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    Will a disputed North Carolina race push defeated candidates to contest results?

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    A disputed North Carolina state supreme court race that took nearly six months to resolve revealed a playbook for future candidates who lose elections to retroactively challenge votes, observers warn, but its ultimate resolution sent a signal that federal courts are unlikely to support an effort to overturn the results of an election.Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes last November out of about 5.5m cast. But for months afterwards, Griffin waged an aggressive legal fight to get 65,000 votes thrown out after the election, even though those voters followed all of the rules election officials had set in advance.The effort was largely seen as a long shot until the North Carolina court of appeals accepted the challenge and said more than 60,000 voters had to prove their eligibility, months after the election, or have their votes thrown out. The Republican-controlled North Carolina supreme court significantly narrowed the number of people who had to prove their eligibility, but still left the door open to more than 1,000 votes being tossed.However, Judge Richard Myers II, a conservative federal judge appointed by Donald Trump, halted that effort on 5 May and ordered the North Carolina state board of elections to certify the race. “You establish the rules before the game. You don’t change them after the game is done,” he wrote in his ruling. Griffin shortly after said he would not appeal against the election and conceded the race.The North Carolina episode marked the most aggressive push by a Republican to overturn an election since Donald Trump’s blunt push to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential race. While both efforts were unsuccessful, the North Carolina state court’s embrace of such a brazen effort to disenfranchise voters after an election could set the stage for another candidate to try the same thing.“The damage to future North Carolina elections has already been done,” Bryan Anderson, a North Carolina reporter who authors the Substack newsletter Anderson Alerts, warned.View image in fullscreenThe North Carolina judges who had ruled in favor of Griffin, Anderson wrote, “have issued decisions paving the way for retroactive voter challenges. It’s a view that can’t be put back in a box and stands to create little incentive for candidates to concede defeat in close elections going forward.“There’s now also precedent for wrongly challenging voters who followed all rules in place at the time of an election and leaving them without any means to address concerns with their ballots,” he added.Although the North Carolina state board of elections was not willing to entertain Griffin’s challenges in the future this time around, North Carolina Republicans wrestled control of the state elections board from Democrats, and might be more willing to entertain efforts to disenfranchise voters.Richard Hasen, an election law scholar at the University of California Los Angeles said the episode sent “two conflicting signals, and it’s hard to know which one is going to dominate”.On the one hand, he said Donald Trump has created an atmosphere in which Republicans are “increasingly willing to believe” elections are being stolen and embrace efforts to overturn them.“On the other hand, the fact that you have pushback, at least from the federal courts, should give some people pause,” he said.Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he believed the saga “closed the door” to similar challenges in the future.“Certainly it is a shame that it took six months to get here, but the end result here is a reaffirmation of the fact that the federal courts aren’t going to stand for changing the rules for an election after it’s been run,” he said. “Will other people try this? Maybe. But I think the lesson that should be learned from this is actually this won’t work.”But Griffin’s efforts may have “only failed because the federal courts that oversee North Carolina happen to be free of partisan corruption”, Mark Stern, a legal reporter, wrote in Slate.“But what if a Republican candidate loses by a hair in, say, Texas, where state and federal courts are badly tainted by GOP bias,” he wrote. “Griffin has laid out the blueprint for an election heist in such a scenario, with Scotus standing as the lone bulwark against an assault on democracy.”Although Republicans have been responsible for bringing election denialism into the mainstream in recent years, Benjamin Ginsberg, a well-respected Republican election lawyer who worked on George W Bush’s team during the Florida recount in 2000, said the legal strategy Griffin deployed was essentially what Al Gore tried to do.“That strategy has not worked, which is not to say somebody won’t try it again. Because history would teach you that candidates who lose narrow races, try everything. Throw it on the wall and see what sticks,” he said. More

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      Federal judge blocks Trump order that could disenfranchise millions of voters

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      A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections.US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court in Washington, agreed with that argument on Thursday.“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote in a 120-page opinion. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”Kollar-Kotelly also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote.The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters. Nearly 10% of eligible voters lack easy access to documents, such as a US passport or birth certificate, that would be required to prove their citizenship, a 2024 survey found.“No president has the authority to dictate our election systems and processes,” Danielle Lang, a voting rights attorney at watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “The Constitution gives the states and Congress the express power to regulate our elections. We are happy to see that the Constitution’s core principle of separation of powers has been upheld in this instance, and we look forward to continuing our challenge so everyday Americans can make their voices heard without unnecessary barriers.”Republicans in the US House have passed a similar bill that would require proof of citizenship to vote, but it almost certainly will not pass in the US Senate. Several states have also passed statutes to require proof of citizenship to vote.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionKollar-Kotelly left in place, for now, portions of the order that instructed the Department of Homeland Security to share information with states and to work with the so-called “department of government efficiency” to find non-citizens on the rolls. She also left in place a portion of the order that sought to punish states that allow mail-in ballots to arrive after election day, saying the plaintiffs had not established legal harm. She left the door open to the challengers returning to court later to bring claims against those portions. More

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      ‘Bad for democracy’: North Carolina could throw out valid ballots in tight election

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      More than five months after the 2024 election, a swath of voters in North Carolina are still unsure whether their votes will count in an unprecedented effort to overturn a valid US election.Democrat Allison Riggs defeated Republican Jefferson Griffin in a contest for the state supreme court. But after the election, Griffin challenged the eligibility of tens of thousands of voters. A ruling from the North Carolina supreme court on Friday paved the way for as many as 1,675 voters to have their ballots thrown out in the election – more than double Riggs’s margin of victory.The challenged voters include someone who grew up in the state, a professor who was there for two decades, a lifelong resident studying abroad, and someone who still owns a home there and plans to move back, according to Guardian interviews.But Griffin claims they are “never-residents”, people who voted in North Carolina who had no previous residency in or attachments to the state.The Guardian spoke with several voters, first identified by the publication Anderson Alerts with their list later expanded upon by Popular Information, who were all living overseas when they cast their ballots in the North Carolina state supreme court race.At risk are two groups: 1,409 overseas voters from Guilford county, a Democratic-leaning area, who voted without showing photo ID – something that the law allows. Then, there are 266 overseas voters whom Griffin alleges have never lived in North Carolina, according to the North Carolina state board of elections.View image in fullscreenThe court gave 30 days for elections officials to get more information from the overseas voters. It said that the 266 voters suspected of never being residents in the state should have their ballots thrown out.That would mean that the vote cast by Josey Wright, a 25-year-old PhD student studying in the UK, wouldn’t count.Wright lived in North Carolina from early childhood until age 18. Her parents still live there, and she visits most years, typically spending summers there. She voted from abroad using a web portal available to US citizens who now live overseas, as she has done in several local and national elections since she moved to the UK to study.She found out her vote may not be counted after a reporter contacted her in recent days.“It’s a bit frustrating because it’s already a bit more difficult, I think, to vote as an overseas voter,” Wright said. “You have to be paying attention to US elections and also submit quite a bit of paperwork in order to get your ballot and to sign up for the portal. It’s a bit disheartening that, after all that effort, my vote actually might not be counted.”The legal battle has drawn attention nationwide and protests locally because the courts could potentially overturn Riggs’s victory by changing the rules of election procedure after the election happened. It’s a road map that election challengers in other states, and in much bigger contests, could use in the future, if it’s successful. If Trump had lost North Carolina, he was expected to make similar arguments.The ruling also set off a scramble to figure out next steps for the unprecedented election challenge. There’s confusion over how to find these voters, how to cure their ballots, and what next steps will look like.The state board of elections said in a court filing yesterday that these voters would be reviewed by elections officials to see whether they have claims of residency in North Carolina, and whether, if they were found to be one-time residents and otherwise valid, their ballots would count.Multiple lawsuits have been filed in federal court to stop the ruling from taking effect. Plaintiffs in one of the cases include a military spouse living in Italy who was born and raised in North Carolina; a lifelong resident who moved to Switzerland for her husband’s PhD program who is in the process of moving back to the state; a North Carolinian teaching English abroad on a one-year contract and a teacher at an air force base in Japan who lived in the state until last year.A federal court in North Carolina said elections officials should begin the ballot curing process but otherwise hold off on certifying any results pending the court process. The judge in that case, a Trump appointee, would not issue a stay of the case.State law has long allowed overseas voters who claim North Carolina residency to vote in the state.But in interviews, several of those voters said they actually had lived in the US and were confused about the challenge to their eligibility and unsure how, or whether, they could fix it.Josiah Young, 20, was studying abroad in Spain when he cast an absentee ballot online, voting in his first presidential election. He is a freshman at American University in Washington DC, but a lifelong North Carolinian. He voted in his home state, which he still has listed as his permanent residence.Young found out his vote had been challenged a couple of months ago, after one of his father’s colleagues shared a PDF that included voters challenged by Jefferson Griffin in a lawsuit. “Lo and behold, at the bottom of the list is a couple pages dedicated just to me. I was definitely surprised,” he said.“It’s pretty disappointing. As a first-time voter, I feel like I pretty much did everything that I was supposed to do. I cast my ballot legally, and then just to find out that someone, or anyone, is challenging my vote is pretty disappointing,” Young said.He believes he accidentally checked a box that said he had never lived in the US and didn’t plan on returning. He’s not sure there’s any way to remedy the situation and get his vote counted. He has not been notified about his inclusion on the list by any elections officials or challengers, he said. He could have remedied the problem quickly, as he voted early, so he wishes he had known.One North Carolina voter who requested to speak anonymously said they believed they had accidentally checked the wrong box on the form to request a ballot. Instead of saying that they intended to return to the US or were uncertain whether they would return, the voter said they had never lived in the US.The voter, who was abroad for six years but has since returned to the US, first learned about the challenge last fall and tried to notify their local election office, but never heard back. “I’m really upset that he would try to change the rules after losing the election,” the voter said. “I think that’s just very bad form for democracy.”Another challenged voter, Neil McWilliam, taught at Duke University for two decades before moving to France with his family in 2023. Originally from the UK, McWilliam, his wife and his son were naturalized in 2013, and he has voted in every state and federal election since. He is a Democrat, and his wife is registered as an independent. His vote was challenged, and hers was not.“Political operatives like Griffin hope to instill cynicism and hopelessness in those who oppose them,” McWilliam said. “The answer is not to reject voting as a waste of time, but to redouble efforts to ensure that everybody who is eligible can and does vote in fair elections free from partisan manipulation.”David Eberhard, also challenged by Griffin, is a former North Carolina resident who moved to Italy for his son’s education but still owns his home in the state and intends to return. He voted while living in Italy in 2024 using the online forms provided by local officials, he said. He found out he had been challenged in January, has no idea why, and updated his information with North Carolina local officials. He’s unsure of exactly what he’s supposed to do.“If I am supposed to present my credentials to a local official in person, I will have to travel at considerable expense and inconvenience, just because Griffin couldn’t bother with the inconvenience of ensuring that the names on his list were in fact improperly registered,” he said. More

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      These Tennessee lawmakers love the unborn. After birth? Not so much

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      Think of the children? NahYou’ve probably seen this quote from an Alabama pastor called Dave Barnhart. It goes viral all the time. But I’m resurfacing the quote because it is another day that ends with “y” in America, which means it is relevant once again.“The unborn are a convenient group of people to advocate for,” Barnhart said back in 2018, remarking wryly on the movement’s priorities. “They never make demands of you … They don’t need money, education or childcare … They allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn.”Over in Tennessee, there are a lot of lawmakers who are very proud of how much they advocate for unborn children. In 2022, as soon as Roe was overturned, the state passed one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans – one without explicit exceptions to save the life of a pregnant person. The ban also made performing or attempting to perform an abortion a class C felony – akin to aggravated assault – which means aiding in an abortion can land you prison time and a hefty fine. That ban has been continuously challenged in court but the bottom line is that getting an abortion in Tennessee is almost impossible.Those Tennessee lawmakers who love unborn children? Surprise, surprise, they’re not so keen on the born ones. Particularly if those kids are immigrants. On Thursday, the GOP-dominated state senate approved a bill that lets public schools check the citizenship or legal immigration status of every student. Undocumented children can be denied enrollment at these public schools or forced to pay tuition. In other words: Tennessee wants to make it legal to deny undocumented kids an education. By requiring school systems to check legal immigrant status, they’re also turning what should be safe spaces into immigration enforcement centers.All of which, to be clear, is blatantly unconstitutional. In 1982, the supreme court decision in Plyler v Doe found states cannot deny students a free public education over their immigration status. The Tennessee bill is not law yet, and if the Tennessee governor does sign it, it will almost certainly face legal challenges. But even if it eventually gets struck down, there is a chance it will stay on the books as a “zombie law” – ready to rise again when circumstances allow.Perhaps you are wondering why all these fierce advocates for the rights of unborn children are so keen on denying kids an education? According to lawmakers who voted for the measure, it’s not because they’re hateful racists who want to punish kids, it’s because they are being fiscally responsible. Their argument is that the state simply doesn’t have enough money for education for undocumented kids, particularly since some will require English language learner classes.There’s a small possibility – just throwing it out there – that one of the reasons Tennessee is finding it hard to find money for education is because its regressive tax policies are heavily weighted towards extracting money from the poor rather than making the rich pay their fair share. Tennessee is one of the nine states in the US that doesn’t have an income tax. It also doesn’t have inheritance tax and has very low business tax. Residents (including undocumented immigrants) pay sales tax, property tax and a grocery tax. Undocumented immigrants are putting money into the system and getting very little out of it. Pretending that this attack on undocumented children is about money is disingenuous. Deep down, I’m sure even the people voting for the bill know that investing in children pays dividends to society.Still, while it is disheartening that a bill like this got as far as it did, it’s also important to note that it faced a lot of opposition. Nearly half of the senate’s members spoke on the bill – many of them, including some Republicans, in passionate disagreement. There were tears and a lot of Bible verses quoted about compassion for children. As the US becomes increasingly dystopian, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of just how much opposition there is to the extremist policies and legislation a hate-filled minority are pushing through. Donald Trump likes to say that winning the popular vote gave him and his cronies a mandate to do whatever they like; that all the policies getting passed have the support of the people. This simply isn’t true. Only around 32% of eligible voters actually voted for Trump.While we must not minimize the amount of misogyny and racism there is in the US (and there is a lot!), we should also take heart from the fact that a sizable number of Americans do not want to live in an authoritarian dystopia where women have no rights and undocumented kids get no education. Sixty-three percent of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases according to Pew research from 2024. Most Americans say undocumented immigrants should have a way to stay in the country legally if certain requirements are met. Increasingly, the actions of the American government don’t reflect the views of the American people.Which, of course, is why the Trump administration is so obsessed with undermining education as a whole. From trying to stop undocumented immigrants from going to school, to tightly controlling how Ivy League universities operate, to attempting to eliminate the US Department of Education, Republicans are waging a war on critical thinking.The US just made it harder for married women to voteOn Thursday the US House approved the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which requires people to prove they are citizens when they vote. If you changed your birth name – as around 80% of women in opposite-sex marriages in the US have – you will have to show a lot more paperwork to vote.Mickey Rourke tells JoJo Siwa he will tie her up and make her straightI had to look up who Rourke is because he hasn’t been relevant for a while. Now, however, he is making headlines for being misogynistic and homophobic on Celebrity Big Brother UK. Rourke, 72, recently told JoJo Siwa (a gay singer and social media personality) that he’d turn her straight. “If I stay [in the Big Brother house] longer than four days, you won’t be gay any more,” Rourke said to Siwa in a clip from Wednesday. “I’ll tie you up,” he added. Rourke got a warning from producers for his language but his comments were not censored. This is in stark contrast to a Big Brother “controversy” last year, when ITV, the broadcaster, edited an episode of the show to remove shots of a T-shirt worn by one of the contestants featuring a watermelon, which is a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhite House says it will ignore reporters with gender pronouns in email signatureThe amount of time these people spend obsessing over pronouns boggles the mind. Get a hobby! Get therapy! Try thinking about literally anything else!Student found guilty of rape goes unpunished because of promising future in gynecologyA criminal court in Leuven, Belgium, recently found a 24-year-old medical student, who was training as a gynaecologist, guilty of rape but suspended his sentence because of his lack of prior offences and his “promising future”. This has sparked a lot of anger in Belgium and many commentators have drawn parallels to the Brock Turner case in the US.Does sitting behind a screen turn you into a woman?Fox News’s Jesse Watters, who sits behind a screen all day, seems to think so. This profundity comes after he declared public soup consumption unmanly and said that real men “don’t wave simultaneously with two hands”.The week in pawtriarchyRemember those tariffs Trump imposed on Heard Island and McDonald Islands, inhabited only by penguins? Those penguins now have their own social media account, @PenguinsAgainstTrump. “What are you going to do, deport us?” one post reads. “We’ve been dealing with ICE for centuries.” More

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      North Carolina judges back Republican colleague in bid to toss votes and overturn election

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      More than 65,000 people in North Carolina who believed they were eligible to vote could have their ballots thrown out nearly five months after election day, flipping the results of a supreme court election, a state appeals court ruled on Friday.The 2-1 ruling from the North Carolina court of appeals came in response to Republicans’ months-long effort to overturn the results of the state supreme court election in November. The Democrat Allison Riggs, who currently sits on the court, defeated appellate judge Jefferson Griffin, a Republican, by 734 votes. After the election, Griffin filed a protest seeking to get around 60,000 votes thrown out.Griffin currently sits on the North Carolina court of appeals – the body that issued Friday’s ruling. A panel of three of his colleagues heard the case.“To permit unlawful votes to be counted along with lawful ballots in contested elections effectively ‘disenfranchises’ those voters who cast legal ballots, at least where the counting of unlawful votes determines an election’s outcome,” Judges John Tyson and Fred Gore wrote for the majority.In a statement, Riggs said: “We will be promptly appealing this deeply misinformed decision that threatens to disenfranchise more than 65,000 lawful voters and sets a dangerous precedent, allowing disappointed politicians to thwart the will of the people.”The election is the only 2024 race still undecided.The state board of elections previously rejected Griffin’s request and a superior court judge upheld their decision. Friday’s ruling from the court of appeals overturned that ruling and ordered the state board to give challenged voters 15 days to prove their eligibility.When the case reaches the seven-member North Carolina supreme court, Riggs will be recused from hearing it. Without her, Republicans will have a 5-1 majority. If the court were to deadlock, the ruling from the court of appeals would stand.More than 60,000 of the voters challenged failed to provide either a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their social security number on their voter registration forms. Another 5,500 challenged ballots came from overseas voters who had failed to provide ID.Republicans had filed a lawsuit making similar arguments ahead of election day last year and had it rejected. North Carolina has required the identifying information since 2004 to register to vote, but the state did not update its voter registration form until 2023.The ruling also said that voters who had never lived in the state, grew up overseas, and cast a ballot in the state were ineligible to vote and their votes should not count. That category of people typically includes children of North Carolinians who moved abroad before they turned 18.In a lengthy dissenting opinion, judge Toby Hampson noted that Griffin had not identified a single voter who cast a ballot who should not have been able to. Instead, he said, he was trying to change the rules around eligibility after the election.“The diligent actions these voters undertook to exercise their sacred fundamental right to vote was, indeed, the same as every other similarly situated voter exercising their voting right in the very same election,” he wrote.“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the constitution.”Hampson said he was doubtful that many voters would respond to a notice to prove their eligibility.“The proposition that a significant portion of these 61,682 voters will receive notice and timely take curative measures is a fiction that does not disguise the act of mass disenfranchisement the majority’s decision represents,” he wrote.Bob Phillips, the executive director of the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, a watchdog group, called the ruling a “disgrace” that “could disenfranchise tens of thousands of lawful voters and invite similar challenges nationwide”.Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, said the decision had “no legal basis and is an all-out assault on our democracy and the basic premise that voters decide who wins their elections, not the courts”. More

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      Democratic attorneys general sue Trump over ‘illegal’ voting order

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      A coalition of 19 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday, arguing that a recent executive order signed by the president that seeks to overhaul the nation’s elections was “unconstitutional, anti-democratic, and un-American”.The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Massachusetts, challenges several provisions of the far-reaching executive order issued last week, including the proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration and new rules requiring all mail ballots be received by election day.The attorneys general accuse the president of overstepping his authority and allege that the order “usurps the states’ constitutional power and seeks to amend election law by fiat”.Among the defendants named in the lawsuit are Trump, the attorney general Pam Bondi and the United States Election Assistance Commission, an independent agency charged with helping to improve election administration and ensuring voting accessibility and security.The state attorneys general say they are asking a judge to declare the provisions “unconstitutional and void”.“The president’s executive order has no legal justification and far exceeds the scope of his constitutional authority,” the California attorney general Rob Bonta, a Democrat, said during a press conference on Thursday afternoon.“Let me be clear: Trump is acting like he’s above the law. He isn’t. He’s violating the US constitution. He can’t, which is why we’re taking action.”The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the lawsuit, the attorneys general repeatedly cite the elections clause of the constitution, which says that states set the “times, places and manner” of elections. The clause allows Congress to pass federal voting laws, which House Republicans are racing to do, but “nowhere does the constitution provide the president, or the executive branch, with any independent power to modify the states’ procedures for conducting federal elections”, the attorneys general assert in the complaint.California was joined by the Democratic attorneys general of Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.Aaron Ford, the Democratic attorney general of Nevada, said Trump’s executive order was not only unconstitutional but “unnecessary”. He said that all US states had a “vested interest” in ensuring a fair election process.“To insinuate otherwise and to seek to impose restrictions based on these insinuations, is political gamesmanship. Frankly, it’s illegal political gamesmanship,” Ford said during the press conference with Bonta.“Blackmailing states with the removal of election security funding unless we comply with the order is a far more damaging and harmful threat than any perceived dangers the president is peddling falsehoods over.”Trump’s elections order, described by White House staff secretary Will Scharf as “the farthest-reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, also faces legal challenges brought by the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, and Senate and House Democratic leaders, as well as a separate lawsuit filed by two nonprofit organizations, the Campaign Legal Center and the State Democracy Defenders Fund.These lawsuits were filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia.Trump, a prolific spreader of election falsehoods who sought to overturn his 2020 defeat on the baseless claim of a stolen election, has said the order is necessary to protect US elections against illegal non-citizen voting. Instances of noncitizens casting ballots in federal elections – a felony crime – are exceedingly rare. Yet Trump and Republicans have continued to amplify the myth.Trump’s order stated that the US had failed “to enforce basic and necessary election protection”, despite reports by elections officials that the recent elections have been among the most secure in US history.“The president seemingly had no qualms with the result of the last election and happily took office for a second term,” Bonta said. “That’s because our elections are secure.” More

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      Republicans are quietly trying to disenfranchise millions of voters | Alexis Anderson-Reed

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      The first months of the new Trump administration have been dizzying with the breadth of executive actions to slash the social safety net, further enrich the wealthy, and inflame division based on outdated notions about culture and identity. While White House policy pronouncements have come with flair and political theater – such as the president signing orders on a Jumbotron – in Congress there are quieter but equally pernicious efforts aimed at silencing the votes and voices of communities across the country.One such piece of legislation is the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or Save Act, which would require Americans seeking to register or re-register to vote to prove US citizenship. This dangerous bill would in effect strip millions of Americans of their access to the vote, while making the voting process more difficult and burdensome for everyone else. Rather than make our elections more secure, the Save Act would disenfranchise millions based on nothing but a series of debunked conspiracy theories.Last week, meanwhile, the White House issued an executive order that would upend voter registration and our elections – requiring additional proof of citizenship on federal voting forms; seeking to block states from from processing mail-in ballots after election day; paving the way for funding cuts to states that refuse to fall in line; and directing Elon Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency” to review voter information. It’s a blatant, brazen and unlawful attempt to try to remake our election system by fiat that represents a direct attack on the checks and balances that have secured our elections for generations. The order is sure to face legal hurdles and should not stand up to scrutiny by the courts or the American people. Now, at the same time as we are calling out this attempted power grab by the Trump administration, we must also prevent Congress from making the mistake of disenfranchising millions of voters.According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice, more than 21 million US citizens of voting age don’t have easy access to proof of citizenship documents, and only about half of American adults have a passport, while millions do not have access to paper copies of their birth certificates. Married women whose legal names do not match their birth certificates could be disenfranchised by the Save Act, and folks looking to obtain lost or misplaced birth certificates would face financial and logistical hurdles.The Save Act would restrict voters’ ability to register to vote online and through the mail while also severely limiting the ability of non-partisan civic organizations to conduct voter registration drives, which have been crucial to civic engagement for more than a century. That’s because, despite voters’ ability to register to vote at the DMV and registration efforts by political parties, data shows that voter registration drives from non-partisan organizations can account for about one-fifth of voter registration applicants – roughly equal to the political power of California, Florida and Texas combined. We simply cannot sit back and allow Congress or the White House to destroy the infrastructure of our elections by disenfranchising so many voters.Voter registration drives by non-profits have a rich and powerful history, dating back to the League of Women Voters and other civic groups encouraging women to register in the 1920s after the passage of the 19th amendment. During the Freedom Summer of 1964 in Mississippi, students from northern states traveled to Mississippi to canvass the state and register Black people to vote as the civil rights movement pushed back on centuries of racist voter suppression. And in more modern elections, voter registration drives have become a critical vehicle for driving community engagement among communities of color and marginalized groups that the traditional political system has left behind. Historically, political parties categorize voters based on their likelihood to vote, and “low propensity” voters are sometimes considered unworthy of political candidates’ time and resources. Without non-profit organizations and civic groups stepping in to spur engagement, we risk a vicious cycle in which marginalized communities are completely ignored.At State Voices, the nation’s largest non-partisan civic engagement network responsible for collecting more than 840,000 voter registration applications and contacting more than 66 million voters in 2024, we see first-hand the impact of voter registration drives to reach communities that are overlooked and underserved. Last year, our affiliate in Nevada, Silver State Voices, sent staff to help register tribal members from the Duck Valley and Pine Nut Reservations – carrying downloaded maps to register applicants who live in rural areas without a street address. In Wyoming, a network of civic organizations helped a county clerk to register hundreds of high school seniors. And in Nebraska, the Nebraska Voting Rights Coalition helps register newly eligible voters who have completed probation and parole requirements due to past felony convictions. These stories represent only a tiny fraction of the impact of nonpartisan voter registration efforts in communities across the country – and they’re all under threat should the Save Act become law.Our nation faces huge questions in the coming elections about the future of our economy, our healthcare system, our children’s education, the environment and more. For our democracy to thrive, we must allow voters to have their say – not restrict who has a voice based on logistical hurdles. As this bill moves forward, it is imperative for people to make clear to their members of Congress that they must reject the Save Act permanently.

      Alexis Anderson-Reed is the president of State Voices, which coordinates hyper-local election registration, education and mobilization across 24 states with 1,200 partners in Bipoc and working-class communities across the country More

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      Trump signs executive order that will upend US voter registration processes

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      Donald Trump has signed a far-reaching executive order that promises to fundamentally disrupt American voter registration processes, introducing measures so restrictive they could in effect disenfranchise millions of citizens if enacted.Described by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary, on Tuesday as “the farthest reaching executive action taken” in the nation’s history, the order represents the latest in a long list of assaults against immigration, but also on current voting systems.The sweeping order amends the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship in order to vote. It demands documentary proof for citizenship such as a passport to be eligible to vote in federal elections, empowers federal agencies to cut funding to states deemed non-compliant and instructs the Department of Justice to prosecute what the White House paints as “election crimes”.The measure also seeks to block states from accepting mail-in ballots after election day, regardless of when they are mailed in.Many of the provisions in the order are likely to be quickly challenged and are legally suspect. The US constitution explicitly gives states and Congress the authority to set the rules for election and does not authorize the president to do so.“The short answer is that this executive order, like all too many that we’ve seen before, is lawless and asserts all sorts of executive authority that he most assuredly does not have,” said Danielle Lang, a voting rights lawyer at the non-profit Campaign Legal Center.Republicans have long sought to add a citizenship to the federal form and been stymied by the courts. In a 7-2 decision in 2013, for example, the US supreme court said that Arizona could not require proof of citizenship to vote in federal elections. The power to set the requirements on the federal form is left to the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission. Courts have also blocked efforts to short-circuit efforts to add the question.The order tracks with a controversial bill in Congress Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (Save) Act, which would require Americans to prove citizenship in person – a requirement that could immediately eliminate mail-in and online voter registration already across 42 states, as well as DC and Guam.All metrics point to these actions making it harder, not easier, for Americans to vote. According to the state department in 2023, fewer than half of all Americans had a valid passport, and nearly 69 million women who have changed their names would struggle to produce matching documentation, according to a Center for American Progress analysis.Kansas had a law requiring proof of citizenship in effect between 2013 and 2016. It wound up putting the registrations of 30,000 people in jeopardy – the vast majority of whom were eligible to vote.The Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement reported in 2024 that roughly 21 million voting-age Americans, about 9% of the population, do not have a current, valid ID.Despite Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, federal law already prohibits non-citizens from voting, with penalties including up to five years in prison. Current election systems already use multiple federal databases to verify voter eligibility, including citizenship data from the Department of Homeland Security.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA day after the 2024 elections, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) director, Jen Easterly – the agency in charge of overseeing election security in the United States – said: “Our election infrastructure has never been more secure and the election community never better prepared to deliver safe, secure, free and fair elections for the American people.“Importantly, we have no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure,” Easterly added.Still, Trump framed the order as a critical step in “straightening out our election”, claiming the country is “sick” from what he termed “fake elections.” He added that “there are other steps that we will be taking as the next in the coming weeks” when it comes to the electoral process.This action continues Trump’s long-term efforts to reshape democratic participation, a throwback to his 2020 memo to exclude non-citizens from census population counts that would be used to shape congressional districts. The rhetoric and subsequent follow through represents a potentially transformative – and deeply controversial – approach to voter eligibility that could redefine access to the ballot box.“Perhaps some people think I shouldn’t be complaining because we won in a landslide, but we got to straighten out our election,” Trump said as he signed Tuesday’s order. More

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      Alarm as Republican judge who lost election pushes voter-fraud claim

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      Four months after the 2024 election, and after recounts affirmed his loss, a North Carolina judge running for a seat on the state’s high court has yet to concede. Instead, Jefferson Griffin is still trying to remove more than 65,000 voters’ ballots from the count, contending they were not lawfully able to vote.Griffin’s case, closely watched by both political parties for its ability to set a precedent in a swing state, is now before the state’s court of appeals, on which he sits. Griffin, a Republican, lost to Democratic supreme court justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes, affirmed by two recounts. The parties filed briefs in early March, and the Republican-leaning court of appeals is expected to schedule arguments soon.Griffin wants to discard these votes because he alleges their registration information was incomplete, among other arguments, but voting rights advocates say the effort will disenfranchise eligible voters, including new voters and those who have been voting successfully for many years.“We view this case as a harbinger for what could come in other states, if this is viewed as an example to draw upon in future elections, and we also view it as an example of what at least some members of the Republican party are willing to do in order to win at the cost of our democratic system,” said Ann Webb, policy director with Common Cause North Carolina.In January, the North Carolina supreme court prevented the state board of elections from certifying the vote while the court cases play out. Three justices agreed in a concurring opinion defending Griffin’s challenges that election protests were an important legal right and that Griffin was not seeking to disenfranchise voters. Instead, the case was about “preserving the public’s trust and confidence in our elections through the rule of law”, a Republican justice wrote. Riggs has recused herself from the case.There are multiple lawsuits alleging the state board of elections should not have allowed wide swaths of voters to be eligible, attempting to negate their ballots. The Republican National Committee filed a similar suit, in which the Democratic National Committee has intervened.North Carolina citizens, including candidates, can file protests to ballots, and these challenges are not uncommon in the state. Griffin first filed the challenges to the Democratic-majority state board of elections, which denied them, leading him to sue. A federal court said state courts should first decide the state law issues in the case, then federal courts could review federal laws at play. A Wake County Superior Court judge ruled against Griffin, and Griffin appealed.Griffin’s challenge stands out because of its breadth and how it attacks rules in place before the election. He isn’t alleging fraud or that voters erred, but that he didn’t agree with the rules in place at the time of the election, Webb said.“This case that Jefferson Griffin is pursuing is essentially the mass election protest that we expected to see from Trump if he had a narrow loss, and it is clearly being driven by an extremist agenda likely from outside North Carolina to experiment with pushing the limits of election law and making it more possible to challenge elections in this kind of unprecedented way,” said Webb, whose group has opposed Griffin’s challenges and planned rallies around the state.Griffin challenged more than 65,000 voters: about 60,000 of them, he alleges, had incomplete vote registrations, for issues like a missing driver’s license number or social security digits, even if they registered more than a decade ago; more than 5,500 absentee ballots from overseas military members and their families, saying they didn’t provide photo ID, which is not required by law for this group of voters; and a couple hundred ballots of overseas voters who have not resided in the US but have ties to North Carolina.The challenges had a disproportionate impact on young voters – about one-fourth of those in the incomplete registration group are aged 18 to 25, WUNC reported. About one-fourth of the students who voted at Duke University were challenged, as were about 400 ballots at North Carolina Central University, a historically Black college.But voters of all backgrounds and political parties were part of the challenge. A Republican city councilman who was challenged told the New York Times that Griffin was being a “sore loser”.In a brief before the appellate court, Griffin’s lawyers claim the state elections board had “broken the law for decades, while refusing to correct its errors”.“This case presents a fundamental question: who decides our election laws? Is it the people and their elected representatives, or the unelected bureaucrats sitting on the state board of elections?”Lawyers for the state elections board said Griffin “seeks to retroactively change longstanding election rules by bringing novel legal claims”. The board also claims Griffin did not provide adequate notice to voters who were challenged – a postcard with a QR code mass-mailed to challenged voters did not meet legal requirements for notice.Riggs, who currently sits on the Republican-dominated supreme court, made similar arguments. “Judge Griffin’s protests were properly rejected because they pose a risk to the stability and integrity of our elections. His effort to change the rules after an election is unprecedented,” lawyers for Riggs wrote in an appellate brief.Spring Dawson-McClure still doesn’t know if her vote will ultimately count, despite it being counted at least twice so far, because Republicans claim her voter registration wasn’t complete.She received a postcard from the North Carolina Republican Party in November, after she voted, that said her vote “may be affected by one or more protests filed in relation to the 2024 general election”. It directed her to scan a QR code to view the protest filings. She initially thought, given the sparse information, that it was a general notice sent to voters to “stir up the idea that there had been voter fraud”.But she found her name listed on a websiteand reached out to her county and the state board of elections to see what happened. She went to the county elections office in person, where they pulled up a copy of her voter registration application.She credited the “audacity to hyphenate my name when I got married” for her inclusion on the list – her current name did not match up with a social security database, though her maiden name did. Contrary to the characterization that more than 60,000 voters didn’t provide necessary information to register, Dawson-McClure’s application was complete.She has voted in 19 elections since 2012, previously without issue. She joined a rally in her town, attended by hundreds of people, to protest against Griffin’s election challenge.“Truthfully, I’m shocked that this is happening,” she said. “I also actually feel quite scared. I feel scared for the future, that my children will live in this state, in this country, and that if our voting rights are not honored in this case, that we will never have free and fair elections in North Carolina again.” More