[T]he Department of Justice raided the Fulton County, Georgia, election office and seized ballots and other materials related to that election. The raid followed a failed attempt to have a federal judge order the materials turned over as part of a civil case.
[...]
Forget the fact that Trump and his allies filed, and lost, eight cases aimed at throwing out the results. In Trump’s mind, the facts are irrelevant. He is only concerned with his false narrative that he was the victim in 2020.
[...]
None of this is a coincidence. It is a strategic effort to cast doubt on the veracity of the 2020 election. Never mind that Georgia conducted two full recounts — one by machine and another by hand.
[...]
The government obtained a search warrant listing specific federal crimes that a partisan U.S. attorney in Missouri is apparently investigating.
We don’t yet know who the target of the investigation is, but we can expect it will be aimed at inflicting maximum damage.
[...]
Last week in Davos, [Trump] pointed directly to what he was doing:“The 2020 U.S. presidential election was rigged. It was a rigged election. Everybody now knows that. They found out. People will soon be prosecuted for what they did. That’s probably breaking news.”[...]
If Trump can use the DOJ to seize ballots from a 2020 election office, he will believe he can do the same everywhere in the country in 2026.
[...]
While we don’t yet know what was presented to the magistrate judge who approved the Fulton County search warrant, recent experience shows the possibility that it contained misstatements.
[...]
With Supreme Court-conferred immunity and a GOP-controlled Congress, the question we must confront is this: Who is going to stop him?
Democracy Docket
A federal court ruled Thursday that Virginia’s lifetime voting ban for people with certain felony convictions violates federal law — a landmark decision that could restore voting rights to hundreds of thousands of Virginians, especially Black residents long targeted by the ban.
U.S. District Court Judge John Gibney, appointed by former President Barack Obama, ruled that Virginia’s constitution unlawfully strips voting rights far beyond what Congress allowed when it readmitted the state to the Union after the Civil War.
Democracy Docket
Yeah, that's the aim.A federal court dismissed the Trump Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking access to California’s full voter registration database Thursday, warning that the government’s bid for the voter records “threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy.”
Democracy Docket
Yeah, that's the aim.The department has sued 23 states and the District of Columbia as part of a sweeping effort to gain access to tens of millions of voter records.
[...]
The ruling, that the federal government has no legal authority to demand the sensitive personal information of nearly 23 million voters, blocks one of the most aggressive efforts yet by the administration to centralize voter data and marks a major victory for voter privacy and state sovereignty over elections.
[...]
It comes a day after a federal judge likewise tentatively ruled to reject DOJ’s lawsuit against Oregon over the same issue.
[...]
The judge warned that concentrating sensitive voter information in federal hands could deter people from registering or casting a ballot, particularly those historically disenfranchised.
And the cheating is getting more brazen.
Also, expect ICE and other goons at polling places to force people to stay home out of fear.
Democracy is on its last legs in America.
The "move" won't have any challenges in red states.President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive action to overhaul elections in the U.S., including requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections and demanding that all ballots be received by Election Day.
[...]
The move, which is likely to face swift challenges because states have broad authority to set their own election rules, is consistent with Trump’s long history of railing against election processes. He often claims elections are being rigged, even before the results are known, and has waged battles against certain voting methods since he lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden and falsely blamed it on widespread fraud.
Trump has focused particularly on mail voting, arguing without evidence that it’s insecure and invites fraud even as he has shifted his position on the issue given its popularity with voters, including Republicans. While fraud occurs, it’s rare, limited in scope and gets prosecuted.
AP
And it's entirely up to SCOTUS when and if they want to hear the case - so, maybe after the elections?Judges quickly blocked several key provisions of President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order from March. But red state officials are picking up where Trump left off: obsessing over the myth of noncitizen voters.
[...]
And at least 15 states have sought access to federal databases to look for noncitizens on their voter rolls.
[...]
North Carolina launched a project Thursday that could disenfranchise North Carolina voters, after Democrats warned it violated federal law.
The plan, conceived by a former top GOP legislative aide, would create a two-tiered system for some voters with missing information — allowing them to vote in federal elections, where legal protections for voters are stronger, but not in state and local contests.
The conflict goes back to Republican Jefferson Griffin’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn the results of the election he lost to North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs last year. Griffin argued that thousands of voters should be disenfranchised because their voter record has incomplete information, due to the state election board’s failure to make clear that the information was required. Griffin lost, but now the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is continuing Griffin’s fight for him, suing the state to remove those voters from the rolls unless they provide additional ID.
It’s also the latest example of the GOP going after the voting rights of overseas voters — its new favorite target for voter suppression.
[...]
A group of Native American voters has been fighting a racial gerrymander of North Dakota’s state legislative map since 2021. Now, with the U.S. Supreme Court stepping in, the case could have catastrophic implications for voting rights.
A district court struck down the contested map in 2023, ruling the state had violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by eliminating one of two districts where Native Americans could elect a candidate of their choice and diluting their voting strength. The state appealed the ruling.
In May, the 8th Circuit turned the case on its head. The court voided the district court’s judgment and issued a ruling that could have dire consequences if the Supreme Court agrees with them: private plaintiffs cannot enforce Section 2 of the VRA .
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, acting alone, issued an administrative stay, keeping the court-ordered legislative districts in place for now.
Democracy Docket newsletter
Texas is set to begin a special session Monday that includes drawing a new congressional map, while national Democrats are busy exploring ways to stop the Republican plan.
Texas Republicans are under pressure from the White House to redraw the state’s congressional map to help the party hold its slim majority in the House. Trump reportedly wants Texas to create five new GOP seats.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) added redistricting to the special session agenda last week, citing “constitutional concerns” raised in a July 7 letter by the DOJ. In that letter, the DOJ argued that Texas impermissibly used race in drawing four majority-minority districts. But in defending a lawsuit brought against its current map, Texas continues to deny using race — raising questions about the justification for the redistricting.
Republicans already hold 25 out of Texas’ 38 congressional seats – a much higher share of seats than their vote-share in the state should net.
Democracy Docket newsletter
The Justice Department has sent several demands to states in recent months for access to their sensitive election and voting data. [...] In many of these demands, DOJ officials claim that they are collecting information as part of the department’s efforts to implement Trump’s order.
[...]
The Trump administration is defying a court order by refusing to say how federal agencies may be implementing President Donald Trump’s sweeping anti-voting executive order, pro-voting groups and Democrats alleged in a filing Friday.
Among the order’s directives that lawyers for the administration have failed to provide answers about: How is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allowing its databases to be used to purge voters? How will the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) punish states for continuing to offer a grace period for mail ballots that arrive after Election Day? And how will the U.S. Election Assistance Commission — an independent agency — withhold funds from states that don’t comply with aspects of the order?
[...]
Trump’s order seeks to fundamentally change how U.S. elections are administered. It would make it more difficult for eligible voters to register to vote and stay registered, kill off popular forms of voting and punish states that do not comply.
Though much of the order has been blocked by multiple federal judges, federal agencies appear to be moving forward with implementing aspects of it, while Republicans are using it as a framework to pursue anti-voting efforts at the state and local levels.
Democracy Docket
That's nice. Especially in light of the new rule that says churches can now promote candidates during services.North Carolina Republicans have introduced a sweeping elections bill that, among other steps, would bar election officials from encouraging or promoting voter turnout.
Democracy Docket
Why don't we just abandon voting in North Carolina?The ban would bar members of the state board and county boards from making “written or oral statements intended for general distribution or dissemination to the public at large encouraging or promoting voter turnout in any election.”
[...]
“The idea is that we want the state board to focus on the conduct of the election and that the responsibility for turnout is better handled by other folks,” Rep. Hugh Blackwell, the Elections committee chair and a sponsor of the bill, said when it was unveiled.
[...]
Indeed, the ban is just the latest extreme anti-democracy tactic pioneered by North Carolina Republicans over the last decade or so. In 2016, a court found that the state’s voter suppression law targeted Black voters with “surgical precision.” They drew multiple gerrymandered maps, and stripped the Democratic governor of several powers before he took office. This year, they waged a months-long campaign, ultimately unsuccessful, to overturn a Supreme Court race by having over 65,000 valid votes thrown out after the vote-counting, and two recounts, had been completed.
[...]
After Republicans gained control of the [elections] board in May, they appointed a new GOP majority that quickly ousted Karen Brinson Bell, a respected nonpartisan election administrator, and replaced her with [Sam] Hayes, a Republican operative.
[...]
“There are a number of things I’ve laid out that I would think that anybody, Democrat, Republican or independent or third party could get on board with,” Hayes said. “I have not made any drastic changes and what I’m looking to do is to make elections more efficient, more secure and most importantly, follow the law.”
[...]
On Thursday, Hayes unveiled a separate plan to require over 100,000 registered voters to provide additional information that’s missing from their records, or risk being disenfranchised.
If the GOP-controlled legislature passes HB 958, Gov. Josh Stein (D) is expected to veto it. But House Republicans are just one vote shy of the three-fifths supermajority required to override a veto. In addition to the turnout provision, the measure, known as HB 958, would add new voting restrictions for military and overseas voters, and ban ranked choice voting. It also would empower Sam Hayes, the state election board’s new director and a former top aide to the Republican House leader, to replace state election board staff with political appointees.
And this time, they mean to win.
The GOP bill, a direct product ofPresident Donald Trump’s decade-long obsession with illegal voting, would require documentary proof of citizenship for voter registration, bar states from counting late-arriving mail ballots, and dramatically infringe on states’ authority to run elections.
[...]
The rapid-fire sequence of developments from Washington, said voting-rights experts and historians, underscores the troubling, and historically unprecedented, 180 that the age of Trump has brought. Where once the federal government operated — albeit often imperfectly — as a defender of access to the ballot and an ally of marginalized groups at risk of disenfranchisement, today it plays the opposite role: as the prime mover behind efforts to make voting more difficult, and as a champion of those seeking to permanently undermine fair elections.
[...]
The House’s action comes at a time when the U.S. Justice Department has pulled out of a slew of cases to protect minority voting rights, while offering support to election deniers and January 6 rioters. And it comes just 16 days after a White House order, already the subject of multiple lawsuits, that appears modeled on the SAVE Act and aims to require states to impose strict new voting rules that could disenfranchise millions.
[...]
The SAVE Act still faces a steep uphill climb to overcome a likely Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But with the GOP controlling Congress and the White House, tightening voting rules near the top of Trump’s agenda, and the party largely unified around the issue, the prospect of major voter suppression legislation becoming law nationwide is much closer to reality than probably ever before.
Democracy Docket
Michiganders overwhelmingly passed a 2018 ballot measure that made voting easier by establishing automatic voter registration, no-reason absentee voting and straight-party voting. By a wide margin, voters approved additional changes in 2022: nine days of early voting, prepaid ballot postage, access to absentee-ballot drop boxes and more.
Eleven GOP state lawmakers filed suit to nullify the amendments. Using the radical independent state legislature theory, they argued that only state legislatures – not citizens – have the authority to set rules for federal elections.
A federal district court judge dismissed the case in April last year. Then, in December, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling.
[...]
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Republicans’ request to hear their challenge to pro-voter amendments to the Michigan Constitution.
Democracy Docket
Two days ago, a 3-panel court blocked this shit.
UPDATE 05/01/2025:
North Carolina auditor Dave Boliek (R) appointed a GOP majority to the State Board of Elections after an appeals court allowed a law that took away appointment power from Gov. Josh Stein (D) to take effect. The new Republican members could put the board in the service of the party’s effort to overturn its loss in the state’s Supreme Court race.
Democracy Docket
UPDATE 05:56 pm:
Nullificationist.
If only they'd listen to him.While some party donors and consultants have urged moderation, Mr. Pritzker is tapping into the Democratic base’s visceral desire for a fight — and for a leader.
[...]
Pritzker has emerged as a leader of an insurgent faction calling for a full-throated, unflinching barrage of attacks on Mr. Trump, his Republican allies and their right-wing agenda.
His speech was a call to action more aggressive and comprehensive than perhaps any other by a major liberal figure since Mr. Trump took office, rivaled only by rallying cries from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York on their Western tour. But unlike them, Mr. Pritzker set his stem-winding address in a state with a century-long hold on the nation’s first presidential primary contest — a striking statement on its own.
[...]
Pritzker wears a triple crown in Democratic politics, simultaneously one of the party’s most prominent elected officials, most generous donors and most talked about 2028 presidential prospects.
[...]
While other governors have made ham-handed attempts at reconciliation with Mr. Trump, Mr. Pritzker has turned his state into a bulwark of opposition to the administration’s crackdown on immigration, cuts to the federal government and tariffs on other countries.
He has done so as some congressional Democrats, including Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, have urged their party to be selective with their attacks against the president to avoid alienating independent voters who supported him. Mr. Pritzker, by contrast, wants his party to adopt a posture of zero accommodation.
NYT
“The main divide within the Democratic Party is not between left and right — it’s whether you think this is a constitutional crisis or this is politics as usual,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of the progressive activist group Indivisible. “Pritzker is really demonstrating what it looks like to lead an opposition party against the overreaching authority of the federal government.”
[...]
While his targets went unnamed, there were obvious candidates: Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, the host of a podcast that has featured stars of the MAGA movement, and the Democratic strategist James Carville, who has argued for “a strategic political retreat” until Mr. Trump’s approval ratings fall.
“Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people and trans kids and immigrants,” Mr. Pritzker said, “instead of their own lack of guts and gumption.”
[...]
“Voters didn’t turn out for Democrats last November — not because they don’t want us to fight for our values, but because they think we don’t want to fight for our values,” he said in his speech. “We need to knock off the rust of poll-tested language, decades of stale decorum. It’s obscured our better instincts.”
[...]
Aides and advisers trace Mr. Pritzker’s activism to his family history and Jewish faith. His ancestors fled pogroms in Ukraine to make their fortune in the United States. He led the campaign to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and has for years invoked the specter of Nazism to describe Mr. Trump.
[...]
“What we’re seeing right now is 1930s Germany; the only way to actually stop that from happening is to be very loud and vocal about the pushback,” said Anne Caprara, Mr. Pritzker’s longtime chief of staff. “That is what is motivating everything he is doing right now.”
[...]
An heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune with a net worth estimated around $3.5 billion, Mr. Pritzker is one of the richest elected officials in the country — a position that has given him a measure of political independence because he is not as reliant on party donors.
In 2018, he transformed himself from a longtime donor who was a major funder of Hillary Clinton’s two presidential campaigns into a formidable politician in his own right. He has self-funded two campaigns for governor and spread his wealth to support Democratic candidates for governor and the state parties in battlegrounds — Wisconsin in particular.
[...]
Even before President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s disastrous debate performance last year, Mr. Pritzker was talked about as the Democrats’ “break glass” nominee — a candidate able to fund a White House campaign at a moment’s notice.
Instead, he endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and threw his party a joyous convention in Chicago.
[...]
Two days after the [2024] election, Mr. Pritzker told reporters that his administration “was not unprepared” for a Trump victory. The planning had begun months earlier as his state stockpiled abortion medication and prepared to sue the federal government.
And he issued a warning: “You come for my people, you come through me.”
In her lengthy ruling, U.S. district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the administration’s argument that the power of the presidency entitles him to tinker with voting requirements.
“The President has no constitutional power over election regulation that would support this unilateral exercise of authority,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “The Constitution vests that power in the States and Congress alone.”
She blocked the two sections of the order numerous voting groups had challenged: one requiring that the Election Assistance Commission, an independent executive branch agency, add the proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, and one requiring the various agencies that dispense public assistance to assess each individual’s citizenship before giving them voting forms.
[...]
She also dinged the administration for making misrepresentations to court. In a revelation shortly before a hearing earlier this month, the voting group plaintiffs produced proof that the head of the EAC was already reaching out to state election officials for guidance about how to put the citizenship requirement into effect — despite claiming to the Court that implementation of the order had not yet begun.
[...]
A coterie of national Democratic organizations also challenged other parts of the order that Kollar-Kotelly did not enjoin, including the order that the EAC cut off federal funds for states that accept ballots sent before but delivered after Election Day, and the mandate that the attorney general enforce the executive order.
[...]
The order is part of a bundle of actions Trump and Republicans in Congress have taken that, if successful, could suppress voting in the 2026 elections. House Republicans have also passed voter restrictions in the SAVE Act (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has vowed that the bill, which would need Democratic votes to overcome a filibuster, will not pass in the upper chamber). And Trump has signed a different executive order targeting the Federal Election Commission, which is also being litigated.
TPM
From Illinois Rep. Bill Foster newsletter:
The following Democrats voted with the Republicans. If they're from your state, write to them and give them hell.The U.S. House on Thursday approved legislation requiring documentary proof of U.S. citizenship for anyone registering to vote, something voting rights group have warned could disenfranchise millions of Americans.
The requirement has been a top election-related priority for President Donald Trump and House Republicans, who argue it’s needed to eliminate instances of noncitizen voting, which is already rare and, as numerous state cases have shown, is typically a mistake rather than part of a coordinated attempt to subvert an election. It’s already illegal under federal law for people who are not U.S. citizens to cast ballots and can lead to felony charges and deportation.
AP
