Archives: Newsletter

Florida Takes Its Election Playbook National By Justin Riemer, President, USGI Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Secretary of State Cord Byrd want other states to copy Florida’s election policies. On September 24, DeSantis and Byrd announced the Association of State and Local Election Officials (ASLEO), a new organization that will train election administrators and promote policies based on Florida’s approach. Byrd, who plans to lead the group after November’s election, said, “We want to take the Florida blueprint and take it nationwide.” The announcement was made in conjunction with news that state prosecutors had indicted 20 individuals for election crimes, most of whom are noncitizens charged with registering and voting illegally. The governor highlighted various Florida policies as a blueprint ASLEO will work to enact outside the state, particularly those that speed up ballot counting. The governor also highlighted the state’s Office of Election Crimes and Security, an agency dedicated

Supreme Court Declines to Revive USPS Election-Mail Rule By Justin Riemer, President, USGI On Monday, September 14, the Supreme Court effectively closed the door on pre-election implementation of a key component of President Trump’s Executive Order 14399, the administration’s directive on citizenship verification and mail-in voting in federal elections. At issue was a recently finalized U.S. Postal Service rulemaking that would require states to use standardized, barcoded ballot envelopes, submit voter-level mailing data to a new federal portal, and obtain USPS clearance before ballots go out. A coalition of states and progressive interest groups sued, and a Massachusetts federal district court preliminarily enjoined its enforcement. After the First Circuit did not immediately act on the government’s stay request, the Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court for a stay. For election officials and observers, the immediate takeaway is that the USPS requirements will not govern this election cycle, but the

The Supreme Court Takes Up Citizenship Verification By Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI The Supreme Court will hear Republican National Committee v. Mi Familia Vota on December 8, the latest round of litigation over Arizona’s 2022 election laws addressing citizenship verification and removal. The RNC sought review of two issues. The first is whether the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), or a 2018 federal consent decree the state entered into, prevent Arizona from requiring documentary proof of citizenship from applicants who register using the state’s own voter-registration form. Under that decree, Arizona cannot reject a state-form application submitted without such proof, but must instead register the applicant for federal elections only—as a so-called “federal-only” voter. The Ninth Circuit held that both do. The RNC argues that the ruling improperly applies restrictions governing the federal registration form to a separate form created by the State. The second

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

HAVA Voter Registration Systems RevisitedBy Matthew Babbitt, Summer Law Clerk, USGI The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) reshaped election administration in the United States. Section 303, in particular, required states to implement a “single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list.” That mandate drew on lessons from the 2000 election and the findings of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform ( “Carter-Ford Commission”), whose 2001 report recommended that every state should adopt a statewide registration system “networked with and accessible to every election jurisdiction in the state so that any level can initiate registrations and updates with prompt notification to the others.” Carter-Ford recognized that the law had increasingly placed responsibility for many voter registration functions, especially list maintenance, on state rather than local officials. It also pointed to increased voter mobility, which required more frequent registration changes across county and state lines. Without greater

New Jersey Plays the Blame Game on Noncitizen RegistrationBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI Last week, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced that a “serious software error” caused the registration of roughly 6,600 self-identified noncitizens through the state Motor Vehicle Commission’s automatic voter registration system (AVR). This occurred between June 2023 and June 2024 during the tenure of former Governor Phil Murphy, something Sherrill unsurprisingly emphasized. A preliminary review found that nearly 400 of these registrants later cast ballots. In June 2024, the state Division of Elections flagged those same 6,600 records because they lacked party-affiliation information. Apparently, the state’s written specifications skipped the party question whenever an applicant answered “no” to citizenship. What drew the state’s attention, then, was the missing party data field, not the citizenship answers sitting alongside it. The MVC’s response was to ask its software contractor IDEMIA to change a setting

The Supreme Court Lets Parties Do Their JobBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI The Supreme Court’s recent decision in NRSC v. FEC deserves a few words, even if it’s a little late. The Court struck down, as a violation of the First Amendment, federal legal limits on how much party committees may spend in coordination with their own candidates. As a lawyer who has advised national and state parties, I welcome the ruling. It always struck me as odd that federal law capped coordinated spending by party committees whose primary purpose is to elect candidates. And the limits included exceptions that exposed how arbitrary they were. State parties could already spend unlimited amounts coordinating with candidates on yard signs, bumper stickers, and palm cards, so long as volunteers distributed them. They could even do mass mailings, subject to convoluted rules that essentially required volunteers to lick stamps and stuff envelopes. Why

Voter ID Goes to Washington, AgainBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI The introduction of the Voter ID Act last week marks the latest effort by Congress to set national rules for verifying voter eligibility. Introduced by House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, the legislation would require voters to provide identification when casting a ballot in federal elections, either in-person or by mail. The bill looks designed to address the most common criticisms of both recent federal legislation such as the SAVE America Act and voter ID requirements more broadly. Opponents argue that ID requirements may burden voters who lack government-issued identification. To assuage these concerns, the legislation would authorize federal grants to support states’ issuance of free ID cards, provides for an affidavit exception for those with a religious exemption, and would permit voters without ID to cast provisional ballots rather than being turned away outright. It also

Trust, but Verify Your Election VendorsBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI Maryland spent the back half of May reprinting roughly half a million primary ballots after a coding error by the state’s mail ballot vendor stripped party identification during ballot packet insertion. Because the vendor could not determine which voters received the wrong ballot, the State Board of Elections (“SBE”) had little choice but to reprint and remail ballots to all primary voters who had a pending mail ballot request. Although SBE was right to send replacement ballots and responded quickly, its remedial efforts appear to have outpaced the planning needed to carry them out smoothly. There have been reports of some voters receiving multiple replacement ballots, meaning they would have received at least three total ballots. SBE also had not entirely thought through the policy issues before remailing. For example, SBE’s position on the fate of any original ballots that voters

Voter Fraud, Voter ID, and Legitimacy By Christian Fong, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan Social scientific studies of voter fraud have found that it is rare, and so far, they have not produced evidence that it has influenced the outcome of recent American elections.  From this evidence, some contend that voter fraud is not a serious problem and that voter ID laws have minimal benefits. However, determining a winner is not the only purpose of democratic elections.  Honest and fair elections also confer legitimacy upon the winner – a sense among the public that they have an obligation to obey their commands and that others have an obligation to do the same.  Legitimacy is an essential ingredient to any well-functioning political authority, and so election rules should be chosen not just to ensure that the person who received the most real votes is the winner, but also