Missouri's supreme court suspended the state's 2025 congressional map on Thursday 3 September and sent it to voters as Proposition A on the same November ballot. North Carolina began posting absentee ballots the next day. Missouri has taken the fight to Justice Kavanaugh, who wants an answer before overseas ballots go out on 19 September.
Purcell meets its first real test of the cycle while ballots are already being posted.
The Supreme Court of Missouri suspended HB 1 on Thursday 3 September and put the map itself on the November ballot as Proposition A. Missourians will vote on those districts while standing inside the ones they were drawn to replace.
the Supreme Court of Missouri suspended the state's 2025 congressional map, HB 1, ruling unanimously in Von Glahn v. Hoskins that a validly filed referendum petition stripped it of effect, and sent it to voters as Missouri Proposition A on the 3 November ballot; the 2022 map governs November unless voters approve HB 1.
Missouri's congressional elections in November run on the 2022 lines, and the fate of the 2025 map now rests with voters rather than judges.
Denny Hoskins asked the Supreme Court on Friday 4 September to stay the ruling that suspended Missouri's congressional map. Justice Kavanaugh set a response deadline of noon EDT on Monday 7 September and entered no ruling.
Missouri secretary of state Denny Hoskins applied to the Supreme Court of the United States for an emergency stay of the map ruling on Friday 4 September, citing 1.2 million primary voters and a 19 September overseas-ballot deadline; Justice Kavanaugh requested a response by noon EDT on 7 September, and no ruling had been entered by that deadline.
An emergency application at the Supreme Court is the only remaining route to putting Missouri's 2025 districts back in force before November.
Darline Graham Nordone beat Ralph Norman 193,486 to 175,412 in South Carolina's Republican Senate runoff on Tuesday 25 August. Neither Norman nor Russell Fry won, so no House seat falls vacant and the alarm this briefing raised in July comes off the board.
Darline Graham Nordone won South Carolina's Republican Senate special election outright in a 25 August runoff, after nobody cleared fifty per cent in the 11 August first round of the certified field . She beat Ralph Norman 193,486 votes to 175,412, 52.45 per cent, on turnout that rose from 335,555 to 368,898, an increase of 33,343 that runs against the usual direction for a South Carolina runoff. Neither Fry nor Norman won, so no South Carolina House seat was vacated.
The special election to replace Lindsey Graham is settled, and the South Carolina House delegation goes into November at full strength.
North Carolina's 100 county boards began posting requested absentee ballots on Friday 4 September, the day after Missouri's congressional map came off the board. The state board says no other state has sent general-election ballots for these midterms.
North Carolina's 100 county boards began posting requested absentee-by-mail ballots on Friday 4 September, the earliest day allowed under G.S. 163-230.1 and the first such mailing of the midterm cycle nationally.
Voting in the 2026 midterms has begun, which changes what a court is doing when it moves a district line.
Cook Political Report changed six House ratings on Thursday 3 September and moved every one toward the Democrats. Silver Bulletin's new FLIPR model, launched on Tuesday 11 August, then moved on a court order rather than a poll.
Cook Political Report moved six House ratings toward the Democrats on Thursday 3 September, with none moving the other way, and Silver Bulletin launched its FLIPR forecast model on Tuesday 11 August, running 40,000 simulations per update across House, Senate and gubernatorial races jointly; after the Missouri ruling FLIPR's Democratic House-control estimate moved from about 81 to about 83 per cent and Emanuel Cleaver's Missouri 5th District retention estimate from 25 to 98 per cent.
Six independently rated races shifted in one direction with nothing moving back, which is a stronger signal than any single survey.
FEC filings due on Thursday 20 August put coordinated party expenditure at $3,945,435 for 14 to 31 July, against $1,032,346 for the whole first half of the year. July is the first complete month since the Supreme Court struck the spending caps.
FEC filings made public by the 20 August reporting deadline showed coordinated party-candidate spending running to $3,945,435 across 40 records dated 14 to 31 July, against $1,032,346 across 40 records for all of January to June, in the first complete month after the Supreme Court struck the coordinated-spending caps; the NRSC accounted for $2,230,472 of the July total and the Alaska Democratic Party's $884,835 on Mary Peltola outpaced the DCCC's $696,884 spread across eleven candidates nationally in the same window.
The register now shows party committees actually using the coordinated channel the Supreme Court opened in June, with figures rather than intentions.
The Eleventh Circuit vacated the federal judgment against Georgia's congressional maps on Tuesday 25 August and sent three consolidated appeals back for reconsideration. No replacement map was chosen.
The Eleventh Circuit vacated the Northern District of Georgia's judgment against Georgia's SB 2EX, SB 1EX and HB 1ES congressional maps on Tuesday 25 August and remanded three consolidated appeals for reconsideration under Louisiana v. Callais, removing the standing federal judgment against the plans without selecting a replacement map.
Georgia keeps the districts it already has, with the federal judgment against them removed rather than upheld or replaced.
Judge Indira Talwani blocked the mandatory parts of the Postal Service's ballot-mail rule on Friday 4 September, covering every election held on or before 3 November. She refused the government a stay pending appeal.
Judge Indira Talwani blocked the mandatory provisions of the US Postal Service's ballot-mail rule on Friday 4 September for every election held on or before 3 November, replacing a temporary order of 27 August and refusing the government a stay pending appeal, though states may still follow the rule voluntarily where their own law allows.
Election officials will not be compelled to follow a new federal postal procedure in the weeks when ballots are actually moving.
The D.C. Circuit refused on Friday 4 September, by two votes to one, to revive the Department of Homeland Security's modified citizenship-checking database. Judge Gregory Katsas dissented.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals refused on Friday 4 September, by two votes to one, to revive the Department of Homeland Security's modified SAVE database for bulk citizenship checks, ruling that the government forfeited its main Social Security Act argument by raising it only after judgment; Judge Gregory Katsas dissented and the system stays disabled nationally through the midterms.
No state can run a bulk citizenship check against federal records before November, and the government lost on a procedural point rather than the substance.
The Supreme Court of Maryland ordered Question 3 back onto the 3 November ballot on Thursday 3 September, rewriting the wording it had found misleading. It partly reopens a redistricting route this briefing reported as closed.
the Supreme Court of Maryland ordered Maryland Question 3, a measure to remove constitutional criteria for congressional redistricting, back onto the 3 November ballot on Thursday 3 September with substituted wording after finding the original language misleading, partly reopening a Democratic mid-decade redistricting route that had otherwise closed with Colorado's in June.
Maryland voters will decide whether to strip congressional-boundary criteria from the state constitution, a change that would bite in 2028 rather than this November.
Judge Joseph Laplante declined on Tuesday 1 September to block New Hampshire's exclusion of student identification cards from accepted voter ID, a week before the state's primary. He ruled on timing, not on whether the law is lawful.
Judge Joseph Laplante declined on Tuesday 1 September to block HB 323, New Hampshire's exclusion of student identification cards from accepted voter ID, ahead of the state's 8 September primary, ruling on election-timing grounds and writing that the 3 November general election may be treated differently because voting there had not yet begun.
New Hampshire's primary runs under the student-ID restriction, and the judge signalled that the November election may be treated differently.
Direction: sideways, pending one decision. The mechanism that moves it is the Supreme Court's ruling on Missouri's stay application, overdue since Justice Kavanaugh's noon 7 September deadline passed unmet. A stay reinstates HB 1 before the 19 September overseas-ballot deadline Hoskins cited; a refusal fixes the 2022 map for November with under six weeks left to print and mail ballots. Either outcome, not the passage of more time, is what changes the picture from here.
