SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- As the California Citizens Redistricting Commission prepares to decide on the final legislative maps, conservation groups are asking communities united by environmental concerns be kept together.

The idea is to give voters more influence over the people who have the power to address problems such as industrial air pollution, marine oil spills, drought or wildfire.

Samuel Sukaton, redistricting coordinator for the California Environmental Voters Educational Fund, noted his organization recently detailed its concerns in a letter to the commission.

"One of the things that we're working on is communities that are dependent on specific environmental features, whether that's public land, major environmental-justice concerns, like oil refineries," Sukaton explained. "They should be kept with those resources so that they can determine, by electing their government representatives, what gets done with that region."

For example, The EnviroVoters Education Fund wants to see North Coast districts keeping Native American reservations intact and including the coastal region. They argued the initial maps, which combine communities in the Sierras with towns in the San Joaquin Valley, create districts with disparate interests and make it harder to draw Latino-majority districts on the valley floor.

Sukaton pointed out the maps drawn by the nonpartisan commission will shape California's direction for the next decade.

"California, with the independent commission, with public testimony, has this unique, powerful opportunity to handle two of the great crises of our time: inequity and the climate crisis," Sukaton contended. "And more democracy is the answer to both."

The commission released draft maps a few weeks ago and is taking public comment online and at a series of meetings taking place almost daily. A final vote is expected to take place Dec. 24.

Minnesota's primary vote is less than a week away, and a pro-democracy group reported it is one of several states with a number of "election deniers" on the ballot. States United Action contended the nationwide trend poses a threat to future elections.

The group's "Replacing the Refs" summary said as of midsummer, 60% of Secretary of State contests around the U.S. include an election denier, described as candidates who promote conspiracy theories and false information about voter fraud and rigged outcomes. More than a third are in governor and attorney general races.

Lizzie Ulmer, senior vice president of communications and strategic partnerships at States United, said the offices play a role in securing fair elections.

"I think it's really important for people to take away that a single election denier in a single state really has the potential to throw our elections into chaos and put our democracy at risk," Ulmer asserted.

Her group's report said there are five candidates for statewide office in Minnesota who have the "deniers" tag, including Republican Kim Crockett, who is running for Secretary of State. Crockett argued the concerns raised about her perspectives are designed to silence candidates who want to make it harder for a voter to commit fraud.

But Ulmer countered voters should not lose sight of what's being promoted by those who align themselves with misinformation about election policy and access. While such candidates often fall on the conservative side, she said it should not be viewed as a partisan issue.

"As Americans, we can all agree on free and fair elections, regardless of our party or our beliefs or the issues we care about most," Ulmer stressed. "This is really fundamental to our American democracy."

The report added the candidate trend coincides with recent policy action. As of May, legislatures in more than 30 states were considering 229 bills to politicize, pose criminal sanctions, or interfere with elections. Fifty such bills have been enacted or adopted since the beginning of 2021.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

CLARIFICATION: Information has been added to clarify the significance of the '170,000 voters' figure in a quotation. (9:40 a.m. MDT, Aug, 4, 2022)

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled this week to affirm expanded mail-in voting in the state is constitutional.

The ruling is seen as a setback to the 14 Republican lawmakers who opposed expanding mail-in voting two years ago, and then challenged the expansion in court. Now, Pennsylvania voters can request and use an absentee ballot for any reason, and the law will be in place for this November's midterm election.

Meg Pierce, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, said mail-in ballots are important to ensure elections are accessible to everyone.

"Voting by mail is convenient and secure, and has resulted in an incredible boost in voter turnout in Pennsylvania's recent election," Pierce pointed out. "About 170,000 registered voters voted in Pennsylvania elections when they were allowed to vote by mail."

Pierce explains those 170,000 voters are folks who voted by mail in 2020, but did not vote at all between 2016 and 2020.

She added the midterm ballot is a critical one, with races for governor, U.S. Senate and House seats, state legislative seats, as well as Democratic and Republican Party committee members.

A Pennsylvanian must be a registered voter to request the mail-in ballot. The deadline to register is Oct. 24. The ballot must be completed and mailed to the local county election office by 8 p.m. on Election Day, Nov. 8.

Pierce emphasized the League recommends voters visit the website Vote411.org to study the ballot before they head to the polls or mail in their ballot.

"You put in your address, and it will autopopulate what your ballot will look like, depending on where you live," Pierce explained. "I encourage everyone who plans to vote to research their candidates and find out what's going to be on the ballot, well ahead of Election Day."

Gov. Tom Wolf addressed the Supreme Court decision, saying it "definitively asserts that voting by mail is a constitutionally valid method of voting," which will allow voters "to cast ballots without disruption or confusion."

Young people often see registering to vote as a rite of passage, but voting advocates discovered one Indiana county has created new obstacles for them.

The League of Women Voters has a long-established practice of conducting voter-registration drives among high school seniors.

Ken Jones, voter services committee chair for the League of Women Voters of Greater Lafayette, said it yields several hundred new voter registrations each year.

"A number of those are going to be done on the federal voter registration form," Jones explained. "The kids fill it out, and they commonly provide the last four digits of their Social Security numbers as their form of ID, which is all perfectly fine under federal and state law."

Jones noted they deliver the applications in bulk to county election officials. Last fall, the league discovered some applications were being subjected to a stricter "mail-in" registration standard, which requires additional proof of address through a utility bill or similar document, which high school students do not typically have.

In attempting to require these high school voter applicants to prove their addresses, the voting advocate groups believe Tippecanoe County officials were demanding more proof than is required under law, and Jones sees it as a problem.

"A county doesn't get to decide that there's an additional requirement that voters must meet in order to vote," Jones asserted.

In a March 10 email, officials with the Indiana Election Division advised the county it does not have the authority to establish voter-registration requirements not codified in federal and state law, but Tippecanoe County election officials continue to interpret the statute as allowing them to regard hand-delivered voter registrations brought in by a third party as being mailed in.

With the impasse, the local League of Women Voters chapter and Common Cause filed a formal administrative complaint on July 21. Jones is hopeful the approach will resolve the issue without going to court.

"We're starting with an administrative complaint; this is not a judicial complaint," Jones acknowledged. "We felt that a step before that would be to go through the election officials in Indianapolis, have them really work it out hopefully with the election officials in the county."

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.