Defending Against Voter Suppression Efforts in California

During Donald Trump’s second term, the ACLU remains committed to defending the vote, both as a fundamental right and as a vital check on the government. Throughout U.S. history, withholding the franchise has been a means of maintaining power. Whether the government denied the right to vote based on gender, race, or social status the goal was the same—to preserve politics as the exclusive domain of white men.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) which prohibits racial discrimination in voting. One of two legislative pillars of the Civil Rights Movement, the VRA ushered in sweeping reforms and abolished literacy tests, poll taxes, and other racist practices states adopted during the Jim Crow era to prevent Black Americans and other people of color from voting. Since its passage, conservative politicians, legal organizations, judges, and activists have chipped away at the vital protections enshrined in the law. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court handed VRA opponents a sledgehammer. The court’s decision in Holder v. Shelby County struck down a key provision requiring states with a history of racial discrimination to clear proposed changes to voting practices with the U.S. Department of Justice.

The ruling cleared the way for a wave of voter suppression tactics— including voter ID laws, voter roll purges, and limits on early voting— targeting Black people, college students, people with disabilities, and elderly voters.

In response, the ACLU has filed a raft of lawsuits across the country to preserve equal access to the ballot. The latest victory came in May, when a federal court ruled that Alabama must keep in place a congressional map that led to the election of two Black members to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in the state’s history. In the Supreme Court’s next term, the ACLU will reargue Louisiana v. Callais, a case that will determine whether a map that created two majority-Black congressional districts survives.

While other states aggressively rolled back voting rights, California bucked the trend. In fact, over the past decade, the ACLU of Northern California has worked to expand the franchise by making automated voter registration available through the Department of Motor Vehicles, pressing the state to print voting materials in multiple languages, and restoring voting rights to Californians on parole. After four years of persistent advocacy by the ACLUs of Northern and Southern California and our partners, in January the California Secretary of State designated the Division of Adult Parole Operations as a voter registration agency. Now, parole officers are required to offer people they supervise an opportunity to register to vote or update their registration when they are released from prison and each time they change their address.

However, two recent developments demonstrate that California is not immune to Trump’s corrosive attacks on the integrity of the American electoral system.

ISSA V. WEBER

After blaming his 2020 loss to Joe Biden on baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, Trump waged a scorched earth campaign to undermine public confidence in mail voting. It worked with his base. In the month before the 2024 election, just 38% of Trump supporters believed mail ballots would be counted as voters intended compared to 85% of Kamala Harris supporters, according to a Pew Research Center poll.

Despite winning, Trump has doubled down on trying to make it harder to cast a ballot. In March, he issued an executive order requiring proof of U.S. citizenship for the federal voter registration form. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in the spring, also would require a birth certificate, U.S. passport, nationalization certificate, or other valid citizenship documentation to register to vote. If approved by the Senate and signed into law, the SAVE act could disenfranchise millions of voters, including married women who took their partners’ surnames.

Trump’s unlawful order also called for withholding funding from the 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, that count mail ballots received after Election Day. This includes California, which sends every active registered voter a mail ballot and counts ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive within a seven-day grace period. More than 80% of Californians who voted in the November presidential election returned a mail ballot.

A coalition of civil rights groups, including the ACLU and the ACLU of D.C., sued Trump over the executive order on behalf of the League of Women Voters. In June, a Massachusetts federal district court blocked both the proof of citizenship and funding provisions on the grounds that the Constitution grants states, not the president, sole authority to set their election rules.

California isn’t out of the woods yet. This spring, San Diego Rep. Darrell Issa sued seeking to stop the state from counting mail ballots that arrive after Election Day. He alleges the practice conflicts with federal law and “provide(s) an unfair electoral advantage for opponents of Republican congressional incumbents.” If Issa’s challenge succeeds, hundreds of thousands of voters could be disenfranchised. On behalf of the League of Women Voters of California, the ACLU and the ACLUs of California filed a motion urging the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

Voting rights advocates believe their arguments will prevail, in part because California’s law complies with federal statutes requiring that votes are cast before or on Election Day as well as longstanding congressional approval of counting absentee ballots from Americans living abroad that arrive after Election Day. But they worry that if Issa loses and appeals the district court’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the issue may ultimately end up before the Supreme Court. That’s because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled last year that a Mississippi statute allowing the counting of ballots received up to five days after Election Day violates federal election law.

“Rep. Issa’s lawsuit is a blatantly partisan attack on voting rights and fair elections. Taken to the extreme, his interpretation of federal law would mean that all ballots must be counted by midnight on Election Day,” said Angélica Salceda, director of ACLU NorCal’s Democracy, Speech, and Technology Project. “Discarding lawfully cast ballots because counties fail to meet an arbitrary and impossible deadline would cripple our democracy.”

BONTA V. HUNTINGTON BEACH

Fueled by spurious claims that extensive voter fraud taints U.S. elections, thirty-six states have passed voter ID laws. California, of course, does not have such a law on the books. In March 2024, voters in Huntington Beach, a conservative stronghold in Orange County, went rogue and approved a ballot measure allowing the city to require ID to vote in municipal elections beginning next year. Huntington Beach maintains that it has the authority to set its election rules because it is a charter city. In response, last fall Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill clarifying that local governments are prohibited from requiring that voters present identification. The law went into effect in January.

Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber had sued Huntington Beach in April 2024, arguing that existing state law barring “mass, indiscriminate, and groundless challenging of voters solely for the purpose of preventing voters from voting” overrides the local measure. The Orange County Superior Court disagreed. The state’s appeal is pending before the California Fourth District Court of Appeal. In a joint amicus brief, the California ACLUs, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, Asian Law Caucus, California Black Power Network, and Disability Rights California argued that voter ID requirements have “historically been used to disenfranchise low-income voters, voters of color, voters with disabilities, and senior voters.”

The state seeks a prompt resolution so that planning for the 2026 election can proceed with clarity.

In a democracy, politicians must win or lose by competing for votes on the merits of their policy proposals, not by shrinking the electorate. These brazen attacks on voting rights must not succeed in California, or anywhere else in the United States.

Lisa P. White is a principal communications strategist of the ACLU of Northern California.

Artwork by Jackie Fawn.