Wednesday, Aug. 14

THE SCOREBOARD

Utah Supreme Court rejects two different Republican attempts to overturn primary losses

• The Beehive State’s highest court rejected not one, but two attempts by Republican candidates trying to overturn their primary election losses.
  
  

• U.S. House candidate Colby Jenkins (R), who lost his election, also lost his bid to count approximately 1,171 mail-in ballots across five counties he alleged were wrongly excluded from the vote count.
  
  

• In a separate case, the court rejected GOP gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman’s bid to overturn his election, taking issue with the Utah Republican Party’s nominating process.

Idaho Supreme Court rejects GOP attempt to squash open primary ballot initiative

• The state’s highest court dismissed a lawsuit from state Attorney General Raúl Labrador (R) that tried to block an initiative from the November ballot to implement an open primary system in the state.
  
  

• The initiative garnered nearly 63,000 signatures to appear on the ballot and, should it pass, would replace the state’s closed primary election system with a single open top-four primary in which all the candidates, regardless of party affiliation, participate.
  
  

• Labrador’s lawsuit alleged fraud in the gathering of signatures for the initiative to get on the ballot, but the Idaho Supreme Court tossed the lawsuit on procedural grounds, noting that “allegations of fraud in the gathering of signatures in the initiative process are serious,” but “must be adjudicated in the district court in the first instance.” The ruling leaves open the option of the state refiling the lawsuit in a lower court.

The 9th Circuit heard a challenge to Montana’s voter suppression law

• In May of 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) enacted a voter suppression law that criminalizes voters who are registered in more than one place.
  
  

• Pro-voting groups the Montana Public Interest Research Group and the Montana Federation of Public Employees filed a lawsuit against the law, arguing that it’s overly vague and violates the First and 14th Amendments.
  
  

• Back in April, a district court decided to temporarily block the law, siding with the pro-voting groups. The state appealed the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and asked them to pause the lower court’s ruling, but the court rejected the request. Oral argument was held today in the case.

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Missouri judge upholds confusing language for noncitizen voting ballot initiative

• Missouri voters will vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment that bans noncitizens from voting in elections, which is already illegal in the state.
  
  

• Two voters sued over the ballot language, arguing that it was imprecise because it neglected to mention that noncitizen voting is already illegal. But a Missouri judge rejected the lawsuit, writing in his order that the language “is not untrue or partial, and it does not use language that is intentionally argumentative or likely to create prejudice for the measure.”
  
  

• The ballot language also bans ranked-choice voting in the state.

Republicans are still mad about Biden’s 2021 pro-voting executive order

• Republican attorneys general in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota filed a lawsuit to block enforcement of a 2021 executive order from President Joe Biden.
  
  

• The order  expands access to voting and accurate election information in a variety of ways — including allowing federal agencies to share data with states that seek to establish automatic voter registration efforts and making federal workers and resources available at polling locations.
  
  

• But Republicans long argued that the order harms states’ sovereign right to regulate voter registration and the electoral process. This latest lawsuit comes on the heels of legal challenges from Pennsylvania Republicans and a coalition of state GOP officials.