Welcome to Fair Elections Alert, your rundown of key attacks against voting rights and independent elections across the country over the past week. It’s a way to keep up with what the opponents of democracy are focused on. We’ll highlight critical updates you need to be aware of, with a spotlight on the South, the original frontline in the fight for voting rights.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” – US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court majority’s opinion eviscerating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
NOTABLE TRENDS
Far-Right Supreme Court Majority Dismantled the Voting Rights Act’s Safeguard Against Racially Discriminatory Redistricting: In a 6-3 decision in Louisiana v Callais, the far-right majority of the US Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s congressional map and eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which will make it nearly impossible to challenge electoral maps as racially discriminatory.
The ruling empowers Republican-controlled legislatures in the South to try to weaken Black voting power by redrawing maps to create 19 more safe, GOP U.S. House seats and eliminate 191 state legislative seats, the vast majority held by Black elected officials.
Elected leaders across the South have already indicated interest in redrawing their maps in response to the decision, including Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. South Carolina, and Georgia are also showing the potential to follow suit.
Trump Officials Attempted to Access Election Administration Info. in At Least 8 States: Reuters found that the Trump officials pushed to access information about local election administration in at least 8 states: Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, Ohio. The efforts include seeking confidential records and pressing for access to voting equipment. In Ohio, Homeland Security Investigations agents have collected voter records in at least 6 counties, including Franklin County, citing unspecified investigations. Separately, the South Carolina State Election Commission agreed to share the state’s voter rolls with the Department of Justice.
At the end of April, PBS reported that local election officials in several states are concerned Trump will attempt to interfere in the 2026 election. One local official put the concerns plainly: “Was the FBI going to show up at our door? Are they going to try to seize our equipment, our ballots? Can we expect ICE agents or other federal agents at the polls in November?”
STATE ACTIVITY
California • Riverside County Voter Roll Information Seized By Sheriff May Have Been Exposed: Election records seized by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department were allegedly publicly accessible through an online link created by counsel for Sheriff Chad Bianco for 5 days. Bianco’s attorney, Robert Tyler, filed a declaration in Riverside Superior Court that included an email with a fully accessible OneDrive link. The OneDrive included files that contained county voters’ names, party affiliations, addresses, emails, and phone numbers. The UCLA Voting Rights Project, which is suing to get the records returned, said that the breach shows why “ballots and election materials cannot be taken out of the hands of election officials and handled outside the safeguards established by California law.”
ANTI-VOTING GROUP ACTIVITY
Election Denier within Federal Government Given Access to Pennsylvania Voter Data: In an unanimous decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that “cast vote records”, spreadsheets of raw data associated with every ballot, are public records. The decision came in a case brought by Heather Honey, who has been a prominent figure in the Election Integrity Network and now works at the Department of Homeland Security, after Lycoming County denied Honey’s request for digital copies from the 2020 presidential election.
Cleta Mitchell, who played a central role in Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss and founded the Election Integrity Network, celebrated Honey’s “HUGE victory” and Audit the Vote PA, an anti-voting group similar to Honey’s PA Fair Elections, also celebrated the decision as a “big win for transparency in PA.”
Trump's tyranny will be secured if the American people give away their right to be heard. If the majority of voters, of all races, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, allow the extinction of Black voting rights as declared by the Supreme Court 6, it is the end of voting rights for all citizens. And being complicit in allowing an alleged sexual predator to benefit from this social tragedy is offensive to our moral values. Black people have struggled to shed the chains of slavery, only to be reminded that they are still available to be reused. But remember, this time, tyranny knows no color; it only knows enemies of the state. Don't believe me, believe Trump's rhetoric and his arrogant wish to be king and criminal consequences be damn. The 250-year legacy is gone, like a puff of smoke.