A state appeals court has overturned the conviction of Nathan Hart, one of the first Floridians arrested by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ election police unit in 2022, ruling that state prosecutors never had proper authority for the case.

The Second District Court of Appeal found that the Office of Statewide Prosecution (OSP) lacked jurisdiction to charge Hart because his alleged crimes occurred only in Hillsborough County, not across multiple judicial circuits as the law required at the time. Judges reversed his conviction for falsely affirming that he was eligible to vote during the 2020 presidential election and ordered the case dismissed.

Hart, of Gibsonton, was among 19 people arrested in 2022 during a sweep that DeSantis touted as a crackdown on voter fraud. The arrests followed creation of the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which was established following claims by President Donald Trump and other Republicans that widespread voter fraud marred the 2020 election.

Hart was among defendants who registered to vote after Florida voters approved a 2018 constitutional amendment automatically restoring voting rights for many felons who had completed their sentences. The amendment, however, excluded people convicted of murder or sexual offenses.

Like many others across the nation, people gathered outside the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 18, 2025, to send a message: No Kings. People played music and danced. Kids found space to throw a football. People ran into old friends. 

“What really stood out to me was how much fun it was. I mean, people were enjoying themselves. You had people in frog costumes and other things. You had some pretty funny signs,” says Larry Hannan, communications and policy director for State Voices Florida, who attended the No Kings rally outside the courthouse in Jacksonville. 

Hannan, who also attended the first iteration of No Kings back in June, estimated a 50 percent increase in attendance. Jacksonville’s protest mirrored other mobilizations across the country. On Sept. 18, it’s estimated that 7 million people turned out at 2,700 No Kings events. 

The protests come in response to the Trump administration’s increasingly authoritarian actions as Trump approaches the end of his first year in office. During his first 10 months back in the White House, Trump has weaponized federal agencies against the American people.

Like many others across the nation, people gathered outside the Duval County Courthouse in Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 18, 2025, to send a message: No Kings. People played music and danced. Kids found space to throw a football. People ran into old friends. 

“What really stood out to me was how much fun it was. I mean, people were enjoying themselves. You had people in frog costumes and other things. You had some pretty funny signs,” says Larry Hannan, communications and policy director for State Voices Florida, who attended the No Kings rally outside the courthouse in Jacksonville. 

Hannan, who also attended the first iteration of No Kings back in June, estimated a 50 percent increase in attendance. Jacksonville’s protest mirrored other mobilizations across the country. On Sept. 18, it’s estimated that 7 million people turned out at 2,700 No Kings events. 

The protests come in response to the Trump administration’s increasingly authoritarian actions as Trump approaches the end of his first year in office. During his first 10 months back in the White House, Trump has weaponized federal agencies against the American people.

Petition groups that planned to have their ballot proposals ready for the 2026 election often plan to have enough signatures by November to meet Florida’s procedural deadlines.

But as of now, it’s not known if any group will get there.

Of the various groups backing 20 different proposed amendments to the state’s constitution next year, the one with the closest numbers to the state’s requirements is Smart and Safe Florida, which wants Florida adults 21 and older to be able to possess, purchase or use marijuana.

Throughout the year, petition groups have told the USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida that the goal was to meet Florida’s signature requirements by November, to give time for county supervisors of elections to verify and tally signatures under deadlines set by Florida law.

So far, Smart and Safe Florida has met one required preliminary threshold of 220,016 signatures, which should – among other things – trigger judicial review by the Florida Supreme Court. Its justices must find that the amendment deals with one subject and that its ballot title and summary are clear and unambiguous.

But on Oct. 31, the group filed a lawsuit against Florida’s secretary of state, alleging he was violating state-mandated procedures and effectively blocking the proposed amendment. Since the group met the threshold that typically triggers the secretary of state to transmit the petition to the attorney general’s office. That hasn’t happened, so they’re requesting the Florida Supreme Court gets involved.

DENVER (AP) — After months of extraordinary steps to ensure his party maintains control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterms, President Donald Trump is turning his sights toward the voting process in Tuesday’s elections.

That pivot is raising alarm among Democrats and others who warn that he may be testing strategies his administration could use to interfere with elections in 2026 and beyond.

Late last week, Trump’s Department of Justice announced it was sending election monitors to observe voting in one county in New Jersey, which features a race for governor that Republican Trump has become deeply invested in, and to five counties in California, where Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing a ballot measure to counter the president’s own effort to rejigger the congressional map to elect more Republicans.

That announcement was followed with a pre-emptive attack by Trump on the legitimacy of California’s elections. The post on his own social media platform echoed the baseless allegations he made about the 2020 presidential election before he and his allies tried to overturn his loss in a campaign that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – Mid-decade congressional redistricting efforts are moving forward across the country as Republican states consider redrawing district lines to protect party control in Washington.

Florida lawmakers are among those expected to pursue redistricting changes, despite opposition from voting rights groups who say the move would erode public trust in the electoral process.

“It is something that erodes public trust,” said Jacquelyn Steele of Equal Ground, a voting advocacy organization.

Voting advocates urged Tallahassee area lawmakers on Monday to keep the state’s congressional map unchanged. Steele said there is no legitimate need for redistricting in Florida.

“There really isn’t a need. The need is coming from Washington, trying to keep control in one party,” Steele said.

U.S. House districts are typically redrawn once a decade, immediately after each census. With a narrow majority, President Donald Trump is pushing states to redraw boundaries to protect Republican control. The effort is gaining support in Republican states, including Florida.

Republicans currently hold 20 of the state’s 28 congressional seats. Governor Ron DeSantis announced his support for a new census to force Florida’s redistricting in August.

Over the past few months, I’ve had the same conversation with different people — my Uber driver, the UPS delivery person, my landscaper, a nurse at my doctor’s office, a waitress at my neighborhood restaurant. They all share the same worries: affording groceries, gas prices, child-care costs. These aren’t abstract economic concerns debated in Washington; they’re the daily anxieties keeping working Americans up at night.

What they may not realize is how deeply connected their struggles are to a fiscal crisis unfolding in our nation’s capital. The federal government ran an $1.9 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2024. Our total national debt stood at $36.2 trillion — a staggering sum that continues to grow.

I’m not an economist. I’m a baby boomer who grew up hearing my father repeat one simple truth: debt is bad. He lived through harder times and understood that spending more than you earn eventually catches up with you. That wisdom applied to our household budget, and it applies to our national budget too. Yet somehow, Washington has convinced itself that the old rules don’t matter anymore.

The numbers tell a sobering story. Interest payments on our debt reached $878 billion in 2024, surpassing both national defense and Medicare spending. We’re now paying more just to service old debt than we spend protecting the country or caring for seniors. Every dollar going to interest is a dollar unavailable for everything else.

A Sarasota resident says it’s unfair that political independents are shut out of Primaries.

Among the dozens of petitions the U.S. Supreme Court rejectedthis week was one from a Sarasota resident who challenged Florida’s closed Primary system.

Michael J. Polelle is a former lawyer and emeritus professor at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. An independent voter, he was upset after moving to Sarasota in 2012 and learning that as a no-party voter, he was shut out of County Commission Primaries because of the state’s closed system.

Florida is one of a minority of states with closed Primaries. That system locks out the nearly 3.4 million Floridians registered as no-party voters, as well as 443,000 more who are registered with a minor political party — more than 28% of the electorate.

In a phone interview this week, Polelle, 87, told the Phoenix that while he was bothered by not being able to vote in the Primaries in 2012, he wasn’t willing to do anything about it at the time. But he said his feelings changed after the 2016 election, when he realized how “fragile” the election system was, and how it gravitates towards polarization.

“But then what really struck me is that I never realized that my real estate taxes go to pay for these Primaries that I can’t vote in. And that makes no sense to me,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — For decades, the faces of American politics have grown more diverse by nearly every measure, especially as racial minority communities gained political representation after longtime legal disenfranchisement and violent discrimination.

But after some Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism about a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark law that civil rights leaders credit with enabling pluralistic democracy in the U.S., Black lawmakers, civic leaders and organizers fear that the faces of the nation’s elected representatives may soon return to a time before hard-fought civil rights gains.

Justices on Wednesday heard oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, a case that scrutinizes whether Section 2, a part of the Voting Rights Act that bars discrimination in voting systems, is constitutional.

Rep. Cleo Fields, who represents the Louisiana congressional district at the heart of the case, sat in the courtroom as the justices questioned attorneys on both sides of the case. He said he hopes the scope of the ruling’s impact would give justices pause about whether to gut the law.

The Supreme Court appeared poised today to weaken a key provision of a landmark civil rights law by limiting the ability of lawmakers to use race as a factor in drawing voting maps.

At the heart of the case is a debate over whether Louisiana violated the Constitution when it adopted a new electoral map in 2024, creating the state’s second majority-Black district. The plaintiffs challenged Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which allowed race to be used as a factor in creating electoral maps in an attempt to undo generations of efforts to suppress the power of Black voters.

During today’s oral argument, several of the court’s conservative justices appeared focused on whether there should be a time limit to using race as a factor in creating electoral maps. The court may rule that the Voting Rights Act, in seeking to protect minority voters, violates the 14th Amendment, which forbids the government to make distinctions based on race.

If the justices determine that lawmakers cannot consider race when drawing districts, the consequences could be sweeping. Republican state legislatures could use the ruling to eliminate around a dozen Democratic-held House districts across the South, according to a Times analysis, enough to make Republicans favored to win the chamber even if they lost the popular vote by a wide margin.

Democratic voting rights groups are preparing for a nightmare scenario if the Supreme Court guts a key part of the landmark civil rights-era legislation, the Voting Rights Act — a very real possibility this term.

Ahead of the court’s Oct. 15 rehearing of Louisiana v. Callais — a case that has major implications for the VRA — two voting rights groups are sounding the alarm, warning that eliminating Section 2, a provision that prohibits racial gerrymandering when it dilutes minority voting power, would let Republicans redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party and crush minority representation in Congress.

That calculation, made in a new report from Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund shared exclusively with POLITICO, would all but guarantee Republican control of Congress.

While a ruling in time for next year’s midterms is unlikely, the organizations behind the report said that it’s not out of the question. Taken together, the groups identified 27 total seats that Republicans could redistrict in their favor ahead of the midterms — 19 of which stem from Section 2 being overturned.

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — U.S. government lawyers say that detainees at the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz” likely include people who have never been in removal proceedings, which is a direct contradiction to what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been saying since it opened in July.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice made that admission Thursday in a court filing arguing that the detainees at the facility in the Everglades wilderness don’t have enough in common to be certified as a class in a lawsuit over whether they’re getting proper access to attorneys.

A removal proceeding is a legal process initiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to determine if someone should be deported from the United States.

The DOJ attorneys wrote that the detainees at the Everglades facility have too many different immigration statuses to be considered a class.

The Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Tampa voter against Gov. Ron DeSantis over his failure to call a Special Election for Senate District 14.

The Hillsborough County-based seat is open after DeSantis appointed former Sen. Jay Collins as Lieutenant Governor on Aug. 12. A month and a half later, a Special Election to replace him has still not been called.

The suit seeks to compel DeSantis to schedule one.

“Tampa deserves full representation in the Legislature. By refusing to call a special election, the governor is denying us that right and ignoring decades of established precedent. It’s illegal and wrong,” said Cort Lippe, the Tampa resident behind the legal complaint.

The lawsuit argues DeSantis’ inaction leaves constituents in SD 14 without representation at a particularly inopportune time — lawmakers are set to begin committee weeks Oct. 6 ahead of the 2026 Legislative Session, which begins Jan. 13.

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Thursday directing the federal government to investigate and dismantle “domestic terrorism networks.”

The move appears targeted at  left-leaning progressive nonprofit groups, which Trump days ago vowed to dismantle, falsely claiming they fund and support political violence and terrorism in the U.S.

The memo directs the FBI’s National Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Department of Justice, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to go after “anti-fascist”  movements in the U.S.

“This ‘anti-fascist’ lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties,” the memo reads.

Trump signed the memo shortly after the New York Times reported that the Department of Justice directed several U.S. attorneys offices across the country to open investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a progressive grant network founded by Democratic megadonor George Soros.

For decades, the Department of Justice (DOJ) relied on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) to foil and forestall attempts to discriminate against minority voters. 

On Wednesday, the DOJ filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to devastate and vitiate much of what’s left of the landmark civil rights legislation.  

When courts have ordered racially gerrymandered maps redrawn for violating Section 2 of the VRA, “they have compelled States to violate the Constitution to remedy phantom statutory violations,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued for the DOJ in an amicus brief filed in Louisiana v. Callais. 

The lawsuit could deliver a deathblow to the VRA, which was significantly weakened by 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder. In Shelby, the Supreme Court struck down the law’s requirement for jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination — mostly in the South — to get all voting changes approved, or “pre-cleared,” by the federal government. 

Under then-President Joe Biden, the DOJ filed an amicus in December 2024, as Callais was first pending before the Supreme Court, which defended the new electoral map Louisiana had adopted in response to successful VRA challenge. But after President Donald Trump took office, the government withdrew the brief.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the administration of President Trump announced on Saturday that it will end a longstanding annual food insecurity survey, calling it “redundant, costly, politicized, and extraneous.”

The Household Food Security Report provides yearly data on the lack of access to adequate nutrition for low-income Americans, and helps shape policy on how to combat food insecurity and hunger.

The USDA’s announcement comes after Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law this summer, which expands the work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. This, in effect, will leave an estimated 2.4 million Americans without food aid.

“The national food insecurity survey is a critical, reliable data source that shows how many families in America struggle to put food on the table,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) told NPR. FRAC is an anti-hunger organization that advocates for food security in the U.S.

FitzSimons said that without the annual report, advocates and policymakers won’t have a clear lens on the scale of hunger in America, and how to prevent it.

Only state and local election officials will provide voter registration services at naturalization ceremonies, under new guidance from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services facilities,

The announcement has sparked strong reactions from voting rights and immigrant advocacy groups.

“It’s an additional attack to third party voter registration organizations from doing the good work of helping the community stay informed and have opportunities to engage in democracy,” said Teresa Guzman Pagan, expanding democracy director of Florida Rising, a voting rights and grassroots organizing group.

The policy prohibits the involvement of nonprofits and community organizations “to keep the process nonpartisan,” while still giving new citizens “full access to registration materials and information through official channels.”

The agency highlighted in their policy alert, published in late August, that the use of nongovernmental organizations was “sporadic” and “varied based upon the location.”

For the hundreds of men who were detained at Alligator Alcatraz, entering the gates of the makeshift migrant detention center in the Everglades meant exiting the labyrinthine but familiar federal immigration process and entering what several immigration attorneys described as an alternate system where the normal rules don’t apply.

One Guatemalan man detained at the tent site was accidentally deported to Guatemala before a scheduled bond hearing, his attorney said, reminiscent of the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

A 35-year-old Cuban man could not be located at the California detention facility where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they had sent him, leaving his family and attorney frantically trying to determine where he was for more than a week, they said.

As of the end of August, the whereabouts of two-thirds of more than 1,800 men detained at Alligator Alcatraz during the month of July could not be determined by the Miami Herald. The Herald had obtained the names from two detainee rosters.

Around 800 detainees showed no record on ICE’s online database. More than 450 listed no location and only instructed the user to “Call ICE for details” — a vague notation that attorneys said could mean that a detainee is still being processed, in the middle of a transfer between two sites or about to be deported.

Florida leaders are calling for unprecedented mid-decade redistricting.

Changing the congressional map usually happens just once a decade after the U.S. Census. 

But, after Texas redid its map to send more Republicans to Congress at President Donald Trump’s urging, other states are now following suit in a political battle to tilt the balance of power ahead of the 2026 midterms.

But data released this week indicates most Floridians disagree with mid-decade changes.

That includes 45% of Republicans, 60% of independents and 62% of Democrats, according to a poll commissioned by the advocacy group Common Cause.

“Floridians do not want the Legislature to waste our taxpayer dollars and their time trying to make our voting maps even more gerrymandered than they already are,” said Amy Keith, who leads the Florida chapter of the group, in a virtual press conference on Thursday. “Floridians want our Legislature to focus on making our state a more affordable place to live.”

Efforts to redraw congressional maps in Texas and beyond are setting off a flurry of litigation as Republicans and Democrats look to add pickup opportunities in the House ahead of 2026. 

Several groups have filed lawsuits against Texas’s congressional maps, which seek to put five more seats in play for Republicans heading into next year’s midterms, arguing the map is unconstitutional and violates the Voting Rights Act. 

But pending litigation in several other states, including Louisiana and North Dakota, could have major ramifications for the Voting Rights Act and who’s allowed to bring those lawsuits in the first place — decisions that could have consequences for future maps down the line. 

Here’s a look at five legal redistricting battles to watch: 

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Tonya Mosley. The 2026 midterms are a little over a year away, but questions about election integrity are already front and center. Just this week, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is quietly working to build a national voter roll by collecting sensitive voter data from states, a move experts warn could be used to revive false claims of widespread fraud and undermine confidence in future elections.

And recently, President Trump has openly proposed using executive power to ban both mail-in ballots and electronic voting machines. My guest today, law scholar Richard Hasen, has warned in a recent op-ed that an order like that would not only be against the law, it would wield, as he writes, the machinery of government to sow doubt, undermine trust and tilt the election playing field.

Those warnings echo a broader wave of concern. Earlier this week, Mother Jones also published a report on what it’s calling Project 2026, a coordinated effort by Trump and his allies to rewrite voting rules, redraw congressional maps and pressure state and federal officials who are responsible for overseeing elections. It all raises a profound question – are our democratic institutions strong enough to withstand that kind of strain?

Lawmakers will be back in Tallahassee next month to convene committee hearings. Among those committees will be the new House Select committee on Congressional Redistricting.

Rep. Mike Redondo, a Republican first elected in 2023 to represent part of Miami-Dade County, will chair the 11-person committee.

House Speaker Daniel Perez, a Republican, announced last month that the committee would convene. The Senate lacks a similar panel.

“Exploring” questions related to redistricting, Perez said last month, “would potentially allow us to seek legal guidance from our Supreme Court without the uncertainty associated with deferring those questions until after the next decennial census and reapportionment.”

A spokesperson for Senate President Ben Albritton, a Republican, told the Phoenix Tuesday that the Senate had no updates about whether the Senate would convene a committee on congressional redistricting.

Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez has appointed state representatives to a redistricting committee to study and complete an historic mid-decade redrawing of Congressional maps.

It’s a move prompted by President Donald Trump, who wants to ensure Republican control of the House.

That could mean the local seats held by Democrats Maxwell Frost and Darren Soto could be targeted for changes that might make it more challenging for them to retain those seats.

When Republican leaders redrew congressional maps in 2022, that turned a 16-11 GOP advantage in Florida to an even bigger one, 20-8. The governor believes another round of redistricting could give republicans 2-3 more seats in Congress.

“There will be major court battles. You already have some groups saying that they are going to sue no matter what the maps look like,” said University of South Florida political expert Susan MacManus during an interview with WESH 2.

The Justice Department is compiling the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.

The effort to essentially establish a national voting database, involving more than 30 states, has elicited serious concerns among voting rights experts because it is led by allies of the president, who as recently as this January refused to acknowledge Joseph R. Biden Jr. fairly won the 2020 election. It has also raised worries that those same officials could use the data to revive lies of a stolen election, or try to discredit future election results.

The initiative has proceeded along two tracks, one at the Justice Department’s civil rights division and another at its criminal division, seeking data about individual voters across the country, including names and addresses, in a move that experts say may violate the law. It is a significant break from decades of practice by Republican and Democratic administrations, which believed that doing so was federal overreach and ripe for abuse.

“Nobody has ever done anything like this,” said Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University’s law school and a former Justice Department official.

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to decide if citizens can still enforce the Voting Rights Act, after a federal appeals court ruled that only the government — not private citizens — can sue to enforce protections against racial discrimination in voting.

In a petition filed Tuesday, Native American voters and tribes urged the justices to overturn an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that stripped voters and organizations of the ability to bring cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the law’s core protection against racially discriminatory voting laws.

“Section 2 is, and always has been, enforced primarily by private litigants,” the petition argues. “Congress enacted the VRA to enforce the rights-creating guarantees of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and crafted Section 2 in explicitly rights-creating terms.”

The case stems from North Dakota’s 2021 redistricting plan, which “cracked” Native communities into multiple districts, diluting their voting power. A federal district court struck down the map under Section 2, but the appeals court reversed — not on the facts, but on the grounds that private plaintiffs cannot enforce Section 2 at all.

Aug 30 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he will issue an executive order to require voter identification from every voter.

“Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!,” Trump said on Truth Social.

“Also, No Mail-In Voting, Except For Those That Are Very Ill, And The Far Away Military,” he added.

Trump has long questioned the U.S. electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. The president and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs.

For years, he has also called for the end of electronic voting machines, pushing instead for the use of paper ballots and hand counts – a process that election officials say is time-consuming, costly and far less accurate than machine counting.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WFLA) — As Governor Ron DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier fight for a mid-decade census in the ongoing redistricting battle, could districts in the Tampa Bay area be targeted?

Political analyst, Tara Newsom says there are a number of seats Republicans have their eyes on flipping, one of them being U.S. Representative Kathy Castor’s 14th congressional district, but Governor DeSantis is also drawing attention to other areas like South Florida.

“North of I-4, I think, is a pretty sound map. I don’t think there’s any basis, I think when you get into central, but particularly southeast Florida, there starts to become questions,” said Governor DeSantis.

Florida currently has 28 congressional seats, 20 of them occupied by Republicans. And as Texas and California deal with redistricting showdowns, could Florida be next?

“Can Republicans really cobble together more congressional districts than the 20 that they already hold in the state of Florida, and that’s where I think going after Tampa Bay is a real issue because we’re just too moderate, too centrist, and there’re too many Democrats and moderate Republicans that live in this area,” said Newsom.

Gov. Ron DeSantis will have multiple opportunities over the next eight months to call a special legislative session so the boundaries of Florida’s congressional districts can be redrawn.

It appears the Republican governor has his eye on one of Palm Beach County’s congressional seats — the District 20 spot held by U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat. During remarks on Aug. 20 at Palm Beach State College near Lake Worth Beach, DeSantis mocked the shape of the district, which was crafted after the 1990 Census to increase the chances that a Black candidate could win there.

“It’s the most irregularly shaped district on Florida’s map,” DeSantis said of District 20, whose boundaries bow out and squiggle to include the Glades, Mangonia Park and Riviera Beach before dipping down to encompass heavily Black portions of Broward County.

There are many oddly shaped districts in the Sunshine State, and DeSantis could ask state legislators to change their boundaries during any of the two-week committee meetings scheduled to be held in Tallahassee in October, November and December. The 2026 legislative session is also scheduled to begin in mid-January and run through March, a month before the April 20-24 filing window for candidates who want to run in the mid-term elections in November 2026.

Aug. 26 (UPI) — The League of Women Voters said Tuesday it opposed the unconventional mid-cycle congressional district redrawing effort led by Republicans. The group outlined non-partisan advice to help guide state lawmakers.

The league said it opposed mid-cycle gerrymandering because it can “easily be used to disenfranchise voters based on race or party affiliation,” read a joint statement by LWV’s CEO Celina Stewart and its president, Dianna Wynn.

The Washington-based League of Women Voters unveiled its guidance on mid-cycle map drawing for governors and state legislators under the heading of “No Harm to Our Communities: Mapping Guidance for Elected Leaders.”

Wynn and Stewart called the Republican-led political moves “uncharted territory” for the country.

The two pointed blame to an “unpopular, authoritarian president” who they said “exploits racial division and seeks to silence voters in a shameless bid for power” as Republicans fear losses in the 2026 midterm elections.

NEW YORK (AP) — A conservative election researcher whose faulty findings on voter data were cited by President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn his 2020 election loss has been appointed to an election integrity role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Pennsylvania activist Heather Honey is now serving as the deputy assistant secretary for election integrity in the department’s Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans, an organizational chart on its website shows.

The political appointment, first reported by Democracy Docket, shows how self-styled election investigators who have thrown themselves into election conspiracy theories since 2020 are now being celebrated by a presidential administration that indulges their false claims. 

Her new role, which didn’t exist under President Joe Biden, also comes as Trump has used election integrity concerns as a pretext to try to give his administration power over how elections are runin the U.S.

Florida election officials and voting rights advocates want to get the word out now that if you’ve renewed or replaced your state driver’s license or state ID in the past year, that could affect your ability to vote by mail or have your signature on a petition ballot be counted.

The change in policy started more than year ago. Beginning on July 31, 2024, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles began implementing legislation that requires the distinguishing numbers assigned to a driver’s license or identification card to include at least four randomly generated numbers. The agency says the change was done “to improve security and safeguard individuals’ identities.”

That change means that when voters go online to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot, they could encounter error messages if their driver’s license information is out of sync with the information they supplied when registering to vote.

“The main problem is that information isn’t being forwarded to supervisor of elections or local elected officials, and that becomes an issue mainly for vote-by-mail voters and those signing petitions, because more recent laws have made strict requirements for ID numbers,” said Brad Ashwell, Florida director for All Voting Is Local.

MIAMI — A federal court ruled Thursday that the state of Florida and the Trump administration can’t add to the population of the immigration detention facility in the Everglades dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” — and must take steps to begin dismantling it.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams said in a case that challenged the facility’s operation on environmental grounds that the state must stop construction at the facility and, within 60 days, remove fencing, lighting, and generators.

Florida’s top emergency management official, Kevin Guthrie, quickly appealed the ruling.

Authorities have not disclosed the number of people held at the detention facility in the vast wetlands west of Miami.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis opened it in July and said it would eventually hold up to 4,000 people facing deportation under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Williams noted that the detention center was intended to be a short-term stopover for people facing deportation and that her ruling would result in a steady population decline through attrition.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t budging on his push for mid-decade redistricting in the nation’s third-largest state, even as the war over congressional maps is currently being waged largely between Texas and California.

DeSantis — along with Attorney General James Uthmeier — laid out reasons Wednesday why the Florida Legislature may eventually need to redraw maps. Florida’s current maps — which were muscled into law by DeSantis three years ago — already give the GOP a 20-8 delegation edge.

Both top Republican officials continue to blast the last Census as flawed, with both raising questions as to whether Florida was deliberately undercounted to ensure it did not gain more than one seat following the 2020 Census. Uthmeier went so far as to mention a “deep state” effort to deny extra representation to Florida.

President Donald Trump on Monday vowed more changes to the way elections are conducted in the U.S., but based on the Constitution there is little to nothing he can do on his own.

Relying on false information and conspiracy theories that he’s regularly used to explain away his 2020 election loss, Trump pledged on his social media site that he would do away with both mail voting — which remains popular and is used by about one-third of all voters — and voting machines — some form of which are used in almost all of the country’s thousands of election jurisdictions. These are the same systems that enabled Trump to win the 2024 election and Republicans to gain control of Congress.

Trump’s post marks an escalation even in his normally overheated election rhetoric. He issued a wide-ranging executive order earlier this year that, among other changes,would have required documented proof-of-citizenship before registering to vote. His Monday post promised another election executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm elections.”

The same post also pushed falsehoods about voting. He claimed the U.S. is the only country to use mail voting, when it’s actually used by dozens, including Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

Leaders of the two most populous states, Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas, are trying to redraw the voting lines for the midterm congressional elections next year. It’s a break from the usual process and was touched off by President Trump calling on Texas to give Republican candidates an edge.

For months, the slim Republican majority in Congress has given the green light to mass deportations, health care cuts, tax breaks and many other Trump priorities.

But Republicans have only a 219-to-212 advantage in the U.S. House. To maintain that majority, the White House is calling on GOP-led states to redraw their voting maps in ways that help Republican candidates win more seats.

States usually redistrict early in each decade after the census count. This technical process is important. Whichever way people vote, the way they’re grouped in congressional districts can determine who wins and whether a citizen’s vote makes a difference.

The Texas and California legislatures plan to meet on their opposing plans this week.

President Trump sparked a national sprint to redistrict when he asked Texas Republicans to draw five more congressional seats for the GOP in their state ahead of next year’s elections.

In response, Democratic and Republican leaders in at least seven other states have said they’re open to moving their political lines in the fight over the U.S. House, but that means very different things in different places.

States are often bound by constitutional language and laws that dictate how redistricting happens. And time is running out for maps to be set ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Sponsor Message

To see how likely redistricting is before then, we asked reporters in the NPR Network to explain what’s going on in their states.

Just weeks after Florida’s Supreme Court weakened voter-approved restrictions against gerrymandering, Governor Ron DeSantis is already pushing to take advantage of the new ruling.

Fresh off a 5-1 Supreme Court win in his pocket, DeSantis announced plans to redraw Florida’s congressional map again, well before the next census. “Stay tuned,” DeSantis teased at a press conference outside of Tampa in late July.

The push is already underway, adding to a national effort by the GOP, in full swing in Texas, to lock in more seats before the midterms. Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez said he will name the members of a new redistricting committee next month.

Even if Republicans forgo a new map this year, the ruling locks in Florida’s existing gerrymander, and it’s likely to embolden the GOP whenever it next redistricts the state.

The court blessed DeSantis’ 2022 push to dismantle a North Florida district where Black voters had consistently elected their preferred candidate for three decades. 

More than that, the justices signaled a retreat in their willingness to protect Black voting power with the Fair Districts Amendments, a set of standards approved by voters in 2010.

If Republicans succeed in pulling off an aggressively partisan gerrymander of congressional districts in Texas, they will owe the Supreme Court a debt of gratitude.

In the two decades Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has led the Supreme Court, the justices have reshaped American elections not just by letting state lawmakers like those in Texas draw voting maps warped by politics, but also by gutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and amplifying the role of money in politics.

Developments in recent weeks signaled that some members of the court think there is more work to be done in removing legal guardrails governing elections. There are now signs that court is considering striking down or severely constraining the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act, a towering achievement of the civil rights movement that has protected the rights of minority voters since it was enacted 60 years ago last week.

Taken together, the court’s actions in election cases in recent years have shown great tolerance for partisan gamesmanship and great skepticism about federal laws on campaign spending and minority rights. The court’s rulings have been of a piece with its conservative wing’s jurisprudential commitments: giving states leeway in many realms, insisting on an expansive interpretation of the First Amendment and casting a skeptical eye on government racial classifications.

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The nation’s redistricting war is now officially coming to Florida.

Citing a recent court ruling on the state’s congressional map, state House Speaker Daniel Perez said Thursday he’s creating a select committee to look at drawing up new districts seven years ahead of the normal schedule.

“Exploring these questions now, at the mid-decade point, would potentially allow us to seek legal guidance from our supreme court without the uncertainty associated with deferring those questions until after the next decennial census and reapportionment,” Perez explained in a memo sent out to House members.

Florida’s decision to enter the fray over redistricting comes amid a political donnybrook sweeping the nation from New York to Texas, Indiana and California. The White House has pressured Republicans in Texas to enact a new congressional map that would generate up to five new GOP seats in that state. Texas Democrats this week left their state to avoid a quorum and halt the state Legislature’s business.

Republicans already hold a commanding 20-8 congressional delegation margin in Florida thanks to a map muscled into law three years ago by Gov. Ron DeSantis that flipped four seats. The GOP also has a supermajority in the Florida Legislature, and there are not enough Democrats to block lawmakers from passing a new map. DeSantis has to sign off on any changes to the congressional map, but he has already said he is open to redrawing the districts after the Florida Supreme Court upheld the current map.

President Trump on Thursday announced he had instructed the Commerce Department to “immediately” begin working on a new census.

The big picture: The development comes as the White House is pushing red states to draw new congressional maps more favorable to Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms. The Constitution requires the census every 10 years to apportion congressional districts.

Driving the news: Trump, in a Thursday Truth Social post, called for a “new and highly accurate” census “based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024.”

• He added that “[p]eople who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”
• Per the Census website, the Decennial U.S. Census is designed to count every resident in the United States and is mandated by Article I, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution. 

Zoom out: The next census is set to take place in 2030.

• Preparing for the count is a complex process that takes several yearsof planning.
• The Commerce Department, run by Secretary Howard Lutnick, oversees the Census Bureau. 
• The Commerce Department and Census Bureau didn’t immediately respond to Axios’ request for comment.

NEW YORK (AP) — The requests have come in letters, emails and phone calls. The specifics vary, but the target is consistent: The U.S. Department of Justice is ramping up an effort to get voter data and other election information from the states.

Over the past three months, the department’s voting section has requested copies of voter registration lists from state election administrators in at least 15 states, according to an Associated Press tally. Of those, nine are Democrats, five are Republicans and one is a bipartisan commission. 

In Colorado, the department demanded “all records” relating to the 2024 election and any records the state retained from the 2020 election.

Department lawyers have contacted officials in at least seven states to propose a meeting about forging an information-sharing agreement related to instances of voting or election fraud. The idea, they say in the emails, is for states to help the department enforce the law.

The unusually expansive outreach has raised alarm among some election officials because states have the constitutional authority to run elections and federal law protects the sharing of individual data with the government.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats reintroduced a bill Tuesday to restore and expand protections enshrined in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, their latest long-shot attempt to revive the landmark law just days before its 60th anniversary and at a time of renewed debate over the future administration of American elections.

Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia unveiled the measure, titled the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, with the backing of Democratic leaders. The bill stands little chance of passage in the Republican-led Congress, but it provides the clearest articulation of Democrats’ agenda on voting rights and election reform.

The legislation would reestablish and expand the requirement that states and localities with a history of discrimination get federal approval before changing their voting laws. It would also require states to allow same-day voter registration, prevent voters from being purged from voter rolls if they miss elections and allow people who may have been disenfranchised at the ballot box to seek a legal remedy in the courts.

“Democracy is the very house in which we live. It is the framework in which we get to fight for the things that we care about,” Warnock said. “These last seven months have reminded us that we ought not take any of it for granted. We are literally in a fight for the life of the republic.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court panel on Monday ruled that private individuals and organizations cannot bring voting rights cases under a section of the law that allows others to assist voters who are blind, have disabilities or are unable to read.

It’s the latest ruling from the St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, saying only the government can bring lawsuits alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act. The findings upend decades of precedent and will likely be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case centered on whether an Arkansas law that limits how many voters can be assisted by one person conflicts with Section 208 of the landmark federal law. 

The opinion from the three-judge panel followed the reasoning of another 8th Circuit panel in a previous case from 2023. That opinion held that the Arkansas State Conference NAACP and the Arkansas Public Policy Conference could not bring cases under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

“Like the provision at issue in Arkansas State Conference, we conclude the text and structure of (Section) 208 do not create a private right of action,” said the decision written by Judge L. Steven Grasz, a nominee of President Donald Trump. “Likewise, we conclude no private right of action is created by the Supremacy Clause.”

Florida lawmakers reached a rare consensus after the deadly Parkland school shooting: More money was needed for mental health counseling at schools. 

“We haven’t put enough resources into mental health issues,” said then-Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples. “And look what happens.”

Two years later, lawmakers passed a bill allowing Medicaid dollars assigned to school districts to be used for more types of care for kids, including counseling.

But state officials didn’t adopt the changes. And they have refused to comply with federal guidelines that would help school districts provide that care.

Florida schools have missed out on about $200 million a year in Medicaid funding — a total of $2.2 billion since 2014 — to support children’s mental health counseling, physical therapy and other services, advocates say.

Their calls to recoup funding come as schools face multimillion-dollar shortfalls in the budget year that began July 1 — and as kids struggle with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today is another dark day in the history of Florida. With today’s ruling, the Florida Supreme Court has turned its back on Black voters, the state constitution, and the fundamental principles of representative democracy.

By allowing a map that clearly diminishes Black voting power to stand in a 5-1 decision, the Court has sent a chilling message: the constitutional rights of Black Floridians are negotiable, and the will of the people can be ignored, even when it is written into the very fabric of our laws.

This ruling, handed down by a court largely appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, disregards the Fair Districts Amendments, which were overwhelmingly passed by Florida voters to protect minority voters and prevent partisan gerrymandering. It confirms that even when communities play by the rules, organize, and demand fairness, those in power can still bend the system to serve themselves.

At the heart of this case was a basic question: Do Black Floridians have the right to fair representation in Congress? Today, the Court answered with a resounding no.

This is not just a legal setback, it is a direct attack on Black political power and a decision that will have ripple effects for generations. It cements an unjust political advantage and further erodes trust in our institutions.

A Florida Senator is among those outraged over a video appearing to show a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) stop escalating to violence against a 22-year-old suspect.

“Once again, we are faced with a sickening reminder of the systemic issues that plague our law enforcement,” said Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami Gardens.

“The video coming out of Jacksonville is deeply disturbing and completely unacceptable. To witness an officer assault an unarmed Black man during what should have been a routine traffic stop is a stark demonstration of the continued racial bias and excessive force that far too many Black individuals experience in our communities. Never mind the fact that the driver was baselessly stopped for not using headlights during broad daylight.”

The driver, William McNeil, was allegedly pulled over in February during the day for not having headlights on. As he noted in the video, which was just released, it was not raining.

JSO has said there is an internal investigation ongoing, but for Jones, the issue is systemic.

Today is another dark day in the history of Florida. With today’s ruling, the Florida Supreme Court has turned its back on Black voters, the state constitution, and the fundamental principles of representative democracy.

By allowing a map that clearly diminishes Black voting power to stand in a 5-1 decision, the Court has sent a chilling message: the constitutional rights of Black Floridians are negotiable, and the will of the people can be ignored, even when it is written into the very fabric of our laws.

This ruling, handed down by a court largely appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis, disregards the Fair Districts Amendments, which were overwhelmingly passed by Florida voters to protect minority voters and prevent partisan gerrymandering. It confirms that even when communities play by the rules, organize, and demand fairness, those in power can still bend the system to serve themselves.

At the heart of this case was a basic question: Do Black Floridians have the right to fair representation in Congress? Today, the Court answered with a resounding no.

This is not just a legal setback, it is a direct attack on Black political power and a decision that will have ripple effects for generations. It cements an unjust political advantage and further erodes trust in our institutions.

Florida’s Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the state’s current congressional redistricting map, rejecting a challenge over the elimination of a majority-Black district in north Florida that was pushed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The court, dominated by DeSantis appointees, ruled that restoration of the district that previously united Black communities from Jacksonville to west of Tallahassee, or across 200 miles (322 kilometers), would amount to impermissible racial gerrymandering. That, the majority ruled, violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.

“The record leaves no doubt that such a district would be race-predominant. The record also gives us no reasonable basis to think that further litigation would uncover a potentially viable remedy,” said Chief Justice Carlos Muniz in the court’s majority opinion.

The decision means Florida’s current congressional districts that give Republicans a 20-8 advantage over Democrats will remain in place for the 2026 midterm elections and beyond. The former north Florida district was most recently represented by a Black Democrat, former Rep. Al Lawson. The new districts divide that area among three Republicans.

The U.S. Department of Justice has unnerved some state election officials by issuing sweeping requests for information that it says is pertinent to enforcing federal election laws and investigating voting crimes, which President Donald Trump has identified as priorities.

In letters sent to at least a dozen states over the past two months, according to documents obtained by Votebeat and reported elsewhere, the department asked for varied sets of data and records, including voter rolls, information on potential election and voting crimes, data from past elections, and details about procedures for maintaining voter lists and checking voters’ eligibility. 

State officials say privately that they have been struck by the scope of the requests and uncertainty around what the administration plans to do with the information, and have been talking to one another about them. Many of these officials have faced years of near-constant scrutiny as Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims of election malfeasance, and the president has tried to use his influence and official authority to rewrite the history of his 2020 election loss. 

While the requests so far are mostly for data or procedures that are public information or accessible by law to the Justice Department, election law experts said, some of them were more questionable.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration left many local officials in the dark about the immigration detention center that rose from an isolated airstrip in the Everglades, emails obtained by The Associated Press show, while relying on an executive order to seize the land, hire contractors and bypass laws and regulations.

The emails show that local officials in southwest Florida were still trying to chase down a “rumor” about the sprawling “Alligator Alcatraz” facility planned for their county while state officials were already on the ground and sending vendors through the gates to coordinate construction of the detention center, which was designed to house thousands of migrants and went up in a matter of days.

“Not cool!” one local official told the state agency director spearheading the construction.

The 100-plus emails dated June 21 to July 1, obtained through a public records request, underscore the breakneck speed at which the governor’s team built the facility and the extent to which local officials were blindsided by the plans for the compound of makeshift tents and trailers in Collier County, a wealthy, majority-Republican corner of the state that’s home to white-sand beaches and the western stretch of the Everglades.

CNN’s Joan Biskupic talks with Wolf Blitzer about Justice Clarence Thomas’ quest to undo a key part of the Voting Rights Act and about whether his conservative justices are now will to join him.

CNN’s Joan Biskupic talks with Wolf Blitzer about Justice Clarence Thomas’ quest to undo a key part of the Voting Rights Act and about whether his conservative justices are now will to join him.

Nearly half of local election officials are concerned about politically motivated investigations targeting election workers, according to a new survey from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Forty-six percent of local election officials said they were at least somewhat concerned about politically motivated investigations of their work or the work of other election officials. Of that, 18 percent of respondents said they were “very concerned” about potential investigations.

Election officials have increasingly become targets of scrutiny in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, when President Donald Trump and his allies touted conspiracy theories about ballot processing to claim the results of the election — which he lost — were rigged.

Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly advocated for greater “election integrity,” while disavowing state and local election officials around the country. Project 2025, the conservative policy agenda laid out ahead of Trump’s second term, endorses investigating and prosecuting election officials. And following Joe Biden’s 2024 loss, similar conspiracies of a rigged election have percolated among some liberals online — although notably these theories have not been embraced by Democratic Party leaders or elected officials.

TALLAHASSEE — A federal judge has blocked a key part of a new law that imposed additional restrictions on the state’s ballot initiative process, saying a ban on non-Florida residents and non-U.S. citizens collecting and delivering petitions “imposes a severe burden on political expression that the state has failed to justify.”

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker’s ruling Tuesday, however, allowed several other parts of the law to remain in effect, including a requirement that people who gather more than 25 signed petitions register with the state and a moratorium on elections supervisors processing petitions from July 1 through Sept. 30.

Florida Decides Healthcare, a political committee sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expanding Medicaid coverage, filed the court challenge in May after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved the law. Smart & Safe Florida, a committee behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational marijuana, also is a plaintiff in the case. A committee proposing a measure aimed at ensuring access to clean water also has joined the challengers.

Walker’s ruling came after the committees requested a preliminary injunction to block parts of the law, which took effect July 1.

The calls from Alligator Alcatraz’s first detainees brought distressing news: Toilets that didn’t flush. Temperatures that went from freezing to sweltering. A hospital visit. Giant bugs. And little or no access to showers or toothbrushes, much less confidential calls with attorneys.

The stories, relayed to the Miami Herald by the wives of detainees housed in Florida’s makeshift detention center for migrants in the Everglades, offer the first snapshots of the conditions inside the newly opened facility, which began accepting detainees on July 2. They reveal detainees who are frightened not just about being deported, but also about how they are being treated by the government, which is saying little about what is taking place inside.

“Why would we treat a human like that?” a woman whose Venezuelan husband is housed in Alligator Alcatraz told the Miami Herald. “They come here for a better life. I don’t understand. We are supposed to be the greatest nation under God, but we forget that we’re under God.”

The men, whose identities the Herald is withholding due to their families’ fears that the government will punish them for speaking out, described harsh conditions at the detention center, pitched as a new model for holding migrants ensnared in President Donald Trump’s war on illegal immigration. The state, which intends to eventually house 3,000 or more people at the site, has said the detainees’ descriptions provided to the Herald are “untrue.”

A group of Democratic state legislators said Thursday they were denied entry to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the newly opened controversial immigration detention center in the Everglades.

“This is a blatant abuse of power and an attempt to conceal human rights violations from the public eye,” said the legislators in a joint statement. “If the facility is unsafe for elected officials to enter, then how can it possibly be safe for those being detained inside?

State Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, state Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith, D-Orlando, along with state Reps. Dr. Anna V. Eskamani, D-Orlando, Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, and Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg, said they were “illegally” denied access to the facility off Tamiami Trail in Ochopee.

They said state officials flatly denied them entry to the facility Thursday afternoon when they first arrived and then later, when pressed, the legislators said state officials offered “vague safety concerns” without any specific details.

The legislators said they wanted to visit the facility because of “legal, moral, and humanitarian concerns” raised following the DeSantis administration announcement of the plans.

“Florida law is unambiguous — state legislators have full access to inspect any state-operated facility. This is not a federal facility,” said the legislators. “Denying us entry is not only unlawful — it’s a disgrace. We will be back.”

The House Homeland Security Committee’s Democratic members made allusions to Nazi Germany as they assailed “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new immigration detention facility in the Florida Everglades that President Donald Trump toured Tuesday.

“Historically, never a bad sign when fascists start building camps,” the committee posted on X on Tuesday alongside a video of Trump advocating for similar facilities in other states.

Trump visited the site alongside Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The governor, Trump’s onetime opponent in the 2024 Republican primary, has pledged his state’s support as the White House works to enact its sweeping mass deportation agenda.

Photos of the facility from Trump’s tour showed dozens of bunk beds arranged in cages inside a large tent.

“They want a bunch of people… interned…in a camp of some sorts…I wonder what we should call this?” the committee wrote in another post.

With less than five months to go before Miami residents were scheduled to head to the polls to vote on a new mayor and city commissioners, the city of Miami has postponed the upcoming November election to 2026 in a move that critics have described as a “power grab.”

On Thursday, the Miami City Commission voted 3-2 to move the city from odd- to even-year elections — a change that its proponents said will drastically increase voter turnout. But the decision also comes with fine print.

As a result, the city’s elected officials will get an extra year in office. That includes Mayor Francis Suarez and Commissioner Joe Carollo, who are both term limited. Suarez, a former city commissioner, will get a 17th consecutive year in Miami City Hall, and Carollo will get a ninth.

Commissioners Damian Pardo, Ralph Rosado and Christine King voted in favor of the election date change, and Commissioners Miguel Angel Gabela and Carollo voted against.

It looks like the Florida African-American Heritage Preservation Network won’t receive funding in the state budget.

The latest Senate offer on Transportation, Tourism and Economic Development zeroes out $800,000 set aside by the upper chamber for the effort. The House never budgeted money for the purpose, and it appears to have fallen victim to extended budget negotiations.

Of note, the Senate proposal had grown from just under $600,000 up to $800,000 before falling prey to the budget ax.

Sen. Rosalind Osgood, a Broward Democrat, had pursued that larger dollar amount in a local funding project request.

“The specific purpose is to serve the 30 network museums/sites that will receive direct grants from the FAAHPN network to help support their historical and cultural programming, technology upgrades, internship programs, heritage tourism, and serve the general public,” reads the application.

LaVon Bracy Davis is one step closer to succeeding her mentor Geraldine Thompson after the sophomore lawmaker won the Democratic nomination for state Senate in Tuesday’s special election.

Bracy Davis’ chief of staff, RaShon Young, also won his special Democratic primary to fill the state House seat she is vacating.

The battle to succeed Thompson, a political icon in Central Florida who died in February just months after her reelection, drew some high-profile Democratic names including both Bracy Davis and her brother Randolph Bracy, a former state senator.

Former congressman Alan Grayson also made his latest bid to return to office, and personal injury attorney Coretta Anthony-Smith, a political newcomer, made a strong showing.

Bracy Davis took in nearly 43% of the vote in the special primary, with Anthony-Smith second with about 28%, Grayson in third with about 17%, and Bracy in last with just over 12%.

“I am humbled and honored to have earned the trust and support of the people of Senate District 15,” Bracy Davis said in a statement.

Republicans in Florida racially gerrymandered two key state senate districts to disenfranchise Black voters and skew results in the Tampa Bay area, a panel of judges has heard.

In one district, they took a small chunk of St Petersburg heavy with minority voters and added it to an area of Tampa in a different county, and across a 10-mile waterway, leaving the remainder of its electorate “artificially white”, the court was told.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, representing voters at a four-day trial in Tampa last week, said the state’s defense that the waters of Tampa Bay made the new district contiguous was ridiculous, pointing out in the lawsuit that “manatees don’t vote”.

“These are cities on opposite sides of the bay and there’s no way to go directly between them,” Caroline McNamara, an ACLU staff attorney, said.

“You either have to go across 10 miles of open ocean at the mouth of Tampa Bay, or you have to cut through other districts in the area through the north end.”

The case has direct parallels in previous moves by Republican officials in Florida to manipulate voting districts to their advantage by undercutting Black voting power.

Equal Ground is hosting community forums via a tour to educate the public about what went down at this year’s Florida legislative session.

The tour started on June 7 in Tampa. Stops are scheduled through Aug. 16; the last one is scheduled in the Panhandle.

Stops were made in Volusia County last week at Greater Union First Baptist Church in DeLand on June 9 and at the Center for Civic Engagement on the campus of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach a day earlier.

“The meetings were well received. 

We desire to have more turnout; however, we had over 50 people at both stops in Volusia County. We are just educating people on the laws that were passed and those that didn’t, said Genesis Robinson, executive director of Equal Ground.

“We want to update the people. We want people to understand these laws and how these laws impact their lives.’’

Equal Ground is grassroots, Black-led political action organization focusing on voter information, voter education, voter registration and political action.

An unfortunate reality the city must face after the death of Councilmember Gwen Henderson is having a special election to fill her seat. Per the Charter, with more than 15 months until the end of the term, an election is required. Inside the 15 months, the remaining council members chose the successor. 

Hillsborough County’s Supervisor of Elections has set the dates, with the election scheduled for Sept. 9 with early voting Sept. 4-7. If no candidate breaks 50%, a runoff election will be held Oct. 28. If you want to vote in either of those elections you must be registered to vote by Aug. 11.

As for candidates, qualifying period is Aug. 11-15, with pre-qualifying starting July 28. In order to be eligible “Candidates shall have been a resident of the City of Tampa for one year immediately preceding the commencement of the term of office and shall also have been a resident of their district for six months immediately preceding the commencement of their term of office.”

Additionally, to appear on the ballot, a candidate must either pay a qualifying fee of $4,511.52 or collect 1008 signatures and pay $0.10 per signature for verification. (The state does provide an option to file an undue burden affidavit if you can’t afford that cost.) The signatures must be registered voters in District 5 and the number is derived from a formula that requires 0.25% of the City of Tampa population. The supervisor used census data of 403,361 persons, according to the ACS 1Y2023.

A panel of three federal judges is now weighing whether a Tampa Bay state Senate district created in 2022 was the result of illegal racial gerrymandering.

A four-day trial resulting from a lawsuit over the district concluded on Thursday afternoon and judges must decide whether the constitutional rights of voters in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties were violated when the Legislature created the Senate district in 2022 that crossed from St. Petersburg over the water to Hillsborough County.

Florida was sued by three voters who are represented by the ACLU of Florida and the Civil Rights & Racial Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law. The plaintiffs allege that the Legislature’s plan to connect Black populations from parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties violated their equal-protection rights by unjustifiably concentrating Black voters into District 16 by removing them from nearby District 18, reducing their influence there.

The defendants, Senate President Ben Albritton and Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd, have denied that claim, saying that the maps were lawfully drawn up and previously approved as legally sound by the Florida Supreme Court.

TAMPA, Fla. — A federal trial is underway in Tampa this week as a panel of three judges hears arguments in a lawsuit challenging a Tampa Bay-area Senate district, alleging the district map was racially gerrymandered in violation of constitutional rights.

The suit was filed by the ACLU of Florida and several voters from the Tampa Bay area. Plaintiffs claim the 2022-adopted district map improperly packs Black voters into District 16, diluting their electoral influence, particularly in Pinellas County.

District 16, currently represented by Democratic State Sen. Darryl Rouson, stretches across Tampa Bay, linking the southern portion of St. Petersburg with parts of Tampa and Hillsborough County.

“We’re not asking for special treatment,” St. Petersburg resident and plaintiff Meiko Seymour said in an interview with 10 Tampa Bay. “We’re asking for fair representation.”

Seymour and others argue that crossing the bay to group voters of color into a single district limits their influence in their direct neighborhood.

“When lines are drawn in a way to pack Black voters into one district, it actually weakens our influence across the rest of the city,” Seymour said. “It keeps us from having an actual seat at the table where decisions are being made that impact our schools, our streets and our future.”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) – A federal judge has partially blocked Florida’s new law regulating how citizens get constitutional amendments on the ballot.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a motion for a preliminary injunction Wednesday. However, the injunction only applied to part of the law. 

Among the several new rules outlined in the law are requiring petition circulators to be registered voters in Florida, shortening the time circulators have to turn in petitions and requiring Financial Impact statements on the petition.

In his order, the judge denied requests to put a stay on those rules. However, he did grant a plaintiff’s request for an injunction to the part of Florida’s new law pertaining to racketeering activity.

“The question for this Court is whether Florida’s expansion of its RICO statute to prohibit committing violations ‘of the Florida Election Code relating to irregularities or fraud involving issue petition activities” is “so vague and standardless that it leaves the public uncertain as to the conduct it prohibits or leaves judges and jurors free to decide, without any legally fixed standards, what is prohibited and what is not in each particular case,’” the order said in part.

A possible proposal by the Miami Commission to shift municipal elections from odd- to even-numbered years — effectively extending current officials’ terms by a year — has drawn threat of legal action from one of the city’s mayoral candidates.

In an email, candidate Michael Hepburn warned Mayor Francis Suarez and the Commission’s four current members against pursuing the change. If they insist on doing so, he said he would tap civil rights lawyer Ben Crump “and others to bring a lawsuit against this action and the city.”

The potential election change, first flagged by Tess Riski of the Miami Herald last month, would delay the scheduled November 2025 city elections to 2026, granting Suarez and Commissioners Joe Carollo and Christine King an additional year in office.

Commissioners Miguel Gabela and Damian Pardo, meanwhile, would stay in office until November 2028 rather than November 2027.

Donald Trump has made false claims about voter fraud central to his political identity and issued a sweeping anti-voting executive order in March. Now he’s weaponizing the Justice Department to advance his voter suppression agenda.

On Tuesday, in its first major voting-related lawsuit, the Trump Justice Department sued the state of North Carolina over its voter rolls, reviving arguments that Republican judicial candidate Jefferson Griffin used to try to throw out tens of thousands of ballots in an effort to overturn the victory of Democratic North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs.

“It’s no accident they’ve chosen a case in which the Republican candidate lost and they’re echoing his exact claims,” says Chiraag Bains, who served as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under Joe Biden and as a senior counsel in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2010 to 2017.

The Justice Department claims that North Carolina violated the Help America Vote Act of 2002 by failing to collect voters’ driver’s license or Social Security numbers when they registered. Griffin challenged the eligibility of more than 60,000 voters who he claimed fell into that category, even though all of those voters showed identification when they cast a ballot and his legal team never presented a single instance of a someone voting improperly.

Some Republican-led states are moving to require voters to prove their citizenship, as Texas advances a controversial measure that could make it harder for eligible voters to get on the rolls because of changed names, mislaid paperwork or database errors.

Voting rights advocates and Democrats warn the plans could prove particularly tricky for people who change their names, including women who do so when they get married or divorced, because their legal names don’t match the ones on their birth certificates. Supporters call the criticism overblown, saying most Americans can readily show they are citizens.

The emerging laws are part of a GOP push led by President Donald Trump to tighten requirements to cast ballots. Voting by noncitizens is both illegal and rare, and the attempts to crack down on voting by foreigners could drive down participation from a much larger pool of legitimate voters, according to election experts.

The Texas legislation passed the state Senate last month, and Republican proponents are hoping to advance the bill through the House by next week as the legislative session wraps up. As two dozen other states consider similar measures, Texas Republicans are weighing whether to change their proposal to more smoothly accommodate name changes, according to people tracking the legislation. The political fight in the state illuminates a larger debate across the country over how to balance election security and access to the ballot.

TALLAHASSEE — “Fear and uncertainty” about a new law targeting the state’s ballot initiative process has led to a significant drop in people working to collect signatures for 2026 ballot measures, groups challenging the law told a federal judge on Thursday.

One of the most controversial parts of the law, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature on May 2 and immediately signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, shortens from 30 to 10 days the length of time to submit signed petitions to supervisors of elections.

In addition, the law includes hefty fines for petitions that are filed late and makes it a felony for petition gatherers to retain voters’ personal information on petitions or make changes to completed petitions. Groups accused of “substantial irregularities” in the petition process could face racketeering charges.

Florida Decides Healthcare, a committee sponsoring a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at expanding Medicaid coverage, quickly filed the lawsuit this month to challenge parts of the law. Smart & Safe Florida, a committee behind a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational marijuana, also is a plaintiff in the case. A similar marijuana proposal narrowly failed to pass in November, and the committee is trying to go back to voters in 2026.

President Trump began his pledge to give America a MAGA makeover Monday, taking a slew of executive actions to walk back Biden-era policies and fulfill bold campaign promises.

The big picture: Trump’s radical expansion of executive power will dramatically change life for millions of people if the orders withstand the barrage of legal challenges that are already coming.

President Trump executive orders list 2025

What Trump’s Day 1 executive orders do…

Immigration executive orders

Many of Trump’s first orders curtail immigration at the southern border.

• He promised mass deportations but hasn’t detailed how he would implement, staff and fund such a massive, costly operation.

Trump declares national emergency at Mexico border

Trump declared an emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, vowing to deploy troops to the region, including the National Guard. He also instructed the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security to construct additional border barriers.

• Trump designated “certain international cartels” and organizations, such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13, as foreign terrorist organizations and announced plans to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target them.

Two days after Florida’s GOP legislative leaders said that they were not aware of any specific guidance from Donald Trump about his plans to combat illegal immigration, Gov. Ron DeSantis responded Wednesday with a detailed list of proposals he expects the Legislature to approve when it convenes in the special session he has called for later this month.

“We are not approaching the new administration in a lackadaisical fashion,” DeSantis said during a press conference at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. “We in Florida have a sense of urgency to accomplish this mission, and the mission is very simple. We need to end the illegal immigration crisis once and for all in these United States of America.”

The proposals he said he wants the Legislature to pass during the special session he called for Jan. 27 include:

• Require that city, county, and state law enforcement officers have “maximum” participation in any program to assist the federal government in enforcing federal immigration laws.
• Enact criminal penalties for illegal entry under state law.
• Appoint a state immigration enforcement officer to coordinate with federal authorities.
• Empower local authorities to detain and deport undocumented immigrants.
• Broaden the legal definition of “gang-related activities” so that it includes undocumented immigrants.
• Education and voting reform to discourage undocumented immigrants.
• Tightening voter registration laws to ensure that only Florida citizens can legally vote.
• Increase penalties for undocumented immigrants who commit voter fraud.
• Impose ID verification for foreign remittances.
• Bail and flight risk presumptions when undocumented are brought up on charges.
• Repeal the 2014 law allowing undocumented students to pay in-state tuition rates to Florida colleges and universities.

For Donald Trump and his supporters, concerns about election administration quickly dissipated once it became clear he would win the 2024 presidential election, and in surveys since, most Republican voters say the election was run well.

But for the wing of the Republican Party that has been pushing sweeping election reform since the 2020 contest, the work continues.

On Jan. 3, the day the new Republican-led Congress was sworn in, Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, reintroduced legislation aimed at stopping noncitizens from voting in federal elections — something that is already illegal and which research has universally shown rarely happens.

The bill, dubbed the SAVE Act, would add new proof-of-citizenship requirements to voter registration that experts say could disenfranchise scores of eligible voters.

It was one of the first bills introduced in the 119th Congress, a sign that what supporters call election integrity policy remains a key part of the GOP agenda, even after Trump’s win.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis of failing to fulfill his constitutional obligation to call special elections for two seats in the state House and Senate.

The seats in question were vacated in November by state Rep. Joel Rudman and state Sen. Randy Fine, who resigned to run for two congressional seats that opened up when President-elect Donald Trump named U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz as Cabinet picks. 

Shortly after Gaetz and Waltz resigned, DeSantis called for special congressional elections with a Jan. 28 primary and an April 1 general. He has yet to set elections for the state-level openings, however. 

“I don’t understand why the governor resists calling special elections in a timely manner. From Jeb Bush to Rick Scott, past governors moved quickly to ensure the people retained their voice in government. DeSantis’s refusal to do so is both troubling and illegal,” said Nicholas Warren, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida.

Donald Trump could use a second term atop the justice department to gut enforcement of US federal voting laws and deploy an agency that is supposed to protect the right to vote to undermine it, experts have warned.

Trump has made no secret of his intention to punish his political enemies and subvert the American voting system. His control of the justice department could allow him to amplify misleading claims of voter fraud by non-citizens and others, as well as investigate local election officials.

It could also cause the department’s voting section to largely scale back its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, returning it to the approach that it took under Trump’s first term.

Trump’s pick to lead the department could give an indication of its future direction. Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, assisted Trump’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election results, echoing false claims of fraud. Trump has also picked Harmeet Dhilon, a staunch loyalist who supported his effort to overturn the 2020 election, to lead the civil rights division at the department. Her law firm has also been involved in several cases arguing in favor of voting restrictions.

Donald Trump could use a second term atop the justice department to gut enforcement of US federal voting laws and deploy an agency that is supposed to protect the right to vote to undermine it, experts have warned.

Trump has made no secret of his intention to punish his political enemies and subvert the American voting system. His control of the justice department could allow him to amplify misleading claims of voter fraud by non-citizens and others, as well as investigate local election officials.

It could also cause the department’s voting section to largely scale back its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, returning it to the approach that it took under Trump’s first term.

Trump’s pick to lead the department could give an indication of its future direction. Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, assisted Trump’s efforts to try to overturn the 2020 election results, echoing false claims of fraud. Trump has also picked Harmeet Dhilon, a staunch loyalist who supported his effort to overturn the 2020 election, to lead the civil rights division at the department. Her law firm has also been involved in several cases arguing in favor of voting restrictions.

Most of the U.S. holds its major primary and general elections in even-numbered years, but there are a handful of places where competitive congressional, state and local-level contests will be happening in 2025.

Here are the races that The Associated Press will be tracking this year:

January 

January 7: Virginia holds a special general election to fill two legislative seats, state Senate District and state House District 26. Both seats, which opened up after their current occupants won congressional races, have been spotlighted by national Democrats.

February 

February 18: Wisconsin holds primary elections for a seat on the state Supreme Court and the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

April

April 1: Florida holds two special elections for U.S. House seats. The 1st District — considered a safe Republican seat — is vacant following the resignation of former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was nominated by President-elect Donald Trump as attorney general but later withdrew. Former Rep. Mike Waltz resigned from the 6th District after Trump appointed him to serve as national security adviser.

Also on April 1, Wisconsin holds general elections for a seat on the state Supreme Court and the state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Prominent voting rights activist Dr. Desmond Meade was honored Friday with a street renaming ceremony in his honor. A portion of Southwest 268th Street in south Miami-Dade County, or Moody Drive, will now be known as “Desmond Meade Street.”

The street now named after him holds personal significance for Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC). It is that very street that he grew up near as a young man struggling with addiction and homelessness.

“I walked this street as a drug addict, and today, I walk it with pride, knowing that it now stands as a beacon of hope for those who need it most,” Meade shared in his remarks during the Dec. 6 ceremony in Naranja. “This street sign is not just for me — it’s for everyone who has ever felt they didn’t have a second chance.”

Meade’s journey is one of resilience. Shortly after graduating high school, he joined the United States Army, where he served as a helicopter mechanic. As a returning citizen, he faced drug addiction, homelessness and incarceration. Meade was living in a homeless shelter when he decided to enroll in Miami-Dade College, where he graduated with honors in 2010. He then went on to earn his law degree from the Florida International University College of Law, graduating in 2013.

With its six-justice conservative supermajority, the Supreme Court has made a sharp right pivot in recent years, eliminating federal abortion rights, certain gun restrictions, and protections for the administrative state while also expanding executive power. To help you keep track of what’s happening this term, we’ll be periodically rounding up the biggest developments in Keeping Up With the Supreme Court. 

Purging Voter Rolls Right Before an Election Is Now Legal—Maybe

The court has had a sleepy start to its new term, as it seemed to keep heavy cases off of the docket in anticipation of postelection litigation that never materialized because Donald Trump won decisively. Still, there were some noteworthy developments: Less than a week before the election, the high court issued an order in Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights that is sure to influence future U.S. elections and inspire some states to push the boundaries of voter suppression.

This case went through the shadow docket, which means that while the justices sided with the state of Virginia, they did not provide a written explanation of their decision. (The three liberals did note their dissent, so we can assume it was a 6–3 split.) The ruling seems to fly in the face of the National Voter Registration Act, which explicitly prohibits the systematic removal of ineligible voters from official lists starting 90 days before a federal election. This is pretty much exactly what Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin did with his eleventh-hour executive order that mandated Virginia election officials use data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify and cancel voter registrations of residents suspected of being noncitizens, unless the resident could verify their citizenship within 14 days. The Biden administration, along with civic and immigrant rights groups, challenged the order in federal court—and in late October, a district court judge sided with them.

With its six-justice conservative supermajority, the Supreme Court has made a sharp right pivot in recent years, eliminating federal abortion rights, certain gun restrictions, and protections for the administrative state while also expanding executive power. To help you keep track of what’s happening this term, we’ll be periodically rounding up the biggest developments in Keeping Up With the Supreme Court. 

Purging Voter Rolls Right Before an Election Is Now Legal—Maybe

The court has had a sleepy start to its new term, as it seemed to keep heavy cases off of the docket in anticipation of postelection litigation that never materialized because Donald Trump won decisively. Still, there were some noteworthy developments: Less than a week before the election, the high court issued an order in Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights that is sure to influence future U.S. elections and inspire some states to push the boundaries of voter suppression.

This case went through the shadow docket, which means that while the justices sided with the state of Virginia, they did not provide a written explanation of their decision. (The three liberals did note their dissent, so we can assume it was a 6–3 split.) The ruling seems to fly in the face of the National Voter Registration Act, which explicitly prohibits the systematic removal of ineligible voters from official lists starting 90 days before a federal election. This is pretty much exactly what Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin did with his eleventh-hour executive order that mandated Virginia election officials use data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify and cancel voter registrations of residents suspected of being noncitizens, unless the resident could verify their citizenship within 14 days. The Biden administration, along with civic and immigrant rights groups, challenged the order in federal court—and in late October, a district court judge sided with them.

With its six-justice conservative supermajority, the Supreme Court has made a sharp right pivot in recent years, eliminating federal abortion rights, certain gun restrictions, and protections for the administrative state while also expanding executive power. To help you keep track of what’s happening this term, we’ll be periodically rounding up the biggest developments in Keeping Up With the Supreme Court. 

Purging Voter Rolls Right Before an Election Is Now Legal—Maybe

The court has had a sleepy start to its new term, as it seemed to keep heavy cases off of the docket in anticipation of postelection litigation that never materialized because Donald Trump won decisively. Still, there were some noteworthy developments: Less than a week before the election, the high court issued an order in Beals v. Virginia Coalition for Immigrant Rights that is sure to influence future U.S. elections and inspire some states to push the boundaries of voter suppression.

This case went through the shadow docket, which means that while the justices sided with the state of Virginia, they did not provide a written explanation of their decision. (The three liberals did note their dissent, so we can assume it was a 6–3 split.) The ruling seems to fly in the face of the National Voter Registration Act, which explicitly prohibits the systematic removal of ineligible voters from official lists starting 90 days before a federal election. This is pretty much exactly what Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin did with his eleventh-hour executive order that mandated Virginia election officials use data from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles to identify and cancel voter registrations of residents suspected of being noncitizens, unless the resident could verify their citizenship within 14 days. The Biden administration, along with civic and immigrant rights groups, challenged the order in federal court—and in late October, a district court judge sided with them.

The U.S. Postal Service said Monday nearly 100% of completed mail ballots were returned to election offices within a week for this year’s presidential contest, despite hurricanes, some misdirected election mail and delivery concerns raised by state officials.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said postal workers processed more than 99 million general election ballots — making extra deliveries and collections and working to identify problems that could lead to incorrect deliveries. They also ensured ballots were delivered even after hurricanes brought devastation to parts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina just weeks before Election Day, he said.

Almost 99.9% of general election mail ballots were delivered to election officials within a week and 97.7% of them were delivered within three days, postal officials said. The three-day return rate was similar to 2020 but slightly lower than the rate during the 2022 mid-term elections.

There were some notable problems even with the overall strong performance.

Election offices in California, Montana, Louisiana, New Mexico and elsewhere reported receiving completed ballots in the mail that should have gone to other states. The California Secretary of State’s office, for example, said about 150 mail ballots from Oregon voters were misdirected to California before being sent back. The Postal Service report did not address those issues.

Ballots can’t get sick, but after an election many voters need to “cure” their ballots to make sure they get counted. If you voted by absentee or provisional ballot, election officials will inspect it to make sure it has all the necessary information − and they often find it doesn’t.

For example, a state election worker might find the signature on an absentee ballot doesn’t match the one the election office has on file. A voter who shows up the polls without the proper photo ID may fill out a provisional ballot that won’t be counted until you present the right ID to the elections office.

In the closely watched swing state of Nevada, on the Monday before the election, there were nearly 14,000 ballots that required signature cures, according to the office of Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. In the county that surrounds Albequerque, New Mexico, hundreds of ballots were rejected, according to a local news station.

“It’s critically important that voters be aware of the potential need to cure their ballots, to make sure their voices are heard and votes are counted,” Aguilar said in a news release. “This is especially important for young voters who may not have a practiced signature or older voters whose signatures have changed over time.”

Ballots can’t get sick, but after an election many voters need to “cure” their ballots to make sure they get counted. If you voted by absentee or provisional ballot, election officials will inspect it to make sure it has all the necessary information − and they often find it doesn’t.

For example, a state election worker might find the signature on an absentee ballot doesn’t match the one the election office has on file. A voter who shows up the polls without the proper photo ID may fill out a provisional ballot that won’t be counted until you present the right ID to the elections office.

In the closely watched swing state of Nevada, on the Monday before the election, there were nearly 14,000 ballots that required signature cures, according to the office of Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar. In the county that surrounds Albequerque, New Mexico, hundreds of ballots were rejected, according to a local news station.

“It’s critically important that voters be aware of the potential need to cure their ballots, to make sure their voices are heard and votes are counted,” Aguilar said in a news release. “This is especially important for young voters who may not have a practiced signature or older voters whose signatures have changed over time.”

A remarkable thing happened Tuesday night on an “election integrity” discussion page on the social media platform X, as it became clear that former president Donald Trump was headed to a decisive victory against Vice President Kamala Harris.

It got quiet.

Created by X owner Elon Musk’s America PAC, the page had provided a platform viewed by millions of users for rapid-fire updates about power outages causing poll closures, Russia-linked bomb threats and unsubstantiated accusations that run-of-the mill voting problems were the work of devious Democrats trying to steal the election.

Around midnight, however, interest in the forum plummeted. With Trump winning back the White House, the urgency to investigate wrongdoing subsided. In its place came a spike of self-congratulation as those who believe Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was riddled with fraud took credit for preventing similar corruption this year.

Election Day was relatively tame around the country, though it was marred by a string of bomb threats against polling places in swing states that law enforcement officials linked to Russia. The threats forced some temporary evacuations and extensions of polling place hours.

Election officials, braced for disruptions and, forewarned by intelligence officials that foreign adversaries would attempt to create problems, responded quickly to reassure voters and minimize interruptions to voting.

In Georgia, Secretary Brad Raffensperger said “noncredible” bomb threats targeted polling places in the Democratic strongholds of Fulton, Gwinnett, and DeKalb counties, forcing an extension of hours at multiple voting sites. In Arizona, a threat forced the evacuation of the election office in La Paz County and targeted polling places in Navajo County. Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said voters were safe. “No one is under threat as we know it right now,” Fontes said at a press conference. There were also bomb threats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of the threats, “many of which appear to originate from Russian email domains. None of the threats have been determined to be credible thus far.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 5, 2024

Florida’s Voter Information Lookup Website Has Crashed, and Many County Information Lookup Sites are Also Down

FLORIDA – The Florida Election Protection Coalition is alerting the media and voters about today’s failure of the state of Florida Division of Elections to provide critical voting information for voters who are seeking to cast their votes today, Election Day, and an alternative solution for voters.

While this does not affect the vote count or tabulation, this does affect voters’ ability to access the ballot. Voters can call their county Supervisor of Elections office to find out information about their registration status or Election Day polling location.

Abdelilah Skhir, senior strategist, ACLU of Florida:

“On the last day to vote in the 2024 General Election, the Florida Division of Elections voter lookup tool is down. The state must make it a priority to correct this issue. Thousands of voters are looking up their voter information and planning where to vote – this is a delay that interrupts their ability to cast their ballot. With hours left until the polls close, we must ensure that every eligible voter in Florida can participate in the democratic process.”

Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida:

“It is urgent for voters to be able to find the information they need to vote today. While these websites are down, voters should call their county supervisor of elections office on the phone to get the information they need before they go vote.”

Voters experiencing look-up tool issues should contact their county Supervisor of Elections. Voters can find the phone number for their supervisor of elections at this website.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Abdelilah (Ab-Dee-Lah) Skhir, ACLU of Florida, 786-363-1660

Jennifer Garcia, Common Cause, jgarcia@commoncause.org, 727-717-2308

The Justice Department on Friday said it will send election monitors to 86 jurisdictions in 27 states on Tuesday, the most in two decades amid growing fears of improper partisan influence and voter suppression.

The announcement comes as officials in some Republican-led states have warned they might attempt to ban federal authorities from entering polling sites on Election Day. They have cast such oversight as partisan meddling from the Biden administration, even though Democratic and Republican administrations have monitored elections for potential voting rights irregularities for decades.

The number of jurisdictions subject to in-person federal scrutiny this year represents a 49 percent increase from 2020. It matches the total in 2004, the first presidential election cycle after the Supreme Court helped decide the fiercely disputed 2000 contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

All seven of the nation’s most closely contested swing states are represented on the list, with monitors planning to visit six counties in Michigan, five in Georgia, four each in Wisconsin and Arizona, three each in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and one in Nevada.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge who recently chastised Florida officials for “trampling” on free speech rights continued to block the head of the state’s health department from taking any more steps to threaten TV stations that air commercials for an abortion rights measure on next week’s ballot.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker extended a temporary restraining order, siding with Floridians Defending Freedom, the group that created the ads promoting the ballot question that would add abortion rights to the state constitution if it passes Nov. 5.

Walker handed down the decision from the bench after hearing arguments from attorneys for the campaign and state officials. The order extends a previous one that bars State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo from taking any further action to coerce or intimidate broadcasters that run the commercials.

Walker said extending the temporary restraining order will give him more time to rule on the preliminary injunction that the abortion rights campaign is requesting. The order will run through Election Day and expire on Nov. 12, unless the judge rules before then.

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida Supreme Court could decide a legal dispute stemming from a high-profile move by Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials in 2022 to target alleged voter fraud by convicted felons.

Defense attorneys filed a notice Wednesday that is a first step in asking the Supreme Court to decide whether charges should proceed against Terry Hubbard, who was one of 20 convicted felons accused of registering and voting when ineligible.

Charges against the convicted felons were announced in August 2022, less than three months before a general election that included DeSantis winning another term. DeSantis and other Republican leaders in recent years have made a major issue of trying to stop what they say is voter fraud.

The dispute in the Hubbard case centers on whether the statewide prosecutor’s office had authority to file charges against him. A Broward County circuit judge dismissed the case because he said the alleged wrongdoing occurred in one judicial circuit and that the statewide prosecutor only had jurisdiction in cases involving multiple circuits.

But a panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in July overturned that ruling and said charges against Hubbard should move forward.

With voting underway in the 2024 presidential race, majorities of American voters are at least somewhat confident that the election will be run smoothly, that votes will be counted accurately and that ineligible voters will be prevented from casting ballots.

But supporters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have sharply different expectations for how this year’s election may unfold. In many cases, these differences are as wide as they were in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

Harris supporters are more optimistic about the way the election will be run: 90% say they are at least somewhat confident that elections across the United States will be administered well. This compares with 57% of Trump supporters who are confident the election will be run smoothly.

This pattern in views extends to other aspects of the presidential race:

• Harris supporters also are more confident that election systems across the U.S. are secure from hacking and other technological threats (73% vs. 32%).
• Harris supporters are more confident than Trump supporters that, after all the votes are counted, it will be clear who won (85% vs. 58%).
• Harris supporters are much more confident that mail-in ballots will be counted as voters intend (85% vs. 38%).

Nearly 1.2 million Floridians have already voted by mail ahead of Election Day, including more than 300,000 in the Miami metro area alone, according to state and county elections data released as early in-person voting kicked off in most of Florida on Monday morning.

In Miami-Dade County, as of 2 p.m., more than 144,000 voters have already cast their ballots, including almost 124,000 who voted by mail and about 20,000 who went to the polls on Monday, according to the county elections department. Roberto Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the elections department, said that historically, around 500,000 Miami-Dade residents vote early in-person in presidential elections.

In Broward, more than 108,000 residents have already voted, while over 130,000 have cast their ballots in Palm Beach County, according to elections officials. Early voting centers in South Florida will be open seven days a week, closing at 7 p.m. on Nov. 3. Election Day is Nov. 5.

The numbers are the latest sign that election season is well underway in Florida — a longtime battleground state that has largely been written off by both parties in this year’s presidential race as a likely Republican win. Yet Republicans and Democrats are still closely watching how voters will break on two proposed constitutional amendments that, if approved next month, would broadly expand abortion access in Florida and legalize recreational marijuana use for adults.

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday issued an order allowing voting-related changes in counties hammered by Hurricane Milton, the second time in less than a month flexibility has been given to supervisors of elections because of catastrophic storm damage.

Milton made landfall in Sarasota County last week and caused widespread flooding, spawned dozens of tornadoes and left a wake of destruction as it barrelled across Florida into the Atlantic Ocean.

Milton came about two weeks after Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Taylor County on Sept. 26 and caused widespread damage along the Gulf Coast.

DeSantis on Thursday issued an executive order allowing supervisors of elections in Milton-affected counties to make changes such as consolidating polling sites and making it easier for displaced voters to obtain mail-in ballots.

The order allows supervisors “to make, you know, reasonable, modest but reasonable, accommodations if they have had damage to any of their voting sites because of the storm, and to be able to ensure that folks have an ability and a place to be able to cast their ballot,” the governor told reporters Thursday during an appearance in Sarasota.

Florida’s ballot initiative process has long been a beacon of direct democracy, a way for everyday Floridians to make their voices heard when politicians fail to represent their values. This process has enabled the public to pass landmark amendments on issues ranging from minimum wage increases to voting rights. 

Amendment 4 – a new constitutional amendment aimed at securing abortion access- underwent a rigorous governmental approval process. But now, the State’s recently created election police force is investigating that same petition process as a tool to attack democracy. The Florida Secretary of State is also pushing highly dubious “fraud” claims while providing no evidence that anything was done wrong. 

The amendment process, which allows citizens to propose changes to the state constitution, is not only legal but a critical part of our democracy. The sheer number of signatures required for an amendment to make it onto the ballot, combined with the hurdles of fundraising and organizing, ensure that only proposals with broad public support even have a chance of success. 

The petition drive for Amendment 4 reflects just such a groundswell of public support. But rather than respecting the will of the people, state officials are using law enforcement to try to quash this effort.

Amid two damaging hurricanes and ongoing recovery looms a major deadline—November 5th. Election Day. That’s when millions of Floridians will cast their votes. But many are facing uncertainty due to storm damage. A clash has been brewing over how best to accommodate displaced voters and those in difficulty due to the storms.

October 7th was the last day to register to vote in the November election. That’s about a week after Hurricane Helene devastated communities in the Big Bend, and just two days before Milton slammed into heavily populated Central Florida. Several voter and civil rights groups called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend the state’s voter registration deadline. But he didn’t.

“People can register today and that’s that,” DeSantis said. “There’s nothing inhibiting you registering today. The storm has not hit yet. Now, after the storm, we will see what damage is there, and if I have to do a similar executive order that I did in Ian and that I did for Helene, we’re happy to do it, but we’re not going to change any registration deadline. You can register today and there’s no reason to open that up.” 

DeSantis DID make other accommodations. He’s given supervisors flexibility in terms of when and where they place early voting sites. He suspended a state requirement that mail-in ballot requests be made in signed writing when sent to an address other than the one on file – an important consideration when voters are displaced. He did other things, too.

But Brad Ashwell, Florida state director of All Voting is Local, says it’s not enough.

Amid two damaging hurricanes and ongoing recovery looms a major deadline—November 5th. Election Day. That’s when millions of Floridians will cast their votes. But many are facing uncertainty due to storm damage. A clash has been brewing over how best to accommodate displaced voters and those in difficulty due to the storms.

October 7th was the last day to register to vote in the November election. That’s about a week after Hurricane Helene devastated communities in the Big Bend, and just two days before Milton slammed into heavily populated Central Florida. Several voter and civil rights groups called on Gov. Ron DeSantis to extend the state’s voter registration deadline. But he didn’t.

“People can register today and that’s that,” DeSantis said. “There’s nothing inhibiting you registering today. The storm has not hit yet. Now, after the storm, we will see what damage is there, and if I have to do a similar executive order that I did in Ian and that I did for Helene, we’re happy to do it, but we’re not going to change any registration deadline. You can register today and there’s no reason to open that up.” 

DeSantis DID make other accommodations. He’s given supervisors flexibility in terms of when and where they place early voting sites. He suspended a state requirement that mail-in ballot requests be made in signed writing when sent to an address other than the one on file – an important consideration when voters are displaced. He did other things, too.

But Brad Ashwell, Florida state director of All Voting is Local, says it’s not enough.

A federal judge in Florida rejected an emergency request from The League of Women Voters of Florida and the Florida NAACP to extend the voter registration deadline in the state. 

The groups brought their request as Florida’s registration deadline for the presidential election fell on Monday, between back-to-back hurricanes in the state. On Wednesday night, US District Court Judge Robert Hinkle declined to extend the deadline, saying in a hearing that “the problem is not something that is going to be solved by the court.” 

Hinkle said that voters had ample time to register before Hurricane Helene made landfall in the state’s Big Bend region and added that voters could have still registered while they were preparing for (or fleeing from) Hurricane Milton.

“If they had evacuated, they still could have registered while evacuating if they had a cell phone,” he said.

The petitioners had hoped to extend the deadline by 10 days. Hinkle cited the already charged environment surrounding election integrity in the hearing, saying that election officials didn’t need further pressure in “the most closely watched election ever.” 

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday that he had no intention of extending the deadline to register to vote in next month’s presidential election, even as voters in a broad swath of Florida have been forced to evacuate their homes because of Hurricane Milton.

“People can register today,” he said on Monday, the deadline to do so. “There’s nothing inhibiting you registering today. The storm has not hit yet.”

The response disappointed Amy Keith, executive director of Common Cause Florida.

“The governor said that there was nothing inhibiting people from registering yesterday, while we had parts of the state under mandatory evacuation orders. We had people in line waiting for gas. We had folks desperately trying to board up their houses and, as I said, really trying to clear out the debris from Hurricane Helene so that it doesn’t get picked up by the winds that are coming from Hurricane Milton,” Keith said on a Zoom call Tuesday.

“It is a very chaotic time on the Florida Gulf Coast and, unfortunately, we’re not getting that support for voters from the state.”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – As Floridians and Georgians juggle storm recovery and preparation in the midst of a historically turbulent hurricane season, time is running out for those hoping to register to vote.

Monday is the voter registration deadline for both Florida and Georgia. It means Monday is the last day people in both states can sign up to vote for the next U.S. president and all other races this November.

Anyone who registers after Monday will not be able to vote until after the November election.

Some voting rights groups are worried that the deadline comes at a time when people may not be able to prioritize voter registration.

“People are not focused on getting registered to vote, understandably, and they have not been focused on getting registered to vote for a few weeks now,” said Larry Hannan, the communications director for State Voices Florida.

State Voices Florida and more than a dozen other groups asked Governor Ron DeSantis to “indefinitely delay” the voter registration deadline, leaving more time to register.

The governor declined on Monday morning.

“We’re happy to do it, but we’re not going to change any registration deadline,” the governor said. “You can register (Monday), and there is no reason to open that up.”

Tallahassee, FL – Today is the deadline to register to vote in Florida. But many communities across the state are still struggling to recover from Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton is projected to make landfall Wednesday on the central Gulf Coast. Due to these unique circumstances, a broad coalition of voting rights organizations are calling for the State to indefinitely extend the deadline to register to vote in all Florida counties until Milton has passed and everything has stabilized. 

It is unreasonable to expect people to focus on registering to vote with multiple storms wreaking havoc in Florida. Floridians who are still recovering from Hurricane Helene are today preparing for Milton; they can not and should not be expected to have to meet a voter registration deadline today.  It is unfair to disenfranchise newly arrived Floridians, people who have just reached the legal age to vote, and others who need to register to vote in Florida due to the impacts of natural disasters that are beyond their control. We therefore urge Governor Ron DeSantis, Secretary of State Cord Byrd, and others to pause the deadline. 

Pinellas’ elections supervisor is asking the state to grant her office greater flexibility in managing the upcoming elections as the county works to recover from the damage of Hurricane Helene.

In a Saturday email to Secretary of State Cord Byrd and Division of Elections Director Maria Matthews, Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus wrote that up to 40 polling locations in the county may have sustained “significant damage and could require relocation.”

Marcus said her office is still assessing how early voting locations and mail ballot drop-off sites fared.

She asked the state to issue an executive order giving the county flexibility similar to what she said the state granted after Hurricane Ian in 2022. That includes the authority to relocate or consolidate polling locations less than 30 days before the election and the ability to create additional early voting locations and to extend early voting days, including up to Election Day. She also asked the state to adjust rules on mail ballot drop-off locations and to permit vote-by-mail ballots to be sent to addresses other than the one a voter has on file.

She also asked that the state OK the United States Postal Service to forward mail ballots to voters who are not at the location listed in their voter file, so long as they provide identifying information.

WASHINGTON – Recent spikes in voter registrations are shaking up the already contentious 2024 presidential race, with hundreds of thousands of new voters now signed up to cast ballots and help determine who resides in the White House for the next four years. 

In the majority of the seven key battleground states where Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris are particularly close in the polls, the current number of registered voters is up compared with the 2020 presidential contest that coincided with the COVID-19 global pandemic. 

North Carolina, as one example, boasts nearly a half million more registered people in 2024 compared with 2020, when Trump eked out a win over Joe Bidenin the Tar Heel State by about 74,000 votes.

Over in Michigan, the total count of registered voters has grown by more than 350,000 since October of 2020. Biden‘s margin of victory that year over Trump in the midwestern battleground state: a little more than 150,000 votes. 

On a recent Saturday afternoon, volunteers with Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group behind the state’s abortion-rights ballot measure, trudge up a street lined with waterfront mansions and Trump-Vance 2024 yard signs. They’ve been knocking on doors in Tarpon Springs — a red city in a bellwether county near Tampa that Joe Biden won by just a few thousand votes — for nearly two hours in 100-degree heat. Amy, 56, a petite brunette who drives an SUV covered in white-marker slogans like “Crooked Donald” and “No to Project 2025,” and Joseph, 64, a white-haired man wearing a purple “Yes on 4” T-shirt, haven’t had much luck. The voters on their list either weren’t home, ignored their knocks, or, in one instance, shouted “no” and slammed the door at the sight of them.

Critics of a recreational pot amendment have attacked it as a so-called “Big Weed” giveaway. But a new ad promoting Amendment 3 says Gov. Ron DeSantis is the one stifling marijuana market competition.

“False,” a 30-second video from the Smart & Safe Florida campaign, directly addresses accusations about Amendment 3’s backers having the most to gain from legalization. The ad insinuates that other financial parties are trying to stop legalization.

“Tallahassee special interests are lying about Amendment 3,” a narrator states, as screencaps of a Vote No on 3 ad appear. “The truth? This is a competition where consumers win.”

The ad references fact checks, including one by WPTV, already done on an anti-marijuana ad that said Amendment 3 would create a monopoly.

Who has jurisdiction over cases launched by Gov. DeSantis’ elections police force?

The Florida Supreme Court will soon consider whether a statewide prosecutor can pursue charges against an individual arrested by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ election police force.

Following a split opinion at the appellate court level, the Florida Supreme Court agreed to take up an appeal. A court orderdeemed the question of whether a statewide prosecutor can prosecute voter fraud cases if a ballot is cast in a statewide election is a matter of “great public importance.”

In 2022, an election police force arrested 20 individuals under investigation by a new Office of Election Crimes. The arrests drew criticism as many individuals claimed to believe their right to vote had been restored after voters approved a constitutional amendment automatically allowing ex-felons to register after the completion of their sentences and once any financial obligations with the state were met.

Voter registration is breaking records as Election Day approaches, particularly among young people, many of whom are first-time voters.

On Tuesday’s National Voter Registration Day more than 150,000 people registered through Vote.org, the most the organization has ever seen on that day. The organization registered 279,400 voters in all of last year.

Last week, 337,826 people visited a link posted on Instagram by pop star Taylor Swift that directed them to their state’s voter registration site.

Although Swift noted that she would be voting for the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, people don’t have to declare a party affiliation when they register and neither vote.org nor Swift tracked registrations by party. Vote.org has previously told USA TODAY that about 80% of people they register turn out in the next election.

A huge percentage of the newly registered voters are young people, many voting for the first time.

TALLAHASSEE – A non-profit advocacy group has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s process of verifying voter registration applications, alleging it violates federal laws. 

The lawsuit, filed in the federal Middle District of Florida, focuses on the process for verifying voter registration applicants’ eligibility. Prospective voters are deemed eligible by election officials if certain identifying information entered into the state’s voter registration system lines up with data maintained by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles or the federal Social Security Administration. Applicants whose information does not produce an “exact match” are not allowed to vote “unless they overcome burdensome bureaucratic hurdles,” the lawsuit said. 

The process “not only places the burden of verification on Black voters, it further disenfranchises Black eligible voters,” lawyers representing Florida Rising Together wrote in the lawsuit. 

The group is a nonprofit “dedicated to advancing economic and racial justice across Florida by building power in historically marginalized communities,” according to the lawsuit. The state’s process is flawed, in part, because the federal database used to verify voter registration “is widely known to routinely produce false and inconsistent results,” the lawsuit alleged.

TALLAHASSEE | The Florida Supreme Court’s conservative majority revealed the high stakes for minority voting rights Thursday as justices questioned whether protections under the state’s Fair Districts Amendments will survive Gov. Ron DeSantis’ aggressive efforts to dismantle them.

Thursday’s oral arguments pitted plaintiffs against state officials in a challenge over DeSantis’ 2022 congressional map that eliminated a district where Black voters had consistently elected their preferred candidates for three decades. DeSantis’ map dismantled the former 5th Congressional District, which stretched about 200 miles across North Florida from Jacksonville to Tallahassee and was formerly held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Lawson.

In its stead, DeSantis spread those Black voters across four separate districts, all of which elected white Republicans in 2022.

While the state and plaintiffs, including Black Voters Matter and the Equal Ground Education Fund, have agreed the move diminished Black voting power in apparent violation of the state’s Fair Districts Amendments, DeSantis’ lawyers have argued the state’s protections for racial minorities violate the U.S. Constitution.

Florida is cracking down on noncitizens attempting to vote, with officials saying barring them from the ballot boxes is vital to protect the integrity of elections — despite the small fraction of incidents involving noncitizens voting.

Last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration requested data from federal immigration officials regarding the citizenship status for seven people on Florida voter rolls, which totals over 13.6 million people, whom the state suspects could be noncitizens.

The letter sent last week from deputy Secretary of State Brad McVay to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services associate director Tammy Mackley says federal law requires them to provide the information, and suggests the state could file suit if it isn’t provided within 14 days.

“The immediate need for accurate citizenship information is critical as we are less than ninety days from the next general election,” McVay wrote. “If verification is not provided within the time requested, Florida will pursue other remedies, including potential litigation.”

Seven members of Florida’s Democratic Congressional delegation have written a letter asking U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate the DeSantis administration’s “brazen attempts at voter intimidation and election interference on Amendment 4.”

The state is investigating tens of thousands of allegedly fraudulent signatures on petitions collected to get Amendment 4, which would enshrine abortion rights into the Florida Constitution, on the ballot.

“These actions constitute an abuse of official resources to undermine political opponents,” the Democrats’ letter says. “Ensuring the honesty of our elections is of the greatest importance, which is why there are measures in place to ensure the validity of state constitutional amendment votes. The Governor’s undemocratic actions undermine the rights of Floridians.”

The Tampa Bay Times first reported the state investigation last week. There have been additional published reports that agents of Florida’s Office of Election Crimes and Security have visited voters’ homes questioning their signatures on those petitions.

A group of leading Black organizations are warning media and voters of disinformation targeting Black Americans ahead of November’s critical election.  

In a letter led by Onyx Impact, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating disinformation within the Black community, organizers urged Black media to recognize the impact disinformation has on Black voters. 

“During a historic election year where critical issues that will determine the future of our communities are on the ballot, including the economy, healthcare, voting rights, and more, it is essential that Black media and Black Gateway Influencers and Platforms have the resources and tools necessary to stem the rising tide of disinformation and provide their growing audiences with even more accurate information,” said the letter, also signed by Judith Browne Dianis of the Advancement Project; Mondale Robinson of the Black Male Voter Project; Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party; and Glynda C. Carr of Higher Heights. 

Earlier this year, a report from Onyx Impact found that more than 40 million Americans within Black online spaces may have been given disinformation about the election. 

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday will hear arguments in a lawsuit led by Black Voters Matter (BVM) alleging the state’s Republican-drawn congressional map unconstitutionally diminishes Black voting power in North Florida. 

Although Floridaians will vote under the contested map this November, the state Supreme Court’s ultimate decision following this week’s argument could alter district boundaries for the 2026 election cycle and beyond. 

Florida trial court Judge Lee Marsh struck downthe map last year after concluding that the state unconstitutionally diminished Black voting power in Jacksonville and Tallahassee. But shortly thereafter, a conservative state appeals court reversed the ruling, leaving the districts in place for 2024. 

Florida’s GOP-controlled legislature enacted the discriminatory map at the behest of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) during an April 2022 special legislative session — brazenly ignoring objections to the elimination of North Florida’s historically Black-performing 5th Congressional District. 

Last week in Chicago, the National Urban League joined with the Brennan Center and Democracy SENTRY for a conversation on voting rights.

“One of the first things I want to do, should we have the presidency and keep the majority, is change the rules and enact both the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Act,” keynote speaker Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

He later told reporters, “This is vital to democracy. This is not just another extraneous issue. This is the wellspring of it all.”

The sentiment was echoed by Vice President Kamala Harris in her acceptance speech, when she noted that among the “fundamental freedoms” at stake in the election is “the freedom that unlocks all the others: the freedom to vote.”

When the Supreme Court stripped the pre-clearance provision from the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that “the conditions that originally justified these measures no longer characterize voting in the covered jurisdictions.”

Ben Wilcox, the research director for Integrity Florida, has heard a lot of frustrated noise coming out of Santa Rosa County this year on the topic of ghost candidates.

And understandably so. The 2024 batch of Santa Rosa write-ins prevented registered Democrats and Independents from voting in all three County Commission races, and, according to research done by the government accountability medium Florida Trident, disenfranchised some 53,000 county residents.

Two write-ins signed on to run against Commissioner Sam Parker in District 1. Two write-ins jumped into the race for James Calkins District 3 seat and three write-ins are running against District 5 Commissioner Colten Wright. Not a single one has raised the first dime, though all are, technically, still in the running for the seat they qualified to run for.

State Rep. Joel Rudman, R-Navarre, has heard the rumblings from his constituents as well, and in a post on his “Dr. Joel Rudman for Florida House” Facebook Page, he has promised to do something about it.

GRAYLING, Mich. — Clairene Jorella was furious.

In the northern stretches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the Crawford County Board of Canvassers had just opened its meeting to certify the August primary when Jorella, 83 years old and one of two Democrats on the panel, laid into her Republican counterparts.

Glaring, she said she was gobsmacked by the partisan opinions they’d recently aired publicly.

“We are an impartial board,” she told them a day after the primary election, sitting at a conference room table in the back of the county clerk’s office. “We are expected to be impartial. We are not expected to bring our political beliefs into this board.”

The two Republicans, Brett Krouse and Bryce Metcalfe, had two weeks earlier written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, endorsing a candidate for township clerk because of “her commitment to election integrity.”

Citing their positions on the Board of Canvassers, the letter went on to claim that because of new state election laws, including one that allows for early voting, “All of the ingredients required for voter fraud were present.”

GRAYLING, Mich. — Clairene Jorella was furious.

In the northern stretches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the Crawford County Board of Canvassers had just opened its meeting to certify the August primary when Jorella, 83 years old and one of two Democrats on the panel, laid into her Republican counterparts.

Glaring, she said she was gobsmacked by the partisan opinions they’d recently aired publicly.

“We are an impartial board,” she told them a day after the primary election, sitting at a conference room table in the back of the county clerk’s office. “We are expected to be impartial. We are not expected to bring our political beliefs into this board.”

The two Republicans, Brett Krouse and Bryce Metcalfe, had two weeks earlier written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, endorsing a candidate for township clerk because of “her commitment to election integrity.”

Citing their positions on the Board of Canvassers, the letter went on to claim that because of new state election laws, including one that allows for early voting, “All of the ingredients required for voter fraud were present.”

Election officials in Florida say they are working to “streamline” a process for formerly incarcerated people to figure out whether they are eligible to vote in the state.

Florida’s Department of State is considering a proposal to formalize how people who served time for a felony conviction can ask the state to clarify if they have met all the requirements to get their voting rights back. The rule change would eventually need to be approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In 2018, voters in Florida approved a ballot measure, known as Amendment 4, that “restores the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.” The measure excludes people who committed murder or a felony sex offense.

But before Amendment 4 went into effect, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law requiring that returning citizens fulfill every part of their sentence — including paying any fees or fines — in order to regain voting rights.

It might feel like the presidential election is still a long way off. It’s not.

There are just over 70 days until Election Day on Nov. 5, but major dates, events and political developments will make it fly by. Think about it this way: The stretch between now and then is about as long as summer break from school in most parts of the country.

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

In just two weeks, Sept. 6, the first mail ballots get sent to voters. The first presidential debate is set for Sept. 10. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, is scheduled to be sentenced in his New York hush money case on Sept. 18. And early in-person voting will start as soon as Sept. 20 in some states.

Here’s a look at why the calendar will move quickly now that the Democratic and Republican conventions are wrapped.

TALLAHASSEE — State elections officials are moving forward with an updated process aimed at providing more clarity for people seeking to determine if they are eligible to vote, after a federal lawsuit over the handling of a constitutional amendment that restored voting rights to felons who completed their sentences.

A proposed rule, released Thursday by the state Division of Elections, includes a one-page form for felons requesting what are known as “advisory opinions” from state lawyers to clarify if they are eligible to vote.

The proposal would give state elections officials two weeks to determine “whether a form is complete,” require notification of “the felon within 14 days … of the specific deficiency or the need for any specific, additional information” and mandate that the state respond within 90 days of receiving a request for an advisory opinion.

Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition who helped advocate for the 2018 constitutional amendment, called the proposal a “step forward” by the state.

In June, a nascent right-wing group in Nevada sent more than a thousand names to 10 county clerks and registrars in an attempt to get them purged from the state’s voter registration. There’s similar efforts underway in Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and dozens of other states.  

Since the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump and his network of conservative sycophants pushed dangerous and false allegationsof voter fraud and other election conspiracy theories, his most loyal supporters are now trying to challenge millions of registered voters before the November election. The effort has evolved into a cottage industry of self-styled election integrity groups recruiting small armies of volunteers to try and identify registered voters that they believe should be removed  from state and local voter rolls. 

It’s hard to fully grasp the scale of this effort. The ecosystem is composed of smaller hyperlocal grassroots groups like the Pigpen Project in Nevada and North of 29 in Wisconsin along with bigger groups — like the Cleta Mitchell-backed Election Integrity Network (EIN), True the Vote and United Sovereign Americans — that are coordinating multi state efforts to challenge voters. At the heart of the issue is how these groups are obtaining voter registration data to initiate these mass challenges. True the Vote and EIN have even developed their own software — IV3 and EagleAI, respectively — that use incomplete or flawed voter registration data, resulting in dozens of mass voter challenges of lawfully registered voters’ registration status. 

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Some Florida counties had difficulty Tuesday reporting primary election results to the public because of an unspecified glitch involving a vendor, state officials said.

Secretary of State Cord Byrd said at a news conference that counties using the vendor VR Systems reported the issue, which included websites timing out.

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

“This was an issue with their public-facing websites. It had nothing to do with the data or the votes being transmitted to the Department of State,” Byrd said.

A person who answered the phone at VR Systems forwarded The Associated Press to COO Ben Martin, who did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment.

The elections supervisor in Hillsborough County, Craig Latimer, said in a statement that the unknown problem caused “intermittent down time and slowness” on its websites but there was no interference with tabulation of votes. Hillsborough County includes the city of Tampa.

“The public website is completely separate from the vote tabulation system, voter registration system or election night results reporting website,” according to the statement.

About two weeks after Sandra Maddox qualified to run for county commission in Santa Rosa County, a campaign sign for the frontrunner in her own race – incumbent and fellow Republican James Calkins –  oddly popped up in her own yard. 

“The sign was right in front of her mailbox,” said Diane Warner, a retiree in the area who spends her free time investigating elections. “I drove out there, and I just stopped by and took pictures.” 

The connection between Maddox and her on-paper political opponent goes deeper than just yard signs. The Florida Trident learned that Maddox’s son, Roger Belanger, did work for Calkins’ campaign, ostensibly in league against his own mother, who is 80 years old and has been almost entirely absent from the race.

Belanger received $5,000 from Calkins for “advertising,” campaign finance records show. In 2022, Calkins described Belanger as a “good friend” in a social media post. 

“It’s incredulous,” said Warner, a Republican voter. “They walk right up to the line of slimy, and it gets old.”

Maddox’s candidacy may seem absurd on its face, but her entrance as a write-in for District 3 had a profound impact. If Calkins had run alone as an unopposed Republican for the seat, the primary would have been open under Florida law, allowing Democrats and independents to vote. When Maddox filed to run, however, it closed the primary to everyone except Republicans, disenfranchising everyone else. 

Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, she announced in a post on X. Harris has a strong record on voting rights, and so does Walz.

“It is the honor of a lifetime to join [Harris] in this campaign,” Walz wrote in a post on X. “I’m all in. Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks!”

He specifically emphasized his commitment to voting rights at a rally on Tuesday evening, alongside Harris.

Walz said he and Harris strive to create “a place where we settle our political differences, not through violence, but with our votes.”

He was elected governor in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022 — both with large margins of victory.

In May 2023, Walz signed the “Democracy for the People Act,” which promoted voting rights in many ways, including by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, permitting voters to opt into a permanent absentee voter list and expanding language access in voting materials.

Voter registration efforts scaled back | Aug. 7

What a shame that the Florida Legislature has accomplished what the Ku Klux Klan used to do for decades: Intimidate voting rights activists from registering people to take part in America’s democracy. The Klan did it through threats of violence. Lawmakers today do it under the pretense of “election integrity.”

Sixty years ago, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi for trying to get Black people to register. Today, groups like The League of Women Voters won’t get shot for voter registration efforts, but the threat of a fine has the same effect on their efforts. I hope they step up their efforts in the coming months. It’s the least that can be done to honor the sacrifice Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner made during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

Joseph Brown, Tampa

Keep up the effort

Voter registration efforts scaled back | Aug. 7

I am grateful to people like Judy Gallizzi and Ruth Barrens who volunteer their time to register other citizens to vote. Voting is the cornerstone of a democratic country. Our governor and legislators have over and over again rehashed lies about election fraud, even after all of the studies and proof of practically no voter fraud. Who would think that somewhere in the United States, the government would try to keep us from voting. It’s beyond weird. It appears they are worried that they will not be elected if everyone who is eligible to vote decides to vote. Hmm. Sounds like the way Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin wins elections.

Ann Jamieson, St. Petersburg

Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, has selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, she announced in a post on X. Harris has a strong record on voting rights, and so does Walz.

“It is the honor of a lifetime to join [Harris] in this campaign,” Walz wrote in a post on X. “I’m all in. Vice President Harris is showing us the politics of what’s possible. It reminds me a bit of the first day of school. So, let’s get this done, folks!”

He specifically emphasized his commitment to voting rights at a rally on Tuesday evening, alongside Harris.

Walz said he and Harris strive to create “a place where we settle our political differences, not through violence, but with our votes.”

He was elected governor in 2018 and was re-elected in 2022 — both with large margins of victory.

In May 2023, Walz signed the “Democracy for the People Act,” which promoted voting rights in many ways, including by allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to pre-register to vote, permitting voters to opt into a permanent absentee voter list and expanding language access in voting materials.

For the past six months, election denial groups across the United States have been laser-focused on efforts to purge voter rolls in support of former president Donald Trump’s reelection bid.

Using new apps and online tools, they claim their volunteers have filed hundreds of thousands of voter registration challenges. Though these efforts are based on unreliable data and debunked election fraud conspiracies, they threaten to disenfranchise voters by removing legitimate registrations. And as the deadline to file these voter roll challenges approaches next week, experts warn that these groups are already planning out their next moves to stop Democratic voters in swing states.

This month marks two years since Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced the creation of a new state office dedicated to uncovering voter and election fraud in the state.

“This was my idea,” he boasted during the 2022 summer press conference about the new office.

The four vacancies are an improvement from a year-and-half-ago when we were first to discover of the unit’s 15 positions at the time, just three were filled.

In response to questions about ongoing employment vacancies in the office, Mark Ard, spokesperson for the Department of State, stated they are, “nearly at full capacity going into the primary election, doing great and continuing to build.”

Critics don’t agree.

“I think the office really amounted to much ado about nothing,” said Mike Gottlieb, a Broward-based attorney who represents one of the original 20 ex-felons arrested as part of DeSantis’ debut of the office.

Robert Brigham, a retired math professor at the University of Central Florida, has difficulty waiting in line to vote because he was concerned about the lack of access to a clean restroom after his treatment for colorectal cancer. But he prefers to drop off his ballot in person because he had a couple of bill payments get lost in the mail.

“I have a medical condition that literally makes me scared to be far from a bathroom,” Brigham said. “When there are more boxes available, I have more ability of where to go to drop off my ballot. I like short distances.”

Brigham was one of 1.5 million Floridians who dropped off their absentee ballots in 2020 and he would like to again this year. Florida adopted restrictions for drop boxes in 2021 to strengthen election security, even though studies found the boxes secure and trustworthy.

The new law required election staffers to monitor drop-off locations during early voting hours, which eliminated some curbside boxes and ended the possibility of stopping by after regular working hours or on most weekends.

Florida was one of 28 states that adopted 67 laws to make it harder to vote since 2020, when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen through fraud, according to a roundup by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. Trump especially targeted ways of voting other than in person, on Election Day, such as voting by mail or in drop boxes.

A “computer error” and bad data from third-party vendors led Florida to wrongfully strip Medicaid coverage from residents, including new mothers who were denied postpartum care, federal testimony revealed Monday.

Will Roberts, a government operations consultant in the unit of Florida’s Department of Children and Families that decides if people are eligible for new or continued Medicaid coverage, confirmed some widespread problems that led the state to wrongly deny insurance to eligible Floridians.

Plaintiffs relied on Roberts’ testimony, the second so far in a bench trial overseen by U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard, in their class-action challenge alleging Florida violated patients’ rights when it removed medical coverage from millions of Floridians without proper notice.

Roberts confirmed that due to a “computer system problem” in the software that Florida jointly operates with Deloitte Consulting LLP, at least some eligible women in Florida have been denied a year of continuous Medicaid coverage that they were entitled to after giving birth.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Multiple groups in Jacksonville want more early voting and election day polling locations added to District 10, a predominantly Black district.

The area lost some of its polling sites because of a lawsuit settlement last year.

Jerry Holland, Duval County Supervisor of Elections, said the lawsuit dealt with some groups arguing about equal access to voting. The argument was some districts had too many voting sites while others didn’t have enough.

“That was a whammy,” Janine Williams, a member of Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters and resident of District 10, said.

She along with other groups are fighting for the district.

Some of those other groups include: All Voting is Local, Beaches Activist Movement, Campus Vote Project, Fair Elections Center, Jacksonville Branch of the NAACP, League of Women Voters of Jacksonville, Northside Coalition of Jacksonville and State Voices Florida.

LaVon Bracy has been registering Florida voters ever since Lyndon Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because she wanted, she said, to give others the voice she was denied as a Black student in a largely white high school. In an average year, she said, the nonprofit Faith in Florida, where she serves as democracy director, used to add 12,000 new voters to the state’s rolls.

That ended last year, when Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation that imposed tough new rules on voter registration drives in the name of stopping fraud — and made voter registration groups that break the rules liable for fines as high as $250,000.

These days, Faith in Florida canvassers no longer help would-be voters fill out registration forms. Instead, they hand out slips of paper with a QR code that links to the state’s online registration website. And it’s not just small-time civic groups that are affected: The Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters has scaled back its trademark voter registration drives, too.

“These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea,” said Cecile Scoon, a lawyer and the president of the Florida league.

The Florida primaries are less than a month out, and that means deadlines are coming and going in the blink of an eye.

The deadline to register to vote and change party affiliation for the primaries passed on Monday and the deadline to submit your vote-by-mail request is rapidly approaching.

Many people who submitted requests during the 2022 midterms will need to submit new requests under a new law, making that deadline all the more important.

Here’s how to check your vote-by-mail status and how to submit a request.

How to check your vote-by-mail status in Florida

You can check your vote-by-mail status on your local Supervisor of Elections website. Not sure where that is? You can use the Florida Department of State’s website to find it.

While a major party’s presumptive nominee withdrawing his presidential candidacy is an extraordinary occurrence, rules and procedures are in place to respond to this development. 

Americans can be confident that this situation falls well within existing rules and that their election system continues to allow for a free and fair election. 

A political party has control over how to choose its nominee in accordance with the party’s own governing rules. When a presumptive nominee withdraws before their party makes its nomination official, the party will follow its own rules and procedures to choose an official nominee (typically, but not necessarily, in person at the party’s nominating convention). In this instance, the Democratic Party will determine its path forward and its delegates will vote to approve a nominee at or before the Democratic National Convention this August. Additionally, state ballot access laws are no obstacle to the party choosing a nominee other than President Biden. States have not yet printed ballots for the general election, and state laws across the country provide for the candidate chosen by the Democratic Party at or before the convention to appear on ballots this November irrespective of whether that nominee is the same individual as the party’s presumptive nominee based on the results of the party’s presidential preference primaries.

Far fewer Floridians have received mail-in ballots this election after a new state law changed how often voters need to request them.

Why it matters: That could spell bad news for Democrats, who are seeing the biggest decline in absentee ballots so far this cycle.

By the numbers: Politico reports that 46% fewer Florida voters are in line to receive a mail-in ballot compared to the 2022 midterms, according to the latest state data available.

• Just about 2.23 million voters have asked for absentee ballots for this year’s elections, compared to 4.11 million ahead of the 2022 primary, the outlet reported.

Catch up fast: Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an election law in 2021 that requires voters to request new mail-in ballots every election cycle, instead of every two.

• As a result, all of Florida’s standing mail-in ballot requests expired after the 2022 elections, instead of carrying over to this November’s presidential election.

Stunning stat: About 868,000 fewer Democrats are expected to receive mail-in ballots this year, compared to a drop of about 506,000 requests for the Republican Party, per Politico.

One core tactic in election deniers’ playbook is making false claims of voter fraud — and these are disproportionately aimed at cities with large populations of people of color. Such lies put the lives of election workers across the country at risk by spurring threats, harassment, and abuse. Election officials who serve communities of color, however, were disproportionately likely to be targeted by such attacks, according to the Brennan Center’s latest annual survey of election officials.

Following the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s campaign team filed dozens of lawsuits contesting the results. These efforts primarily focused on urban centers with larger shares of voters of color than surrounding communities. At a press conference in late November 2020, Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani cast doubt on results in the mostly Black city of Philadelphia by falsely claiming, “Unless you’re . . . stupid, you knew that a lot of people were coming over from Camden[, New Jersey,] to vote. They do every year. . . . And it’s allowed to happen because it’s a Democrat, corrupt city, and has been for years.” Such claims were echoed by outlets like Newsmax and other prominent election deniers, including Trump.

In Michigan, the campaign’s accusations of fraud centered on Detroit, where the population is nearly 80 percent Black, and not on nearby white counties where Joe Biden also won by significant margins. In Wisconsin, Trump singled out Milwaukee, which has the largest percentage of voters of color in the state. He accused the county of counting ballots slowly to perpetrate fraud, even though Wisconsin election officials are legally required to wait until Election Day to count mail-in ballots.

The allegations were outlandish, but they still shocked Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Julie Marcus when they appeared on a blog in 2022.

Clearwater resident Chris Gleason claimed that Pinellas County was “ground zero” for mail ballot fraud that stole the 2020 election from former President Donald Trump, even though Trump won Florida. To his followers online and at local political clubs, Gleason spread allegations that Marcus erased votes and attempted to hide the evidence, which Marcus said is “categorically false.”

After nearly two years of attacking the county’s handling of ballots and voting machines, Gleason qualified to challenge Marcus, a fellow Republican and 22-year elections professional, in the Aug. 20 primary. He’s one of at least nine candidates running to control county elections offices across Florida with platforms casting doubt about the integrity of those operations.

County supervisors enforce regulations that safeguard elections through testing of voting machines, auditing of results and verification of mail ballots. But the drumbeat of U.S. election fraud claims spawning from the 2020 presidential election are being injected into races to control these agencies that count votes.

A federal court officially rejected Alabama Republicans’ attempt to drastically weaken part of the Voting Rights Act. Thanks to today’s order, a crucial lawsuit fighting for fair representation in the state will continue. Due to prior court rulings, Alabama already has a new congressional map with two Black-opportunity districts for the 2024 elections. 

The order issued Thursday holds that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — which is a crucial tool in fighting racial discrimination in voting and map drawing — contains a private right of action. This means voters and organizations have the ability to bring challenges to racially discriminatory maps under Section 2. This is exceptionally important as most cases challenging state’s maps under Section 2 are brought by voters themselves. 

This win is particularly important as Republicans have been relentlessly pushing the theory that only the U.S. Department of Justice — not private citizens or nonprofit organizations — can bring claims under Section 2.  Last year, in a catastrophic 2-1 ruling, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Republicans and ended the ability for voters in those states to bring Section 2 challenges. The 8th Circuit includes Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

With concerns about election dis- and misinformation coursing through the election cycle this year, a group of Florida voting rights and social justice groups are calling on every state and county elected official to be aware of election laws and communicate that information accurately to their constituents.

More than two dozen groups — led by All Voting is Local Florida, the NAACP Florida State Conference, Common Cause Florida, and the ACLU of Florida — have written a letter to state legislators and county commissioners stressing the critical role that they play in combating bogus information.

“While dis- and misinformation about our elections have circulated for many years, the 2020 election acted as the impetus for sowing doubt regarding the safety and security of our voting systems, particularly in relation to falsehoods perpetuated around the safety and reliability of vote-by-mail ballots,” the missive begins.

“All election disinformation is dangerous; according to POLITICO, ‘disinformation alone has now become the single biggest threat to electoral integrity in many countries around the world, meaning that what election authorities have traditionally seen as their biggest obligation — organizing technically competent free and fair elections — is no longer enough.’”

With concerns about election dis- and misinformation coursing through the election cycle this year, a group of Florida voting rights and social justice groups are calling on every state and county elected official to be aware of election laws and communicate that information accurately to their constituents.

More than two dozen groups — led by All Voting is Local Florida, the NAACP Florida State Conference, Common Cause Florida, and the ACLU of Florida — have written a letter to state legislators and county commissioners stressing the critical role that they play in combating bogus information.

“While dis- and misinformation about our elections have circulated for many years, the 2020 election acted as the impetus for sowing doubt regarding the safety and security of our voting systems, particularly in relation to falsehoods perpetuated around the safety and reliability of vote-by-mail ballots,” the missive begins.

“All election disinformation is dangerous; according to POLITICO, ‘disinformation alone has now become the single biggest threat to electoral integrity in many countries around the world, meaning that what election authorities have traditionally seen as their biggest obligation — organizing technically competent free and fair elections — is no longer enough.’”

The dramatic plunge in requests for vote-by-mail ballots proves two things: Voter suppression works, and it’s up to every Floridian to protect their access to the ballot box. Local elections supervisors are doing what they can, but Florida voters must look after themselves in overcoming these new hurdles.

Tampa Bay is facing a steep drop in mail ballot requests ahead of this year’s presidential election, thanks to changes in state law under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-led Legislature. The sponsors maintained the shift would make voter rolls more secure.

Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties have far fewer mail ballot requests for this year’s general election cycle than they did in the 2022 midterms, as the Tampa Bay Times’ Nina Moske reported recently. As of last week, fewer than 42,000 Pasco voters had requested mail-in ballots for the general election, compared to more than 124,400 requests two years ago.

Hillsborough reported fewer than 155,500 vote-by-mail requests for elections this year, compared to more than 335,600 requests for the midterms. Pinellas reported about 232,900 requests this year, compared to more than 332,800 requests in 2022.

BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (AP) — The Republican National Committee on Friday launched a swing state initiative to mobilize thousands of polling place monitors, poll workers and attorneys to serve as “election integrity” watchdogs in November — an effort that immediately drew concerns that it could lead to harassment of election workers and undermine trust in the vote.

The RNC says its plan will help voters have faith in the electoral process and ensure their votes matter. Yet, as former President Donald Trump and his allies continue to spread false claims that the 2020 election was marred by widespread fraud, the effort also sets the stage for a repeat of Trump’s efforts to undermine the results — a gambit that ultimately led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attackon the U.S. Capitol.

Trump allies already have signaled that they might not accept the results if he loses to President Joe Biden.

The RNC has said its new effort will focus on stopping “Democrat attempts to circumvent the rules.” The party will deploy monitors to observe every step of the election process, create hotlines for poll watchers to report perceived problems and escalate those issues by taking legal action.

The national party says it hopes to recruit 100,000 volunteers — a number some election experts have said would be difficult to achieve even in a high-profile presidential election year.

Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd and Attorney General Ashley Moody this week appealed a federal judge’s decision blocking part of a 2023 Florida elections law that placed new restrictions on voter-registration groups.

As is common, a notice of appeal filed Monday did not detail arguments that lawyers for Byrd and Moody will make at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

But they are challenging a final judgment issued May 15 by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker involving part of the law that would prevent non-U.S. citizens from “collecting or handling” voter-registration applications. In issuing a permanent injunction, Walker said that part of the law violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.

The groups Hispanic Federation and Poder Latinx and individual plaintiffs filed the challenge in May 2023 after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican–controlled Legislature approved the restrictions.

DENVER — President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign on Thursday called on top Republicans to drop litigation seeking to curtail aspects of mail balloting now that Donald Trump has begun to embrace the method.

Trump for years falsely claimed voting by mail was riddled with fraud, but his 2024 campaign began a program this month to encourage mail voting if convenient for people. It is part of Republicans’ attempt to increase mail voting among their supporters.

At the same time, the Republican National Committee, newly under the former president’s control, has sued or joined lawsuits seeking to limit certain aspects of mail voting. That includes laws in some states, including Nevada, that allow late-arriving mailed ballots to be counted as long as they are sent by Election Day.

“If Donald Trump is serious about finally recognizing that mail voting is a great option for voters to utilize this November, he should demand the RNC and his MAGA allies drop every one of these lawsuits throughout the country,” Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.