06/24/2022 Welcome back! Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court released a decision allowing GOP state lawmakers to intervene in a North Carolina voter ID case. In other SCOTUS news, we’re still waiting for the Court’s response in a Louisiana redistricting case.
If you missed our Wednesday email, make sure to read Marc’s latest, “The Redistricting Fight Continues.”
Love our newsletter? Forward it to a friend or colleague! If you received this email from someone else, you can subscribe here. |
|
|
What’s an Intervention? Big Ruling From SCOTUS and a New Motion in Illinois |
In handing down some of the final opinions of the term yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that Republican state legislators in North Carolina had the right to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the state’s voter ID law. The GOP leaders in the North Carolina Senate and House previously tried and failed to intervene in the case three separate times. But what does it mean to intervene in legal proceedings? Why did North Carolina Republicans want to jump in a case if they weren’t originally involved? We answer all these questions and more in “What’s the Deal With Interventions?”
-
First, a little about the case: A 2018 North Carolina law requires voters to provide one of 10 authorized photo IDs to vote by mail or in person. The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and others challenged this law, arguing that it disproportionately burdens African American and Latino voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the 14th and 15th Amendments.
|
An intervention happens when a group or individual asks to join an already existing lawsuit as either a plaintiff or defendant. Intervenors usually have a stake in the outcome of the case and want to help their side win. In this instance, the Republican lawmakers believed that North Carolina’s Democratic attorney general wouldn’t have adequately defended their voter suppression law. These days, and especially in voting rights cases, Democrats don’t want a Republican lawsuit unfolding without their participation and vice versa.
|
Once a group is allowed to intervene, it fully participates in the rest of the case — meaning it files briefs with the court, participates in trials or oral arguments and appeals decisions if desired. Read more here.
Last Friday, we saw another motion to intervene
, this time by the Democratic Party of Illinois. Illinois Democrats want to get involved in a Republican lawsuit seeking to change Illinois’ mail-in ballot receipt deadline, which requires counting mail-in ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day as long as they were mailed or placed in a drop box by Election Day.
Republicans argue that Illinois shouldn’t count any ballots received after Election Day. |
Waiting for SCOTUS To Weigh In on Louisiana |
We are awaiting a shadow docket ruling from the Supreme Court over Louisiana’s congressional map; the justices are reviewing whether to reinstate the map that was struck down a few weeks ago for violating the VRA. Louisiana’s map is actually being litigated in three separate federal court levels simultaneously: in addition to SCOTUS, the district court is moving forward with the remedial map-drawing process and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will soon hear oral arguments.
Confused? Review our Twitter thread on the Bayou State’s redistricting bind. (Notably, the Legislature adjourned its special session last weekend without passing a new map, a flagrant disregard of the district court’s order and the right of Black Louisianans to fair representation.)
|
How Kansas Republicans Divided the State’s Most Diverse County |
It took over a month, but the Kansas Supreme Court finally released its opinion on the state’s new congressional map. On May 18, the court upheld Kansas’ unfair congressional map, issuing an order without a full opinion. This week, the court clued us into its reasoning: -
A 4-3 majority of the court found that the partisan gerrymandering claim raised is a nonjusticiable political question, meaning it’s unsuitable for Kansas courts to rule on. (The Kansas Constitution does not contain an explicit ban on using partisanship when drawing lines.)
|
Even if the legal arguments failed to convince the court, any lay person can see the issue with how the Republican Legislature carved up the majority-minority Wyandotte County (containing Kansas City). The seat, the 3rd Congressional District, is currently represented by Kansas’ lone Democrat in Congress, Rep. Sharice Davids (D). |
As Gov. Laura Kelly (D) noted in her veto message, the enacted map “shifts 46% of the Black population and 33% of the Hispanic population” out of Wyandotte’s previously configured 3rd Congressional District into a district with a largely rural and white population. Republicans broke apart Wyandotte County, despite it being kept whole for 90 of the last 100 years, solely to maximize the Republican lean of the state’s congressional delegation. Former state Senate President Susan Wagle (R) vowed in 2020 to enact “a Republican bill that gives us four Republican congressmen, that takes out Sharice Davids.”
Partisan gerrymandering is more than politics — it harms communities that have shared interests in remaining in the same district. Read our latest for how this phenomenon played out this year not just in Kansas but also in Florida, Tennessee and Utah as well.
|
On Wednesday, Massachusetts’ Republican Gov. Charlie Baker signed the VOTES Act into law, codifying the popular but temporary reforms of the 2020 election (such as no-excuse mail-in voting and expanded early voting), ensuring eligible, incarcerated voters have meaningful access to the ballot and more. Same-day registration, however, did not make the cut after it was removed from earlier versions of the bill; despite the Bay State’s preferred political narrative as a policy trailblazer, Democratic lawmakers failed to enact a common-sense reform that’s been adopted by 22 states.
|
What Massachusetts can’t accomplish, Delaware might. On Wednesday, a bill to enact same-day voter registration in time for this year’s elections advanced out of the Delaware Legislature. It now awaits the signature of Gov. John Carney (D).
|
Over the weekend, the Texas Republican Party approved a nauseating platform that takes the most extreme, harmful position on nearly every topic imaginable. In the sphere of voting, the platform rejects the results of the 2020 presidential election, calls for repealing the VRA and supports restricting ballot access.
|
Here’s a victory — a court blocked Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) (yes, that Brnovich) from forcing Secretary of State Kate Hobbs (D) to use his preferred election procedures manual. Instead, the court ordered the bipartisan-approved 2019 manual to be used for the 2022 elections.
|
Challenging Someone Else’s Voter Eligibility Shouldn’t Be So Easy. But It Is. |
The Republican National Committee’s dubious legacy of “ballot security” operations may take on new meaning in 2022. Read more ➡️
|
|
|
We’re watching Ruby Freeman, a former Georgia election worker, testify before the Jan. 6 committee: “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere… Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”
Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss were election workers in Georgia during the 2020 election. Former President Donald Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani placed a target on the backs of the two Black women; they received death threats and vile, racist harassment, including an attempted “citizen arrest” by a mob of strangers.
So far, more than 100 GOP primary winners support Trump’s false claims of voter fraud or outwardly deny the 2020 election results. To halt this anti-democratic effort in its tracks, we need to elect Democrats up and down the ballot. Support and follow: |
|
|
Have a question? Join Marc and Democracy Docket today on Twitter Spaces at 2 p.m. EST for a discussion and Q&A on the latest democracy news. (Twitter Spaces is like a podcast, but live. You can listen to it without having a Twitter account.) |
|
|
We depend on the support of our readers to keep bringing you the latest on the fight for democracy. You can support our work here to keep our content free and available for all. You can update your email preferences here. Email is the best way to keep in touch, but you may unsubscribe.
|
Democracy Docket
PO Box 733
Great Falls, VA 22066
United States
|
|
|
|
