Bad News Weekly: July 25, 2025

Welcome to Bad News Weekly, your rundown of key attacks on voting rights and independent elections across the country – it’s a way to keep up with what the opponents of democracy are up to. We’ll highlight some of the worst anti-voter efforts, with a spotlight on the South, the original frontline in the fight for voting rights, and still its fiercest.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

“I will check before the next election, I will verify it again, but you should be able to register and not worry about this. I will not be assured until I see it.” – Mary Kay Heling, one of the NC voters challenged by failed state Supreme Court candidate Jefferson Griffin who is also included in the list of 200,000 voters asked to provide alleged missing registration information, on her worries that her vote will not count in future elections. 

NOTABLE TRENDS

• DOJ Continues to Target States and Efforts To Gather Data On Voters:

  • In Illinois, the DOJ filed a statement of interest in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit that accused the state of failing to properly maintain a statewide voter list in violation of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA). This is at least the second Judicial Watch lawsuit targeting voter list maintenance practices that the DOJ has recently filed a statement of interest in.

  • In Maryland, the DOJ sent a letter requesting voter registration data from Nov 2022 to Nov 2024 as well as “the number of voters identified as ineligible to vote” during that period because they were a “non-citizen, … adjudicated incompetent” or had a felony conviction. About 4 days later, attorneys with the firm Consovoy McCarthy, representing the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the state GOP, sent the state a notice of intent letter that claimed the state had “implausibly high” voter registration percentages.

  • In Michigan, the DOJ also sent a letter asking for a copy of its voter rolls and information on the state’s list maintenance practices. The letter also said the DOJ had received a complaint about MI’s compliance with HAVA’s provision that requires all voters to be assigned unique identifiers.

  • In Wisconsin, after officials in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and Voting Section requested voter data from the state election commission, officials in the DOJ’s criminal division incorrectly requested sensitive election data from SOS Sarah Godlewski (D), who does not oversee elections in the state.

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STATE ACTIVITY

• Georgia • Secretary of State Raffensperger Urged Congress To Use Georgia’s Anti-Voting Policies As “Blueprint” for National Laws & Called for End of 90-Day Voter Purge Quiet Period: In a letter sent to US House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R), GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) urged the committee to use GA’s anti-voting policies, including voter ID, as a “blueprint” for national election laws. Raffensperger also pushed for Congress to lift the “federal barrier” of the 90-day restriction on voter purges before a federal election, stating that the limit “restricts us from conducting systematic list maintenance in federal election years precisely when clean voter rolls are most scrutinized.”

• North Carolina • State Election Board Passed Guidance Restricting Overseas & Military Voters: In an effort to comply with court rulings in the 2024 state Supreme Court election challenge, the NC State Board of Elections (NCSBE) passed new guidance to county boards of elections that requires overseas and military voters to provide photo ID with their absentee ballots and states that, if voters do not provide photo ID, then they must cure their ballots by 12pm on the 3rd business day after the election in order for their votes in state and local elections to be counted. The guidance also states that overseas voters who have never resided in the state would only have their votes in federal races counted and votes in state and local elections would not be counted.

ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY

• PILF & RITE Presidents Testified In Favor Of Stricter Voter Purge Laws At Us House Administration Committee Hearing: J. Christian Adams, the president and general counsel of Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), and Justin Reimer, the president and CEO of Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE), both appeared as witnesses at a US House Administration Committee hearing on voter list maintenance standards. In his testimony, Adams claimed that courts have interpreted the National Voter Registration Act’s (NVRA) voter list maintenance requirements “too loosely” by only specifying that states must make a “rational effort” to keep lists updated and remove ineligible voters. Reimer similarly focused his testimony on the NVRA and pushed for changes to the NVRA that would allow states to remove voters from the rolls closer to elections instead of the current policy that prohibits states from purging voters less than 90 days before an election.

  
  Paid for by Fair Fight Action.