4/5/2024

Democracy Docket got our hands on an Republican National Committee memo this week that outlines the group’s litigation efforts to restrict the right to vote in a number of states. While the memo serves as an intriguing overview of the RNC’s legal strategy this election cycle, it also seems to vastly inflate the number of lawsuits and states it's actually involved — numbers that have become key talking points for Republican leadership in the media.

Meanwhile, trial began this week in federal court over Florida’s omnibus voter suppression law, and North Carolina’s Democratic nominee for governor, Josh Stein, answered some of our questions about his vision for the Tar Heel State.

How the RNC Is Framing Its Assault on Voting Rights

It’s no secret that the Republican National Committee made a concerted effort in recent years to roll back voting rights. In February of 2020, just a month before the novel coronavirus forever changed the world, then-RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel announced that the Republican committee would spend $10 million on voting lawsuits. A couple months later she doubled that number and promised to “spend whatever is necessary” to block litigation efforts to ensure the right to vote for all Americans.

So it comes as no surprise that an RNC memo obtained by Democracy Docket explains, in depth, the scope of its efforts in the current election cycle to disenfranchise as many voters as possible. What is surprising, however, is that our team thoroughly analyzed the memo and discovered that the RNC appears to be greatly inflating its legal attack on voting rights.

In recent weeks, McDaniel and her successors at the RNC — Michael Whatley and Lara Trump — have appeared on various right-wing media platforms touting their litigation efforts to restrict voting access. Two numbers have come up repeatedly: 78 lawsuits across 23 states in the 2023-2024 election cycle.

But our analysis of the memo, which was published on Feb. 8, found that the RNC is only involved in litigation in 18 states. Moreover, the RNC appears to be counting closed cases, amicus briefs and public comment and records requests on non litigation-related state election policies in that 78 number. According to Democracy Docket’s own litigation number the RNC is only currently involved in 28 active election-related lawsuits. In response to an inquiry about the memo from Democracy Docket, a spokesperson for the RNC said in an email that the information in the memo is not a “comprehensive list of our cases, nor did the memo say it was.”

The RNC’s legal assault on voting rights may not be all they’re cracking it up to be, but the memo gives an inside overview into the legal strategy and scope of the RNC’s efforts to thwart the right to vote in any way they can.

A Federal Judge Will Decide the Fate of Florida’s Omnibus Voter Suppression Law

A bench trial began this week in a federal legal challenge to Florida’s omnibus voter suppression law that was enacted in May of 2023. The trial consolidates three separate federal lawsuits filed against the law, best known as Senate Bill 7050, that allege various violations of the U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act.

At the center of the trio of legal challenges to Florida’s omnibus voter suppression law are a number of provisions that target third-party voter registration organizations (3PVROs). A lawsuit brought by the Florida State Conference of Branches and Youth Units of the NAACP (FL NAACP) alleges that various restrictions and penalties for how 3PVROs can operate — reducing the number of days to return a voter registration application and increasing the fine for late-returned applications — add unnecessary roadblocks that disproportionately harm Black and Latino voters, who are “five times more likely than white Floridians to register with the assistance of a 3PVRO.”

The FL NAACP’s lawsuit also alleges that S.B. 7050 violates the Voting Rights Act because it restricts who can assist a voter with requesting a mail-in ballot. According to the law, county supervisors are only allowed to accept a mail-in ballot request from voters and their immediate family members. Before S.B. 7050 passed, friends, neighbors, community organizers and caregivers could assist voters in requesting a mail-in ballot.

If there’s any indication for how the judge presiding over all three cases might rule, his actions taken last summer might give some hint. In July of 2023, Chief Judge Mark E. Walker — an Obama appointee — issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking two provisions of S.B. 7050.

• One of the provisions barred noncitizen volunteers from conducting voter registration for 3PVROs — in March of this year, Walker permanently struck down this provision.

  
  

• The other provision criminalized routine retention of voter information for any purpose except for voter registration — activities like get-out-the-vote efforts.

It’s Josh Stein’s Moment in North Carolina

There’s perhaps no state election more consequential this year than the race for North Carolina’s next governor. As one of two swing states with a gubernatorial election the same year as a presidential election, there’s a lot at stake in the Tar Heel State.

With Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) term-limited tenure coming to an end and Republicans’ control of the state Legislature, the GOP has an opportunity to secure a trifecta and enact some of the most restrictive policies on abortion, voting rights and democracy in the state’s history.

None of this is lost on Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general who, despite the enormous stakes of the election, is hyper focused on the one thing he’s always been: the people of North Carolina.

“The road is not always easy but I am committed to fighting for every North Carolinian, whether it be as Attorney General or as the next Governor,” he told Democracy Docket.

In our new profile of the Democratic nominee for North Carolina’s next governor, Josh Stein answered questions about his upbringing — his dad was a lawyer who co-founded the state’s first integrated law firm — what he’s learned from his tenure as a state senator and attorney general and how he handles the constant barrage of criticism from Republican lawmakers.

At the heart of Stein’s campaign is a deep commitment to protecting the rights of North Carolina residents. In his career as state attorney general, he’s been in the crosshairs of Republican ire for extending mail-in ballot deadlines, refusing to enforce a 20-week abortion ban and declining to challenge a court ruling that restored the right to vote for 56,000 people.

“In our democracy, the people should choose their representatives, not the other way around, and the state should be about protecting people’s right to vote, not restricting it,” he told Democracy Docket. “As Governor, I will never stop fighting to make sure the people’s voting rights are protected.”

OPINION: The Virus of Mass Voter Challenges Threatens Democracy and Is Spreading Fast

Georgia Republicans continue to make mass voter challenges easier and more dangerous. But if we fight against these suppression tactics now, we can protect democracy and help prevent them from being spread across the country, writes Marc in his latest. Read more.  ➡️

What We’re Doing

If you’ve also been watching the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, then you’re aware of how Georgia’s kafkaesque line-warming ban plays a central role in the series. The plotline, in which star Larry David is arrested for accidentally handing a bottle of water to a woman waiting on line to vote on a hot day, caught the attention of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who sent David a letter last month trying to, uh, defend the law in his own cheeky way:

“Given the obvious concern you have about access to voting in Georgia, you’ll be glad to hear that waiting times for all voters, including Leon’s aunt, in the last two major elections were under two minutes, even as we experienced record turnout,” Raffensperger wrote.

Our friends at Accountable.US just published new research — used in a recent New York Times column about Trump’s biggest financial backers — diving into the $2 billion “political machine” orchestrated by Leonard Leo and his network of conservative organizations. We’re also reading this excellent and comprehensive Bolts Magazine guide to all the state Supreme Court elections happening this year.

A new episode of our podcast Defending Democracy dropped this morning! In today’s episode, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder joins Marc to discuss how redistricting determines political power, recent threats to our voting rights and what gives him hope. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch it on YouTube.