Of all the election-related bills introduced this year, 1,765 (46.7%) are in states with Democratic trifectas.
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 and recent legislative activity.
IIn this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 13 bills state legislatures acted on since our last edition.
Legislative highlights
- No bills have been approved since our last edition. Three hundred fifty bills have been enacted so far in 2024, compared to 570 in 2023 and 210 in 2022.
- State legislatures acted on 13 bills this week, two fewer than last week.
- Democrats sponsored three (23.1%) of the bills active over the past week. Two (15.4%) bills had bipartisan sponsorship, and eight (.5%) bills hadsponsors other than Democrats or Republicans.
- Five (38.5%) of the bills active over the past week were in states with Democratic trifectas, and eight (61.5%) were in states with Republican trifectas.
- One bill passed one or both chambers this week. The bill was in a state with a Democratic trifecta, and it was Democrat-sponsored.
- The top bill topics this week were:
- Election types and contest-specific procedures (12)
- Legal conflicts and litigation (3)
- Voter registration and list maintenance (2)
- Offices (1)
- Audits and oversight (1)
Recent activity
Enacted bills
No election-related bills were approved since our last edition, compared to one in 2023 and none in 2022 during the same week. To see all enacted bills, click here.
Recent activity by topic and sponsorship
The chart below shows the topics and partisan sponsorship of the bills with legislative activity over the past week. 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.
Recent activity by state and trifecta status
Of the 13 bills with activity over the previous week, five (38.5%) were in states with Democratic trifectas, and eight (61.5%) were in states with Republican trifectas.
The map below shows election-related bills acted on in the past week by state trifecta status.
All legislation
Enacted bills by sponsorship and trifecta status
States have enacted 350 bills so far this year, compared to 570 bills in 2023 and 210 in 2022. The chart below shows the number and partisan sponsorship of enacted bills in 2024, 2023, and 2022.
Seventy-nine of the election-related bills passed this year (22.6%) are in states with Democratic trifectas, 216 (61.7%) are in states with a Republican trifecta, and 55 (15.7%) are in states with a divided government. The table below shows the number of enacted election-related bills introduced by trifecta status this year compared to 2023 and 2022.
All bills by topic and sponsorship
The chart below displays the topic and sponsorship of a sample of the 3,777 total 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.
All bills by sponsorship and trifecta status
Of all the election-related bills introduced this year, 1,147 (30%) are Democrat-sponsored bills in Democratic trifecta states. Republicans sponsored 799 (21%) bills in states with Republican trifectas.
The chart below shows the percentage of all election-related bills by sponsorship and trifecta status.
All bills by state and trifecta status
Of all the election-related bills introduced this year, 1,765 (46.7%) are in states with Democratic trifectas, 1,367 (36.2%) are in states with Republican trifectas, and 645 (17.1%) are in states with divided governments.
Of all active bills in 2023, 42% were in states with Democratic trifectas, 43.8% were in states with Republican trifectas, and 14.2% were in states with divided governments. In 2022, 37.8% of bills were in states with Democratic trifectas, 30.4% were in states with Republican trifectas, and 31.8% were in states with divided governments.
The map below shows the number of election-related bills introduced by state and trifecta status this year.
Editor’s note:This post originally reported that there were 15 bills were acted on this week in state legislatures and two bills were approved since the last edition. It has been updated throughout to reflect that no bills were approved and 13 bills were acted upon since the last edition.