A recent ruling in Georgia should send a clear message to Arizona that its signature matching policies are unconstitutional.

WASHINGTON – Mail-in ballots in Arizona now account for nearly three-quarters of the total ballots cast. But not all those ballots will be counted. In 2016, 2,657 of those ballots were rejected because election officials were not “satisfied” that the signature on the ballot matched the voter’s registration signature. Many of those voters were not even told that their vote was rejected until after Election Day, if at all.

Counties must ensure that all mail-in voters are given notice and an opportunity to confirm their signature before their ballot is rejected.  But, in fact, all counties except Pima simply reject ballots with perceived mismatches that they receive on or near Election Day, in violation of voters’ constitutional rights to due process.

Yesterday, a federal court in Georgia held unconstitutional similar signature matching practices. The court ordered election officials to provide all absentee voters with due process before rejecting their ballot. The decision should send a clear message to Arizona that its policies fall short of adequately protecting Arizonan voters.

On October 22, CLC, ACLU, and ACLU of Arizona sent a letter on behalf of a coalition of Arizona groups: League of United Latin American Citizens-Arizona, Arizona Advocacy Network Foundation, League of Women Voters-Arizona, and All Voting is Local-Arizona. Today, the groups sent a follow-up letter advising Arizona officials of yesterday’s Georgia ruling and demanding a solution.

“Given the popularity of voting by mail in Arizona, processing mail-in ballots properly is critical,” said Danielle Lang, senior legal counsel at CLC. “Votes must not be rejected without due process. Secretary Reagan should issue immediate guidance to county recorders statewide requiring that all voters with ballots flagged for ‘mismatched’ signatures receive notice and an opportunity to confirm their signature before having their ballots rejected.”

“Arizona voters deserve to know with certainty their votes will be counted when they submit their mail-in ballot,” said Darrell Hill, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Arizona. “The Secretary of State and county recorders should use the processes already in place, as the Pima County Recorder currently does, to notify voters if their ballot envelope signature does not appear to match the signature on file, and give these voters an opportunity to confirm their signature instead of rejecting their ballot.”

"Arizona should protect voters, not undermine them. Instead, signature-matching is used as another way to make voting more difficult. County recorders have the authority to let voters resolve signature issues, and are simply refusing to do so," said Julie Ebenstein, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Right Project.

"The Constitution requires Arizona's elections officials to afford the same opportunities to all eligible voters. Doing so here would not entail significant administrative burdens. Rather, election officials would simply need to refine their existing practices, which already permit certain voters to cure issues with their early ballot signatures,” said Spencer Scharff, a Phoenix lawyer advising the coalition.

WASHINGTON – Today, Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Josh Hawley violated federal campaign finance law by illegally coordinating nearly $1 million in spending.

The evidence indicates that the NRA routed nearly $1 million in spending supporting Hawley’s campaign through an apparent shell corporation established by Hawley’s top campaign consultant. Additionally, in at least one instance, an official at the same media company placed the NRA’s pro-Hawley ads and the Hawley campaign’s own ads on the same stations and on the same day.

“The evidence indicates that the NRA routed nearly $1 million through shell corporations to unlawfully coordinate with the Hawley campaign,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform program at CLC. “Groups like the NRA can only make unlimited expenditures if they are independent of the candidates they support, and it falls to the FEC to enforce the laws that preserve that independence and prevent corruption.”

“The NRA is at it again,” said David Pucino, a staff attorney at Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “As these apparent campaign finance violations accumulate, one has to wonder why the NRA continues to use these tactics. Maybe it’s because they know that a majority of Americans oppose their radical agenda. Maybe they just don’t care about the rule of law. Whatever the case may be, it’s clear that the FEC must investigate.”

Campaign finance law prohibits coordination between candidates and outside groups like the NRA. In order to preserve their independence, FEC rules limit how a vendor may work for both a candidate and an outside group supporting that candidate, to prevent the vendor from being used as a conduit for coordination.

Earlier this year, Politico Magazine uncovered that the directors at OnMessage – a consulting firm led by Hawley’s campaign consultant, Brad Todd – created a shell corporation called Starboard, located at the same address, and which appears indistinguishable from its parent company. Candidates would then hire OnMessage, and the NRA would contract with Starboard to create ads supporting those candidates. Hawley’s top consultant, Todd, is on the board of both OnMessage and Starboard.

In addition to the NRA and Hawley campaign using OnMessage/Starboard to create advertisements, the NRA and Hawley also appear to be using a shared set of vendors to place those advertisements, providing further evidence of coordination. According to FEC and FCC records, the NRA’s pro-Hawley communications were distributed and placed by employees of the firm “National Media” under a trade name, while the Hawley campaign placed its own ads using National Media or an affiliate. In at least one instance, the same National Media official placed advertisements on behalf of both the NRA and Josh Hawley for Senate on the same stations and on the same day.

More than 500 affected Nevada voters have been added to the rolls for November elections as a result of this effort

LAS VEGAS, NV – Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has come to an agreement with Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske’s office and the Clark County registrar after the county was denying voter registration applications due to an unlawful paperwork requirement, asking eligible voters to unearth decades-old discharge papers in order to register to vote. In a memo sent to Nevada counties by Deputy Secretary for Elections Wayne Thorley, the state clarified that eligible voters who complete the registration process by signing a declaration form affirming the restoration of their voting rights after a conviction are eligible to vote normally on Election Day. Clark County has added more than 500 Nevada citizens whose registrations were denied to the rolls. The Secretary of State’s memo recommended that all other counties also take this crucial step to ensure no eligible voter is wrongly denied the right to vote in 2018.

“Nevada voters should not be disenfranchised due to an unnecessary paperwork requirement,” said Blair Bowie, legal fellow at CLC. “We are pleased that the Nevada Secretary of State and Clark County registrar worked with us to resolve this issue amicably, so that the voters could be reinstated in time for the November elections. It is critical that Nevadans and voters around the country receive accurate information about their state’s voting rights restoration requirements.”

This comes after Nevada has agreed to do four things to clarify voter registration processes for people with past convictions.

CLC has further worked to simplify the rights restoration process for people with past convictions, releasing a fact sheet that answers common questions about Nevada law.

ATLANTA, GA – Today, a coalition of civil rights organizations filed an emergency motion in Georgia federal district court to make sure that persons inaccurately flagged as non-citizens under Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s flawed “exact match" system can vote. Kemp’s “exact match” voter registration process relies on outdated citizenship data which identifies naturalized citizens as non-citizens, forcing them to track down a deputy registrar before they can vote, even if they already produced proof of citizenship when they registered to vote originally. 

However, there is not a guaranteed deputy registrar at every polling location. Therefore, naturalized citizens may be required to travel to the county seat to resolve an error in their registration that they did not cause. Moreover, recently naturalized citizens have been told that they cannot fax or mail their proof of citizenship, they must present it in-person. For voters temporarily out of the state, this is an absolute bar to voting.

The emergency motion asks only that these voters be treated the same as everyone else on the pending list and be permitted to show their proof of citizenship to their poll worker in-person or mail or fax their proof of citizenship with their absentee ballot application.

Of the 51,111 voter registrations that were “pending as a result of a no-match, 80.15 percent were submitted by minority registrants. Over 3,000 of those individuals have been flagged as potential non-citizens based on outdated and unreliable data. They should have a fair and reasonable opportunity to prove their citizenship and vote.

“Georgia voters can’t afford to wait,” said Danielle Lang, senior legal counsel, voting rights and redistricting at the Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Their fundamental right to vote on November 6 is imperiled by no fault of their own, but rather by Kemp’s continued use of the state’s flawed exact match process. The voters impacted by this process are often newly naturalized citizens voting for the first time. We should be welcoming them to our political community, not interrogating them.”

“Secretary Kemp’s much-maligned ‘exact match’ system is a travesty,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “It burdens voters with correcting mistakes caused by the State and its faulty databases, and places those burdens disproportionately on minority voters. This is played out starkly in the unreasonable burdens imposed specifically on new Americans, many of whom will not be able to vote unless relief is granted now.”

"As an organization, our core mission is to empower our Asian-American communities to be fully active in civic life,” said Phi Nguyễn, litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. “This includes helping immigrants navigate the naturalization process so that they can exercise one of the hallmarks of citizenship: the right to vote. It's particularly heartbreaking to witness new American voters being immediately disenfranchised because of unnecessary barriers created by the state of Georgia."  

CLC, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta are serving as counsel in the case representing a coalition of civil rights groups: Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, Asian-Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, Georgia State Conference of the NAACP, New Georgia Project, Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, and ProGeorgia State Table. The suit alleges that Georgia’s protocol violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Section 8 of the National Voter Registration Act, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

The original lawsuit was filed on October 11. Today an amended complaint was filed, adding Common Cause and the Joseph & Evelyn Lowery Institute as additional plaintiffs.

Visit our case page to read the declarations of our plaintiffs: Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda v. Kemp.

Enforcement of donor transparency requirements would give voters in November knowledge about who is funding election ads

WASHINGTON  - Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) alleging that Heritage Action for America, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, violated the law by failing to disclose the contributors who funded hundreds of thousands in independent expenditures.

Following a recent D.C. District Court opinion striking down an FEC rule that had undermined legal disclosure requirements, the FEC issued new guidance clarifying that dark money groups reporting such spending must disclose all donors who gave for “political purposes” and for the purpose of furthering any of the group’s independent expenditures. The new guidance first applied to the quarterly reports due October 15, for contributions received after August 4. 

Heritage Action issued a press release on August 8 announcing its plans to “to spend $2.5 million and back 12 candidates this November,” and its executive director told McClatchy, “What we’re telling donors is, every dollar we raise over our budget we can effectively pour more into these races.” But even though Heritage Action was raising contributions for independent expenditures, it failed to report the identity of any donors.

“Heritage Action officials stated publicly on August 8 that the group would ‘raise’ money ‘to back 12 candidates,’ and then spent six figures supporting those same candidates. Under the D.C. District Court’s decision and the FEC’s guidance, Heritage Action should have disclosed at least some donors on its October quarterly report, but failed to do so,” said Brendan Fischer, director, federal reform at CLC. “The question now is whether the FEC will enforce the law.”