Archives: Newsletter

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

Callais and Its ConsequencesBy Marshal Trigg, Counsel, USGI On April 29, the Supreme Court handed down its 6 to 3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais, holding that the state’s 250-mile, snake-shaped 6th Congressional District—linking the populations of Shreveport, Alexandria, Lafayette, and Baton Rouge to create a second majority-minority district—amounted to an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ripple effects have been fast and wide-ranging, as are the longer-term implications for future redistricting fights. The day after the ruling, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry suspended the May 16 U.S. House primary, and was subsequently hit with several lawsuits which are currently pending. On May 4, the Court granted the Callais plaintiffs’ request to expedite issuance of the judgment, waiving the usual 32-day waiting period and enabling the state legislature to enact a remedial map. The same day, Florida enacted its own redistricting legislation. Tennessee followed suit on May 7. On May 11, the Court lifted the federal injunction blocking Alabama from using its legislature-drawn map, and relisted

Arizona Experiments to Speed up Election ResultsBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Junior Counsel, USGI The 2020 presidential race took four days to call. It took a week to determine which party controlled the House in 2022. This phenomenon erodes voter confidence without any benefit that couldn’t be achieved by counting votes more quickly. Heavy vote-by-mail states may tend to report results more slowly, but the pace is largely the product of policy choices that some states make and others have not. The menu of reforms has been well understood and “pre-processing” ballots is perhaps the most cited. Pre-processing is a broad term encompassing the various steps election officials may take before Election Day to prepare mail ballots for final tabulation: removal of ballots from outer and inner envelopes, duplication of ballots that are not machine readable, ballot scanning, and identity verification. Although some experts suggest its impact may be

Virginia Tests the Limits of Mid-Decade RedistrictingBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Junior Counsel, USGI On Tuesday, Virginia voters will answer a seemingly innocuous question that carries enormous consequences for the balance of power in Congress: Should the General Assembly be allowed to temporarily redraw the state’s congressional districts to “restore fairness in upcoming elections”? In 2020, Virginia voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment creating a bipartisan redistricting commission, thus explicitly taking mapmaking out of the legislature’s hands. To undo that arrangement, even temporarily, Democrats needed to amend the constitution again and do so in time for this year’s midterms. Virginia’s amendment process requires passage of the amendment in two consecutive legislative sessions with a general election in between, followed by a public referendum. Virginia threaded that needle at breakneck speed, passing the amendment in October 2025 and again in January 2026, then scheduling the April 21 special election. Newly-sworn in