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 taking of democracy does not occur in one fell swoop; it is chipped away piece-by-piece until there is nothing left.” – Judge David O Carter, U.S. District Court Judge for the Central District of California, in his opinion blocking the DOJ’s effort to access California’s unredacted voter roll data.
NOTABLE TRENDS
Trump Expressed Regret For Not Seizing Election Machines in 2020 and Speculated if We Should “Even Have an Election” While He Pushes to Reshape How the 2026 Midterms are Run: In a recent interview with The New York Times, President Trump said that he “should have” ordered the National Guard to seize voting machines in swing states after the 2020 election. A few days later, during an interview with Reuters, Trump said, “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election,” while boasting about his “accomplishments” and expressing frustration that Republicans could lose control of Congress during the 2026 midterms.
These concerning statements come at the same time Trump and his regime are trying to change how the midterms will be conducted in a likely attempt to try to influence the results or sow doubt in their validity if his party loses.
Trump is using “every tool,” including pressing states to redraw their congressional maps, demanding an end to mail voting, appointing election deniers to positions of power, and seeking personal voter data from dozens of states, to this end.
STATE ACTIVITY
North Carolina • State Board of Elections Rejected Sunday Voting Hours For 6 Counties And On-Campus Voting Sites For 4 Different Universities: The new Republican majority of the North Carolina State Board of Elections voted against including Sunday voting in 6 counties and cut early voting sites at 4 different universities. Dozens of students from North Carolina A&T State University, a historically Black university, protested the vote against a polling location on campus with one student saying “If we were a different color or looked different, this would be a different outcome.”
State law requires that the state election board has final say in early voting plans if county boards cannot reach an unanimous decision.
The votes to limit early voting were some of the first major moves since a massive overhaul of the state’s election administration that flipped all election boards to Republican control last year.
ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY
Judicial Watch Celebrated Supreme Court Ruling Allowing Candidates To Challenge Election Rules: In a 7-2 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that candidates for office are entitled to challenge rules on how votes are counted in their elections, opening the “floodgates” to election law challenges. Judicial Watch, the anti-voting legal organization behind the case, celebrated the decision as “the most important Supreme Court election law ruling in a generation.” Their statement added that, “American citizens concerned about election integrity should celebrate this Supreme Court victory.”
What is the chain of custody when votes are uploaded to computers?