Welcome to Bad News Weekly, your rundown of key attacks on voting rights and independent elections across the country – it’s a way to keep up with what the opponents of democracy are up to. We’ll highlight some of the worst anti-voter efforts, with a spotlight on the South, the original frontline in the fight for voting rights, and still its fiercest.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The real threat to our democracy is just the opposite: too many people don’t register to vote and don’t show up at the polls.” — North Carolina’s Missing Voters, a new report from the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, on false allegations of voter fraud being used to impose restrictions on voting.
NOTABLE TRENDS
At Least 27 Restrictive Voting Laws Have Been Enacted So Far in 2025:
According to data from the Voting Rights Lab (VRL), 27 restrictive voting bills have become law so far in 2025. Democracy Docket gave UT the “top dishonorable spot” after the passage of the omnibus anti-voting bill HB 300, which ended universal mail voting, created a new photo ID requirement for mail ballots, and eliminated the grace period for mail ballots by requiring ballots to arrive by 8pm on Election Day to be counted. “This is the only state we’ve seen repeal a mail voting law like this. It’s the most significant change around mail voting that we’ve seen since 2020,” said Liz Avore, senior policy adviser at VRL.
U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Continued to Attack States After Anti-Voting Shift:
In Alabama, the DOJ announced that it had filed a Statement of Interest in the state’s redistricting case, stating that it opposed efforts to require AL to submit future redistricting plans for preclearance under the Voting Rights Act. In the filing, Deputy Assistant AG Michael E. Gates of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division called the preclearance requirement “a drastic departure from basic principles of federalism.” In California, the DOJ sued Orange County Registrar of Voters Robert Page for allegedly refusing to provide full, unredacted records related to the removal of noncitizens from the county’s voter rolls after the U.S. Attorney General requested the records from January 2020 earlier this month. The lawsuit claimed that by redacting certain personal information from the records, Orange County “undermined” voters’ confidence in the elections process by “refusing transparency of its voter information, in violation of federal voting laws, and concealing the unlawful registration of ineligible, non-citizen voters.”
STATE ACTIVITY
New Hampshire • Legislature Considered Bills That Would Restrict Vote by Mail Process:
The NH legislature moved forward with bills to restrict the vote by mail process. A conference committee approved the NH House’s version of SB 287, which would require voters who wish to vote absentee to go in person to town offices or to mail a notarized application, and SB 218, which would require voters who wish to vote absentee to provide documentary proof of citizenship when mailing an absentee ballot with a witness’s signature.
North Carolina • 200,000 Voters Asked for Missing Registration Info:
The North Carolina State Board of Elections voted unanimously on June 24 to send mailers to roughly 200,000 voters whose records lack a driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number, asking them to provide the missing information. About half of those voters, 98,000, would be limited to voting with a provisional ballot until they provided the missing information. The board voted in favor of the plan in response to a lawsuit filed last month by the DOJ that claimed the board failed to collect information from voters required by federal law and to maintain accurate voter rolls.
Texas • Collin & Williamson Counties to Use Hand-marked Paper Ballots:
County commissioners in Texas’ Collin and Williamson counties recently approved plans to use a hand-marked paper ballot system for upcoming elections in an effort to comply with President Trump’s election subversion executive order that banned the use of ballots with barcodes. In Collin County, the TX Civil Rights Project and the local chapter of the League of Women Voters have sent the county commissioners a letter urging them to reconsider their decision, warning that hand-marked paper ballots could lead to long lines, human error, and distrust in elections.
ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY
Judicial Watch Claimed Over 5 Million Voters Were Removed From the Rolls After Their Litigation:
In a video shared on Twitter (we don’t call it X), Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, claimed that 5 million voters’ names had been “cleaned” from voter rolls across the country due to their litigation. Judicial Watch has filed a number of lawsuits in the past few years targeting states’ voter roll maintenance, including ongoing litigation in Oregon that the DOJ filed a Statement of Interest in.
Paid for by Fair Fight Action.
My contender for quote of the week comes from Quasim Rashid's talk with Anat Schenker Osorio. Speaking of the frog in hot water analogy and applying it to fascist signs in the US, Schenker Osorio said, "This isn't a jacuzzi, folks."