The Brennan Center summarizes Shelby v. Holder as follows:

In April 2010, Shelby County, Alabama filed suit asking a federal court in Washington, DC to declare Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Section 5 is a key part of the Voting Rights Act, requiring certain jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to submit any proposed changes in voting procedures to the U.S. Department of Justice or a federal district court in D.C. – before it goes into effect – to ensure the change would not harm minority voters. In September 2011, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and in May 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed with the district court that Section 5 was constitutional. Shelby County appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court agreed to take the case in November 2012. On June 25, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the coverage formula in Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act — which determines which jurisdictions are covered by Section 5 — is unconstitutional because it is based on an old formula. As a practical matter this means that Section 5 is inoperable until Congress enacts a new coverage formula, which the decision invited Congress to do.

In the ensuing five years, the Republican-controlled House and Senate never held a single hearing to ever consider restoring Section 4. But there’s quite a bit more that needs correction beyond just the pre-clearance feature of that section.

This week, MSNBC’s Chris Hayes spent time specifically talking about election issues.

As noted by the guests on Hayes’ show, during Jeff Sessions’ shortened tenure as attorney general, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division didn’t file a single voting rights case—not one.

Since Donald Trump took office, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has not filed a single lawsuit enforcing a crucial law intended to prevent racial voter discrimination. By contrast, according to a Justice Department website disclosing the Civil Rights Division’s case filings, the Obama administration filed 5 lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the primary provision permitting lawsuits alleging voter discrimination on the basis of race. The second Bush administration filed 15, and the Clinton administration filed 16. Indeed, according to the Justice Department, DOJ only filed four suits of any kind enforcing a voting rights statute. None of those four suits filed by the Trump administration were brought on behalf of voters of color denied the right to vote. In fact, one of these suits was actually a voter purge suit that resulted in an outcome that actually made it harder for people to vote — as a result of this suit, Kentucky agreed to “develop a general program of statewide voter list maintenance that makes a reasonable effort to remove registrants who have become ineligible due to a change in residence.”

In her first press conference following the results of the midterm, soon-to-be returning Speaker Nancy Pelosi specifically pointed out how amazing the Democratic victories were, despite the fact they had to “jump over gerrymandered lines all over the country.”

This hurdle is large enough that even the Washington Post has noted it:

After the 2010 Census, Republicans controlled enough state legislatures to draw new electoral lines in four times as many districts as Democrats did. And Democrats have been locked out of power in some swing states ever since. A new report finds they might not make it back to power without lines that favor them, and Democrats don't have a reasonable chance to control the line-drawing process until after the 2020 Census. A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice calculates that Democrats are going to have to win the popular vote by a historically large margin — an estimated 11 percent — to overcome Republican-drawn districts that were designed to keep them out. Winning by such a large margin is something no party has done in decades. From the report, which published last week: To attain a bare majority, Democrats would probably have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have won by such an overwhelming margin in decades. Even a strong blue wave would crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps.

In order to just break even, Democrats have to start out 11 points ahead. Even though the individual states may control the drawing of the district lines, it really shouldn’t matter which party is in control of the governor’s mansion and legislatures in those states. House committees should bring forth testimony in an open hearing about the current state of national redistricting and use that to write legislation that requires the drawing fair and reasonable districts, preferably using an external independent commission, or else face a challenge under the Voting Rights Act.

But first, you have to actually get to the polls without being harassed and intimidated, as voter intimidation this year was the worst it’s been in decades.

“I’ve been here for 30 years, and this harassment that’s going on, I haven’t ever seen the likes of this,” said Toni Pippins-Poole, the county’s election director. “I’ve seen some other things, props being used and whatnot, but nothing like this type of mentality or aggressiveness or demeaning type of actions.” At the Lakeside Activity Center in Mesquite, Texas, election administrators received complaints of a partisan poll watcher looking over voter’s shoulders as they cast their ballots and questioning voters on their politics. The person was later escorted out by Mesquite Police Department officers on Monday after refusing to leave the premises, according to Pippins-Poole. Texas law requires that any form of electioneering — including passing out political literature or advocating for or against candidates or issues — can only occur more than 100 feet outside a polling location. Within that distance, poll workers can kick people out for causing a disturbance. When the nuisance is farther away, Pippins-Poole instructs her poll workers to call law enforcement.

There was an incident in Virginia where a Trump supporter decided to park his truck near a polling place with his large, barking German Shepard on top of it.

“What the heck is happening in Virginia Beach??” Norfolk, Virginia City Councilwoman Andria McClellan asked in a Facebook post, with the photo attached (below). “There’s a German Shepherd standing on top of a pick up angrily barking at voters as they approach the ARE voting precinct (sporting a Taylor button and Trump banner). This speaks volumes. If this isn’t voter intimidation, I don’t know what is,” she adds. x The Virginia Beach Republican Party doesn’t have a problem with what several are calling voter intimidation

Also in this past election, various efforts to suppress the vote, particularly of minorities and Democrats, were widespread and vicious. In Georgia, the suppression efforts implemented by Brian Kemp in his gubernatorial race against Democrat Stacey Abrams were easily larger than the margin of difference between them in the first count of the election.

On Tuesday, ThinkProgress watched voters in Gwinnett County endure four-and-a-half hour lines at polling places due to broken voting machines. x One African American voter told @joshua_eaton she arrived here at 7 am and didnÃ¢ÂÂt vote until almost noon. Her husband left the line because he had to go to work Ã¢ÂÂ Kira Lerner (@kira_lerner) November 6, 2018 The majority-minority county strongly favored Democratic candidates on Tuesday, but not even a court-ordered extension of voting hours could make up for the reality that many of the citizens who tried to cast their votes during the morning did not have time to wait or return. Similar issues were reported in Fulton County as well. [...] Elsewhere, large numbers of black voters at Georgia State University told ThinkProgress they were forced to cast provisional ballots — which may or may not be counted — with little or no explanation as to why they were not allowed to vote normally or how to have their votes counted.

Long lines were created in Georgia because Kemp had locked up many of the voting machines because apparently, they were vulnerable to being hacked.

Metro Atlanta voters stood in long lines Tuesday, amid a surge in turnout that made the midterm election resemble a presidential contest. As they waited — some for hours — hundreds of voting machines sat unused, locked up in government warehouses, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned. The machines were sequestered by local officials because of an ongoing federal lawsuit that argues Georgia’s electronic voting machines could be hacked or tampered with. With fewer machines in precincts, voters faced heavy delays, often more than an hour, before they got to the front of the line. The issue affected voters in Cobb, DeKalb and Fulton counties, the three jurisdictions covered by the court case. Election officials said Wednesday that the lack of voting machines — combined with high turnout and wordy constitutional amendments — created some of the longest lines in years. They said that by the time they realized turnout would significantly exceed the last midterm election, there wasn’t time to find additional machines.

This is highly ironic since just two years ago it was Brian Kemp who rejected aid offered by Homeland Security to help protect their systems from hacking because he claimed it was a “Federal Power Grab” and even this year they still refused help.

Despite increasing scrutiny of Georgia’s voting technology ahead of the 2018 midterms, the state will not join more than a dozen others asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for special help protecting its election system from hacks, the Secretary of State’s office confirmed this week. Russia views the upcoming midterms as a potential target for interference, top U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Tuesday. [...] Since 2015, the Secretary of State’s office or its contractors have left exposed sensitive data, including personal information of Georgians, passwords for poll workers and programming details for voting machines. Broce reiterated this week that Georgia was not one of the 21 states Russian hackers targeted in 2016 and that there’s no evidence the election system has been maliciously hacked. Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp, a Republican candidate for governor, has had a complicated relationship with DHS. Kemp was one of at least 11 state elections officials who rejected an offer from DHS to scan their states’ voting systems ahead of the 2016 election.

Why let the Feds help you protect your systems from hacks when you simply leave the problem unresolved and stick the machines in a closet while voters wait in line for hours, after you’ve purged over a million names from the rolls? Kemp had previously accused Homeland Security of trying hack Georgia’s election system, and also Democrats although there is no evidence to support this, and also he’s done pretty much nothing to prevent outside actors such as Russia or China from doing the same thing and the situation with the excessive use of voter ID was so oppressive that even Kemp himself couldn’t use his ID to vote.

Ironically, even Kemp himself had trouble casting his ballot. Even more concerning than day-of chaos and confusion were the systematic attempts by Kemp to reject eligible voters through suppression tactics. While presiding over the election he ran in, he was caught admitting to his supporters that if all Georgians voted, he would lose. To ensure that would not happen, he oversaw the purging of more than one million “inactive” voters from the voting rolls and attempted to implement an illegal scheme to reject tens of thousands of absentee ballot requests that he said did not have an “exact” signature match.

Without pre-clearance, these suppression efforts were allowed to go forward, even though Democrats sued to take control of his own election away from Kemp.

As a lawsuit filed Tuesday lays out, Kemp spuriously accused Democrats of trying to hack the state’s voter registration system. He aggressively purged registered voters. And he “held up 53,000 voter registrations — a whopping 70 percent of them from black applicants.” Some of these actions were blocked by federal courts. The lawsuit, entitled Brown v. Kemp, seeks “a narrow temporary restraining order (TRO) transferring [Kemp’s] duties to another official to be selected by the governor.” It roots this argument in the longstanding principle that “no man can be a judge in his own case.”

At one point in time, Trump himself was actually concerned about “vote flipping” when he thought it was happening in Texas to help his 2016 opponent Democrat Hillary Clinton.

x A lot of call-ins about vote flipping at the voting booths in Texas. People are not happy. BIG lines. What is going on? Ã¢ÂÂ Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2016

But in that case, it wasn’t true.

The Republican nominee and real estate mogul was likely referring to debunked reports that voting machines in Texas are changing votes for president on straight-ticket ballots from Trump to Hillary Clinton. Those reports — which originated in Tarrant County, according to Snopes — have since been debunked. Election officials have said repeatedly that any “vote flipping” is caused not by broken machines, but user error. “Reports are not flooding in from across Texas about vote switching, and most anecdotes are identical with localities changed,” Snopes, a website that fact checks Internet and urban rumors, wrote in a post on Wednesday

But this year, it is true.

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — Voters are reporting odd problems on both the Republican and Democratic side of straight-party voting in Texas.

Mickey Blake was one of the voters in those early voting lines in Houston earlier this week.

"I hit straight Democratic ticket," Blake said.

She says she expected all Democrats to come up on her screen, especially Rep. Beto O'Rourke, but when she got to the last screen to review her choices, she noticed a problem.

"It's all Democratic except for Ted Cruz was checked," Blake said.

So she backed up and did it again. And again.

"I tried it a third time and the same thing happened," she said.

The same thing happened to Cordell Hosea in Fort Bend County. "When I got to the end, I just so happened that I glanced at the screen, I saw Ted Cruz was selected as my senator," Hosea said. He too voted straight ticket Democrat.

But it's not just a Democrat problem. Voters who select straight-party Republican unselect Sen. Cruz and wind up voting for no one. Either way, officials say it's a rare issue that happens, but not to everyone.

And there were many more voting machine problems, as some machines in Georgia couldn’t be used because of missing power cords, forcing hundreds of black Georgia voters to wait. And Georgia was far from alone, as voting machines in South Carolina were truly caught flipping votes.

According to WLTX, upwards of 30 technicians are working to fix the machines, after voters noticed that their votes were swapped out for the opposing party. Other malfunctions, with cords and non-functioning outlets, also made voting difficult.

Voters were turned away in Detroit because voting machines were “locked in a closet.” New York and New Jersey voters were told to “come back in an hour” due to broken scanners and late-opening precincts. Frustrated voters walked out in Brooklyn after all but one voting machine broke down. The New York City Board of Elections director blamed ”wet ballots” and “high turnout” for voting issues—and not the city’s voter purge.

All told, there were ridiculous issues with voting machines in more than a dozen states.

Broken voting machines were reported in at least 12 states by noon (1700 GMT) on Tuesday, according to an “election protection” coalition of more than 100 groups that set up a national hotline for reporting irregularities. [...] “We’re fully prepared to mount emergency litigation to push back against some of the systemic problems that sometimes rear their heads in our elections,” said Kristen Clarke, head of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which leads the election protection coalition. [...] Civil rights groups have already been locked in litigation with several states over voting restrictions that were passed in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election. North Dakota introduced a voter ID requirement that Native Americans say discriminates against them; Kansas and Georgia moved polling locations, and changes in Tennessee registration laws led to people being removed from the voting lists. Advocacy groups said the changes stack the deck against minority voters who are likely to support Democratic candidates.

In the case of North Dakota, changing ID requirements to include a street address disenfranchised Native American voters who were crucial to Heidi Heitkamp joining the Senate six years ago, and likely destroyed her chances of staying there this year.

And then there were some out-and-out stunts pulled to block and frighten some voters away from the polls. In Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rouke’s home district, Border Patrol agents planned to conduct a ”crowd control exercise” near a heavily Latino neighborhood’s polling station in El Paso, Texas.

The U.S. Border Patrol is preparing for the migrant caravan – still weeks and hundreds of miles away – by conducting a “crowd control exercise” on Election Day in a Hispanic neighborhood a half-mile away from their polling station. x Border Patrol is doing a Ã¢ÂÂcrowd control exerciseÃ¢ÂÂ in an El Paso Latino neighborhood on Election Day. Nothing to see here, IÃ¢ÂÂm sure. pic.twitter.com/cmUgTJvA4z Ã¢ÂÂ Bob Moore (@BobMooreNews) November 6, 2018 That Hispanic neighborhood is in El Paso, which coincidentally happens to be the hometown of Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the popular Democratic candidate challenging U.S. Senator Ted Cruz. In Kansas, Secretary of State Kris Kobach approved moving the single polling place for the majority Latino town of Dodge City literally outside the city limits, to a location that was not accessible by sidewalk, not accessible to disabled citizens, and was located more than a mile away from the nearest bus stop.

forwarded the email to Kobach and added one comment of her own: “LOL”. There is only one polling place in the entire town, just one. And when the ACLU wrote the county clerk [Debbie Cox] asking her to open other polling places which would actually be inside the town and asked for her help publicizing a helpline for voters to help cut down on confusion she

In Kobach’s case, this blatant suppression attempt wasn’t enough for him to prevail in his race to become governor.

Then you have other cases, such as GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York, who sent out wrong information to voters (as outlined below by Rachel Maddow). Maddow detailed how other GOP secretaries of state have been sending out wrong dates for absentee ballots (specifically on the Spanish language version in 2016). Rep. Zeldin did it again in 2018 by having the correct date for Republicans but the wrong date on the mailer for Democrats. That’s not to mention other outright misdirection, as well as direct threats against voters intended to scare them away from the polls.

These types of problems are likely to persist, particularly with voting machines and particularly in GOP-controlled states, because there is no federal standard for the quality of the software used in voting machines