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State of Election Administration Legislation 2025 Mid-Year Report: Executive summary
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Absentee/mail-in voting • Early voting • Electoral systems • Voting rights for convicted felons • Private funding • Primary systems • Redistricting • Voter identification |
August 26, 2025
By Ballotpedia staff
Executive summary
This year is another of significant state legislative activity on election laws and voting policies. As of Aug. 15, Ballotpedia has tracked 4,705 election-related bills and resolutions—surpassing the total for 2022, 2023, and 2024. There are more than 500 new laws, nearing the most for any year in that time period.
As in previous years, Republican lawmakers and Republican trifecta states are driving most of this activity. This trend reflects both their advantage in legislative control—holding majorities in 57 of the 99 state legislative chambers—and greater control of state governments in general, with 23 trifectas compared to 15 for Democrats.
So far in 2025, Republican lawmakers have led efforts to:
- Implement checks of voters’ citizenship status through new data sources,
- Require absentee/mail-in ballots to arrive by Election Day to be counted,
- Ban ranked-choice voting (RCV), and
- Increase the signature requirement for initiatives to reach the ballot and raise the vote thresholds to approve those amendments once there.
Democratic lawmakers and states with Democratic trifectas remain active as well, often pushing for changes in the same areas but with different goals. Democratic lawmakers have passed laws to:
- Establish state level voting rights acts (VRAs) that grant a private right of action to enforce election laws,
- Expand automatic voter registration services,
- Provide language accommodations for voting materials and services, and
- Increase drop box availability and security measure.
While election law changes can be contentious, lawmakers have still found common ground. Bipartisan efforts have advanced legislation to:
- Align election dates,
- Revise ballot access rules for candidates,
- Increase the frequency of some voter list maintenance activities, and
- Update ballot processing procedures to speed up election results.
This report covers election-related legislative activity in 2025 state legislative sessions. Unless otherwise noted, all figures are current as of Aug. 15, 2025.
Ballotpedia's Election Administration Legislation Tracker
State election laws are changing. Keeping track of the latest developments in all 50 states can seem like an impossible job.
Here's the solution: Ballotpedia's Election Administration Legislation Tracker.
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:
- Ballotpedia's election experts provide daily updates on bills and other relevant political developments.
- We translate complex bill text into easy-to-understand summaries written in everyday language.
- And because it's from Ballotpedia, our Tracker is guaranteed to be neutral, unbiased, and nonpartisan.
About the authors
Joe Greaney is a staff writer on Ballotpedia's Law Team.
Ballotpedia Managing Editor Janie Valentine reviewed the report and provided feedback, as did Senior Editor Norm Leahy Associate Director of Features Cory Eucalitto.
See also
- Ballotpedia's Election Administration Legislation Tracker
- About Ballotpedia's Election Administration Legislation Tracker
- Voting laws in the United States
- Election Policy
