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.
In this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 244 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.
Weekly highlights
The big takeaways from the past week’s legislative actions.
Lawmakers in 28 states acted on 244 bills over the last week, 28 more than last week.
- No bills were enacted this week. No bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, and three bills were enacted in the same week in 2023 and 2022.
- Legislators acted on 316 bills in 2024, 322 in 2023, and 325 bills in 2022 during the same week.
- Thirty-eight of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 88 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 118 are in states with a divided government.
- The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (88), campaign finance (68), and voter registration and list maintenance (52).
- We are currently tracking 1,540 bills. We were following 1,135 bills at this time in 2023.
Note: In some states, legislators are able to file hundreds of bills per day. We are actively reviewing those bills to determine their relevance to election administration. As a result, during this period of heightened legislative activity, year-to-year comparisons may not yet account for all relevant bills introduced in 2025.
In the news
A glance at what’s making headlines in the world of election law.
- On Jan. 29, Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) submitted additional filings to the Wake County Superior Court in his lawsuit challenging ballots cast in last year’s North Carolina Supreme Court race, where Griffin ran against Allison Riggs (D). In the new filings, Griffin alleged that the number of voters who have never resided in North Carolina or the United States, but voted in the election, could exceed Riggs’ 734 vote lead.
- On Jan. 28, a judge on the Second Judicial District Court of Nevada dismissed a lawsuit challenging voter roll maintenance practices in Washoe County. The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) filed the lawsuit in May 2024, alleging that the county’s voter rolls contained commercial addresses, violating a state law requiring residential addresses for registration.
- On Jan. 23, officials in Nassau County, New York, agreed to redraw district maps for the 19-member Nassau County Legislature. After the county legislature approved the district boundaries in 2023, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit alleging the maps disenfranchised voters of color.
- On Jan. 23, the State Bar of Texas dropped its lawsuit against Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) over the state’s challenge to presidential election results in several states after President Joe Biden’s (D) 2020 victory. Previously, on Dec. 31, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster (R) could not be disciplined after the State Bar of Texas alleged Webster and Paxton provided false evidence to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Key movements
A look at what bills are moving and where.
No bills were enacted in the past week. There were no bills enacted during the same week in 2024, three in 2023, and three in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.
No bills passed both chambers of any legislature. To see all bills awaiting gubernatorial action and their full summaries, click here.
Governors vetoed no bills. No bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, 2023, or 2023. To see all vetoed bills, click here.
The big picture
Zooming out to see the macro-level trends in election policy so far this year.
Enacted bills
No bills were enacted this week. The chart below shows the number of enacted bills in 2025 compared to previous years.
The chart below shows the number of bills enacted over the first 12 weeks of each year.
All bills
We are following 1,540 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 463 (30.1%)
- Republican: 830 (53.9%)
- Divided: 247 (16%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 607 (39.4%)
- Republican: 756 (49.1%)
- Bipartisan: 85 (5.5%)
- Other: 92 (6%)
We were following 1,135 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 542 (47.8%)
- Republican: 489 (43.1%)
- Divided: 104 (9.2%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 471 (41.5%)
- Republican: 505 (44.5%)
- Bipartisan: 79 (7%)
- Other: 80 (7%)
See the charts below for a comparison of total bills between 2023 and 2025 and a breakdown of all 2025 legislation by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.