Search results

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 […]

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 […]

In the past two years, Oregon has improved multilingual access to ballot instructions, made it easier to register to vote and strengthened privacy and legal protections for election workers subject to harassment as former President Donald Trump spread false conspiracy theories about the results of the 2020 election.  Oregon has served as a decades-long model […]

Once a swing state, Ohio has turned solidly red. Extreme gerrymandering of legislative and congressional districts could keep it that way for a long time. Although Republicans control statewide offices such as governor, secretary of state and attorney general, the state is pretty evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Because of gerrymandering, Republicans boast supermajorities […]

One in five Black residents of Tennessee are prohibited by state law from voting. In combination with numerous other election barriers, advocates say, people of color have been broadly disenfranchised by white lawmakers maintaining their grip on power in the state.  Tennessee has one of the most draconian laws in the country stripping voting rights […]

Voting rights in North Carolina hinge on the balance of powers between the three branches of government.  For now, North Carolina residents have broad access to voting beyond showing up at the polls on Election Day. They can cast an absentee ballot by mail without having to provide a reason, or vote early in person […]

Texas has vacillated between occasionally prying open a smidgen of expanded access to the ballot box and then constraining it. It’s a state with a long history of voter intimidation and suppression — recorded since at least 1902, when it enacted an annual poll tax, designed to discourage Mexican-Americans, African Americans and poor whites from […]

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 […]

Rhode Island changed state law this summer to remove three significant election barriers, but roadblocks including a strict voter ID requirement remain an issue, particularly for voters of color. The Let RI Vote Act, enacted in June, allows residents to vote by mail without an excuse, drops the requirement that mail ballots be signed by […]

Experts widely agree that voting in California is getting easier: All registered voters now receive their ballots by mail, which can be tracked through a U.S. Postal Service serial number. Voters in many parts of the state can visit any voting center in their county instead of having a designated polling place. California law recently […]

Voting is, for the most part, easy in New Jersey. Over the past few years, the state has permanently expanded access to voting in several key areas. But advocates are pushing for a more complete transition to universal vote-by-mail access, among other changes they see as key to equity. During the first year of the […]

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 […]

A record number of people voted in Iowa two years ago. Its Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds responded by adopting a broad set of limitations last year that put up various roadblocks to absentee and election day voting. Voting rights advocates have called this legislation a blatant effort to suppress participation in elections after […]