Unlike their counterparts in most Republican-leaning states across the country, legislators in Nebraska have resisted placing new restrictions on access to voting. But in November, voters will consider a significant one. Right-wing activists echoing former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election collected enough signatures to put new photo ID requirements […]

A ballot initiative that would sidestep a Republican-controlled state legislature and expand voting rights in Michigan has surpassed the number of signatures needed to appear on the November ballot, but opponents have challenged it on technical grounds. The measure advanced by voter advocacy group Promote the Vote would allow for nine days of early voting […]

Louisiana’s Republican-controlled legislature and Democratic governor have agreed on a series of minor improvements to voting access in the past two years. But an extreme gerrymander of the congressional districts has made representation of the state’s growing Black population less equitable.  Louisiana is one of four states this year that will be using a redistricting […]

The District of Columbia has some of the most inclusive voter laws in the country. Voters can register in person, by mail or online. Voters can cast a ballot in person, by mail or at a drop box. Additionally, it stands with only Maine and Vermont as a place where residents convicted of felonies never […]

As the CEO of Women4Change Indiana, Rima Shahid spends her time talking to potential voters, trying to convince them to support policies that would make the state a better place for women. “The statement that we hear time and time again is that it doesn’t matter,” Shahid said. It’s not that people in Indiana are […]

Republicans who control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office in New Hampshire are maintaining the state’s strict limitations on registering to vote and casting ballots while enacting new security requirements and penalties advocates see as an attempt to criminalize people who mistakenly fail to follow rules that were unnecessary in the […]

Voting rights advocates in Massachusetts are celebrating a series of pandemic-era measures made permanent in June, but obstacles remain that disproportionately affect Black and Latino voters. The VOTES Act, a voting reform law, expands early voting and no-excuse absentee voting. It was proposed by a Democratic-controlled legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Charlie […]

Kentucky surprised many in 2020 when, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials reached a bipartisan compromise expanding vote by mail and early voting access in a state that historically had some of the most restrictive voting access laws in the country. Kentucky has continued to buck national trends ever since. Lawmakers in the […]

Hours-long lines at polling places, baseless allegations of fraud and a law that makes voting more difficult have drawn international attention to Georgia elections. In a state with a long history of voter suppression, changes in advance of the 2020 election made casting a ballot easier for Georgians. Voters could drop their ballots off in […]

Colorado has continued to improve access to voting in the past two years, but advocates are urging an end to the state’s disenfranchisement of people who’ve been convicted of felonies.  In a different time, small improvements in voting access in Colorado would seem “niche” to wider observers. But baseless accusations of widespread voter fraud spurred […]

Voting in Arkansas was made considerably more difficult by a slew of new laws last year that create stricter voter ID requirements, signature matching, a special voter fraud hotline (despite no evidence of fraud), earlier absentee voting deadlines and much more.  In March, an Arkansas judge found many of these measures unconstitutional, but the state’s […]

Amid a failed attempt by supporters of former President Donald Trump to throw out the state’s 2020 election results based on false accusations of voter fraud, Republicans who control Arizona’s state legislature and governor’s office passed significant new obstacles to voting.  New laws allow for the purging of names from the state’s mail-in ballot voting […]

Maryland has been among the most aggressive states in the country over the past two years in making access to voting more equitable. Since 2020, the heavily Democratic Maryland state legislature has passed and Republican Gov. Larry Hogan signed new state laws that expand access to early voting and absentee ballots; improve voting access for […]

Language and other barriers faced by Indigenous communities and the inability to get information to voters in broadband deserts caused a distressingly high rate of ballot rejections in Alaska’s June primaries. These problems exacerbate longstanding issues of inequity in access to voting and political representation in Alaska, such as relying on a postal service heavily […]

When Alabama rewrote its state’s constitution in 1901, it limited voting to wealthy white men and established white supremacy as a guiding principle for state law. The fact that some clauses clearly violated provisions in the United States Constitution didn’t stop state leaders. It banned anyone from voting who wasn’t a male over 21, was […]