On a day that began with a major ruling against Republican voting laws in North Carolina, a federal judge in Wisconsin issued a sweeping ruling that declared a number of Republican-authored election laws in that state unconstitutional.



There was also a ruling against Republican voting laws in Kansas, where a county judge ruled that the state must count potentially thousands of votes in state and local races from people who have registered without providing citizenship documents.

Two Wisconsin liberal groups filed a lawsuit in May challenging laws including a requirement that voters show photo identification. US district judge James Peterson issued a ruling on Friday that upheld the voter ID law but struck down a number of Republican-written statutes and policies that restricted voting.

Peterson ordered the state to quickly issue credentials valid for voting to anyone trying to obtain a free photo ID for voting.



He also struck down a restriction limiting municipalities to one location for in-person absentee voting, time limits on in-person absentee voting, an increase in residency requirements from 10 to 28 days, and a prohibition on using expired but otherwise qualifying student IDs to vote.

In Kansas, the order from Shawnee County district judge Larry Hendricks came only four days before Tuesday’s primary election. Hendricks blocked an administrative rule from state secretary of state Kris Kobach.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of three prospective voters earlier this month, a week after a state board allowed Kobach to impose the rule temporarily – through the November election – without a public hearing. It applies to people who register to vote at state motor vehicle offices without providing proof of their US citizenship as required by a 2013 state law.

The affected voters were to receive provisional ballots to be reviewed later, and county election officials were directed to count only their votes for federal offices, not state and local ones. Ahead of the primary, about 17,600 people registered at motor vehicle offices without providing citizenship papers, and the rule could apply to 50,000 people in November.

Kobach’s action was a response to a federal judge’s ruling in May in another lawsuit that people who register at motor vehicle offices are entitled to vote in federal races even if they have not met the proof-of-citizenship requirement.

Kobach said he would not appeal Friday’s ruling because it was too late before the primary election. But he criticized the judge’s decision.

“It essentially knocks a huge loophole in that law,” he said, of its impact on the citizenship requirement.

In North Carolina, a federal appeals court struck down voting laws it said were enacted with “discriminatory intent” and targeted African Americans “with almost surgical precision”.

Republican officials in the state government said the decision “by three partisan Democrats ignores legal precedent, ignores the fact that other federal courts have used North Carolina’s law as a model and ignores the fact that a majority of other states have similar protections in place”.

They added: “We can only wonder if the intent is to reopen the door for voter fraud, potentially allowing fellow Democrat politicians like Hillary Clinton … to steal the election.”