polling places

If You’re Gonna Vote in Texas (You Gotta Have a Legally-Qualifying Building?)

Election Law Society · November 1, 2021 ·

It starts with tents in Houston and turns into a legal melee with forty-eight interested parties in federal court. The November 2020 elections were particularly newsworthy, featuring a contentious presidential race happening many months into an ongoing pandemic. So how do tents and Black’s Law Dictionary come into it?

Harris County, whose county seat is Houston, Texas, responded to public concerns about voting during COVID by expanding “curbside voting” during early voting with drive-through, multi-car tents (as seen here). Curbside voting has long been allowed through Texas Election Code Chapter 64 (Voting Procedures), § 64.009 – Voter Unable to Enter Polling Place. Inability was broadly defined in the Code as “physically unable to enter the polling place without personal assistance or likelihood of injuring the voter’s health,” the latter provision utilized to justify the drive-through voting. However, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released guidance pushing back on this, stating “[f]ear of COVID-19 does not render a voter physically unable to cast a ballot inside a polling place without assistance,” while still recognizing election officials should not question a voter’s qualifications for being “physically unable” to enter the building.

Learning from Lawsuits: How Kentucky’s top officials adapted to satisfy voter complaints

Election Law Society · October 16, 2020 ·

By Cameron Newton

When the dust settled following the contentious 2019 elections in Kentucky, each of the commonwealth’s major executive offices—save for the governorship—was won by the Republican candidate. While the election of Andy Beshear brought control of the Governor’s Mansion back into Democratic hands, perhaps the night’s most shocking result came as Michael Adams, an election lawyer with a history in Republican politics, upset former Miss America Heather French Henry in the race for Secretary of State. No thinking observer would have anticipated emerging election policy to be anything but crafted and contested along rigid ideological boundaries.

A Perfect Storm: Texas’s Polling Place Closures and COVID-19

Election Law Society · October 5, 2020 ·

By Caitlin Turner-Lafving

On September 7, Judge Jason Pulliam dismissed Mi Familia Vota v. Abbott after determining that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question. The plaintiffs’ complaint argued that Texas’s election laws impose an undue burden on the right to vote in violation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as applied to elections held during the COVID-19 pandemic: “Because Defendants have closed hundreds of polling places over the last eight years, voters will have to travel further to vote in person and vote in locations that service a higher number of voters, burdening the exercise of the franchise and the risk of person-to-person transmission of the virus.” Part of the relief sought was that the court order Governor Greg Abbott and Secretary of State Ruth Hughs to open additional polling places for the November election. [Read more…] about A Perfect Storm: Texas’s Polling Place Closures and COVID-19

Are long lines to vote in Georgia unconstitutional? We may soon find out

Election Law Society · September 30, 2020 ·

By Alex Lipow

In recent years, Georgia has become a posterchild for election controversies and administrative snafus. Election disputes have ranged from claims of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering to allegations of a conflict of interest in administering the 2018 gubernatorial election. With these issues in the background, a federal court is wrestling with a more fundamental question: do long voting lines in Georgia—which were the longest in the country in 2018 and 29 percent longer in black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods—violate the U.S. Constitution?

On August 6, 2020, three Georgia voters, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Party of Georgia (the “Plaintiffs”) filed suit against Georgia’s secretary of state, members of nine county boards of election from counties with some of the longest lines in the most recent election, and members of Georgia’s State Election Board (the “Defendants”). In their complaint, the Plaintiffs contend that the long voting lines, which have become longer and longer in each of the most recent elections, stem from the Defendants’ “persistent closure and consolidation of polling locations and failure to provide adequate election equipment, elections officials and volunteers with sufficient training, available technicians to address technical problems that arise, sufficient time to set up polling locations, and emergency paper ballots for backup when equipment breaks down or malfunctions.”

The Night the Votes Went Out in Georgia

Election Law Society · September 28, 2020 ·

By: Fiona Carroll

Legal action is pending following Georgia’s problematic June 9 primary that was characterized by long lines at polls, broken voting machines, failure to process mail-in ballots, and fears over possible voter suppression. With November’s general election rapidly approaching, several state entities and voters’ rights groups are scrambling to ensure a fairer process this time around.