05/17/2024

The U.S. Supreme Court allows Louisiana to use a congressional map that was struck down by a lower court. Wisconsin’s highest court weighs a potential reversal of a ban on unmanned ballot drop boxes in the swing state. Relatedly, former President Donald Trump no longer abhors early voting, a convenient departure for the Republican Party.

U.S. Supreme Court allows Louisiana to use congressional map with two majority-Black districts

Louisiana finally has a congressional map in place for the 2024 general election after roughly two years of litigation in the federal courts. But the matter is not yet fully resolved.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a request from the state as well as Black Louisiana voters and civil rights groups to allow a congressional map that features two majority-Black districts to remain in place while the parties appeal a lower court ruling that struck the map down.

The Court issued its decision on Wednesday, the deadline for when the state said it needs a congressional map in place in order to have enough time to prepare for the November general election. The decision was a 6-3 split, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan saying they would have denied the application, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.

In her dissent, Jackson wrote that she would have let the federal district court’s remedial process “run its course before considering whether our emergency intervention was warranted.”

Last week, the federal district court in Louisiana — which in April struck down the congressional map with two majority-Black districts — issued a scheduling order for the state to pass a new one. The court set a May 17 deadline for the parties to submit map proposals and a May 24 deadline for each party to respond. The court also scheduled a May 30 hearing in which parties would be allowed to make arguments.

Although the fight over a fair congressional map in Louisiana has been ongoing since 2022, an April 30 ruling from the federal district court sparked weeks of uncertainty when it struck down the congressional map with two majority-Black districts for being an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.

The April order stems from a lawsuit filed in January by a mostly-white group of 12 individuals who identified themselves as “non-African American voters.” The complaint alleges that the map — which increased the Black makeup of the state’s 6th Congressional District, stretching from Caddo Parish to East Baton Rouge Parish — violates the 14th and 15th Amendments. It was enacted in January of this year to remedy a Voting Rights Act violation from a previous map.

Wednesday’s ruling seems to give the state and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund — which represents the Black voters — a temporary reprieve.

The drop box battle brewing in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments this week in a lawsuit challenging the state’s prohibition on unmanned drop boxes and certain regulations on absentee voting in the swing state.

Wisconsin’s highest court weighed whether to overturn a decision handed down in 2022, when the then-majority-conservative court ruled in Teigen v. Wisconsin Elections Commissions that the use of drop boxes is unauthorized under Wisconsin’s election laws. Voters could only return absentee ballots via mail or in person to a municipal clerk.

On Monday, the now-majority-liberal court heard from parties in Priorities USA v. Wisconsin Elections Commission — a lawsuit filed by progressive advocacy group Priorities USA, the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans and an individual voter who allege that the drop box restrictions violate the Wisconsin Constitution.

During arguments, the court’s liberal justices seemed inclined to potentially overturn the ban on the use of drop boxes, the Associated Press reported.

“What if we just got it wrong?” liberal Justice Jill Karofsky reportedly said. “What if we made a mistake? Are we now supposed to just perpetuate that mistake into the future?”

The plaintiffs’ attorney told the Supreme Court that its 2022 decision banning  drop boxes could pose problems for elections administrators, the Wisconsin Examiner reported.

If the court does reverse the ban on ballot drop boxes, Wisconsin Republicans told NBC News on Wednesday that they’ll encourage their voters to use them, despite previous attacks on the use of drop boxes from Republicans in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

Wisconsin Republicans say it will be one part of a multipronged approach in anticipation of the expanded use of drop boxes in the state, with another element likely to be a monitoring program to look for fraud and abuse by Democrats.

Their strategy underscores an ongoing shift in attitudes toward early and alternative voting methods within the GOP nationally. Republicans all the way up to former President Donald Trump had until recently falsely claimed or insinuated that drop boxes were a source of fraud during the 2020 election.

"We have to deal with things as they are, not maybe how we wish they were sometimes, and that’s going to apply to drop boxes,” Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Brian Schimming said about the possibility the party’s approach to the legality and use of drop boxes could change.

After the ruling in July of 2022 that ballot drop boxes were unlawful, Trump took to his social media site Truth Social to wrongly claim that the decision nullifies all votes that were cast via drop box in the 2020 election. That same month, a court-ordered, taxpayer-funded investigation into election fraud in Wisconsin during the 2020 election found no evidence of widespread fraud.

But Trump’s false claims underscored his yearslong aversion to absentee and early mail-in voting ahead of, during and after the 2020 election. He has repeatedly alleged without evidence that mail-in voting leads to fraud and “ballot harvesting” a popular term for right-wing critics of election procedures. Only recently has Trump appeared to change his tune.

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Speaking of mail-in voting, Trump is apparently now a fan

The former president has never been shy about his baseless repudiation of mail-in and absentee voting, despite casting his own absentee ballot in the 2020 election. But he recently changed his stance on the issue, according to a new video posted to Truth Social.

In the video, Trump tells viewers that “absentee voting, early voting and election day voting are all good options” and urged his Republican base to “make a plan, register and vote.”

It’s a stunning departure for Trump, not so much for the Republican Party at large. In the months leading up to the 2020 presidential election, some strategists expressed dismay at Trump’s constant disparagement of mail-in voting. And since the election, Republicans have been trying to promote the voting methods despite occasionally contradicting the party’s standard-bearer.

Complicating matters further are the lawsuits the Republican National Committee (RNC) is pursuing against multiple states over voting regulations. In one case — which On The Docket covered last week — the RNC, the Nevada Republican Party and Trump’s campaign sued Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state this month over Nevada’s ballot receipt deadline. It’s the Trump campaign’s first such lawsuit of the 2024 election cycle. The lawsuit is also one of five  cases brought by the RNC against elections officials, and the Democratic National Committee as well as pro-voting groups have sought to intervene in each case.

RNC Chair Michael Whatley — Trump’s pick to replace outgoing chair Ronna McDaniel — said that the Republican group will continue to encourage early voting.

"...Over 50% of all voters are going to be voting before Election Day this cycle," Whatley said. "We need to be talking to the voters before they go vote ... But [the] key for us is if you want to vote my mail, great. If you want to vote early, great. If you want to vote on Election Day, great. Make a plan and stick to the plan and make sure you get that ballot in."

Legal disputes over various aspects of the voting process have waged across the country. But the outcomes of these cases could have a significant impact on turnout, especially in critical 2024 states like Nevada and Wisconsin.

OPINION: Ohio’s Voter ID Law Doesn’t Just Harm Students

Like Me

Democracy Docket guest author Cameron Tiefenthaler writes about a new, restrictive Ohio voter-ID law and how it impacts college students like him. “As an Ohio college student deeply invested in democracy” Tiefenthaler writes, “I strongly oppose any attempts to silence young people at the polls. My peers and I are determined to make our voices heard in November.” Read more here.

What We’re Doing

It’s been a very busy month for election-related litigation in Arizona, Democracy Docket’s Matt Cohen writes. And he’s not just talking about failed GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s flurry of litigation aimed at somehow elevating her to the governor’s office. Read more here.

Voting rights journalist Ari Berman joins Defending Democracy to discuss his new book, right-wing extremism, gerrymandering, the U.S. Supreme Court and more. Watch on YouTube here.