On December 6, the U.S. House passed HR 4, the bill to update the pre-clearance part of the Voting Rights Act. In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the old pre-clearance rules were so out-of-date, they could not be enforced.

If there were at least 15 instances in a single state when a local government had committed a voting rights violation in the last 25 years, then that state would be subject to having its election law changes pre-cleared by the U.S. Justice Department. Or if the state itself had committed a voting rights violation, and there were also nine or more instances when a local government in that same state had also done so, all in the last 25 years, then that state would also be under pre-clearance.

All Democrats in the U.S. House voted for HR 4, but only one Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, voted for it. The lone independent voted against the bill. Here is a description of the bill.

The old Voting Rights Act was not very helpful against restrictive ballot access laws. Generally when a state that was under pre-clearance made its ballot access laws more severe, the federal Justice Department approved the changes. The Justice Department did stop Mississippi from increasing its statewide independent petition in 1966 from 1,000 signatures to 10,000 signatures. Also when Alabama in 1982 increased the vote test for a party to stay on the ballot from zero votes to 20%, the Justice Department stopped Alabama from enforcing the new law for the 1982 election.

The New York Times has this story about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on December 6 to hear Carney v Adams, the case over whether Delaware state court judges can be confined to registered Republicans and Democrats. It is astounding that the state claims that its policy is “balanced”, when over 20% of all registered voters are barred from consideration. Thanks to Ron Paulinski for the link.

On November 5, 2019, the voters of Virginia’s 30th House district elected a write-in candidate. Nick Freitas, who was the incumbent, received 14,694 write-ins. His only opponent, Ann Ridgeway, the Democrat, who was the only name printed on the ballot, received 11,011.

Freitas tried to be on the Republican primary ballot in June 2019, but he was kept off due to a paperwork problem. Virginia doesn’t permit write-ins in primaries, so he couldn’t win the Republican nomination via write-in votes. Thanks to Thomas Jones for this news.