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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 […]

A single Republican state senator who rejects former President Donald Trump’s false accusations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election has blocked a slew of proposed restrictions on voting rights in Idaho. Her retirement this fall and the state Republican Party’s sharp turn toward Trump’s right-wing conspiracy theory talking points have advocates bracing for […]

A court decision finding no explicit right in Pennsylvania to “cure” absentee ballots rejected due to minor paperwork mistakes, along with state Republicans’ aggressive attempts to roll back widespread use of mail-in ballots, is setting the stage for chaos in this November’s midterm elections.  Along with a ban on outside funding of local elections and […]

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 […]

Missouri’s Republican leaders have long placed restrictions on voting that have been shown to disproportionately impact Black and Latino citizens. Since the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump’s false claims that voter fraud led to his re-election loss, they’ve doubled down, passing a strict new photo ID requirement and making it a crime to […]

Earlier this year, South Carolina’s state legislature passed a wave of new election restrictions in a state that was already one of the most difficult places to vote in the country.  Republicans in control of the legislature and governor’s office enacted S108 in May 2022. While it created a 12-day early voting period that hadn’t […]

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 […]

Under threat of prosecution because of Kansas’ new election laws, the state’s League of Women Voters has stopped organizing voter registration drives. A strict ID requirement — left to local election officials to interpret — prevents some people from voting at the polls. If a voter casts their ballot absentee instead, the state’s subjective signature […]

Over the past year, partisan gerrymandering during Utah’s redistricting process has resulted in protests at the state capitol and legal challenges by voting rights groups.  The League of Women Voters of Utah and the Mormon Women for Ethical Government filed a lawsuit alleging that the new maps — which were created last year after 2020 […]

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 […]

From voter registration up to and on Election Day to a weeks-long early voting period to no required voter ID, it’s easy to see why Minnesota leads the country with the highest voter turnout at nearly 80%. However, advocates said Minnesota could improve equity in voting in a few areas, including  increased access to absentee […]

Under a Democratic-controlled legislature and former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, Virginia repealed its old photo ID requirements ahead of the 2020 presidential election, started registering voters automatically through the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles and opened absentee ballots to any registered voter, without requiring a specific reason or excuse.  With a legislature whose control is […]

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 […]

Vermont’s progressive election laws have put it in the top 10 among U.S. states in voter turnout for decades. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it switched to a universal vote-by-mail system for the 2020 election. Last year, it made that change permanent. It’s easy to register to vote in Vermont — something you […]

Washington state has steadily made access to voting more equitable in recent years and has long been a pioneer in providing universal access to voting by mail.  It’s one of five states in the U.S. that mails ballots to all registered voters for every election. The state has also made drop boxes more accessible. A […]

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 […]

Since 2020, Illinois has gone further than almost any other state to expand access to voting for both the overall population and some of the state’s most marginalized people. The state expanded early voting hours, made Election Day a state holiday and set a higher bar for local election officials to reject absentee ballots just […]

Even though West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner claims that the 2020 presidential election results were “fair” in his state, he questions the results in other states and has used former President Donald Trump’s claims about voter fraud to justify changes advocates fear will suppress voter turnout.  Earlier this year, the West Virginia state […]

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 […]

Hawaii was ahead of other states in moving to a universal mail ballot system that greatly improved access to voting. Even with an improvement in voter turnout, the state’s turnout remained among the lowest in the country for the 2020 election. Lawmakers looked more deeply into the reasons. They found that language troubles and homelessness […]

Wisconsin, a key battleground state that has a divided government and was narrowly won by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election, has been a focal point of a nationwide Republican push to further restrict access to voting. Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, has vetoed six Republican-backed bills that would have put up more barriers for […]

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 […]

Mississippi has the highest percentage of Black residents in the country at nearly 39%. White Republicans have long had total control over state government due to an array of voter suppression policies dating back to Reconstruction, designed to keep the formerly enslaved from exercising full citizenship rights.   Mississippi has an extreme felony disenfranchisement law, with […]

What does equality mean for the “Equality State” in a modern world? Wyoming got its nickname in 1869, before it was even a state, when the territory granted women the right to vote. In the 153 years since, waves of voter suppression tactics have followed closely after societal and political gains made by people of […]

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 […]

New Mexico has steadily expanded access to voting since Democrats took control of state government in 2018, but continues to disenfranchise citizens convicted of felonies. Starting this year, people in New Mexico can register to vote up to and on Election Day. Previously, voters had to register at least 28 days before Election Day.  “With […]

A judge has struck down a new law that would have allowed no-excuse mail-in ballots in Delaware this November, but upheld the state legislature’s adoption of same-day voter registration. Delaware allowed universal access to voting by mail two years ago amid concern about COVID-19. At the time, a different judge ruled that the change was […]

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 […]

For decades, multiple Indigenous tribes in North Dakota have sued the state for infringing on their voting rights, with mixed success.  In 2011, they were successful in keeping polling places open in Benson County after they were closed, and since 2013 they’ve both won and lost lawsuits over the details of North Dakota’s voter ID […]

Days before Florida’s primary this year, a new task force, dubbed  the “election police,” arranged the arrest of 20 people, putting them in handcuffs and loading them into police cruisers.  Their crime? Voting.  In 2018, Florida residents voted overwhelmingly to end the state’s draconian lifetime ban on voting for people who have been convicted of […]