Who Gets to See the Voter Rolls?
By Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI
Two federal appeals courts have now split over whether the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) lets the public inspect a state’s voter rolls.
The latest case is Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Nago. PILF requested Hawaii’s statewide voter file under Section 8(i) of the NVRA, which requires election officials to allow the public to inspect “all records concerning the implementation” of programs used to keep voter lists accurate and current. The Ninth Circuit held in April that the disclosure provision does not cover the voter file itself, but rather records that “document each step a state undertakes when actively implementing” NVRA “programs,” such as procedural manuals. PILF asked the Supreme Court to review that decision in July.
The Ninth Circuit’s decision conflicts with the First Circuit’s 2024 ruling in PILF v. Bellows. There, the court held that Maine’s voter file was subject to disclosure because it was the “output and end result” of the state’s registration and list maintenance activities. A Maryland federal district court held the same in 2025 in Sullivan v. Summers, a case brought by Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), adding that voter history housed in the state voter file is also covered by Section 8. Federal district courts in South Carolina, Illinois, and Mississippi have also held that Section 8 guarantees access to a state’s voter rolls. But a federal district court in Michigan rejected these courts’ rationales and similar arguments from the Justice Department in February, reasoning that the voter list is something produced by list maintenance, not a record about how list maintenance is performed. (The Sixth Circuit affirmed in June on other grounds, without reaching the Section 8(i) question.) The Ninth Circuit adopted much the same distinction in Nago. On that reading, Section 8(i) reaches only officials’ documentation surrounding list maintenance, not the voter file itself.
These rulings deny the public access to the record that enables it to evaluate the efficacy of list maintenance efforts: the voter file itself. States constantly add, remove, and update voter registration records. A voter file records the accumulated results of those decisions. Examining it can uncover duplicate registrations, voters who remain registered at old addresses, deceased voters’ records, and other discrepancies that warrant further investigation. Often enough the apparent problem turns out to have an innocent explanation, which is worth knowing too.
Procedure documents do not answer the same questions. A manual can explain when an official is supposed to remove a voter or update his or her record. Emails may show how officials handled a particular issue. The voter file itself shows what those procedures produced, and whether officials were actually following them.
Voter files are complicated, and outside groups sometimes draw dramatic conclusions from records they do not fully understand. Some of those claims rest on clerical quirks or mistaken analyses regarding the meaning of certain data within them. But secrecy is a strange remedy for that. Mistaken claims can be examined and corrected. Inaccurate and outdated records in the state’s own database, where, according to the Ninth Circuit, no one else can look, can sit there indefinitely because nothing makes the state go looking either. Congress deliberately chose broad language in Section 8: “all records concerning” the implementation of list maintenance programs. And it said why: the statute’s declared purposes include “ensur[ing] that accurate and current voter registration rolls are maintained” and “protect[ing] the integrity of the electoral process,” with public inspection as the mechanism for testing whether that is happening. Manuals and reports are records concerning implementation. So is the file those procedures produce. A voter roll reflects thousands or millions of individual decisions made in carrying out that work. Until this split is resolved, whether the public can check a state’s list maintenance work depends on which circuit the state sits in.
Alaska
Nunapitchuk’s polling place did not open until approximately 5:00 p.m. for the August 18 primary, leaving the community’s 343 registered voters with only about three hours to vote in person. Election officials cited weather problems possibly contributing to delays.
Arizona
The Citizens Clean Elections Commission is investigating whether three statewide candidates drew a combined $4.7 million in public campaign financing on fraudulent $5 qualifying contributions submitted under the names of voters who say they never gave, after roughly 2,600 voters were listed as donating the qualifying amount to all three campaigns.
Georgia
Princeton researcher Max Springer showed that a known weakness in the state’s voting system let him use artificial intelligence and public records to determine how more than 2,200 people voted in two counties’ May primaries, prompting the Secretary of State’s office to direct counties to remove the data used in the exploit.
Hawaii
A Maui permanent resident pleaded not guilty to voting unlawfully as a noncitizen in the 2024 general election, after the Maui County clerk referred the case to federal authorities.
Massachusetts
Federal prosecutors charged a Chinese national living in Andover with fraudulent voter registration and voting. Prosecutors allege the defendant used another person’s identity to register online and cast an early ballot in Malden for the 2024 presidential election.
Michigan
Attorney General Nessel charged six people over the 2024 general election, five of them noncitizens accused of registering and voting unlawfully and one a citizen accused of registering her noncitizen spouse. Detroit’s elections department acknowledged that 13 absentee ballots returned before the deadline for the August primary were left at the city clerk’s office and never delivered for tabulation. The Wayne County Board of Canvassers declined to count the ballots in question because they were never entered into the Qualified Voter File. The Board of State Canvassers deadlocked on the Americans for Citizen Voting proposal to require voters to prove citizenship and to end registration by affidavit for those without ID, keeping the measure off the November ballot after the Bureau of Elections found its petition short of the required valid signatures. The sponsors said they would appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.
Nevada
The United States Postal Service (USPS) cited “human error” for the three dozen rural Nevada mail ballots that went uncounted in the June primary after USPS employees mistakenly routed them through an incorrect automated sorting process. USPS stated ballots that should have been redirected “to the right mailflow” were instead sent to the Mail Recovery Center. The agency has since directed new training for employees across the Western United States on proper election mail handling, and instructed facilities not to process returned ballots through its automated redirection system.
New Jersey
State officials removed about 5,100 registrations after a vendor software error let thousands of self-identified noncitizens register through the Motor Vehicle Commission, and referred roughly 1,650 more to county officials for review. New Jersey Republican leaders have sent a ten-part inquiry to the law firm that the state charged with investigating the noncitizen registration issue.
North Carolina
Governor Stein vetoed House Bill 958, which would shorten the primary early-voting period, authorize the State Auditor to review county election systems, and require removal of voters flagged as deceased through federal database checks. Wake County discontinued its use of an election management vendor after learning that the vendor’s password may have been compromised. The system contained names, email addresses, training records, and assignments for approximately 9,000 election workers. Election officials reported no evidence that voter registration records, ballots, voting machines, or tabulation systems were affected. The State Board of Elections approved early-voting plans for 20 counties whose local boards had deadlocked, eliminating 16 Sunday voting days across 13 counties while extending Saturday hours in their place.
Virginia
Federal prosecutors charged a Great Falls man with impersonating a federal officer after he presented fake FBI credentials and wore a pellet gun resembling a pistol at a Fairfax County polling place during the 2024 general election.
North Carolina
At its August 27 meeting, the Rules Review Commission will review four sets of permanent rules adopted by the State Board of Elections. The submitted rules govern absentee ballots, photo ID, recounts, and voting sites.
Federal Agencies
Brown v. FCC, No. 26-1785 (4th Cir.)
On August 25, the Fourth Circuit struck down a Federal Communications Commission notice that would have permitted political parties and joint fundraising committees to buy broadcast campaign advertising at the discounted lowest-unit-charge rate reserved for candidates.
Arizona
Keating v. State, No. CV-2026-02670 (Ariz. Super. Ct., Maricopa Cnty.)
On August 18, the state Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 144 may remain on the November ballot. The court held that the measure’s provisions concerning citizenship, voter identification, election administration, and campaign contributions were topically related and sufficiently interrelated to comply with the state constitution’s Separate Amendment Rule.
Arkansas
League of Women Voters of Arkansas v. Jester, No. 5:25-cv-5087 (W.D. Ark.)
On August 21, a federal court permanently blocked several Arkansas restrictions on ballot-petition canvassing, including a requirement that canvassers be state residents and a ban on paying them by the signature. The court held the rules burden First Amendment activity. The state said it would appeal to the Eighth Circuit.
California
Cervantes v. Bianco, No. S295866 (Cal.); Attorney General of California v. Bianco, No. S295901 (Cal.)
On August 24, the Supreme Court of California heard arguments in two challenges to the Riverside County sheriff’s seizure of more than 650,000 ballots from the November 2025 redistricting special election, taken under warrants a county court issued for a criminal investigation into disputed undercounting claims.
Colorado
United States v. Griswold, No. 1:25-cv-03967 (D. Colo.)
On August 17, the Department of Justice appealed to the Tenth Circuit the dismissal of its suit seeking Colorado’s unredacted voter file.
District of Columbia
Democratic National Committee v. U.S. Department of Justice, No. 1:26-cv-02928 (D.D.C.)
On August 20, the Democratic National Committee sued the DOJ, seeking records concerning any planned or potential federal inspection or seizure of ballots, voting machines, or other election materials. The DNC submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to the FBI and the DOJ’s Criminal Division in February, following the FBI’s January seizure of Fulton County’s archived 2020 election materials.
Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County v. FEMA, No. 1:26-cv-02886 (D.D.C.)
On August 17, four local governments sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency in federal court over new conditions on Homeland Security grant funds that require recipients to run a five-percent manual ballot audit, reconcile ballot counts with voter-participation totals, and use the SAVE citizenship system.
Georgia
NAACP v. United States, No. 1:26-cv-01205 (N.D. Ga.)
On August 19, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to restrict the federal government’s use of Fulton County’s 2020 election records, which the FBI seized in January. The court held that the procedural rule invoked by the plaintiffs did not permit restrictions on the records without a request for their return.
Indiana
Deery v. Copenhaver, No. 26A-EX-2271 (Ind.)
On August 25, the Indiana Supreme Court agreed to hear a state senate candidate’s appeal of the recount that reversed his District 23 Republican primary win. The court ordered expedited briefing and September 10 argument.
Kentucky
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth v. Adams, No. 3:24-cv-387(W.D. Ky.)
On August 24, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth withdrew its National Voter Registration Act suit against the Secretary of State after the state issued an emergency regulation requiring election officials to match registrations against out-of-state records and notify voters before removing those who appear to have moved, with a permanent rule to follow through public comment.
Maryland
Howell v. Md. State Bd. of Elections, No. C-02-CV-26-001986 (Md. Cir. Ct., Anne Arundel Cnty.)
On August 26, a state court granted summary judgment for plaintiffs in a challenge to SB29, legislation that would place a question on the November ballot that would remove state constitutional protections against congressional gerrymandering. The opinion is available here. Plaintiffs in the case, represented by Oversight Project, include members of the state’s legislative Freedom Caucus. A second challenge brought by other members of the General Assembly in Dorchester County has a hearing scheduled for today (August 27). Both cases are expected to be heard by the state Supreme Court next week.
Massachusetts
State of California v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-11581 (D. Mass.)
On August 24, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a federal court’s injunction that had blocked the March mail-voting executive order in the 23 states and the District of Columbia that sued, holding the challengers had not shown standing because the order’s provisions either direct federal agencies alone or remain preliminary.
State of California v. Trump, No. 1:26-cv-13917 (D. Mass.)
On August 26, 24 states and the District of Columbia filed suit in federal court to block a new Postal Service rule requiring states to obtain federal approval for their mail-ballot envelope designs and to give the Postal Service a list of voters eligible to receive mail ballots.
Michigan
United States v. Benson, No. 1:25-cv-01148 (W.D. Mich.)
On August 14, the Sixth Circuit declined to rehear en banc the panel decision affirming dismissal of the DOJ’s demand for Michigan’s unredacted voter file.
Minnesota
United States v. Simon, No. 0:25-cv-03761 (D. Minn.)
On August 17, a federal court dismissed the DOJ’s suit for Minnesota’s voter data, rejecting it as an attempt to seek discovery before stating a claim.
Missouri
People Not Politicians Missouri v. Hoskins, No. 25AC-CC08724 (Cole Cnty. Cir. Ct.)
On August 12, a state court scheduled a trial for the following week in the challenge to Secretary of State Hoskins’s rejection of the referendum on Missouri’s redrawn congressional map.
Harris v. Hoskins, No. 26AC-CC00446(Cole Cnty. Cir. Ct.)
On August 19, a state court upheld Secretary of State Hoskins’s rejection of a referendum petition challenging Missouri’s new congressional map. The court concluded that the constitution’s specific grant of redistricting authority to the legislature overrides the general referendum power. Plaintiffs appealed the ruling.
Nevada
United States v. Aguilar, No. 3:25-cv-00728 (D. Nev.)
On August 14, a federal court dismissed the DOJ’s suit seeking Nevada’s unredacted state voter file.
Republican National Committee v. Burgess, No. 3:24-cv-00198 (D. Nev.)
On August 21, the Ninth Circuit dismissed the Republican National Committee’s challenge to Nevada’s law allowing post-election mail ballot counting up to four business days after Election Day. The court held the plaintiffs lacked standing to pursue the appeal.
Ohio
Ohio Alliance of Retired Americans v. LaRose, No. 1:25-cv-1760(N.D. Ohio)
On August 25, a federal court preliminarily blocked Ohio’s requirement that people show documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote at motor vehicle offices, holding it likely conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act. Secretary of State LaRose said Ohio would appeal.
South Carolina
Grant v. Knapp, No. 2:23-cv-6838 (D.S.C.)
On August 18, the Fourth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a Twenty-Sixth Amendment challenge to South Carolina’s no-excuse mail-voting law, holding that allowing voters 65 and older to vote by mail without an excuse while requiring younger voters to qualify abridges the right to vote on account of age, and noted its disagreement with the Fifth and Seventh Circuits.
South Dakota
League of Women Voters of South Dakota v. Johnson, No. 4:26-cv-04162-ECS (D.S.D.)
On August 24, the League of Women Voters of South Dakota filed suit against Secretary of State Monae Johnson and state election-board members in federal court over the documentary proof-of-citizenship requirement in Senate Bill 175, arguing the law denies applicants placed on federal-only voter status adequate notice and a chance to cure. Plaintiffs additionally challenge a provision requiring identification to be shown in original physical form rather than by photocopy.
Wisconsin
Public Interest Legal Foundation v. Wolfe, No. 24-cv-285 (W.D. Wis.)
On August 19, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s exemption from certain National Voter Registration Act requirements and seeking access to the state’s voter-registration list. The court held that Wisconsin qualifies for the exemption because it permits Election Day registration.
Democratic lawmakers, election administrators, and allied groups are mounting a coordinated effort in anticipation of potential federal intervention in the midterms. Reported measures include litigation preparation and election observer programs.
U.S. Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (WY) announced that the SAVE America Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register and identification to vote, would remain a top legislative priority after the August recess.
The Department of Justice announced plans to send roughly 1,000 monitors to polling places for the November midterms, a sharp increase from the dozens deployed in recent cycles, drawing volunteers from department staff and U.S. Attorney’s offices to monitor Voting Rights Act compliance.
Don Palmer argues that the Supreme Court’s recent stay in Trump v. California gives the administration a path to tighten mail-ballot integrity before midterms.
John J. Martin of Quinnipiac University contends that the Supreme Court’s stay in Trump v. California was a narrow, procedural ruling that leaves the constitutionality of the mail-voting executive order unresolved and adds uncertainty for election officials and voters before the midterms.
Hans von Spakovsky of Advancing American Freedom argues that the Supreme Court’s stay in Trump v. California applied settled standing doctrine.
A study by Brendan Cirillo and Jeffrey Milyo commissioned by the Grant Institute, examines how the suspension of federal preclearance after Shelby County v. Holder affected minority turnout and finds no significant evidence that it reduced minority voter participation.
A Michigan Public Policy Survey report by Debra Horner and Stephanie Leiser examines local officials’ views of election administration ahead of the 2026 general election and finds very high confidence in the accuracy and security of local elections, while identifying election costs and disinformation, especially in larger jurisdictions, as the most prominent concerns.
Derek Clinger of the University of Wisconsin Law School’s State Democracy Research Initiative examines how state chain-of-custody rules, certification timelines, and recount and contest procedures may constrain law-enforcement seizures of ballots and election records.
The Quinnipiac University School of Law is soliciting papers for its Fall 2026 junior election law scholars workshops, a virtual series in which non-tenured scholars present early-stage or completed work for feedback from others in the field. Interested presenters may submit an abstract through the workshop’s online form by September 4, 2026. Tenured professors interested in serving as discussants may contact John J. Martin at john.martin@quinnipiac.edu.
The organizers of the annual Election Law Conference invited paper abstracts for the third annual conference, to be held February 26-27, 2027, at the USC Gould School of Law. Papers may address any topic in election law or the law of democracy. Abstracts of up to 500 words are due September 4, 2026.
The Grant Institute has potential openings for junior-level attorneys and others interested in the study of election administration and voting issues. Interested candidates should please email their resume to info@grantdemocracy.org.