Election Changes
Please bookmark our litigation tracker for a complete compilation of the latest developments in every lawsuit regarding changes to election and voting procedures.
• Indiana: Marion County Clerk Myla Eldridge, a Democrat, has asked Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson to extend the noon Tuesday deadline by which absentee ballots must be received for Indiana's June 2 primary to avoid disenfranchising thousands of voters who've experienced delays in receiving or returning their ballots. As of Friday afternoon, Lawson's office had not yet responded to Eldridge's request.
• Maine: Democratic Gov. Janet Mills says she does not plan to order that Maine's July 14 primary be conducted by mail. Democratic Secretary of State Matt Dunlap, who at one point supported an all-mail election but soon thereafter reversed himself, said that if Mills changes her mind, she'd have to issue an order by June 14, a month before the primary.
• Nevada: A federal judge has, for the second time, rejected a lawsuit by a conservative group seeking to block Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske from conducting Nevada's June 9 primary by mail. The plaintiffs had amended their case after U.S. District Judge Miranda Du concluded they'd fail to show they would be harmed by Cegavske's plan, but Du ruled that their latest attempt "glaringly repackages old arguments."
• New York: New York's Democratic-run state legislature has passed a bill to allow voters to request absentee ballots online for the November general election. The bill also extends the deadline to postmark ballots from the day before the election to Election Day itself. Ballots must still be received within seven days of the election. The measure now goes to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
• Pennsylvania: Voting rights advocates faced setbacks in two suits aimed at extending Pennsylvania's absentee ballot receipt deadline ahead of Tuesday's primary, while a second populous county in the Philadelphia suburbs brought its own lawsuit seeking to delay the deadline.
In one case, backed by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, an intermediate state appeals court ruled that it likely did not have jurisdiction over the plaintiffs' requests and could therefore not grant them. Instead, said the judge, only the Pennsylvania Supreme Court likely could decide the matter. Plaintiffs have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, asking the justices either to find that the appeals court does have jurisdiction or to grant them the relief they're seeking.
In a separate suit, supported by the Public Interest Law Center, the state Supreme Court ruled that plaintiffs had failed to bring their case within a 180-day period specified by new law passed last year that, for the first time, allowed any voter to request an absentee ballot without an excuse.
The PILC had previously filed a lawsuit addressing the same issue that the Supreme Court rejected earlier this month, with one justice explaining in a concurring opinion that worries about disruptions in mail service were too speculative at the time. In its new case, the PILC argued that such disruptions had in fact become very real but could not persuade the justices that the 180-day deadline, which recently passed, did not apply to them.
Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the case now belongs in the same intermediate appeals court, known as the Commonwealth Court, that just said it could not hear the Priorities USA case—the exact reverse situation.
Finally, officials in Bucks County, the fourth-largest county in the state, have asked a lower state court to allow them to count ballots so long as they are postmarked by the day before the primary and received by a later date of the court's choosing. Under Pennsylvania law, ballots must be received by Election Day in order to be counted, but officials say that due to the surge in requests for absentee ballots, they've been unable to send them out with enough time for voters to return them. A similar request made by officials in Montgomery County was recently rejected.
• Texas: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott says he will extend the early voting period for the November general election in Texas, but in remarks on Thursday, he did not specify how long such an extension might be. In May, Abbott doubled the length of early voting for the state's July 14 runoffs from one week to two.