Georgia is one of five states that uses vote-counting machines with no paper trail.  On May 21, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Totenberg issued a 61-page opinion in Curling v Raffensperger, clearing the way for a trial on whether the Georgia machines violate the U.S. Constitution because they may not guarantee an accurate vote count.

Footnote 38 of the opinion acknowledges that the Georgia law was changed last month to require a new type of vote-counting machine that has an audit trail.  But the state has not yet chosen a new type of machine, and elections later in 2019 will be using the old machines.  Thanks to Rick Hasen for the link.

Alabama Senate Bill 336, which would lower the number of signatures for minor parties and non-presidential independent candidates, is pending in the Senate Judiciary Committee.  This news story says that an informal straw poll of the Senators on that committee shows that it only has two supporters, out of 13 committee members.  But the bill has not had any publicity in Alabama newspapers, until this story.

There is a ballot access lawsuit pending against Alabama petition requirements in special elections.  It is in the U.S. Supreme Court.  It had won in U.S. District Court, but then the Eleventh Circuit had ruled 2-1 that the case had been moot when it won in U.S. District Court, and the Eleventh Circuit erased the decision without actually deciding the ballot access issue.  The issue in the U.S. Supreme Court is whether the Eleventh Circuit was wrong to do that.

On May 20, Ohio opponents of partisan gerrymandering filed this brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.  It asks the court not to stay the decision of the lower court that ordered Ohio to redraw its US House districts.