This backgrounder can be used by members of the media and the public to guide their understanding of the electoral process of electing a President.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania issued written guidance on how the state will handle mail-in ballot return envelopes. The processes include multiple secure methods used by the voter’s county board of election to verify that the qualified voter’s absentee or mail-in application is complete and that the requirements are satisfied. The guidance comes in response to a lawsuit brought by Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and partners.

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a motion to intervene on behalf of its client, the League of Women Voters of Montana. 

On September 11, 2020, the full membership of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the trial court decision in Jones v. DeSantis. The Eleventh Circuit’s decision allows Florida’s pay-to-vote system for people with past felony convictions to remain in place. 

Poll commissioned by Campaign Legal Center (CLC) and Protect Democracy and conducted by GS Strategy Group (R) and ALG Research (D). The online poll lasted from July 28-31, 2020 and surveyed 1,000 likely voters nationwide. The results show wide support for increased election funding.

A federal court in Tennessee granted enjoined Tennessee’s requirement that first-time voters who register by mail, including those who register for the first time online, vote in person the first time they cast a ballot.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted Campaign Legal Center's (CLC) motion requiring DOJ to conduct an adequate search for documents about the citizenship question and requiring DOJ to disclose drafts of the letter requesting the citizenship question. 

Campaign Legal Center (CLC) is representing individual Jeffrey Lichtenstein and community organizations A. Phillip Randolph Institute (APRI), The Equity Alliance (TEA), Free Hearts, Memphis Central Labor Council (MCLC), and the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, in their efforts to stop enforcement of a law that makes it a felony for organizations and their members to disseminate applications for absentee ballots to voters. Under the law, anyone other than an election official who provides a copy of an application for an absentee ballot to a voter is at risk of losing their voting rights, a sentence of at least one and up to six years in prison, and a fine of up to $3,000. This is despite the fact that the applications are available on the Tennessee Secretary of State's and several county election commissions' websites. 

On August 31, 2020, CLC filed a motion for preliminary injunction on behalf its clients Jeffrey Lichtenstein, A. Phillip Randolph Institute (APRI), The Equity Alliance (TEA), Free Hearts, Memphis Central Labor Council (MCLC), and the Tennessee State Conference of the NAACP, asking the court to immediately allow Plaintiffs to distribute blank absentee ballot applications to voters and declare Tennessee's law making it a felony to do so unconstitutional. 

The League of Women Voters and the NAACP New Jersey State Conference filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Trump Campaign and the RNC challenging New Jersey’s emergency election plan to mail ballots to all active voters in New Jersey.

CLC submitted this request under the Freedom of Information Act to the U.S. Census Bureau. The request seeks documents related to the Census Bureau’s current attempt to obtain state government records related to driver licenses. The Bureau intends to use these state records to help compile data on how many voting-age U.S. citizens live on each census block. However, CLC is concerned about this plan because records on citizenship status held by state driver-license agencies are often outdated and inaccurate. CLC therefore filed this FOIA request to investigate why the Bureau wants driver-license records, how expansive the Bureau’s request for these records is, and what decisions the Bureau has made about the role these records will play in compiling citizenship data.