Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

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      Women Are So Fired Up to Vote, I’ve Never Seen Anything Like It

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      I’ve watched Americans in recent years acclimate to some very grim realities. Especially since the ascension of Donald Trump, numerous tragedies and extreme policies have been met with little political consequence: schools targeted by mass murderers, immigrants treated as subhuman and autocratic regimes around the globe affirmed as allies. While Mr. Trump did fail in his re-election bid, a swing of just over 20,000 votes in the three states with the narrowest margins would have produced a win for him, and Democrats hold razor-thin majorities in the House and the Senate.In the weeks following the leak of a draft ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which all but guaranteed the end of abortion protections under Roe v. Wade, it initially seemed this pattern would hold. About three weeks after the leak, a CNN analyst claimed that “the Republican wave is building fast” heading into the midterm elections. In late May, the highly respected election analysts at the Cook Political Report increased their estimate of how many House seats the G.O.P. would gain. The discussion was not focused on whether the November general election would be a “red wave” but rather just how big of a wave it would be.But once the actual Dobbs decision came down, everything changed. For many Americans, confronting the loss of abortion rights was different from anticipating it. In my 28 years analyzing elections, I’ve never seen anything like what’s happened in the past two months in American politics: Women are registering to vote in numbers I’ve never witnessed. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe how different this moment is, especially in light of the cycles of tragedy and eventual resignation of recent years. This is a moment to throw old political assumptions out the window and to consider that Democrats could buck historic trends this cycle.One of the first big signs that things had changed came from Kansas. After voters there defeated a constitutional amendment that would have removed abortion protections in the state in a landslide, I sought to understand how activists could have accomplished such an astounding upset. While it takes several weeks for state election officials to produce full reports on who voted in any given election, there was an immediate clue. I looked at new voter registrants in the state since the June 24 Dobbs decision. As shocking as the election result was to me, what I found was more striking than any single election statistic I can recall discovering throughout my career. Sixty-nine percent of those new registrants were women. In the six months before Dobbs, women outnumbered men by a three-point margin among new voter registrations. After Dobbs, that gender gap skyrocketed to 40 points. Women were engaged politically in a way that lacked any known precedent.Repeating the Kansas analysis across several other states, a clear pattern emerged. Nowhere were the results as stark as they were there, but no other state was facing the issue with the immediacy of an August vote on a constitutional amendment. What my team and I did find was large surges in women registering to vote relative to men, when comparing the period before June 24 and after.The pattern was clearest in states where abortion access was most at risk, and where the electoral stakes for abortion rights this November were the highest. The states with the biggest surges in women registering post-Dobbs were deep red Kansas and Idaho, with Louisiana emerging among the top five states. Key battleground states also showed large increases, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Ohio, which are all facing statewide races in which the fate of abortion access could be decided in November.The surge in women registering and voting helped the Democrat Pat Ryan prevail over Marc Molinaro — one of the more credible Republican recruits this cycle — in New York’s fiercely contested 19th Congressional District last month. This is not the type of performance you would see in a red wave election. Among the mail and early votes cast in the district, women outnumbered men by an 18-point margin, despite accounting for about 52 percent of registered voters.With over two months until Election Day, uncertainty abounds. Election prognostication relies heavily on past precedent. Yet there is no precedent for an election centered around the removal of a constitutional right affirmed a half-century before. Every poll we consume over the closing weeks of this election will rely on a likely voter model for which we have no benchmark.The stakes are high. Going into the midterms this fall, the G.O.P. need only gain six seats in the House and one seat in the Senate to retake control of those chambers, thwarting any hope of advancing federal abortion protections or any number of other liberal priorities.Already, several Republicans seem to be sensing that they’re in trouble. In Arizona, the Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters, an ardent abortion opponent, recently wiped language advocating extreme abortion restrictions from his website.Whether the coming elections will be viewed as a red wave, a Roe wave or something in between will be decided by the actions of millions of Americans — especially, it seems, American women. As Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority decision in Dobbs: “Women are not without electoral or political power.” He was right about that. Republicans might soon find out just how much political power they have.Tom Bonier is a Democratic political strategist and the C.E.O. of TargetSmart, a data and polling firm. He teaches political science at Howard University and is a member of S.E.I.U. Local 500.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act by limiting help to voters, a judge rules.

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      A federal judge ruled that Arkansas violated the Voting Rights Act with its six-voter limit for those who help people cast ballots in person, which critics had argued disenfranchised immigrants and people with disabilities.In a 39-page ruling issued on Friday, Judge Timothy L. Brooks of the U.S. District Court in Fayetteville, Ark., wrote that Congress had explicitly given voters the choice of whom they wanted to assist them at the polls, as long as it was not their employer or union representative.Arkansas United, a nonprofit group that helps immigrants, including many Latinos who are not proficient in English, filed a lawsuit in 2020 after having to deploy additional employees and volunteers to provide translation services to voters at the polls in order to avoid violating the state law, the group said. It described its work as nonpartisan.State and county election officials have said the law was intended to prevent anyone from gaining undue influence.Thomas A. Saenz is the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented Arkansas United in the case. He said in an interview on Monday that the restrictions, enacted in 2009, constituted voter suppression and that the state had failed to present evidence that anyone had gained undue influence over voters when helping them at the polls.Read More About U.S. ImmigrationA Billion-Dollar Business: Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years into a remunerative operation controlled by organized crime.Migrant Apprehensions: Border officials already had apprehended more migrants by June than they had in the entire previous fiscal year, and are on track to exceed two million by the end of September.An Immigration Showdown: In a political move, the governors of Texas and Arizona are offering migrants free bus rides to Washington, D.C. People on the East Coast are starting to feel the effects.“You’re at the polls,” he said. “Obviously, there are poll workers are there. It would seem the most unlikely venue for undue voter influence to occur, frankly.”Mr. Saenz’s organization, known as MALDEF, filed a lawsuit this year challenging similar restrictions in Missouri. There, a person is allowed to help only one voter.In Arkansas, the secretary of state, the State Board of Election Commissioners and election officials in three counties (Washington, Benton and Sebastian) were named as defendants in the lawsuit challenging the voter-assistance restrictions. It was not immediately clear whether they planned to appeal the ruling.Daniel J. Shults, the director of the State Board of Election Commissioners, said in an email on Monday that the agency was reviewing the decision and that its normal practice was to defend Arkansas laws designed to protect election integrity. He said that voter privacy laws in Arkansas barred election officials from monitoring conversations between voters and their helpers and that this made the six-person limit an “important safeguard” against improper influence.“The purpose of the law in question is to prevent the systematic abuse of the voting assistance process,” Mr. Shults said. “Having a uniform limitation on the number of voters a third party may assist prevents a bad actor from having unlimited access to voters in the voting booth while ensuring voter’s privacy is protected.”Chris Powell, a spokesman for the secretary of state, said in an email on Monday that the office was also reviewing the decision and having discussions with the state attorney general’s office about possible next steps.Russell Anzalone, a Republican who is the election commission chairman in Benton County in northwestern Arkansas, said in an email on Monday that he was not familiar with the ruling or any changes regarding voter-assistance rules. He added, “I follow the approved State of Arkansas election laws.”The other defendants in the lawsuit did not immediately respond on Monday to requests for comment.In the ruling, Judge Brooks wrote that state and county election officials could legally keep track of the names and addresses of anyone helping voters at the polls. But they can no longer limit the number to six voters per helper, according to the ruling.Mr. Saenz described the six-voter limit as arbitrary.“I do think that there is a stigma and unfair one on those who are simply doing their part to assist those who have every right to be able to cast a ballot,” he said. More

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      Group Seeks to Block Abortion Vote in Michigan, Citing Typography

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      Conservative groups in Michigan filed challenges this week to efforts to put two constitutional amendments on the ballot in November, one that would guarantee abortion rights and the other that would expand voting access.The challenge to the abortion amendment was based on a lack of spacing between words, which gave some words the appearance of running together. They characterized the typographical errors as “gibberish,” and “incomprehensible argle-bargle.”One group argued that the Michigan Board of State Canvassers should reject the petition to put that amendment to voters, while a second group took issue with the voting petition, saying it failed to identify every current constitutional provision the amendment would override.The board of canvassers will meet on Aug. 31 to decide whether to certify the petitions.The challenge to the abortion measure comes less than three weeks after voters in Kansas overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have let state legislators ban or severely restrict abortion. That vote underscored abortion rights as a salient issue capable of driving voters to the polls after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and it raised advocates’ hopes that Michiganders would vote similarly.Supporters of the petition for the Michigan abortion amendment said they had submitted more than 730,000 signatures, surpassing the roughly 425,000 required, though the board of canvassers needs to verify them.Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaAn Uneasy Champion: President Biden, a practicing Catholic, is being called to lead a fight for abortion rights that he has sidestepped for decades. Advocates wonder if he’s up to the task.Safe Havens: After Roe, conservatives are seeking to expand ways that allow women to give up newborns, such as baby drop boxes. But for many experts in adoption and women’s health, they are hardly a solution.In Mississippi: The state that spurred the overturning of abortion rights, is among 17 that have rejected an option to extend new mothers’ Medicaid coverage.A Rare Prosecution: A teenager used pills to terminate her pregnancy at home with the aid of her mother. Their Facebook messages are now key evidence in a rare prosecution over abortion.Darci McConnell, a spokeswoman for Reproductive Freedom for All, the group promoting the abortion amendment, said that the organization was “confident that we’re in compliance with all legal requirements for ballot proposals” and that hundreds of thousands of voters had “read, understood and signed the petition in support of reproductive freedom for all.”The petition includes the text of the proposed amendment, which would ensure abortion rights broadly until fetal viability and in cases where “the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant individual” was in danger after viability. On some lines, the text is squeezed tightly. In a 152-page challenge, Citizens to Support MI Women and Children, a group that opposes the amendment, argued that the lack of spacing was unacceptable.For instance, in a section that reads, “Every individual has a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, which entails the right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy,” the challengers said the formatting created “nonexistent words” such as “decisionsaboutallmattersrelatingtopregnancy.”They described this and other examples as “nonsensical groupings of letters that are found in no dictionary and are incapable of having any meaning.”The text at issue in a Reproductive Freedom for All petition.State of Michigan“Because the petition fails to use actual words in the full text in its proposed amendment, how can the people know what they are voting for or against?” it said, adding that even if the board of canvassers concluded that these were merely typos, Michigan law did not allow supporters of the amendment to fix such errors at this point in the process. Citizens to Support MI Women and Children directed a request for comment to Genevieve Marnon, the legislative director for Right to Life of Michigan, an anti-abortion group. Ms. Marnon, who filed an affidavit in support of the challenge, said that petitions were “routinely disqualified for technical errors,” saying that state officials had rejected signatures on a 2019 anti-abortion proposal “for small tears in the petition and for return address stickers’ covering a few words of the ‘essential elements’ of the petition.” (Signatures for that campaign, which extended into 2020, were also challenged on substantive grounds, including claims that some were duplicates.)Ms. Marnon attached to her email a mocking word-search puzzle whose answer list consisted of words from the petition — all of them separated in the correct places.Reproductive Freedom for All will file a formal rebuttal by Tuesday, according to Mark Brewer, a lawyer working with the group, who called the complaint a “frivolous Hail Mary challenge.” After that, he said, nonpartisan staff in the Michigan secretary of state’s office will make a recommendation to the board of canvassers on whether the challenge should be upheld.If the board of canvassers — two Democrats and two Republicans — deadlocks at its meeting on Aug. 31, the next step will be the courts. Under the Michigan Constitution, amendments for the November ballot must be finalized by Sept. 9.The challenge to the voting rights amendment was filed on behalf of a group called Defend Your Vote. The proposal it objected to would amend the Michigan Constitution to, among other things, require nine days of early in-person voting and expand access to absentee ballots. It would also bar any law or conduct that “has the intent or effect of denying, abridging, interfering with or unreasonably burdening the fundamental right to vote.”Supporters said they had submitted about 670,000 signatures.In their challenge, lawyers for Defend Your Vote argued that the amendment petition did not specify all of the current constitutional provisions it would modify.One provision they said was improperly omitted designates the “first Tuesday after the first Monday of November” as Election Day. By mandating an early-voting period, the challengers argued, the amendment would render that provision “inoperative.”Micheal Davis Jr., the executive director of Promote the Vote, the group supporting the voting amendment, called the complaint “bogus, baseless and meritless.”The challenge to the voting amendment will be adjudicated through the same process as the challenge to the abortion amendment. A spokeswoman for Promote the Vote said the group had not filed its formal rebuttal yet. More

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis Announces Arrests in Florida for Election Fraud

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      Seven weeks after Florida’s state government opened a new office of election crimes and security, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that 17 people had been charged with casting illegal ballots in the 2020 election, in which 11.1 million Floridians voted.The governor called the arrests “a first salvo” in a long-overdue crackdown on voting crimes. Critics called the announcement a publicity stunt that said less about voter fraud than about holes in the state’s election security apparatus that had allowed the violations to occur in the first place.Mr. DeSantis, who is seeking re-election this year and is widely considered to be running an unannounced campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made action against voter fraud a centerpiece of his tenure as governor. He offered crucial backing last year to legislation tightening the rules for registering to vote and casting ballots. The State Legislature allotted $1.1 million for his 15-person election crimes office after he proposed its creation late last year.But while the specter of widespread fraud has become a staple of Republican political rhetoric, there is no evidence that election crimes are a serious problem in Florida or anywhere else in the nation. There and elsewhere, most violations appear to involve people who ran afoul of laws that restrict voting by former felons, or people who cast two ballots, usually in separate states where they spend different parts of the year.Experts say that many of those violations appear to be inadvertent. The 17 people charged on Thursday were all felons, convicted of murder or sex offenses, who were barred by law from casting ballots. All but one were men, and all but two were in their 50s or older.Casting an ineligible ballot is a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment and up to $5,000 in fines. “That was against the law, and now they’re going to pay for it,” Mr. DeSantis said.The governor said more arrests were forthcoming, and suggested that they would include so-called double voters and noncitizens who cast illegal ballots — another offense that experts say is frequently the result of confusion about voting rules.He added that a paucity of voting fraud prosecutions in recent years reflects a lack of enforcement, not a lack of fraud. “Now we have the ability with the attorney general and statewide prosecutors to bring these cases on behalf of the state,” he said. He said that if anyone is thinking of committing electoral crimes: “Don’t do it, because we’re coming for you.”Local law enforcement officials made a flurry of voting-related arrests this spring after a researcher who scanned voting rolls claimed to have found scores of convicted sex offenders who cast ballots in 2020, although a constitutional amendment bars them from voting.A group that advocates restoring voting rights to former felons said on Thursday that none of the 17 people arrested would have faced charges had the state not allowed them to register and vote, despite their ineligibility.“When someone registers to vote, it is the responsibility of the state to utilize its vast resources to determine a person’s eligibility,” Desmond Meade, the executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, said at a news conference. “And once that person is eligible to vote, that person is issued a voter identification card.”Mr. Meade said state money would be better spent on improving voter registration systems to screen out potentially ineligible voters than on finding and prosecuting them.“What we’ve seen today is an indication that the system is broken,” he said. “These individuals should never have gotten to this point.”Mr. DeSantis’s announcement drew quick rebuttals from two Democrats who are vying to oppose him in the November election for governor.“Everybody wants elections to be secure, but Ron DeSantis — who has never refuted Donald Trump’s Big Lie — is the last person we can trust with ‘election police,’” Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner and Florida’s highest-ranking Democrat, said in a statement. “As governor, I will disband this force and return jurisdiction back to local authorities.”Representative Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor, who is running against Ms. Fried in next week’s primary election, said in a statement that Mr. DeSantis’s news conference was “about playing politics, intimidating Democratic voters and his desire to run for president, not securing elections.” More

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      Alaska Elections: Where to Vote and What’s on the Ballot

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      Do not be misled by Alaska’ long history of voting for Republicans: Its slate of primaries and a special election on Tuesday offers plenty of intrigue, with multiple big names on the ballot such as former Gov. Sarah Palin and Senator Lisa Murkowski.The races pose another test of the power of an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump. He is backing Ms. Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, for the state’s lone House seat, and also supports Kelly Tshibaka, Ms. Murkowski’s main Republican rival in the Senate primary.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what is at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Alaska does not have same-day registration for primaries, though it does for presidential elections.All registered voters, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in Alaska’s newly nonpartisan primaries.Where to voteAlaska’s voters can click here to look up their assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Tuesday and received by state election offices by Aug. 26. They can also be hand-delivered to designated drop-off locations by 8 p.m. Alaska time on Tuesday, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.Alaska offers no-excuse absentee voting — meaning voters are not required to provide a reason — with an option to receive ballots through the state’s secure online portal. Voters can choose to return their ballots by fax instead of mail but must do so by 8 p.m. on Tuesday.What is on the ballotMs. Murkowski was one of seven Republicans in the Senate who voted to convict Mr. Trump during his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, drawing a backlash from the former president and his supporters in her quest for a fourth term. Mr. Trump endorsed one her opponents, Ms. Tshibaka, a former commissioner of Alaska’s Department of Administration, in the primary.Another race creating national intrigue will decide who will fill the seat of Representative Don Young, a Republican who died in March, for the remainder of his term that ends in January. Mr. Young had held the seat since he was first elected to the House in 1973.The special election is headlined by Ms. Palin, who will face Nick Begich III, a Republican and the scion of an Alaskan political dynasty, and Mary S. Peltola, a Democrat and former state legislator. Voters will rank their choices in the special election. If no candidate receives a majority, officials will eliminate the last-place finisher and reallocate supporters’ voter to the voters’ second choices until one candidate has at least 50 percent.All three candidates, along with many others, are also listed separately on the regular primary ballot for the House seat, which will determine who will compete in November to represent the state for a full two-year term starting in January.Voters will also decide various races for governor and the State Legislature. Click here for a sample ballot. More

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      What’s On the Ballot and How to Vote in Connecticut’s Primary

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      Connecticut might be known as a campaign fund-raising powerhouse that rarely deviates from electing Democrats statewide, but even its primary on Tuesday is drawing the attention of former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Trump made a late endorsement in the Republican Senate primary race. Its winner will challenge Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat on whom the former president has aimed his attention.The three-way Republican contest is not the only competitive race on the ballot.Here is a refresher on the rules for voting and what’s at stake.How to voteThe registration deadlines for voting in person and requesting an absentee ballot have passed. Connecticut does not have same-day registration for the primary, though it does for the general election.You have to be registered with a political party to vote in the primary. The cutoff for switching parties is three months before a primary.No-excuse absentee voting is no longer available in Connecticut, which mailed ballots to all voters at the onset of the pandemic. A referendum would be required for it to be reinstated.Where to voteClick here to look up your assigned place to vote. Absentee ballots must be returned — by mail or by hand to drop boxes or local clerks — by Tuesday at 8 p.m. Eastern time, which is also when the polls close for in-person voting.What is on the ballotRepublicans will winnow the field of candidates for the Senate, the House in southwestern Connecticut and secretary of the state, an open-seat race to decide who will oversee elections.Democrats have competitive primaries for state treasurer and secretary of the state.Voters will also decide various intraparty races for the Connecticut Legislature. Click here for your sample ballot. More

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      What’s On the Ballot and How to Vote in Minnesota’s Primary

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      Minnesota voters in the First Congressional District will see some names on the ballot twice on Tuesday. It is not a mistake.There is a special general election to decide who will serve the final four months remaining in the term of Representative Jim Hagedorn, who died in February, as well as a regular primary for the same seat.Not registered to vote? That is OK. The state’s same-day voter registration law means you can still head to the polls on Tuesday.Here is what else to know:How to voteIn-person voting ends at 8 p.m. Central time. Not sure if you are registered to vote? Check here, and use this state site for more information about same-day registration.In most places in Minnesota, voters can cast their ballots in person or by mail with an absentee ballot, if one was requested in advance.Some towns and cities with fewer than 400 registered voters have chosen to hold elections only by mail and delivered ballots to all registered voters before Election Day. Find out if that includes your town here.Mail-in ballots must be received by elections officials on or before Election Day. If you have not already mailed yours, deliver it by hand to the election office that sent it to you no later than 3 p.m. Tuesday. Voters may not return mail-in ballots to polling places. Check the status of your mail ballot here.Where to voteFind your nearest polling place at the secretary of state’s website.What is on the ballotIn addition to the special election and regular primary for Mr. Hagedorn’s seat, Representative Ilhan Omar, a well-known member of the progressive clique known as the squad, is seeking her third term in office and is once again facing a primary challenge from a moderate candidate. This time it is Don Samuels, who is running on a pro-law enforcement platform.There are other statewide contests and some local races, too. See a sample ballot here.Michael C. Bender More

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      Forbidden From Getting Help Returning Absentee Ballots, Disabled Voters Sue Wisconsin

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      Several disabled voters are suing Wisconsin’s Elections Commission in federal court after learning that they can no longer get help returning absentee ballots, a reversal that they argue is unconstitutional.The lawsuit, filed on Friday in United States District Court in Madison, seeks to restore a decades-old precedent that allowed people with disabilities to receive assistance from family members and caregivers with the return of absentee ballots.The accommodation was struck down by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on July 8 in a 4-to-3 ruling by the court’s conservative majority, which concluded that only voters themselves could return their absentee ballots in person. The ruling did not address the handling of ballots that are returned by mail.It also prohibited the use of most drop boxes for voting in Wisconsin.The lawsuit filed on Friday concerns only the issue of who is authorized to return absentee ballots, something that Republicans have sought to clamp down on in Wisconsin and other states, falsely claiming that Democrats engaged in fraudulent ballot harvesting during the 2020 election.Timothy Carey, 49, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and lives in Appleton, Wis., is one of four plaintiffs listed in the lawsuit. He said in an interview on Tuesday that he had voted absentee for 30 years, enlisting the help of a nurse or his parents to return his ballot. As someone who relies on a ventilator and cannot use his hands, he said a mandate that he return his own ballot presented a particular hardship.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 6The state of the midterms. More