State braces for surge in absentee voting demand for November General Election due to COVID-19

NEW YORK, NY – Today, a coalition of groups filed a lawsuit urging a federal court to change New York State’s flawed absentee ballot verification requirements in time for the 2020 General Election. New York has consistently had one of the highest absentee ballot rejection rates in the country. In the 2018 general election, state election officials discarded more than 34,000 absentee ballots – or about 14% of all absentee ballots cast. This is, in part, because the state does not notify voters and given them an opportunity to respond when their ballots are in danger of not being counted because of benign issues – like an omitted signature or a perceived discrepancy between the signature on the absentee ballot envelope and the one in their voter registration file.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and pro bono partner Selendy & Gay are representing the League of Women Voters of the United States, the League of Women Voters of New York, and individual client Carmelina Palmer in the case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. When she moved to New York City, Mrs. Palmer, 23, was diagnosed with a neurological condition that causes tremors, which last for unpredictable lengths of time. Mrs. Palmer fears that her inconsistent handwriting might cause any absentee ballot she casts to be rejected because of a signature mismatch.

“All eligible voters should be able to have confidence that when they participate in an election, their vote will be counted,” said Danielle Lang, co-director, voting rights and redistricting at CLC. “As more New Yorkers rely on the state’s vote by mail system to exercise their right to vote during the pandemic, more face the risk of disenfranchisement due to their signature or other benign errors. New York’s rejection rate for absentee ballots is alarmingly high. The lack of notice to voters and an opportunity to fix errors must be resolved with urgency with less than 120 days until the General Election.”

“I signed on to this lawsuit to right the wrongs of past disenfranchisement and to vote confidently in the General Election this November,” said Carmelina Palmer, plaintiff in the case. “Providing all absentee voters the opportunity to fix signature verification issues before their ballots are thrown away would give me confidence that when I participate in an election, my vote will be counted. With this lawsuit, my hope is to have that confidence restored.”

“For the past two election cycles, New York’s ballot rejection rate has been among the highest in the country,” said Laura Ladd Bierman, executive director for the League of Women Voters of New York State. “Voters need the opportunity to ensure their vote is counted and their voice is heard. We want to make sure that when a ballot is challenged, the voter is notified and has sufficient time to correct the error.”

“Decisions around the validity of absentee ballots cannot be left to the whims of each individual county. This is a time when every vote counts more than ever, and New York must take the proper steps to ensure that absentee ballots are properly and uniformly counted,” said Selendy & Gay partner Joshua Margolin. “It is also our hope to ensure that New Yorkers, who are still suffering from the pandemic, are not unintentionally foregoing their right to vote by voting absentee.”

Even before the global pandemic, voters across the country have increasingly relied upon vote-by-mail as their preferred method of casting their ballot. Vote-by-mail ballots in New York are certain to surge this November and New York’s lack of adequate procedures to safeguard those ballots will affect many more New Yorkers. This failure to provide absentee voters with notice and an opportunity to cure is particularly problematic in New York, which uses signature matching for absentee ballot verification. Signature matching is notoriously error-prone and cannot be properly utilized without clear, accessible ways for voters to cure their ballots and ensure their votes are counted.

The Selendy & Gay team includes Joshua Margolin, Faith Gay, Jordan Weatherwax, Shelby Rokito, and Katie Renzler.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. – U.S. District Judge Janet Neff today dismissed the lawsuits attacking the voter-approved constitutional amendment that established the Michigan’s Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. The amendment puts voters – not politicians – in charge of drawing state Legislative and U.S. Congressional election maps through a fair, impartial, and transparent process, with robust public input.

“It is time for fair maps in Michigan,” said Paul Smith, Vice President at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Taking partisanship out of drawing electoral maps is critical to advancing the principles of accountability and transparency in government. Voters nationwide are tired of being silenced by special interests, who have exerted their will over the redistricting process for far too long. Now Michigan can turn to the important work of putting their citizen-led commission into action.”

“Michigan’s Constitution begins with, ‘All political power is inherent in the people.’ The courts have vindicated the people’s right to use our political power to take back our redistricting process and unrig our elections,” said Nancy Wang, Executive Director of Voters Not Politicians, the grassroots, nonpartisan group that ended gerrymandering in Michigan. “We are thrilled to see an end to these wasteful lawsuits brought by the Michigan Republican Party, Tony Daunt of the Michigan Freedom Fund, and other opponents of fair redistricting to thwart the will of the people.”

“Thousands of regular Michiganders took the initiative to make our voices heard and our votes count.” Wang continued. “Voters overwhelmingly approved the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, but we knew that those who stood to lose power under a fair, impartial, and transparent redistricting process would do whatever they could to hold onto that power. Our continued, decisive legal victories from the Michigan Supreme Court to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals demonstrate that when the people come together to protect and strengthen our democracy, we will prevail.”

Voters Not Politicians has started to test a free tool in partnership with the Princeton Gerrymandering Project to make it easy and efficient for communities of interest to submit maps to the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission so they have a say in how they are represented. Volunteers are also developing an educational curriculum to help Michiganders learn more about providing compelling, detailed, and localized feedback to help guide the Commission’s decision making.

The application window to serve on the Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission closed on June 1, 2020, with 9,367 voters submitting applications, and an independent firm retained by the Secretary of State’s office randomly selected a group of 200 “semi-finalists” that reflects the geographic and demographic diversity of the state. The Legislative leadership has until August 1 to strike up to 10% of the applications in the semi-finalist pool. Then the independent firm will randomly select from the remaining applications the final 13 commissioners – 4 who affiliate as Republicans, 4 who affiliate as Democrats, and 5 who affiliate with neither major party by September 1. A full timeline of constitutional requirements can be found on the Voters Not Politicians website here.

Paul Smith, Mark Gaber, and Annabelle Harless of CLC represented Voters Not Politicians.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that states have the authority to require presidential electors to vote for the candidate that wins the popular vote in their state.  

Paul Smith, CLC’s Vice President, Litigation and Strategy, issued the following statement:  

“Today’s ruling is the correct one. If electors had been turned loose to violate state law and ignore their state’s voters, they would have been free to accept contributions from wealthy special interests who want to influence our politics, free from any public disclosure. While numerous federal laws require elected officials and policymakers to follow financial ethics and transparency rules, there are currently no federal ethics or transparency laws for presidential electors. The absence of transparency laws, combined with unfettered discretion, would have led to corruption threatening the very legitimacy of the presidential election. 

Voters should go to the polls with the confidence that their vote will count and that their political system will be free from corruption. However far from perfect the current system may be, the chaos of an unbound Electoral College would have been even worse.” 

Campaign Legal Center and Issue One filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the cases, Chiafalo v. Washington and Colorado Department of State v. Baca, arguing that states should have the ability to bind electors to the popular vote. 

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) today introduced the Judicial Ads Act to increase transparency in the judicial nominations process. Campaign Legal Center endorses the legislation and CLC President Trevor Potter issued the following statement of support:  
 

"Transparency means more accountability. This principle holds true for political campaigns, and it should be no different when it comes to the confirmation of federal judges. Wealthy special interests -- of all political stripes -- secretly spend millions of dollars on ads in support of judicial nominees they believe will advance their causes in the courtroom, and the public has no idea who is behind these ads. This secret spending means that justices and judges may have hidden conflicts of interest. The Judicial Ads Act will finally bring transparency to our third branch of government.”