Carrie Levine, Votebeat

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

At Tuesday’s presidential debate, former President Donald Trump once again asserted that “elections are bad” and that Democrats are trying to get immigrants who’ve entered the country illegally to vote. As fact checks pointed out and Votebeat has previously reported, there is no evidence of widespread noncitizen voting, and experts say it is extraordinarily rare.

Republicans, though, continue to allege that voting by noncitizens is a pressing problem that demands a legislative solution. And the assertions aren’t just political theater: They are already affecting actual voters, and the impact could grow. Trump wants Republicans to shut down the federal government until they get their way on legislation requiring everyone registering to vote to provide documentary proof of citizenship.

House Republicans first passed the legislation, known as the SAVE Act, in July. The Democratic-controlled Senate has taken no action on it. House Republicans are now attaching it to a bill that would keep the government funded until March. That legislation passed an initial procedural hurdle, but House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, called off a scheduled floor vote Wednesday saying he was still working to “build consensus” for it as members of his caucus wavered over diverging priorities.

The legislation is certainly a nonstarter in the U.S. Senate; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have made it clear they view the proof-of-citizenship legislation as a “poison pill.”

People who try to register must already attest, under penalty of perjury, that they are U.S. citizens. Any noncitizen who attempts to vote — including legal permanent residents — would be taking extraordinary risks, including a felony charge, loss of their residency status, and deportation.

So why are Republicans so focused on noncitizen voting?

Watchdogs say it’s because Republicans are laying the groundwork for Trump and others to cast doubt on the outcome of November’s election if he doesn’t win. Trump has used similar claims that way in the past, asserting that illegal voting is why he lost the popular vote in 2016, though he won that election.

“This is not intended to actually clean up the rolls,” said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “This is intended to set the stage for claims the election was stolen.”

Two House Republican-led committees had separate hearings on elections this week. Some Republican secretaries of state, including Cord Byrd of Florida and Frank LaRose of Ohio, urged Congress to pass the bill. Democrats pointed out repeatedly that noncitizen voting in federal elections is rare.

“Noncitizen voting does not happen in any systemic way in New Mexico or in the nation more broadly,” said New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver, a Democrat, during one of the hearings, adding, “However, voters believe noncitizen voting does occur, and this impacts their overall confidence in elections.”

Feeding that belief, Republicans and allied groups have continued to file lawsuits over the voter rolls and treat noncitizen voting as an urgent issue, an approach that experts say is having consequences around the country.

In Texas and Alabama, voting watchdog groups are questioning whether state officials have removed voters within 90 days of a federal election in violation of federal law. In those states as well as Virginia and Ohio, advocates say voter removals shortly before the deadline likely included naturalized citizens who were flagged as noncitizens based on outdated records.

In Alabama, Secretary of State Wes Allen, a Republican, acknowledged in a statement that some of the individuals he flagged may have been naturalized citizens, who are eligible voters, but said such people would have to update their voter registration records with their new citizenship status in order to vote.

But this close to an election, the risk of disenfranchising or discouraging eligible voters is high. Efforts to “clean” the voter rolls have indeed wrongly or improperly ensnared eligible voters in the past. In 2019, for example, Texas officials flagged 95,000 voters whom they identified as “noncitizens” and accused broadly of voter fraud. After review, it turned out that many of the people identified on the rolls were naturalized citizens. The scandal resulted in the secretary of state resigning. The state abandoned the effort after numerous lawsuits, which resulted in the state setting new guidelines for future voter roll cleanups.

That relatively recent episode has prompted concerns about the press release put out last month by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, asserting that Texas has removed 6,500 “potential noncitizens” from its rolls since 2021.

Advocacy groups want to know how the state identified those voters as potential noncitizens, and whether those steps complied with the procedures put in place after the 2019 incident. Many of those voters, they point out, may in fact be citizens.

Nonetheless, the number in Abbott’s release is making its way into the comments made by other Republicans on the issue. For example, at the opening of a House Judiciary Committee meeting on the proof of citizenship legislation Tuesday, Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, cited it, and he described the removed voters only as noncitizens — not “potential noncitizens.”

In response to the concerns about noncitizen voting, election officials have repeatedly stressed, in court and to the public, that there are multiple measures in place to prevent noncitizens from registering and casting ballots, and no evidence that these things are happening, outside of rare and isolated instances.

Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican who left office in 2023, said in an interview that election officials perform many checks before adding a voter. In that state, “at least two people have to sign off to say that this person should be added to the voter rolls,” he said. Texas election officials, too, have emphasized the checks they use to keep voter rolls accurate and ensure only eligible voters are on them.

In Georgia in 2022, a review by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, found 1,634 potential noncitizens had attempted to register to vote between 1997 and 2022, though he said 80% were since 2016; none were permitted to register or cast a ballot.

The SAVE Act pushed by Republicans this week would require anyone registering to vote to present documentary proof of citizenship — a way, they argue, to ensure people are following the law. But not everyone has such documentation, or can easily access it. Research published last year by the Brennan Center for Justice found that more than 20 million people don’t have proof of citizenship readily available, and the percentage was higher among Americans of color.

Arizona already limits registrants without such documentation — like a birth certificate or U.S. passport — to a separate list of voters who are permitted to vote only in federal elections. A December 2023 Votebeat analysis found that these “federal only” voters are more likely to be young and living on or near college campuses; other research has found voting-age students are more likely to lack a driver’s license.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

This news analysis was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get future editions, including the latest reporting from Votebeat bureaus and curated news from other publications, delivered to your inbox every Saturday.

Within hours of when former President Donald Trump and others were shot at a political rally in Pennsylvania, election officials in Arizona were scrambling to assess the implications for the early voting already in progress for the state’s July 30 primary.

Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers was on the phone to confer with election officials and the county sheriff, and said he worked late into the night. The sheriff’s office later posted on social media that there is no known active threat against Maricopa County polling places. “Security plans are robust and we actively watch & evaluate every potential threat,” it said. On Sunday, election officials sent a letter to Maricopa poll workers and election staff, telling them that law enforcement knew of no active threats, but reminding them to share any concerns.

Sellers, a Republican, said the shooting might spur him to take steps to further protect his own safety, something law enforcement officials have urged him to take more seriously, given the stream of threats he and his fellow local officials have received. “I don’t feel very threatened, but I need to do more,” he said.

The shooting, he said, “made me feel sick.”

The threat of political violence moved abruptly again to the forefront of Americans’ consciousness with the assassination attempt on Trump, but for election officials, an environment of threats and fear has been the uncomfortable norm for years.

In Arizona, and all over the country election officials have been receiving death threats in the years since Trump and his allies claimed the 2020 election was stolen, some of which have led to federal prosecution. The specter of violence has also appeared at polling places and election facilities. For example, in Pennsylvania, two Virginia men were convicted last year for bringing weapons to the Philadelphia Convention Center where mail ballots for the November 2020 election were being counted.

“As a result of the threats and harassment election officials have experienced over the last several years, our community has invested in physical security for facilities and personnel, from trainings to physical security assessments and upgrades to exercising response and contingency plans,” said Amy Cohen, executive director of the National Association of State Election Directors. “We’ve done that so that we’re prepared to respond and recover in the event of an incident.”

Last week’s attack on Trump may not have direct implications for safety at the polls, but it provoked new rounds of conversations about how best to protect election workers and the voting public from politically motivated violence, and prompted election and public safety officials to review their precautionary measures. They’re careful to avoid making too many details of their security planning public, but they promised heightened awareness and are expecting to respond to amped-up concerns from others.

Scott McDonell, the county clerk in Dane County, Wisconsin, which includes Madison, expects the attack at the Trump rally to fuel worries in places that host voting. “We’ve been preparing for this election to be a difficult election, so I think the difference is that maybe this brings this issue to the fore for everybody else,” he said.

Jennifer Doinoff, president of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said she expects a lot more discussion about security at an upcoming conference of state election officials organized by the Secretary of State’s Office. In Hays County, where she is the election administrator, she said it means she’ll “talk more with law enforcement about patrolling polling locations,” and meet with municipal and university police departments to make sure emergency and security plans are firmly in place and everyone is prepared for whatever might happen.

“We do that all the time. This isn’t a new thing,” she stressed. But “the awareness is a little more heightened in this election,” and she’s hoping law enforcement can have an increased presence.

Doinoff also plans to make sure voters are aware of the steps she’s taking to ensure they feel safe while voting.

Thad Hall, elections director in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, just north of where the assassination attempt took place, said election officials have already been planning for a host of possible scenarios, from power outages to cyber attacks.

“Some violent event happening at a polling place is one out of a thousand contingencies we might plan for,” he said. Hall stressed that county election officials are in constant contact with law enforcement and public safety officials. In addition, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro earlier this year announced an Election Threats Task Force composed of law enforcement, public safety officials, and election officials that is assigned to share information in order to more quickly identify and respond to any incidents.

In Durham County, North Carolina, Derek Bowens, the elections director, said the county will be using a new location tracking system to monitor the election workers who drive results from polling places to the elections board. The system will update their location every three seconds, he said, allowing for more frequent checks on their location for safety purposes. The older system had longer lag times.

In April, a poll by PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist found roughly 1 in 5 respondents said violence might be necessary to get the country back on track. That included 28% of Republicans and 12% of Democrats. Those are frightening numbers.

It’s also true that a majority rejected violence. But as the country learned last week, it just takes one person who doesn’t.

Votebeat editorial director Jessica Huseman and reporters Natalia Contreras, Jen Fifield, Alexander Shur, and Carter Walker contributed.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s managing editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org. Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about an argument that had the potential to undermine a key section of the Voting Rights Act: the contention that private parties couldn’t sue to enforce Section 2 of the landmark voting rights statute.

It “flies in the face” of how the law had been interpreted by federal courts for decades, I wrote at the time. Expert after expert stressed that it was a long shot, describing it with terms such as “far-fetched” and “Hail Mary pass.”

Except for one thing: Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, had raised the question, in a one-paragraph concurring opinion in another voting rights case in 2020. Past cases, he wrote, “have assumed—without deciding— that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action under §2.”

No contention is too far out there if two Supreme Court justices want to parse it. That’s why defendants in voting rights cases, including the states of Texas and Georgia, began raising the argument, which, if successful, would mean only the U.S. Department of Justice could file suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (the provision of the law which prohibits discrimination in voting based on race or membership in certain language minority groups and has historically been most often used in redistricting cases). That’s a dramatic change that almost certainly would result in far fewer such cases.

Now, a federal appellate court has officially endorsed it.

“Did Congress give private plaintiffs the ability to sue under § 2 of the Voting Rights Act? Text and structure reveal that the answer is no,” a three-judge panel wrote for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in connection with an Arkansas case.

That means that for now, private parties can’t bring suit under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in the seven states covered by the 8th Circuit: Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. And almost certainly, Gorsuch, Thomas, and their fellow Supreme Court justices will eventually have to decide the question.

Voting rights advocates who have been bringing suit under the provision for decades say they’re flummoxed by the 8th Circuit’s decision. They point to a legislative record that clearly shows Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act knowing full well that private plaintiffs were suing under Section 2 of the VRA, and making it clear Congress expected that to continue.

“The Committee reiterates the existence of the private right of action under Section 2, as has been clearly intended by Congress since 1965,” reads a Senate report from 1982, according to research provided by the Campaign Legal Center’s Danielle Lang. “It is intended that citizens have a private cause of action to enforce their rights under Section 2,” reads a House report from the same year.

In a 1996 opinion, Morse v. Republican Party of Virginia, the late Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens noted that Section 2 “provides no right to sue on its face,” but the Supreme Court has “entertained cases brought by private litigants to enforce § 2.”

The 8th Circuit panel was dismissive of both the legislative history (“there are many reasons to doubt legislative history as an interpretive tool”) and Morse, which it wrote “assumes that a private right of action exists under § 2.” The emphasis there is the 8th Circuit’s.

The 8th Circuit decision is already reverberating through ongoing cases. For example, in North Dakota, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and the Spirit Lake Tribe recently won a victory in a case over state political maps. Secretary of State Michael Howe, a Republican, cited the 8th Circuit’s ruling on the private right of action when he announced the state would appeal.

Lang points out the North Dakota case was also brought under a separate federal statute that isn’t necessarily affected by the 8th Circuit ruling on Section 2, but by her description, voting rights advocates like the Campaign Legal Center are playing something akin to whack-a-mole with the never-ending challenges to the VRA, and it’s “another way in which our resources are kind of being pulled away from doing our work just to maintain the status quo.”

The Supreme Court recently issued a strong decision upholding the Voting Rights Act — this summer’s 5-4 Milligan ruling originating from an Alabama challenge. That decision, points out Ruth Greenwood, director of the election law clinic at Harvard Law School, may have given new oxygen to arguments such as this as it became apparent the Supreme Court was not immediately going to strike down the law.

“This sort of collateral attack maybe wasn’t seen as the best way to get there, but having Milligan come out the way it did, the conservatives have decided to come at it from every angle until they find something that sticks,” Greenwood said.

We’re preparing to cover the 2024 elections next year. What issues in voting should we focus on? What’s missing in election news? Help us decide what to cover by filling out our survey here.

Back then

Conservatives were not always this hostile to the Voting Rights Act, or the ways by which its powers could be brought to bear. The U.S. Senate unanimously reauthorized it in 2006, and several of the Republicans who voted for it remain in office: Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Grassley, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and John Thune.

Its passage in the U.S. House that year was more fraught with controversy. While House leaders had guaranteed Republican support for the renewal, conservative representatives forced the first vote to be canceled over their support for controversial changes that Democrats and even some Republicans said would gut the intent of the act. To placate them, the House held votes on four amendments (though ultimately none passed).

In the end, most House Republicans did vote for the bill (it passed 390-33), and even did so ahead of schedule.

In other voting news

• So-called “false electors” in states won by President Joe Biden who attempted to wrongly cast those states’ electoral votes for former President Donald Trump continue to face legal consequences. The Washington Post reported Nevada is now the third state to criminally charge false electors. In Wisconsin, the 10 Republicans agreed to a legal settlement requiring them to withdraw their false certification, acknowledge Biden’s victory, and never serve as a presidential elector in any election that includes Trump on the ballot, the Post reported. (Read Votebeat’s story on why Pennsylvania’s “false electors” are likely to avoid prosecution.)
• Columbia County in Georgia has become the first known county to contract with EagleAI, a voter information system endorsed by conservatives who have spread conspiracy theories about elections, the New York Times reports. Experts have warned against using the system, and Georgia state officials said it contained errors.
• To support allegations that former President Donald Trump and his campaign intended to subvert the vote in the 2020 election, federal prosecutors said in a court filing that an unidentified Trump campaign employee “encouraged rioting” to obstruct the tallying of ballots in Detroit, the Detroit News reported.
• A prominent misinformation researcher, Joan Donovan, has filed a complaint against Harvard University, alleging it stopped supporting her work as it sought grants worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the charity of Facebook’s founder, the Washington Post reported. Donovan is now affiliated with Boston University.
• Some Wisconsin Republicans want the state Legislature to dissolve the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and give the secretary of state management of elections, with oversight from state lawmakers, but it’s unclear whether the proposal has enough support to pass, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
• Eligible voters are being caught up in a sweeping conservative effort to challenge voter registrations, forcing those voters to take steps to maintain their registrations and requiring election officials to spend hours evaluating the challenges, CBS News reported.
• Former President Donald Trump and his backers are urging supporters to “guard the vote.” CNN looks at why that phrase troubles democracy advocates and experts.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s story editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org. Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization committed to reporting the nuanced truth about elections and voting at a time of crisis in America.

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

After lawyer Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to charges in Fulton County, the headlines and opinion columnists said it was bad news for former President Donald Trump and an acknowledgement that the conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections were baseless.

And Powell’s guilty plea is one of several. Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis also took deals recently and agreed to testify against co-defendants, a long list that includes Trump. News reports noted at least some of those taking pleas submitted videotaped accounts of what they would say against the remaining defendants if put on the stand. Chesebro and Ellis, unlike Powell, both pleaded guilty to felonies, though the deals for all three call for probation rather than jail time.

Ellis tearfully said she felt “deep remorse” for the false information she pushed on the public, claiming she had relied on assurances from other, more experienced lawyers. Maybe. She had previously acknowledged making misrepresentations about the 2020 election in a sworn statement connected to bar disciplinary proceedings in Colorado, though the Washington Post correctly notes she later suggested she had cut a deal under pressure to settle the case.

A guilty plea and an admission in open court that her claims were false could be harder to explain away. Nonetheless, some social media commenters dismissively said Powell, Ellis, and others pleading guilty would be silly not to take themselves out of legal jeopardy by accepting a deal that carries no jail time, and it’s fair to say the plea deals are light. After all, Crystal Mason, the Texas woman who said she voted in 2016 because she didn’t know she was ineligible to do so, was sentenced to five years in prison for it — a much stiffer sentence for, arguably, something that did far less damage.

But it’s clear that even if people like Ellis acknowledge they made claims completely unsupported by actual facts, people will still believe the lie. It’s not clear what’s going to change that, and the lies are still shaping events.

For example, take the mess over on the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where the Republican majority ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, then spent basically three weeks of precious floor time, as wars rage overseas and the federal government nears a shutdown, attempting to select a replacement.

The fractious backbiting over there went on for so long, through so many failed candidates, it took basically as long as the baseball playoffs, which is saying something because those teams have to win the majority of a seven-game series and a House speaker (technically) doesn’t.

One candidate, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, was the speaker designate for a few hours Tuesday, the same day Ellis choked up in court, but couldn’t get the votes.

Why not? Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told reporters some members wouldn’t vote for Emmer because he voted to certify the 2020 election - even though people are pleading guilty to crimes while acknowledging their allegations of election fraud were baseless.

By Wednesday morning, House Republicans had turned to their next speaker candidate, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, whom the New York Times has described as “the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”

That’s apparently a key credential for the job that’s third in line for the presidency, because Johnson got the votes.

Asked whether the plea deals will change the minds of Americans who believe the results of the 2020 election were somehow tampered with, David Becker, the head of the Center for Election Innovation & Research and a voting rights lawyer, acknowledged it won’t be that easy for the truth to penetrate.

“The people who have been sending $25 of their Social Security check to grifters for three years, those people are legitimate victims, and I don’t think this is going to change overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take a long, long time.”

Nonetheless, he said, the prosecutions and guilty pleas “are an important first step” that, over time, “disincentivize the leaders of these grifting movements.” Eventually, he said, that could allow us all “to agree on a common reality, especially one as important as: Elections have meaning, and the winners win.”

“And,” he added, “we know who won elections.”

Back Then

We’re offering you recent history this week: a collection of stories about newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s efforts to stop certification of the 2020 presidential election. The Associated Press, the Washington Post, the New York Times, NBC News, and Politico all highlighted his efforts.

New From Votebeat

From Votebeat Arizona: Fixes may be coming for 4 of Arizona’s election controversies prior to the presidential election

From Votebeat Michigan: Michigan Appeals Court rules that secretary of state improperly set limits for poll challengers

From Votebeat Michigan: Some communities are kicking off Michigan’s historic early voting with this fall’s municipal elections

From Votebeat Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania’s voting law is filled with obsolete provisions, troublesome conflicts

From Votebeat Texas: Harris County’s voter roll errors — if left unexplained — could fuel claims of voter fraud

In Other Voting News

• A federal judge struck down Georgia’s political maps, finding they violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. The judge ordered the Republican-controlled Legislature to create an additional majority-Black congressional district, as well as two more state Senate and five state House districts with Black majorities. Separately, in North Carolina, lawmakers passed new maps that heavily favor Republicans.
• A data breach may have exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers, about every voter in Washington, D.C., WTOP reported, and election officials plan to reach out to voters and are working with cybersecurity experts.
• A Georgia trial will determine whether hundreds of thousands of challenges to Georgia voters’ eligibility backed by conservative nonprofit True the Vote were meant to discourage voters from casting ballots, the New York Times reported.
• The percentage of provisional ballots rejected in Ohio skyrocketed during August’s special election, the first under a new law requiring voter identification, the Statehouse News Bureau reported.

Carrie Levine is Votebeat’s story editor and is based in Washington, D.C. She edits and frequently writes Votebeat’s national newsletter. Contact Carrie at clevine@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. A version of this post was originally distributed in Votebeat’s free weekly newsletter. Sign up to get it delivered to your inbox every Saturday.