Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares144 Views

    Activists File ‘Bad-Faith’ Ballot Challenges, Pennsylvania Officials Say

    by

    Right-wing activists and G.O.P. state lawmakers have questioned the eligibility of some 4,000 people who requested ballots.One by one, they testified under oath: a military spouse who moves every three years. A man just back from six months of traveling around the country. A graduate student temporarily away for school.All were eligible voters who had cast a mail ballot in Chester County, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, before Election Day. And they, along with more than 200 others, had their votes challenged by a single activist, who questioned whether they met residency requirements.Some 4,000 such ballot challenges were delivered to 14 election offices across the critical battleground state by Friday, the deadline. The challenges represent an escalation of a tactic that has been used increasingly since the 2020 election. While thousands of voter registrations have been contested since then, the Pennsylvania cases could toss out votes already cast — a move election officials say they have rarely seen on this large a scale.Many of the challenges were submitted by activists who have mobilized around Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods about rigged elections. Election officials warn that the challenges not only threaten to disenfranchise voters, but they also propel unnecessary skepticism about the integrity of the election.“These challenges are based on theories that courts have repeatedly rejected,” the Pennsylvania Department of State said in a statement, adding that they were made in “bad faith,” appeared coordinated and were meant to “undermine the confidence in the Nov. 5 election.”A leading activist in Pennsylvania disputed state officials’ characterization of the effort. Heather Honey, the activist, said the challenges “could not be in better faith.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 138 Shares87 Views

      in Elections

      Judge Allows Iowa to Challenge Voters It Suspects of Being Noncitizens

      by

      A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Iowa may continue challenging hundreds of potential ballots cast in the election on the basis that the voters might be noncitizens, a move that critics say could disenfranchise legitimate voters.Iowa’s secretary of state, Paul Pate, a Republican, issued a letter to county commissioners last month challenging the status of 2,176 people on voter rolls, saying that they had previously identified themselves to a state agency as noncitizens. The plaintiffs in the case were four recently naturalized U.S. citizens whose voting status was challenged, despite being eligible to vote. They had asked the court for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to rescind the letter and restore the status of any voters removed from the rolls.But Judge Stephen H. Locher of the Southern District of Iowa, who was appointed by President Biden, said that a small minority of the 2,176 registered voters — about 12 percent, or about 250 people — “are indeed registered voters who are not United States citizens,” and that granting an injunction “effectively forces local election officials to allow ineligible voters to vote.”It is a felony for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election, potentially resulting in jail time, a fine and deportation.Judge Locher also pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that allowed Virginia to purge about 1,600 people from its voter rolls in supporting his decision to allow the challenge to go forward.But he also expressed concern at some of the directives in Mr. Pate’s letter, which he said directed local election officials to challenge the legitimacy of a voter on the list “even when the local officials themselves do not suspect the person is ineligible to vote” and “require voters on the list to file provisional ballots even when they have proven citizenship at the polling place.”In a statement, Mr. Pate said that the ruling was “a win for Iowa’s election integrity,” adding that his role “requires balance — ensuring that on one hand, every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot while ensuring that only eligible voters participate in Iowa elections.” More

    • 113 Shares165 Views

      in Elections

      Uncertainty Reigns in Nevada With Rise of Nonpartisan Voters

      by

      With early voting coming to a close, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris must now ensure their respective bases show up on Election Day, while chasing down those whose choice is less clear.As early voting came to a close in Nevada, many of the state’s most veteran pollsters, pundits and political operatives — no strangers to close elections and their accompanying jitters — are finding it uniquely difficult to predict what happens next.Republicans, thrilled with their surprise early voting edge, say they are well on their way to making former President Donald J. Trump the first Republican to win the state since 2004. Democrats agree that Republicans have seized an unusual and anxiety-inducing advantage, but insist that their prized organizing machine will put Vice President Kamala Harris over the top.But what’s making this presidential election different is the sheer number of voters who don’t officially identify with either party. Thanks to the state’s relatively new automatic voter registration law, nonpartisan voters became Nevada’s largest voting bloc in 2022, outpacing both Democratic and Republican registrations.Figuring out who those voters are, and how or if they will cast a ballot, has been a crucial challenge for the campaigns scrambling to find and sway those last few persuadable people. Changes in voting patterns wrought by the pandemic four years ago are also throwing prognosticators for a loop.“The Achilles’ heel of early vote analysis is that it’s really difficult to make cycle-to-cycle comparisons,” said Adam Jentleson, who was a senior aide to Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the longtime Democratic leader, “and that has never been more true than in this cycle.”All of those factors combined mean “you are flying blind,” he added.The race is tied, according to The New York Times’s polling average. Both Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris have visited Nevada multiple times, emphasizing that every ballot will make a difference.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares106 Views

      in Elections

      As Trump Sows Doubt on Pennsylvania Voting, Officials Say the System Is Working

      by

      With about a week to go before Election Day, officials from two Pennsylvania counties announced that they had found large batches of suspicious voter registration forms. While at least some of the documents appeared to be fraudulent, there is no indication that any of them are ballots, though officials clarified that they were continuing to investigate.To hear former President Donald J. Trump’s telling, Pennsylvania’s election system was already melting down.“They’ve already started cheating in Lancaster,” he said at a rally on Tuesday night in Allentown, Pa. “Every vote was written by the same person.” He made similar allegations about York County, building on claims that he made on social media earlier in the day about “Really bad ‘stuff,’” in the two counties. “Law Enforcement must do their job, immediately!!!”, he insisted.But contrary to Mr. Trump’s incendiary claim that fake ballots had been cast, there were no reports of actual ballots being among the two batches of documents. And on the ground, away from the high-strung channels of social media, law enforcement was already doing its job.Neither a representative for the Trump campaign nor the state G.O.P. immediately responded to requests for comment.Thousands of voter registration forms, as well as some mail-in ballot applications, were submitted in large batches by out-of-state canvassing groups. Some of the paperwork raised suspicions among county election workers, and officials from both counties said any forms that appeared to be fraudulent would be turned over to local prosecutors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares146 Views

      in Elections

      No, noncitizens are not voting in droves.

      by

      The false claimFormer President Donald J. Trump and his allies have falsely claimed that scores of noncitizens — including illegal immigrants — are voting or trying to vote in the United States presidential elections.Why it is falseIt is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, and studies have concluded that noncitizen voting is essentially nonexistent.A 2017 analysis from the Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive nonprofit, showed that election officials in 42 jurisdictions found only about 30 incidents of potential noncitizen voting in the 2016 election — among more than 23.5 million votes cast, or 0.0001 percent. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, called claims of widespread noncitizen voting “bogus” this year after reviewing state policies and previous audits.Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, announced in October that the state had found only 20 noncitizens among 8.2 million registered voters. An earlier audit he conducted in 2022, going back 25 years, identified 1,634 people who had tried to register to vote but whose citizenship couldn’t be verified. None were allowed to cast a ballot. Georgia has not identified any example of a noncitizen in Georgia who voted in that time.How the falsehoods are being usedThe claim has played a central role in voter fraud conspiracy theories for years, but Mr. Trump and other Republicans have made it a focal point of their targets against immigration and election integrity.“There’s going to be thousands upon thousands of noncitizens voting,” Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, told Politico — a claim he has repeated in news conferences. “If you have enough noncitizens participating in some of these swing areas, you can change the outcome of the election in the majority.”In July, a group tied to the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, published a video claiming to show noncitizens who were registered to vote. The New York Times found that the video was deceptive. Three of the seven people said they had misspoken, and state investigators found no evidence that any of the people had registered to vote.In October, Mr. Trump claimed that the Department of Justice was trying to put illegal voters “back on the Voter Rolls” in Virginia. The Justice Department sued to stop the Republican governor’s executive order that could remove noncitizen voters. The department cited a federal law that prevents purging voter rolls en masse within 90 days of an election — a process that a lawyer with the Justice Department said puts “qualified voters in jeopardy of being removed from the rolls and creates the risk of confusion for the electorate.” More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Republican Legal Challenges to Voting Rules Hit a Rough Patch

      by

      The legal wars over election rules are raging even as voters around the country cast ballots. And several recent efforts by groups aligned with former President Donald J. Trump to challenge voting rules have been coming up short in federal and state courts.Judges in a number of political battlegrounds and other states have rejected legal challenges this month to voter rolls and procedures by Republicans and their allies.The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled that election officials cannot bar people with felony convictions from voting after their sentences are served.A Michigan state judge rejected a Republican attempt to prevent certain citizens living abroad, including military members, from being eligible to cast an absentee ballot in that swing state.And a federal judge in Arizona rejected a last-minute push by a conservative group to run citizenship checks on tens of thousands of voters.“They are hitting quite a losing streak,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research, who advises both Democratic and Republican election officials on rules and procedures and has been tracking election-related litigation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      G.O.P. Lawmaker Voices Support for Giving North Carolina’s Electors to Trump

      by

      Representative Andy Harris, Republican of Maryland, appeared to voice support for a plan for North Carolina’s Republican-controlled Legislature to award former President Donald J. Trump the swing state’s electoral votes, according to video of a conservative gathering on Thursday that was posted on social media.Mr. Harris, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, later walked back his comments in a statement on Friday, saying that the “theoretical conversation has been taken out of context” and that “every legal vote should be counted.”His comments, reported earlier on Friday by Politico, came in an exchange with Ivan Raiklin, a lawyer and a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump who promoted a plan in 2020 to pressure former Vice President Mike Pence not to certify electors from several disputed swing states.Mr. Harris appeared to use the hurricane-damaged region of western North Carolina as a rationale for the plan, falsely saying that the voters there had been “disenfranchised.” The North Carolina State Board of Elections approved several emergency measures this month to ensure that voters in the region who were reeling from the effects of Hurricane Helene could still cast ballots.Early in-person voting in the 13 most-affected counties has fared well so far, despite challenges presented by storm recovery efforts. Voters in those counties account for 8 percent of the state’s registered voters, and they have accounted for nearly the same percentage of accepted votes in the state so far. “It looks like things are improving,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C.Representative Patrick McHenry, Republican of North Carolina, told reporters on Friday that “it makes no sense whatsoever to prejudge the election outcome,” according to Politico.“That is a misinformed view of what is happening on the ground in North Carolina,” Mr. McHenry said of Mr. Harris. “Bless his heart.” More

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math

      by

      A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.“Math is power” is the tag line of a new documentary, “Counted Out,” currently making the rounds at festivals and community screenings. (It will have a limited theatrical release next year.) The film explores the intersection of mathematics, civil rights and democracy. And it delves into how an understanding of math, or lack thereof, affects society’s ability to deal with its most pressing challenges and crises — health care, climate, misinformation, elections.“When we limit access to the power of math to a select few, we limit our progress as a society,” said Vicki Abeles, the film’s director and a former Wall Street lawyer.Ms. Abeles was spurred to make the film in part in response to an anxiety about math that she had long observed in students, including her middle-school-age daughter. She was also struck by the math anxiety among friends and colleagues, and by the extent to which they tried to avoid math altogether. She wondered: Why are people so afraid of math? What are the consequences?One of many mathematicians who share their perspectives in the film is Ismar Volic, a professor at Wellesley College and a founder, in 2019, of the Institute for Mathematics and Democracy. He is also the author of “Making Democracy Count: How Mathematics Improves Voting, Electoral Maps and Representation.”Dr. Volic grew up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country that in the early 1990s went through “a horrific war,” he said. “I am familiar with what collapse of democracy can lead to.” He saw parallels between what happened in Bosnia and what was happening in the United States and around the world. “That has driven me in the last few years, understanding the mechanics of democracy, the infrastructure of democracy, which is very much mathematical,” he said.The following conversation, conducted by videoconference and email, has been condensed and edited for clarity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Could Second-Home Owners Swing New York’s Swing Districts?

      by

      A group is pushing thousands of New Yorkers to vote from weekend homes in swing districts. Its pitch: “Your second home could determine the next speaker.”Lauren B. Cramer has raised two daughters in Brooklyn, where she lives and commutes into Manhattan as a lawyer. Allen Zerkin, an adjunct professor of public service, lives just a few miles away. So does Heather Weston, an entrepreneur.But come this Election Day, all three Brooklynites — along with five other members of their households — plan to cast their ballots to support Democrats much farther afield in closely divided swing districts in New York’s Hudson Valley.They are part of a growing set of affluent, mostly left-leaning New Yorkers taking advantage of an unusual quirk in state law that allows second-home owners to vote from their country cottages, vacation homes and Hamptons houses that just happen to dot some of the most competitive congressional districts in the country.Call it the rise of weekender politics.It is no accident. With a half-dozen competitive districts, New York has taken center stage in the fight for Congress, and Democratic organizers believe that registering a fraction of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who own second homes could help tip a Republican majority to a Democratic one.As of late September, they had helped nearly 2,500 voters shift their registration from New York City into one of the state’s swing districts, according to data provided by MoveIndigo, a group spearheading the effort. The numbers are expected to grow as voting nears.The sprawling 19th District has seen the biggest shift, with 1,040 voters newly registered at second homes in the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions, according to the group. Representative Marc Molinaro, a Republican, won the seat by 4,500 votes in 2022, and is running neck and neck with Josh Riley, a Democrat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More