Latest news with #votingrights
CBS News
14 hours ago
- General
- CBS News
Supreme Court to weigh whether to revive Republicans' challenge to Illinois law for late-arriving ballots
Washington — The Supreme Court said Monday that it will consider whether to revive a Republican congressman's callenge to an Illinois law that allows mail-in ballots to be received and counted up to 14 days after Election Day. The dispute involving GOP Rep. Michael Bost will be heard by the Supreme Court in its next term, which begins in October, with a decision expected by the end of June 2026. The question in the case is a procedural one: Whether Bost and two Republican presidential electors have the legal right to challenge state regulations concerning the time, place and manner of federal elections. If the high court finds that the plaintiffs do have the legal standing to sue, their lawsuit could proceed. The case concerns an Illinois law that dictates when vote-by-mail ballots have to be postmarked and received in order for them to be counted. Changes in state law in 2005 effectively allow a mail-in ballot received up to 14 days after Election Day to be counted as long as it is cast by mail on or before the day of the election. At least 17 states also allow ballots that arrive after Election Day to be counted. Bost, who was first elected to Congress in 2014, and two Republican presidential electors sued Illinois election officials over the deadline for counting mail ballots in 2022. They argued in part that the receipt and counting of late-arriving ballots dilutes the value of their votes, infringing on their rights under the First and 14th Amendments, and contended that the ballot-receipt deadline is preempted by two federal statutes that set a uniform day for federal elections. A federal district court dismissed the case in 2023, finding that Bost and the two electors failed to allege that they have the legal right to sue, a concept known as standing. A divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the district court's decision last year, agreeing that the plaintiffs did not allege standing to bring their lawsuit because they did not plausibly allege they had been injured by the law involving late-arriving mail ballots. Bost and the electors appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, arguing that in recent years, the ability of candidates and parties to sue over state laws that affect their campaigns has been restricted by the federal courts. "The court's guidance is needed to correct the unwarranted narrowing of candidates' ability to challenge electoral regulations," they wrote in a filing with the Supreme Court, adding that it is "vitally important" for the Supreme Court to clarify whether candidates can challenge state election laws in federal court. "It is important that courts hear and resolve well-pleaded challenges by federal candidates to state time, place, and manner regulations affecting their elections," the Republicans wrote. "Aside from the interests of the litigants, it is important that the public conclude that elections are run in an orderly, not arbitrary, fashion." But Illinois election officials urged the Supreme Court to turn away the appeal, arguing that the plaintiffs disagree with their decision to count mail-in ballots that are cast on or before Election Day, but arrive after. "They do not claim that Illinois's ballot receipt deadline affected their likelihood of prevailing in any race in which they have ever competed or are likely to compete in the future," the state officials said in a filing with the high court. "Rather, petitioners contend that they are entitled to challenge the deadline simply by virtue of their status as candidates, on the theory that a political candidate can always challenge a state's regulation of the time, place, and manner of conducting an election."
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
ProVen VCT plc: Total voting rights
ProVen VCT plcTotal Voting Rights2 June 2025 In conformity with the Disclosure and Transparency Rule 5.6.1, ProVen VCT plc announces that the Company's capital and voting rights, as at 31 May 2025, are summarised as follows: Shares in issue Voting rights per Share Voting rights Ordinary shares of 10p each 285,153,185 1 285,153,185 Total voting rights 285,153,185 The Company does not hold any shares in treasury. The above takes account of any shares that have been recently bought back for cancellation, even if such transactions have not yet settled. The above figure may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in, or a change to their interest in, ProVen VCT plc under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rules. Beringea LLPCompany SecretaryTelephone 020 7845 7820 - EndError in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
North Carolina elections take a risky turn
The new NC Board of Elections, with all members appointed by the state Auditor, are sworn in on May 7, 2025. Left to right, Jeff Carmon, Chairman Francis DeLuca, Stacy "Four" Eggers, Siohban Millen, and Robert Rucho. Our democracy, with free and fair elections at the cornerstone, can be warped in favor of those who manipulate the election process to their advantage – who gets to vote, when and where, and which votes are included when they're finally counted. Call that a cornerstone of autocracy. For the past 15 years in North Carolina, ever since Republicans captured majorities in the state House and Senate amid President Obama's first-term struggles, the party has sought to solidify its hold on power in just that fashion. The tactics have been manifold: gerrymandering that puts Republicans in disproportionate numbers of safe seats. Photo ID rules that cut against groups of voters who might tend to favor Democrats. Stricter rules for absentee voting that result in some ballots being tossed because they weren't received in time, perhaps because of postal delays. Republican legislators have been the driving force behind such changes – with elected Republican judges helpfully turning aside cries of foul from Democrats and their allies among voting-rights advocates. All of that brings us to a chain of events triggered by last fall's elections, in which Democrat Josh Stein claimed the governor's mansion and, by a single seat in the House, Republicans lost their veto-proof legislative majority. The results apparently left Republicans in the General Assembly to vow, 'You ain't seen nothing yet!' The counter-strategy they cooked up has panned out with what amounts to a hostile takeover of an agency that worked to advance the principles of honest, orderly elections in which every eligible citizen is encouraged to participate. That is of course the State Board of Elections – under control of the governor's party by virtue of a law dating back decades. The takeover was set in motion when it became clear that, with Stein's victory, the board otherwise would continue with a Democratic majority. Legislators decreed that instead of by the governor, appointments to the board would be made by the state auditor – a post captured in the November balloting by Republican Dave Boliek. In essence, the auditor would hold the reins when it came to the state's election oversight. The changeover would – and did – take effect on May 1, after Stein's court challenge was sidetracked by Republicans on the state Court of Appeals and then the state Supreme Court. As it would happen, much water went under the bridge between the passage in December (over Stein's veto) of Senate Bill 382 and the power shift in which Boliek appointed new Republican members to run the board, and the board's nationally heralded executive director, Democratic appointee Karen Brinson Bell, was ousted. North Carolina's political headlines throughout the end of 2024 and the first months of 2025 were dominated by the contested Supreme Court election between Democratic incumbent Justice Allison Riggs and her challenger, Republican Judge Jefferson Griffin of the Court of Appeals. Riggs' 734-vote victory finally was nailed down on May 5 – no thanks to Griffin's allies on the two appellate courts who agreed with him that thousands of votes shouldn't have been counted. It took a Republican-appointed federal judge to explain why disallowing those votes would have violated the constitutional rights of citizens who cast them. Here's where the Riggs-Griffin clash and the Board of Elections saga became intertwined. The board, for reasons ultimately validated by Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Myers, resisted the attempt to disallow votes that Griffin claimed shouldn't have been counted, even though the people who cast them, including military and overseas voters, hadn't knowingly violated any rules and there was no evidence of fraud. If the board hadn't pushed back, insisting for example that overseas voters actually didn't need to submit copies of photo IDs, chances are that enough votes from likely Democrats would have been tossed aside that Griffin would have won the race. Myers boiled down his thinking in everyday language: The legality of certain conduct should be assessed according to the laws in effect at the time. 'That principle will be familiar to anyone who has played a sport or board game,' he wrote. 'You establish the rules before the game. You don't change them after the game is done.' That was the election board's point all along. Yes, it aligned with Democratic arguments. But nobody would accuse Judge Myers of carrying the Democrats' water. While Griffin's effort to overtake Riggs worked its way through the judicial pipeline, the law transferring election oversight to the state auditor was being challenged by Stein as an infringement on his executive powers. He argued that the state constitution gives him final responsibility for seeing that the laws are faithfully carried out, and thus he needs to be able to appoint a majority on the elections board who share his commitment to elections operated in the public interest. Other attempts by the General Assembly to horn in the powers of Stein's predecessor, Democrat Roy Cooper, were turned aside by the courts as violations of the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches. In the case of S.B. 382, top lawmakers argued that since state auditors are themselves executive branch officials, the legislature's constitutional prerogative to assign duties within that branch allows them to take oversight of the elections board away from Stein and give it to Boliek. In accord with the state's procedure for refereeing alleged constitutional violations, Stein's lawsuit was routed to a three-judge panel in Wake County Superior Court. After a full-dress review, with briefs and oral arguments, the panel on April 23 reached a 2-1 decision that Stein's complaints were justified. Even though North Carolina parcels out various executive duties to the elected members of the Council of State, including such figures as the state treasurer and the attorney general as well as the state auditor, the panel held that under the state constitution ultimate responsibility for the appointed Board of Elections lies with the governor. The two-person majority included one Democratic judge and one Republican. A Republican judge dissented. Republican Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Destin Hall appealed to the Republican-dominated state Court of Appeals. On April 30 – the day before the election board change was to take effect – a three-person panel of the court's judges sided with the legislators, meaning that the changeover could go ahead. The unanimous, unsigned ruling contained no explanation and the judges who participated weren't identified. No prizes for accountability there! Stein filed a last-ditch appeal with the Supreme Court, where Republicans also rule the roost. With no immediate intervention by the high court, Boliek on May 1 took command of North Carolina's election machinery. Instead of a 3-2 Democratic majority with a Democratic chairman, with Boliek's appointees the elections board emerged with a 3-2 Republican majority. The new chairman is Francis De Luca, a Republican activist who hardly has been a cheerleader for so-called same-day registration during early voting – a convenience encouraging many eligible citizens to cast their ballots. Another new member, former Republican state Sen. Robert Rucho, would belong in the Gerrymanderers Hall of Fame, were there such a dubious institution, for his work to tilt the scales in favor of Republican candidates for the legislature and Congress. When the Supreme Court finally responded to Stein's appeal, it rejected the governor's argument that the reassignment of election oversight to the auditor should have been blocked while the appellate courts weighed the constitutional issues. That leaves the election board's new governance structure intact while Stein pursues his case. Of course as time elapses, as Boliek proceeds to appoint new members of county election boards and as this fall's elections approach, unwinding that new structure becomes increasingly impractical. The high court's opinion was unsigned, meaning it was supported by the five Republican justices, although Justice Richard Dietz in a concurrence criticized the Court of Appeals' opaque handling of the matter. Dissents came from the court's two Democrats – Riggs, freshly sworn back into office after her drawn-out election win, and Anita Earls. 'The voters hired Joshua Stein and David Boliek to do specific jobs, and the General Assembly is restructuring those jobs after the election,' Earls wrote. 'The General Assembly may not grab power over enforcement of election laws by shuttling the Board [of Elections] between statewide elected officials until it finds one willing to do its bidding.' Well, that sort of power grab looks to be just what the legislature's Republican chiefs had in mind, and acceding to it looks to be just what the appellate courts are inclined to do. Continue down that path, and they'll be turning over supervision of the state's elections to people whose 'election integrity' mantra has proven to be code for voter suppression driven by right-wing partisanship. Not only does that degrade our democratic system, but it also puts the best interests of many North Carolinians vulnerable to economic, educational, environmental and health challenges at unacceptable risk.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
Independent voters challenge constitutionality of Maryland's closed primary elections
Registered voters in Maryland who are not affiliated with a political party are prevented from voting in much of the state's primary elections. A lawsuit filed this week hopes to change that. (File photo William J. Ford/Maryland Matters.) Five Maryland voters who are not affiliated with any political party filed a lawsuit this week asking a state judge to declare the state's restrictions on primary elections a violation of the state constitution. Maryland, which has a partially closed primary system, requires voters to affiliate with the Democratic or Republican party if they want to vote in the primary election. The five unaffiliated voters, represented by Republican former Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford, said the elections — paid for with tax dollars — are a violation of their right to vote. 'The point is, it really is a voting rights issue,' Rutherford, who is now an attorney with Davis, Agnor, Rapaport & Skalny in Columbia, said in an interview. 'It's not an attack on the parties. It's a question of what is fair for 22% — over a fifth of the voting population — approaching 25% of the voting population that has chosen not to be affiliated.' The 15-page lawsuit filed in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court on behalf of the five unaffiliated voters challenges the current primary election system. All five said they were barred from voting in the 2022 and 2024 primary elections because they opted not to affiliate with either major political party. Requiring party affiliation to vote creates a barrier of 'partisan primaries that the state endorses and supports and funds, which is contrary to the plain reading of the state constitution and the Declaration of Rights,' Rutherford said. It is a subject with which Rutherford has some personal experience. In 2015, Rutherford told The Washington Post that he was a registered independent but changed his affiliation to Democrat to vote in primary elections in the District of Columbia. A spokesperson for the Maryland State Board of Elections did not provide a comment on the suit pending litigation. John Willis, who served as secretary of state under Gov. Parris N. Glendening, and is a professor of public affairs at the University of Baltimore, said the lawsuit is misplaced. 'Primary elections are for political parties. They're not for 4 million individual voters,' said Willis, who is also an attorney. 'They're a process for nominating candidates for a general election. The whole notion that they're somehow open to everybody, the public — there's no constitutional right to that.' Unaffiliated voters in Maryland can cast votes in state primaries for nonpartisan races such as the election of judges and school board members. But. the voters in the lawsuit compare the process to 'taxpayers funding the selection of officers to private clubs or in this case private entities.' CONTACT US Rutherford said it is the use of taxpayer dollars that conflicts with his clients' rights. 'We're just saying the state should not be paying for it, because the state would be paying for something that's unconstitutional,' Rutherford said. 'This is, again, it's a voting rights question, so the state should not be supporting something that is unconstitutional.' In Maryland, the number of voters who identify as unaffiliated has grown to nearly one in five voters in the state. Willis said that growth is a 'legitimate thing to talk about.' 'But I don't think it's a lawsuit. I think it's a political debate or a philosophical debate. It's an OK political debate to have, but I don't think it's a legal constitutional debate.' To Willis, the appropriate venue for making a change is the legislature. Rutherford, in an interview, said the legislature is unlikely to make those changes. 'I don't think the legislature sees it in their interest, even though they should, because it is a question of voting rights,' Rutherford said. We think the courts need to take it up, just like the Voting Rights Act or Brown versus Board of Education. The legislature alone is not going to do it.' Willis said the current political system dates back more than 100 years. 'Since the Civil War, in Maryland, we've been a two-party system,' he said. Legislation sponsored in 2023 by Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) called for allowing unaffiliated voters to affiliate with a party as late as the day before the start of early voting. Kagan, who was not available for an interview, said in 2023 testimony that many unaffiliated voters 'do not understand our closed primary system.' Then, when they arrive to vote, they are told they can vote in nonpartisan races. That sometimes causes voters to become 'frustrated — and sometimes quite angry,' Kagan's written testimony said. Her bill and an identical House bill both died in their respective committees. In 2000, the Maryland Republican Party did briefly change its rules to let unaffiliated voters cast ballots in its presidential primary. The change was short-lived. A spokesperson for the Maryland Democratic Party declined to comment on the pending lawsuit. A representative of the Maryland Republican Party was not immediately available for comment. The lawsuit is backed by the Open Primaries Education Fund, a nonprofit that advocates for allowing unaffiliated voters to participate in primary elections. The group also promotes the use of litigation toward that goal. Rutherford said the group and its local affiliate reached out to him about challenging the state primary system after the two-term lieutenant governor authored an opinion piece calling for allowing unaffiliated or independent voters to participate in primary elections. And while the debate over Maryland's primary system is not new, Rutherford said the lawsuit is novel in its approach. 'It's been challenged in other states, one, generally in the federal courts. Not as much so in the state courts,' said Rutherford, adding that he believes there has never been a challenge under the Maryland Constitution. The constitution, Rutherford said, sets out specific rules for qualifying voters. Maryland residents 18 years old and older 'shall be entitled to vote at every election, all elections,' Rutherford said. 'They said all elections,' Rutherford said. 'Nowhere in the constitution does it state anything about primaries or political parties or anything of that notion. And then the Declaration of Rights, which is part of the constitution, goes further by stating that it talks about the right of suffrage.' Maryland is one of nine states that have a partially closed primary system, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In such systems, the parties can choose to allow unaffiliated voters to vote in their respective primary elections. Seven states are considered open to unaffiliated voters. Those systems allow unaffiliated voters to vote in the party primary of their choice. Voters who are affiliated with a political party must vote in that party's primary. Another 15 states have open primaries — voters are not asked to affiliate with a party. Voters can then choose which primary they wish to cast a ballot in. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Washington Post
5 days ago
- General
- Washington Post
Maryland's primary elections are unconstitutional, lawsuit alleges
About 10 years ago, Dona Sauerburger, a longtime Maryland Democrat disillusioned with America's two-party system, decided to become an independent voter. But that choice, she said, was immediately disenfranchising because Maryland residents who register as unaffiliated with a political party are not allowed to vote in primary elections. So for years, Sauerburger protested outside primary polling places and advocated for change before state lawmakers in Annapolis — without success.
