Bismarck, ND – Today, the League of Women Voters of North Dakota (LWVND), represented by Campaign Legal Center (CLC), filed a motion seeking to intervene on behalf of voters and LWVND members to defend against a challenge to the state's mail-in voting processes.

Last month, the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed suit on behalf of Burleigh County Recorder Mark Splonskowski seeking to prevent election officials from counting mail-in ballots that are mailed before, but received after, Election Day. Under current North Dakota law, otherwise valid mail-in ballots postmarked up to the day before Election Day must be counted so long as they are received prior to the vote canvassing deadline, 13 days after the Election Day. 

North Dakota is one of several states that set uniform deadlines for the counting of mail-in ballots and help ensure postal issues don’t prevent voters from having their timely ballots counted.

“Voting by mail is a convenient and secure way to vote that allows North Dakotans – and voters across the country – to make their voices heard in our elections,” said Molly Danahy, senior legal counsel for litigation at Campaign Legal Center. “A hallmark of our democracy is that every vote counts, and that means we must count every vote. We look forward to joining the League of Women Voters of North Dakota in challenging the lawsuit’s faulty logic.”

Voting by mail is not only convenient but also critical for increased voter access and equity to the ballot,” said Barbara Headrick, president of the League of Women Voters of North Dakota. “All North Dakotans deserve equal access to the ballot and confidence that their vote will be counted. The League of Women Voters will continue to advocate for North Dakota voters to ensure their votes are not compromised by those who seek to dismantle our democracy.”

"Voting should be a simple process, not a confusing one," said Celina Stewart, chief counsel and senior director of advocacy and litigation at the League of Women Voters of the US. "It is our core mission to ensure that all voters, in North Dakota and across the country, have increased access to the ballot, and that includes voting by mail. The League of Women Voters will continue to fight for voters when bad actors seek to silence them and sow distrust in our elections."

More information about the case can be found here.

Seattle, WA – In a victory for the voters of Washington, a federal judge ruled yesterday that Washington state’s redistricting plan violates Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) and dilutes the voting strength of Latino voters in the Yakima Valley region. 

Campaign Legal Center (CLC), MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund), the UCLA Voting Rights Project, and attorney Edwardo Morfin of the Morfin Law Firm in Washington filed the lawsuit in January 2022 on behalf of individual Latino voters in the Yakima Valley area.  

The case, Soto Palmer v. Hobbs, was the last racial vote dilution case to go to trial before the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed Section 2 of the VRA in June’s Allen v. Milligan decision. 

“The Court’s ruling helps to ensure that Latino voters in the Yakima Valley and Pasco regions can make their voices heard,” said Mark Gaber, senior director of redistricting at Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “Multiple times before, federal and state courts invalidated election systems that discriminated against Yakima Valley’s Latino voters. After decades of racial discrimination with a long-lasting impact on the ability of Latino voters to participate in the political process, Latino voters in the region can now elect state legislators who will best serve their communities.” 

“The State of Washington drew a legislative redistricting map that ignored Latinos’ immense growth in the Yakima Valley over the last decade and denied them the ability to elect representatives of their choosing,” said Ernest Herrera, MALDEF Western Regional Counsel. “Today’s decision is a first momentous step in addressing that injustice and protecting Latinos’ right to representation in Washington state government.”

“For the first time in Washington’s history, the historic Latino community in the Yakima Valley and Pasco region will be able to elect their preferred candidates to the State Legislature and have their voices heard.” said Sonni Waknin, Program Manager and Voting Rights Counsel at the UCLA Voting Rights Project (UCLA VRP). “This was the first statewide Federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit against Washington and the Court’s ruling affirms that voters must have real electoral opportunities, not just bare, ineffective districts."

In November 2021, the Washington State Redistricting Commission drew its adopted state legislative district plan in such a way that Latino voters were not able to elect state legislative candidates of their choice in the 15th Legislative District. Specifically, the plan for Yakima Valley, which covers multiple counties with large Latino populations, dispersed Latino voters across several legislative districts with white majorities, a practice known as “cracking.” 

In this lawsuit, attorneys successfully argued that the enacted Legislative District 15 violates Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity and language. Commissioners should have initially drawn a legislative district that gave Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of their choice in the Yakima Valley. Now, because of this Court ruling, Latino voters in the region will be able to make their voices heard.  

More information on the case can be found here. 

Washington state law protects the rights of voters by requiring online platforms like Facebook to make publicly available information about political ads disseminated on their platforms. The law is an important tool for addressing digital political messages and their unique capacity to micro-target carefully cultivated audiences. Facebook parent company Meta repeatedly violated the law, received an extraordinary fine for its violations, and is challenging Washington’s transparency requirements as unconstitutional. Campaign Legal Center, joined by a coalition of good government groups, has submitted a brief supporting the law. 

Seattle, WA – Campaign Legal Center, joined by the League of Women Voters of Washington, Fix Democracy First and the Brennan Center for Justice, today filed an amicus brief in State of Washington v. Meta Platforms supporting a Washington state law that advances voters’ right to know who is spending in their elections.
 
Meta Platforms, Inc. has challenged the constitutionality of Washington’s Disclosure Law, which provides the public with vital information about spending in state elections by requiring commercial advertisers, including online platforms, to keep and make available records related to the election ads they accept. This measure is critical in light of the dramatic rise in spending on digital political advertising in recent elections and ensures that online ads are held to equivalent standards of transparency as other political advertising. When Facebook allows political candidates and groups to pay for election ads on its platform, it is responsible for disclosing who paid for them and who was targeted and reached.

Meta’s previous failures to comply with this law resulted in a $25 million penalty in 2022 and a decision by the Washington Superior Court ruling that “This is clearly a very appropriate subject for disclosure, and the law is very constitutional.” Meta has appealed the decision to the state Court of Appeals, pressing its argument that the law violates its First Amendment rights. This assertion ignores decades of Supreme Court precedent recognizing that campaign finance transparency laws are constitutional and an important tool to enable voters to make informed decisions when they vote. 

“Voters across the country have a right to know which wealthy special interests are spending big money to influence their vote and their government. This case gets to the heart of why that right is essential,” said Tara Malloy, Senior Director for Appellate Litigation and Strategy at CLC. “Thankfully, the state of Washington has made an effort to fulfill that right by passing laws that make information about political ads easily accessible – the result is a more robust debate from a more diverse set of voices, more accountability and less corruption.”

"Meta, and all digital communication platforms, must comply with state disclosure laws and respond to public requests including who bought the ads and what audiences are being targeted," said Mary Coltrane, President, LWV of Washington. “Without the guardrails provided by disclosure laws, the potential harms of digital electioneering will only multiply as technologies continue to advance."

"The people of Washington state need to know who is buying ads for political campaigns, and that includes any political advertising on social media platforms." said Cindy Black, Executive Director of Fix Democracy First. "Fix Democracy First believes disclosure in political campaigns is vital information for voters to make informed decisions. Social media platforms should not be exempt from disclosing the details about who’s behind an ad, as well as who’s being targeted in political advertising."

"Whether a political ad is on TV or a website, citizens have the right to know who's spending money to influence their vote," said Mekela Panditharatne, Counsel in the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law. “Digital ads should be held to the same transparency standards as other political advertising. Washington’s disclosure law makes that possible, and it is backed by decades of legal precedent.”

A government that is truly by the people and responsive to the people can only exist if everyone is able to meaningfully participate by choosing their elected officials and holding those officials accountable once in office. If wealthy special interests can avoid disclosure and drown out the voices of everyday Americans by spending millions of dollars on election influence, the values underpinning the First Amendment are significantly undermined.

As political advertising moves increasingly online, disclosure laws like those in Washington have become an indispensable resource to voters. Such laws make it harder to spread disinformation without accountability and easier to assess both who is behind each advertisement as well as the full range of advertisements being fielded – a key piece of an ever-growing puzzle as online platforms give advertisers the ability to microtarget ads to specific, narrow audiences.

Reasonable campaign finance laws, like Washington’s, help ensure that we can live up to the core principles of our constitution and protect the voices of all Americans.