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State of Election Administration Legislation, February 2024 Roundup
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Absentee/mail-in voting • Early voting • Electoral systems • Voting rights for convicted felons • Private funding • Primary systems • Redistricting • Voter identification |
February 15, 2024
Welcome to Ballotpedia’s first regular election-related legislation report of 2024. This report takes a look at election-related legislative activity from all active state legislatures, diving into the busiest states and the most consequential issues with an eye towards how policymakers are changing the administration of elections in their states.
This report will be released monthly throughout the year, with a longer-form mid-year, and end-of-year report. Through six weeks of 2024, we’ve seen more than 2,000 election-related bills newly introduced across the country, with eight states adopting new laws.
Take a look at other takeaways from the start of 2024 legislative sessions below. All figures are as of Feb. 15, 2024, unless otherwise stated. We’ll be back in mid-March and monthly thereafter with more updates.
Click the following links to navigate through this month's report:
New laws
Lawmakers have enacted 14 election-related bills in eight states so far in 2024. At the same time last year, just six bills had been enacted, while in the same period in 2022, 12 bills had been adopted.
States with Democratic and Republican trifectas have each passed six bills, but more Republican trifecta states have approved legislation. Two states with divided governments have also passed a bill.
Last year, Republican trifecta states passed four bills in the same period while Democratic trifecta states passed three. In 2022, states with Democratic trifectas were more active early in the year, passing six bills to Republicans’ two, while states with divided governments passed four.
Finally, of the 14 bills passed, four had Democratic sponsorship while three had Republican sponsorship. Of the remaining seven bills, four had bipartisan sponsorship and three were introduced without partisan sponsorship.
Most of the newly adopted bills alter election procedures in specific local jurisdictions or make small administrative changes to election administration. The most consequential change adopted so far comes from Louisiana's HB17, which creates closed partisan primaries and primary runoffs for Congress, the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Louisiana Public Service Commission and Louisiana Supreme Court beginning in 2026. Currently in Louisiana, all candidates running for a local, state, or federal office appear on the same ballot in either October (in odd-numbered years) or November (in even-numbered years), regardless of their partisan affiliations, and if a candidate wins a simple majority of all votes cast for the office (i.e., 50 percent, plus one vote), he or she wins the election outright.
Overview of introduced legislation
In total, lawmakers have acted upon 2,055 bills this year, with more bills introduced in Democratic trifectas than Republican trifectas and states with divided governments.
There are 23 Republican trifectas, 17 Democratic trifectas, and 10 divided governments where neither party holds trifecta control.
The most common topic among active bills in 2024 is Voter registration (120), followed by Municipal election procedures (109), Ballot access for candidates (101 bills), and Election dates (76). To learn more about Ballotpedia’s election-related legislation topic categories, see here.
What's moving and where?
One hundred and ninety-eight election-related bills have passed at least one chamber of a legislature this year. Legislators in Virginia have moved the most legislation (45 bills), followed by New York (29) and Georgia (19).
The most frequent topic of these bills is Municipal election procedures, with 30 such bills, followed by Ballot access for candidates (20 bills), and Election dates (14).
Twenty states that are in session, or that have been in session this year, have not passed any election-related legislation out of either chamber. Four states, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas, do not have even-year legislative sessions, while only one state has not yet convened this year, Arkansas.
Topics of note
There are several topic areas of note that Ballotpedia is paying close attention to, including legislation related to ranked-choice voting (RCV), voter registration, post-election audits, and changes to election dates.
Below are updates on these topics. Be on the lookout for future updates on these, and other topics as sessions progress.
Ranked-choice voting
Legislators in 11 states have introduced legislation that would ban ranked-choice voting in their states. Notable examples included Georgia’s SB355, which passed the Georgia State Senate 31-19 on Jan. 26th, and Wisconsin’s AJR101. Since 2021, five states have passed legislation banning or prohibiting ranked-choice voting (RCV), including three states that did so last year.
Elsewhere, lawmakers in Alaska and Maine have introduced legislation to repeal their state’s use of RCV. In Alaska, AB4 would repeal that state’s use of ranked-choice voting and an open top-four primary system originally established by Alaska Ballot Measure 2 in 2020. The bill was voted out of committee with a favorable recommendation on Jan. 18 this year.
Every state to ban or prohibit ranked-choice voting has done so with a Republican trifecta in control of state government.
Despite the efforts in new states to ban or prohibit RCV, bills introduced this year to adopt or expand the use of ranked-choice voting outnumber prohibitions by more than 2-to-1, including S1522 which would overturn Florida’s existing ban on the electoral system, and bipartisan efforts in South Carolina (H4022) and Wisconsin (AB563).
Finally, two bills passed the Virginia State Senate on Feb. 12th, SB270 and SB248, which would expand that state’s use of RCV. The first would allow presidential primaries to use ranked-choice voting, while the second would permit the use of RCV for any local or constitutional office. Both bills passed by a vote of 21-19.
Voter registration
Notable bills related to voter registration include a number modifying voter list maintenance protocols, as well bills that address youth pre-registration, which typically permit 16 and 17-year-olds to register to vote.
Among states with active legislation modifying voter roll maintenance laws are several states, Florida, Missouri, Virginia, and West Virginia, that recently withdrew from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a multi-state voter list maintenance compact. The bulk of such legislation in these states relates to establishing new list maintenance procedures, such as S1602 in Florida which requires election officials to conduct a quarterly review of voter registration rolls using data from other state agencies. Some bills, however, seek to reverse withdrawal, such as Virginia’s HB1177 which would require Virginia to re-apply to ERIC. That bill passed the Virginia House of Delegates 50-48 on Feb. 13. One other bill, California’s AB2050, would require application to ERIC.
Separately, bills in at least five states, Alaska, Illinois, Kansas, New Jersey, and Maryland would allow 16 or 17-year-olds to register to vote, while bills in at least four states, Arizona, Kansas, Maryland and New York, would lower the voting age to 16-years-old for at least some elections. Democratic legislators sponsored all of these bills.
Post-election audits
Legislators in 20 states have introduced bills this year that would expand or modify post-election audit requirements, including several efforts to implement new risk-limiting audit requirements.
In Georgia, Republican-sponsored HB977 would expand an existing requirement for risk-limiting audits to new contests and passed the Georgia House of Representatives 164-3 on Feb. 12. In New York, Democratic-sponsored A3738 would implement a new risk-limiting audit requirement. New York currently requires traditional post-election audits for certain contests.
Elsewhere, Republican legislators in three states have introduced bills that would require hand count audits: H4259 in South Carolina, HB1189 in Virginia, and SB1651 in Arizona. Most post-election audit requirements include some element of hand counting, but recently there has been a new emphasis on hand counting requirements, mostly in Republican controlled states.
As of January 2024, 41 states and D.C. required some form of post-election audit, whether a traditional audit, a risk-limiting audit, or a procedural audit. To learn more, see here.
Election dates
Legislation related to election dates has been one of the most common bill types introduced in 2024. This continues a pattern that saw legislators in 20 states introduce legislation in 2023 that would eliminate or consolidate certain election dates.
The degree to which election timing affects voter turnout varies by state and by jurisdiction, but studies comparing turnout for local off-cycle elections to voter turnout in on-cycle elections universally show significantly lower turnout in off-cycle elections.
Notable bills this year include Republican-sponsored SB1131 in Arizona which would invalidate any election with a turnout of less than 25% of registered voters and require that election to be repeated at an election with a state or federal candidate on the ballot.
Elsewhere, four bills that would consolidate election dates have been introduced in West Virginia, and eight other bills in six states would change school board or bond election dates.
Noncitizen voting
Thirty bills related to noncitizen voting have either been introduced or acted on by legislators this year. The majority of these bills prohibit noncitizens from voting in any elections or codify existing restrictions, including SB143 which passed the Kentucky State Senate 31-4 on Feb. 12th.
Noncitizens are not permitted to vote in any federal elections under federal law, and no state constitution explicitly allows noncitizens to vote in state or local elections. Currently, seven states specify that noncitizens may not vote in state and local elections, while municipalities in three states, and the District of Columbia, allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
Methodology
This report leverages Ballotpedia’s Election Administration Legislation Tracker to deliver insights on the changing landscape of election administration. We continually improve our tracking and tagging systems and, as such, year-on-year comparisons do not necessarily account for changes made to the tracker’s layout and infrastructure.
State election laws are changing. Keeping track of the latest developments in all 50 states can seem like an impossible job.
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Ballotpedia's Election Administration Tracker sets the industry standard for ease of use, flexibility, and raw power. But that's just the beginning of what it can do:
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