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State of Election Administration Legislation 2025 Spring 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 |
March 20, 2025
By Ballotpedia staff
Executive summary
This year is shaping up as another of significant activity related to changing election laws and voting policies in state legislatures. As of March 11, Ballotpedia has tracked 3,505 election-related bills and resolutions — nearing the total for 2023 and 2024, and surpassing 2022.
As in previous years, Republican lawmakers and states with a Republican trifecta are driving most of this activity. This trend reflects both their advantage in legislative control — holding 55.7% of state legislative seats and 23 trifectas compared to 15 for Democrats — and their ongoing focus on revising election laws.
So far in 2025, Republican lawmakers have led efforts to:
- Require proof of citizenship for voter registration,
- End automatic or no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting,
- Ban ranked-choice voting (RCV), and
- Modify the ballot initiative process by increasing signature requirements for ballot access and raising vote thresholds for amendments.
Democratic lawmakers and states with Democratic trifectas remain active as well, often pushing for changes in the same areas but with different goals. Their efforts focus on:
- Expanding same-day and automatic voter registration,
- Mailing absentee/mail-in ballot request forms automatically or increasing the availability of drop boxes, and
- Authorizing new uses of RCV.
While election law changes can be contentious, lawmakers have still found common ground. Bipartisan efforts have advanced legislation to:
- Revise ballot access rules for candidates,
- Increase voter list maintenance activities, and,
- Update ballot counting procedures to speed up election results.
All 50 state legislatures will convene in 2025, though two have already adjourned their regular sessions. This report covers election-related legislative activity in 2025 state legislative sessions. Unless otherwise noted, all figures are as of March 11, 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 Marquee Team.
Ballotpedia Editor in Chief Geoff Pallay reviewed the report and provided feedback, as did Managing Editor 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
