Republicans Keep Losing Voting Rights Cases

Defending Democracy with Marc Elias

Democracy Docket

News, Politics

4.9 • 702 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Republicans are waging an all-out war on voting rights in court – and we keep beating them. In this video, Marc Elias is joined by Democracy Docket's Legal Content Editor Ashley Cleaves to break down all of the recent wins for the Pro-Democracy movement.

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00:00 Good News for Democracy

01:21 Indiana Voter ID Case: Student IDs Restored for Voting

07:57 DOJ Voter File Lawsuits: Federal Government’s Push for Voter Data

11:06 DOJ Losses in Court: Judges Reject Requests for Voter Information

14:06 Concerns Over Data Use & Federal Overreach

21:14 California Ballot Seizure Case: 650,000 Ballots & Supreme Court Response

31:10 Arizona Voting Cases: Three Major Losses for Election Deniers

33:40 Election Certification Battles: Ongoing Threats in Key States

36:16 Arkansas Voting Case: Court Blocks Wet Signature Requirement

40:32 Wisconsin Supreme Court Election: Major Victory & Implications

42:32 Final Takeaways: Why Legal Wins Matter & Staying Engaged

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Mark Elias, founder of Democracy Docket. Look, usually I do these videos to tell you all of the threats facing democracy. Well, today, I've got good news. Donald Trump and the Republicans, they are losing in court all across this country. And I'm leading the effort. We're winning a lot of these cases and where we're not doing it, we're cheering on the lawyers who are. I'm going to tell you today all the ways we've beat Republicans
0:21.3	in court, but before I get into it, Democracy Docket is made possible by viewers like you. So click
0:26.3	on the link in the description to learn how you could support its mission and help defend democracy.
0:30.6	To help break this all down, I'm joined today by Ashley Cleves, the legal content editor at Democracy
0:36.1	Docket. Ashley, it's good to have you on a day of good news.
0:40.2	Yes, happy to be back, Mark.
0:42.0	As I say, all you do is win.
0:43.9	I'm so happy to break down all these important wins for democracy with you today.
0:47.1	I feel like there's always bad news that I am discussing with people, the threats to democracy,
0:52.0	and it's important that we do that. But I like to get you on
0:56.0	from time to time because you track all of the cases in the Democracy Docket Universe. And that's like
1:02.2	160 some odd right now, right? It's 156 now. 156. The reason why it's down from where it was,
1:09.9	Ashley, is because we won some big cases.
1:12.0	So I want to start with the most recent one. And then we're going to talk about the problems that
1:16.4	this Department of Justice seems to be having in federal court on its voter file lawsuits.
1:21.4	So we're going to get to that because that's super important. But Indiana, where, you know,
1:26.3	look, Indiana's had a voter ID law going all the way back to
1:30.7	like 2005. In fact, people don't know this, but Indiana actually pioneered what we now think of as
1:37.0	the modern photo ID law. They were the first state to enact one that went all the way to the U.S.
1:42.2	Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court blessed these
1:45.2	ID laws. But it didn't say that states had carte blanche. It put some guardrails in place
1:50.3	and created this kind of balancing test for whether a restriction on voting, including voter
	...

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