GOP-backed lawsuits challenge early voting, same-day registration

Two voting bills signed into law by Gov. John Carney July 22 were immediately challenged in Court of Chancery by a GOP-backed lawsuit.

Shortly after Carney signed bills that allow vote by mail and voter registration on Election Day, the Brady Legal Group, headed by GOP state chair Jane Brady, formerly a Superior Court judge and state Attorney General, filed a lawsuit on behalf of Michael Higgin and Michael Mennella challenging the constitutionality of those laws.   

"The constitution provides you must vote in person on Election Day unless you qualify under very limited conditions to vote absentee. Mail-in voting clearly violates that requirement, as it allows remote voting without declaring or meeting any of those limited conditions,” Brady said in a statement. “The Delaware Constitution also provides that a period must be provided for new voters to register to vote, but requires that the period end 10 days before the election.”

Senate Bill 320, sponsored by Sen. Kyle Evans Gay, D-Heatherbrooke, allows voting by mail under the state’s methods and instruments of voting. The bill passed the Senate 13-8, and the House with 25 yes votes.

“The General Assembly finds that voting by mail ballot is a method of voting that is within the General Assembly’s power” under Delaware’s Constitution, the bill reads.

Under the law, a qualified, duly registered elector wishing to vote by mail would be able to do so by filling out a handwritten or electronic application.

The same-day voter registration bill, House Bill 25, sponsored by Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, D-Wilmington, would allow a person to register to vote the day of an election provided they submit an application with at least a current government document displaying their name and address.

Brady questioned the timing of the bill signing and absence of the bill sponsors in what is usually a scheduled press event with photos.

“Why are the Democrats hiding?” she asked. “Why did Delaware Gov. John Carney sign the bills on a Friday – a day notoriously known in politics for the best time to take action regarding matters on which you don’t want much press coverage – in a private signing ceremony? Why aren’t Kyle Gay, Krista Griffith and the other sponsors standing proud and saying, ‘Look what we did for you?’ Even more, why, when the bills fundamentally change the way Delaware voters can vote, are they not taking every step to let the voters know what the new laws are and the significant ways how they vote have changed?”

Brady said she believes many Delawareans do not support mail-in voting, and that members of the Delaware General Assembly who voted for this bill know that it is unconstitutional.

The lawsuit is the second Brady has filed opposing Delaware voting laws. In January, she filed a lawsuit on behalf of Mennella, an election inspector, who is also named in the recent lawsuits. The lawsuit states that Delaware’s early voting laws, set to take effect in 2022, conflict with and violate the Delaware Constitution because those laws expand the administration of the general election beyond its constitutionally designated day.