Alabama Lawmakers in Alabama have introduced more than two dozen election-related bills since the 2020 presidential election, including Republican-backed bills that would restrict
early and
absentee voting. House Bill 285, for instance, would ban curbside voting (the bill passed the
Alabama House of Representatives in a party-line vote on March 18, 2021) while another would shorten the time voters have to mail in absentee applications from five days before an election to 10. Republican Rep.
Danny Garrett actually proposed a bill that would increase the number of sites that voters can drop off their absentee ballots, which recently passed the Constitution, Campaigns and Elections House committee, but it has faced consternation among other members of his party, with some objecting that it would "provid[e] for
early voting".
Arizona Alleging election fraud, in April 2021 Arizona Republicans hired a private firm to conduct
an audit of the 2020 presidential election results. The auditors released a report five months later finding no proof of fraud and that their ballot recount increased Biden's margin of victory by 360 votes. County election officials released a final report in January 2022 finding that nearly all of the auditors' allegations of irregularities were false or misleading. After a six-month investigation, Arizona attorney general
Mark Brnovich, a Republican running for Senate in 2022, said in April 2022 he found no proof of 2020 election fraud. (
R) defended Republican proposals to restrict Arizona's
vote-by-mail system by stating: "Everybody shouldn't be voting...quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes, as well." A measure passed in the Arizona Senate would require voters to include photo identification with mail-in ballots (which account for 80% of ballots cast in Arizona). Proposed bills include provisions that would limit or eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, require signatures on absentee ballots be notarized, allow officials to purge voters from the Permanent Early Voting List (a list of people automatically sent mail-in ballots) if they have not voted in both the primary and general elections for two consecutive cycles, require mail-in ballots be
postmarked by the Thursday before the election, even if they arrive by
Election Day, preemptively forbid same-day voter registration (which the state does not currently offer), Another proposal would significantly decrease the number of polling locations in the state, including decreasing the number of locations in
Maricopa County from 100 to 15. Rep. Athena Salman (
D), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Government and Elections Committee, argued that "[Republicans] definitely came in with a plan to make sure the historic voter turnout we saw in 2020 never happens again". Mail-in balloting has existed in Arizona for over a century.
Arkansas On March 3, 2021, Arkansas governor
Asa Hutchinson signed into law House Bill 1112, which eliminates a provision that allows voters to sign a sworn statement in order for their provisional ballots to be counted in lieu of presenting a photo ID. On March 4, 2021, Hutchinson signed into law House Bill 1244, which eliminates non-photo ID's as valid forms of identification to vote. Republicans have also introduced a bill that would shorten
early voting (Senate Bill 485).
Florida On February 19, 2021, Florida governor
Ron DeSantis introduced a slate of voting proposals focused largely on making vote-by-mail more restrictive. These included a ban on vote-by-mail ballots from being automatically sent out to voters, restrictions on
ballot boxes, stricter signature verification, a ban on
ballot collection, a prohibition on counties accepting financial help from private organizations for
get-out-the-vote initiatives and a requirement that counties report voter turnout data in real-time. DeSantis had earlier advocated for
faithless electors from states President
Donald Trump had lost in the
2020 election to vote for him anyway, circumventing their states' voters. DeSantis also called for a measure that would cancel current absentee ballot requests for the
2022 gubernatorial election. The state legislature's Republican leaders announced that they "join the Governor in his efforts to continue to make Florida the national leader on election integrity" and "look forward to working with him on this important issue". Opponents of the governor's agenda argue that DeSantis used false claims of widespread voter fraud pushed by Trump to advance voter suppression efforts to give advantage to Republicans. Fearing that traditionally Republican-leaning constituencies, such as the elderly and members of the military, would vote in lower numbers under stringent mail voting rules, Republicans sought to exempt those two groups from the requirements that other voters would face. However, in Republican negotiations over the language of the legislation, the exemptions were rejected because it would be legally impermissible. On March 31, 2022, U.S. District Court Judge
Mark E. Walker ruled that Senate Bill 90 violated the
Voting Rights Act of 1965. Walker issued a permanent
injunction against the law's restrictions on absentee ballot drop boxes and required Florida to obtain preclearance from federal courts before enacting election laws. DeSantis and Florida attorney general
Ashley Moody have since appealed Walker's ruling.
Georgia floor, the newly elected senator from Georgia
Raphael Warnock (
D) declared that "We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights and voter access unlike anything we have seen since the
Jim Crow era". On March 25, 2021, Georgia became the first
swing state to impose new voting restrictions following the 2020 presidential election, in which
Joe Biden became the first
Democratic candidate since 1992 to carry the state (additionally, both of the state's senate seats flipped to the Democratic Party in that year's
Senate elections). The 98-page
Election Integrity Act of 2021 (SB 202) was the culmination of a months-long flurry of proposals; it includes a great many of the proposals floated, like voter identification requirements for
absentee ballots, restrictions on
ballot drop boxes, and a prohibition on handing out food and water to voters waiting in line, but drops some of the more controversial proposals, most notably the attempt to ban Sunday
early voting, when
Black churches traditionally run "Souls to the Polls"
get-out-the-vote efforts. and appears targeted at Black voters, with
Democratic voting rights activist
Stacey Abrams going so far as to call it "nothing less than
Jim Crow 2.0". It also follows a controversial statewide voter roll update in 2019 that a report by the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) concluded likely wrongfully removed nearly 200,000 people from voter rolls. The act has already prompted a number of ongoing legal challenges. By late February, the first elections bill had cleared a chamber of the
Georgia General Assembly. Passed in the
Georgia State Senate on February 23, 2021, in a nearly party-line vote, Senate Bill 67 would have require a photo ID when requesting an absentee ballot. Concurrently, a broader elections bill, House Bill 531, was being considered in the
Georgia House of Representatives. Most controversially, it would have restricted early voting on Sundays, when
Black churches traditionally run "Souls to the Polls"
get-out-the-vote efforts; according to
The Economist, Black voter turnout is 10 percentage points higher on Sundays. The Sunday restriction is similar to a North Carolina law that also would have ended Sunday early voting but was struck down in 2016 by a federal court for targeting black voters. The restriction has been defended on the basis that there should be no voting on the
Sabbath. House Bill 531 passed the House in a party-line vote on March 1, 2021. After outcry, the Sunday early voting restriction was dropped in the Senate version of the bill. While House Bill 531 was being considered in the Senate, and nearing the March 8 deadline a bill must pass one of the two chambers, the Senate passed Senate Bill 241, which would have eliminated no-excuse absentee voting (something the state has offered since 2005), restricting it only to those who are over 65 years old, have a physical disability, or will be out of town on
Election Day, and Senate Bill 202, which would have prohibited organizations from sending absentee ballot applications to voters who have already requested a ballot. On March 12, 2021, the
Georgia Chamber of Commerce, an organization representing businesses based in Georgia like
Coca-Cola and
Home Depot, issued a statement opposing the Republican voting reforms. As the end of March neared, with no election bill passed by both chambers (the Georgia General Assembly adjourns on March 31), Republicans raced to finalize changes to their election law proposals. Republican efforts consolidated around two omnibus bills: the 45-page House Bill 531, passed in the House on March 1, 2021; and the significantly expanded 95-page Senate Bill 202, passed in the Senate on March 8, 2021. On March 25, 2021, both chambers passed Senate Bill 202, now called the
Election Integrity Act of 2021; it was signed into law by Governor
Brian Kemp that evening. The bill imposes voter identification requirements on absentee ballots, gives the legislature greater control over election administration, limits the use of ballot drop boxes, reduces the amount of time people have to request an absentee ballot, and makes it a crime for political organizations to give food or water to voters waiting in line (although poll workers are still allowed to).—and includes a provision removing the secretary of state from the Board of Elections, a measure seemingly targeted at
Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state who oversaw the 2020 election in Georgia and famously rebuffed attempts by
Donald Trump and state lawmakers to overturn Georgia's election results. Providing justification for itself, a preamble to the bill declares that "many electors [are] concerned about allegations of rampant voter fraud"—despite no evidence of meaningful levels of fraud. They argue that the bill violates the
14th Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section Two of the
Voting Rights Act of 1965, which forbids racially discriminatory voting rules. The Georgia NAACP further alleges that Republican officials are purposefully attempting to discriminate against black Georgians "in order to maintain the tenuous hold the Republican Party has in Georgia" (Democratic wins in the state in 2020—especially the two Senate races—were fueled by high black turnout). Georgia House Republicans retaliated against Delta by passing a bill ending a tax break on jet fuel (it failed to advance in the state Senate). Commenting on the bill, state House Speaker
David Ralston quipped, "You don't feed a dog that bites your hand". Former president
Donald Trump, who was the central promoter of false claims of widespread election fraud and the principal agent in the
attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, called on Republicans and conservatives to boycott Major League Baseball, Coca-Cola, and Delta Air Lines, as well as a host of other companies that condemned the bill. Republican lieutenant governor
Geoff Duncan said during an April 2021 CNN interview that momentum for the legislation grew from "the fallout from the ten weeks of
misinformation that flew in from former president Donald Trump. I went back over the weekend to really look at where this really started to gain momentum in the legislature, and it was when
Rudy Giuliani showed up in a couple of committee rooms and spent hours spreading misinformation and sowing doubt across, you know, hours of testimony."
Idaho Republicans in Idaho have introduced bills that would make
ballot collection a felony, bar absentee ballots for presidential elections except for active-duty members of the military, limit which forms of photo ID can be used to vote (e.g.
student IDs would no longer be accepted), and make it more challenging to qualify voter initiatives for the Idaho ballot. While defending recent Republican voting proposals in the state, Representative
Mike Moyle stated, "You know what? Voting shouldn’t be easy". The first bill to advance was the ballot collection bill (HB 88, introduced by Mike Moyle), which has been amended to be less restrictive. Moyle has justified his bill by pointing to false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Iowa ) signed into law the first bill restricting the vote following the 2020 presidential election. On March 8, 2021, Iowa governor
Kim Reynolds signed into law a Republican-backed bill reducing
early voting by 9 days, requiring most mail-in ballots to be received by
Election Day, banning county election officials from sending out absentee ballot request forms unless requested, and shortening Election Day voting by one hour. Republicans claim the bill is necessary to defend against
voter fraud, despite no history of meaningful levels of fraud in the state.
Kansas Shortly after the inauguration of
Joe Biden, Republicans in the state began rolling out a number of voting reform proposals. Among them, one would make it a felony for anyone besides a family member or caregiver to return another person's absentee ballot; one would disallow the
Kansas Secretary of State from extending the deadline absentee ballots
postmarked by
Election Day must be received by the state, which critics worry could disenfranchise voters if the
US Postal Service were to experience delays; In late March, the
state Senate approved a number of measures that would, according to the
Kansas City Star, "give the Legislature virtually complete control of elections" by stripping the governor, the secretary of state, and the courts of their ability to regulate elections. Another bill passed would limit
ballot collection by churches, civic groups, neighbors and candidates; Republicans cited the example of former Democratic state Representative
Tim Hodge, who won his 2018 election by only 88 votes—some of them picked up and returned by his campaign—as reason to end ballot collection. The ballot collection bill was opposed by the
NAACP, the
ACLU, and the Disability Rights Center of Kansas. and HB332 were both passed and went into effect on July 1, 2021. HB2183 made an expanded definition of impersonation of an election official a felony. The District Attorney of
Douglas County, Kansas said the provisions were too vague and that she would not enforce them. However, Kansas attorney general
Derek Schmidt promised to do so, causing the non-partisan organizations League of Women Voters of Kansas and Loud Light to halt voter registration drives, including those on college campuses at the beginning of the school year. The state is also being sued by the
American Civil Liberties Union for $4 million worth of legal fees after the organization's successful five-year legal effort to overturn a Kansas law that required potential voters to prove their citizenship when registering to vote, which blocked the registrations of more than 35,000 eligible Kansas voters.
Kentucky Republicans in Kentucky have largely bucked the trend of state Republicans advancing partisan bills that would make voting laws more restrictive, instead backing a bipartisan bill that would make certain policies implemented during the
COVID-19 pandemic to ensure voter access permanent, including a short period of
early voting (prior to the pandemic, Kentucky was one of only a few states not to offer early voting) and allowing voters to fix errors made on mail-in ballots. This distinction was made explicit by the Republican Secretary of State, who told lawmakers, "In many other states right now, legislatures are debating restricting access of their voters to the ballot. Not here in Kentucky. What you all are debating today, and hopefully considering, is actually making it easier for our voters to vote". The bill passed the
Kentucky House of Representatives 93–4 in late February.
Montana In March 2020, in a party-line vote the Montana House passed a bill that would end same-day voter registration, which has been offered in the state since 2005, and instead require voters to register by noon on the Monday before
Election Day. Supporters say it would ease the workload of election officials on
Election Day, while critics say it would unnecessarily eliminate an effective voting measure and may disproportionately impact
Native Americans living on tribal reservations, who often face long travel times to polling locations. Opponents say the bill could disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters, including college students and disabled or elderly people who don't drive, and would disproportionately affect Native Americans, Some Republicans are backing a bill introduced by Democratic representative
Sharon Stewart-Peregoy that would make voting easier for Native Americans by requiring at least two satellite elections offices on every reservation and allow tribal citizens to vote using a non-traditional address on their reservation.
Nevada Republicans in Nevada have proposed a bill (AB 163) that would require voters to provide proof of identity at the polls and require absentee ballots to be received by 7 p.m. on Election Day (under existing law, as long as ballots are turned into the Post Office by Election Day they are accepted up to a few days after Election Day).[185] It also includes a provision requiring the Nevada Secretary of State to crosscheck the names of dead Nevadans with voter registration lists at least once a month, likely prompted by former President Donald Trump's false claims that over 1,500 deceased people voted in Nevada in the 2020 presidential election.[185] Nevada was one of six states targeted by Trump and his Republican allies in their attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. However, with Democrats in charge of both chambers of the legislature, Republican election bills have almost no chance of passing.
New Hampshire With more students per capita than any other state (fully 12% of the state's overall population are university students), Republican efforts have focused on student voting. As reported by Abigail Weinberg in
Mother Jones: After Republicans took control of the state’s legislature in 2020, House lawmakers introduced three bills restricting student voting: HB 554, HB 362, and HB 429. HB 554 prevents people from voting in New Hampshire if they maintained a domicile address in another state; HB 362 forbids students from registering to vote at their college address; and HB 429 prohibits the use of a college ID as a voter ID. As of February 8, 2021, at least seven other bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced. Another bill would end the winner-take-all system for New Hampshire's electoral votes in the
Electoral College, replacing it with a district system similar to Maine's. On July 30, 2021, Governor
Chris Sununu signed SB 89, which rejects the
For the People Act. In case the latter becomes a law, it will not apply to the local elections in New Hampshire.
Oklahoma (
R) introduced a bill that would have required every registered voter in Oklahoma to re-register before the next general election. In February 2021, Republican state representative
Sean Roberts introduced two election-related bills, one that would prohibit the use of electronic voting machines and another that would require all registered Oklahoma voters to re-register before the next general election. Another bill would call for an amendment to the
U.S. Constitution that would prohibit
absentee ballots from being mailed to voters unless their absentee ballot application had been notarized or signed by two witnesses.
Texas , the chairman of the
Texas Republican Party, has said "election integrity" is among the party's highest priorities following the 2020 election. He previously faced controversy over a December 2020 comment in which he seemingly suggested
secession from the United States after the
Supreme Court rejected
Texas' attempt to invalidate election results from four states. According to the
Texas Tribune, "Republicans are staging a sweeping legislative campaign to further tighten the state's already restrictive voting rules and raise new barriers for some voters, clamping down in particular on local efforts to make voting easier". State GOP chairman
Allen West has declared that "election integrity" would be a top priority in the 2021 legislative session, a sentiment that was affirmed by Republican governor
Greg Abbott, who proclaimed "election security" to be an emergency legislative item. Bills proposed would ban drive-thru voting and reduce early voting hours, restrict the number of voting machines allowed at polling centers, and prohibit local election officials from sending out mail-in ballot applications to all voters. Republicans are placing special emphasis on targeting procedures that were used in
Harris County, a heavily
Democratic county that includes
Houston, Texas, which offered more expansive voting options like drive-through voting and longer hours at polling locations. By February 1, 2021, eight bills that would reduce voting access had been introduced, House Bill 1924 and House Bill 335, which would expedite removal of deceased persons, the mentally incapacitated, and those charged with felonies from voter rolls; House Bill 61, which would tighten signature requirements on absentee ballot requests; House Bill 329, which would require the
Texas secretary of state to cross-reference its voter registry with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's non-citizen resident database at least twice a year; Among the over two dozen proposals By late March, Republican efforts had consolidated around two election bills: House Bill 6 (HB6), introduced by Rep.
Briscoe Cain (who had previously volunteered with the
Trump campaign in Pennsylvania as it attempted to overturn the outcome of the presidential election), and Senate Bill 7 (SB7), introduced by Sen.
Bryan Hughes et al. HB6 would ban drive-through voting, make it a felony for local election officials to send unsolicited absentee ballot request forms, require counties to provide the same number of voting machines in each polling location regardless of population density, and tighten the state's already strict absentee ballot qualifications (only the elderly, people with disabilities, and those who will be away from home can vote by mail) by requiring voters with disabilities to provide proof that they are incapable of voting in person (which critics argue amounts to a
poll tax, since it would require disabled people who are unable to vote in person to pay for a doctors visit On April 1, 2021, the state Senate passed SB7, amended to allow voting hours from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. Republicans argue these bills are necessary to prevent voter fraud, despite fraud being nearly nonexistent in the state. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a cosponsor of SB 7, has defended Republican election bills by saying "The November 2020 election demonstrated the lack of transparency and lack of integrity within the election process", drawing on claims from the months-long effort by Republican officials to de-legitimize the 2020 election. Critics, including former House Representative
Beto O'Rourke, have decried the efforts as "voter suppression". The
Texas Democratic Party called the bills an "assault on voting rights". On July 12, 2021, at least 59 Democratic lawmakers left the state to prevent Republicans from having quorum to act on their legislation. A new bill, SB 1, was passed into law on September 7, 2021. The law expands the voting hours as proposed in the earlier SB7, but critics stated this reduced voting hours in the state's most populous areas. The law also bans drive-thru and overnight early voting, and introduced identification requirements for absentee voting. Multiple groups challenged the law on the day it was passed. The U.S. Department of Justice also filed suit against the state in November 2021, asserting the law's change to accessibility at voting places and absentee ballots violates the Voting Rights Act. The DOJ also joined some of the other suits challenging SB1.
Utah On February 15, 2021, Utah governor
Spencer Cox signed into law House Bill 12, which the
Brennan Center for Justice claims will "make faulty [voter] purges more likely". According to the
Casper Star-Tribune, the resolution "parrot[s] numerous concerns pushed by former President Donald Trump, who claimed numerous instances of voter fraud in several states he lost despite providing no evidence to support those claims". On April 6, 2021, Republican lawmakers passed HB0075, which requires residents to present an ID to vote (previously, voters had to present an ID when registering to vote, but not when voting). Supporters say the bill is necessary to prevent voter fraud, despite no evidence of significant levels of fraud in the state (there have been only four convictions for voter fraud in the state over the past several decades). ==State bills==