Redistricting

● Idaho: Idaho Republicans have introduced a new bill that aims to preserve and even expand their power by effectively destroying the state's existing bipartisan redistricting commission, where the Democratic and Republican legislative leaders and party chairs currently get to appoint an equal number of commissioners from both parties. The GOP's bill would add a tiebreaking member chosen by the state's legislative council, which would in turn mean a party controlling both legislative chambers would choose a majority of redistricting commissioners, who could then implement maps with only a simple majority of members.

This measure would essentially give control over redistricting back to the legislature, letting Republicans gerrymander Idaho's congressional and legislative districts in the future. Republicans already hold over 80 percent of the seats in both legislative chambers, while both of Idaho's two congressional districts are already safely GOP, so this power grab may appear completely unnecessary. But if Idaho's population growth causes it to gain a third congressional seat in the future, that new 3rd District could be winnable for Democrats if it's located in the swingy Boise area, which is currently divided between the 1st and 2nd districts.

Consequently, Republicans may simply be playing the long game when it comes to gerrymandering. Unfortunately, the GOP easily has enough legislators to refer this bill to the voters as a constitutional amendment ballot measure. If it makes the ballot, hopefully voters will see through this charade and preserve a commission that has produced relatively fair maps compared to whatever GOP legislators would draw if left to their own devices.

● North Carolina: In what appears to be a first-ever occurence in state history, Democrats have filed to run in every North Carolina state legislative district in 2018, while Republicans filed for all but a single state House seat. Legislative candidate filings would normally be beyond the purview of the Voting Rights Roundup, but this milestone matters for voting rights for two major reasons. First, every single voter in a democracy should get to at least have the opportunity to choose between the major parties. As recently as 2016, 43 percent of North Carolina legislative districts only had one major party on the ballot, which deprives voters of even a nominal choice, let alone a competitive race.

The second reason is critical in the fight against gerrymandering: Fielding candidates in almost every seat means we will get a far more accurate read on the statewide popular vote this year. Even if Democrats win more votes statewide than Republican candidates, the GOP will almost certainly retain their majorities this fall, largely thanks to gerrymandering. Democrats can then publicly call out that gross disparity and use it as evidence in court to launch lawsuits arguing that partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution. Indeed, this very thing happened in Wisconsin in 2012, and the U.S. Supreme Court will soon rule on whether the GOP's partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional.

The potential for North Carolina Democrats to argue that gerrymandering produces outcomes at odds with the popular vote in 2018 stands in sharp contrast to 2012. That year, Democratic congressional candidates won more votes than Republicans did when both parties ran candidates in every district, but uncontested seats skewed the legislative popular vote toward Republicans because Democrats simply contested fewer districts than the GOP did. Using statistical models to correct for this skew, Democrats may have just narrowly won more legislative votes than Republicans in 2012 if both parties at least had a token name on the ballot in every contest.

Because of the skew from uncontested seats, Republicans have tried to downplay the harms of gerrymandering by saying their candidates won more votes. The 2018 elections could subsequently pull back the curtain to reveal just how unfair these maps are and demonstrate how important for democracy it is for both parties to field candidates everywhere.

● Ohio: Ohio legislators, with support from both parties and major reform groups, recently placed a redistricting reform measure on the May 8 primary ballot. However, we have criticized this proposal for being a GOP scheme to undercut any momentum for more comprehensive reform. In a recent blog post, Daily Kos Elections community member Tallahasset demonstrated why we're so skeptical of this bipartisan deal by looking at what sort of map Republicans could have passed if this new system had been in place this past decade.

This new bipartisan redistricting proposal would still let the legislature’s majority party pass a map without any support from the minority party, although it would only remain in effect for four years instead of 10. However, doing so brings certain restrictions on how many counties and cities can be divided. But as Tallahasset shows, Republicans could have adhered to these restrictions while still drawing a gerrymander that would have left Ohio with just five winnable districts for Democrats out of 16 seats—in other words, that's barely different than the four seats Democrats won under the actual map from 2012 through 2016. We have previously shown how a truly nonpartisan map could have seen Democrats win six to nine total districts over the last three election cycles, which is a far more equitable distribution of seats.

If the majority party does pass a map without any support from the minority party, this reform proposal supposedly prevents such a map from unduly favoring or disfavoring a political party or incumbents. However, this language is inadequate protection when the legislature still controls the process. Indeed, after Florida voters amended their state constitution in 2010 to ban legislators from gerrymandering based on party or incumbency, GOP legislators drew gerrymanders anyway. Those Florida maps only got struck down in 2015 because the liberal-aligned bloc held a majority on Florida's Supreme Court, but that still meant Republicans got away with gerrymandering for four years.

If Ohio Republicans pass another congressional gerrymander after the 2020 census, we could be looking at protracted litigation that lets them get away with an illegal map for one or more election cycles. And with Republicans holding a lopsided majority on Ohio's Supreme Court, there's a strong chance that the court would simply uphold whatever Republicans pass so long as it nominally complies with the new rules on county and city divisions. Time and again, legislators will continue to gerrymander within whatever system of restrictions gets imposed upon them, which is why this reform deal is deeply flawed compared to a truly independent redistricting commission free from the influence of self-interested legislators.

● Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Republicans are appealing to a federal court in a desperate bid to overturn a recent state Supreme Court decision that threw out their congressional gerrymander and replaced it with a fair map, but the GOP's chances for success do not look good. A federal district court panel declined to issue a temporary restraining order against the new map, and they instead scheduled a March 9 hearing over whether to issue an injunction to block the new districts. Meanwhile, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has taken up the GOP's request for a stay of the state court's new map, and he gave the plaintiffs until March 5 to respond before he either denies the request or sends it to the full court.

Although this saga hasn't yet concluded, these judges declining to temporarily block the map still bodes very badly for Republicans. That's because candidate filing will already be underway by the time either Alito or the district court makes a decision. If Alito or the district court judges were inclined to block the new map, doing so before candidates begin gathering petitions to get on the ballot would have been far less disruptive to the election process than halting a new map in the middle of the filing period. Furthermore, Alito previously rejected the GOP's stay request when the state court made its initial ruling before the maps were drawn. Ultimately, all signs point to the GOP failing in their last-ditch effort to preserve their gerrymander.

● San Juan County, Utah: Last December, a federal district court struck down district maps for the county commission and school board in San Juan County, Utah, because they discriminated against Navajo voters, but county officials are now appealing to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. This small and predominantly Navajo county had previous district lines that all but guaranteed that white candidates would win the most seats, but the district court redrew the lines and ordered special elections take place this fall where Navajo-backed candidates could win majorities for the first time.

● Washington: Both chambers of Washington's Democratic-run state legislature have now passed the new state Voting Rights Act, sending it to Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who has said he will sign it. This act would enable local governments to switch from holding at-large elections to using districts. That change will make it easier for people of color to to elect their preferred candidates in places where the white majority consistently votes against them.

Election Security

● Election Assistance Commission: In a blow to efforts to promote election security, House Speaker Paul Ryan revealed in late February that he won't reappoint Election Assistance Commission chair Matthew Masterson to another term as one of the two Republicans on the four-member commission. The EAC is the only federal agency tasked with helping states protect their elections from hacking, and Masterson was widely respected by election administrators from both parties for taking steps to address Russia's efforts to hack into election administration systems across the country in 2016.

Republicans had previously tried to eliminate the EAC outright when they approved a bill to do so in a House committee last year. Consequently, it's likely that Ryan and the GOP will appoint a Republican replacement for Masterson who is more of a partisan hardliner like fellow GOP commissioner Christy McCormick, who served on Trump's defunct voter suppression commission in 2017. With such an appointment, the GOP could seriously undermine any efforts by the EAC to proactively address the security risk of hacking by hostile state actors like Russia in upcoming elections.

● Georgia: Georgia's Republican-dominated state Senate has given its nearly unanimous approval to a bill that would replace the Peach State's paperless electronic voting machines with an optical scanning system, producing a paper trail that officials can check against electronic result counts. Election reform advocates sued the state in 2017 to replace its outdated electronic-only equipment and adopt a more secure system after a bombshell report found that election administrators erased a critical data server at the center of a lawsuit over a breach that exposed sensitive voter records. While there's no evidence of any tampering with votes, moving to a system with a paper trail will provide greater security and enable audits of results.

Felony Disenfranchisement

● New Jersey: New Jersey Democrats have introduced a bill that would end felony disenfranchisement entirely, including even those who are currently in prison by letting them vote by mail in elections where they lived prior to becoming incarcerated. New Jersey disenfranchises roughly 1 percent of adults, so this reform is unlikely to have much of an impact on election outcomes. But when black voters are disenfranchised at seven times the rate of the rest of the population in New Jersey, ending felony disenfranchisement would strike an important symbolic blow against institutionalized racism.

Indeed, racism has always been the underlying motivation for felony disenfranchisement laws. Maine and Vermont are the only two states that currently let even inmates vote, and they also happen to be the two whitest states in the country. But both states can serve as an example that others will hopefully emulate, and there is even some evidence that maintaining the franchise while incarcerated can help reduce recidivism by keeping inmates connected with civic life.

Voter Registration and Voting Access

● California: Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a groundbreaking new law that will automatically pre-register all eligible 16- and 17-year-olds when they obtain a driver's license or state ID card, which would add them to voter registration rolls as soon as they turn 18. California lawmakers previously passed automatic registration for those who are already of voting age when they do business with the Department of Motor Vehicles, but this latest law is the first in the nation to apply automatic pre-registration to those aged 16 and 17. An estimated 200,000 teenagers could be pre-registered every year, and lowering these registration barriers could boost youth turnout by making voting easier.

● Hawaii: Hawaii legislators have once again introduced a bill that would switch the state to an entirely vote-by-mail system by 2020, something Colorado, Oregon, and Washington have already done as a way to save money, make voting easier, and increase turnout. This bill has already passed a state House committee, and Democrats are so dominant in the legislature that any GOP opposition would be irrelevant. But this bill's chances remain uncertain, since similar proposals came very close to passing in each of the last three legislative sessions only to fail when the House and Senate couldn't agree to reconcile their different versions in conference committee.

● Washington: Washington's Democratic-run state state legislature has now passed two more bills as part of its pro-democracy reform package, sending them to Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, who supports these measures. The first bill implements same-day voter registration starting in 2019, allowing voters to register and cast a ballot on the same day, including Election Day itself. The second bill would let 16- and 17-year olds pre-register in high school or when they get a driver's license or state ID, meaning they would get added to the voter rolls as soon as they turn 18. Both measures would make it easier to vote, and states with same-day registration have seen higher average voter turnout than those that don't.

Election Administration

● Wisconsin: Michael Haas, who is serving as Wisconsin's interim chief election administrator, has announced he will step down and won't try to fight the GOP's effort to oust him so they can install someone more partisan. Republicans recently used their state Senate majority to remove Haas by denying him confirmation, even though he had bipartisan support from the state's elections commission. Wisconsin Republicans have long tried to inject partisanship into election administration, and back in 2015 they dismantled the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board, which had been investigating GOP Gov. Scott Walker's administration.

Republicans subsequently created a new elections commission made up of three Democrats and three Republicans. That commission unanimously named assistant administrator Megan Wolfe to fill Haas' role as an interim elections chief on Friday. However, state Senate Republicans could just vote again to deny confirmation to Wolfe or another replacement if they aren't partisan enough for the GOP, creating a chilling effect on nonpartisan election administration.

Ballot Measures

● South Dakota: South Dakota's state Senate has killed a bill approved by the House that would have restricted on the amount of money ballot measure campaigns could raise from out-of-state donors, something that almost certainly would have been unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's interpretation of campaign finance laws and the First Amendment. However, a Senate committee did send a House-approved bill to the floor that would require personal contact information from signature-gatherers as part of an effort to deter residents of other states from circulating ballot petitions in South Dakota. Republicans have been looking to restrict the ballot initiative process after they repealed a voter-approved ethics reform law in 2017.

Elections

● Wisconsin: After Democrats won a huge upset in a special election for a decidedly conservative state Senate seat in January, Republican Gov. Scott Walker has decided the best way for the GOP to avoid election losses is to simply not hold elections. Now, the National Democratic Redistricting Committee has sued Walker for refusing to call special elections to a vacant state Senate seat and state Assembly district, which would leave voters there without representation for nearly a year. It's unclear what this lawsuit's chance of success is, but conservatives allied with Walker control Wisconsin's Supreme Court.