Ballot Measures, Legislation & Rulemaking
Arizona: This week, the Senate will take up a proposal to force all 15 of the state’s counties to sign an agreement with ICE “to provide for a federal immigration law enforcement presence at each location within this state where ballots are cast or deposited.” The Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee is slated to take up the strike-everything amendment to Senate Bill 1570 either Wednesday or Friday. (The committee has scheduled nearly 60 bills for hearings over the two meetings, but it’s unknown which measures will be considered on which day. This is the final week for legislative committees to hear bills.) Even if it passes, the proposal by Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, seems to directly run afoul of federal law, which bars “any troops or armed men” who are part of “the civil, military, or naval service of the United States” from being deployed to polling locations. The only exception is if doing so is needed to “repel armed enemies of the United States.”
Florida: An elections bill that would tighten voter citizenship verification requirements, overhaul post-election auditing procedures and expand state oversight of voter rolls cleared its second House Committee despite ardent opposition by voting access advocates. The House State Affairs Committee voted to advance HB 991, sponsored by Fort Myers Republican Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, despite opposition by Democrats. The bill would require the U.S. citizenship status of every Florida voter to be verified through Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) records before their voter registration application is considered valid. Applicants whose citizenship cannot be confirmed would be designated as “unverified voters” until they provide proof of citizenship. Residents who appear to vote without citizenship verification would be issued a provisional ballot, which would only count if citizenship documentation is submitted by 5 p.m. two days following the election. The measure also modifies the voter registration oath and strengthens backend verification. If citizenship cannot be confirmed through existing databases, she said the bill specifies acceptable documentation and preserves due process protections.
With no objections, the House has passed a bill that would relax rules for students who volunteer at polling places. HB 461, sponsored by Republican Rep. Kiyan Michael, says the ban on privately-funded election-related expenses would not bar high school students who are registered or preregistered to vote from voluntarily helping poll workers in exchange for community service hours that apply to Bright Futures scholarships. Students can preregister to vote beginning when they turn 16. The bill would take effect July 1, meaning that eligible students could begin participating in the process during the August Primaries this year if it becomes law. A companion bill (SB 564) is moving in the Senate, where Republican Sen. Clay Yarborough is the sponsor.
Idaho: Changes could be coming to when some Idaho elections are held and when certain voters — particularly in rural areas — receive their ballots under a proposal moving through the Legislature. Rep. Brandon Mitchell presented House Bill 726 to the House State Affairs Committee on Monday, Feb. 18, 2026, describing it as a cleanup bill to Idaho’s election procedures. The measure would make several changes to state election law. Among them, it would shift upcoming elections for soil and water conservation district supervisors. Elections currently scheduled for November 2026 and November 2028 would instead be held in May of the following year as part of a transition. Mitchell said the proposal was brought forward by county clerks and the Secretary of State’s Office. The bill would also require mail-in ballots to be sent no sooner than 45 days before Election Day, compared with the current 24-day timeline, and no later than 11 days before the election, instead of the current 14-day deadline. Additionally, the legislation would shorten the timeframe for counties to certify election results. Current law allows up to 10 days for counties to finalize results; under the proposal, that window would be reduced to nine days.
Indiana: Indiana’s early voting period would be cut from 28 days to 16 days in a year-old push revived by Republican state senators. The proposal for fewer early voting days was added Monday by the Senate Elections Committee through an amendment; no public testimony was allowed. Committee Chair Sen. Mike Gaskill, R-Pendleton, said the change he proposed would still allow for three weekends of in-person early voting ahead of Election Day. “A shorter amount of time for early voting will save money and also make it easier to administer the election,” Gaskill said. The early voting change was inserted into Senate Bill 1359, which was focused on rules for when local election officials could scan early voting ballots. The committee voted 7-2 along party lines to advance it to the full Senate. Gaskill didn’t allow any public testimony on the amendment, saying the committee had heard from the public about shortening the time for early voting when it considered a similar bill last year. That 2025 proposal called for a 14-day early voting period. It cleared the Senate Elections Committee but never was called for a full Senate vote because it did not have enough support to pass. The bill cleared the House last month, so if the early voting change wins Senate approval it could become law without any public testimony on the issue during this year’s session. Gaskill called his proposal for a 16-day early voting period a compromise from last year’s 14-day proposal. “I think this is going to increase those lines and put some really heavy burdens on our (county) clerks,” Sen. J.D. Ford, D-Indianapolis said. “Essentially this is going to take away from working-class folks who need that time because they might have an inflexible work schedule or caregiving responsibilities or even transportation issues.”
Kansas: The House used emergency procedures to pass a bill in just one day that would require all driver’s licenses to show citizenship, which supporters say will help prevent voter fraud. Republicans say it’s important to put citizenship on driver’s licenses to close a loophole that might allow voter fraud, while Democrats say the bill will expose Kansans who aren’t citizens to discrimination. Supporters of the bill say right now, there’s no way for a poll worker who is the last line of defense on election security, to know whether a person is a non-citizen. Currently, non-citizens can get a temporary driver’s license, but it looks just like a US citizen’s license. If this bill goes through, the non-citizen license would list the person’s citizenship status. It will now go to the Senate for consideration.
Kentucky: A bipartisan bill that would pave the way for Kentucky to restore voting rights to some people who have served sentences for felony convictions passed out of a Senate committee this week. Voters would have the final say at the ballot box in November if the General Assembly approves Senate Bill 80, sponsored by Sens. Jimmy Higdon and Keturah Herron. It proposes a constitutional amendment to restore the right to vote after a felony conviction except when the felony involved treason, election bribery or fraud, a crime against a child or violent or sexual offenses. Higdon, a Lebanon Republican, had proposed legislation in 2020 that was similar to the current bill, but it did not make it through the legislature. He began working with Herron, a Louisville Democrat, on the issue around that time, before she was elected to the General Assembly. “When a felon has served their time, served their probation period, this bill would automatically give them their voting rights back,” Higdon told the Senate State and Local Government Committee. He added that Kentucky is one of two states that do not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons after they serve their sentences. Higdon also said that SB 80 would remove a controversial section of the Kentucky Constitution that says “idiots and insane persons” cannot vote. The amended language says people “determined by a court of competent jurisdiction to be mentally incompetent and who have not retained their voting rights or had those rights restored” would be among those who cannot vote.
A bill cleared a Senate committee this week that would restrict more forms of secondary identification that can be used by voters to cast a ballot in Kentucky elections — even though state records show only a tiny fraction of voters use them. The Kentucky General Assembly passed a law in 2020 requiring voters to have valid identification with their photo on it in order to vote, but also allowed secondary forms of identification if they signed an affidavit affirming their identity. Last year, lawmakers passed a law to exclude credit cards with the voter’s name as a valid secondary identification, and Senate Bill 154 that advanced Wednesday would also strike social security and food assistance cards from the list of acceptable secondary IDs under the 2020 law.
Maryland: Sen. Katie Fry Hester (D-Howard and Montgomery Counties) is leading the charge on artificial intelligence (AI) regulations with the 2026 election cycle fast-approaching. Her first bill, SB0141 — which passed with unanimous bipartisan support in the Senate last week —, specifically targets the use of AI-generated deepfakes to distribute election misinformation. The bill would allow the state administrator of elections to seek an injunction for the removal of any election misinformation from online platforms and then require the administrator to release the correct information to the public. After the content is taken down, the bill would give the state the ability to file a civil action against the perpetrator of misinformation, eligible for a maximum fine of $5,000 and five years in prison. Maryland Administrator of Elections Jared DeMarinis testified in support of the bill, explaining it would give his office the necessary tools to address false information efficiently. “The quicker that I can react to dis and misinformation, then I can help voters feel more empowered,” DeMarinis said. The legislation now heads to the House of Delegates for approval. “This criminalizes the use of artificial intelligence to show an image of a polling place on fire, or advising voters that the election is over and they need not vote,” Deputy State Prosecutor Sarah David told members of the Senate Education, Energy and Environment Committee.
Mississippi: February 12th was the deadline for the Legislature to pass some bills in the full Senate or House. Those that were not approved by one chamber or another died, although lawmakers can sometimes revive measures by amending bills that lived. Elections and voting issues are some of the hottest debated policy items at the Capitol. For the fifth straight year, lawmakers failed to agree on a way to restore Mississippi’s ballot initiative. Each year in recent years, lawmakers push to reform Mississippi’s election laws and notorious lax campaign finance laws. But these efforts over the last several years, including this current session, have mostly sputtered. Here is a list of where election-related bills stand so far in the 2026 legislative session: The Robert Clarke Jr. Voting Rights Act: Several Democratic lawmakers pushed legislative leaders to pass a state version of the federal Voting Rights Act, but the measures died in both the House and Senate. Supporters said the proposal was designed to safeguard minority voting rights, as the U.S. Supreme Court has indicated it will reconsider provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act and has already overturned some. The state legislation would have prohibited dilution of minority voters, established a Mississippi Voting Rights Commission, and required some jurisdictions to obtain preclearance approval from the commission for changes to voting regulations. The bills were named in honor of Robert G. Clark Jr., who in 1967 became the first Black Mississippian elected to the state Legislature in the modern era.Proof of citizenship to vote: The House and Senate have passed bills that could make it more onerous for people without a driver’s license to register to vote, a proposal legislative leaders have said would allow local elections officials to verify a person’s citizenship. The Safeguard Honest Integrity in Elections for Lasting Democracy, or SHIELD, Act would require county registrars to conduct extra checks on people who try to register to vote without a driver’s license number. Under the bill, if someone tried to register and could not produce a license number, the clerk would have to verify whether the person appears in a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services database called SAVE. Government agencies use the federal database to verify an applicant’s immigration status or citizenship. The bill would also require election officials to notify applicants flagged as non-citizens and require them to prove citizenship.
New Mexico: The Senate voted to approve a politically-tinged election bill on February 15, sending it on to the House with just a few days left in this year’s 30-day legislative session. The measure, Senate Bill 264, would make it a state-level crime for troops, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, to be deployed to polling places or to block registered voters from casting a ballot. It passed the Senate on a straight party-line 26-16 vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans in opposition. Backers of the legislation said the bill was prompted by President Donald Trump’s recent calls to “nationalize” elections. “We have to be prepared,” said Sen. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, D-Albuquerque, at one point during Sunday’s debate. “We’ve heard enough in the rhetoric of this president to show we’re doing absolutely the right thing.” But Republicans blasted the measures as misguided, with Senate Minority Leader William Sharer, R-Farmington, calling the bill dealing with election interference a “tin foil hat” law. “
Senators were also poised late Sunday to vote on a separate bill eliminating an existing exemption for licensed concealed-carry permit holders to bring their gun to vote. That bill, Senate Bill 261, would largely do away with exemptions enshrined in a 2024 bill signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham that prohibited carrying firearms within 100 feet of polling places — and within 50 feet of ballot drop boxes — in an attempt to address possible voter intimidation. However, it would leave in place an exemption for law enforcement officers to bring firearms to polling places in certain limited situations, including when summoned by a county clerk or election judge.
Clay County, Texas: The Clay County Commissioners Court voted during a special meeting this week to eliminate the county’s election administrator position, just two weeks ahead of the primary elections. Commissioners voted to abolish the office following controversy surrounding the former election administrator who was terminated after allegations of bias towards local candidates during elections. “The motion was made, discussion was held, and the commissioners voted to abolish the election administrator’s office,” county officials said. Clay County Judge Mike Campbell said the decision was driven by ongoing challenges with the position and funding concerns. “Certainly there’s been some challenges over the years, and this was the commissioners court’s way of resolving those challenges so that we don’t have to deal with that again,” Campbell said. With the position now vacant, election responsibilities will be transferred to the county clerk. The Texas Secretary of State will oversee the upcoming primary elections. Campbell said the county is confident Election Day will run smoothly with the state’s assistance, though he acknowledged concerns about how the change could impact other entities. “It’s going to be a challenge for our schools and for our cities that we’ve done elections for,” Campbell said. “That is concerning for us. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Washington: Efforts to enact new barriers to Washington’s initiative process ended quietly this week. Senate Bill 5973, dubbed the “initiative-killer” by opponents, lapsed when it did not get passed by a 5 p.m. deadline for action on non-budget bills. Sen. Javier Valdez, D-Seattle, the bill’s prime sponsor, and Senate Majority Leader Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle, each cited unresolved concerns from many corners, including other senators and Gov. Bob Ferguson, as the reason for the controversial legislation’s demise. “Obviously, I’m disappointed. I’m trying to remain positive,” Valdez said. “I’m encouraged that a lot of them still wanted to have the discussion. We’ll roll up our sleeves in the interim and hope to bring back another version in 2027.” The bill would have barred paying a person for each signature they collect on initiative petitions and allowed legal action against those suspected of violations. It also would have added a new step by requiring a person, when starting the process, to submit signatures of 1,000 registered voters to show support for their proposal. An identical House bill died in January. To qualify an initiative for the ballot or send it to the Legislature to consider requires thousands of signatures — 386,000 currently, after factoring in a buffer for signatures that get rejected. Opponents argued the new restrictions would have impeded voters’ ability to engage in the process.
West Virginia: A bill that would prohibit municipalities from issuing IDs was approved by the House Judiciary Committee this week. The bill is one of many working their way through the legislature that would tighten regulations surrounding elections. The sponsor of the bill, Del. Geno Chiarelli (R-Monongalia), said his constituents were worried that a planned municipal ID program in Morgantown would help ineligible voters get around state ID laws. During a committee hearing for the bill, members pressed Chiarelli on the purpose of the bill, considering that the Morgantown ID program, nor any existing municipal programs, offer services to issue valid voter identification. A representative from the City of Morgantown said the program “never intended to circumvent, modify, or influence any election-related protocols.”
Wyoming: A bill to amend the Wyoming Constitution to prohibit certain dual citizens from voting has died. Joint House resolution “citizenship-sole allegiance to the United States” sought to ban Wyomingites from voting if they are also citizens of a nation deemed to be a “foreign adversary.” It also would have banned people from holding office if they had “voluntarily acquired citizenship in a foreign adversary.” The proposal was a narrower version of a new initiative from Secretary of State Chuck Gray which appeared in a broader form on a list of five priorities to change elections this year. Other initiatives included efforts to ban ballot drop boxes and require pen to paper ballots as the default method for voting. In bills regarding property ownership, the Legislature has previously considered foreign adversaries to be defined by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce. It includes China, Korea, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and Russia. Bill sponsor Rep. Joe Webb of Lyman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Legal Updates
Georgia: The NAACP and other organizations are asking a judge to protect personal voter information that was seized by the FBI from an elections warehouse just outside Atlanta. Georgia residents entrusted the state with their “sensitive personal information” when they registered to vote, and the Jan. 28 seizure of ballots and other election documents from the Fulton County elections hub “breached that guarantee, infringed constitutional protections of privacy, and interfered with the right to vote,” the organizations said in a motion filed late February 15. The motion asks the judge to “order reasonable limits on the government’s use of the seized data” and to prohibit the government from using the data for purposes other than the criminal investigation cited in the search warrant affidavit. That includes prohibiting any efforts to use it for voter roll maintenance, election administration or immigration enforcement. They also want the judge to order that the government disclose an inventory of all documents and records seized, the identity of anyone who has accessed the records outside of those involved in the criminal investigation, any copying of the records and all efforts to secure the information. The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the motion.
Indiana: With the 2026 primary elections fast approaching, plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging Indiana’s new prohibition on using student IDs are asking a judge for an emergency order blocking enforcement of the law. In-person early voting starts April 7. The motion for a preliminary injunction, filed on Feb. 6 in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, asks the court to temporarily suspend enforcement of Senate Bill 10, which was a law passed during the 2025 legislative session. The request comes with the May 5 primary election approaching and early voting set to begin in less than two months. If granted, the injunction could allow college students—including thousands in Monroe County—to use their university identification cards when casting ballots this spring. If denied, the new restriction will remain in place for the primary. The plaintiffs argue the new law violates at least three provisions of the U.S. Constitution by making it harder for young people to vote. In court filings, they contend the law imposes an “undue burden on the right to vote,” in violation of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They also argue the law violates the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which prohibits denying or abridging the right to vote on account of age. According to the plaintiffs, student IDs were accepted for years without any issues, and banning them now disproportionately affects younger voters, who are less likely to have alternative forms of qualifying ID and may face obstacles in obtaining one before an election. Indiana state officials are asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit. They say there is no constitutional right to use a student ID to vote and that Indiana is within its authority to determine what forms of identification are acceptable.
Maine: Brian Rafford, 37, of Hermon, accused of voter fraud in the 2024 General Election made his first appearance in court on February 12 and pleaded not guilty to all four class C felony counts. According to court documents, those charges include attempting to vote in the name of another, two counts of forging the name of another on an absentee ballot, return envelope, or application for absentee ballot, and attempting to vote twice at the same election. Rafford voted in his hometown of Hermon in late October, according to the indictment. However, among the court documents obtained by ABC7/Fox22, there is an application for an absentee ballot. The application shows it was filled out and signed by Dale Rafford, a Hampden resident and Brian’s uncle. It’s dated October 2, 2024, for when the application was received, and dated October 5, 2024, for when the ballot was sent and delivered. But according to a Bangor Daily obituary, the 68-year-old died unexpectedly on September 29 of that year. 3 days before the paperwork was received, and 6 days after it was sent. Court documents also say he knowingly forged his uncle’s name on an absentee ballot return envelope.
Michigan: The Democratic National Committee filed a friend of the court brief backing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee last November. The RNC, alongside the Michigan Republican Party and Chesterfield Township Clerk Cindy Berry, is challenging a state law which allows the spouses and dependents of Michigan voters living abroad to cast a ballot in Michigan elections, provided they are not registered to vote anywhere else in the state. The law does not require those individuals to have lived in Michigan, which the RNC argues is in direct conflict with the Michigan state constitution, which says “every citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 21 years, who has resided in this state six months, and who meets the requirements of local residence provided by law, shall be an elector and qualified to vote in any election except as otherwise provided in this constitution.” Democrats slammed the suit as an attempt to disenfranchise military families, while the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and the Secure Families Initiative, a nonpartisan group advocating for military families, have filed their own brief arguing the state constitution “unambiguously grants the Michigan Legislature authority to define residency to include the challenged voters.” The DNC argues that the suit ignores an amendment to the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act which President Donald Trump signed in 2018, which allows the spouses of service members to elect to use the same residence as their partner for state and local voting purposes.
North Carolina: The Republican National Committee has settled a federal lawsuit with the state Board of Elections over missing information on voter registration forms. Under the settlement filed this week, the state agreed to continue its Registration Repair project seeking to collect the missing information and to reject registration applications where voters don’t supply government ID numbers or check a box indicating they don’t have one. Federal Judge Richard Myers must sign off on the settlement. In 2024, state and national Republicans sought a court-ordered purge of 225,000 registered voters, claiming their voter registration records did not include either a driver’s license number or partial Social Security number. The Democratic National Committee joined the lawsuit on the side of the state board, which then had a Democratic majority. In the meantime, the U.S. Justice Department also sued the state board over the same issue of incomplete registrations. Last June, the state board launched the Registration Repair project as a way to settle the DOJ lawsuit. The state settled the Justice Department lawsuit last year. When the effort to collect information began last summer, about 103,000 people were on the list of voters with missing information. About 70,000 people remain on the list.
Ohio: The League of Women Voters and Council on American-Islamic Relations are suing Ohio’s secretary of state over a controversial piece of voting legislation signed into law late last year. The groups are asking the court to block portions of the law from taking effect. The ACLU and Campaign Legal Center are representing them in court. Ohio Senate Bill 293’s most notable change was the elimination of a four-day grace period for absentee ballots. But the measure also directs the secretary of state to comb through the voter registration database monthly to remove suspected noncitizens on the rolls. What could be wrong with that? The voting rights groups contend Ohio’s law relies on shaky data to remove voters when federal law doesn’t allow it — and without providing notice to the voters facing removal. “Senate Bill 293’s requirement that there be systematic voter purges is discriminatory and unlawful and it threatens to disenfranchise perfectly eligible voters,” ACLU of Ohio Chief Legal Officer Freda Levenson said in a press release. “Using manifestly unreliable data to cull our voter rolls doesn’t protect the integrity of our elections — it harms it.”
Texas: A Fifth Circuit panel overturned U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez’s ruling blocking a law banning paid political canvassing in the presence of a mail ballot. The law was passed as part of Senate Bill 1, an omnibus voting law passed by Texas Republicans in 2021 following unsupported claims that Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election was the result of widespread fraud. It prohibits canvassers from receiving “compensation or other benefit” for providing “vote harvesting services,” which it defines as an “in-person interaction with one or more voters, in the physical presence of an official ballot or a ballot voted by mail, intended to deliver votes for a specific candidate or measure.” A violation of the ban is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Finding that the ban violates the First Amendment and is unconstitutionally vague, Rodriguez issued a ruling in September 2024 permanently enjoining the Texas secretary of state, the Texas attorney general and the district attorneys for several Texas counties from enforcing the ban, though a separate Fifth Circuit panel stayed the ruling to avoid changes to election laws close to the 2024 election. Rodriguez, a George W. Bush appointee, found that “compensation or other benefit” could apply to things like food, water or swag given to volunteers and that it isn’t clear how close by a ballot needs to be for a canvasser to be “in the physical presence” of it. However, in the Fifth Circuit panel’s opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Edith Jones criticized Rodriguez’s ruling for relying on “vague hypotheticals” to find the ballot harvesting ban facially unconstitutional. “In contrast to this judicial myopia, ordinary citizens serving on a jury ‘should be capable of understanding’ this statute’s ‘common-sense core of meaning,’” the Ronald Reagan appointee wrote. She noted that Rodriguez had conceded that “applying the statute to ‘prevent paid partisans from haranguing Texas citizens while they fill out their mail ballots’ is not vague or unconstitutional.” The panel found that Rodriguez was required to accept the interpretation of what the ban prohibits, provided in testimony by a former director of the Texas Secretary of State’s Office’s election division: “the voter and the harvester get[ting] together and … reviewing the ballot together … and the harvester mak[ing] sure they check the right box.”
Wyoming: The Wyoming Supreme Court agreed with a district court judge’s decision to dismiss an attempt to remove Secretary of State Chuck Gray from office on Feb. 13. Retired Laramie attorney Tim Newcomb sought to have Gray removed under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which bans state officials from having engaged in insurrection or rebellion, or given aid or comfort to those who have. Newcomb’s lawsuit alleged Gray provided “aid and comfort” to Jan. 6 insurrectionists who rioted at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. His original lawsuit was filed in Albany County’s Second Judicial District last February. That court ruled against Newcomb in August. He then appealed to the state’s high court. In the Supreme Court decision, justices agreed with the lower court that Newcomb failed to state a claim on which the dismissal could be granted. “Mr. Newcomb cannot state a claim to remove Secretary Gray under Wyoming law, which contains only two avenues for removing a statewide elected official other than through an election—impeachment and the remedy of quo warranto,” the decision reads. “This Court has no subject matter jurisdiction to impeach a state officer where the Wyoming Constitution solely vests such jurisdiction to the House of Representatives.” “Further, [Wyoming Statute] state[s] only the attorney general, a county attorney, or a party claiming entitlement to hold public office may bring an action quo warranto. This Court has also held that a declaratory judgment action is not the proper mechanism for obtaining the remedy of quo warranto. Because Mr. Newcomb is not a member of the House of Representatives, the attorney general, a county attorney, or a party claiming entitlement to hold public office, he cannot pursue either avenue, and he has failed to state a claim on which relief can be granted.”
NYC Wins When Everyone Can Vote! Michael H. Drucker
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