Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

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      Turnover of Election Officials in Swing States Adds Strain for 2024, Report Says

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      A tide of resignations and retirements by election officials in battleground states, who have increasingly faced threats, harassment and interference, could further strain the election system in 2024, a national voting rights group warned in a report released on Thursday.The group, the Voting Rights Lab, said that the departures of election officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania and other swing states had the potential to undermine the independence of those positions.The 28-page report reveals the scope of challenges to the election system and underscores the hostile climate facing election officials across the nation. Resignations have swept through election offices in Texas and Virginia, while Republicans in Wisconsin have voted to remove the state’s nonpartisan head of elections, sowing further distrust about voting integrity.In Pennsylvania, more than 50 top election officials at the county level have departed since the 2020 election, according to the report, which said that the loss of their expertise was particularly concerning.In Arizona, the top election officials in 13 of 15 counties left their posts during the same period, the report said. Some of the defections have taken place in counties where former President Donald J. Trump’s allies have sought to require the hand-counting of ballots and have spread misinformation about electronic voting equipment.“They are leaving primarily due to citing harassment and security concerns that are stemming from disproven conspiracy theories in the state,” said Liz Avore, a senior adviser for the Voting Rights Lab.The Justice Department has charged at least 14 people with trying to intimidate election officials since it created a task force in 2021 to focus on such threats, according to the agency. It has secured nine convictions, including two on Aug. 31 in Georgia and Arizona, both battleground states.“A functioning democracy requires that the public servants who administer our elections are able to do their jobs without fearing for their lives,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement at the time.Along with the departures, the Voting Rights Lab report examined a series of issues that it said could create obstacles for the 2024 election, including the approval of new rules in Georgia and North Carolina since 2020 that are likely to increase the number of voter eligibility challenges and stiffen identification requirements.In another area of concern for the group, it drew attention to the expiration of emergency rules for absentee voting in New Hampshire that were enacted during the pandemic.At the same time, some other battleground states have expanded voting access. Michigan will offer at least nine days of early voting in 2024, accept more forms of identification and allow voters to opt in to a permanent mail voting list, while Nevada made permanent the distribution of mail ballots to all voters, the report said. More

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      Nueva ley de votación en Texas: lo que ha sucedido en el juicio

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      Los críticos han expresado su preocupación por la posibilidad de que la ley impida la participación de los votantes con discapacidades, los de edad avanzada y los que no hablan inglés.Durante años, Stella Guerrero Mata, de 73 años, una conductora de autobús escolar jubilada que vive cerca de Houston, había podido votar por correo sin ningún problema. Guerrero, que usa un bastón para caminar y tiene una larga lista de padecimientos, entre ellos diabetes, deterioro de la vista y dolor de espalda, esperaba volver a sufragar de la misma manera en las elecciones de medio mandato de 2022.No obstante, poco tiempo después de enviar su boleta por correo, recibió una carta que la dejó enojada y confundida. Su boleta no fue aceptada porque no incluyó el número de su licencia de conducir ni los últimos cuatro dígitos de su número de seguridad social, un requisito de una nueva y polémica ley de votación que se aprobó en 2021.“Mi voto fue rechazado”, denunció Guerrero Mata y agregó que se había dado cuenta de que era demasiado tarde para corregir el error. “Estaba enojada, porque mi voz no se iba a escuchar”.Guerrero Mata forma parte de un grupo de votantes que testificaron en un juicio que se está realizando en San Antonio sobre la extensa reforma electoral del estado, conocida como SB 1. La ley se aprobó por una mayoría republicana incluso después de que los legisladores demócratas abandonaron el recinto durante 38 días, lo que puso al estado en una lucha infructuosa para impedir que el proyecto de ley llegara a votación.Desde que entró en vigor, los críticos han expresado su preocupación por la posibilidad de que la ley impida la participación de los votantes con discapacidades, los de edad avanzada y los que no hablan inglés. El juicio federal, que ahora inicia su segunda semana, brinda una oportunidad inusual para escuchar directamente a los electores que querían votar pero no pudieron hacerlo.Una coalición de grupos defensores del derecho al voto, entre ellos el Fondo Educativo de Defensa Legal Mexicoestadounidense (MALDEF, por su sigla en inglés) y la Unión Estadounidense de Libertades Civiles (ACLU, por su sigla en inglés) de Texas, afirma en su demanda que la ley afecta a las personas que votan por correo, aquellas que se apoyan en ayudantes conocidos como asistentes para votar y quienes dependen de organizaciones comunitarias para saber dónde y cómo votar.La ley agregó nuevos requisitos de identificación para votar por correo, dificultó el uso de asistentes para sufragar, estableció sanciones penales para los trabajadores electorales si son demasiado enérgicos a la hora de controlar a las personas en los centros de votación y prohibió la votación disponible 24 horas, así como la votación desde un vehículo, medidas que se utilizaron, en particular, en el condado de Harris durante la pandemia.Los abogados que representan al estado han dicho que las nuevas reglas previenen un posible fraude electoral y que los votantes parecen adaptarse mejor con cada elección. Ryan Kercher, abogado del estado, opinó que la integridad electoral significa que los votantes “van a tener confianza en el proceso”. Además, Kercher añadió que la ley permite ampliar el horario de votación anticipada para alentar una mayor participación de los electores.Durante el contrainterrogatorio, otro abogado del estado, Will Wassdorf, le dijo a Guerrero Mata que había ingresado la información requerida en el formulario en el que solicitó una boleta por correo, pero que no lo hizo cuando envió por correo la boleta electoral. Luego, Wassdorf le mostró en una pantalla los espacios que había dejado en blanco.“¿Entiende que por eso se rechazó su boleta?”, le preguntó Wassdorf. Y Guerrero Mata respondió: “Ahora lo entiendo. En este momento, sí”.Un ejemplo de los nuevos requisitos para votar como el número de la licencia de conducir y los cuatro últimos dígitos del número de Seguridad Social del votante.Sergio Flores/ReutersCuando Fátima Menéndez, una de las abogadas demandantes, le preguntó si tendría la confianza de votar por correo en 2024, Guerrero Mata respondió que no estaba segura. “Siento que no se contaría”, mencionó.Un desfile de funcionarios electorales de Dallas, Austin, El Paso y el valle del Río Grande también testificaron que consideran confusas y vagas muchas de las nuevas regulaciones y que a menudo tuvieron dificultades para explicárselas a otros votantes que también estaban confundidos.“No sabía qué decirles a los votantes”, dijo Dana DeBeauvoir, secretaria del condado de Travis, en Austin, que supervisó varias elecciones antes de jubilarse. DeBeauvoir describió el supuesto problema del fraude electoral como “un unicornio”, en el mejor de los casos, “muy pocos entre millones de votos y, en la mayoría de los casos, no fueron intencionados”.Kercher insistió en eso durante el contrainterrogatorio. “Aunque el fraude electoral sea un unicornio, tenemos que estar alerta”, dijo.“Yo siempre lo he estado”, replicó ella.Se espera que el juez a cargo de este caso, Xavier Rodriguez, del Distrito Oeste de Texas, escuche los testimonios durante las próximas semanas antes de emitir una orden.Previamente, Rodriguez consideró que una parte de la ley era ilegal: el requisito de que los votantes escriban los últimos cuatro dígitos de su número de seguridad social o el número de su licencia de conducir cuando soliciten votar por correo y que los trabajadores electorales puedan emparejar uno de los números con los datos de registro del elector.Rodriguez, designado por el expresidente George W. Bush, determinó que el requisito violaba la Ley de Derechos Civiles porque cabe la posibilidad de que los funcionarios electorales rechacen a votantes que de otro modo calificarían para votar por correo pero que tengan dificultad para proporcionar esa información adicional.La ACLU de Texas asegura que alrededor de 40.000 solicitudes de boletas de votación por correo han sido rechazadas por errores relacionados con este requisito.Nina Perales, una abogada de MALDEF, argumentó durante su discurso inicial que los votantes con discapacidades están entre los más afectados.“Añadir más pasos al proceso de votación y exigir más formularios dificulta la votación y reduce el número de boletas emitidas”, dijo Perales. “Esto impone más y más obstáculos a los votantes discapacitados y provocará la privación de sus derechos”.La nueva ley de votación se convirtió en una prioridad para el gobernador Greg Abbott después de que el expresidente Donald Trump afirmó haber perdido las elecciones de 2020 debido a un fraude electoral, una aseveración que ha sido descartada por jueces de todo Estados Unidos. Sin embargo, Abbott amenazó con convocar una sesión especial de la legislatura hasta que los legisladores le enviaran el proyecto de ley de votación para que lo firmara.Después de la legislación, hubo una serie de cambios electorales adoptados en varias áreas urbanas de Texas, lugares en gran parte dominados por demócratas, los cuales fueron diseñados para facilitar que los votantes que cumplan con los requisitos emitan su voto. Por ejemplo, Houston atrajo la atención nacional al permitir que se sufragara desde los vehículos, las 24 horas del día, en el punto álgido de la pandemia.La defensa aún está por presentar su caso. Gran parte de la primera semana estuvo dedicada a votantes y funcionarios electorales, llamados por los demandantes, quienes detallaron sus dificultades con las nuevas reglas.Toby Cole, un abogado que perdió el uso de sus brazos y piernas tras un accidente cuando tenía 18 años y que vota con la ayuda de un asistente, testificó que se sentía incómodo compartiendo su información médica con los trabajadores electorales cuando votaba en persona, la forma de votación que prefiere, para que un asistente le ayude a emitir su voto.Cole dijo que conoce a muchos otros votantes con discapacidades que pueden optar por no votar en persona o simplemente no sufragar porque no se sienten cómodos compartiendo las razones por las que tienen derecho a recibir ayuda adicional.Él dice que ha podido votar porque es muy “persistente”.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Pennsylvania Will Start Automatic Voter Registration

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      Nearly half of all states have similar programs that combine getting a driver’s license or state ID card with registering to vote.Pennsylvania, a battleground state that could play an outsize role in the 2024 presidential election, will begin to automatically register new voters as part of its driver’s license and state ID approval process, officials said on Tuesday.The program, which was announced by Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, is similar to those offered in 23 other states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.Voters must meet certain eligibility requirements, which include being a U.S. citizen and a Pennsylvania resident for at least 30 days before an election. They also must be at least 18 years old on the date of the next election.“Automatic voter registration is a common-sense step to ensure election security and save Pennsylvanians time and tax dollars,” Mr. Shapiro said in a statement. “Residents of our Commonwealth already provide proof of identity, residency, age and citizenship at the D.M.V. — all the information required to register to vote — so it makes good sense to streamline that process with voter registration.”In the 2020 election and the midterm races last year, Pennsylvania was a hotbed of falsehoods about voter fraud, promoted by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies. Republicans in the state have mounted a series of unsuccessful legal challenges over voters’ eligibility and absentee ballots that did not have dates written on their return envelopes, which a state law requires.The move to automatic voter registration, which begins Tuesday, comes as both Republicans and Democrats keep an eye on the state as the 2024 race heats up.The state where President Biden was born, Pennsylvania could determine not only whether he is elected to a second term, but also whether Democrats maintain control of the closely divided Senate. Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat in his third term, is facing a key re-election test.In the near term, a special election in the Pittsburgh area on Tuesday was expected to determine the balance of power in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives.Pennsylvania had about 8.7 million registered voters as of December 2022, according to state officials, who, citing census figures, estimated that about 10.3 million residents were eligible to register to vote. More

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      ‘My Vote Was Rejected’: Trial Underway in Texas Over New Voting Law

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      Voting rights advocates say the law, intended to curb fraud, is impeding people with disabilities, older voters and non-English speakers.For years, Stella Guerrero Mata, a 73-year-old retired school bus driver who lives near Houston, has been able to cast her vote through the mail with little hassle. Ms. Mata, who uses a cane to walk and suffers from a long list of ailments, including diabetes, worsening eyesight and back pain, expected the 2022 midterm elections to be no different.But sometime after she placed her ballot in the mail, she received a letter with news that left her angry and confused. Her ballot was not accepted because she had failed to include her driver’s license number and the last four digits of her Social Security number, a requirement of a contested new voting law that was approved in 2021.“My vote was rejected,” Ms. Mata said, adding that she had realized it was too late for her to correct her mistake. “It made me feel angry, because my voice was not being heard.”Ms. Mata was one of several voters to testify in a trial, now underway in San Antonio, over the state’s sweeping election overhaul, known as S.B. 1. The law was passed by a Republican majority even after Democratic lawmakers staged a 38-day walkout, leaving the state in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the bill from coming to a vote.Since it went into effect, critics have raised concerns that the law would impede voters with disabilities, elderly voters and voters who do not speak English. The federal trial, now entering its second week, is providing an unusual opportunity to hear directly from voters who wanted to cast a vote but were not able to do so.A coalition of voting rights groups, including MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, claim in their lawsuit that the law hurts people who vote by mail, those who use the help of aides known as assisters to vote and those who rely on community organizations to learn about where and how to vote.The law added new voter identification requirements for voting by mail; made it harder to use voter assisters; set criminal penalties for poll workers if they are too forceful in reining in people at polling places; and banned 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, measures that were notably used in Harris County during the pandemic.Lawyers representing the state countered that the new rules prevent potential voter fraud and that voters seem to be adapting better with every passing election. Election integrity means that voters “are going to have confidence in the process,” said Ryan Kercher, a lawyer for the state. In addition, Mr. Kercher said, the law allows for expanded early-voting hours to encourage more voter participation.During cross-examination, another lawyer for the state, Will Wassdorf, pointed out to Ms. Mata that she had entered the required information in an application for a mail ballot, but that she did not do so when she mailed the actual ballot. Mr. Wassdorf then directed her attention to a video screen that showed the entries she had left blank.“Do you understand that that’s why your ballot was rejected?” he asked her.“Now I do. At this time, yes,” she replied.An example of a new mail-in ballot request requiring a driver’s license number and the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number.Sergio Flores/ReutersAsked by one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Fátima Menéndez, if she would have the confidence to cast a vote by mail in 2024, Ms. Mata replied that she was not sure. “I feel like it would not be counted at all,” she said.A parade of election officials from Dallas, Austin, El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley also testified that they found many of the new regulations confusing and vague and that they often struggled to explain them to equally confused voters.“I did not know what to tell voters,” said Dana DeBeauvoir, a county clerk in Travis County, home to Austin, who oversaw several elections before she retired. Ms. DeBeauvoir described the purported problem of voter fraud as “a unicorn,” at best, “ones and twos out of millions of votes, and in most cases unintentional.”Mr. Kercher seized on that during cross-examination. “Even though voter fraud is a unicorn, we still have to be vigilant,” he said.“I always was,” she replied.The judge in the case, Xavier Rodriguez, of the Western District of Texas, is expected to listen to testimony for the next few weeks before issuing an order.Judge Rodriguez previously found one part of the law to be unlawful: its requirement that voters write down either the last four digits of their Social Security number or a driver’s license’s number when requesting to vote by mail and that election workers be able to match one of the numbers with the voter’s registration records.Judge Rodriguez, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, ruled that the requirement violated the Civil Rights Act because elections officials may be turning away voters who otherwise qualify to vote by mail but have a hard time providing the extra information.The A.C.L.U. of Texas said that about 40,000 submissions for mail-in voting ballots have been rejected for errors connected to this requirement.Nina Perales, a lawyer with MALDEF, argued during her opening statement that voters with disabilities are among the most affected.“Adding more steps to the voting process and requiring more forms makes voting more difficult, and it reduces the number of ballots cast,” Ms. Perales said. “This imposes significant and more obstacles for disabled voters and will cause disabled voters to be disenfranchised.”The new voting law became a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott after former President Donald J. Trump claimed he lost the 2020 election because of election fraud, a claim that has been discounted by judges around the country. Nevertheless, Mr. Abbott threatened to call a special session of the Legislature until lawmakers sent him the voting bill to sign.The legislation followed a series of voting changes adopted in several urban areas across Texas, places largely dominated by Democrats, that were designed to make it easier for eligible voters to cast ballots. Houston, for example, drew national attention by offering 24-hour drive-through voting at the height of the pandemic.The defense has not yet begun presenting a case. Much of the first week was taken up by voters and election officials, called by the plaintiffs, who detailed their struggles with the new rules.Toby Cole, a lawyer who lost the use of his arms and legs after an accident when he was 18 and votes with the help of an aide, testified that he felt uncomfortable sharing his medical information with poll workers when voting in person, a method he prefers, in order to have an aide assist in casting his ballot.Mr. Cole said he knows of many fellow voters with disabilities who may choose not to vote in person or at all because they do not feel comfortable sharing why they qualify for extra assistance.He has been able to vote, he said, only “because I’m persistent.”Kirsten Noyes More

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      DeSantis Played Both Sides of the GOP Rift Over the 2020 Election

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      The Florida governor created an election crimes unit that placated election deniers. It led to scores of “zany-burger” tips, and, according to one Republican, “Kabuki theater.”It resembled a political rally more than a news conference. In November 2021, exactly one year after Donald J. Trump lost the presidential election to Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida spoke to a raucous crowd in a hotel conference room just a few miles from Mr. Trump’s home base of Mar-a-Lago.Their suspicions about vast election malfeasance would be heard, Mr. DeSantis promised. He was setting up an election police unit and he invited the crowd to send in tips about illegal “ballot harvesting,” nodding to an unfounded theory about Democrats collecting ballots in bulk.The crowd whooped and waved furiously. “He gets it!” posted a commenter watching on Rumble.But in his seven-minute, tough-on-election-crimes sermon, Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, never explicitly endorsed that theory or the many others spread by the defeated president and embraced by much of their party.In this way, for nearly three years, Mr. DeSantis played both sides of Republicans’ rift over the 2020 election. As his state became a buzzing hub of the election denial movement, he repeatedly took actions that placated those who believed Mr. Trump had won.Most prominent was the creation of an election crimes unit that surfaced scores of “zany-burger” tips, according to its former leader, disrupted the lives of a few dozen Floridians, and, one year in, has not yet led to any charges of ballot harvesting or uncovered other mass fraud.Yet Mr. DeSantis kept his own views vague. Only last month — two years, six months and 18 days after Mr. Biden was sworn into office — did Mr. DeSantis, now running for president, acknowledge that Mr. Biden had defeated Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has said he pushed “the strongest election integrity measures in the country.” But critics say their main impact was to appease a Republican base that embraced conspiracy theories about elections — and that came with a cost.He failed to counter lies about the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Florida judges are considering whether his administration overstepped its legal authority.Nathan Hart, a 50-year-old ex-felon from near Tampa, is among 32 people who have been arrested or faced warrants under the new initiative. Mr. Hart, who plans to appeal his conviction, said he lost his job as a warehouse worker because he had to show up in court. When he cast his ballot for Mr. Trump he had no idea he was ineligible to vote, he said.He and others suffered so that the governor “could have a really good photo op and make himself look tough,” he said.Workers at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department tabulating mail-in ballots in October 2020. The 2020 election was one of the smoothest in state history.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe 2020 AftermathTightening voting rules had not been high on Mr. DeSantis’s agenda when he first came into office in 2019. After the ballot-counting debacle during the 2000 presidential election, Florida had substantially revamped its elections. Experts considered the 2020 election, in which over 11 million Floridians voted, well run and smooth. Mr. Trump won by 371,686 votes.One significant change Mr. DeSantis made to Florida’s elections was his decision to join the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC. The data-sharing program, which had bipartisan support, helps states identify people who had moved, died or registered or voted in more than one state.When he announced the move to a group of local election supervisors, they broke into applause.But after the 2020 election, Mr. DeSantis came under concerted pressure from Mr. Trump’s loyalists. Florida became a staging ground for people promoting election conspiracy theories, including Michael Flynn, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, and the Overstock.com founder Patrick Byrne.Pressed again and again on whether he accepted Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSantis dodged. “It’s not for me to do,” he replied in December 2020. “Obviously, we did our thing in Florida. The college voted,” he said, referring to the Electoral College. “What’s going to happen is going to happen.”But within a few months, Mr. DeSantis was pushing for legislation he said would bulletproof Florida’s elections from fraud, with tighter rules for mail-in ballots, the use of drop boxes and third-party organizations that register voters.The governor signed the bill live on Fox News in May 2021.Peter Antonacci, the now-deceased former director of the election crimes unit, and Mr. DeSantis in 2022.Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun-Sentinel, via Associated PressElection Crimes UnitBut lobbying by the election denial movement did not end. Cleta Mitchell, one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers in his effort to undo the outcome of the 2020 election, helped organize Florida activists into state and local groups through her national Election Integrity Network.Members of Defend Florida, another group, went door to door canvassing for evidence of voter irregularities. They delivered their leads to local elections officials, who, to the group’s frustration, typically investigated and dismissed them.Public records show the organization’s representatives met repeatedly with aides to the governor and other high-level members of his administration. Six months after the 2021 changes became law, Mr. DeSantis proposed the election crimes unit — a top priority, aides told lawmakers. He requested a team of state law enforcement officers and prosecutors who could bypass the local officials he suggested had turned a blind eye to voting abuses.Some lawmakers worried about giving the governor’s office too much influence over law enforcement, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The Republican-led Legislature did not explicitly authorize state prosecutors to bring voter fraud charges, as Mr. DeSantis had requested.Otherwise, the governor got much of what he wanted: $2.7 million for a 15-member investigative unit and 10 state law enforcement officers dedicated to election crimes. His administration has used prosecutors under the attorney general’s office to handle the bulk of the cases, even without the Legislature’s authorization.The new investigative unit became a receptacle for activists’ tips about fraud. Activists at times alerted conservative media outlets to their leads, generating headlines about new investigations. Some accusations poured through unusual channels.Activists in Mr. DeSantis’s home county, Pinellas, handed over one binder full of tips to Mr. DeSantis’s mother. They later heard back that the package had been successfully delivered in Tallahassee, according to two people familiar with the episode.A small team reviewing the claims found the vast bulk were not credible.“Most that comes my way has zany-burger all over it,” Peter Antonacci, the now-deceased former director of the election crimes unit, wrote to an official in a local prosecutor’s office in 2022, according to an email obtained by The New York Times through a public records request.Andrew Ladanowski, a former analyst for the unit who describes himself as an elections data hobbyist, said he spent weeks combing through voter records from the 2020 election. He had expected to find thousands of cases of illegal votes, but pickings were slim. “I can safely say there was no large-scale fraud that could have had a change in a state or a national election. It wasn’t sufficient,” he said.Jeff Brandes, a Republican former state senator who opposed the election crimes unit, described it as largely “Kabuki theater.”Five days before Florida’s 2022 primary election, the governor, then running for re-election, announced third-degree felony charges against Mr. Hart and 19 other ex-felons.Nathan Hart, a 50-year-old ex-felon from near Tampa, is among 32 people who have been charged with election crimes under the new initiative.Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post, via Getty ImagesA 2018 ballot initiative allowed former felons to vote but exempted those who had been convicted of murder or sex offenses. Defendants and their lawyers have said they were unaware of that distinction. They said they thought they could vote because the state had allowed them to register and issued them voter registration cards.At a news conference announcing the charges, Mr. DeSantis said more cases from the 2020 election were to come. “This is the opening salvo,” he said.But by the end of 2022, the unit had announced only one other case against a 2020 voter. Mr. Ladanowski said by the time he had left in December, the team had moved on to vetting the current voter rolls.As of July, the election crimes unit had referred nearly 1,500 potential cases to local or state law enforcement agencies, according to the governor’s office. Just 32 — or 2 percent — had resulted in arrests or warrants, and those cases were unrelated to the purportedly systematic abuses that elections activists claimed had tainted the 2020 election.Thirteen of the defendants had been convicted of felonies. Defense attorneys said that some ex-felons accepted plea deals simply out of fear of being sent back to prison, and that none received a stiffer penalty than probation. Appeals court judges are now considering whether the state prosecutors had the legal authority to bring charges.The election crimes unit also fined more than three dozen organizations that ran voter registration drives a total of more than $100,000 — much of that for failing to turn in the voter registration forms quickly enough.The governor has said that even a limited number of arrests will deter voter fraud. Press officers for the secretary of state and the state law enforcement agency said the DeSantis administration expected courts to eventually decide that it acted within its authority, and that investigations of mass fraud like ballot harvesting are complex, time-consuming and still open.Warning Against ‘the Left’s Schemes’Mr. DeSantis endorsed Doug Mastriano, a vocal election denier running for governor, during a rally in Pittsburgh in 2022.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesIn August 2022, the day after he announced the election crime unit’s first arrests, Mr. DeSantis went to Pennsylvania to endorse Doug Mastriano, a vocal election denier running for governor.The trip was another chance for the governor to show election activists he gets it. Onstage with a man who had worked with Mr. Trump’s lawyers to send an “alternate” slate of electors to Washington, Mr. DeSantis spoke carefully.He did not mention the 2020 result, but he stressed that his state had cracked down on illegal voters. “We’re going to hold ’em accountable,” he told an enthusiastic crowd, ending his speech with an exhortation to “take a stand against the left’s schemes.”Mr. DeSantis continued to dance around the 2020 election for another year, while his policies sent a strong message to the Republican base.In March 2023, Cord Byrd, Mr. DeSantis’s secretary of state, announced that Florida would pull out of ERIC, the system Mr. DeSantis had ordered the state to join in 2019.Only a few weeks earlier, Mr. Byrd had called ERIC the “only and best game in town” to identify people who had voted in two different states, according to the notes of a private call he had with Florida activists allied with Ms. Mitchell. The notes were provided by the investigative group Documented. In its annual report, the election crimes unit also described ERIC as a useful tool.But Ms. Mitchell’s group and other critics had attacked the system as part of a liberal conspiracy to snatch Republican electoral victories. Mr. Byrd said publicly that Florida had lost confidence in it, and his agency cited ERIC’s failure to correct “partisan tendencies.”In Florida, activists celebrated the victory. But they also want more. In interviews they said they were frustrated that the election crimes unit hasn’t brought more charges or validated their claims of mass elections malfeasance.And when Mr. DeSantis finally said last month that “of course” Mr. Biden had won the 2020 election, he faced the sort of reaction he had long tried to avoid.“It’s a betrayal,” said Wesley Huff, a Florida elections activist who has been involved in Defend Florida and other groups.Trip Gabriel More

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      A Majority of Americans Support Trump Indictments, Polls Show

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      Recent polls conducted before the Georgia indictment showed that most believed that the prosecutions of the former president were warranted.Former President Donald J. Trump’s blistering attacks on prosecutors and the federal government over the cascade of indictments he faces do not appear to be resonating much with voters in the latest polls, yet his grip on Republicans is further tightening.A majority of Americans, in four recent polls, said Mr. Trump’s criminal cases were warranted. Most were surveyed before a grand jury in Georgia indicted him over his attempts to subvert the 2020 election, but after the federal indictment related to Jan. 6.At the same time, Mr. Trump still holds a dominant lead over the crowded field of Republicans who are challenging him for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who continues to slide.The polls — conducted by Quinnipiac University, The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, ABC News/Ipsos and Fox News — showed that Americans remain divided along party lines over the dozens of criminal charges facing Mr. Trump.The takeaways aligned with the findings of a New York Times/Siena College poll last month, in which 22 percent of voters who believed that Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes said they still planned to support him in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with Mr. DeSantis.Here are key findings from the recent polling:Most say a felony conviction should be disqualifying.In the Quinnipiac poll, 54 percent of registered voters said Mr. Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And seven out of 10 voters said that anyone convicted of a felony should no longer be eligible to be president.Half of Americans, but only 20 percent of Republicans, said that Mr. Trump should suspend his presidential campaign, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. This poll, which surveyed American adults, was the only one of the four surveys conducted entirely after Mr. Trump’s indictment in Georgia.When specifically asked by ABC about the Georgia case, 63 percent said the latest criminal charges against Mr. Trump were “serious.”Republicans, by and large, haven’t wavered.The trends were mixed for Mr. Trump, who is a voracious consumer of polls and often mentions them on social media and during campaign speeches. He has continually argued that the indictments were politically motivated and intended to short-circuit his candidacy.In a hypothetical rematch of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump trailed President Biden by a single percentage point in the latest Quinnipiac poll, 47 to 46 percent. Mr. Biden’s advantage was 5 percentage points in July.At his campaign rallies, Mr. Trump has frequently boasted how the indictments have been a boon for his polling numbers — and that rang true when Republicans were surveyed about the primary race.In those polls that tracked the G.O.P. nominating contest, Mr. Trump widened his lead over his challengers, beating them by nearly 40 points. His nearest competitor, Mr. DeSantis, had fallen below 20 percent in both the Fox and Quinnipiac polls.Mr. DeSantis, who earlier this month replaced his campaign manager as he shifts his strategy, dropped by 6 to 7 percentage points in recent months in both polls.Trump participated in criminal conduct, Americans say.About half of Americans said that Mr. Trump’s interference in the election in Georgia was illegal, according to the AP/NORC poll.A similar share of Americans felt the same way after Mr. Trump’s indictments in the classified documents and the Jan. 6 cases, but the percentage was much lower when he was charged in New York in a case related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.Fewer than one in five Republicans said that Mr. Trump had committed a crime in Georgia or that he broke any laws in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.When asked by Fox News whether Mr. Trump had engaged in illegal activity to overturn the 2020 election, 53 percent of registered voters said yes.But just 13 percent of Republicans shared that view.A plurality of those surveyed by ABC (49 percent) believed that Mr. Trump should be charged with a crime in Georgia.Support for the Justice Department’s charges.Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults said that they approved of the Justice Department’s decision to bring charges against Mr. Trump for his attempts to reverse his electoral defeat in 2020, The A.P. found.At the same time, the public’s confidence in the Justice Department registered at 17 percent in the same poll. More

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      Democratic Group Plans $10 Million Push to Protect Election Officials

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      The group is starting a new venture that will focus on five battleground states: Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.A group that works to elect Democrats as the top election officials in states around the country is planning a $10 million venture to pay for private security for election officials of both parties, register new voters and try to combat disinformation.The group, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, is starting a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization called Value the Vote that will initially focus on five battleground states: Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada and Wisconsin.“We’ve seen our election officials come under threat while they’re just trying to do their jobs, and they’re doing a fantastic job,” said Travis Brimm, the executive director of the Democratic group, who will also serve as president of Value the Vote. “They deserve the ability and the right to feel safe while they’re doing their job.”Mr. Brimm said the new group had raised $2.5 million so far of its $10 million pledge.Since the 2020 election, once-uncontroversial matters of election administration have increasingly become entangled in partisan politics.Election officials have faced increased threats in recent years, and they have been resigning at an alarming rate. Elections for secretary of state also became far more politicized last year, as several Republicans who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 vote sought the office in critical battleground states before ultimately falling short.In turn, the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State grew rapidly after the 2020 election, when former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the results drew attention to the importance of the position. The group went from raising a few million dollars each election cycle to raising and spending more than $30 million in the midterms last year.Officials at the group say they will provide equal funding opportunities to both Democratic and Republican election officials, but how the distribution will work in practice is unclear. Republican officials may hesitate to take money from a Democratic organization, fearing political fallout from fellow conservatives.Mr. Brimm said that election officials could request grants to pay for private security themselves, and that Values the Vote would also proactively offer private security.The introduction of private security with a loose affiliation to a political group could carry risks, however, especially in an era of extreme polarization and partisan distrust in the mechanics of voting.The safety funding is also likely to serve as an early test of new bans on outside funding of elections in Georgia and Arizona, which passed laws after the 2020 election prohibiting private groups from providing financial help to election officials. The bans were rooted in conservative criticism of grants made by an organization with ties to the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — money frequently called “Zuckerbucks” by right-wing news outlets.Republicans in the North Carolina legislature, who have veto-proof majorities, are currently seeking to pass a bill that would also ban outside money for election officials.Campaign finance experts note that the new laws are untested, and say they include some gray areas that could allow for the security donations.“The 501(c)(4) could theoretically provide security services directly to state election officials or at voting or vote-counting sites without charging for them,” said Brett Kappel, an campaign finance lawyer at the firm Harmon Curran. “It will take a court to decide if that is prohibited donation of services or whether it falls within the exception for services provided without remuneration.”Mr. Brimm said the group was working with a legal team to make sure it was “navigating those laws correctly.”“In some ways, it’s going to be a little bit of a new frontier,” he said.The rest of the initiative hews more closely to traditional campaign tactics and organizing. The group will look to counter election misinformation, including with paid digital advertising, and will begin a voter registration program.And though the group says it will be apolitical, its voter registration efforts align with typical Democratic efforts, focusing heavily on Black and Latino communities, which have tended to back Democrats in greater numbers.“The voter registration piece is about actually getting more people into the process,” Mr. Brimm said. “The people who are not getting access to voter education and voter registration are typically rural communities, typically lower-income communities and Black and Latino or Hispanic communities.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Has a Gimmick That Republicans Are Sure to Love

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      Vivek Ramaswamy is a 38-year-old investor and former pharmaceutical executive who wants to be the Republican nominee for president. He’s not ahead by any means, but he’s doing better than you might expect. If Donald Trump dominates the field and Ron DeSantis is the far runner-up, then Ramaswamy is the candidate poised to rise if the Florida governor falls further behind.Ramaswamy is “anti-woke,” condemns Juneteenth as a “useless” holiday and says that “diversity is not our strength.” He thinks climate activism is a “cult” and wants to send the military to the border with Mexico. He wants to unravel the so-called deep state, thinks the Trump indictments are politically motivated and won’t say whether, if he were in Mike Pence’s shoes, he would have refused the former president’s demand to overturn the 2020 election results.In other words, he’s preoccupied by most of the same concerns as his rivals. But he does have one gimmick that DeSantis and Trump don’t: “We are a constitutional republic. We need to revive civic duty among young Americans,” Ramaswamy said on the platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “That’s why I’m announcing my support for a constitutional amendment to raise the voting age from 18 to 25, but to still allow 18-year-olds to vote if they either pass the same civics test required of immigrants to become naturalized citizens, or else to perform 6 months of military or first responder service.”Ramaswamy has elaborated in interviews on his call to raise the voting age for most young people. “I think we have a loss of civic pride in our country. I think people, young people included, do not value a country that they simply inherit,” he told NPR. “I think we value a country that we have a stake in building. And I think that asking a young person, asking any citizen, to know something about the country before voting, I think is a perfectly reasonable condition.”Demanding a de facto literacy test for most young Americans to vote is not actually a “perfectly reasonable condition.” It is a direct assault on the basic democratic rights of millions of citizens.To begin, there’s the fundamental fact that no aspect of political equality hinges on the ability to memorize trivia. What’s more, you do not need a formal education of any sort to embrace the duties of citizenship or to understand yourself as a political actor with a right to self-government. You do not even need one to understand your political interests and to work, individually or with others, to pursue them through our democratic institutions.To think otherwise is to believe that Americans, from the yeoman farmers of the early Republic to the freedmen of the Reconstruction South to the urban industrial workers of the early 20th century, have never been equipped to govern themselves.There’s also the practical fact that most new requirements for voting in the United States are — in intent and purpose — new restrictions on voting.For example, these days we take the secret ballot for granted as the only rational way to conduct an election. Of course the state should produce uniform, standard ballots for all elections. Of course we should vote in private. But for much of the 19th century before the introduction of the secret ballot — also known as the “Australian” ballot — American voters obtained their ballots from their political parties. “Since the ballots generally contained only the names of an individual party’s candidates, literacy was not required,” notes the historian Alexander Keyssar in “The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States.” “All that a man had to do was drop a ballot in a box.”With a single, standardized ballot — cast in private without the assistance of a friend or relative or party representative — voters had to read to participate. That was the point. As one contemporaneous observer, George Gunton, an economist and social reformer, declared, “so obvious is the evil of ignorant voting that more stringent naturalization laws are being demanded, because too many of our foreign-born citizens vote ignorantly. It is to remedy this that the Australian ballot system has been adopted in so many states.” Its purpose, he continued, was “to eliminate the ignorant, illiterate voters.”We similarly take voter registration for granted — of course we should confirm our intention to vote with municipal authorities ahead of time. But that, too, was introduced to limit and restrict the electorate. “Beginning in the 1830s,” writes Keyssar, “the idea of registration became more popular, particularly among Whigs, who believed that ineligible transients and foreigners were casting their votes for the Democratic Party.” Sixty years later, Southern Democrats used highly discretionary registration laws to remove as many Republican-voting Blacks from the electorate as possible.“The key disfranchising features of the Southern registration laws were the amount of discretion granted to the registrars, the specificity of the information required of the registrant, the times and places set for registration, and the requirement that a voter bring his registration certificate to the polling place,” explained the political scientist J. Morgan Kousser in “The Shaping of Southern Politics: Suffrage Restriction and the Establishment of the One-Party South, 1880-1910.” “Registration laws were most efficiently used — as in South Carolina, Louisiana and North Carolina — to cut the electorate immediately before a referendum on constitutional disfranchisement.”We also can’t forget the actual literacy tests, introduced at the turn of the 20th century, that were designed to keep as many immigrants, Black Americans and laboring people from the polls as possible. The point was to limit, as much as possible, the political power of groups that might challenge the interests of those in power, from industrial barons in the North to large landowners in the South.Ramaswamy says that the goal of his proposal is to encourage civic pride and inculcate a deeper attachment to the country among the youngest American adults. But there are ways to do both without creating new obstacles to voting. There’s also no evidence or indication that a mandatory civics test would achieve the goal in question. When you consider, as well, the extent to which there are older adults — even elderly adults — who could use a little civic pride themselves, it appears that Ramaswamy’s proposal has less to do with fostering national cohesion and more to do with the Republican Party’s unenviable dilemma with young people.Democrats win most younger voters across all racial and ethnic groups. In the 2022 midterm elections, according to the Pew Research Center, 68 percent of voters under 30 backed Democrats compared with 31 percent for Republicans. And soon, young people will represent a majority of potential voters in the country.Rather than try to appeal to or persuade this bloc, Ramaswamy’s proposal is to remove a vast majority from the electorate altogether.To be clear, this isn’t a serious plan. The American public is so polarized along partisan and ideological lines as to make the Constitution effectively unamendable. Ramaswamy’s call to raise the voting age is a novelty policy for a novelty candidate. And yet it tells us something about the Republican electorate, and thus the Republican Party, that the eye-catching gimmick of an ambitious politician is a plan to disenfranchise millions of American voters.In many ways, big and small, the Republican Party has turned against the bedrock “republican principles” of majority rule and popular sovereignty. We see it in a governor removing a duly-elected official because he disagrees with the views she represents, a state legislature gerrymandering itself into a permanent majority regardless of where the votes fall, an entire state Republican Party trying (and failing) to change the rules of constitutional amendment to keep the voters from affirming their rights and a former president who would rather end the American experiment in democracy than accept defeat at the ballot box.Ramaswamy is playing the same song. There’s almost no one in the Republican Party, at this point, who isn’t.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