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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
“If there is no private right of action under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act is basically dead. I would consider it the final nail in the coffin…there won't be much left for the Voting Rights Act…” — Franita Tolson, an election law expert and dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, on legal efforts to end the ability for private citizens [ [link removed] ] to sue to enforce the Voting Rights Act.
NOTABLE TRENDS
DOJ Continues To Target States: The Department of Justice (DOJ) continued its efforts to target states and their voter rolls. The DOJ recently requested information [ [link removed] ] about the removal of noncitizens from the voter rolls from the Los Angeles County Register-Recorder. The request asked for records from January 1, 2020 to the present and requested the registration application, voter registration record, voting history, birth date, driver’s license or state identification number, and the last 4 digits of the Social Security number for every person who had their registration cancelled for not meeting citizenship requirements. The Orange County Registrar of Voters previously received a similar request from the DOJ but redacted sensitive information, leading to the DOJ suing the county. 
Trump Pushes For “New” Census That Would Exclude Millions of People: President Trump has instructed [ [link removed] ] the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau,  to “immediately begin work” on a census using “the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,”  which would exclude millions of people living in the country without legal status. This would be an “unprecedented change” to how the census has been conducted since the first one – the Constitution says the census counts all people. Sophia Lin Lakin, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said the Trump administration’s effort to exclude residents without legal status from a census “would defy the Constitution, federal law, and settled precedent” and that the ACLU would not “hesitate to go back to court to protect representation for all communities.” In his first term, Trump proposed adding a citizenship question to the Census — a move advised by redistricting strategist Thomas Hofeller, who argued it would shift political advantage [ [link removed] ]. Hofeller’s analysis suggested the change would benefit one party and reduce representation for diverse communities.
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STATE ACTIVITY
Georgia • Judge Ruled Fulton County Must Accept Election Denier BOE Nominees: Senior Superior Court Judge David Emerson ruled [ [link removed] ] that the Fulton County Board of Commissioners must appoint election deniers nominated by the Fulton County GOP to the county Board of Elections (BOE). Judge Emerson said that there is nothing in the law that supports county commissioners being able to veto eligible nominees. The decision came after the Democratic-controlled Fulton County Board of Commissioners rejected the GOP’s nominees, Jason Frazier, know for filing thousands of voter challenges [ [link removed] ], and Julie Adams, an Election Integrity Network-connected incumbent BOE member.
Texas • 5th Circuit Panel Upheld Law Requiring ID Number to Cast Mail Ballot: A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld [ [link removed] ] part of SB 1 (a 2021 anti-voter law passed after Trump lost the 2020 election) that requires mail ballots to have a voter’s state identification number or partial Social Security number in order to be counted. In the opinion, Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee, stated that the panel had “little difficulty” upholding the law.
ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY
PILF Sent Letters to At Least 4 State Election Officials Claiming the State’s Voter Rolls Contained Mass Inaccuracies: Recently, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) Research Director Logan Churchwell has sent letters [ [link removed] ] to state election officials in Maine, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, claiming that each of the state’s voter rolls had mass inaccuracies and requesting meetings to discuss PILF’s findings. The most recent letter, sent on August 4 to North Carolina State Board of Elections executive director Sam Hayes, offers to assist the state in its “Registration Repair initiative” to collect missing information from registered voters. PILF’s letters to the 4 state election officials were copied to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Maureen Riordan, the acting chief of the DOJ’s voting section and a former PILF lawyer.
Paid for by Fair Fight Action.

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