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State of Election Administration Legislation, March 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 |
March 26, 2024
Welcome to the State of Election Administration Legislation March 2024 Roundup. This monthly report looks at election-related activity from all active state legislatures, diving into the busiest states and the most consequential issues with an eye toward how policymakers are changing election administration in their states.
Through nearly three months of 2024, legislators have introduced more than 2,500 new election-related bills, with 24 states adopting 59 new election-related laws.
All figures are as of March 21, 2024, unless otherwise stated. We will release our next update in April, with regular monthly updates leading up to our mid-year report in June.
Click the following links to navigate through this month's report:
New laws
Lawmakers have enacted 59 election-related bills in 24 states so far in 2024. This is fewer bills during the same period when compared to last year (81 bills, in 18 states), but more than during the same period in the last-even year (45, 19).
States with Republican trifectas have been most active so far this year, approving 32 election-related bills in 12 states. Eight states with Democratic trifectas have approved 19 bills. Four states with divided governments have adopted eight new laws.
Last year, Republican trifecta states passed 57 bills in the same period while Democratic trifecta states passed just eight and states with divided governments passed 16.
During the same period in 2022, states with Republican trifectas passed 21 bills compared to 12 adopted bills in both states with Democratic trifecta and states with divided governments.
Of the 59 bills passed, 13 had Democratic sponsorship, 23 had Republican sponsorship. Sixteen bills had bipartisan sponsorship and the remaining seven bills were introduced without partisan sponsorship.
Frequent topics of newly adopted laws are Municipal election procedures (11 bills), Ballot access for candidates (8), and Administrative deadlines, Elections officials, Elections in specific jurisdictions, and Primary systems with five bills each.
Notable enacted bills include:
- Louisiana’s HB17 - Creates closed partisan primaries and primary runoffs for Congress and other offices, including the Louisiana Supreme Court, beginning in 2026. Currently, all candidates running for a local, state, or federal office appear on the same ballot regardless of their partisan affiliation. A candidate can win outright with a simple majority of the votes cast for the office (i.e., 50%, plus one vote).
- Indiana’s HB1264 - Adds new requirements to the voter registration application process and changes voter list maintenance procedures, including allowing officials to obtain commercially available data from a credit agency for voter address verification.
- Arizona’s HB2785 - Moves the 2024 statewide primary date up one week to July 30 and changes associated deadlines, moves up the required completion date for the canvass of an election, changes the deadlines for an election official to verify the signature on a provisional ballot to five days instead of ten, and more.
- Washington’s SB5843 - Creates new penalties for election interference, new election-related cybersecurity disclosure requirements, and mandates that counties install and maintain a cybersecurity intrusion detection system.
- Tennessee’s HB2294 - Moves up the deadline to request an absentee ballot from not less than 7 days before the election to not less than 10 days before the election.
- New Jersey’s A3690 - Allows registered voters who are 17 years-old to vote in primary elections if they will be 18 on or before the date of the general election.
There are also three legislatively referred constitutional amendments (LRCA) that have passed consideration, two in Wisconsin and one in West Virginia. Two of these LRCAs, one in each state, would prohibit noncitizens from voting in any election in their respective states, HJR21 in West Virginia and SJR71 in Wisconsin, which passed its second consideration in the Legislature. The remaining Wisconsin amendment, SJR73, would require photo identification to vote in any election and passed its first consideration. In Wisconsin, the legislature must approve an LRCA in two consecutive sessions before appearing on the ballot.
In Wisconsin, Question 1, Ban on Private and Non-Governmental Funding of Election Administration Amendment, will appear on the ballot at the April 2 statewide election. In West Virginia, the Prohibit Noncitizen Voting Amendment will appear on the ballot at the Nov. 5 general election.
Overview of introduced legislation
In total, there are 3,361 active election-related bills, with more than 2,500 introduced since the beginning of the year and the remainder carried over from last year’s sessions. There are more active bills 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 (319 bills), followed by Municipal election procedures (298), Ballot access for candidates (238), and In-person voting and polling places (211). To learn more about Ballotpedia’s election-related legislation topic categories, see here.
What's moving and where?
So far, 478 active or enacted election-related bills have passed at least one chamber of a legislature.
Legislators in two states with divided governments, Arizona (49 bills) and Virginia (44), have moved the most legislation. The most active Republican trifecta state has been Georgia (41), and New York (32) is the most active state with a Democratic trifecta.
The most frequent topic of active bills that have passed at least one chamber of a legislature is Municipal election procedures, with 69 such bills, followed by Ballot access for candidates (48), Election dates (33), In-person voting and polling places (31), and Voter registration (30).
Five states that have convened this year have not passed any election-related legislation out of either chamber: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, and Wyoming. Four other states, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, and Texas, do not have even-year legislative sessions.
Topics of note
Ballotpedia is paying close attention to several topics of note including legislation related to ranked-choice voting (RCV), voter registration, absentee/mail-in ballot administration, and ballot access for candidates.
Below are updates on these topics. Be on the lookout for future updates on these, and other topics as sessions progress.
Ranked-choice voting
There are 119 active bills on ranked-choice voting, including 90 introduced since the beginning of the year.
Legislators in 19 states have introduced legislation that would ban or repeal ranked-choice voting in their states. Seven of these bills, in six states, have passed at least one chamber of a legislature. All but one of these states has a Republican trifecta. One of those bills, in Utah, ultimately died without further advancement.
Since 2021, five states with Republican trifectas have passed legislation banning or prohibiting ranked-choice voting (RCV), including three states that did so last year.
Four bills that would allow or require new uses of RCV have passed at least one chamber. These are:
- Maine’s LD1578 requires RCV for presidential primaries and makes Maine a member of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
- Vermont’s S32 implements RCV for presidential primaries.
- Virginia’s SB270 would allow presidential primaries to use ranked-choice voting.
- Virginia’s SB248 would permit the use of RCV for any local or constitutional office.
Maine’s LD1578 is the only bipartisan-sponsored ranked-choice voting bill that has passed a legislative chamber. It is also the only RCV bill to pass two legislative chambers so far this year.
Voter registration
There are 450 active bills in 40 legislatures that deal with voter registration, making up nearly 15% of all election-related legislation Ballotpedia is tracking this year.
Democratic legislators introduced the majority of voter registration bills (226) across all states. Similarly, legislators have introduced more bills dealing with voter registration in Democratic trifecta states than in states with Republican trifectas or divided governments.
Forty-eight of these bills have advanced past at least one legislative chamber, including seven bills in Virginia and six in Arizona.
In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) vetoed SB606 on March 8. The bill would have required the state to rejoin the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). ERIC is a multi-state voter list maintenance compact. The Virginia Senate approved the bill 21-19 on Feb. 12. The House of Delegates voted 51-49 in favor of the bill on Feb. 21. Both votes were along partisan lines, with all Democrats in each chamber voting for passage, and all Republicans in each chamber voting against. A veto override requires a two-thirds vote by both houses of the general assembly.
Other legislation in Virginia includes SB300 which requires the state’s Department of Elections to create and maintain a public record of canceled voter registrations, including the reason for cancellation, and to retain such data for at least four years. Three Republicans joined all Democrats to pass the bill through the House of Delegates 54-45 on March 6th.
In Arizona,
- HB2590 requires counties to participate in a statewide voter registration database, instead of operating individual county databases approved by the secretary of state. Eight Democrats joined all Republicans to pass the bill through the lower chamber on Feb. 13th.
- HB2852 prohibits the state from becoming a member of a multi-state voter registration or voter list maintenance organization that requires the state to provide otherwise confidential voter registration information, or that requires certain voter outreach activities. The bill passed the lower chamber along partisan lines on Feb. 22nd.
- HB2482 requires county recorders (election clerks) to notify a voter of any change to their registration record within 24 hours by text or email if a phone number or email is available for the voter, or within ten days by mail if not. The bill passed the House of Representatives 57-0 on Feb. 20th.
Other notable bills not already mentioned in this edition of the Roundup include:
- Kentucky’s HB44 requires the secretary of state to issue an annual and publicly available report detailing voter registration cleanup activities. It also requires the creation of new voter list maintenance resources, including a database consisting of each address in the state and the number of registered voters at that address. One Democrat joined all Republicans to pass the bill through the Kentucky House of Representatives 75-1 on Feb. 23.
- Hawaii’s SB2240 requires application to join the Electronic Registration Information Center voter list maintenance compact by January 1, 2025. The bill passed the State Senate 11-0 on Feb. 20th.
Ballot access for candidates
More than 20 states are considering changes to their candidate ballot access laws. Laws governing ballot access vary by state and, frequently, by which office a candidate is seeking, and by whether the candidate is seeking a major, minor party, or independent placement on the ballot.
Notable bills related to ballot access not mentioned elsewhere in the Roundup include:
- Idaho’s H661 sets a deadline of August 1, instead of March 15, for independent candidates for U.S. President and Vice President to file a declaration of candidacy. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little (R) on March 12th, and took effect immediately.
- New York’s S8664 modifies the filing period for candidates to the U.S. House of Representative to account for changes related to legislative redistricting. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Feb. 28.
- West Virginia’s HB5289 prohibits a person who was a candidate for nomination by a recognized party from becoming a candidate for the same political office in the next election for a different political party. The bill passed the state senate 34-0 on March 4, and passed the lower chamber 95-2 on March 7.
Learn more about ballot access laws here.
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.
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