Voting Rights, Registration and Requirements

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      States Push for New Voting Laws With an Eye Toward 2024

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      Republicans are focused on voter ID rules and making it harder to cast mail ballots, while Democrats are seeking to expand access through automatic voter registration.The tug of war over voting rights and rules is playing out with fresh urgency at the state level, as Republicans and Democrats fight to get new laws on the books before the 2024 presidential election.Republicans have pushed to tighten voting laws with renewed vigor since former President Donald J. Trump made baseless claims of fraud after losing the 2020 election, while Democrats coming off midterm successes are trying to channel their momentum to expand voting access and thwart efforts to undermine elections.States like Florida, Texas and Georgia, where Republicans control the levers of state government, have already passed sweeping voting restrictions that include criminal oversight initiatives, limits on drop boxes, new identification requirements and more.While President Biden and Democrats in Congress were unable to pass federal legislation last year that would protect voting access and restore elements of the landmark Voting Rights Act stripped away by the Supreme Court in 2013, not all reform efforts have floundered.In December, Congress updated the Electoral Count Act, closing a loophole that Mr. Trump’s supporters had sought to exploit to try to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.Now the focus has returned to the state level. Here are some of the key voting measures in play this year:Ohio Republicans approve new restrictions.Ohioans must now present a driver’s license, passport or other official photo ID to vote in person under a G.O.P. measure that was signed into law on Jan. 6 by Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican.The law also set tighter deadlines for voters to return mail-in ballots and provide missing information on them. Absentee ballot requests must be received earlier as well.Republicans, who control the Legislature in Ohio, contend that the new rules will bolster election integrity, yet they have acknowledged that the issue has not presented a problem in the state. Overall, voter fraud is exceedingly rare.Several voting rights groups were quick to file a federal lawsuit challenging the changes, which they said would disenfranchise Black people, younger and older voters, as well as those serving in the military and living abroad.Texas G.O.P. targets election crimes and ballot initiatives.Despite enacting sweeping restrictions on voting in 2021 that were condemned by civil rights groups and the Justice Department in several lawsuits, Republican lawmakers in Texas are seeking to push the envelope further.Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.2023 Races: Governors’ contests in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi and mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia are among the races to watch this year.Democrats’ New Power: After winning trifectas in four state governments in the midterms, Democrats have a level of control in statehouses not seen since 2009.G.O.P. Debates: The Republican National Committee has asked several major TV networks to consider sponsoring debates, an intriguing show of détente toward the mainstream media and an early sign that the party is making plans for a contested 2024 presidential primary.An Important Election: The winner of a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April will determine who holds a 4-to-3 majority in a critical presidential battleground state.Dozens of bills related to voting rules and election administration were filed for the legislative session that began this month. While many are from Democrats seeking to ease barriers to voting, Republicans control both chambers of the Texas Legislature and the governor’s office. It is not clear which bills will gain the necessary support to become laws.Some G.O.P. proposals focus on election crimes, including one that would authorize the secretary of state to designate an election marshal responsible for investigating potential election violations.“Similar bills have passed in Florida and in Georgia,” said Jasleen Singh, a counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “We should be concerned about whether this will happen in Texas as well.”Under another bill, a voter could request that the secretary of state review local election orders and language on ballot propositions and reject any that are found to be “misleading, inaccurate or prejudicial,” part of a push by Republicans in several states to make it harder to pass ballot measures after years of progressive victories.One proposal appears to target heavily populated, Democratic-controlled counties, giving the state attorney general the power to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate voter fraud allegations if local officials decline to do so. Another bill goes further, allowing the attorney general to seek an injunction against local prosecutors who don’t investigate claims of voter fraud and pursue civil penalties against them.A 19-year-old registering to vote in Minnesota, where Democrats introduced a bill that would allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. Tim Gruber for The New York TimesDemocrats in Minnesota and Michigan go on offense.Democrats are seeking to harness their momentum from the midterm elections to expand voting access in Minnesota and Michigan, where they swept the governors’ races and legislative control.In Minnesota, the party introduced legislation in early January that would create an automatic voter registration system and allow applicants who are at least 16 years old to preregister to vote. The measure would also automatically restore the voting rights of convicted felons upon their release from prison and for those who do not receive prison time as part of a sentence.In Michigan, voters approved a constitutional amendment in November that creates a nine-day early voting period and requires the state to fund absentee ballot drop boxes. Top Democrats in the state are also weighing automatic voter registration and have discussed criminalizing election misinformation.Pennsylvania Republicans want to expand a voter ID law.Because of the veto power of the governor, an office the Democrats held in the November election, Republicans in Pennsylvania have resorted to trying to amend the state constitution in order to pass a voter ID bill.The complex amendment process, which ultimately requires putting the question to voters, is the subject of pending litigation.Both chambers of the Legislature need to pass the bill this session in order to place it on the ballot, but Democrats narrowly flipped control of the House in the midterms — and they will seek to bolster their majority with three special elections next month.“If the chips fall in a certain way, it is unlikely that this will move forward and it might quite possibly be dead,” said Susan Gobreski, a board member of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania. “But it ain’t dead yet.”Gov. Josh Shapiro has indicated an openness to compromise with Republicans on some voting rules.“I’m certainly willing to have an honest conversation about voter I.D., as long as that is something that is not used as a hindrance to voting,” Mr. Shapiro said in an interview in December.First-time voters and those applying for absentee ballots are currently required to present identification in Pennsylvania, but Republicans want to expand the requirement to all voters in every election and have proposed issuing voter ID cards. Critics say the proposal would make it harder to vote and could compromise privacy.Mr. Shapiro has separately said he hoped that Republicans in the legislature would agree to change the state’s law that forbids the processing of absentee ballots and early votes before Election Day. The ballot procedures, which can drag out the counting, have been a flash point in a series of election lawsuits filed by Republicans.Georgia’s top election official, a Republican, calls to end runoff system.Early voting fell precipitously in Georgia’s nationally watched Senate runoff in December after Republicans, who control of state government, cut in half the number of days for casting ballots before Election Day.Long lines at some early-voting sites, especially in the Atlanta area, during the runoff led to complaints of voter suppression.But the G.O.P. lost the contest, after a set of runoff defeats a year earlier that gave Democrats control of the Senate.Now Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is Georgia’s secretary of state and its top election official, wants to abandon the runoff system altogether, saying that the condensed timeline had put added strain on poll workers.Critics of ranked-choice voting cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican.Ash Adams for The New York TimesRepublicans in Alaska want to undo some voting changes approved in 2020.After a special election last year and the midterms, when Alaska employed a novel election system for the first time, some conservatives reeling from losses at the polls have directed their ire at a common target: ranked-choice voting.At least three Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to repeal some of the electoral changes that were narrowly approved by voters in 2020, which introduced a “top-four” open primary and ranked-choice voting in general elections. In addition to deciding winners based on the candidate who receives the most votes, the bills also seek to return to a closed primary system, in which only registered party members can participate.Supporters of the new system contend that it sets a higher bar to get elected than to simply earn a plurality of votes.But critics have called the format confusing. Some have blamed it for the defeat of Sarah Palin, the Republican former governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee, in a special House election in August and again in November for the same office.They also cited the system as being instrumental to the re-election last year of Senator Lisa Murkowski, a centrist Republican who angered some members of her party when she voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial after the Jan. 6 attack.Still, Republican foes of ranked-choice elections could face hurdles within their own party. According to The Anchorage Daily News, the incoming Senate president, a Republican, favors keeping the system in place.Nebraska Republicans aim to sharply curb mail voting.Nebraska does not require voters to provide a reason to vote early by mail, but two Republican state senators want to make wholesale changes that would mostly require in-person voting on Election Day.Under a bill proposed by Steve Halloran and Steve Erdman, G.O.P. senators in the unicameral legislature, only members of the U.S. military and residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities could vote by mail.The measure would further require all ballots to be counted on Election Day, which would become a state holiday in Nebraska, along with the day of the statewide primary.The League of Women Voters of Nebraska opposes the bill and noted that 11 of the state’s 93 counties vote entirely by mail under a provision that gives officials in counties with under 10,000 people the option to do so.“This is an extreme bill and would be very unpopular,” MaryLee Mouton, the league’s president, said in an email. “When most states are moving to expand voting by mail, a bill to restrict vote by mail would negatively impact both our rural and urban communities.”In the November election, Nebraskans overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative that created a statewide photo ID requirement for voting.A Republican bill in Missouri would hunt for election fraud.In Missouri, where Republicans control the governor’s office and Legislature, one G.O.P. bill would create an Office of Election Crimes and Security. The office would report to the secretary of state and would be responsible for reviewing election fraud complaints and conducting investigations.Its investigators would also be authorized to enter poling places or offices of any election authority on Election Day, during absentee voting or the canvass of votes. More

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      Lawyers Who Investigated Trump Start Firm to Combat Threats to Democracy

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      Mark F. Pomerantz, Carey R. Dunne and Michele Roberts, the former head of the N.B.A. players union, will launch a pro bono law firm, the Free and Fair Litigation Group.Last year, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne were leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump’s business practices.Now, they have turned their attention to a broader phenomenon that they say the former president represents: threats to democracy in the United States.Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne, who resigned last year when the district attorney decided not to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump, said they have formed a pro bono law firm that aims to stem the tide of anti-democratic policies proliferating around the country. The firm — the Free and Fair Litigation Group, which opens its doors this week — is also led by Michele A. Roberts, the former head of the union that represents professional basketball players.All three founders have extensive experience as litigators, and they plan to defend policies they see as just and bring lawsuits challenging those they believe are undemocratic, the three founding partners said in an interview. Their work will initially focus on voting rights, gun control and free speech.“As I see it, we’re now faced with not just one politician, but really with a national movement that’s aimed at rolling back decades of rights and constitutional principles,” Mr. Dunne said.In the two years since Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen helped spark a violent riot at the Capitol, election denial has only grown within the Republican Party. Mr. Trump is once again a leading contender for president, and the House is in the hands of Republicans — many of whom voted against certifying President Biden’s election victory.Against that backdrop of deep political polarization, it remains to be seen how much of the new firm’s ambitious agenda can be accomplished, particularly if its cases reach a Supreme Court that has taken a sharp rightward turn.Michele Roberts, the former executive director of the N.B.A. players union, is an experienced litigator.Gabriella Demczuk for The New York TimesThe three founders will take no salary, and the firm will do all its work for free. They expect to hire a small staff of lawyers — no more than eight employees, including one who recently served as a federal prosecutor — and partner with a number of larger law firms. The firm, a nonprofit, will solicit outside donations from foundations and small donors alike.The new firm differs from larger groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Brennan Center for Justice, which conduct lobbying and research in addition to their work in court, because of its singular focus on litigation.The venture was a product of serendipitous timing: three busy lawyers who found themselves with nothing on their dockets in the spring of last year.Ms. Roberts, an experienced litigator, had just retired as executive director of the N.B.A. Players Association. Mr. Pomerantz, a well-known defense lawyer who also served as the criminal division chief at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, came out of retirement in early 2021 to lead the district attorney’s investigation into Mr. Trump. He resigned in February of last year, as did Mr. Dunne, another prominent litigator who oversaw the Trump investigation and successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court twice in the fight over a subpoena for Mr. Trump’s tax returns.Although Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had begun to present evidence to a grand jury about the former president’s business practices by early last year, the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, developed concerns about proving the case and decided not to seek to indict Mr. Trump at that time, prompting the resignations. The investigation, which began under the prior district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., is now continuing under Mr. Bragg, who also recently secured the conviction of Mr. Trump’s company.Carey Dunne won a Supreme Court decision that gave Manhattan prosecutors access to Donald Trump’s tax returns.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesWhile the new law firm currently has no plans to take on Mr. Trump directly, its mission was in some sense inspired by his influence over the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices.“Trump is obviously the poster boy for increased authoritarianism,” said Mr. Pomerantz, who has written a book about his time investigating Mr. Trump that Simon & Schuster announced on Wednesday would be published in February. “He personifies the problem, but he’s far from the only manifestation of the problem.”For his part, Mr. Trump has slammed Mr. Pomerantz publicly, calling him a “low-life attorney” who “is a ‘Never Trumper’ and a Hillary Clinton sycophant.”The firm’s first case involves gun control policies under attack in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year expanding the right to carry firearms outside the home. The firm is defending four Colorado towns, each with bans on carrying assault weapons in public, that were sued by a gun rights group after the court’s decision. The case is scheduled to go to trial this fall.Measures like Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E.” law, which limits talk of race, gender and nationality in schools and the workplace, are also of interest at the new firm. It has begun examining the possibility of bringing a First Amendment lawsuit focused on similar laws in other states that prohibit diversity training in the workplace.The firm is also developing plans to challenge Florida’s arrest of a number of people with criminal histories who were able to register to vote in the 2020 election even though their past convictions should have barred them from doing so. Although criminal charges against some of those people have been dismissed, the firm is researching the possibility of suing the state for having violated the Voting Rights Act, arguing that the arrests discourage legal voting by people with criminal convictions.“It’s just disgraceful,” Ms. Roberts said, adding that the case had hit home for her as someone who is concerned with voting rights and with “legislative changes to election laws in various states.”To litigate the cases, the firm will turn for support to a roster of prominent law firms and advocacy groups.In the Colorado gun control case, the firm is working with Everytown for Gun Safety, the group founded by the former New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, as well as Davis Polk, Mr. Dunne’s former firm. On the Florida voting rights case, they have met with a group called Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by lawyers from the Obama White House, as well as Paul Weiss, where Mr. Pomerantz was a partner for many years.Mark Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne led the Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry into Mr. Trump until they resigned last year.David Karp/Associated PressThe outside firms are providing their resources on a pro bono basis. The new firm’s board of directors will also include a number of boldfaced names from the criminal justice world, including Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former general counsel at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office who was a Democratic candidate for Manhattan district attorney in 2021.Free and Fair’s executive director will be Danny Frost, a lawyer who served as a senior adviser and spokesman in the district attorney’s office under Mr. Vance, when Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz were working on the Trump investigation.Thus far, the firm has mostly accepted donations from friends and professional acquaintances but in the coming months will ramp up their fund-raising now that the I.R.S. has certified the firm as a nonprofit.Originally, the principals had expected that getting authorized for tax-exempt status would take half a year. Then they learned that they could make an emergency application to the I.R.S., “but only if what you’re providing is so desperately needed by the country that you can claim emergency treatment status,” Mr. Dunne said.They filed their application in October. Within 14 days, they had received the emergency approval. More

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      After Election Problems in Houston, Republicans Seek to Overturn Results

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      A growing number of contests to elections in Texas’ Harris County are a broad attempt to cast doubt on an Election Day that officials concede had problems.HOUSTON — Jon Rosenthal has seen some close races, but his re-election to the Texas State House in November, in a Houston district redrawn to be a virtual lock for Democrats, was not one of them. Mr. Rosenthal won by 15 points.So it came as a surprise when his Republican challenger in the race contested the results, petitioning the State Legislature to order a new election.Another surprise came late Thursday when the Republican candidate for the top executive position in Harris County, which includes Houston, announced that she, too, would contest her much narrower loss, by about 18,000 votes, to the progressive Democrat who is the county’s incumbent chief executive, Lina Hidalgo. By Friday, more than a dozen losing Republican candidates had filed suits to contest the results of their races.Election Day in Harris County, Texas’ largest county, saw a range of problems at polling places, including some that opened late and others that ran out of paper for printing voted ballots. A court ordered the polls to stay open an extra hour to compensate; then the Texas Supreme Court stepped in and halted the extra voting.Republicans, who have been watching closely for election issues in races around the country, seized on the difficulties in Harris County, which is becoming a Democratic stronghold. Candidates called into question the reliability of the results in a bitter and expensive campaign that failed to dislodge Ms. Hidalgo and a slate of Democratic judges.“It is inexcusable that after two months, the public is no further along in knowing if, and to what extent, votes were suppressed,” said Alexandra del Moral Mealer in explaining her decision to contest her loss to Ms. Hidalgo, adding that her challenge was “fundamentally about protecting the right to vote in free and fair elections.”Candidates called into question the reliability of the results in a bitter campaign that ended with Republicans failing to oust Lina Hidalgo and a slate of Democratic judges. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesElection contests are not uncommon in Texas, often involving down-ballot races in small counties where the margins are often notably slim. But the challenges in Harris County appeared to be uniquely broad in their attempt to cast doubt on much of the voting process in an election that involved 1.1 million votes. They followed calls from state leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, for an investigation into the county’s handling of the election. The local district attorney opened an inquiry in November.The election contests in Harris County have at times resembled the one mounted in Arizona by the Republican candidate for governor, Kari Lake, who has sought to overturn her loss by claiming that election officials in one major county deliberately disenfranchised her voters. A judge dismissed her claims last month for lack of evidence.But the latest contests in Texas have little precedent, said the Harris County attorney, Christian Menefee, a Democrat. “To my knowledge, this is the first election contest filed in Harris County that is wholly focused on these kinds of process failures,” Mr. Menefee said in an interview.The sprawling Texas county has shifted more decisively in the direction of Democrats in the last few election cycles, following in the direction of other major Texas population centers.For a variety of reasons, it has struggled to conduct elections smoothly, drawing repeated scrutiny from Republican lawmakers in the State Capitol. The county’s size has been a challenge, covering an area nearly the size of Delaware with 2.5 million registered voters and more than 700 polling places. It has struggled with newly mandated voting systems and has not had steady leadership at its elections office, with three different administrators since 2020.An audit of the 2020 election, conducted by the secretary of state, highlighted a range of issues, including instances where Harris County did not handle its electronic records properly, though there was no evidence of widespread fraud.Several steps that the county took during the coronavirus pandemic to make it easier to vote in Houston — such as limited 24-hour voting and drive-through polling places — also drew criticism from Republicans, who argued that the changes had made the election less secure. The Republican-dominated State Legislature, in its last session, took steps to curtail many of the measures.Voters waited in line at Damascus Missionary Baptist Church on Election Day in Houston in November.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOn Election Day in November, the county experienced problems at a number of polling places, including several that were significantly delayed in opening and others that reported running out of paper ballots.A judge ordered polling places in the county to remain open for an extra hour after the Texas Organizing Project, a nonprofit, filed suit over the issues, claiming that voters were being prevented from casting ballots. The Texas Supreme Court stepped in and stayed the ruling in response to a challenge from the Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton. The court eventually allowed about 2,000 provisional ballots that were cast during the extra voting time to be added to the official count.The county elections administrator, Clifford Tatum, has defended the election process and said the issues that came up reflected small problems in an otherwise well-run election. “Overall, Election Day was a success,” a postelection report from Mr. Tatum’s office concluded.But the report, released last week, also found that the county’s voting system was in “an immediate need of upgrades or replacements” to correct software issues, simplify voting day setup and create a system for the elections administrator to know in the moment whether problems reported at polling places had been resolved.The Harris County Republican Party has focused on a broad range of issues that arose on Election Day, including not only sites that ran out of paper ballots but also others where poll workers incorrectly fed paper ballots into the voting machines.In its report, the election administrator’s office said that officials at 68 voting centers reported running out of the initial allotment of paper on Election Day, and that only 61 of them said they had received deliveries of more paper.But it remained unclear how many voters were turned away because of the paper shortages, in part because, according to the report, some of the election judges “declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party.”A spokeswoman for the county Republican Party, Genevieve Carter, denied any such instructions. “We encouraged them to provide their firsthand account of any issues that occurred,” she said. “Our goal is to get to the bottom of what went wrong during this election.”The party’s lawyers and leaders have not claimed that they can prove their candidates should have won. Instead, they have argued that the scope of the problems on Election Day were so great — including, they claimed, allowing some voters to cast ballots who were no longer eligible to do so in the county — that the true results in the election cannot be known; they are demanding that new elections be held. (More than two-thirds of the ballots were cast either during early voting or by mail, not on Election Day.)“We have a systematic cancer that has invaded our election process,” said the chair of the county Republican Party, Cindy Siegel.Democrats have not raised public challenges, but have privately complained that the repeated issues in the election process in Houston were not being adequately addressed, giving Republicans fuel for their efforts to pass new restrictive laws and, now, election contests.Jon Rosenthal said he believed the challenge to his election was frivolous, and that allowing it to go forward in the State House could cause future headaches for lawmakers. Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesOnly the candidates themselves can initiate the contests, and so far at least 14 have done so, including Ms. Mealer, a first-time candidate who received millions in campaign contributions from top Houston-area donors; Mr. Rosenthal’s challenger, Michael May; a candidate for county district clerk; and nine Republican judicial candidates.One of the earliest challenges came from a judicial candidate, Erin Lunceford, who lost by 2,743 votes, and filed suit late last year. Ms. Lunceford’s suit includes 19 separate claims of issues with the way votes were handled or counted during the November election and asks the court to void the judicial election and “declare that the true outcome of the election cannot be ascertained.” Ms. Lunceford is represented by Andy Taylor, an election lawyer for the county Republican Party.Ryan MacLeod, a lawyer for the Democrat who won the race, Tamika Craft, described the suit in court papers as a “stunt to make headlines” after an election was lost, and said that “no allegations are supported by facts” and that no evidence had been provided.In the latest challenge on Thursday to the outcome of the race for Harris County judge — effectively the county’s chief executive — Ms. Mealer’s lawyers focused primarily on the paper ballot issues, arguing that they had been concentrated in high-turnout Republican areas and that county officials had “suppressed the voting rights” of residents in those places.Ms. Hidalgo’s office referred questions to the county attorney, Mr. Menefee, who described the challenges as “frivolous attempts to overturn the votes of more than a million residents.”Unlike the other challenges, Mr. May’s contest to his loss against Mr. Rosenthal does not go before a judge, because it involved a State House race. Instead, under Texas law, it will be considered by state legislators, who reconvene this month. The House could decide that the challenge is frivolous and reject it quickly, or choose to investigate the allegations by gathering testimony and evidence before deciding whether the result should be voided and a new election held.Mr. May, in his petition, cited the paper ballot issues and argued that eligible voters were turned away and unable to cast ballots. He has not provided evidence and did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Rosenthal said he believed the challenge was frivolous and that allowing it to go forward could cause future headaches for lawmakers.“If there is life given to this, and there is no consequence for bringing something this frivolous, you’re setting up for election challenges across the state,” he said. “You could have dozens of challenges per cycle.” More

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      Mark Meadows Won’t Face Voting Fraud Charges in North Carolina

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      The state attorney general said there was “not sufficient evidence” to bring charges against Mr. Meadows or his wife, Debra Meadows.Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, will not face voter fraud charges after officials determined that he did not fraudulently register to vote and cast a ballot in North Carolina during the 2020 presidential election, the state attorney general said on Friday.The attorney general, Josh Stein, said there was “not sufficient evidence” to bring charges against Mr. Meadows or his wife, Debra Meadows.The State Bureau of Investigation conducted the investigation and found that because Mr. Meadows was “engaged in public service” in Washington, he was qualified for a residency exception, officials said. Under North Carolina law, if a person moves to Washington or other federal territories for government service, then the individual will not lose residency status in the state.The couple also signed a yearlong lease, which was provided by their landlord, for a Scaly Mountain, N.C., residence listed on their voting registration, prosecutors said, and cellphone records showed Mrs. Meadows was in the area in October 2020.Mr. Meadows was a North Carolina member of Congress until March 2020, when he went to work in the White House. Then, six weeks before the 2020 election, the couple registered to vote using the address of a modest, three-bedroom mobile home with a rusted roof in Scaly Mountain.Law enforcement officials in Macon County, a rural community in the mountains of western North Carolina, became aware of questions surrounding Mr. Meadows’s voter registration in early March after The New Yorker revealed that he had registered to vote at a residence where he did not live.The North Carolina Department of Justice then asked the State Bureau of Investigation to investigate if any laws were broken.Before he registered to vote at the Scaly Mountain home, Mr. Meadows had voted in 2018 from a home in Transylvania County, N.C., and in 2016 from Asheville, N.C., according to North Carolina records.“My office has concluded that there is not sufficient evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt against either Mr. or Mrs. Meadows, so my office will not prosecute this case,” Mr. Stein said in a statement. “If further information relevant to the allegations of voter fraud comes to light in any subsequent investigation or prosecution by authorities in other jurisdictions, we reserve the right to reopen this matter.”Ben Williamson, a spokesman for Mr. Meadows, declined to comment on Friday.Despite cases of voter fraud being rare, Mr. Meadows has been one of the primary speakers boosting former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud both before and after the 2020 election.During an August 2020 interview on CNN, Mr. Meadows warned of fraud in voting by mail and said people are able to register to vote in multiple places at once, leading to fraud. More

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      Democrats, Feeling New Strength, Plan to Go on Offense on Voting Rights

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      After retaining most of the governor’s offices they hold and capturing the legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, Democrats are putting forward a long list of proposals to expand voting access.NEW ORLEANS — For the last two years, Democrats in battleground states have played defense against Republican efforts to curtail voting access and amplify doubts about the legitimacy of the nation’s elections.Now it is Democrats, who retained all but one of the governor’s offices they hold and won control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota, who are ready to go on offense in 2023. They are putting forward a long list of proposals that include creating automatic voter registration systems, preregistering teenagers to vote before they turn 18, returning the franchise to felons released from prison and criminalizing election misinformation.Since 2020, Republicans inspired by former President Donald J. Trump’s election lies sought to make voting more difficult for anyone not casting a ballot in person on Election Day. But in the midterm elections, voters across the country rejected the most prominent Republican candidates who embraced false claims about American elections and promised to bend the rules to their party’s advantage.Democrats who won re-election or will soon take office have interpreted their victories as a mandate to make voting easier and more accessible.“I’ve asked them to think big,” Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota said of his directions to fellow Democrats on voting issues now that his party controls both chambers of the state’s Legislature. Republicans will maintain unified control next year over state governments in Texas, Ohio, Florida and Georgia. In Texas and Ohio, along with other places, Republicans are weighing additional restrictions on voting when they convene in the new year.Democratic governors in Arizona and Wisconsin will face Republican-run legislatures that are broadly hostile to expanding voting access, while Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor-elect of Pennsylvania, is likely to eventually preside over one chamber with a G.O.P. majority and one with a narrow Democratic majority.And in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court is weighing a case that could give state legislatures vastly expanded power over election laws — a decision with enormous implications for the power of state lawmakers to draw congressional maps and set rules for federal elections.Democrats have widely interpreted that case — brought by Republicans in North Carolina — as dangerous to democracy because of the prospect of aggressive G.O.P. gerrymandering and the potential for state legislators to determine the outcome of elections. But it would also allow Democrats to write themselves into permanent power in states where they control the levers of elections.The Supreme Court’s deliberation comes as many Democrats are becoming increasingly vocal about pushing the party to be more aggressive in expanding voting access — especially after the Senate this year failed to advance a broad voting rights package.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      The Election Is Over. Now Comes the Battle for Voting Rights in 2024

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      Voters rebuffed the most aggressive efforts to weaken democracy in the midterms. But battles over election districts and ballot restrictions that could prove crucial in 2024 have already resumed.WASHINGTON — With Raphael Warnock’s victory in the Georgia Senate race on Tuesday, the major midterm elections are over.But the battles over voting rules, restrictions and political boundaries that will help determine who wins the next ones barely paused for ballot-counting before resuming in force.Indeed, the day after Mr. Warnock’s election, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a potentially seismic case brought by Republicans in North Carolina that could give state legislatures significantly expanded power over election laws — and virtually unlimited authority to draw gerrymandered maps.The landscape is familiar. Democrats who took control of state legislatures in Michigan and Minnesota are preparing legislation to to broaden voting access, including measures in Michigan that would mandate absentee ballot drop boxes.Republicans, who control a majority of legislatures across the country, are proposing new restrictive legislation they say would combat election fraud, though it remains exceedingly rare. And though both parties have benefited from gerrymanders, Republicans are far more likely to make it a centerpiece of their electoral strategy.In the Ohio Legislature, Republicans are poised to pass bills that would stiffen the ID requirement for casting a ballot, limit the use of drop boxes and end automatic mailings of absentee-ballot applications to voters.In North Carolina, a Republican sweep of state Supreme Court races last month makes it likely that the State Legislature will be able to gerrymander existing nonpartisan maps of congressional and legislative districts before the 2024 elections.In Wisconsin, both parties are girding for an April election that will determine partisan control of the state’s already politicized Supreme Court — and either open or shut the door on a legal challenge to an impregnable Republican gerrymander of the State Legislature.Some of that jockeying for power always goes on beneath the radar of most voters. But in the wake of more direct attacks on democracy by insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol and by election deniers in last month’s vote, the divergent legislative priorities of the two parties — and particularly Republican reliance on restrictive voting measures and supercharged gerrymanders — reflect what has become a ceaseless tug of war over the rules of American politics and governance.“It’s not the same thing as throwing out the vote count and putting in the wrong count,” said Wendy Weiser, who directs the Democracy Program at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. “But it’s a form of unfair gaming of the system to gain electoral advantage, in a way that shuts out legitimate voters.”The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      North Carolina’s Governor Says a Fringe Claim Before the Supreme Court Would Upend Democracy

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      Over the past six months, the United States Supreme Court has handed down one misguided ruling after another, stripping Americans of the constitutional right to an abortion, curtailing the regulation of guns and industrial emissions, and muddying the divide between church and state. The people have protested. They’ve organized. And in 2022, they voted.In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the June decision on abortion, the majority wrote that “women are not without electoral or political power.” That’s one thing they got right, and Republicans found that out the hard way in the November midterm elections that they expected to win big. Now, however, the very ability to exercise electoral and political power at the ballot box is hanging in the balance in a case the court is scheduled to hear on Wednesday.Moore v. Harper is a case from North Carolina that state and national Republicans are using to push an extreme legal premise known as the “independent state legislature theory.” While the United States Constitution delegates the authority to administer federal elections to the states, with Congress able to supersede those state decisions, proponents of this theory argue that state legislatures are vested with the exclusive power to run those elections. This view would leave no room for oversight by state courts and put the ability of governors to veto election-related legislation in doubt.The court’s decision on this alarming argument could fundamentally reshape American democracy. Four justices have suggested that they are sympathetic to the theory. If the court endorses this doctrine, it would give state legislatures sole power over voting laws, congressional redistricting, and potentially even the selection of presidential electors and the proper certification of election winners.Indeed, the North Carolina Supreme Court, in a decision earlier this year, said the theory that state courts are barred from reviewing a congressional redistricting plan was “repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences.”You can look to North Carolina to see the potential for dire consequences. In 2010, Republicans took over the state legislature in a midterm election. Since then, North Carolina has been ground zero for Republican attempts to manipulate elections. As the state’s attorney general and now governor since 2017, I’ve dealt with Republican legislative leaders as they advanced one scheme after another to manipulate elections while making it harder for populations they have targeted to vote.These schemes robbed voters from the start to the end of an election: a voter ID requirement so strict that a college ID from the University of North Carolina isn’t good enough. No same-day registration during early voting. No provisional ballots for voters who show up at the wrong precinct. Shorter early voting periods eliminated voting the Sunday before Election Day, a day when African American churches hold popular “souls to the polls” events.Fortunately, these measures were stopped in 2016 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which described them as targeting African Americans “with almost surgical precision.”Republicans in the legislature have also gerrymandered districts in diabolical ways. In 2016, state Republicans drew a congressional redistricting map that favored Republicans 10-3. They did so, the Republican chairman of a legislative redistricting committee explained, “because I do not believe it’s possible to draw a map with 11 Republicans and two Democrats.”North Carolinians have relied on courts and my veto power as governor to foil many of these schemes. In 2022 a successful lawsuit in state court challenging a 2021 gerrymandered congressional map resulted in fair districts, splitting the state’s 14 districts (the state gained a district after the 2020 census) so that Democrats and Republicans each won seven seats in November’s elections. It seemed only right, given the nearly even divide between Democratic and Republican votes statewide. Republican efforts to avoid this result led to the Moore v. Harper appeal now before the Supreme Court.As recently as 2019, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a majority opinion on partisan gerrymandering claims in Maryland and North Carolina that state courts were an appropriate venue to hear such cases but that those claims were political issues beyond the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Retreating from that position on the role of state courts would be a shocking leap backward that would undermine the checks and balances established in state constitutions across the country.Republican leaders in the North Carolina state legislature have shown us how the elections process can be manipulated for partisan gain. And that’s what you can expect to see from state legislatures across the country if the court reverses course in this case.Our democracy is a fragile ecosystem that requires checks and balances to survive. Giving state legislatures unfettered control over federal elections is not only a bad idea but also a blatant misreading of the Constitution. Don’t let the past decade of North Carolina voting law battles become a glimpse into the nation’s future.Roy Cooper, a Democrat, has been the governor of North Carolina since 2017. He was previously elected to four terms as attorney general.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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      Turnout Was Strong in Georgia, but Mail Voting Plummets After New Law

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      An analysis of November turnout data shows that voting by mail dropped as Georgians increasingly cast ballots in person. The shift hints at the possible impact of a 2021 voting overhaul.While voter turnout remained strong, absentee voting in Georgia dropped off drastically in this year’s midterm election, the first major test of an expansive 2021 voting law that added restrictions for casting ballots by mail.Data released by the Georgia secretary of state showed that mail voting in the state’s November general election plunged by 81 percent from the level of the 2020 contest. While a drop was expected after the height of the pandemic, Georgia had a far greater decrease than any other state with competitive statewide races, according to a New York Times analysis.Turnout data suggests that a large majority of people who voted by mail in 2020 found another way to cast their ballots this year — turning to in-person voting, either early or on Election Day. Turnout in the state was 56 percent of all active voters, shy of the 2018 high-water mark for a midterm election.The numbers are the first sign of how the 2021 law may have affected the election in Georgia, which has recently established itself as a battleground state. The law was signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, and backed by G.O.P. state lawmakers who said that the changes would make it “easier to vote, harder to cheat.” It significantly limited drop boxes, added voter identification requirements and prevented election officials from proactively mailing out absentee ballot applications.But civil rights groups, voting rights advocates and Democrats noted that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in elections. They viewed the law, known as S.B. 202, as an attempt to suppress Democratic-leaning voters, especially people of color, who had just helped flip Georgia blue in a presidential election for the first time in decades.President Biden called the law “Jim Crow in the 21st century.” Major League Baseball moved its All-Star game out of suburban Atlanta in protest.This year, after a mostly smooth and high-turnout general election under the new rules, both sides saw validation in their arguments. Republicans pointed to the strong overall turnout as evidence that the law had not suppressed votes. Democrats and civil rights groups argued that their sprawling voter education and mobilization efforts had helped people overcome the new hurdles.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More