4/12/2024

On HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David went to trial for breaking Georgia’s voter suppression law. On Monday, a real-life trial begins over the same draconian voting law in a classic case of life imitating art — or vice versa, depending on how you look at it.

Meanwhile, a trial began this week in Louisiana over a lawsuit against the state’s new congressional map. The new map, enacted at the beginning of the year, created a new majority-Black district, but a group of “non-African American” voters sued saying it created a racial gerrymander. And in Shasta County, California, a MAGA candidate who lost her election for the county’s board of supervisors failed to cough up the money for a recount that she requested.

Georgia’s 2021 Voter Suppression Law Heads to Trial For the First Time

This week, one of the finest American television comedies bid adieu. After 12 seasons, Curb Your Enthusiasm — the HBO sitcom very loosely based on the life of Seinfeld co-creator Larry David — aired its final episode. And if you’ve been watching the final season, then you’re aware of how the season’s main plotline — in which David is arrested and goes to trial for inadvertently breaking Georgia’s draconian line-warming rule — eerily syncs up with the first real-life trial for one of the country’s most infamous voter suppression laws.

On Monday, trial begins in a federal court in Georgia over Senate Bill 202 — an omnibus voter suppression bill passed in 2021 that, among numerous other provisions, shortened the absentee ballot request timeline, added new restrictions on drop box locations and criminalized helping voters waiting in line to vote during severe weather conditions.

In April of 2021 — three years ago almost exactly to the date — a trio of voting rights organizations led by VoteAmerica sued over the law. Specifically, they sued over the provision of the law that restricts sending voters absentee ballot applications that are already filled out, and the provision that bans groups from sending absentee ballot applications to voters who have already requested, received or voted an absentee ballot.

This is hardly the first lawsuit against S.B. 202 — there are currently eight active lawsuits challenging various provisions of the restrictive law — but this is the first one to make it to trial. Six of the lawsuits were consolidated to challenge various provisions, including the linewarming penalty.

Last year, a federal judge temporarily blocked a part of S.B. 202 that required election officials to reject a voter’s absentee ballot if the birth date written on an outer ballot envelope did not match the voter’s registration record. Even part of the line-warming provision that led to David’s arrest in Curb Your Enthusiasm is temporarily blocked as the law awaits a final verdict from the judge.

Lawmakers Defend Louisiana’s New Congressional Map in Court

Georgia isn’t the only state to have a trial begin this week that could drastically affect voters. A federal trial began in Louisiana on Monday to determine the future of the state’s new congressional map.

In January of 2024, the Louisiana Legislature enacted a new congressional map after the previous one was struck down by a federal court for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The court ordered that a new map be drawn that features two majority-Black districts. Not long after the new map passed the Legislature, a group of 12 voters who identified themselves as “non-African American” filed a lawsuit challenging the new maps, alleging that the new maps are a racial gerrymander and violate their right to vote under the 14th and 15th Amendments.

So far, the trial has revealed rifts between the state’s Republican leadership in drawing new map boundaries that complied with the court’s previous ruling. The new map created a majority Black 6th Congressional District, with its boundaries stretching from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Alexandria to Shreveport, which the plaintiffs in this week’s trial claim is unconstitutional.

In court testimony on Tuesday, several state lawmakers said that the new map wasn’t just drawn to create a new majority-Black district, but rather to protect several powerful incumbent federal lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R). Redrawing the map to protect such lawmakers put current 6th Congressional District Rep. Garret Graves (R) at risk by making his district a majority Black district, according to reporting from the Shreveport Times.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) and state Rep. Mandie Landry (D) both testified that that was the impetus for redrawing the map, not to create a new majority Black district that constitutes a racial gerrymander, as the plaintiffs contend.

"The governor wanted Congressman Graves out," Democratic Rep. Landry said in her testimony. "Congressman Graves was targeted in the map. The governor and Congressman Graves had a longstanding contentious relationship. It was the one (map) we all understood would go through."

A MAGA Candidate in Shasta County Fails to Pay for Recount

When Laura Hobbs, a candidate for the board of supervisors in Shasta County, California, lost her election on March 5, she did not take the loss lightly. Hobbs — a self-proclaimed “MAGA” candidate endorsed by the prominent election conspiracy theorist, and MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell — filed a lawsuit to trigger a recount of the election. But the recount, which was scheduled to begin this week, was canceled after Hobbs failed to pay the over $8,000 needed to begin recounting the votes.

Hobbs ran against Allen Long for District 2 of the Shasta County board in March in a hotly contested election — Long surpassed the 50% vote threshold needed to avoid triggering a runoff election by just 13 votes. The county board of supervisors serves as the local governing body that establishes policy and procedures, like rules for running an election. The five-member board of Shasta County is nonpartisan and its members are elected on staggered four-year terms.

But Shasta County — a conservative county in northern California — has evolved into something of a hotbed for election denialism and right-wing extremism in recent years. In 2023, its board of supervisors voted 3-2 to hand count all of its ballots in the county’s next election, inspired by conspiracy theories related to Dominion Voting Machines. The move prompted a stern warning from California Secretary of State Rob Bonta (D), who warned the board of supervisors that the move violates state and federal law. Shasta eventually caved and used electronic voting machines to count votes. But the county took steps this year to, once again, move toward hand-counting ballots in upcoming elections.

In Hobbs’ lawsuit, she alleged that there were “many illegal ballots” cast that caused her to lose the race. She also alleged that “a multitude of scenarios where the entirety of the elections process has resulted in human mistakes, lack of security, lack of chain of custody, electronic machine errors and intentional human actions that caused illegal ballots to be cast and tabulated, ballots being counted more than once, or ballots being discarded and not counted.”

Despite failing to pay the money to trigger a recount, Hobbs said she’s still moving forward with the lawsuit.

OPINION: Ohio’s Democracy Pays the Price for LaRose’s Political Ambition

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose (R) has lurched to the right, rigged maps and tried to undermine majority rule all in an attempt to advance his political career. But Ohio's democracy has paid the ultimate price, argues Katy Shanahan. Read more.  ➡️

What We’re Doing

After the U.S. Supreme Court essentially gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in its 2013 ruling in Shelby County v. Holder, a number of states passed their own laws to protect the right to vote for their residents. Among the strongest of state voting laws is Connecticut’s Voting Rights Amendment (CTVRA), enacted in June of 2023. A new report in the Harvard Law Review (which cites our reporting!) analyzes how the law strengthens voting rights in the Constitution State and how the law can serve as a blueprint for other states considering a VRA.

In her latest piece, Democracy Docket’s Madeleine Greenberg explains how, like Connecticut’s law, New York’s Voting Rights Amendment (NYVRA) — enacted in 2022 — is hoping to remedy representation among elected officials in the Empire State. Thanks to the NYVRA, four lawsuits have been filed just this year using its new legal protections. Read it here.

A new episode of our podcast Defending Democracy dropped this morning! In today’s episode, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold joins Marc to discuss the rising threats against election workers, efforts to hold Donald Trump and John Eastman accountable and how secretaries of state are securing elections — plus the details of Republicans’ attempt to impeach her. Listen on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, or watch it on YouTube.