By Selen Ozturk
Contributing Writer
SAN FRANCISCO — With the 2026 midterm elections still months away, voting rights advocates warn that new voting laws and disputes over election processes could reduce participation among millions of minority, low-income, elderly, rural and first-time voters.
A recent Supreme Court ruling, Calais v. Louisiana, has already prompted states across the South to redraw congressional district lines in ways that eliminate majority Black seats. Meanwhile, 36 states now require some form of ID at the polls, while local election battles that once seemed like regional issues are drawing national scrutiny.
A 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruling issued April 29 by Justice Samuel Alito struck down Louisiana’s congressional map containing two majority-Black districts. Voting rights groups say the decision effectively guts Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act which prohibits voting procedures that dilute minority representation. (Blacks account for more than 30% of the state’s population.)
The ruling’s new standard requires plaintiffs to prove intentional racial discrimination — a nearly impossible burden compared to the previous standard of proving that a redistricting map gives Black voters less opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.
In the weeks following the decision, several southern states including Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina moved to redraw congressional maps — in some cases while mail-in voting for primary elections was already underway — explained Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, at a June 26 American Community Media briefing.
The changes have already eliminated “a number of majority-Black congressional seats in the South,” Saenz said. “This means that absent some huge wave of increased voting by voters of color, some of our long-standing Black congress members may lose their seats in November.”
A Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund analysis found that up to 191 currently Democrat-held southern state legislative districts could be redrawn as a result of Calais — including 127 Black-majority districts, more than half of all Black-majority districts in those states.
An earlier joint report estimated that the new Section 2 standard alone could secure 19 Republican House seats. Combined with Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting efforts, the report projected a potential shift of 27 House seats — “enough to cement one-party control of the U.S. House for at least a generation.”
But at the federal level, “the president of the United States has no authority to regulate elections,” Saenz said. “Without congressional action … his executive orders have no effect. This is why Trump is pushing so hard now to get federal legislation to require voter ID, to restrict the ability to cast a remote ballot and the like, but it would require congressional action.”
As a more credible near-term threat, he pointed to the SAVE Act, which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, potentially stripping the effective ability to vote from the more than 21 million Americans who lack ready access to documents like a passport or birth certificate.
While the act passed the House April 10 on a vote of 220-208, with the support of all Republicans and four Democrats, Senate passage would require seven Democratic votes, a threshold few analysts expect it to reach.
But even if passed, the measure could apply only to federal races, Saenz said, noting that implementing such a system nationwide would be “exorbitantly expensive.” It would also, he said, “consolidate federal with state and local elections in every state around the country,” resulting in “two sets of rules for one election.”
According to Saenz, the “greater danger” voters face is at the state and local levels. “The Supreme Court made Voting Rights Act challenges to such measures more difficult,” he noted, adding, “It’s important that people be prepared to have a voter ID. Even if [the ID requirement] is being challenged in court. It may or may not be resolved before the election comes around.”
Roughly half of Americans don’t have a passport, including 55% of registered Republican voters; nearly 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens lack a current driver’s license; and another 29 million have licenses that do not reflect their current name or address.
Citizens of color are nearly four times more likely than white citizens to lack a valid, unexpired state ID, with Black and Hispanic Americans disproportionately affected.
“The ever-changing landscape of voter ID laws creates confusion for voters, who will often stay home rather than face shame or get turned away or intimidated for potentially not having the correct form of ID,” said Da Hae Kim, policy advocacy manager at national voting rights nonprofit Vote Riders.
“If you have a minimum wage job and it’s $7.25 an hour, and you need to pay about $29 to get an ID — if it’s a choice of putting food on the table or getting an up-to-date license — putting food on the table will likely take precedence,” Kim said, adding that rural residents frequently lack transportation to the offices where IDs are issued, and that natural disasters like floods and fire can leave many voters without any identification at all.
