Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Alabama: A collection of bills aimed to enhance voting access in Alabama were never considered by committees during the 2025 legislative session, but advocates say the fight for enhanced voting rights in Alabama is not over HB 59, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, would have required one early voting precinct in each county for one week before Election Day. The bill was assigned to the House Constitution, Campaigns and Elections Committee, but Rep. Bob Fincher, R-Woodland, chair of the committee, said he did not take HB 59 up in his committee because he is not in favor of early voting due to the cost to the state. HB 97, sponsored by Rep. Kenyatté Hassell, D-Montgomery, would have allowed voters to cure their absentee ballot affidavit if they submit them before the election and the absentee election manager finds an error. Currently, the ballots are set aside and not counted if election officials find a defect with the affidavits. The bill was assigned to Fincher’s committee, but Fincher said he did not take it up because of conversations with other legislators and the Secretary of State Wes Allen. HB 31, sponsored by Rep. Adline Clarke, D-Mobile, allows people with a disability, or those unable to read or write, to designate someone to assist them with delivering an absentee ballot application or the absentee ballot itself, to the election manager.
District of Columbia: U.S. House lawmakers voted this to repeal a law allowing noncitizens to vote in local DC elections. “The right to vote is a defining privilege of American citizenship,” Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said on the House floor. “Diluting that right by extending it to noncitizens — whether here legally or illegally — undermines the voice of D.C. residents.” The vote to repeal the city’s noncitizen voting law marked the third time the House has sought to block the law in as many years, showing the GOP’s relentless mission to stop the policy ever since it passed the D.C. Council in 2022. The repeal effort has repeatedly garnered broad bipartisan support, with 56 Democrats joining Republicans in the 266-148-1 vote this time, a slight uptick from previous years.
Maine: Lawmakers advanced a bill this week to allow ranked choice voting to be used in statewide elections, including for governor. If enacted, the bill may set up a confrontation in court. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court issued a 2017 advisory opinion that using ranked choice voting for state-level offices conflicted with the state Constitution, which says such offices are determined by who gets the most votes. Currently, ranked choice voting is used in Maine for federal offices and in gubernatorial and state-level primary elections. Some cities, such as Portland and Westbrook, also use ranked choice voting for local elections. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Cameron Reny, D-Round Pond, cleared both chambers this week in mostly party-line votes, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed. It narrowly passed in an initial 72-70 vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday with seven people absent and it cleared the Senate 20-14 without debate on June 10. The bill faces additional votes in each chamber before it can be sent to Gov. Janet Mills, whose aides did not respond to questions about the proposal. Opponents argued that the bill would conflict with the Maine Law Courts’ advisory opinion and would expand a system that is confusing to some voters. But proponents said a case decided by the Alaska Supreme Court dismantled Maine’s advisory opinion and upheld the constitutionality of the system.
A bill aimed at requiring voters to show a photo ID before voting has failed. It didn’t make it out of committee at the State House. LD 38 would have required the secretary of state to provide free IDs to people who need them. The Republican initiative aimed to reassure Mainers that state elections are secure, though some Republicans admit there is no widespread voter fraud in the state. Even though the bill is dead in Augusta, Maine voters will still get to have their say on this issue in November after a citizen’s petition put a voter ID question on the ballot.
Nevada: Governor Joe Lombardo has vetoed Assembly Bill 105, which would have prohibited firearms in, or within a certain distance of, an election site. The bill would have also required the county clerk, city clerk, or registrar of voters to post a sign at each election site notifying people that having a firearm at the site was prohibited and listing the possible penalties. The bill passed 27 to 14 with one excused in the State Assembly, and passed 13 to 8 in the State Senate. In his veto message, Governor Lombardo said that the bill was commendable in its intent to enhance public confidence in the safety of our election process. However, he went on to say that the bill simply duplicated protections already established under federal and state law against voter intimidation.
New Hampshire: The House made it more difficult to vote by absentee ballot passing several bills that will require more information to vote in absentia. The House also failed to change the state’s primary election day from September to June, and decided cities and towns have to purge their voter checklists yearly instead of once in a decade. The House voted to require that people registering for an absentee ballot will now have to present proof they are a United States citizen to receive the ballot. Supporters of Senate Bill 218, said the bill simply brings the requirements to register for an absentee ballot in line with registering to vote in person by adding a person needs to prove citizenship through a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers. Women who changed their names when they married would need to provide proof of the change from their maiden name. The bill passed on a 192-149 vote and goes to the Senate because of changes the House made. The House also approved Senate Bill 287 which will require a photo ID to obtain an absentee ballot. The House also approved a bill that would require town and city clerks to purge their checklist annually. Currently the lists are purged every 10 years. The House voted down Senate Bill 222 which would have changed the state’s primary from the second Tuesday in September to the second Tuesday in June.
Vermont: A sweeping elections bill that has been years in the making is advancing at the Vermont Statehouse. Since first implementing universal vote by mail during the pandemic, other election policy proposals in the past few sessions failed to make it to the finish line. But lawmakers this week were able to strike a deal advancing a bipartisan bill. The measure is a big priority for state elections officials who say the changes are needed to make the 2026 election run smoother. Changes include auditing voter checklists and district boundaries; requiring write-in candidates to register in primary elections, and ways to streamline the counting of those ballots. The measure also restricts candidates who lose a party primary to run for the general election under a different party or as an Independent — what is known as “taking a second bite of the apple.” A provision to have ranked-choice voting for the next presidential primary was not included in the bill.
Texas: Texans will have a new schedule for early voting in coming years under new legislation that starts the voting period later but slides it right up to Election Day, eliminating the three-day break in between. According to Votebeat, experts say Senate Bill 2753, which lawmakers approved this week, will likely boost turnout, as it includes more time for voting on weekends. The author of the bill, Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican from North Texas, told Votebeat that the change also “simplifies the process” and would reduce the cost of election operations and equipment. But local election officials said they aren’t so sure of that, and are still determining how it will work and what it could cost counties. The bill doesn’t allocate any funding for counties to implement the changes. And there’s one notable side effect of taking away the gap after the early-voting period: Partial vote tallies from the early ballots, which are typically released shortly after polls close on Election Day, won’t be available until later, election administrators said. The bill is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature, though it can become law without it.
Washington: Initiative Measure No. IL26-126 is sponsored by Rep. Jim Walsh, R-Aberdeen, the Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party. Walsh and others want to strengthen the integrity of the state’s voter database by requiring verification of citizenship for voter registration. Under the initiative, county auditors would determine whether each person on the voter list has demonstrated proof of citizenship. Those who have not will be notified to produce this documentation or be dropped from the registration list and would not receive a ballot. The verification requirements could be met if people produce documentation such as a U.S. passport, a birth certificate, or a certificate of naturalization. “It focuses on the voter ID, the proof of citizenship to register to vote. That’s the only thing it does. It does not touch vote-by-mail mechanisms,” Walsh said. “In the big picture, would we like to see some of those other reforms here in Washington? Yes, but we believe that the voter ID part is the first step and we may address those others later.”
Wisconsin: There were five statewide referendum questions on the ballot in 2024 and now lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have proposed bills aimed at simplifying ballot questions. Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers proposed separate legislation aimed at making statewide referendum questions easier for voters to understand. While state law already mandates that referendum questions must be written concisely and in the affirmative, it does not require questions to be written in plain language — a way that makes them easily understandable for the general public. Both bills aim to make referendum questions and constitutional amendments easier to understand for Wisconsin voters, though they differ on how that would be accomplished. The Democrat-authored bill would require referendum questions to be written in plain language to avoid tricky phrasing that could confuse voters. In addition to using plain language for questions on the ballot, the bill would require referendum questions related to constitutional amendments to clarify for voters whether the proposed changes already exist in state statute. On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jerry O’Connor, R-Fond Du Lac, said that rather than just putting the questions in plain language, the bill he co-authored goes a step farther by creating an informational notice with the full text of the referendum question or proposed amendment, an explanation in plain language what a “yes” or “no” vote means and a summary of current law in plain text, if applicable.
Legal Updates
Arkansas: A three-judge federal court panel dismissed with prejudice a case challenging Arkansas’ congressional district map. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by a group of voters and the Christian Ministerial Alliance. It claimed boundaries for Arkansas’ 2nd Congressional District were racially gerrymandered and diluted the votes of Black Arkansans. Congressional and state legislative districts are redrawn after the U.S. Census each decade in a process known as redistricting. The goal is to create districts that contain roughly the same population. The Ministerial Alliance’s lawsuit was one of four filed to challenge Arkansas’ 2021 redistricting process and the only one that hadn’t been dismissed. U.S. Circuit Judge David Stras, U.S. District Judge D.P. Marshall Jr. and U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. granted the state’s motion for summary judgment, saying there was not enough evidence to support the plaintiffs’ racial discrimination claims. “Multiple Arkansas citizens challenge how the General Assembly redrew the state’s congressional district lines,” Friday’s order states. “Although their allegations were plausible enough to survive a motion to dismiss [Docs. 35, 42], the evidence does not back up their claims of racial discrimination. For that reason, we grant summary judgment to Secretary of State John Thurston.”
California: The Fresno County Board of Supervisors said this week they will appeal a court ruling that elections for top law enforcement leaders must be held during presidential elections, when voter turnout is highest. The county lost the lawsuit last week brought by state Attorney General Rob Bonta and Secretary of State Shirley Weber, which argued setting the election on gubernatorial cycles was against state law. The supervisors discussed the case in closed session, and released a statement afterward. “The county respectfully disagrees with the superior court and intends to challenge the ruling in the court of appeal,” the statement read in full. The supervisors came to a consensus and no vote was taken, according to county spokesperson Sonja Dosti. A Fresno County Superior Court judge ruled June 2 to invalidate Fresno County’s Measure A. The 2024 ballot initiative that passed and aligned Fresno County District Attorney and Sheriff elections with the off cycle, which has a lower voter turnout than those on the presidential cycle. The measure passed with a 55% vote but was at odds with an earlier law, Assembly Bill 759, that aligned the elections. Gubernatorial races across the state routinely draw lower numbers of voters than presidential. The most recent presidential election in Fresno in 2024 saw an almost 60% turnout, while the off-cycle election two years earlier drew 27% of voters.
Georgia: This week, the state Supreme Court overturned four rules passed by the State Election Board just before last year’s general election, ruling the board overstepped its authority and intruded on lawmaking power reserved for legislators under the state constitution. The state Supreme Court’s unanimous decision limits the future rulemaking ability of the State Election Board and other executive branch agencies of Georgia’s government. The board passed a slate of new rules in August and September that mostly had to do with processes after ballots are cast, spawning a flurry of lawsuits. The new rules brought an outcry that the board’s majority was trying to improperly use its power to help Donald Trump. The board members claimed the changes were needed to improve the accuracy of results. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox ruled in October that seven of the rules were “illegal, unconstitutional and void,” but the board appealed. In its decision, the state Supreme Court invalidated the requirements that ballots be hand-counted after the close of polls, that someone delivering an absentee ballot in person provide a signature and photo ID, that county election board members be allowed to conduct a “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results and that county election board members be granted broad access to election-related documents. The court let stand a rule requiring video surveillance and recording of ballot drop boxes after polls close during early voting. It told a lower court to decide whether Chatham County Board of Elections member James Hall has the right to challenge two other rules, which expand designated areas where partisan poll watchers can stand at tabulation centers and require daily public updates of the number of votes cast during early voting. As part of its decision, the court overturned a 1990 decision that widened the rulemaking power of state agencies. Chief Justice Nels Peterson wrote that the decision was a mistake because it doesn’t “provide clear, objective guidelines that cabin an executive branch agency’s exercise of discretion.”
A man falsely accused of voting fraud in the conspiracy film “2000 Mules” tried to hold its producers responsible, asking a federal judge to rule in his favor. But the moviemakers, including conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza and the election group True the Vote, said they couldn’t have defamed a man whose face was blurred and who wasn’t identified by name. U.S. District Judge Steven Grimberg didn’t signal how he would rule, asking skeptical questions of both sides before deciding whether to send the case to a jury or dismiss it. “This case is not that complicated. It’s about defendants working together to spread a lie,” said Lea Haber Kuck, an attorney for Mark Andrews, an auditor from Gwinnett County who brought the suit. “They accuse him of committing a crime … and expose him to ridicule, hatred and contempt.” The lawsuit centers on an eight-second surveillance video featured in “2000 Mules” that shows Andrews returning absentee ballots for himself and four family members at a drop box before the 2020 election. D’Souza, speaking as the narrator, tells the audience “What you are seeing is a crime. These are fraudulent votes.” State election investigators cleared Andrews, and D’Souza later apologized, saying the film was based on “inaccurate information.” Dropping off ballots for family members is legal in Georgia.
Michigan: The House of Representatives announced June 5 that it has filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for her alleged failure to comply with a subpoena issued by the chair of the chamber’s oversight body. The complaint, House of Representatives v. Benson, filed in the Michigan Court of Claims on Wednesday, follows the House Oversight Committee’s request for election training materials from Benson and her office, which resulted in a subpoena. House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Township) last month asked the full chamber to hold Benson in civil contempt for her alleged failure to provide the materials, which the House moved as a resolution later that day. Now, the chamber’s Republicans have sued Benson seeking a declaratory judgment holding that the House issued a valid subpoena to which the secretary of state must comply. That lawsuit also seeks an injunction prohibiting Benson or the Michigan Department of State from modifying relevant records in the initial request. Department spokesperson Cheri Hardmon said in a statement that Benson asked lawmakers to let a court review their request for sensitive information that, in the wrong hands, would compromise the security of the state’s elections.
Nevada: Former elections chief Cari-Ann Burgess has filed a lawsuit against Washoe County, detailing what she calls a toxic work environment, coercion and retaliation.Burgess was sidelined throughout the final weeks of the 2024 election when Washoe was in the national spotlight as a swing county in a swing state for the presidential race. At the time, the county put out a statement that she was stressed and had requested time off for self-care. She said this was not true. Her lawsuit alleges county Manager Eric Brown and others coerced her to take personal leave and threatened her with insubordination and investigation if she talked about what was going on with the media, commissioners or staff. Her lawsuit also alleges: Assistant County Manager Kate Thomas engaged in “a pattern of bullying and harassment” against her.; Her privacy was violated by revealing personal health information regarding anxiety and high blood pressure; And that the county’s public comments about her have hurt future job prospects. The county terminated her employment on Feb. 12. “The county is in the process of reviewing the amended complaint, which was only recently filed and served,” said Kendall Holcomb, Washoe County District Attorney’s Office spokesperson. “We plan to file a response and vigorously defend the action. Due to pending litigation, we have no further comment at this time.” Washoe County has until July 31 to reply to Burgess’ complaint.
Oregon: On June 6, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would file a “statement of interest” in an ongoing suit between a number of conservative plaintiffs and the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. The U.S. DOJ says it is watching the case closely for signs Oregon violated a federal law, the National Voter Registration Act. “Accurate voter registration rolls are critical to ensure that elections in Oregon are conducted fairly, accurately, and without fraud,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon said in a statement. “States have specific obligations under the list maintenance provisions of the NVRA, and the Department of Justice will vigorously enforce those requirements.” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read declined to comment on the filing, citing ongoing litigation. “What I can say is that we take our responsibility to maintain secure, accurate voter rolls seriously,” Read said in a statement. “Oregonians want and deserve fair and free elections, and we must do everything in our power to deliver.” The Oregon Department of Justice said it was researching the matter. At issue is a lawsuit filed in October by the national conservative group Judicial Watch, along with the Constitution Party of Oregon and two individual Oregonians, Suni Danforth and Hannah Shipman.
Pennsylvania: The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a Republican appeal and left in place a Pennsylvania court decision allowing people to cast provisional ballots when their mail-in votes are rejected for not following technical procedures in state law. The court released the decision June 6, after an “apparent software malfunction” sent out early notifications about orders that had been slated to be released Monday. A technological error also resulted in an opinion being posted early last year. The justices acted in an appeal filed by the Republican National Committee, the state GOP and the Republican-majority election board in Butler County. Pennsylvania’s top court ruled last year that the county must count provisional ballots that were cast by two voters after they learned their mail-in ballots were voided because they arrived without mandatory secrecy envelopes. Pennsylvania Democrats had urged the court to stay out of the case.
Utah: Former gubernatorial candidate Phil Lyman filed a federal lawsuit against Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson on June 6, seeking access to voter registration data and arguing that Utah’s law allowing voters to make their information private runs afoul of federal law. Lyman, a former state lawmaker, has long claimed Utah’s elections are fraudulent and sought to obtain the complete voter rolls after losing the GOP primary to Gov. Spencer Cox last summer. Lyman regularly accused Henderson, the state’s top election official, of fraud and tried to have her and Cox thrown out of office. His latest lawsuit, however, doesn’t allege any malfeasance on Henderson’s part but says Utah’s law on private voter records conflicts with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which requires that voter registration records be public. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court with the help of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative firm based in Virginia that has filed similar suits in other states and made claims of voter fraud. A spokesman for Henderson said the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office does not comment on active or pending litigation.
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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