Wednesday, April 9

Though President Donald Trump and Elon Musk lost big in the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race last week, the election also saw a major voting rights loss, as voters enshrined voter ID into the state’s constitution. Emboldened by the victory, Republicans in California and Pennsylvania are trying to pass strict voter ID laws.

Also in this issue of Eye On The Right: The Senate confirmed Harmeet Dhillon to the DOJ and two North Carolina judges issued a ruling to help a GOP candidate steal the state’s Supreme Court election.

As always, thanks for reading.

— Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter

At Democracy Docket, we prioritize our readers in everything we do. Help support our pro-democracy news outlet as we continue to hold the Trump administration accountable. Become a member and join us in the fight for a stronger, more transparent democracy.

After Wisconsin election, the GOP is emboldened to pass more state voter ID laws

The GOP suffered a big loss in Wisconsin last week when Brad Schimel, the Elon Musk-backed conservative candidate, lost the contentious state Supreme Court election to liberal Justice Susan Crawford. Despite pouring a record amount of money into the election — including legally dubious efforts by Musk to buy votes — Schimel lost to Crawford by nearly 10 points. Crawford’s victory wasn’t just a win for Wisconsin but a win for democracy.

But it wasn’t all victorious in the Badger State. Wisconsin voters also approved a ballot measure to enshrine the state’s restrictive voter ID requirement into the state constitution.

Wisconsin lawmakers passed a voter ID requirement in 2011, which only allows certain types of IDs to be used for voting — limiting common forms like student IDs. The law faced a litany of legal challenges that were ultimately unsuccessful, and it went into effect in 2016.

With voters enshrining the voter ID law into the state constitution, it will be a lot harder for lawmakers to reverse it — they could do so only by passing another constitutional amendment. Now, the Wisconsin result is emboldening Republicans on voter ID in other states.

In California, for example, there’s an effort by a conservative group called Reform California to get a restrictive voter ID measure on the 2026 ballot. Like in Wisconsin, the effort is trying to amend the state constitution to require voter ID for any counted ballot in any election, along with citizenship verification for anyone registering to vote.

“A record number of Californians have lost faith and confidence in how our state conducts its elections — and the reasons are well-documented,” the group stated. “California’s fraud-prone election practices include outdated voter rolls, ballot harvesting schemes, refusal to verify citizenship status, non-existent signature reviews, etc.”

In fact, voter fraud is exceedingly rare and California state law already requires voters to provide an ID or driver’s license number and the last four digits of their social security number to register to vote.

Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, state Republicans are trying to jam through a voter ID bill. “Time for PA to follow Wisconsin’s lead!” the Pennsylvania GOP X account posted after the Wisconsin election.

Senate confirms anti-voting lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to top voting rights post

Last week the Senate confirmed longtime anti-voting lawyer Harmeet Dhillion as assistant attorney general to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division — a position at the forefront of enforcing voting rights in the country.

Dhillon’s nomination was confirmed in a 52-45 vote, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) as the lone Republican to vote against her. But Dhillon wasn’t the only person with a deep anti-voting history confirmed by the Senate to a voting-related position in the Trump administration. Dean Sauer — who previously represented Trump in his Supreme Court immunity case and, as Missouri solicitor general, supported Texas’ effort to decertify the 2020 election — was confirmed as the next U.S. solicitor general.

Dhillon’s reign in the Civil Rights Division is likely to herald a troubling about-face in the unit’s mission. Since the Civil Rights era, the division has been the federal government’s chief enforcer of voting rights, bringing cases under the Voting Rights Act and other protections against racial discrimination in voting, and has spearheaded the U.S. government’s efforts to crack down on racist violence and intimidation.

Since at least 2006, when she founded her namesake law firm, Dhillon has become one of the leading legal figures working to roll back voting rights across the country. Just in the past few years, her firm has been involved in more than a dozen election and voting-related lawsuits across seven states and Washington, D.C., according to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker.

When Trump nominated Dhillon to the position in December, he wrote on TruthSocial that, throughout her career she “has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers.” He also noted she “is one of the top Election lawyers in the Country, fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted.”

Prior to Dhillon’s confirmation, a coalition of 75 civil rights groups, spearheaded by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, sent a letter to senators urging them to oppose her nomination.

“Ms. Dhillon’s lack of independence and record of going after the rights of the very people that she would have the duty to defend is disqualifying,” the letter reads. “With the attacks on our multiracial democracy and civil and human rights already underway at the DOJ, it is critical that the Civil Rights Division fulfill its responsibility to vigorously enforce the nation’s landmark civil rights laws.”

North Carolina ruling to help the GOP steal an election put on hold

A three-judge panel in the North Carolina appeals court ruled Friday to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters in the state’s Supreme Court election unless they can fix their ballots in 15 days. On Monday, the state Supreme Court issued a temporary stay blocking the appeals court’s decision.

The ruling is the latest in the seemingly never-ending legal saga over North Carolina’s extremely close and contentious state Supreme Court race from November, where incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs won reelection over her Republican challenger, Jefferson Griffin, by a little over 700 votes.

But Griffin refused to concede and launched a massive legal effort to have the election overturned because, according to his lawsuits, the NCSBE decided to count some 65,000 ballots by voters with allegedly incomplete registrations. Now it may be up to Riggs’ campaign and supporters to track them down to get them to fix their voter registration by providing an ID.

The appeals court panel ruled 2-to-1 to give voters 15 days to fix the error, or else risk disenfranchisement in an election they already cast their ballot for.

“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution,” Democratic judge Toby Hampson wrote in a lengthy, scathing dissent.

Hampson noted that the majority’s ruling imposes a remedy on the issue “without thought or care for its impact on the people its decision truly impacts: the voters.” He described a host of scenarios in which people’s vote will be disenfranchised: voters who died since election day, voters who have moved since election day, servicemembers living abroad in unsafe locations who are “unable to jump through the judicial hoops the majority now puts in their way.

“Make no mistake: should the majority’s decision be implemented, the impact will be to disenfranchise North Carolina voters even though they were eligible to vote on election day,” Hampson wrote.

But the state’s GOP doesn’t see it this way. In a statement, NC GOP chairman Jason Simmons called the court’s ruling a victory.

“Our position has not wavered and today’s decision confirms the facts were on Judge Griffin’s side,” Simmons said. “This is a victory for the rule of law and election integrity.”

For her part, Riggs told Democracy Docket she’ll keep fighting to ensure that North Carolina voters aren’t disenfranchised.

“North Carolinians elected me to keep my seat and I swore an oath to the constitution and the rule of law – so I will continue to stand up for the rights of voters in this state and stand in the way of those who would take power from the people,” Riggs said in a statement.