Turnout Signals
Plus: The Justice Department’s new cases against states. 🗳️
Voter turnout was as high if not higher in many key states in the 2024 general election compared to 2020, new data released by States United shows.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin saw increases in turnout. Voter turnout remained steady between 2020 and 2024 in Georgia and Nevada and declined slightly in Arizona and North Carolina.
These figures from States United are part of a new release of turnout data from the 2023 and 2024 elections. It showed several other trends, including that the number of voters who only vote for candidates at the top of the ballot declined in many states in 2024. Roll-off, as it is commonly called, is when voters leave many state and local races unmarked lower down on the ballot.
The decrease in roll-off means greater democratic participation; more voters are casting ballots for statewide races. There are several causes, one being that because of greater media attention and work by pro-democracy organizations, more voters may be understanding that many of the decisions that impact their day-to-day lives happen at the state level.
This Week in Democracy
- The Justice Department sued election officials in six states, seeking to force them to share voters’ personal information, including birth dates, driver’s license numbers, and partial Social Security numbers. The officials—from California, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania—each previously refused the department’s requests for information.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs declined to share the private information of his states’ voters with the department this week. The Brennan Center for Justice is tracking which states have received similar requests and how they have responded.
➡️ READ: What’s Breaking Through About the Justice Department’s Election Investigations
- A federal grand jury indicted former FBI Director James Comey on two charges related to his testimony before Congress in 2020. Comey denies any wrongdoing. The indictment comes after President Trump pressured Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute his rivals, including Comey.
The charges were brought by acting U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan. Trump appointed Halligan last week after her predecessor, Eric Siebert, resigned amid pressure from the administration to bring charges against other enemies of the president. According to reports, Siebert left a memo for Halligan detailing his investigation into Comey, in which he concluded there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges against him.
➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Misusing Federal Law Enforcement for Political Retaliation
- A federal judge in Rhode Island blocked the Trump administration from withholding disaster relief funding from states if they refuse to cooperate with federal immigration policies. The attorneys general of 20 states sued the administration in May to stop it from holding up funding.
➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About Coercive Funding Demands
The Department of Homeland Security also threatened legal action against California, Illinois, and New York if they refuse to cooperate with the administration’s immigration policies.
➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About State and Local Authority to Set Public Safety & Law Enforcement Priorities
- A federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to restore hundreds of grants from the National Institutes of Health to the University of California, Los Angeles. The administration froze more than $500 million in federal funding for the university in August.
➡️ READ: Sharing the Facts About the Impact of Targeting Higher Education
State of the States
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation aimed at restricting the conduct of federal immigration agents, including a ban on face masks. Similar proposals have been introduced in Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon.
The Department of Homeland Security wrote on social media that agents would not comply with California’s mask ban.
In D.C., an appeals court suspended the law license of Kenneth Chesebro, a key architect of the “fake electors” plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. A New York appeals court revoked Chesebro’s license in June, citing his guilty plea in the Georgia election interference case.
In Texas, Secretary of State Jane Nelson announced that her state would share voter registration data with nine other Republican-led states in order to cross-check their databases. So far, there is little information about how the agreements will function.
The new interstate agreements purport to serve a similar purpose as the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization which 26 states and Washington, D.C. participate in. ERIC has long been the subject of disproven conspiracy theories, which some states—including Texas—used as justification to withdraw from it.