Last minute voter? The Supreme Court is coming for you

This week, the US Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case that could affect elections in more than a dozen states, including California, by requiring voters to mail in their ballots early.

The dispute is over a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count such ballots when they are marked on Election Day but received days later. The conservative-leaning Supreme Court appears poised to side with the state’s GOP and strike down legislation passed during the pandemic by Mississippi’s GOP-majority legislature, according to New York Times.

If rejected, laws in other states that allow late-arrival ballots could also be at risk. In California, mail-in ballots that arrive a week after Election Day are still being counted. Voters cast more than 400,000 of those ballots in 2024, or about 2.5 percent of the total, reports Los Angeles Times.

The lawsuit comes as President Donald Trump moves to restrict voting access ahead of the November election. Trump has expressed particular disdain for mail-in voting, often claiming, without evidence, that mail-in voting is fraud and the reason he lost the 2020 presidential election.

Speaking of Trump:

• CA Sues Oil Pipeline: California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Monday that the state is suing the Trump administration to stop its efforts to restart pipeline that spilled thousands of barrels of crude oil off the coast of Santa Barbara County in 2015. After state regulators halted Sable Offshore Corp’s plans to resume pipeline operations, the company pushed the Trump administration to step in and force the restart using emergency authorities. Bonta argued that the move violated state authority and that the administration had “fabricated” claims of a national energy emergency. Read more by Alejandro Lazo of CalMatters.

• ICE agents at airports: On Monday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at several airports across the country to help with security amid a shortage of federal personnel. California Democratic officials quickly denounced the deployment, including the governor. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco State Senator. Scott Wienerwho told the agents “bring nothing but fear (and) chaos.” Video footage of federal officers detaining a woman in the San Francisco International Airport on Sunday, the day before the deployment, also drew sharp criticism from some officials.

The company that supplies electronic tablets to 90,000 California inmates is causing a switch in supplier disruptions and headaches among usersCalMatters’ Joe Garcia reports.

Inmates in the state have access to tablets that they can use to call and text loved ones from their cells and access other services. Both prison staff and residents say these devices have made prisons feel safer because people no longer have to share limited phone resources and officers are no longer tasked with facilitating an understaffed system.

By the end of last year, the tablets had to be replaced with ones from the company Securus after it won a contract bidding war with the previous supplier, Viapath/Global Tel Link.

But the transition was difficult. Not only is it behind schedule, but in some facilities where Securus tablets have been rolled out, inmates have found that their messages aren’t costing 3 cents per message as thought, but rather a higher price based on the number of characters. Securus quietly adjusted its billing practice in March to 3 cents per message after inmates complained and CalMatters reached out about the fees.

Read more.

More than 250 UC students from all nine undergraduate campuses were at the Capitol earlier this month, lobbying for bills that could have a remarkable effect on their lives as students, writes CalMatters’ Khadeejah Khan College Journalism Network.

As part of the UC Student Association’s Lobby Day, students pushed for an amendment to the state constitution that would add voting rights for second student regent. Right now only one of two student positions of the 26-member Board of Regents has such power.

To help students facing homelessness and food insecurityUC student leaders also advocated for two bills: One that exempts housing projects for students, staff and faculty on university campuses from environmental expertise to stimulate development and another that aims to increase student access to CalFreshfederally funded state food assistance program.

Read more.