Welcome to our coverage of election-related legislation in the 2024 session! We are currently following 1,445 active bills in 2024, including 1,281 carried over from 2023. These carryover bills were introduced in 2023 but remain active in 2024.
Welcome to The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration. Every Friday, we deliver the latest updates on election policy around the country, including nationwide trends, legislative activity, and updates on notable lawsuits and policy changes.
Legislative highlights
Highlights:
- No bills have been approved since the beginning of the year, and no bills were enacted in the same period in 2023. In 2022, four bills had been enacted.
- Of the 50 bills with activity this week, Democrats sponsored 14 of the bills active over the past week, and Republicans sponsored 15 bills.
- Seven (14.0%) of these bills are in states with Democratic trifectas, 41 (82.0%) are in a state with Republican trifectas, and two (4.0%) are in states with a divided government.
- Almost all of the bills acted on this week are in Missouri (19) and Nebraska (21).
- Many of the bills introduced this week deal with a single subject, like election dates or voter registration, rather than being multi-subject, omnibus-style election bills.
- The bill topics with the most legislative activity this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (21), election dates and deadlines (15), ballot access (9), ballot verification (9), and absentee/mail-in voting (7).
Recent activity and status changes
Here is the current status of this year’s election-related bills:
- 0 enacted bills
- 4 that have passed both chambers
- 88 that have passed one chamber
- 1,352 introduced bills
- 0 dead bills
Enacted bills
States have not approved any election-related bills in 2024 and had not enacted any bills at this point last year. To see all enacted bills, click here.
No bills have been approved since our last edition.
Bills that passed both chambers
Four bills have passed both chambers and are awaiting gubernatorial action, compared to zero bills at this point last year. To see all bills that have currently passed both chambers, click here.
The bills passing both chambers since our last edition, with their official titles, are below.
Delaware (Democratic trifecta)
- DE HB198: An Act To Amend The Town Charter Of The Town Of Clayton.
- DE SB41: An Act Concurring In Proposed Amendments To The Delaware Constitution Relating To Technical Corrections.
New York (Democratic trifecta)
- NY S07550: Relates to the presidential primary, to provide for the election of delegates to a national party convention or a national party conference in 2024; schedules the presidential primary election for April 2, 2024; updates the political calendar accordingly; requires cure affirmations for curing ballots to be received by the board of elections no later than 7 business days after the board’s mailing of the curable rejection notice or the day before the election, whichever is later
Ohio (Republican trifecta)
- OH HB101: Modify the law regarding village dissolution
Vetoed bills
Governors have not vetoed any bills this year, nor any at this point in 2023. To see all vetoed bills, click here.
No bills have been vetoed since our last edition.
Recent activity by topic and sponsorship
The chart below shows the topics of the bills with legislative activity since our last edition. Click here to see a full list of bill categories and their definitions.
* Note: Contest-specific procedures refer to primary systems, municipal election procedures, recall elections, special election procedures, and other systems unique to a particular election type.
All 2024 bills by topic and sponsorship
The chart below shows the topics of a sample of the 1,445 bills we’ve followed this year. Note that the sums of the numbers listed do not equal the total number of bills because some bills deal with multiple topics.
Recent activity by state and trifecta status
Of the 50 bills with activity this week, seven (14.0%) are in states with Democratic trifectas, 41 (82.0%) are in a state with a Republican trifecta, and two (4.0%) are in states with a divided government.
The map below shows election-related bills acted on in the past week by state trifecta status.
All 2023 bills by state and trifecta status
Of all the election-related bills introduced this year, 842 (43.2%) are in states with Democratic trifectas, 353 (43.0%) are in states with Republican trifectas, and 250 (13.9%) are in states with divided governments.
New York legislators have the most active election-related bills in 2024 (351). Texas was the most active state at this point in 2023, with 107 bills.
The map below shows the number of election-related bills introduced by state and trifecta status this year.
Recent news
Judge recommends dismissal of North Carolina felon voting lawsuit
On Jan. 2, a federal judge recommended dismissing a lawsuit challenging a North Carolina law prohibiting someone on probation or parole for a felony from voting. Two groups, the A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, filed the lawsuit in 2020, alleging “the vague wording of the (law), have chilled countless eligible voters with criminal convictions from exercising their rights to cast a ballot.” Last fall, the North Carolina General Assembly passed S747, which altered the language of the law so that only those who vote “knowing the right of citizenship has not been restored” would be prosecuted. In the dismissal recommendation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joe Webster wrote that the alteration “substantially diminishes any prospective voter’s perceived threat of prosecution and any resulting confusion. As a result, Plaintiffs can no longer claim that they must divert substantial resources to educate volunteers and prospective voters regarding the new law because much of the confusion concerning one’s eligibility to vote has been eliminated.” Lawyers for the state said the law “provides an easily understood notice that once one loses the right to vote due to felony conviction, they cannot vote again until those rights are restored. The fact that subsection 163-275(5) requires reference to the statute governing rights restoration does not make the law so standardless that it is unconstitutionally vague.” Southern Coalition for Social Justice counsel Mitchell Brown, who is one of the attorneys arguing the case for the plaintiffs, said he was disappointed with the dismissal recommendation and would consider options for appeal. The case now heads to Judge Loretta Biggs, a Barack Obama (D) appointee, of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
District judge rules group did not intimidate Georgia voters
On Jan. 2, a judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled that the group True the Vote, which describes itself as “a leader in the effort to ensure free and fair elections in America,” did not illegally intimidate Georgia voters during the state’s 2021 Senate runoff election. After True the Vote challenged the registrations of more than 360,000 voters, Fair Fight sued the group, alleging it violated Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act prohibiting voter intimidation. According to Fair Fight’s website, the group seeks to “promote fair elections in Georgia and around the country, encourage voter participation in elections, and educate voters about elections and their voting rights.” U.S. District Judge Steve C. Jones, a Barack Obama (D) appointee, wrote that there was insufficient evidence that True the Vote attempted to coerce voters. Jones said the plaintiffs had not “sufficiently shown that any Georgia voter was reasonably intimidated.” Jones added that the court did not want to “imply that the manner in which Defendants made these challenges should be permissible under the Georgia law—that is a question for the Georgia General Assembly, not this Court.” True the Vote Lead Attorney Jake Evans said, “This decision is monumental. It vindicates True the Vote in totality and establishes that eligibility challenges under Section 230 are a proper method to ensure voter rolls are accurate.” Fair Fight Executive Director Cianti Stewart-Reid said, “Efforts by conspiracy theorists and anti-voter extremists to strip eligible voters from the rolls through mass voter challenges and aggressive voter purges are one of the biggest threats to our democracy and upcoming elections in 2024.”
