Archives: Newsletter

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

The Impact of a Nationwide Ballot Return DeadlineBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Watson v. Republican National Committee, a case that will determine whether federal law requires the return of mail ballots by Election Day. We covered the legal arguments in Watson in an earlier Grant Report, and now want to briefly unpack the policy ramifications if the Supreme Court rules in the RNC’s favor. Only fourteen states permit a default post-Election Day ballot return, although several among those are universal or heavily vote-by-mail including Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and California. Others are high-population states—including Texas, Illinois, and New York—but have significantly lower mail voting rates. In theory, a large number of voters could be impacted. However, in these states only a small percentage of voters overall take advantage of grace periods. A Votebeat survey found that late arriving mail ballots represented anywhere between .01 to 3.1% of the 2024 General

HAVA’s Unfinished WorkBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Junior Counsel, USGI It has been more than twenty years since Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and states are still working to get it right.   Take North Carolina. For years, the state’s voter registration form marked HAVA’s mandatory identification fields (driver’s license or partial Social Security number) as optional. A citizen complaint in 2023 finally surfaced the problem, and the state eventually corrected the form—but by then, somewhere in between 100,000 and 250,000 voters had been registered without providing the required information. The issue escalated into parallel litigation: the Republican National Committee sued, and the Department of Justice followed with its own enforcement action. Each case resulted in separate consent judgments. Together, those orders require the state contact affected voters, update records, use provisional ballots for those with missing information, and report to DOJ through 2027. This was also a central issue in an election

On Drawing LinesBy Marshal Trigg, Junior Counsel, USGI With the 2026 midterm primaries already underway, the Supreme Court’s decision to issue an emergency stay of a New York trial court’s redistricting order may prove to be one of the most consequential election law rulings of the cycle. (As a reminder that we told you so, we did predict some eventful shadow docket rulings in our first edition of the year.) The facts of the New York case are straightforward enough. A state trial judge ordered the redrawing of the 11th Congressional District, directing that its boundaries be configured to ensure certain minority voters could elect their preferred candidate. The order directed the state’s independent redistricting commission to produce a new map on an accelerated timeline, with primaries just months away. Congresswoman Malliotakis and others appealed and sought emergency stays with both of New York’s appellate courts. After neither acted, Malliotakis sought a stay from

Debate Rages Over the SAVE America ActBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI Last week, the House of Representatives passed the SAVE America Act (“SAVE”) and sent it to the Senate where it awaits an uncertain future. SAVE would enact nationwide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) for voter registration, require voter photo ID, and largely take effect upon enactment. SAVE would also eliminate certain states’ exemptions from requirements of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and clarify that states can remove noncitizens within the law’s 90-day pre-election list maintenance blackout period. Unsurprisingly, SAVE has ignited fierce debate. The left views DPOC and photo ID requirements as solutions in search of a problem because noncitizen voting and impersonation fraud occur too infrequently to warrant enacting such policies. And any upsides are outweighed by the risk of disenfranchising or at least significantly inconveniencing voters. We are also seeing a lot of predictable fair-weather federalism arguments against

Virginia Elections Have Consequences…for Elections By Justin Riemer, President, USGI Virginians are suddenly finding out that elections have significant consequences, well, for our elections. After securing a clean sweep in November’s contests by flipping the Governor’s, Lt. Governor’s and Attorney General’s offices, and significantly expanding their House of Delegates majority, Virginia Democrats have moved quickly to reshape the Commonwealth’s election landscape. The most consequential change is House Joint Resolution 4 (HJR 4), a proposed constitutional amendment that would permit Virginia to redistrict congressional lines mid-decade if another state does so first. State Democrats are considering creating a 10-to-1 map. HJR 4 may not survive legal challenges, but will go before voters in April if it does, leaving enough time to redistrict prior to November’s midterms. Incoming Attorney General Jay Jones also gave the General Assembly an assist by issuing an official opinion on Inauguration Day that provided the legislature with legal cover on the process for

Off to the RacesBy Justin Riemer, President, USGI, and Marshal Trigg, Junior Counsel, USGI It’s not even February, and as we predicted in the last edition of the Grant Report, 2026 is already shaping up to be an eventful year in election law litigation. Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections expanded candidate standing in a pretty categorical way, exceeding the expectations of many court observers. The Court held that candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules governing how votes in their elections are counted, even without showing that the challenged rule is likely to change the outcome or otherwise harm their electoral prospects. In practical terms, Bost lowers the threshold for pre-election challenges and invites a broader class of candidate-initiated suits. Although election administrators will understandably bemoan the likelihood of facing more lawsuits, we believe Bost will prove to be a net positive for our elections system. It’s a strange