activism as the birthplace of the Texas farmworker movement of the 1960’s. Farmworkers – who harvested cotton, vegetables and fruits — organized and marched for roughly 400 miles from the Valley to Austin to demand fair wages and better working conditions. Mexican-American farmworker labor today remains key to the area’s growth and agricultural economy.

A neighborhood in San Juan, Texas on Oct. 23, 2026.

But due to the lack of affordable housing, Mexican Americans for years purchased land they could afford in rural areas outside of city limits, often lacking basic infrastructure and public services. Those communities are known now as the colonias.

Alamo, where Santos de Torres lives, and San Juan, where LUPE is based, are neighboring cities. The landscape varies depending on the side of town. In the southern parts of the cities, closer to the border with Mexico, modest residential homes with green front lawns adorn along palm tree-lined streets. Shopping centers, chain restaurants, stadiums, and commercial developments lie to the north of the cities, along Interstate Highway 2, reflecting the transition from the once primarily agricultural community to a growing metropolitan hub. The Valley has for years relied on its trade of goods and services with Mexico. It has a population of more than 1.4 million people and 90% of them are Hispanic or Latino, according to Census data.

About 24% of people in the Valley live below the poverty line, which is more than double the national rate. And about 30% of Valley residents don’t have health insurance – one of the highest uninsured rates in the country. The area also has one of the highest rates of diabetes in the country; Nemorio Torres’ blindness is a complication of the disease.

A mural advertising La Unión del Pueblo Entero in San Juan, Texas on Oct. 10, 2026.

LUPE and other advocacy groups have long worked with residents in the colonias and all over the Valley, providing resources to find affordable housing and medical treatment, or helping with complex procedures such as filing taxes. Voter education and outreach was part of the mission.

Now, instead of providing one-on-one assistance, LUPE hosts group sessions with a screen projector showing what mail ballot applications and mail ballots look like. Facilitators point at the screen indicating what the instructions say and explaining how the forms should be filled out.

The limitations are frustrating, Chavez Camacho said, especially “si una persona no sabe leer” — if a person can’t read. “It doesn’t matter that we’re doing those sessions because a person who doesn’t know how to read has to do it on their own and we can’t help them to know where to mark,” she said.

Instead, LUPE’s workers and volunteers now focus on letting people know key deadlines are coming up. They also have fewer volunteers willing to guide and interpret for voters at the polls, she said, because the law now requires such people to sign an oath affirming the voter is qualified to receive help because they are disabled or need an interpreter, and detail their relationship with the voter. They must also affirm they are not being paid by a candidate or political committee, which would be illegal. Volunteers fear any misstep while assisting voters could get them in trouble, Chavez-Camacho said.

“We really feel that the people are not getting the support they need,” Chavez Camacho said.

A cactus plant in San Juan, Texas on Oct. 23, 2026.

Election and voting law experts say the courts have interpreted “compensation” prohibited from going to volunteers by SB1 as any type of benefit. That interpretation is so broad that it makes it difficult for voter outreach organizations to know whether they are violating the law, said Zachary Dolling, litigation director at Texas Civil Rights Project, which works with groups to design trainings in voter outreach that comply with the law.

Dolling said some organizations historically provided unpaid volunteers dinner, T-shirts, or pens, and others have given volunteers college credit for their work.

“All of those things are items of value” and could be considered compensation, he said.

Advocates warned state leaders of added burdens for people with disabilities

Texas Republicans passed SB1, the sweeping overhaul of election law, in part responding to false claims and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.

Republicans claimed the law would increase public trust and confidence in the elections. Democrats argued the legislation would disproportionately burden voters of color and people with disabilities, and staged two walkouts and a 15-hour Senate filibuster in their failed attempt to defeat the bill.

A bell to call for voting assistance is seen at a polling site on the first day of early voting in Alamo, Texas on Oct. 19, 2026.

Despite lawsuits from voting rights organizations including LUPE, the League of United Latin American Citizens and organizations representing Texans with disabilities, a federal appeals court ultimately upheld key provisions of SB1, including the restrictions on voter assistance.

Other attempts to expand voting help for people with disabilities were meanwhile unsuccessful.

In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have expanded vote-by-mail access for people with disabilities — specifically people who are blind or paralyzed and need assistance marking their ballot — by allowing such voters to request an electronic ballot and use a computer to mark their choices. Similar options in Texas are already available for military overseas voters and astronauts, but not for voters with disabilities.

The challenges Santos de Torres and her husband have faced are an example of what advocates worried about under SB1, said Lydia Nunez Landry, statewide coordinator for REV UP Texas, which works to get out the vote among people with disabilities.

Eustorgia Santos de Torres, 67, celebrates after voting during the midterm elections as La Unión del Pueblo Entero members cheer her on outside of a polling location in Alamo, Texas on Oct. 19, 2026.

“That was our worst fear and now it’s happening,” she said. Nunez Landry has muscular dystrophy, uses a power wheelchair, and needs help doing basic tasks such as opening the refrigerator.

The state has made voting “just so impossible and so arduous for people — and now people are also terrified of helping us,” she said.

An increased ‘sense of anxiety’

Groups across the state have been changing their voter outreach work to comply with SB1.

Asian Texans for Justice conducts voter outreach in Asian communities, focusing on San Antonio, Houston, Austin, and North Texas.

The stricter rules associated with voting by mail under SB1 have created “a sense of anxiety” in those communities, Executive Director Nabila Mansoor said. She said that the process is now much more complicated for elderly voters, who must provide one of two forms of ID on their application and pay close attention to pages of instructions that are written in font that is small and hard for them to read. In addition, an error could force them to restart the whole process of applying for a ballot.

“That anxiety comes from this kind of fear that they’re going to do something wrong,” Mansoor said. “Whenever you have that kind of fear, it is one more barrier for that person to actually go out and vote.”

Now that Asian Texans for Justice can no longer provide one-on-one help, they’ve turned to providing checklists for voters, she said, which she believes is less effective when some voters may need help reading and understanding the ballot and instructions

Mansoor said she believes that SB1’s goal was to make it harder for people to vote.

Maria Gomez, 78, “Doña Mary,” left, and her friend Teresa Corona Garza, 80, talk to each other at Corona’s home in San Juan, Texas on Oct. 9, 2026.

“It means that we have to be more careful. It means that we have to dot our i’s and cross our t’s. It means that we have to take good records. It means that we have to be very thorough in terms of our training of our volunteers,” she said, adding that the organization assembled a legal team to defend against challenges to their work as well.

In the meantime, volunteers for LUPE and other groups say they are doing their best to fill the gap.

Maria Gomez, better known as Doña Mary, of Pharr, worked as a farmworker for years in Hidalgo County and has been a member of LUPE since the organization was founded. Gomez, 78, was involved in the farmworker movement years ago. She now ensures her elderly friends and neighbors are aware of election deadlines, know where to vote, and have a ride to the polls if they need one.

After she drops off her grandkids and great-grandkids at school, she makes her rounds around the Colonias in San Juan in her small red SUV. She chats up her neighbors, and asks them what they need help with or if they need resources or a ride. She’s always fielding calls.

“People don’t vote because sometimes they can’t leave their home and because they might not have access to that piece of paper that they need to sign to receive their ballot,” Gomez said in Spanish, referring to voter registration forms and ballot-by-mail applications.

One of her friends, 80-year-old Teresa Corona Garza of San Juan, has relied on Gomez for rides to the polls for some time now. Corona Garza struggles to stand for long periods of time and can’t see very well out of her left eye. Even though she qualifies to vote by mail, she prefers to go to the polls in person.

Maria Gomez, 78, walks from a polling site with the children of family and friends in Alamo, Texas on Oct. 19, 2026.

“There’s so much on there you have to fill out, and those letters are small,” Corona Garza said in Spanish. “No, I prefer to go, quiero ver que mi voto cuenta,” she said – I want to see that my vote is counted.

The laws have gotten so complicated and strict that Gomez worries state leaders may even try to prevent volunteers like her from providing rides to the polls.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, if they’re going to keep making this harder for people,” she said, “but I would like to see people who want to vote to be able to do it.”

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.

More early voters casting ballots in person after Trump attack on voting by mail

2026-10-29T20:46:34+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.

More Americans are heading to the polls and relying less on mail ballots this election as voter preferences shift, according to a Votebeat analysis.

Voter turnout for the ongoing election is about 42 million as of Thursday, slightly ahead of turnout for the 2022 midterm election at the same point. But there has been a notable shift in how people are casting ballots in the lead-up to Election Day: a growing number of voters are turning away from voting by mail and are instead heading to early voting polling sites.

Clear examples of the shift are North Carolina, Georgia, and Wisconsin, where, on average, early in-person voting is up 35% compared with 2022 and voting by mail and drop box is down about 35%.

The catalysts for the shift aren’t entirely clear. But election experts, polling and voters themselves suggest that a combination of factors — including President Donald Trump’s persistent attacks on voting by mail and an end to COVID-19 pandemic concerns — are driving the changes.

Paul Gronke, a political science professor and director of the Elections & Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon, said both COVID and Trump have played a role in transforming how Americans vote.

“Any kind of messaging from such an influential voice in our political system, and whose attacks are taken up by, and amplified by, others with very large megaphones have moved many Republicans away from voting by mail / absentee voting,” Gronke said in an email.

But voting patterns are also adjusting to life after COVID-19.

In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, around 43% of voters cast ballots by mail, according to the Election Assistance Commission. That figure fell to 30% in 2024.

“Because Republicans and Democrats reacted differently to COVID, they also reacted differently to COVID and voting,” Gronke said. “Many more Democrats opted for the vote-by-mail option in 2020, then habituated and continue to vote that way. Many more Republicans rejected that advice, and/or listened to Trump, so voted early then habituated.”

Democratic trust in mail voting ebbs

The shift in voting trends comes amid Trump’s critiques of voting by mail and his unsuccessful attempts to restrict the widespread practice for this election through executive orders. The most recent, blocked by the Supreme Court in September, would have given the U.S. Postal Service more power to regulate voting by mail. Trump has repeatedly attacked voting by mail as riddled by fraud, even though he himself has cast ballots that way.

“There’s a lot of cheating in vote by mail,” Trump said earlier this month.

It was unclear until the Supreme Court ruling in mid-September whether voters looking to vote by mail would face new restrictions in the ongoing midterm election.

While Trump’s ballot restriction effort was derailed by the high court, his attacks on mail voting appear to have had an impact. A recent Pew Research poll found a drop in voters planning to vote by mail, driven mostly by a decline in Democrats.

“When you put [your ballot] in the mail, you don’t know if it’s going to count — if it’s going to come or not,” Greenfield, Wisconsin, resident Nereida Loma told Votebeat this month, adding that she plans to vote in person from now on.

American confidence in the Postal Service is also waning. Budget cuts have led to a spike in mail ballots being rejected because they are caught by slow-moving delivery delays.

This year, 15% of Democratic voters told Pew they planned to vote by mail, down 6% from 2024. That comes in parallel with a distinct drop in Democratic confidence in voting by mail, which fell from 85% in 2024 to 64% in the latest poll. Overall, the poll found broad bipartisan confidence that election officials would handle the election well.

Marc Meredith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania who recently examined mail-in and early voting data, said Trump’s comments appear to be driving part of the shift.

“I don’t doubt that some of what you’re seeing is a reflection” of that, Meredith said.

Take the key battleground state of North Carolina, where Democrats are optimistic about winning an open U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Republican Thom Tillis.

Total early voting in North Carolina is up 35% from 2022, according to the latest figures, driven largely by more early voting at polling places. Early in-person voting has long been popular in the state, but it is up by 41% so far, while voting by mail is down 33%, according to state data.

North Carolina voter requests for mail ballots have also fallen, dropping from around 207,000 in 2022 to about 140,000 this year —- a 32% decline. The biggest decline came among Democrats. As of mid-October, Democratic requests for mail ballots had fallen by 41% from the same period in 2022.

That trend is playing out in other key battleground states, including Georgia, where the number of people going to early voting polling places is up 10% from 2022 and those voting by mail is down 47%, according to state data.

Wisconsin has seen in-person voting rise 53% from 2022 and a 22% drop in people sending their mail ballots back, according to the most recent state figures.

The shifts are not uniform across the country. In Pennsylvania as of Oct. 28, Democratic mail ballot requests are down slightly less that 14% compared to the same point in 2022, while independent and Republican requests are on par or even slightly up.

While ballot requests from Pennsylvania Democrats are down from last midterm, they are down less than independents and Republicans compared to the 2024 election. Democratic voters are requesting just 36% fewer ballots, while independents and Republicans are both down more than 50%. And Democrats have also returned the greatest portion of their ballots among all three, indicating they may not be as skeptical of the Postal Service as some fear.

Neil Makhija, a Democratic county commissioner in Montgomery County, outside of Philadelphia, said there’s been large increases in the number of voters in his county using drop boxes to return ballots rather than the Postal Service.

There’s a good reason for that: The county changed its messaging. Makhija himself has been vocal on social media that the most secure way to return a ballot is via a drop box, and this year, the county included a list of all its drop box locations along with the ballots sent to voters.

“We wrote frankly at the top, ‘To avoid issues with USPS, use a drop box,’” he said. “Given all the questions and uncertainty we were hearing from voters, we wanted them to know there was a secure way to return their ballot.”

Meredith said he and his co-author, fellow University of Pennsylvania law professor Michael Morse, noticed surveys showing hesitation among voters, particularly Democrats, about using mail ballots this time around and wanted to see if that was translating into their behavior. That study found a decrease, and he said his findings, as well as subsequent data he has seen, support the idea that some voters are turning away from mail voting due to concerns over the Postal Service and the Trump administration.

He said that’s likely the top reason for the decline, but there are other factors that may be at play.

“One of the most robust findings, not just in the United States but globally, is this winner-loser effect in election confidence,” he said. Voters whose party lost the most recent election, which in this case would be Democrats, tend to have decreased trust in elections.

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

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

How Wisconsin’s gubernatorial candidates differ on election administration

2026-10-29T15:07:51+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 election is underway for Wisconsin’s first open gubernatorial race in over 15 years, as voters decide between two candidates who offer strikingly different views and rhetoric on election administration.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican, has supported many of President Donald Trump’s election goals, including efforts to overturn the 2020 election, while his opponent, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley has backed many Democratic election priorities and denounced Trump’s efforts to undermine elections.

Here’s how the gubernatorial candidates’ views differ and — in one instance — align.

2020 election

Six years later, the 2020 election continues to be front and center in Wisconsin’s election discourse and a recurring topic on the campaign trail. The FBI this year probed Milwaukee officials about the election as an ongoing lawsuit seeks to obtain Milwaukee County’s 2020 Ballots. A criminal case against 2020 false electors is ongoing.

Tiffany in 2020 voted not to certify the 2020 election, and has expressed support for the FBI probe into how the election was conducted in Milwaukee. During his campaign, Tiffany dodged questions about the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, before conceding in August that “Joe Biden won.”

David Crowley, who currently serves as Milwaukee County Executive, has vehemently denounced the 2020 probe. He said the 2020 election was properly conducted, adding that “no amount of fear and intimidation from the Trump administration will change that truth.”

Voter registration and identification

Tiffany has been a consistent supporter of federal legislation that would require voter registrants to provide proof of citizenship. He also told Votebeat he would sign legislation comparing state transportation records with the voter registration database to identify ineligible voters.

In 2011, while serving in the State Assembly, Tiffany co-authored the legislation that established Wisconsin’s photo ID requirement for voting, one of the strictest in the nation.

Crowley has criticized Wisconsin’s voter ID law, which requires voters to present an acceptable form of photo identification when casting a ballot, rather than when registering. In 2020, Crowley called voter ID an “extreme barrier” in low-income communities and communities of color, likening it to “what was going on in Jim Crow days with the literacy test.”

During his time in the Wisconsin Legislature, Crowley was the lead author of a bill to establish automatic voter registration, which would allow eligible residents to be registered during interactions with state agencies. The bill never received a public hearing or floor vote.

Ballot processing

Unlike many states, Wisconsin election officials cannot begin processing absentee ballots until Election Day. It’s a restriction that can delay the reporting of results in communities with large numbers of mail ballots, particularly Milwaukee. A bipartisan proposal would allow clerks to begin processing absentee ballots on the Monday before an election, without counting or releasing results until Election Day.

Crowley’s team told Votebeat that he supports the proposal.

Tiffany didn’t respond to a request for comment. He acknowledged the Monday processing bill at an August press conference but didn’t say whether he supports it.

Wisconsin Elections Commission

In 2015, while serving in the state Senate, Tiffany voted to create the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which replaced the Government Accountability Board as the agency overseeing the state’s elections.

But, at a recent debate, Tiffany said he was open to dismantling or making significant changes to the agency, arguing that it needs greater accountability. He said he would only eliminate the agency if lawmakers could agree on a better replacement.

Crowley’s team told Votebeat that he wants to keep the Wisconsin Elections Commission in charge of elections. At the debate, Crowley acknowledged that the agency isn’t perfect but defended its resistance to the Trump administration’s efforts to obtain unredacted Wisconsin voter information.

Both would certify 2028 presidential winner

The next governor’s ability to reshape Wisconsin election laws will depend in part on who controls the Legislature. Both legislative chambers have been controlled by Republicans for over a decade, but Democrats hope to flip at least one chamber in November.

The governor can sign or veto election legislation, giving the office significant influence over which policies become law. The governor also plays a part in certifying presidential results. At an October debate, Crowley questioned whether Tiffany could be trusted to certify the 2028 election, citing his efforts to overturn the 2020 results.

But Tiffany said, “I will certify the election in 2028, regardless of who the winner is.”

Crowley, asked whether he would certify the results, answered: “Absolutely.”

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

Voting machines malfunction every election. But manufacturers and election officials have safeguards in place

2026-10-29T09:00:00+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.

Clarification, Oct. 29: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Dominion Voting Systems has been renamed Liberty Vote.

When Dolly Parton’s sister, Stella, reported last week that a voting machine in Nashville had incorrectly recorded her vote selection three times, her allegation quickly spread on social media.

“Don’t let them rig this election,” Parton wrote.

Tennessee officials looked into the issue and concluded that the problem was most likely that Parton kept hitting the wrong part of the screen. They found no evidence the voting machines, on which voters select their choices using a touchscreen, were deliberately switching votes.

Similar complaints have surfaced for years, with both Democratic and Republican voters claiming that machines made it harder for them to select their preferred candidates — including in Mississippi in 2019, Georgia in 2024 and Illinois in 2024. Some involved older touchscreen machines that had fallen out of calibration, causing them to register a different selection than the voter intended. Others, as here, were attributed to voter error. None of those investigations found any evidence of deliberate vote switching.

Voting technology has undergone a gradual evolution from the early mechanical lever machines to modern day touchscreen tablets with printers that produce scannable ballots. Today’s voting machines are far more reliable than those of the past, but they aren’t infallible. Like any technology, they can malfunction, particularly as equipment ages and experiences wear and tear from repeated use.

“There’s no such thing as a perfectly reliable computer,” said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for secure, reliable and verifiable elections. “You can’t really pretend that there is — and you shouldn’t.”

That doesn’t mean voting equipment is inherently insecure, Smith said. Rather, election security depends on the procedures and safeguards surrounding the machines, including paper ballots that can be used to verify results independently of the technology. Most election jurisdictions have those safeguards in place, she said.

‘Voting machines do not change votes’

Voting equipment is expensive to purchase and replace, in part because it must undergo extensive testing and certification before it can be used. With limited budgets and few manufacturers to choose from, election officials often rely on the same equipment for more than a decade, even as technology advances.

The market is dominated by three main players that control about 85% of the market — Election Systems & Software, Liberty Vote, and Hart InterCivic.

The three companies produce different types of touchscreen voting machines, scanners, printers, and software.

The companies have also faced scrutiny over where the components in their machines come from. The Trump administration has raised concerns about parts made in China and other countries, suggesting foreign adversaries could use hidden backdoors in the machines to to change votes, potentially causing the kind of vote switching that Parton and others have reported.

Sara Cutter, executive director of the American Council for Election Technology, a national trade association representing businesses that manufacture voting equipment, said the companies create safeguards to ensure no one tampers with the machines.

For example, companies work with certified transportation companies, track serial numbers of machine components, test components, and refuse to include parts from North Korea, Iran, or Russia. Avoiding Chinese-made components is far more difficult. Manufacturers say some essential electronic parts cannot be sourced domestically, making it virtually impossible to build voting machines without relying on China.

Even so, experts say, the safeguards put in place by both manufacturers and election officials are designed to ensure that voting systems are secure. Election officials strictly control access to the machines and conduct their own tests before elections.

“Voting machines do not change votes,” said Katina Granger, senior public relations manager for ES&S. “Voting machines are tested thoroughly by jurisdictions before every election to ensure they are accurate and perform as expected.”

To guard against problems, the vast majority of Americans cast their votes using either hand-marked paper ballots or machines, known as ballot-marking devices, that record electronically cast votes on paper ballots.

Nearly 70% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that primarily use hand-marked paper ballots, which are typically counted by electronic scanners, according to Verified Voting. Less than 2% of registered voters live in jurisdictions that still use voting machines without a paper trail, according to Verified Voting, and most of them are in Louisiana.

Louisiana has spent nearly a decade trying to replace its aging, paperless voting machines, but disputes involving voting equipment vendors, canceled contracts and political pressure have repeatedly delayed the purchase. The state is still using machines that are roughly 35 years old, even though lawmakers approved a transition to a system with voter-verifiable paper records in 2021.

That paper trail is one of the most important ways voters and election officials can ensure that the ballots are properly counted.

“What makes elections really resilient is having paper ballots in the first place, because they’re not going to break down” like a voting machine might, said Smith.

Voting machine flaws and safeguards

All 50 states now conduct some form of post-election audit to check the accuracy of vote counts and election procedures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The majority — 36 — carry out conventional hand counts of a sample of paper ballots. Seven others require a more substantial review.

“I would never say that a voting system by itself is secure,” said Smith. “It takes the context in which you use it and the responsible use of that voting system to generate the secure election that you want.”

Smith said the various safeguards help ensure that election officials can address any questions about the reliability of the votes.

“No matter what goes wrong, can you still find out the correct outcome?” she said. “That’s kind of the central question.”

Older touchscreen voting machines sometimes need to be recalibrated, said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the Election Center, a national nonprofit association for election administrators.

“Calibration can sometimes go awry, even after it’s tested,” Patrick said at a Votebeat event Tuesday. Even something as simple as a voter’s long fingernails can affect how a sensitive touchscreen registers selections on older machines, she said. “It can happen. I think it’s a sign that we need to properly fund our elections so that everyone can replace their voting equipment with modern technology.”

That’s why election officials conduct checks before, during and after elections, said Ryan Macias, an election security specialist who previously helped oversee voting machine certification at the Election Assistance Commission.

“Every technology has flaws, but it’s not just technology; it’s processes,” he said.

The checks in Tennessee offer a prime example of how voters and election officials deal with concerns, he said, even as concerns were magnified because of who the messenger was.

“If you are concerned that your ballot, your paper record, after you have verified it and ensured that it is correct and accurate, is then being tabulated incorrectly, then show up to the post-election audit,” he said.

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

Live webinar event: How did the midterms go? Check in with two leading election attorneys

2026-10-28T14:37:23+00:00

So, how did the midterms go? Join Votebeat a week after Election Day to get the full breakdown on what happened and what it all means. Hear from two of the country’s leading election attorneys about lawsuits already filed, and those they expect to be filed.

We’ll also examine how election administration held up across the country, separate fact from fiction about voters’ experiences and ballot counting, and explain what happens between Election Day and the certification of results.

Votebeat is a nonprofit newsroom specialized in explaining how elections work. Each of our reporters and editors spend every day covering voting rules, election administration, misinformation, election lawsuits, local officials, and the systems that determine how ballots are cast and counted.

Become a Votebeat member to join the conversation. Give any amount from $1 to $26 — we suggest $26 for 2026 — and help fund the independent, deeply reported journalism that explains how elections actually work and clarifies confusion about often technical and opaque election processes.

If you are an existing Votebeat member, look out for an email invitation from us! Contact us at community@votebeat.org with any questions.

Live member event: How did the midterms go? Check in with two leading election attorneys

Virtual Zoom webinar
Nov. 10 at 1 p.m. ET
Become a Votebeat member to attend.

Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s Editorial Director. She runs big initiatives for Votebeat, like our Expert Desk, and manages our investigations. She was previously the lead elections reporter for ProPublica, and helped manage the Electionland project for three federal election cycles, sharing information and tips with hundreds of newsrooms across the United States.

Ben Ginsberg is a nationally known political law advocate representing participants in the political process. He’s also a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution’s Revitalizing American Institution project and co-chair of three nonprofits aiding election officials to enhance confidence in American elections. He represented four of the last seven Republican presidential nominees and served as national counsel to the 2000 and 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaigns and played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount.

Bob Bauer is professor of practice and distinguished scholar in residence at the New York University School of Law and co-director of NYU Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic. He is faculty Co-Director of NYU Law’s Democracy Project. In 2013, President Barack Obama named him co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. He is co-chair of Pillars of the Community and of the Bipartisan American Elections Project, each devoted to the support of professional election administration.

Lauren Aguirre is Votebeat’s growth and community editor, focused on connecting people to information they need about voting in their state. She is based in Philadelphia. Contact Lauren at laguirre@votebeat.org.

Trump administration asks appeals court to set aside ballots and investigate the citizenship of as many as 20,000 voters in ongoing California election

2026-10-26T00:11:42+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.

Update, Oct. 26, 6:05 p.m.: On Monday, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 ruling, rejected the Trump administration’s appeal and sent the case back to the lower court, which is scheduled to hold its first hearing on the matter on Tuesday. The majority found the appellate court lacked jurisdiction. In a concurrence, Judge Mark Bennett wrote that there was a “real risk” that ruling for the Justice Department “would result in disenfranchisement.” In his dissent, Judge Patrick Bumatay said the Trump administration was pursuing a valid objective. “None of California’s counterarguments prevent the federal government from stepping in and seeking to stop California from burying its head in the sand while aliens may be voting in federal elections,” Bumatay wrote.

A panel of federal judges on Sunday appeared skeptical of the Trump administration’s position in its extraordinary effort to compel California to set aside as many as 20,000 ballots in the ongoing election and investigate the voters’ citizenship.

In a 105-minute hearing, two of the three 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges hearing the case voiced clear concerns about the Justice Department’s request that the court immediately force California to segregate ballots cast by voters on a list of suspected noncitizens the Trump administration produced earlier this month.

Judge Mark Bennett, who was appointed to the court by President Donald Trump in 2018, grilled Justice Department attorney Matthew Donnelly about the federal government’s request, citing language in the U.S. Constitution referred to as the Elections Clause, which gives states authority to set the rules for congressional elections, subject to congressional oversight.

“It seems to me that under the Elections Clause, [the state legislature has] the right to determine the manner of the elections, including sorting out non-citizens,” Bennett said to Donnelly. “And Congress has not directly changed what the legislature has adopted, which they had the right to do, and it seems to me you want us to issue an injunction that is entirely inconsistent with the law the California legislature has adopted pursuant to the Elections Clause. How can we do that? Why doesn’t the Elections Clause foreclose the relief you are requesting here?”

The lawsuit, along with a separate Justice Department action unfolding in Alaska, represents extraordinary efforts by the Trump administration to intervene in the conduct of the ongoing midterm elections.

Even as voting is underway, the Trump administration is demanding that state officials change the way they are handling and counting ballots from registered voters, in California’s case, and has filed a separate lawsuit preemptively trying to block certification of election results in some potential circumstances in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.

The results of elections in California, which has 52 House seats, could play a key role in deciding which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate race in Alaska will be crucial to Democratic efforts to gain control of the upper house.

On Sunday, the judges pressed Donnelly to explain why the Justice Department asked the appeals court to act when the lower court has yet to even hold a hearing on the federal government’s appeal.

“The District Court has said it’s going to rule expeditiously. It gave you the timing you wanted” for a hearing, Bennett said. “I don’t see how we have jurisdiction.”

The judges also asked a series of questions about the analysis the federal government relied on to produce its list of potential noncitizens, which state officials have said isn’t reliable.

Judge Patrick Bumatay, another Trump appointee, appeared more sympathetic to the Justice Department’s argument and asked California’s attorneys’ pointed questions.

California officials say list of potential noncitizens on the voter rolls is flawed

The legal showdown started on Oct. 13 when the Justice Department sent Los Angeles County election officials a thumb drive it said contained the names of 20,000 potential noncitizens on state voter rolls. It gave California 48 hours to check the names and commit to segregating ballots from any of the people on that list until it investigated and confirmed whether they were eligible voters. California officials questioned the timing of the action and noted that they had already started sending out mail ballots and opened early voting centers on Oct. 5.

California officials also said the federal government’s list was “deeply flawed.” In its court filings and public statements, Los Angeles county officials said 7,035 of those names had Los Angeles County addresses. It compared a sample of 200 of those voters with county voter records, and found fewer than half were active voters, more than 70% had never voted, and a quarter said they were born in the U.S., a strong indicator of citizenship.

The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against California on Oct. 15, demanding that it segregate ballots returned by any voter on its list until their eligibility was confirmed. Before the District Court even ruled, the Department of Justice asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to take swift action, setting up Sunday’s emergency court hearing in San Francisco.

With early voting underway in California, the Trump administration argued that urgent action was needed to compel the state to segregate the ballots.

“Every minute of processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected ineligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” the Justice Department told the court in its motion to the Court of Appeals. “Once illegally cast ballots are counted and commingled with lawful votes, the resulting harm is impossible to remedy.”

In court filings, Los Angeles’ registrar-recorder, Dean Logan, pointed out that the federal government had the voter data underlying its list earlier this year, but waited until the election was already well underway and ballots had been mailed out to send the list to California officials, and the list could contain outdated and incorrect information. He also said the difficulty of complying with the federal government’s demands “cannot be overstated.”

“This is an incredibly complex system involving thousands of workers and changes of this magnitude simply cannot be effectively completed overnight without jeopardizing the effectiveness of the system as a whole,” his lawyers wrote in a court filing.

California officials asked the appeals court to block the Trump administration request and warned that the lawsuit could set the stage for further intervention by the federal government.

“This litigation is a precursor to further interference here in California. The Court must not be drawn into this chilling degradation of democratic values and constitutional principles,” the state said in a court filing.

The Justice Department is aggressively suing California and Alaska as voting is underway

Sunday’s hearing comes amid a flurry of actions by the Trump administration to inject itself into states’ administration of the midterm election. On Friday, the Justice Department sent letters to local election officials across California warning them that they would “risk significant federal scrutiny” if they did not set aside ballots cast by potential noncitizens.

In a statement Saturday, San Benito County Clerk-Recorder Francisco Diaz said two federal agents hand-delivered an official demand letter Friday, with a list of 33 suspected noncitizens.

Diaz’s statement said that “not all listed individuals” were currently registered with the county and that the federal government’s letter demanded Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, and other nonpublic information. The county is reviewing the letter with legal counsel, Diaz said in the statement, and, “we will not be intimidated by agents with guns for simply doing our jobs.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on Saturday also accused the Trump administration of “waging a campaign of intimidation against elections officials, voters, and our democracy” and expressed confidence the state would prevail in court.

The legal fight in California comes in tandem with a White House attempt to prevent certification of the U.S. Senate race in Alaska if it results in a narrow loss for the incumbent, Republican U.S. Sen Dan Sullivan.

The Trump administration is arguing that the presence on the ballot of a second Dan Sullivan — a retired teacher who is one of four candidates in the U.S. Senate race — could confuse voters who intended to vote for the incumbent. Trump said he personally directed the Justice Department to file the lawsuit and accused Democrats of covertly backing the retired teacher in a deliberate attempt to divert the Republican vote.

Polls show Sen. Sullivan in a tight race with Democratic challenger Mary Peltola.

The expansion of Trump administration’s legal attacks on the ongoing election process has raised concerns that the White House could be laying the groundwork to challenge election results the president does not like, as polls suggest that Republicans are likely to lose control of the House of Representatives and that they could also lose their Senate majority. Many legal experts have questioned the Justice Department’s authority to bring the California and Alaska cases. The outcome of Alaska’s race is seen as central to determining control of the Senate.

On Sunday, Attorney General Todd Blanche defended the Alaska lawsuit and dismissed any concerns that Trump would try to overturn the results of a legal election.

“President Trump is not trying to take over a state election in any way, shape or form,” Blanche said on CNN. “What we are trying to do is make it clear that, if it is obvious after the election that confusion led to an improper and illegal result, that the Alaskan system should be able to address that.”

Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who worked as a senior voting rights adviser in the Biden White House, said the Trump administration lawsuits were unlikely to pave the way for any credible challenges to the results.

“I don’t think the cases in either Alaska or California meaningfully further the likelihood that a post-election challenge succeeds, because neither of the cases in Alaska or California are reality-based,” he said. “There’s no law there. And just waving your hands in a document filed with a court doesn’t do anything other than just waving your hands in a press conference.”

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

In rural Nebraska, mail voting saves money and boosts access. Restrictions could change that.

2026-10-23T20:58:48+00:00

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Flatwater Free Press, Nebraska’s first independent nonprofit newsroom focused on investigative and feature reporting, and Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free newsletters here.

For most of the 21st century, some of Nebraska’s smallest counties have conducted elections entirely by mail following bipartisan action to expand voting access. The effort has saved taxpayer money and made it easier for residents in the state’s most isolated rural areas to vote.

But now, as President Donald Trump pushes to restrict mail voting nationwide, Nebraska’s Republican nominee for secretary of state is proposing changes to a system that has become essential to election administration in some of the state’s most Republican counties.

Scott Petersen, who defeated incumbent Secretary of State Bob Evnen in the Republican primary in May, has called for establishing in-person voting in those counties rather than automatically mailing ballots to all registered voters. He argues that extended mail voting encourages outside groups to collect ballots and influence elections. Petersen has argued that technology could make polling places accessible to rural voters without requiring counties to conduct elections only by mail.

Morrill County in the Nebraska Panhandle is one those counties, along with 10 others that have opted to conduct their elections entirely by mail. The county’s election commissioner, Candace Panas, said all-mail voting saves the county the costs of setting up polling places and hiring poll workers.

“I don’t have the money in my budget to turn around and get all my polls in order and all the equipment and things I would have to get to do that,” she said. “There’s just no way my budget would allow me to do that.”

Since 2005, Nebraska has allowed counties with fewer than 10,000 residents to hold elections entirely by mail. Eleven counties now do so: Boone, Cedar, Cherry, Clay, Dawes, Dixon, Garden, Knox, Merrick, Morrill and Stanton. All 11 supported Trump by wide margins in the 2024 election, ranging from 71% voting for Trump in Dawes County to 90% in Cherry County.

Those 11 counties also have consistently recorded higher voter turnout than Nebraska as a whole. In the 2022 midterm election, turnout in those counties averaged about 69%, compared with 55% statewide.

The difference is not simply a reflection of rural voting habits. A 2024 Flatwater Free Press analysis found that the number of ballots cast in the 11 counties increased by an average of 16% between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, as most transitioned to all-mail voting. Participation also increased in lower-turnout elections, including the 2022 midterms, even as statewide turnout declined.

The findings suggest that automatically sending ballots to registered voters may have helped boost participation in counties where residents often live far from polling places.

Panas said the move to all-mail voting has been positive, noting that many Morrill County voters are elderly or live far away from the county seat, making in-person voting hard. The county also had rural roads washed out by recent flooding and some still are not passable from massive wildfires last year, she said.

How Nebraska Republicans helped expand mail voting

Mail-in voting has been around as long as Nebraska has been a state, but for most of its history, the state required those voting in absentia to provide a reason they couldn’t get to the polls on Election Day. Absentee ballots were available mainly to deployed military members, the disabled, and the elderly. But in 1999, the Nebraska Legislature opened mail-in voting to all voters, becoming a no-excuse state that allows any registered voter to request an early-voting ballot without having to provide a reason.

In Nebraska, the effort was solidly bipartisan, introduced by a Democratic state lawmaker, publicly supported by the Republican Nebraska secretary of state and advanced unanimously from committee. It was signed soon after passing in the Legislature by then-Gov. Mike Johanns, a Republican.

At a 1999 legislative hearing, Republican Secretary of State Scott Moore said some voters were reluctant to request absentee ballots because they couldn’t honestly claim they would be unable to vote in person on Election Day.

“And I respect them for that, but if they don’t vote because of it, I want to take care of the problem,” Moore told lawmakers.

The intent was to get more voter participation in elections, and it clearly worked, said Dave Shively, who headed elections in Lancaster County from 1999 to 2023, when he retired as county election commissioner. Shively conducted one of the first elections in the state in mid-1999 that allowed no-excuse absentee voting.

In 2005, Republican state Sen. Deb Fischer sponsored legislation allowing Nebraska’s smallest counties to conduct elections by mail, in part to avoid the expense of equipping far-flung polling places with accessible voting machines required under federal law. Fischer, now a U.S. senator, later explained that maintaining the equipment across sparsely populated counties was prohibitively expensive.

The transition was gradual. Some counties first experimented with mailing ballots to voters in a handful of precincts before expanding the practice countywide. In Stanton County, inaccessible polling locations and a tornado that destroyed much of the town of Pilger helped accelerate the shift. In Knox County, officials expanded mail voting after seeing turnout rise in precincts that tried it in 2018.

“We probably have a larger number today of people that are what we call 100% voters — people that never miss an election — because, you know, they get that ballot in the mail and always send it in,” Shively said. “If they didn’t get that ballot, they might not vote in every election.”

A longtime voting practice faces new opposition

Voting by mail has been besieged by critics in recent years who cast it as a threat to election integrity. It became a national partisan flashpoint in 2020, following President Trump’s claim — without evidence — that voter fraud cost him re-election. Trump has since cast doubt on mail ballot security, although he has repeatedly cast his own votes by mail and has encouraged Republican voters to utilize mail ballots.

In March, Trump issued an executive order designed to restrict mail voting by requiring the U.S. Postal Service to deliver ballots only to those voters who appear on lists built from federal data that has been called into question as unreliable. Courts have blocked that effort for this year’s midterms.

Some Nebraska Republicans also have sought to restrict mail voting, despite officials’ assurance of vote-by-mail security. Since 2024, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to limit early and mail voting, including those to again require voters to provide an acceptable reason to vote by mail and cut the time voters now have to vote by mail or early in person from 35 days to 22 days.

Those proposals failed to advance, but Nebraska has adopted other changes. After voters approved a photo ID requirement in 2022, lawmakers passed a law requiring people voting by mail to provide identification information when requesting or returning their ballots. The state has also imposed security requirements on ballot drop boxes and tightened rules governing their use.

Nebraska election officials say voting by mail is reliable and accurate thanks to its extensive security measures: a photo ID requirement to receive a mailed ballot, a signature requirement on the outside envelope of a returned ballot that is matched to the signature on voter registration records, and barcodes on the envelope that are scanned.

The barcode both allows voters to check that their ballot was accepted and ensures against anyone trying to return duplicate ballots. If the election office were to receive a duplicate ballot tied to a registered voter, it would accept only the first received and reject any others. Voters who find that their mailed ballot was not received may contact their county election office. But election officials in Nebraska are not required to inform a voter if their ballot is rejected.

Outside of counties that conduct all-mail elections, Nebraska does not automatically provide mailed ballots to all registered voters. All eligible residents must request a mail ballot be sent to them. Mailed ballots also may be returned in person to the voter’s county election office or to ballot drop boxes managed by election officials.

Evnen, who has served as Nebraska’s top election official since first being elected in 2018 before losing his primary to Petersen in May, defends the state’s mail voting system, even as he has said he would comply with Trump’s executive orders on voting.

“In the 2024 general election, 300,000 Nebraska registered voters chose to vote by mail,” Evnen said in a recent social media post. “We work hard in Nebraska to assure that our mail-in voting is honest.”

Petersen, meanwhile, has argued that rural voters could be accommodated without mailing ballots to everyone, though he has offered few specific details.

“It’s prohibitive to vote if you live too far from a polling place,” Petersen told Nebraska Public Media. “There’s an easy way with technology to address that without making the whole county mail in, right?”

Margery Beck is a reporter for Flatwater Free Press in partnership with Votebeat. Contact Margery at mbeck@flatwaterfreepress.org.

Trump administration stokes concerns about Chinese-made parts in voting equipment, but experts say risks remain low

2026-10-22T09:00:00+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.

The Trump administration and some conservative election activists argue that foreign-made components in voting machines present a national security risk, and believe the federal government should take steps to mitigate it for the midterm elections. They worry another county could try to hack voting equipment to meddle in the election and some Trump allies want the president to ban voting machines altogether.

But voting equipment manufacturers say it’s impossible to build the equipment without Chinese-made parts — and they already take precautions to protect against sabotage and foreign interference.

Recent intelligence assessments suggest that America’s adversaries could run disinformation campaigns to try and sway the outcome of the elections, but that there is little evidence to suggest they will try to manipulate vote counts.

The three voting technology companies that serve around 85% of registered voters all confirmed they use some Chinese parts. The same Chinese-manufactured computer parts are used in critical infrastructure from ports and the electrical grid to telecommunications and water systems, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that advocates for secure, reliable and verifiable elections.

“We cannot domestically source all of these parts,” said Sara Cutter, executive director of the American Council for Election Technology, a trade association representing many U.S. voting equipment manufacturers and election technology companies. “The Chinese have such a deep bench of supplies in all levels of electronic supplies for any number of critical infrastructure organizations, and it’s a reality of modern American life.”

The association understands the concerns about foreign parts and has a policy of not using components from America’s top adversaries – North Korea, Russia or Iran, Cutter said, but extending that policy to China would be impossible.

Cutter said manufacturers use a variety of safeguards to protect against sabotage, including physically inspecting parts, tracking serial numbers, testing components, and using certified shipping partners.

Elections a ‘critical’ subsector

The outgoing Obama administration in 2017 designated election infrastructure as a critical infrastructure subsector, joining others including manufacturing, financial services, dams, and emergency services. The designation is meant to make federal resources available to support those sectors and ward off threats, including foreign intervention.

At the time, then-Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson acknowledged bipartisan concerns from election officials around the country about any increased federal role in elections, which are run by states and localities.

“It is important to stress what this designation does and does not mean,” Johnson said in a statement. “This designation does not mean a federal takeover, regulation, oversight or intrusion concerning elections in this country. This designation does nothing to change the role state and local governments have in administering and running elections.”

But the Trump administration has nonetheless sought to increase its oversight of elections, though federal courts have blocked key prongs of its effort. And current Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has asserted that foreign adversaries could hack voting machines.

“Foreign adversaries have parts that are vital pieces in our voting machines,” Mullin said in a July press conference. “We know that they can access what they consider the key to the back of these machines. We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible. There’s not a question. It’s not even for debate.”

Mullin also raised the issue in an August letter in which he acknowledged the voting-system industry “is impacted by the fact that some necessary components cannot be sourced from domestic manufacturers, so vendors are dependent on foreign suppliers.”

Still, “voting machines with components manufactured by foreign adversaries introduce significant security risks,” he wrote. “These vulnerabilities mean that malicious actors could potentially compromise election infrastructure at any stage of the supply chain, even before the machines are assembled or deployed.”

Mullin threatened to withhold 20% of Homeland Security counterterrorism grants if states didn’t embrace Trump administration election security measures, including manual audits of paper ballots and citizenship checks of voter rolls. But a federal judge struck down the conditions in September, ruling that the agency had exceeded its authority.

Manufacturers and experts say voting equipment is protected by a series of layered precautions to keep anyone from obtaining improper physical access. Also, it isn’t connected to the internet.

Jeb Cameron, the senior vice president of customer and government relations at Election Systems & Software, said the company operates “under a healthy sort of paranoia” with its supply chain.

“We treat all components of our voting systems with high scrutiny, regardless of their country of origin,” Cameron said. “All our vendors are subject to the same supply chain securities, regardless of where they are located.”

Cameron also said it’s important to reality check the concerns.

“Just because a vulnerability may exist that doesn’t mean it can or has been exploited when you put it within the context of elections and elections administration,” he said.

Another major question is whether countries such as China, Russia or Iran are willing to take the risks of trying to overtly meddle in the administration of a U.S. election, or the results.

A declassified 2024 National Intelligence Council assessment concluded that the three countries had the “technical capability to access some U.S. election-related networks and systems,” but that they would “probably refrain from disruptive attacks that seek to alter vote counts because they almost certainly would not be able to tangibly impact the outcome of the federal election without detection.”

The assessment also noted that “there is no indication they attempted such attacks during the past two election cycles.”

Rather than working to directly change results, the assessment concluded that the countries were more likely to carry out disinformation campaigns to try and cast doubt on the results.

Perhaps more importantly, nearly all voting equipment across the country now has paper trails to ensure that results compiled by computer can be checked against paper copies. (Louisiana is the only state that still uses paperless voting systems statewide.) Every state now requires some form of post-election audit in which election officials check samples of paper ballots to verify that computerized vote counts are accurate, though the percentage of ballots or precincts audited varies from state to state.

Smith, from Verified Voting, said companies and election officials work to develop what she called “defensive depth,” a system of safeguards to protect against any attempts to manipulate results.

“You may have a risk inherent in your supply chain, but that does not mean you won’t end up with a legitimate, correct, accurate, fully verified result at the end of the day,” Smith said.

Smith cited a quote from Verified Voting founder Dave Dill: “If we do it right, the devil himself could build the voting machines, and we could hold an honest election.”

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

In Wisconsin, voters cast early in-person ballots as distrust in the mail grows

2026-10-21T09:00:00+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.

Greenfield resident Nereida Loma planned to vote by mail in November, as she usually does. But the ballot she said she requested never arrived, and city officials had no record of her application.

Rather than risk missing her chance to vote, Loma went to City Hall in the Milwaukee suburb on Tuesday to cast an in-person absentee ballot.

“When you put it in the mail, you don’t know if it’s going to count — if it’s going to come or not,” said Loma, who said she plans to vote in-person from now on.

Loma is among the thousands of Wisconsin voters reconsidering how they cast their ballots amid widely reported issues with the U.S. Postal Service and a continued shift away from mail voting after a pandemic-era peak.

Ahead of the November election, Wisconsin voters have requested about 20% fewer mail ballots than at this point in 2022, and those who have received them are returning them at a slower rate. Election clerks and experts say the trend could reflect concerns about mail delivery, or voters choosing to participate in person despite requesting a ballot.

Several of those voters were at the polls on Tuesday, Wisconsin’s first day of early voting. In Greenfield, Philip Zimmer said that he’s typically an early-in person absentee voter because it’s the easiest option for him. He doesn’t consider mail voting a viable option because of the growing politicization of what was once a standard way to cast a ballot.

“With all this Trump stuff and everything,” he said, “I don’t even bother.”

In New Berlin, a voter who identified herself only as Barb said she typically votes early and not by mail because you “never know if it’s gonna get here.”

In Milwaukee, voter Shan Nelson-Rowe said he has always preferred in-person absentee voting. It’s simpler than mail voting and quicker than voting on Election Day, he said. Plus, he doesn’t trust the Postal Service. He’s noticed others growing wary of it too: His neighbor, who usually mails back his ballot, plans to use a drop box this year because he no longer trusts the mail to deliver it, Nelson-Rowe said.

USPS did not return a request for comment sent Tuesday.

Clerks respond to trend away from mail voting

Clerks are seeing fewer ballot requests and adjusting their advice to voters as concerns about postal delays grow.

Inside the New Berlin City Hall, Clerk Rubina Medina told Votebeat her office is receiving just 25 to 30 mail ballot requests a day, down from 75 to 100 in past elections.

Meanwhile, in-person absentee voting appears to be holding steady. Voters lined up at City Hall on Tuesday morning, and Medina said turnout on the first day of early voting was about as busy as usual.

“The voters are saying they don’t trust the mail,” she said. “We hear that often.”

She said the distrust in the Postal Service is often unwarranted and driven by the media, but that she also does recognize that mail is slower than it used to be.

“We used to advertise a mail-it-back Monday, the week prior to election day,” she said. “We now advertise that two weeks prior.”

Election officials across the state have been offering similar advice for months, but the numbers show voters are turning their ballots in more slowly than they have in the past.

As of Tuesday, two weeks before the election, voters have returned 51.5% of the ballots they’ve been sent, down from 55.5% at the same time in 2022. The slowdown is widespread: In 63 of the state’s 72 counties, voters have returned a smaller share of their ballots than they had at this point four years ago.

Across the state, absentee voting is also down so far compared with the November midterm election in 2022. By this time in 2022, voters had returned nearly 259,000 ballots, 26% higher than the current returns of 191,000. The number of sent-out ballots has dropped about 20%, from 466,000 to 372,000.

Clerks and experts respond to what the numbers show

Much of the drop-off in traditional absentee voting can be credited to the passage of time since the pandemic. More voters are simply comfortable voting in person, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. But, he said, trust in the U.S. Postal Service has dropped dramatically too. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that only 58% of Americans are confident about timely election mail delivery, compared with 71% two years ago.

“Voters are looking for ways to get around the Postal Service,” Burden said. “That can mean waiting until in-person voting opens up in one form or another, or getting a ballot by mail but finding another way to get it back to their clerk’s office.”

To a lesser extent, absentee voting has also gone down because more voters have exited Wisconsin’s list of voters who automatically received absentee ballots on a permanent basis, and because a series of high-profile errors around the state involving absentee ballots may have deterred some voters from voting absentee, Burden said.

Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, agreed voters are now motivated to bypass the mail. She expects many voters who have requested a mailed ballot will ultimately leave it blank and instead vote in-person on Election Day.

Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, also a Republican, agreed. And Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez said more and more voters over the last few elections have been dropping off their ballots on Election Day citing similar concerns. She said Milwaukee anticipates that voters “are more comfortable” dropping their ballots off themselves.

Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli, a Democrat, said she believes part of the drop-off in the share of returned ballots may be due to mail delays.

Some clerks are experiencing that slowdown firsthand: Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, said his son studying in Ireland requested a mail ballot in September. It was sent in late September, he said, and his son still hasn’t received it.

Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe said she doesn’t know exactly what’s behind the lower ballot-return rate, but said she has heard a lot of concern from voters about mail delays.

“We’re just trying to get the message out that if people still have a by-mail absentee ballot and they want to return it by mail, they need to do so as soon as possible, she said. ”We really do recommend that if you’re returning your ballot by mail, that you do so at least two weeks in advance of the election.”

That was Oct. 20.

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

What to expect if you have to cast a provisional ballot in Texas

2026-10-19T20:53:42+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.

Early voting is now underway in Texas for the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Texans had until Oct. 5 to register to vote. But two recently discovered backlogs of voter registration records caused by state errors have flooded the offices of election officials who process that paperwork.

If a registration is not processed by the time a voter shows up to cast a ballot, their name may not appear in the list of registered voters at the polling place. But those voters can still vote by casting a provisional ballot.

Here’s what to know about casting a provisional ballot in Texas:

What is a provisional ballot?

Federal law requires that provisional ballots be offered to any voter whose eligibility is uncertain, such as a voter who isn’t appearing on the list of registered voters due to an administrative error.

Provisional ballots are kept separate from all other ballots until after the election. Election officials then determine whether the voter is eligible to vote and whether the ballot should be counted.

Provisional ballots in Texas are offered during both early voting and on Election Day.

In Texas, who is offered a provisional ballot?

There’s a long list of circumstances under which a voter will be offered a provisional ballot instead of a regular one. It includes:

A voter believes they are properly registered to vote, but does not appear on the list of registered voters and the voter registrar’s office is unable to immediately verify the voter’s registration status.
A voter is on the precinct list of registered voters, but their registered residence address is outside the political subdivision in which the voter is seeking to vote.
A voter is registered to vote but attempting to vote in a different precinct from where they are registered.
A voter does not provide an acceptable form of identification.
A voter’s name on their identification is not substantially similar to the name on the official list of registered voters.
A voter’s identity cannot be verified by the identification presented.
A voter has received a disability exemption, but does not have a Voter Registration Certificate indicating such exemption.
A voter has applied for a ballot by mail, but has not yet properly canceled the mail ballot application.
A voter votes during polling hours that are extended by a state or federal court.

What do provisional ballot voters have to do at the polling place?

Voters who agree to cast a provisional ballot will be asked additional questions by the election judge — the person supervising the polling location — to gather details election officials can later use to determine whether the voter is eligible. For example, if a voter isn’t appearing on the list of registered voters, the election judge might ask when and how the voter registered. If the voter registered through the Texas Department of Public Safety while obtaining or updating their driver’s license or state ID, election officials will make note of that to help them investigate the problem with the voter’s registration. (The state uncovered a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration updates held up by that DPS driver’s license portal last month, though the backlog was reportedly cleared up by mid-October.)

Voters will also be required to sign an affidavit that will act as a new voter registration form. The election judge will also fill out a form indicating the reason the voter is casting a provisional ballot. Both the voter and the election judge will sign the forms.

How are provisional ballots cast?

Once the voter and the election judge fill out all required forms, voters will head to the voting booth to cast their ballot just like everyone else at the polling location. In most counties, voters will mark their choices using an electronic ballot marking device. Some counties use paper ballots that voters mark by hand.

Once the voter is finished making their selections, the voter’s ballot must be placed in an envelope. Election workers keep it secure in a sealed container, separate from regular ballots. The ballots are then delivered to the county’s election officials for review.

Who determines whether a provisional ballot is counted or not?

During early voting and in the days after Election Day, county voter registrars will review their records in connection with any provisional ballots cast. They’ll determine whether the voter was actually registered by the deadline, and whether there’s any missing information that the voter might need to provide.

That information, combined with the notes and information gathered by the election judge at the polling place, is then delivered to the Early Voting Ballot Board — a group of people appointed by the county elections board that includes members of both political parties. The group is tasked with processing mail-in ballots to ensure they contain all the required information voters need to submit, and they also make determinations on provisional ballots.

How do I know whether my provisional ballot was counted?

Voters will be mailed a notice around two weeks after Election Day informing them of the determination made by the Early Voting Ballot Board.

Local election officials must conduct the canvass of votes — the official review and certification of votes that were counted — between Nov. 6 and Nov. 17. According to the Texas election code, election officials must deliver a written notice of the outcome of provisional ballots “no later than the tenth day after the local canvass.”

The notice must state whether a voter’s ballot was counted. If it was not counted, the notice must include the reason why it wasn’t. If the voter has additional questions, the notice will include contact information for local election officials.

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.

Voters face flurry of ballot measures that could transform elections across the country

2026-10-19T10:00:00+00:00

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

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.

As a former longtime California voter, I used to spend lots of time poring over the pros and cons of the ballot measures I was being asked to consider — and there were lots! One year, there were 20 initiatives on the ballot. I’ve been asked to decide whether farm animals should live in more humane conditions, whether to ban certain animal traps used by hunters, and whether to allow slot machines at race tracks.

This year, California voters will be asked to weigh the fate of 14 initiatives, which puts the state on par with Colorado for the most on the ballot this November. And quite a few of them center on election-related issues.

Other states have them, too. There are 145 ballot measures before voters in 39 states this November, including 39 focused on election issues, a new record high, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The amount of election-related measures appearing on the ballot has escalated pretty steadily for more than the last 10 years,” said Helen Brewer, senior policy specialist on elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The measures this year run the gamut from endorsing redrawn congressional maps to a new high of six voter identification measures.

Between 2004 and 2025, voters approved 10 of 13 voter ID ballot measures, said Nicole Fisher, a staff writer at Ballotpedia, the nonpartisan online political encyclopedia and election site. Thirty-six states now have some kind of voter ID law.

One of the most closely watched such initiatives this year is in California, where voters are considering a Republican-backed change to the state constitution that would require voters to provide ID. The measure would also require people voting by mail to provide the last four digits of a government ID number, such as a driver’s license.

Polling on the proposal shows that the measure faces an uphill battle.

Voters in Arizona are showing much stronger support in polls for a similar measure, Proposition 144, which would change the state constitution to require people to provide voter ID before casting a ballot in person or by mail.

The measure leaves it up to state lawmakers to figure out how to write the law if it passes. Various voting rights groups, including the ACLU of Arizona, warn that the measure could make it harder for Arizonans to vote by mail, which is the main way most residents cast ballots.

Meanwhile, a ballot measure in Alaska asks voters to toss out their current system for choosing political candidates, which puts the top four candidates on the general election ballot and uses ranked choice voting to choose the winner. Measure 2 would replace the system with a traditional partisan primary. Alaskans rejected a similar proposal in 2024 by 743 votes.

Alaska’s ranked choice voting process has been in the spotlight this year because incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, is facing a challenger with the same name. Republicans tried — and failed — to force the lesser-known Dan Sullivan off the ballot. President Donald Trump just flew to Alaska to campaign for the senator, who faces a tight race against a Democratic candidate, former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who is narrowly leading in the polls.

Unlike voter ID proposals, ballot measures to overhaul primary elections have fared poorly in recent years. In 2024, 11 states and the District of Columbia had measures that would have revamped their systems for choosing candidates; only the District of Columbia approved one, said Fisher.

Fisher said the spike in election-related ballot measures may be an extension of the attention such issues are getting from Trump, his supporters, and those challenging his preferred policies.

Trump has made election reforms a cornerstone of his second term. He has unsuccessfully pushed Congress to enact nationwide voter ID laws. He’s signed two election-related executive orders that have largely been neutered by the courts. And he pushed Republicans across the country to take the unusual step of redrawing congressional maps.

“We definitely do see some partisanship on both sides related to these measures,” Fisher said.

Voters in three states — Missouri, Colorado and Maryland — will be deciding the fate of redistricting proposals next month. Of the three, Missouri’s has followed the most tortured path to the ballot, involving multiple state and U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

Missouri’s measure asks voters to approve or reject new congressional lines drawn last fall by the Republican-controlled legislature that weakened Democratic chances in the state. The messy litigation meant the new lines were used for the primary election, but won’t be in place for the general.

Polling shows voters are evenly split on the measure, Proposition A.

Voters in six states will face measures explicitly restricting voting to U.S. citizens, continuing a trend that has seen voters approve every such proposal since 2018. Noncitizen voting is already prohibited in federal elections, and none of the six states with ballot measures currently allows it in statewide elections.

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

Texas has a new backlog of voter address updates due to another state error

2026-10-16T18:30:02+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, Friday Oct. 16, 2026, 2:45 p.m.: This story has been updated to include additional information provided post-publication by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

Four days before the start of early voting in Texas, county officials said they learned Thursday about another state error that has backlogged thousands of voter registration records.

This error affected address updates submitted through the state’s voter registration name and address change website between Sept. 1 and sometime last week.

That means election officials just receiving the records must quickly determine which were submitted before the Oct. 5 registration deadline and therefore must be updated in time for the start of early voting Monday.

Fifteen thousand affected records were sent to counties, said Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, but not all counties were impacted.

According to the Texas Association of County Election Officials, Bexar County election officials on Thursday received 3,000 records to process, Travis County received 1,100, Williamson County received 700, and Hays County received 400.

This is the latest in a string of challenges for increasingly hard-pressed local election officials. Earlier this week, county officials said they had cleared a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration records that had piled up for over a year due to a separate state error involving a software update to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s online driver’s license portal. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has offered counties grants to offset costs such as overtime pay and bringing in additional staff to help. Election officials said the state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, made the backlog harder to resolve at a critical time.

Now they must contend with a new issue while they prepare voting equipment and supplies and equip poll workers for early voting. On top of that, election officials are also working through ballot-by-mail applications and processing remaining voter registration applications submitted by the deadline.

“Just when most counties were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, another unexpected backlog is being dropped on county voter registrars,” said Chris McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials.

“This continued mismanagement at the state level requires action and accountability from the Texas Legislature, because the current unpredictability of the TEAM system is unsustainable for our state’s election system,” McGinn said.

Some counties have reported the new backlogged records are missing necessary address information, McGinn said. The secretary of state’s office is escalating the issue to resolve it, he said.

In a Thursday email to county election officials obtained by Votebeat, Christina Adkins, the state’s elections director, said her office had identified an error with Texas.gov – a website that offers various services such as online updates to vehicle registrations and updates to voter registration records such as name changes and address changes.

The site is managed by the Texas Department of Information Resources and the websites were developed by Deloitte, the same vendor that works with DPS. But officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s office told Votebeat the issue originated with its Louisiana-based vendor, Civix, which runs the TEAM system.

In the email, Adkins said the issue was “an extra address validation with Texas.gov,” and Civix “has rerun all files from September 1 through the present to identify any affected voters. The Texas Online registration updates that were impacted by this will be sent out to the counties today.”

Adkins said not all counties had registrations that were impacted by the error and that “many counties will not see any increase to their Texas Online registrations at this time.“

Voters who have questions about their voter registration should contact their county voter registrar directly. A list of voter registrars by county is available 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.

Experts say the midterms could face challenges, but are less concerned than in the spring

2026-10-15T09:00:00+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.

President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about voter fraud, attempts to reshape U.S. election law, and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election have left plenty of people worried that his administration will try to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections. But what threats are worth taking seriously, and what is just doomerism?

To answer that question with certainty, we’d need a crystal ball — which, unfortunately, is not in our arsenal. But we do have the next best thing: the educated guesses of more than 30 experts in election law and administration.

Last spring, we asked them to assess the likelihood of over two dozen potential scenarios that could upend the midterms — from new voting rules, to troops at the polls, to widespread voter fraud, to an overturned election. Now, with just weeks remaining until the midterms, we recently went back to them and asked for their final answers to the same questions.

In broad strokes, their opinions were unchanged. While they believe the election is likely to face challenges — such as federal agents interfering with the voting process — they ultimately do not expect a significant number of voters to be disenfranchised or the final results to be illegitimate. If anything, fewer things are keeping them up at night now than in the spring.

Experts do not expect election laws to change at this point

One of the least likely midterm scenarios, in the eyes of the experts, is that new voting laws or regulations will be put in place before the election. At least 26 of the 31 experts who filled out the questionnaire said it was unlikely that states would pass laws restricting mail voting, strengthening voter ID requirements, requiring new registrants to prove their citizenship, cutting access to in-person voting, or limiting or eliminating the use of tabulators to tally ballots.

This was a mild shift from the spring, when all of these scenarios (except limiting voting machines) were considered at least somewhat likely by a substantial minority of experts.

The reason for the change is pretty clear: Although some states might have passed new election laws in the spring and summer, by the fall, there was no longer time to enact any new laws. Mitchell Brown, a political science professor at Auburn University who was one of the experts who shifted her answer, explained that most legislatures had adjourned by the time of the second survey. “Unless something extraordinary happened it wouldn’t have been possible” to change the laws, she said.

Likewise, experts thought it was unlikely that the federal government would change election rules in any of those ways. That was largely unchanged from the spring, when our respondents were similarly skeptical that Trump would be able to get Congress or the courts to go along with his proposed election law changes, such as the SAVE America Act or his executive orders on elections.

Experts were much more emphatic about federal action than state action, with at least 24 saying it was not at all likely that federal law would affect four of these five aspects of voting. The exception, though, was mail voting. Twenty-five experts still thought it was unlikely that the federal government would restrict it, but only 11 said it was not at all likely, and four experts thought it was somewhat likely.

This is probably because most of our respondents (23 out of 31) filled out the questionnaire before the Supreme Court blocked the U.S. Postal Service’s proposed rules restricting the delivery of some mail ballots for the 2026 election. In a separate question, 16 of the 23 thought it was unlikely that the courts would allow the Postal Service rules to take effect, but there was plenty of uncertainty: Only eight said it was not at all likely.

With the Postal Service question resolved, though, experts are pretty sure the federal government won’t restrict mail voting in the midterms. Seven of the eight experts who answered that question after the Supreme Court’s ruling said further limits on mail voting were unlikely.

In general, experts are still very aware of the possibility that court rulings could significantly alter election rules shortly before the midterms. Almost half (13) of the 31 people surveyed thought that was at least somewhat likely. Notably, the share of experts saying so was roughly equal before and after the Supreme Court’s mid-September decisions on the Postal Service and Missouri’s congressional map, suggesting that their concerns were broader rather than tied to specific cases pending at the time.

Fewer experts than in the spring expect physical disruption at the polls

One of the biggest questions looming over the midterms is whether federal agents, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, will physically disrupt the voting process. It’s illegal to send armed troops to polling places absent a violent threat, but the Trump administration has sent mixed messages about whether it might do so — saying they have no plans to but declining to rule it out entirely.

Experts, though, consider this a serious possibility. Nineteen of the 31 thought it was at least somewhat likely that the federal government would deploy some form of military or law enforcement personnel at or near polling places during the midterms. That said, the share was notably smaller than in the spring; on net, four experts who took the survey both times switched from likely to unlikely.

Pam Smith, the president and CEO of Verified Voting and one of the experts who changed her answer, offered a number of reasons for her reevaluation. She noted that, since the spring, several primaries took place without any armed federal intervention, and several states (such as California) have passed laws to strengthen existing prohibitions on voter intimidation. She added that, paradoxically, the Trump administration’s rhetoric hinting about federal agents at polling places “also has given rise to robust pushback, including several lawsuits seeking to prevent this kind of scenario in advance.”

Brown, the Auburn professor, also switched her answer to this question between the two surveys. “There simply aren’t enough ICE agents out there, nor are there enough National Guard troops, to flood everywhere,” she explained.

Relatedly, a majority of experts (18 of 31) thought it was at least somewhat likely that Trump would ask federal agents to seize voting equipment or ballots after the election. However, that was significantly fewer than in the spring, with six experts, on net, changing their answers from likely to unlikely.

Experts were less concerned about seizures during voting itself. Most experts now think Trump probably will not ask federal agents to seize materials during the election, with only 13 of 31 saying that was likely. In the spring, a majority said that was at least somewhat likely.

Former Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, a Republican who has broken with Trump on election issues, said he changed his mind on both questions after watching the president over the past few months. “While I am certainly troubled by much of the rhetoric and many actions, the administration has generally respected court decisions,” he wrote in an email. “Also, at key points - such as the President’s much ballyhooed election integrity address in July that ended up being a mostly nothingburger -- they have either stood down, or their actions did not rise to the level of their rhetoric.”

Another expert who changed his mind, Western Carolina University political scientist Christopher Cooper, noted that Republicans are starting to resign themselves to the idea that they will lose seats in the midterms. “It just seems that Trump has moved on,” he said. “After all, there’s an arch to be built.”

In general, experts still believe there will be physical threats to voters or polling places in 2026. Almost three-quarters (22 of 31) thought this was likely, roughly matching their spring responses. But, encouragingly, only nine of the 31 experts thought it was likely that a significant number of voters would decide not to vote in the midterms because of those threats.

Experts anticipate claims of fraud — but don’t think they’ll lead to an overturned election

One thing that hasn’t changed since the spring is our experts’ confidence in the integrity of U.S. elections. Virtually all of them (30 of 31) believe it is unlikely that a significant number of ineligible voters will cast ballots in the midterms, including 27 who believe it is not at all likely. The same number of experts believe it is unlikely that voter fraud could influence the outcome of a 2026 congressional race, including 26 who believe it is not at all likely.

Of course, politicians don’t all share this confidence — and experts expect them to question the election as a result. Three-quarters of experts (23 of 31) said they thought it was at least somewhat likely that a significant number of losing candidates would claim fraud influenced the outcome of the midterms. And every single expert thought it was likely that at least one congressional or statewide election result in 2026 would be legally challenged.

But an election being legally challenged isn’t the same as an election getting overturned — and experts are confident that the final midterm results will reflect the will of the voters. The vast majority (26 of 31) said that it was unlikely that any congressional or statewide election results from 2026 would be overturned.

Overall, our survey found that election experts are cautiously optimistic that the 2026 midterms will be administered fairly — even in the face of significant challenges. But they are also keeping a watchful eye out for a handful of serious and unprecedented threats. And even if the election goes smoothly, they warn not to discount the psychological impact of the perception that democracy is under threat.

Cooper, the Western Carolina University professor, summed up the thoughts of many of his peers. “Even though I think the odds of successfully pulling most of this off is low, the effect on distrust in the system is real and concerning.”

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

Texas election officials clear backlog of thousands of voter registrations

2026-10-14T22:24:46+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 appear to have cleared a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration applications and updates that went unprocessed for more than a year due to a state software error.

More than 500,000 voter registration records were caught in what the Texas Department of Public Safety said last month was an error related to a software update for the agency’s online driver’s license portal.

Roughly a month after state officials acknowledged the issue, The Texas Secretary of State’s Office and the Texas Association of County Election Officials both said on Wednesday that they’re not aware of any county still working through the backlog.

Kristin Miles, president of the election officials’ association and the Bastrop County election administrator, said the effort shows county election officials will do whatever it takes to ensure that eligible voters can cast ballots.

“If that means long nights and working weekends, county election officials are not going to fail the voters of Texas,” Miles said. But, she added, the state “should be looking at ways to prevent those things from happening again in the future to ensure that county election officials are not burdened by issues that may arise. Because at the end of the day, it was county election officials who put in the work to get the job done.”

Last month, Votebeat first reported on the backlogged voter registration records, which dated back to October 2025. The news came shortly before the state’s Oct. 5 voter registration deadline, which meant election officials had to scramble to get through backlogged records on top of hundreds of voter registration applications arriving daily.

Voting rights groups have sued the state, saying the backlog breached a 2021 settlement agreement that required Texas to provide a reliable way for people to register to vote through DPS’ online driver’s license portal.

Some better-resourced counties with outside vendors and additional technology, including Dallas, Harris, and Collin counties, were able to get through the backlog within a week. But many election officials said issues with the secretary of state’s voter registration system, known as TEAM, made the backlog harder to resolve during a critical time.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it would offer counties grants to pay for costs related to the backlog, and on Wednesday confirmed it is still offering money to cover overtime and temporary workers.

“Texas counties have worked diligently and have cleared the backlog. We don’t know of any counties with pending applications,” Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office said in an email Wednesday.

Although the backlog related to the DPS records has been cleared, election officials continue to process voter registration applications they’re receiving by mail and in person ahead of the election. Even if they are processed later, registrations that were postmarked or submitted through DPS’ portal ahead of the Oct. 5 registration deadline will be considered valid for the Nov. 3 election.

Pierce said if a voter registered through the DPS web portal but does not appear on the voter roll, they can cast a provisional ballot and election officials will take additional steps to determine their eligibility so it can be counted.

“Election officials have an established method with DPS to check the transaction. If that voter did register through DPS, the vote will be counted,” she said.

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 officials call for prompt ballot return after court rules against proposed backup plan

2026-10-14T20:24:03+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.

Election officials are again urging Wisconsin voters to return their absentee ballots as early as possible after an Oct. 6 court ruling blocked a plan that would have allowed voters with late-arriving mail ballots to cast provisional ballots on Election Day. That decision led officials to double down on their long-standing advice for voters to submit absentee ballots well in advance, whether by mail or through alternative return methods.

Voters should not mail back their ballots if Election Day is less than two weeks away, Rock County Clerk Lisa Tollefson told reporters on a call Tuesday. Instead, she said, “We want them to actually deliver it to the clerk directly, use a drop box, find an alternate method, because if we don’t have it by 8 p.m. we can’t count it.”

Two-thirds of Wisconsin clerks observed issues with absentee ballot mail delivery in the April election, a Wisconsin Elections Commission survey showed. Clerks like Tollefson worry delays could happen again and would be exacerbated by voters mailing ballots late.

So far, clerks haven’t seen many issues with mailing ballots, Chetek City Clerk Mark Eby, the vice president of the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association, told reporters Tuesday. Ballots began going out in mid-September, and voters have already returned over 142,000. It’s the late returns clerks worry about.

Mail delays pose a significant risk to Wisconsin voters because it is one of 35 states that do not accept late-arriving mail. Unlike the 15 states that allow ballots postmarked by Election Day to arrive late, Wisconsin requires all absentee ballots to arrive at the polls by 8 p.m. on Election Day to be counted.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin filed a lawsuit in July to allow voters whose mail ballots would likely arrive late to cast a provisional ballot in case the mail one doesn’t show. The lawsuit is still pending in Dane County court, but Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled last week against a motion for a temporary injunction that would have allowed the provisional ballot relief in the upcoming election.

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

Wisconsin officials can count ballots that arrive late over official errors, judge rules

2026-10-13T19:26:30+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, Oct. 14, 9:45 a.m.: This story has been updated to include comments from Wisconsin Elections Commission chair Don Millis.

Wisconsin clerks can count ballots that are in a municipality’s possession by 8 p.m. on Election Day but don’t arrive at polling places until after that time because of election official errors, a Dane County judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision comes months after Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell first ruled that Madison was correct to count 23 ballots that the city had in its possession before Election Day in April but didn’t reach the polls until after the 8 p.m. deadline, a delay city officials say was caused by election administrator error.

“Where a qualified elector has complied with every statutory requirement, and the ballot was in the custody of the municipal clerk in time for delivery to the polling place, the failure of election officials to deliver it by 8:00 p.m. is not a lawful ground for rejecting the ballot,” Mitchell said in his Tuesday order.

Wisconsin law says that ballots must be “delivered to the polling place no later than 8 p.m.” on Election Day.

The lawsuit was filed by Margaret and Robert Honig, two of the 23 voters whose ballots in the state’s April Supreme Court race were delayed, and whose ballots the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered not to be counted before Mitchell reversed the agency’s decision in May. It alleges that discounting properly cast votes over election officials’ errors would deprive voters of their constitutional voting rights.

The commission argued that a plain reading of Wisconsin law states that ballots arriving after 8 p.m. may not be counted. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell disagreed, saying that state law can’t be reasonably interpreted to punish voters over election officials’ mistakes.

Ann Jacobs, a Democratic appointee on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said she was delighted by the Tuesday decision.

“The errors of the clerk should not be visited upon innocent voters,” she said. “This is the right outcome.”

Don Millis, the Republican chair of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said he doesn’t believe Mitchell’s decision should be appealed. But he questioned the logistical hurdles and potential liabilities this decision could create for clerks in certain scenarios, like whether a clerk would be responsible if a voter returned a ballot to a clerk’s office — rather than a polling place — just before polls close.

Mitchell clarified that the decision doesn’t extend deadlines for voters who return ballots late, nor does it allow officials to count late-arriving ballots if the voter was even partially responsible for the late arrival.

“Today’s decision is a cause for celebration, a major victory for voting rights in Wisconsin,” said Law Forward staff counsel Scott Thompson, who represents the Madison voters in the case.

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

‘Mail early’: Election officials urge people to get ballots in pronto amid Postal Service slowdowns

2026-10-12T10:00:00+00:00

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

The U.S. Postal Service had enough problems even before President Donald Trump tried to transform the agency into a de facto election regulation hub that would have had the power to reject ballots heading to voters this November.

That plan was quashed by the Supreme Court after a tumultuous legal battle. But that hasn’t taken the spotlight off the Postal Service, which is still facing a lot of questions about how prepared it is to handle the massive flow of ballots moving around the country over the next four weeks.

The Postal Service has lost money for decades. Since 2007, the agency has lost $118 billion. Despite a mantra that “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night” would keep the mail from getting through, the Postal Service is charging customers more and delivering some mail more slowly. Things are so bad that the Postmaster General has warned that the agency could run out of cash early next year.

The problems are a concern for tens of millions of Americans expected to vote by mail in this November’s elections. This year, the challenges could be compounded by belt-tightening measures that could lead to more ballots being rejected if voters aren’t paying attention.

The so-called Regional Transportation Optimization plan the agency rolled out last year has reduced pickup times at more than 15,000 post offices that are more than 50 miles from a regional processing center. That means a ballot could sit in a local post office and not get a postmark until the following day.

For people dropping off their ballots at the last minute, that could mean the difference between their votes being counted or rejected. The problems are likely to have the biggest impact on rural areas, which tend to be more likely to vote for Republicans.

Oregon has been an early case study in how the system works — or doesn’t. Oregon, which was the first state to shift to voting entirely by mail in 1998, was part of the Postal Service pilot project testing the consolidation process. The results were not encouraging. The Postal Service’s own audit found that performance declined and complaints increased.

Most importantly for voters, Oregon has seen an increase in ballots being rejected because they weren’t postmarked as required by Election Day. During the primary election this past May, more than 7,300 ballots that might have been counted when they came in after Election Day were rejected because they didn’t have a proper postmark, amounting to a 13% rejection rate, up from 9.5% in 2024.

That set off some alarm bells in Oregon, which is trying to address the problems and ensure that fewer ballots are rejected this November.

Leading the charge is Secretary of State Tobias Read, a Democrat who has worked to expand the state’s ballot drop box system, which operates independently of the Postal Service. Oregon has more than 320 drop boxes. More than 60% of all Oregon voters used drop boxes in 2024, but it’s much easier for people in urban areas to use them than those in rural areas, where it can take an hour or more to reach one. Read just got state lawmakers to add another 20 for the November election to help expand the system’s reach.

Read is so worried about postal delays that he’s encouraging people to send ballots back a week before the election or instead plan to secure a postmark or vote another way.

“We can’t count on it,” said Read, referring to the Postal Service. “It might work, but I don’t want anyone to be taking a chance with their ballot.”

Voters who send their ballots back close to Election Day should go into the post office and ask workers to manually postmark the ballot, Read said.

“It’s not that the Postal Service is something you should avoid,” he said. “Just do it early if you’re going to use the mail.”

The Postal Service itself is also encouraging voters to send their ballots back well before Election Day to ensure they are counted. The agency has a 90-second public service announcement on its website urging people to “mail early.” For some voters, the agency suggests that people send their ballots in at least a week before the deadline.

In Washington, Secretary of State Steve Hobbs is going further and urging people to send in their ballots 10 days before the deadlines to ensure that they aren’t rejected. The problem with ballots being rejected because of late postmarks skyrocketed in some Washington counties by more than 300% between the 2024 primary and the 2026 primary.

Like Read, Hobbs, a Democrat, is encouraging people to use a drop box to return their ballots - and make sure they make a plan to ensure their vote is counted.

“If you’re going to mail, you better do it right away,” he said. “Don’t wait.”

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

Election officials are scrambling to process voter registration backlog using a system they say does not work

2026-10-05T17:45:17+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 6 p.m. a few days after the state sent Randall County election administrator Shannon Lackey a backlog of 3,388 of voter registration records, she was still at her desk, processing them after a full day of work.

She planned to stay late and get as much done as she could, then keep working from home. Lackey, whose department has five employees, isn’t expecting overtime pay or compensatory time off to make up for the extra work caused by the state error.

The most frustrating part, she said, was that the state’s voter registration and management system, known as TEAM, was making it harder to get through the backlog.

“I just got a message saying ‘an error occurred’,” Lackey said while on the phone with a Votebeat reporter. “I cannot tell you how many times I get that message, ‘an error occurred,’ so I’m just clicking. Nothing’s happening. I can’t work right now.”

She said her only choice is to push through.

“I have to get this done” she said, but “how are we going to fix it? And if it’s not fixable, where do we go from here? Because this is unacceptable.”

Local election officials across the state have raised concerns about TEAM since the state rolled out a long-awaited upgrade more than a year ago. Now they must use the system to resolve a backlog of hundreds of thousands of voter registration records and updates state officials sent them due to a software error with the Texas Department of Public Safety web portal. Many say the issues with TEAM are making the backlog harder to resolve at a critical time.

State officials discovered the error just weeks before today’s deadline for Texans to register to vote in time for the critical midterm elections. Election officials are already contending with the typical high volume of voter registration applications delivered in person and by mail at the last minute in the coming days.

Some better-resourced and larger county election departments have been able to quickly resolve their backlogs with help from outside vendors, but they’re also still reporting problems interacting with TEAM.

Election officials said it is still difficult to verify voters’ eligibility when processing voter registration applications, and process mail-in ballots in TEAM, among other tasks.

“Based on the direct experiences of county election officials across the state, it has become evident that these problems are the result of fundamental system architecture failures by the state’s voter registration database vendor, Civix,” the Texas Association of County Election Officials said in a statement last week.

With the election just weeks away, the state should “ensure the delivery and maintenance of reliable voter registration database software” before any further payments are made to Civix, which is based in Louisiana, the statement said.

Civix did not respond to a request for comment.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office said it’s offering counties grants to reimburse their costs to process the backlogged applications.

In an emailed statement, Alicia Pierce, the spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, said the agency has communicated directly with counties about TEAM “on a continual basis.” Pierce said the agency conducted trainings throughout the state for the rollout and continues to offer webinars. “We send weekly emails with updates on production builds and development work, and we host monthly calls for counties to ask questions,” she wrote.

“Texas has had seven successful elections since the rollout of the newly developed TEAM,” she added. “Additional features addressing county concerns will be rolled out soon as we all prepare for the November election.”

The agency has resolved some functionality issues with TEAM and has improved it some since its July 2025 launch, election officials told Votebeat, but fixes often take months. In other cases, when one problem is resolved, another pops up.

Some voting rights advocates say local election officials have enough burdens without adding technological problems to the mix.

“If I had to log on to a system every day and have no idea if it was going to work today like it worked yesterday, I think I would lose my mind,” said Emily Eby French, policy director at Common Cause Texas. “But we are asking county officials to follow hundreds and hundreds of statutes in the Texas Election Code, keep ballots safe, protect the security of the elections, while not knowing how or if TEAM will work for them.”

Election officials say promises still unmet

In January 2024, at an annual gathering of election officials, the state showed an early video demonstration of new features the upgraded TEAM system would have. They said it would help election officials complete tasks more quickly and efficiently.

Hundreds of election officials clapped and cheered in excitement. They’d been waiting years for such upgrades.

But “those promises are still unmet,” Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and current president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said in an interview. “We’re not even at basic functionality, much less bells and whistles that had county election officials excited back then.”

Texas promised to pay Civix $17 million, and up to $36 million if the state renews the contract in October 2027, public records show. The secretary of state’s office said the cost is covered by a mix of state dollars and federal funds earmarked for improving election administration.

Officials in each of the state’s 254 counties interact with the TEAM system on a daily basis to conduct voter list maintenance and manage elections. Roughly 18 counties use state-approved outside vendors to manage their voter registration lists, but must still sync their data with TEAM daily and rely on TEAM for other essential functions.

Three local election officials told Votebeat they are struggling with verifying voters’ eligibility, a key step that must be done in TEAM.

That step confirms a voter’s name, date of birth, and partial Social Security number or driver’s license number matches state records, essentially ensuring that the registrant is who they say they are. It’s an automated process, and the majority of the time it works. But in some cases, election officials said they have waited weeks — up to 60 days — for that verification, and they aren’t sure why.

A long delay risks that the voter doesn’t show up on the rolls when they try to actually vote, said Michelle Allcon, the Smith County elections administrator.

“I can’t tell what that application is missing so we can fix it. It’s just stuck,” Allcon said. She said election administrators first flagged the problem in May. “Then those voters are calling me, asking ‘what’s going on? Why haven’t I gotten my voter registration certificate?’ And we look into it and see that there’s no action.”

Allcon, along with other election officials, said the secretary of state’s office typically confirms creation of an IT ticket to resolve the problem, but isn’t necessarily able to give a timeline for the fix.

Some election officials say they have come up with workarounds. Trudy Hancock, the Brazos County election administrator, said her staff has created a spreadsheet to track which mail ballots have been sent and received, as well as to sort them by voter ID number, name, and date, a feature that TEAM doesn’t have. In TEAM, her staff isn’t able to select a batch of mail-in ballot records at once to mark them as sent or received. Instead, they have to be updated one by one, which is time-consuming. The spreadsheet helps the elections team organize the ballots before marking them in the TEAM system. Her staff is keeping track of more than 1,800 mail ballots, Hancock said last week.

Although no technology rollout is ever perfect, other states have taken early steps to try and avoid problems later.

A 2024 report on four states that launched voter registration systems — Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Rhode Island — emphasized involving local election officials, who it described as the main users of such systems, from the start.

But in Texas, local election officials say they had little input. Miles, Lackey, Hancock and others say their testing of the system occurred only a couple of months before the TEAM upgrade went live.

Election officials say they’ll figure it out, but worry the public is losing trust

The counties that use outside vendors rely less heavily on TEAM, though they still must use it. But those vendors can be costly, while TEAM is free.

Dallas County’s election department uses an outside vendor. That’s how they were able to quickly get through a backlog of nearly 70,000 records sent to them after the DPS error, Elections Administrator Paul Adams said in an interview.

“There are other counties where either they don’t have that access to vendors or they have limited staff. So for some counties it’s going to be difficult, but everybody has contingency plans,” Adams said.

He said the main concern is what news of the backlog — and the state error that caused it — is doing to voters’ confidence.

“People are already concerned about the election; you start adding additional things onto it, and your voters are now concerned about the process,” he said.

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.

Everything you need to know about voting in Wisconsin’s November election

2026-10-05T10:00:00+00:00

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

This story was adapted from an article originally published July 28, 2026.

Wisconsin’s Nov. 3 midterm election is a month away, and absentee voting is already happening.

Voters will choose a governor, members of Congress and the state Legislature, statewide officials and local candidates, while also deciding three proposed constitutional amendments.

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 November.

When is Wisconsin’s midterm election?

Election Day across the nation and in Wisconsin is Nov. 3, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.

You can also vote early in person beginning as soon as Oct. 20, depending on your jurisdiction.

What offices are on the ballot?

The governor’s office is up for grabs, along with every Wisconsin Assembly and U.S. House district in the state, 17 state Senate seats, attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, plenty of local offices and three constitutional amendments.

Click here for a full list of what’s on your ballot.

Who can vote in Wisconsin’s November election?

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

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

You still have time.

The deadline to register online or by mail is Oct. 14. After that, you can register at your local clerk’s office or at an early voting location through Friday, Oct. 30.

If you miss that window, you can also register at your polling place on Election Day.

Where is my polling place?

Click here to find your polling place. On Nov. 3, you must vote at the polling place assigned to your address. Your early voting location may be different.

Early voting schedules and locations vary by municipality, and you can contact your municipal clerk here to learn more. 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 showing your name and current mailing address. That could include a Wisconsin driver’s license or other government ID, a residential lease, or a utility bill.

How does early voting work?

In Wisconsin, early voting is technically in-person absentee voting. It allows you to cast an absentee ballot before Election Day at your municipal clerk’s office or another location designated by your municipality.

The availability of early voting varies widely across the state. Some clerks offer it only by appointment. Some cities, including Madison and Milwaukee, operate multiple early voting sites that are open several hours a day. But by law, early voting can’t be offered later than the Sunday before the Nov. 3 election. After that, you must vote on Election Day.

Once you arrive at an early voting site, you must first request an absentee ballot and show an acceptable photo ID. You can then mark your absentee ballot in private. Let an election official know if you require assistance.

Your ballot is sealed in an absentee envelope, which must be signed by the appropriate election official, and is kept until it is counted on Election Day.

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 Oct. 29 by 5 p.m. for regular and overseas voters, and Oct. 30 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 Nov. 3 at 8 p.m.

Don’t request and return your ballot by mail last minute if you have any other options. Mail delays have recently led to hundreds of absentee ballots getting delivered too late to count. If Election Day is approaching, clerks recommend dropping your ballot off at your local election office, a drop box, or an early voting location instead of mailing it.

What if I return my absentee ballot and then wish to change my vote?

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 spoiling remains prohibited in the meantime.

That means — at least for this election — that your absentee votes are final once your ballot is in the hands of election workers. If you make a mistake while casting the ballot, though, or spill something on it, you can request a replacement from an election official prior to submitting it.

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

Please contact your municipal clerk, whose information you can find here. Votebeat would also like to hear about any problems you notice and answer any questions you have. 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.

If you run into a problem at the polls on Election Day or during early voting, legal assistance is available at 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

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

Records show DPS knew of problems with Texas’ online voter registration portal as early as March

2026-10-01T22:47:34+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.

Six months before the Texas Department of Public Safety and Secretary of State’s Office were forced to send hundreds of thousands of backlogged voter registration records to local county officials, both agencies were warned that records were getting lost in DPS’s web portal.

A state lawmaker flagged an issue with voter registration records in March, public records show. The agencies said that problem was resolved. But complaints about the portal continued. And in August the agencies realized they had a big issue — at least 500,000 backlogged voter registration records sent to county election officials last week.

Now, county election administrators are scrambling with little time to sort through those records before the critical Nov. 3 midterm election.

State officials said the most recent backlog of records was due to an October 2025 software update by a DPS vendor. Software engineering and election administration experts say the state agencies should have tested updates to their respective systems, including how they worked together, and developed ways to immediately alert state officials of errors.

“To me, it just looks like they did not have the people with the depth of knowledge and maybe experience to make sure that they were testing everything that they needed to test,” said Trevor Timmons, the former chief information technology officer for the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office confirmed it had tested how a new version of its voter registration management system, known as TEAM, worked with DPS’s portal before launching its system overhaul in July 2025. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office and DPS did not respond to questions about whether they had again tested the systems before the October 2025 DPS update.

DPS acknowledged in March that a “programming change” had prevented the processing of nearly 1,000 voter registration applications and updates Texans submitted through its web portal between December and February, public records show.

The agency assured state Sen. Donna Campbell’s office, which was seeking information on behalf of a constituent, that the error had been resolved, according to a March email. State information technology officials “are monitoring online activity for any unforeseen anomalies. Should they encounter irregularities, they will be notifying the Department immediately,” a DPS official wrote in the email obtained by the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit that advocates for voting rights, and shared with Votebeat.

DPS officials told Campbell’s office that a programming change made by the Department of Information Resources (DIR), which administers the web portal, and its vendor, Deloitte, caused the issue. The voter registration selections made during online driver’s license and state ID transactions could “not be saved or transmitted to the Department,” DPS said.

Voters who checked the option “yes” to register to vote received a receipt reflecting their selection. But the transaction didn’t go through due to the programming error, DPS said. As a result, voters’ applications and address updates weren’t actually submitted and their records were never sent to the secretary of state. DPS officials said DIR and its vendor were not able to identify the impacted records, so voter registration records were corrected “only when a customer provides a copy of their transaction receipt,” the emails say.

Warnings about the system’s flaws continued. In July, voting rights advocates wrote to both DPS and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office citing similar problems with the web portal.

“As a result, Texas voters showed up to the polls during recent elections believing they had successfully updated their voter registration on DPS’s website, only to discover their registration was not updated,” the Texas Civil Rights Project wrote in the letter shared with Votebeat.

Both agencies responded. DPS told the group that technical issues are promptly resolved. The secretary of state’s office said it receives files of voter registration records daily from DPS and sends them to local election officials, and that it was following state and federal laws.

Despite the assurances, problems with voter registration applications submitted through the portal have continued to surface.

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office did not respond to specific questions for this story. In an emailed statement Thursday, spokesperson Alicia Pierce said the office is “laser-focused on helping counties process these registrations and ensuring all eligible Texans can exercise their right to vote. We will continue to review our processes and procedures to identify areas of improvement and ways to prevent similar issues in the future.”

In a September call with county election officials, Christina Adkins, the secretary of state’s elections division director, described “a little frustration” because, she said, her office had “made inquiries, expressed concerns” to DPS related to complaints about the portal and “had been assured that there were no problems.”

“So when DPS presented this information to us, it was quite the surprise,” she said, according to a recording of the call obtained by Votebeat.

In an emailed statement Wednesday, DPS said the error that led to the backlog announced last week had been resolved and the agency “has not identified any further issues with the transfer of its daily batch reports of voter information.”

“Additional controls are now in place between DPS and the SOS to confirm that complete information has been sent and received, so this cannot be replicated in the future,” the DPS statement said.

The agency did not respond to questions about specific steps taken after the incidents to prevent them from continuing.

Election officials must now process the delayed records and add voters to the rolls just weeks before the midterm election, in a year when some high-profile statewide races could be close. If voters show up at the polls and aren’t listed as registered, they’ll be asked to vote using provisional ballots, which will require extra steps to confirm their eligibility before those ballots can be counted.

Some better-resourced counties, including Dallas, have already been able to get through their backlogs; Dallas had nearly 70,000 records. Others are working long hours to do so.

The news of the backlog sparked bipartisan calls from state lawmakers for an investigation into what went wrong. At least one key GOP legislator said the secretary of state’s office should have caught the problem sooner. Timmons, the former Colorado official who is now vice president of Ready for Tuesday, an organization that provides operational support for election officials, agrees.

“They both should have been staying in touch about system upgrades to make sure everything is still flowing along normally, and just making sure that you had the right people talking to each other,” he said.

‘Technical incompetence’

Voting rights advocates with the Texas Civil Rights Project, the nonprofit group that wrote to DPS and the secretary of state in July, are skeptical the problems are fixed.

Although the magnitude of the most recent problem is unlike what officials and advocates have seen before, election officials, voters, and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office have long said that voters’ attempts to register via DPS — in person and through its web portal — don’t always work. That has led to some voters having to cast provisional ballots in past elections, as Votebeat previously reported.

Karla Maradiaga, a voting rights attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said the years-long problems signal a lack of oversight.

“They say they have checks in place,” Maradiaga said. “Either that’s not true or whatever checks they have in place are not working.”

William Furney, 29, a voter from North Texas, believes he may have been one of the voters whose registration was never sent to county officials.

In October 2025, after he moved from Collin to Dallas County, he used DPS’s web portal.

“I checked the option to register to vote. I thought everything was good, I got the receipt, I got the driver’s license in the mail, I thought everything had transferred over fine,” Furney said.

But on Election Day for the March primary he found out it hadn’t worked. He was told he wasn’t on the list of registered voters and offered a provisional ballot.

Furney told the poll worker he’d updated his address and had registered through the DPS web portal, “and the immediate response I got from him was something like, ‘oh I can’t believe this is happening again,’ like he had seen this happening before,” Furney said.

Furney said he spent about an hour at the polling site to cast his provisional ballot. Weeks later, he got a notice from the county saying his ballot was not accepted, he said.

“It was so frustrating to have to go through all that process just to be told my vote wouldn’t count because I wasn’t registered,” Furney said. “It just kind of illustrates the technical incompetence of Texas state government. If DPS isn’t capable of delivering these registration changes in time, like, why even offer the service?”

Lawmakers promise investigations into the problem

Two key GOP lawmakers have promised investigations into what went wrong. State Rep. Matt Shaheen, the chair of the Texas House Elections Committee, previously told Votebeat he has spoken directly with DPS officials and is “going to personally make sure whoever is responsible for the mistake is held accountable.”

Still, Shaheen, a Republican from North Texas who has a background in technology and software management, said questions about whether the agencies adequately tested how the systems work together are “speculation.”

“A lot of different things can happen when you’re working with these systems,” he said.

But state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said this is a “two-agency snafu that could have easily been resolved with some better programming.” He previously said the Texas Secretary of State’s Office should have flagged the problem sooner. “If something stops happening, you either have to ring the alarm bell, or you have to have somebody looking at the data that realizes that something’s wrong,” he said.

The public records show there were multiple complaints about the DPS portal.

A staff member for Campbell’s office first reached out to DPS officials on March 9 about a constituent who had tried to update her address via the state agency’s web portal. The change had not been made. “Please advise if anyone can figure out what happened,” Campbell’s office wrote.

DPS officials responded the next day.

“The Department recently became aware of an issue affecting voter registration information collected through the online driver’s license feature,” the email response says. “The issue impacted transactions completed between December 6, 2025 and February 26, 2026.”

The agency said it immediately alerted the secretary of state’s office to the problem and the programming error was resolved.

In an email on March 12, in summarizing transactions made using the web portal during the March Primary election, DPS officials said 992 transactions were conducted during the period affected by the programming issue.

“We also responded to 53 election officials to provide an online receipt because the voter claimed they had selected “yes” during the DIR programming issue,” a DPS official wrote. “And four records were changed to “yes” because we received their online receipt.”

Then, in July, the Texas Civil Rights Project and the League of Women Voters wrote to DPS and the secretary of state’s office to say that the portal appeared to be failing. The organizations said they received complaints from at least three voters who selected the voter registration option on DPS’s web portal but later found that their registration had never been updated.

The groups argued that the problems could violate a 2021 legal settlement that directed the state agencies to maintain a system that allows voters to register online while updating their driver’s license or state ID, and could be in violation of federal law.

“As with any complex data-transfer system, occasional technical issues may arise,” D. Phillip Adkins, DPS’s general counsel, responded on Aug. 6, according to the records. “When they do, the Department works promptly to identify and resolve them in close coordination with the secretary of state.”

The secretary of state’s general counsel, Adam Bitter, responded too.

“Your reliance on three purported instances across the State — out of more than 18 million registrants — is sorely misguided,” he wrote. “Indeed, nothing in your letter establishes—or even suggests — that the Secretary of State or DPS has failed to comply” with the settlement or federal or state law, he wrote, adding, “should you choose to proceed with litigation on this matter, we stand ready to vigorously contest your allegations.”

State officials say they worked quickly to resolve the problem

Both agencies have said that an October 2025 software update to the DPS portal by vendor Deloitte, caused the current massive backlog.

DPS in its statement Wednesday said the update “caused three pieces of data to be omitted from the daily file” sent to the secretary of state that has information from online driver’s license and state ID transactions.

DPS said that in late August, “the department identified the missing data fields issue” and immediately worked with the secretary of state’s office and their third-party vendor, Civix, to resolve it.

The issue was resolved as of Sept. 13, DPS said.

On Sept. 23, Adkins, the secretary of state’s elections division director, acknowledged in the call with county officials that voters and county officials had reported problems with DPS voter registration applications to her agency. She said her office had asked DPS about them.

“We noticed that we were missing some daily files from DPS,” Adkins said. “This is something that happens and has happened from time to time over the years, where we don’t get a file posted for our system to pull down and automatically process.”

She said the office reached out to DPS to investigate. About a week later, DPS said that “there were some bigger issues that were going on that they needed to alert us to,” Adkins said.

Adkins said that because the records were missing key data points, the automated process didn’t match records and push the data to counties as it typically did. Adkins told county officials she and her staff did not know at first exactly how many records they’d be receiving.

“We had some kind of broad ideas from what they were telling us, but we’re not given any kind of specific numbers,” Adkins said. “So when we got the records on the 14th, they were pretty large files, pretty substantial records, and we knew there was going to be quite a bit of data there.”

Adkins added that DPS requested that both agencies work together “over the next couple of weeks to do some manual verifications on a daily basis. They want to ensure that the modifications that they have made to their system to address this issue are in place and working as they should be, and not impacting files going forward,” she said.

Adkins told county officials that her office would be conducting “additional manual verifications going forward, especially through this very critical early voter registration timeframe leading up to the November election.”

She said her staff is now having “some bigger discussions about other safeguards” to prevent such problems.

“I think our obligation right now is really to our voters, to make sure that these voters are not impacted and that they can vote a regular ballot in November, as they should be able to,” Adkins told county election officials.

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.

Monae Johnson questioned vote-counting machines. Running elections changed her mind.

2026-09-28T09:00:00+00:00

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

Four years after far-right Republicans helped elect Monae Johnson as South Dakota secretary of state, she’s backing a Democrat to replace her.

The cross-party endorsement is unusual. But the more interesting story is how Johnson got to this point.

Johnson ousted a GOP incumbent in 2022 with support from activists who distrusted electronic vote-counting machines and wanted South Dakota to rely more heavily — or entirely — on hand-counting. Her own rhetoric was plenty skeptical too.

In a fundraising letter that spring, Johnson wrote that “all across America we’ve seen questionable results in national, state, and local elections.” Asked that fall whether Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election, she would not say yes: “I’m not going to acknowledge that.” After she won, she said “anything can be hacked,” citing warnings from “IT people, military people,” and floated restricting the use of vote-counting machines.

But once Johnson became responsible for running elections herself, her views started to change. By 2024, she was publicly expressing confidence in tabulators and saying South Dakota’s election system had safeguards “built in throughout the process.” And this summer, Johnson told Republican convention delegates, “I trust the county auditors to do their jobs, and I fully support the use of secure, tested ballot tabulators.”

Former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar, a Democrat, said she has seen the same evolution play out among poll workers and county officials: People sometimes get involved in elections because they are skeptical of how they work. Then they discover that the problems they expected to find are not there and that some of the fixes they imagined are not workable.

“It’s a brave thing to admit,” Boockvar said. She said she could not recall another example of a statewide election official doing so.

More common are local versions of the same story.

For example, Michelle Burchill — a Republican and supporter of President Donald Trump — went to work for Yavapai County, Arizona, in 2020 after absorbing many of Trump’s claims about rigged elections. On her first day, she watched workers stop when two parts of the operation were off by a single ballot, then search until they found two ballots stuck together. “I was an election skeptic, for sure,” she told Governing Magazine last month. Watching the process “very humbly woke” her up. Today, she serves as one of the county’s top election officials.

In Pennsylvania, registered Republican Jay Schneider signed up to work elections after 2020, still suspicious that there had been “shenanigans.” After serving as a poll worker and training to become a judge of elections, he told Votebeat that seeing the safeguards firsthand changed his view.

In California’s Shasta County, Tom Toller took over an elections office that had spent years at the center of post-2020 conspiracy fights. He arrived with no election experience, skeptical of voting machines and willing to consider hand-counting — or even undertake a legal fight with the state over it. Four months later, after “getting underneath the hood” of the system, he said his views had changed: Hand-counting was slow and expensive, while properly run machines were fast and accurate.

These stories are not about people changing their politics. They are about what happens when a campaign promise becomes an administrative problem.

Johnson appears to have confronted that gap early.

One of Johnson’s first major projects was turning her campaign promise of post-election audits into something counties could actually carry out. She chose Jennifer Morrell, who runs The Elections Group, to help lead the work, despite criticism from some of the conservative activists who had helped put Johnson in office.

Johnson also assembled a team of people who had already taken opposing sides on election policy. For example, activist Vicky Buhr had testified in favor of banning ranked-choice voting, while Democratic state Rep. Kameron Nelson was one of just five House members who voted against the ban. Over three meetings, the group worked out how the audits would function and eventually conducted a mock audit.

The system they helped implement required counties to hand count ballots in 5% of precincts and compare them with machine results. When counties carried out those audits in 2024, the results repeatedly corroborated the tabulators. “The accuracy and transparency demonstrated by this process highlight the strength of our election system,” Johnson said in a statement announcing the results.

Hand-counting had become a way to corroborate the machines rather than an argument for eliminating them.

Many of the activists who helped elect Johnson in 2022 remained unconvinced. This summer, they backed state Rep. Heather Baxter, whose campaign had called for hand-counted paper ballots and eliminating machines, for secretary of state instead. Republican convention delegates chose Baxter over Johnson, 59% to 41%. Johnson is now backing Democrat Terrence Davis in the general election, who says he trusts South Dakota’s current election system and opposes statewide hand-counting as the primary method of tallying ballots.

In explaining her endorsement, Johnson wrote that she now knows “the difference between campaigning for this office and carrying the responsibility of leading it.” The job, she wrote, requires “the humility to listen to professionals” and “a willingness to review new information and change course when the evidence supports doing so.”

Nearly 200 candidates who have promoted false or unsupported claims about elections are on the ballot this fall for Congress or statewide office, reports Wired. Some are seeking jobs that would put them much closer to the machinery of elections themselves.

Johnson’s story suggests that proximity can do something an argument sometimes cannot: replace assumptions with the tedious, technical reality of how elections actually work.

We’re about to get more chances to see whether others will be as willing to change course when the evidence demands it.

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

Delayed voter applications highlight the difficulties of registering in Texas, experts say

2026-09-26T00:29:10+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’ backlog of at least 200,000 voter registration applications and updates, which election officials must now process in the weeks before the critical midterm elections due to state error, is highlighting just how difficult it can be to register to vote in Texas, voting rights experts said.

Texas is one of just eight states that doesn’t have universal online voter registration and it severely restricts voter registration efforts. Texans with driver’s licenses can use the state Department of Public Safety’s web portal to register to vote or update their voter registration. But that’s the only online option for registration — and it was ordered by a judge after a six-year long legal battle. More than 6 million voters have used the portal since it launched in 2020.

But Votebeat and the Texas Tribune reported an untimely flaw in that system earlier this week: DPS failed to send counties thousands of voter registration applications and updates submitted through that web portal, dating back to October 2025. The agency blamed the error on a software update. The problem has sparked bipartisan calls for an investigation into what went wrong, and state officials so far have provided few details.

“We live in a system that has been designed to make things harder for voters,” said Sarah Chen, the senior supervising attorney at Texas Civil Rights Project. “We don’t have online voter registration, except for this teeny little carveout, and because of the teeny little carveout, now we have these technical glitches resulting in this backlog.”

On top of the backlog of unprocessed applications, county election officials will also have to process hundreds of applications submitted in person and mailed in between now and Oct. 5, the voter registration deadline. Officials have promised every record will be processed, but advocates such as Chen are worried some voters could be disenfranchised if they aren’t added to the rolls in time.

On Friday, the Texas Secretary of State’s Office told counties it would offer grants to reimburse “costs incurred above your routine operational expenses related specifically to the increased number of DPS voter registration applications,” though it isn’t clear how much money is available or where the funds come from.

Some local election officials say they had noticed a slowdown in the flow of applications from DPS and flagged it to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office over the summer but weren’t sure of the cause. Trudy Hancock, the elections administrator in Brazos County, said her staff noticed they’d receive a handful of applications through the state system one day, none for a couple of days, and then several the next.

It didn’t make sense, Hancock said, “especially those days when we wouldn’t get any applications. Our local DPS office has a line of people out the door every day, so how come there were days where we weren’t getting any applications from DPS?”

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

Affected voters ‘did everything right’

When asked whether he was concerned about the error or whether he had offered DPS specific direction on how to handle it, Gov. Greg Abbott’s office referred questions to the agency and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office. At a press conference Thursday, he said DPS had told his office the issue was “fully resolved.” He also said county election officials were already working to process the applications.

In an emailed statement Thursday night, DPS said it proactively noticed the problem, investigated and found that the issue was connected to an October 2025 software update by “a third-party vendor, whose software handles these batch transactions.”

Emily French, Texas Policy Director at Common Cause, said the state should find a way to reach out to all impacted voters, especially since several statewide races on the Nov. 3 ballot are expected to be close.

“That should be step one,” French said. “Tell every affected voter you’re eligible, you did everything right. You will be registered to vote — tell every affected voter they can vote a provisional ballot.”

State officials said voters who don’t appear on the rolls because of this error can still ask to cast a provisional ballot, and election officials will count it once they confirm the voter had registered via DPS by the appropriate deadline.

But there are concerns that having to fill out a provisional ballot unexpectedly will cause confusion at polls, which members of the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus highlighted in a Friday letter to Abbott.

State senators sent the governor a list of questions, including “What safeguards failed?” and “What support will the state provide to counties?” They also want to know how many of the applications and updates that languished were submitted before the March primary.

State Rep. Mihaela Plesa, a Democrat who sits on the House Elections Committee said that she’s going to push for tighter protocols in the upcoming legislative session to ensure that future errors are caught earlier.

“I’m going to be looking at ways to require fast alerts and repairs,” Plesa said. “Notify the secretary of state of any affected county, notify applicants about what’s going on, and definitely protect the voters’ original submission.”

Members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Julie Johnson of Texas and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla of California, both Democrats, have also called for investigations. So have key Texas Republicans, including state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, who has championed legislation on election administration and voter list maintenance for years, and state Rep. Matt Shaheen, the chair of the Texas House Elections Committee.

Shaheen said he has spoken with DPS officials and is investigating what exactly went wrong to ensure it does not happen again.

“I’m going to personally make sure whoever is responsible for the mistake is held accountable,” he said. But Shaheen said the problem is dissuading him from supporting online voter registration.

Election officials cite ongoing technical challenges

Texans who submitted voter registration applications or updates via the DPS portal had no way of knowing something was wrong unless they checked their voter registration status.

County election officials who flagged an issue, including Hancock, told Votebeat they initially assumed the problem was related to issues with the state’s voter registration and election management system, which is known as TEAM.

The state in July 2025 overhauled its voter registration system using Louisiana-based election technology vendor, Civix. Election officials have since raised ongoing concerns about how the system works.

Kristin Miles, the Bastrop County elections administrator and current president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, told Votebeat the way TEAM works is making it harder for officials to get through the backlog of voter registration records.

For instance, TEAM only allows county officials to see 30 records at a time on their screen, and they have to be sorted through one by one, before officials can see additional records. Miles and her staff of four are working through more than 2,200 records.

This week the secretary of state’s office told election officials they’re trying to prioritize a fix for that issue.

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.

Colleen DeGuzman is a reporter for the Texas Tribune. She is based in Houston. Contact her at colleen.deguzman@texastribune.org.

Everything you need to know about how to vote in Pennsylvania in 2026

2026-09-25T10:00:01+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.

Election Day isn’t until Nov. 3, but the 2026 election is officially underway in Pennsylvania: The first ballots are starting to hit voters’ mailboxes.

Voters around the state will weigh in on everything from control of the U.S. Congress to the commonwealth’s next governor.

Here is everything you need to know about voting in Pennsylvania in the 2026 midterm election.

How do I register to vote?

To be able to vote, you first must be registered. The last day to register to vote in the 2026 election in Pennsylvania is Oct. 19.

Current or prospective voters can check their registration status online here.

To register to vote, you must be a U.S. citizen for at least 30 days prior to the election, be at least 18 years old by Election Day, and have lived in Pennsylvania for 30 days prior to the election.

Voters can register online through the Department of State’s website, by mail using this form, or in person at their county election office.

What offices are on my ballot?

Voters across the state will have congressional races, state House races, and the gubernatorial race on their ballot, and some will also have state Senate races and possibly other contests or ballot questions.

Nonpartisan groups such as the Committee of Seventy, Vote411, and Ballotpedia provide free sample ballots online based on voters’ addresses.

County election offices also provide sample ballots. You can look up your county website here.

How do I request a mail ballot?

Voting at a polling place on Election Day is not your only option. Mail voting is available to all registered voters in Pennsylvania and voters are not required to provide a reason for requesting a mail ballot.

The deadline to apply for a mail ballot is 5 p.m. on Oct. 27.

Voters can apply online here, by mailing this form to their county elections office, or by visiting their county elections office in person.

When filling out your mail ballot application, you’ll have the option to provide your email address. If you do, you will receive updates from your county on when they received your ballot and if there are any issues that could prevent it from being counted.

You can also track your mail ballot here.

I missed the deadline to apply for a mail ballot. What are my options if I can’t vote in person on Election Day?

If a voter has not applied for a mail ballot by Oct. 27 and some unexpected circumstance prevents them from voting in person on Nov. 3, they can apply for an emergency absentee ballot at any point before 8 p.m. on Election Day. Applications can be found here.

How do I return my mail ballot?

Mail voters can return their ballots through the U.S. Postal Service; just make sure you do it several days before Election Day to make sure it has plenty of time to arrive. Ballots can also be returned directly to your county election office or, if offered by the county, through a designated ballot dropbox or satellite voting location.

A list of drop boxes and satellite voting locations can be found here.

Once you have made your selections on the ballot — remember to check both sides — the ballot must first be placed in the secrecy envelope and sealed. Once it is placed in the secrecy envelope, place it in the outer return envelope and seal that as well. Finally, sign and date the declaration on the outer envelope, using the current date. Do not write on any other portion of the return or secrecy envelope.

Can I vote early in person in Pennsylvania?

Pennsylvania does not technically have early in-person voting like many other states. But registered voters can simulate the experience by visiting their county elections office anytime before Oct. 27 and applying for a mail ballot, filling it out, and handing it back to an election official all in one fell swoop.

Some counties also offer this option at satellite voting offices. Visit the Department of State website here to find out if this is available to you.

When and where can I vote on Election Day?

You can find your polling location here.

Polls will be open on Nov. 3 from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. As long as you are in line by 8 p.m., you will be allowed to vote.

What should I bring to vote?

If it is your first time voting at a new polling place, or your first time voting in Pennsylvania, you will be required to show ID. Acceptable forms of ID include a driver’s license, passport, utility bill with name and address, or paycheck with name and address, among other things. A full list can be found here. If you’ve voted at your polling place before, you shouldn’t need to bring anything.

I applied for a mail ballot. Can I still vote in person?

If you applied for a mail ballot and instead decided you would like to vote in person, you still can. Bring the entire mail ballot package, including the ballot and both envelopes, to your polling place and surrender them to the poll workers.

If you never received, forgot, or lost your mail ballot, you will have to vote a provisional ballot.

What is a provisional ballot?

Provisional ballots are used when there is some question about a voter’s eligibility, ranging from whether they are in fact registered to vote to whether they already returned a mail ballot. Provisional ballots allow these voters to cast a ballot on a conditional basis — if their eligibility is later confirmed, it will be included in the final count; if not, it will be excluded.

Voting a provisional ballot is very similar to voting a mail ballot. After the ballot itself is completed, it is placed in a secrecy envelope, then an outer envelope.

Unlike a mail ballot, there are two places provisional voters must sign. First, they must fill out their information in the Voter Information section of the outer envelope and sign the affidavit. After compiling the ballot and sealing it in the envelopes, the voter must also sign the Voter Signature section in front of the poll workers. Be sure the poll worker also fills out the portions they are responsible for, and keep the provisional ballot identification receipt given to you by the poll worker in a safe place.

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

Voters who encounter any issues or have questions should contact their county election officials. Their contact information can be found here.

The Pennsylvania Department of State also runs a hotline for election issues, which can be reached at 1-877-868-3772.

If you experience something newsworthy while voting, we’d also like to hear about it. You can email us at pa.tips@votebeat.org.

Carter Walker is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with Spotlight PA. Contact Carter at cwalker@votebeat.org.

Key GOP lawmaker says state should have caught error that caused Texas voter registration backlog

2026-09-24T22:54:19+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.

A key Texas Republican lawmaker says state officials must be held accountable for an error that led to a backlog of at least 178,000 voter registration applications from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Votebeat reported earlier this week that DPS failed to send counties thousands of voter registration applications and updates submitted through its online driver’s license portal. Some of those date back at least a year, and counties are now being hit with a deluge of applications to process in the weeks leading up to November’s midterm election.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston who has championed election administration legislation for years, told Votebeat on Thursday that although a DPS failure is at the heart of the problem, the Texas Secretary of State’s office should have caught the issue because it oversees the system the counties use to receive the files from DPS.

“If the files were received, pulled, or not, that should have been noticeable,” Bettencourt said. “They should have caught it.”

When asked whether he was concerned about the error or whether he had offered DPS specific direction on how to handle it, Gov. Greg Abbott referred questions to the agency and the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

DPS has said only that the error has been resolved, but has not offered details on how it was fixed or responded to further questions about the cause.

The backlogged voter registration records go back at least as far as October 2025. They could include new registrations or simply updates to voters’ existing records, like a change in address.

The exact number of outstanding applications statewide is still unknown, but officials in seven of Texas’ 254 counties have confirmed receiving more than a combined 178,000 records. Some of the people whose applications were delayed may have since registered another way.

Bettencourt said he spoke directly with Texas Secretary of State Robert Howden about the error after Votebeat first reported it earlier this week. Howden, who took office in July, recognized the DPS error has to be fixed and the backlog addressed as soon as possible, Bettencourt said. A spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Texas Democrats have called for investigations, as well. The error surfaced just weeks before a hotly contested midterm election in which Democrats are hoping to be competitive for statewide offices, including a closely watched U.S. Senate contest.

Bettencourt also brought up ongoing issues with TEAM, the state’s voter registration system, which was overhauled last summer by the secretary of state’s office. The majority of counties in the state rely on the system to manage elections and to maintain voter registration lists, and election officials quickly began highlighting problems both before and after the July 2025 launch.

For more than a year, county election officials have been asking for fixes to functionality issues with TEAM that prevent them from completing essential tasks, such as easily sorting through voter registration applications by date. Some of the problems have been resolved, but others — such as the system operating very slowly — are ongoing, election officials say.

In June, Bettencourt publicly asked the secretary of state’s office for assurances that TEAM would be fixed before November’s election and questioned whether the Louisiana-based vendor that developed the system, Civix, was the correct choice.

On Thursday, Bettencourt said he still has concerns. TEAM’s functionality is “basic to rudimentary from what they need in voter registration in a modern sense,” he said.

The secretary of state’s office is well-regarded for its expertise in election law, he said, but he criticized their operational efficiency.

“They’re gonna have to shift from being a legal-driven response organization to an operationally excellent organization,” he said. “They’re going to have to do both.”

DPS error leaves officials scrambling

Texas’ largest counties have received tens of thousands of backlogged voter registration applications and updates after the DPS debacle.

Dallas County on Thursday confirmed receiving more than 68,000, and Williamson County has received 18,000. Lubbock County confirmed receiving 7,400, Hays County received 8,200, and Cameron County confirmed 4,500. Votebeat reported Wednesday that Collin County confirmed receiving 40,000, and Travis County 32,000.

The secretary of state’s office has said it learned of the backlogged voter registration applications last week, after county election officials flagged that they’d noticed a surge in “older” voter registration applications and updates coming from DPS. Those applications and updates are sent from DPS to counties via TEAM.

State officials said the affected transactions involved incomplete voter registration records, which were withheld instead of being transmitted to county registrars.

Officials have not said what information was missing, what caused the records to be incomplete, how many voters were affected, why incomplete information would have prevented the transmission, or exactly when the problem began.

It’s not clear how many registrations were new versus address updates for already-registered voters, or whether the error prevented any voter from casting a ballot in the March primary election.

Bettencourt said election officials across the state have been working nonstop to get through the thousands of applications that have dropped in their laps. He described the task as monumental, but said county officials would get it done.

“What I am impressed with is how much the counties are working to fix all of this in bipartisan unanimity,” Bettencourt said.

Texas Tribune reporter Colleen DeGuzman contributed reporting.

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.

Unknown number of Texas voter registrations went unprocessed due to DPS error

2026-09-22T23:32:49+00:00

For more information, please read Texas counties are receiving tens of thousands of unprocessed voter registration applications due to state error.

Just weeks before the pivotal midterm elections, Texas election officials have discovered that an unknown number of voter registration applications have not been processed due to an error by the Texas Department of Public Safety.

DPS failed to send the applications, which were submitted by voters through its online driver’s license portal, to county voter registrars for processing, according to an email sent to county officials and provided to Votebeat. The state confirmed to Votebeat that it would begin delivering the unsent registrations to county officials overnight.

State officials said the affected transactions produced incomplete voter registration records, which prevented them from being transmitted to county registrars. Officials have not said what information was missing, what caused the records to be incomplete, how many voters were affected, or exactly when the problem began.

The DPS portal is a major voter registration channel in Texas. From 2020 through 2024, about 6 million Texans used it to register to vote, according to testimony DPS officials provided to state lawmakers in 2025. Texas has more than 18 million registered voters.

The Texas Association of County Election Officials is collecting information from its members to determine the scale of the issue. DPS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The problem comes less than two weeks before the Oct. 5 voter registration deadline, and the sudden arrival of older applications from DPS is likely to add to counties’ voter registration processing backlogs at one of the busiest points in the election calendar.

Voters whose registrations were affected by this issue can still have their ballots counted as long as they submitted their registration before the Oct. 5 deadline, said Alicia Pierce, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office.

“A voter who registered through DPS online services but does not appear on the rolls can cast a provisional ballot,” Pierce said in an email to Votebeat. “Election officials have an established method with DPS to check the transaction. If that voter did register, the provisional vote will be counted.”

Texas does not have online voter registration, but since September 2020, after voting rights groups sued the state and DPS, eligible Texans who renew their driver’s license and state ID or update their address online can also choose to register to vote through that same online portal.

The secretary of state’s office became aware of the problem last week, when election officials flagged that they’d noticed a surge in “older” voter registration applications coming from DPS in TEAM, the state’s voter registration system.

In an email to county election officials sent after the discovery and obtained by Votebeat, state elections director Christina Adkins said the agency was “actively investigating this issue to determine the source of these historical records.” She said the agency asked Civix, the voter registration vendor that developed the latest version of TEAM, to “temporarily remove the files from county dashboards while we work to address this issue.”

In a second email sent Tuesday, Adkins said DPS had determined that some voter registration records from its online transactions were incomplete, which prevented them from being sent to counties. She said the state and DPS had identified the affected records and that the state was “working with DPS to ensure that the modifications they made to their system to address this issue are not impacting daily files going forward,” Adkins said.

Counties will now have to process the older registrations while making sure they do not overwrite more recent updates submitted by the same voters. For counties that work directly in TEAM, the state said it was able to identify voters with newer registration information and would withhold the older DPS record, Adkins wrote.

The task will be more complicated for counties that use their own voter registration software rather than working directly in TEAM. The state cannot perform the same check for those counties, so they will receive all of the affected DPS records and will have to determine whether individual voters subsequently submitted newer registration information. Adkins said the state said it would send those records in batches and work with the counties’ voter registration vendors to process them.

This is a developing story.

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

Election officials played key role in Supreme Court mail ballot decision

2026-09-21T09:00:00+00:00

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

Election officials exhaled when the Supreme Court on Monday night ended months of uncertainty by blocking the Trump administration from restricting mail ballots this November.

The Supreme Court decision clears the way for millions of Americans to vote by mail, just as they have in previous elections, though availability ranges widely from state to state.

“It’s a relief and it’s palpable,” said Marybeth Kuznik, the elections director for Pennsylvania’s Fayette County. “I honestly don’t know how we could have complied with (the Postal Service’s restrictions) at this point in the election cycle.”

But the administration’s efforts to tighten access and the chaotic legal battle that ensued left voters worrying that voting by mail could be disrupted or unreliable.

Now election officials are working to reassure them.

For months, people across the political spectrum voiced concerns about the new proposed U.S. Postal Service rules pushed by President Donald Trump. Election officials from both major political parties played a central role in the Supreme Court debate. More than 80 of them, including Kuznik, signed onto a brief warning that they wouldn’t have time to meet the new requirements before the November election. Several Republican secretaries of state, including officials from Kentucky, Georgia, and Kansas, urged the court to freeze the plans because of the chaos they would create for an election now less than 50 days away.

Those pleas appear to have been decisive for at least one justice, Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote a concurring opinion saying he thought there was a fair chance the rules would hold up to legal scrutiny, but applying them in the 2026 elections would be “arbitrary and capricious” because “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule.”

Now, election officials who have been for months raising concerns about an entirely new vote by mail system have to communicate to voters that the old one is safe to use, even as Trump continues to denounce it. Despite voting by mail himself last month in Florida, Trump attacked the process on social media as a “disaster” and “Nation Destroying SCAM” that made America the “laughing stock all over the World.”

Some election officials and experts said they are seeing fewer absentee ballot requests than expected.

“It has already caused all sorts of voter confusion, and even though the rule is not in place for this election, that’s not to say that there won’t be some voters that think that it is,” said Tammy Patrick, the chief program officer at the Election Center, a national nonprofit association for election administrators. “So it’s going to be incumbent on all of us to make sure that we just keep up the mantra that nothing has changed as a result of the rule.”

Patrick, who filed an expert declaration in the court cases challenging the Postal Service rules, said the best thing voters can do is get their ballots in as early as possible.

Dana Lewis, the recorder who oversees elections in Arizona’s Pinal County, joked that she wears six-inch heels so she can pivot on a dime, something that gave her the dexterity to keep up with this topsy-turvy election season.

Lewis, a Republican, has invested heavily in her county’s drop box system, which includes 24/7 video monitoring and GPS-locked ballot boxes for tighter security, something she believes should give voters confidence that their ballots will be kept safe. Roughly three-quarters of Arizona’s voters cast mail ballots in 2024, federal data show.

“Trust the system,” Lewis said.

But not everyone does. The court ruling came in parallel with a new poll showing a precipitous decline in public confidence in the nation’s electoral system. The University of California, San Diego survey found that just 55% of respondents trust that the vote would be counted fairly, compared to 71% in 2024.

The poll also found just 49% of Americans expect the upcoming election to be free and fair.

That’s in line with other polling, including a recent Pew Research Center survey in which 55% of respondents said they thought the upcoming election would be free and fair, an historic low for the question they have asked over the past six years.

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

Wisconsin election laws could change under a Republican or Democratic trifecta

2026-09-17T19:21:47+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.

Over the past several years, gridlock between the Republican Legislature and Democratic governor’s office means election legislation in Wisconsin has hardly seen the light of day.

Though Republican lawmakers have pushed for stricter voting rules, Gov. Tony Evers has blocked those efforts at several turns during his eight years in office, leaving election policy changes in a stalemate of bills and vetoes. Instead, courts have increasingly become the primary venue for election rules to be challenged and changed.

That dynamic could change after November’s elections. Democrats hope to retain the governor’s office and win control of both legislative chambers. Republicans are vying to hold the Legislature and flip the governor’s office. Either outcome would give one party unified control of state government — a so-called trifecta — and a much clearer path to enacting its election priorities.

The results could shape election rules over the next several years, including how voters cast ballots and have them counted in the 2028 presidential election.

Still, unified control would not necessarily produce dramatic changes to Wisconsin election policy. Some major election policies are now written into the state Constitution, and Republicans have already achieved many of their goals.

“I don’t see big changes coming in state law, almost regardless of what partisan configuration the state ends up with after the election,” said UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden, who runs the school’s Elections Research Center. Republicans, he said, took advantage of a political trifecta from 2011 to 2018 to implement their biggest priorities.

Democrats would have difficulty undoing some of those policies, like voter ID and a ban on private funding for election administration, which are now enshrined in the state Constitution, making them harder to roll back.

Democrats would have limited room to change policy

If Democrats were to win a trifecta, Burden said, Republicans’ past success in putting major election policies into the state Constitution wouldn’t leave them much room to maneuver.

They could try to make the state’s voter ID law more accommodating, but eliminating it altogether would be difficult, he said. Democrats could turn toward other priorities, like enacting automatic voter registration and potentially allowing people with felonies to vote if they’re on parole.

Sen. Mark Spreitzer, a Democrat from Beloit, said that if Democrats win a trifecta they would immediately try to pass legislation allowing election officials to process ballots on the Monday before an election. That measure would give officials an extra day to process ballots, likely speeding up unofficial results at the end of the night.

Other priorities, he said, include codifying the legality of absentee ballot drop boxes, expanding absentee ballot tracking for voters, allowing voters to spoil an absentee ballot, creating standards for fixing mistakes on absentee ballots, and removing a requirement for officials to put numbers on certain absentee ballots that can risk the voters’ anonymity.

“These are very low hanging fruit that either Republicans were interested in but didn’t have unanimity on, or, in a couple of these cases like drop boxes and curing, we have a different perspective than they do,” Spreitzer said.

Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, told Votebeat he would prioritize the Monday processing proposal.

“This common-sense change would help election workers process ballots more efficiently and reduce delays in reporting results, while maintaining the security and integrity of the election process in Wisconsin,” he said.

Crowley also said he would support better funding for local election officials, which has long been a concern for municipal and county clerks in Wisconsin. Spreitzer agreed.

Democrats could also revive some of the bills that have stalled under GOP leadership, including shortening the state’s residency requirement, banning firearms near polling places and establishing automatic voter registration.

Crowley himself was the lead author on an automatic voter registration bill during his brief tenure in the Legislature. Like most Democratic election bills under the GOP Legislature, his bill didn’t receive a public hearing or floor vote.

Republicans could prioritize noncitizen voting legislation

Republicans would also have limited room for broad policies if they won a trifecta, Burden said, largely because they enacted most of their policy priorities during their previous period of unified control. That includes one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws and a requirement to reject absentee ballots missing a witness address.

One area where they could go further is citizenship verification. Republicans could pursue requirements that voters provide documentary proof of citizenship, Burden said, or revive efforts to audit the state’s voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

“That has just been a drumbeat coming out of the Trump administration: executive orders, lawsuits, DOJ actions, requests for data from the state, and other things,” he said. “So Republicans in the state will feel pressure, if nothing else, from the Trump administration to do something more about citizenship in such a key battleground state.”

Republican lawmakers have already pursued such measures. Earlier this year, Evers vetoed a bill that would have required a noncitizen voter audit. During legislative testimony in January, Rep. Dave Maxey, the GOP chair of the Assembly Elections Committee, said that he would prefer IDs used for voting to also clarify a person’s citizenship status. Maxey didn’t respond to Votebeat’s request for comment.

Republicans could also revive other election bills Evers vetoed, including legislation that would have banned those with felonies from voting until they paid certain court fees, and a proposal to eliminate the voter ID exemption for people who are indefinitely confined because of age or a disability.

Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany, a U.S. representative from northern Wisconsin, has also supported several election policies that could become relevant under unified GOP control. In Congress, he voted for the federal SAVE Act, which would have required people registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of citizenship. In his time in the state Legislature, Tiffany co-authored the bill that led to the state’s voter ID requirement.

Tiffany told Votebeat that he would approve legislation to identify ineligible voters by comparing Department of Transportation records with the statewide registration database, along with other “election integrity reforms that Governor Evers vetoed that I believe deserve another look.”

Tiffany tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which President Donald Trump lost. He told Wisconsin Watch recently that he thinks President Joe Biden won the race but welcomes investigations into the election.

He acknowledged the Monday ballot processing bill at a press conference in August, but didn’t signal whether he supported it. This specific policy priority may have more of a chance, Burden said, because it has broad support across the spectrum despite some GOP dissension.

Stalemate likely to continue under divided government

The stalemate that has been the status quo since 2018 would likely continue under any form of divided government, Burden said. Even if Republicans win a trifecta, Democrats have a backstop in the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 liberal majority, Burden said. Republicans, meanwhile, could challenge Democratic priorities in federal court, where they may have the upper hand.

“With Evers and Republicans in power the last eight years, it’s been mostly stalemate: lots of vetoes, and very little actual lawmaking around elections,” Burden said. “If things were to flip with Tiffany in office and Democrats were to win both chambers — I think that’s unlikely — I would expect more stalemate.”

Spreitzer, the Democratic senator, said some proposals, like the Monday processing bill and deleting poll list numbers from the back of absentee ballots may still be viable under split control.

“Those are things we could very easily get done and demand in a split-government situation,” he said.

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

In blow to Trump, Supreme Court blocks mail ballot restrictions from taking effect in 2026

2026-09-15T00:45:05+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. Supreme Court on Monday night blocked the U.S. Postal Service from imposing new restrictions on voting by mail this November, delivering a fatal blow to President Donald Trump’s attempts to inject more White House control over the midterm election.

In a brief, unsigned ruling, the court kept in place a lower court’s freeze on the restrictions. “The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge” to the lower court’s ruling, the justices wrote.

Under the proposed restrictions, the Postal Service would have been able to block delivery of ballots that weren’t on a prereviewed list or met specific design requirements. But as a result of Monday’s decision, mail voting in the 2026 election will largely function the same way it has in previous elections.

The ruling leaves open the question of whether the restrictions are legal overall and can be implemented in future elections. But the structure of the decision suggests that a majority of the justices are skeptical. Only two justices — Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas — joined a dissent arguing that the rules were likely to be upheld and should be allowed to proceed for the upcoming election.

In a concurrence with the main decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh also wrote that “there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal Service’s statutory authority” but that “state and local election officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections.”

How we got here

The Supreme Court ruling marked the culmination of a frenzied, monthslong legal battle over Trump’s effort to impose tighter restrictions on American elections, even though some states have already sent out mail ballots and people have begun to return them.

It began in March, when Trump issued an executive order meant to restrict mail voting. Trump’s order directed the U.S. Postal Service to set up a new system that would allow the agency to block delivery of mail ballots to voters not on a list presubmitted by state election officials.

It quickly prompted a slew of lawsuits by 23 Democrat-led states, voting rights groups, and Democratic organizations that temporarily put the brakes on the effort.

In June, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found that some of the order’s key provisions were unconstitutional and blocked them from going into effect for this year’s elections. The Trump administration fought Talwani’s decision and brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In late August, the Supreme Court lifted Talwani’s injunction against the order on narrow procedural grounds, finding it had been issued prematurely because the Postal Service had not yet issued the final rules when she blocked the agency from enacting its plan.

But shortly before the Supreme Court justices ruled, the Postal Service unveiled its final rules in a 95-page plan. The court’s order meant it would quickly go into effect, creating widespread confusion among election officials. But Talwani again put the Postal Service plans on hold.

The Postal Service rules require states to use a new online federal government system to send it a list of all voters who should receive mail ballots, though that portal is not yet available. The Postal Service would refuse to send ballots to anyone not on the list. Ballot envelopes would also have to meet new design standards, including unique barcodes that have to be checked by the Postal Service.

A bipartisan group of elections officials across the country have warned that they have neither the time nor money and resources to comply with the new rules if they were to be put in place for the November election. Some states said their laws would prevent them from following the Postal Service rules. Others said they didn’t have the time to redesign their ballot envelopes.

In court filings, the Trump administration argued that the Postal Service plan was a legal effort by the federal government to prevent voter fraud in the election.

The Postal Service defended its efforts as a nonpartisan attempt to ensure people could vote by mail if they wanted to this fall.

“Regardless of political party or perspective, we share a common goal: ensuring that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably should their election officials choose to use the mail for ballot delivery,” the Postal Service said in a statement.

A USPS whistleblower warns of disenfranchisement

The Trump administration rules created significant unease within the Postal Service. In early September, an anonymous whistleblower within the agency came forward to describe the system as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

The whistleblower warned that the Postal Service had not done proper testing on the system and that it could prevent millions of Americans from receiving mail ballots this November.

One of the biggest concerns raised by the whistleblower was the possibility that the Postal Service system could reject millions of mail ballots from reaching voters.

As planned, the Postal Service system would take a random sample of bulk mail ballots going to voters to make sure the envelopes all contained required information, including special bar codes tied to each voter. If the computers found that one ballot failed the check, even if it was a mistake, the Postal Service system would reject all the ballots in the mailing and send them back to the state.

That, the whistleblower account warned, could lead to a “catastrophic failure” that prevents millions of Americans from voting.

Voting rights groups and the coalition of states and the District of Columbia renewed their legal fight in Talwani’s court after the Postal Service issued its final rules at the end of August, arguing that the president had no authority to try and regulate mail ballots.

Talwani agreed. In her 11-page decision, she concluded that Trump’s proposals were an unconstitutional attempt to usurp powers from the states over elections.

“The court is unaware of, and no party has proffered, any delegation Congress has made that would permit the USPS to regulate election mail,” Talwani wrote.

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
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
Supreme Court lifts 1 of 2 blocks on Trump’s mail-voting executive order, Aug. 24, 2026
Election officials wrestle with uncertainty amid legal battles over Trump mail ballot restrictions, Aug. 26, 2026

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

Homeland Security secretary steps to forefront of Trump’s election battles

2026-09-14T09:00:00+00:00

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

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin isn’t one to shy away from a fight.

The former professional mixed martial arts fighter once challenged the Teamsters president to a brawl in the middle of a Senate hearing and clashed with U.S. officials while unsuccessfully trying to mount his own rescue mission to Afghanistan during the chaotic 2021 American withdrawal.

Now Mullin is stepping to the forefront of the Trump administration’s battle to exert more control over the fast-approaching November elections.

Mullin has threatened to lock up elections officials and withhold federal dollars from states that don’t adopt the election security measures dictated by his agency. He’s suggested that ICE officers might enter polling places on Election Day if they are trying to arrest a suspect. And he’s directed agents to step up voter fraud investigations in nine states.

The cascade of tough talk has propelled Mullin into the heart of the Trump administration’s expansive efforts to remake America’s electoral system in President Donald Trump’s vision.

Justin Levitt, an election law specialist at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles who worked in the White House under President Joe Biden on voting rights issues, said Mullin appeared to be driven by one overriding ambition: “Please the boss.”

“When the fourth grade soccer coach decides that everybody runs to the ball, everybody runs to the ball,” he said. “Regardless of what your actual job is.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

Mullin took over as secretary in March after the tumultuous 14-month tenure of Kristi Noem, who was forced out by Trump after a series of controversies, notably on immigration enforcement.

“My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” Mullin said during a confirmation hearing in March that barely touched on election issues.

Mullin emerged as a prominent public face of the Trump administration’s election overhaul in July when the president delivered a primetime address attacking the integrity of the nation’s voting system.

The next day, Mullin held a press conference at the White House complex, where he claimed his agency had found more than 250,000 noncitizen voters on the rolls in four states, challenged the integrity of voting machines, and threatened to jail election officials who didn’t do enough to prevent voter fraud. States have pushed back on those numbers.

Since then, Mullin has shifted more focus onto elections, declaring that “election security is national security.”

Last week, news broke that Mullin had directed hundreds of agents to focus their efforts on hunting down noncitizens on voting rolls across the country, even though there is no evidence of a widespread problem with noncitizens voting in U.S. elections.

Mullin also told reporters that he might send ICE agents into polling places on Election Day if they get reports of undocumented immigrants inside they are trying to arrest. That stirred up renewed concerns that the Trump administration would try to use federal forces to intimidate and deter voters from casting ballots — a federal crime, Levitt and others said.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson tried to calm fears by saying that “ICE is not planning operations targeting polling locations,” but that did little to assuage concerns.

“We have to respond in a very calm, collected way” to the Trump administration, said Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar, who leads the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State. “We cannot respond in a chaotic manner that creates angst among the voters because we already know the administration is creating enough chaos.”

So far, Mullin’s efforts have had a limited impact. The Department of Homeland Security has quietly walked back its claims of 250,000 noncitizens on voter rolls. In Nevada, for instance, the agency scaled back its estimate from 16,000 to 185.

The federal campaign to root out alleged noncitizen voting over the past month has led to the arrest of at least six noncitizens accused of voting.

Mullin has also asked the Justice Department to pursue an investigation into some voting equipment.

Levitt said Trump’s biggest leverage is the perception that he might seize ballots or send troops to polling places on Election Day, not that he would actually do so.

“My real fear is that people change their own behavior in response to the noise, rather than taking a breath and looking around and recognizing that the world outside their door doesn’t actually look like the communications world he’s trying to construct,” he said.

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

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.

Update, Sept. 11, 1:22 p.m.: The Texas Supreme Court on Friday blocked Galveston County from using newly approved precinct maps that changed some boundaries between the primary and general elections, ruling that the county must use the same maps it used in the March primary for the November election.

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.

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 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?

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

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 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.

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

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.”

Live event: Will the midterms happen? Your election questions, answered

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.

Correction, Oct. 16: A previous version of this story said that 1,800 voters received notices from Bishop. While Interlochen Public Radio estimates 1,800 voters had their statuses questioned, only about 1,600 actually received notices.

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 1,600 people received such notices — 7% 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.