On The Docket
04/07/2023

On Monday, we launched our new contributor program! You can expect monthly articles from experts, advocates and leaders about the threats our democracy is facing and how we can tackle them. Meet our five inaugural contributors below and read our first column from Rakim Brooks, an attorney and the president of Alliance for Justice. [link removed]
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If you are catching up on the great news in Wisconsin, shockingly anti-democratic news in Tennessee, terrible party-switching news in North Carolina and predictable news of voter suppression bills in Florida and Texas, then you can see the new normal: The future of democracy is on the docket. In this week’s newsletter, we explore it all.

Liberals Flip Control of Wisconsin Supreme Court

On Tuesday, Wisconsin voters elected Janet Protasiewicz to a 10-year term on the state’s highest court, a crucial victory for Wisconsin’s democracy. She defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly 55.5% to 44.5% and, in doing so, will flip the balance of the court from a 4-3 conservative majority to a 4-3 liberal majority after a conservative justice retires at the end of this term on July 31, 2023. [link removed]

But, it’s worth noting: A Republican candidate prevailed in a special state Senate election on Tuesday, maintaining the GOP supermajority in the chamber. Due to hyper-gerrymandered legislative maps, the GOP is only two votes short of a supermajority in the Assembly.

Protasiewicz has an openly pro-choice platform and has not shied away from expressing her views about the extreme gerrymandering in Wisconsin. In an interview with Democracy Docket, Protasiewicz expressed concern over the court’s past rulings — including its July 2022 decision banning drop boxes and third-party ballot collection — that restrict access to voting.

Protasiewicz will be seated on Aug. 1, 2023. A progressive law firm based in Wisconsin already indicated that it will file a request for the court to hear a redistricting case the day after she is seated.

In 2022, Wisconsin was one of the top three most litigation-heavy states with 16 voting and election lawsuits filed. There are currently eight ongoing voting lawsuits in Wisconsin state court; while none are currently pending before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we could see the suits make their way there eventually. Here’s how democracy is on the docket in Wisconsin:
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Stone v. Wolfe: Lawsuit filed by a right-wing legal group challenging the use of an online portal to request absentee ballots.

Braun v. Wisconsin Elections Commission: Lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) — a conservative legal organization that stays busy in the Badger State — challenging the use of a federal voter registration form.

Kormanik v. Wisconsin Elections Commission: Lawsuit filed by a right-wing legal group challenging absentee ballot spoiling guidance (the process by which a ballot that has been marked incorrectly is destroyed and disqualified from being counted).

Rise, Inc. v. Wisconsin Elections Commission and League of Women Voters of Wisconsin v. Wisconsin Elections Commission: Lawsuits filed by pro-voting groups seeking clarification about what qualifies as a complete absentee ballot witness certificate address.

Delorey v. Jeffreys: Lawsuit from November 2022 alleging that the Green Bay city clerk did not allow “members of the public to view all aspects of the public voting process.”

Concerned Veterans of Waukesha County v. Wisconsin Elections Commission: Lawsuit that tried to sequester and stop counting absentee ballots completed by voters in the military in the 2022 midterms.

Brown v. Wisconsin Elections Commission: Lawsuit filed by WILL challenging the use of mobile voting sites throughout the city of Racine.

Don’t Think We Forgot About Florida

In 2021, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 90, a 40-page voter suppression law that targeted nearly all aspects of the voting process.

In 2022, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 524, which created a special force to investigate allegations of voter fraud, among a host of other restrictions on election administration and third-party voter registration organizations. The Legislature also buckled under pressure from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) to dismantle Black representation when redrawing new maps.

Already in 2023, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 4B, which enables statewide prosecutors to prosecute election crimes. Now, the Sunshine State seems poised to enact its latest piece of problematic legislation. [link removed]

On Tuesday, the Florida Senate Ethics and Elections Committee advanced an omnibus elections bill that revises multiple parts of the state’s election code. While much of the bill involves technical revisions, several aspects of the bill could directly harm voters if enacted. All three of the committee’s Democratic members voted against advancing the bill.

The newly introduced bill would:
Shorten the deadline to request a mail-in ballot by one day,
Require all first-time voters without a Florida ID or Social Security number to vote in person,
Mandate third-party voter registration organizations to re-register every election cycle and prohibit organizations from prefilling information on registration applications,
Strengthen requirements for list maintenance, a process that could lead to the purging of otherwise eligible voters,
Further criminalize the voting process and more.

Read our full breakdown here. [link removed]

An Indictment and an Announcement: A Week in the 2024 GOP Bids

Last week, former President Donald Trump was indicted in New York City over hush money payments — not a great look for the failed former president who still maintains a strong grip over the Republican primary electorate.

In Marc’s latest, he argues that Trump’s indictment is not a “test” of our democracy, but rather the latest in a long line of insults that Trump and his allies have thrown at our democracy. [link removed]

Yet, Trump is running to regain the Oval Office in 2024, and a few others are jumping into the race as well. On Sunday, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) announced his run for the Republican nomination for president. Hutchinson, who served as governor of Arkansas from 2015 to January 2023, urged Trump to drop out of the race.

“The temptation is to become the loudest voice in the room to draw more attention,” Hutchinson told the Washington Post. “That’s not my style, and I don’t think that’s what the electorate expects.” Though he touts his quiet focus, under Hutchinson’s watch, Arkansas enacted some of the worst voting restrictions and redistricting maps in the country. The state may get less national attention than anti-voting efforts in nearby Florida and Texas, but Hutchinson has proved that he is no ally to democracy. Learn more here. [link removed]

“An Unprecedented Disenfranchisement” in Nashville, Tennessee

An anti-democratic Tennessee law went to court this week. The law, signed by the governor earlier this month, forces Nashville to cut the size of its city council in half, a move that council members and community leaders claim disenfranchises voters and violates the state constitution. Two lawsuits argue that the law “wages an unprecedented disenfranchisement of the voters of Metro Nashville.” [link removed]

“One-quarter of the seats are held by Black officials — on par with a city that is roughly 25% African American,” Delishia Porterfield, chair of the council’s Minority Caucus, wrote in The Tennessean. “For the first time in our city’s history, we have both a first and second generation immigrant, our first Latina council member, as well as our first Muslim council member. Downsizing the council would roll back gains in women and minority representation.” [link removed]

This isn’t the first time that the GOP-led Legislature has gone after Music City. In the latest round of redistricting, the Legislature divided Nashville’s Davidson County into three separate districts, dismantling the city’s Democratic-held seat that had previously been kept in a single district for as long as Tennessee has been a state.

In another outrageous, anti-democratic act, Republican lawmakers are making moves to formally expel three of their Democratic colleagues from the Tennessee House of Representatives. Last week, Reps. Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson (who all represent urban regions of the state: Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis, respectively) disrupted proceedings to protest the Legislature’s lack of action on gun control, just days after a horrific school shooting. Expelling elected members for protesting is unprecedented in Tennessee. [link removed]

Mississippi’s Broken Rights Restoration Process, Exemplified

Mississippi Today reported that for the first time since 2016, the Mississippi Legislature did not restore voting rights to a single person convicted of a felony. Mississippi has one of the strictest felony disenfranchisement laws in the country, barring individuals from voting for life if they are convicted of certain offenses. [link removed]

The state is also unique in requiring disenfranchised individuals to petition for what is basically an individualized piece of legislation — a bill introduced in the Legislature on their behalf that must pass both chambers by a two-thirds vote before being signed by the governor. In Mississippi, seven individualized rights restoration bills were proposed in 2023 but none advanced before the end of the session earlier this week.

In 2017, two Black Mississippians who are barred for life from voting because of past convictions for embezzlement and forgery filed a lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement law. The law — originally designed during an indisputably racist 1890 constitutional convention — was upheld by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last August. [link removed]

Now, the plaintiffs have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision in Harness v. Watson. SCOTUS has not yet released an order related to the case, so we are currently waiting to learn what’s next for Mississippi’s outdated, discriminatory policy. [link removed]

More News

The Mississippi Legislature passed a bill to create a separate, unelected court system in Jackson — a city that is over 80% Black — with judges appointed entirely by white officials. The bill now heads to Gov. Tate Reeves (R) for his signature. Unfortunately, this court system is just the tip of the iceberg in the state. [link removed]

A consolidated lawsuit challenging Galveston County, Texas’ Commissioners Court map will go to trial in federal court this August. A judge rejected requests from Texas officials to dismiss the cases, which argue that the map discriminates against Black and Latino voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The U.S. Department of Justice brought one of the cases. [link removed]

North Carolina state Rep. Tricia Cotham switched her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, giving the GOP a veto-proof supermajority in both chambers of the Legislature. With Republicans already possessing a supermajority in the state Senate, the party will now be able to override vetoes from Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and potentially enact its preferred election laws. [link removed]

Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed into law a bill that tightens identification and residency requirements for voter registration. Notably, the bill excludes student IDs from the list of acceptable IDs for registration and removes them as an option to prove residency. This mirrors a recently enacted law narrowing acceptable IDs for voting, a move that has drawn two lawsuits for discriminating against younger voters. [link removed]

The Texas Senate’s State Affairs Committee has advanced multiple anti-voting bills to the floor. The bills impact multiple aspects of elections in the Lone Star State, including in-person voting, election irregularities and voter purges. Given Republican control of the Texas Senate, all of these bills have a good chance at advancing further in the legislative process. Read more here. [link removed]

OPINION: Two Visions for the Constitution Stand Before Us, But It’s Not a Hard Choice

By Rakim Brooks, president of Alliance for Justice and a public interest appellate lawyer. As a contributor to Democracy Docket, Brooks writes about issues relating to our state and federal courts as well as reforms to our judicial systems. Read more ➡️ [link removed]

What We’re Doing

Today marks one year since the U.S. Senate confirmed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court. We’re revisiting her inspiring speech on the White House lawn after the confirmation; listen here. [link removed]

In a contrasting image of the nation’s highest court, we’re reading ProPublica’s stunning report into Justice Clarence Thomas’ long history of lavish gifts and vacations from a billionaire Republican donor. Call your representatives and senators in Congress to support H.R. 926 and S. 359, the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act. [link removed]

This week, voters across Chicago cast ballots in a mayoral runoff. Among those, an active voting bloc cast their ballots from a voting booth in Cook County Jail, which in March 2020 became the first jail in the country to serve as a polling location. In our latest Explainer, learn about the hundreds of thousands of eligible incarcerated voters who face unique barriers to casting ballots every election. [link removed]

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Our podcast, Defending Democracy, is on spring break for the next few weeks, so there's no new podcast episode today. It's the perfect time to catch up on our previous episodes. From election deniers in Arizona to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, we’ve covered a lot of topics. Listen here. [link removed]


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