Washington, D.C. - On Monday, (click here) the New York Senate approved Senate Bill 616, which would effectively rescind an out-of-date ban on providing food and water for voters waiting at the polls, otherwise known as a line-warming ban. When the Republican legislatures in Florida and Georgia passed large voter suppression laws in 2021, provisions that made it illegal to distribute items to voters waiting in line drew the most outrage from voting rights advocates. Though enacted years ago, New York state has a similar law on the books, one that says that, “during the hours of voting, on a day of a general, special or primary election,” no person may provide or pay for “any meat, drink, tobacco, refreshment or provision.” The archaic ban has limited exceptions for items with a “retail value of less than one dollar,” which is, in effect, a total ban given that almost all snacks or drinks would cost more than that. Violators are subject to criminal penalties....
Georgia has been at the center of that storm. Trump zeroed in on his loss in the state, even as two Democrats won election to the U.S. Senate in January, flipping control of the chamber to their party. The 98-page measure that was signed into law Thursday by Republican Gov. Brian Kemp makes numerous changes to how elections will be administered, including a new photo ID requirement for voting absentee by mail....
January 10, 2023
Washington, DC - As of Tuesday, Jan. 10, Missouri Republicans (cilck here) have introduced a dozen bills to make it harder for Missouri voters to approve constitutional amendments. In Missouri, citizens can initiate statutory or constitutional changes via a petition process; approved petitions will be placed on the ballot before Missouri voters. Less than a week into the 2023 legislative session, Republican lawmakers are trying to undermine that form of direct democracy.
Two resolutions — House Joint Resolution 2 and House Joint Resolution 28 — both would make it harder to get a citizen-led petition onto the ballot by raising the percentage of voter signatures required. They also require that the expected percentage of signatures comes from “each” congressional district in the state....
16,000 otherwise valid votes in the Midterm Elections in Pennsylvania were tossed out on technicality. They voted for the Democratic candidates.
Harrisburg - New data from Pennsylvania’s elections agency shows (click here) an early November state court decision that barred mail-in ballots without accurate handwritten dates on their exterior envelopes resulted in otherwise valid votes being thrown out.
The Department of State said this week more than 16,000 mail-in ballots were disqualified by county officials because they lacked secrecy envelopes or proper signatures or dates. Democratic voters, who are much more likely to vote by mail, made up more than two-thirds of the total canceled ballots.
The agency said 8,250 Pennsylvania mail-in ballots were rejected because they were sent in without being contained within a secrecy envelope, making it impossible for them to be tabulated without putting voter privacy at risk.
The remaining 7,904 invalidated ballots were tossed out because the exterior envelopes used to send in those ballots did not have the voters’ signatures, or because those exterior envelopes were either undated or improperly dated....
