Voter ID and vote-by-mail reform bills move to Pa. House – Pennsylvania Capital-Star Source Link Excerpt:
Pennsylvania lawmakers will consider a package of election reforms including a voter ID requirement and changes to the commonwealth’s vote-by-mail law after a House committee passed the long-debated measures.
Most Democrats have staunchly opposed proposals requiring voters to prove their identities every time they vote but leaders have recently expressed a willingness to negotiate in exchange for support on other measures to modernize Pennsylvania’s election system.
On Tuesday, House Bill 771, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Mehaffie (R-Dauphin) passed with a bipartisan 14-12 vote in the House State Government Committee. Democratic Reps John Inglis of Allegheny County and Nancy Guenst of Montgomery County voted in support.
The committee voted along party lines, however, to approve an omnibus bill that would eliminate ambiguity in Act 77, the law that gave Pennsylvanians the option to vote by mail without an excuse for the first time in 2020.
The vote-by-mail provision has been the subject of numerous lawsuits, including one now before the U.S. Supreme Court, as candidates and parties have argued over how election officials should handle irregularities, such as errors on completed ballots, that are not explicitly addressed.
The bill would make clear that county election officials are required to notify voters if their mail-in ballots have been rejected for the lack of a signature and give the voter an opportunity to “cure” the error.
Among other changes, House Bill 1396 would also give election workers up to a week before Election Day to prepare to count mail-in ballots, a process that has been a bottleneck for election results in parts of the state, providing fodder for election deniers.
New York State Senate committee approves anti-trans sports bill – Gay City News Source Link Excerpt:
The New York State Senate’s Education Committee approved an anti-trans sports bill on May 6 that would stop the state education commissioner from implementing trans-inclusive sports policies, drawing immediate criticism from LGBTQ advocates.
Senate Bill S460 would ban the education commissioner from creating any rules preventing schools from implementing bans on trans athletes if a school “determines” that a student’s participation would somehow “have an adverse effect on the physical or emotional safety of female participants or would adversely impact a female student’s ability to participate successfully in interschool athletic competition.”
The legislation drew five “aye” votes — including from Democrats — and six “nay” votes, but three others voted “aye WR,” or “aye with reservations,” which suggests that those three lawmakers had issues with the bill but voted for it to move forward nonetheless. The “aye” votes came from Republicans Stephen Chan of Brooklyn, James Tedisco of Saratoga County and Schenectady, Daniel Stec of North Country, Bill Weber of Rockland County, and Alexis Weik, whose Long Island district includes parts of the queer haven of Fire Island.
Attorneys general in 19 states and Washington, D.C., are challenging cuts to the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, saying the Trump administration’s massive restructuring has destroyed life-saving programs and left states to pick up the bill for mounting health crises.
The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James said. The attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia signed onto the complaint.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. restructured the agency in March, eliminating more than 10,000 employees and collapsing 28 agencies under the sprawling HHS umbrella into 15, the attorneys general said. An additional 10,000 employees had already been let go by President Donald Trump’s administration, according to the lawsuit, and combined the cuts stripped 25% of the HHS workforce.
As a number of rulings have come in this afternoon with federal judges blocking several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact via vehicles such as executive orders, here’s a brief roundup of those developments.
A judge blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections. US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with that argument. She also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote. The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters.
Meanwhile, a federal judge said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes. US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.
