Voters in Butler County, Pennsylvania made a mistake in voting their mail ballots in the April 2024 primary election, forgetting to use the required secrecy envelope. Because their mail ballots could not be counted, they went to the polls in Election Day and voted provisional ballots. The County later determined that it would not count their provisional ballots, and the voter’s appealed, arguing that Pennsylvania law requires that when an eligible voter attempts to vote by mail but the mail ballot is rendered void due to some defect like lacking a secrecy envelope, the eligible voter may cast a provisional ballot and have that ballot counted notwithstanding the failed attempt to vote by mail.

This case arises from the November 2024 election for state supreme court justice in North Carolina. Incumbent State Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs defeated Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, but Griffin has filed a petition seeking to invalidate more than 60,000 votes from the election. He argues that the state Board of Elections impermissibly allowed over 60,000 people to register without providing their driver’s licenses or social security numbers, and that the Board impermissibly allowed thousands of overseas voters to cast absentee ballots without photo identification. The petition has resulted in both federal and state litigation, and the ACLU has submitted amicus briefs in both venues. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project and the ACLU of North Carolina filed an amicus brief explaining that the petition’s attempt to cancel tens of thousands of votes threatens democratic backsliding in North Carolina. Separately, in the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative and the ACLU of North Carolina submitted an amicus brief explaining that, even if the Board did make mistakes, cancelling votes as a consequence of those mistakes would violate the popular sovereignty provision of the North Carolina Constitution because voters relied on the Board to know how to register and vote.

Eligible Philadelphia-area voters who submitted mail ballots in the September 17, 2024 special election only to have their votes set aside because they omitted or miswrote the correct date on their outer return envelope – even though the date is not used for any purpose – sued to have their votes count. Plaintiffs urge the courts to rule that enforcing the irrelevant envelope-dating requirement to disenfranchise eligible voters violates the Pennsylvania Constitution's Free and Equal Elections Clause.

Colorado Springs’s unusually-timed elections suppress voter turnout—disproportionately, among the City’s Black and Hispanic population. This federal court lawsuit challenges the City’s election timing for violating our clients’ right to vote free from denial of abridgment on account of race under the Voting Rights Act of 1965.