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 643 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.
Weekly highlights
The big takeaways from the past week’s legislative actions.
Lawmakers in 43 states acted on 643 bills over the last week, 132 more than last week.
- Seven bills were enacted this week. Four bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 19 bills were enacted in 2023, and eight bills were enacted in 2022.
- Legislators acted on 407 bills in 2024, 264 in 2023, and 306 bills in 2022 during the same week.
- One hundred twenty of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 426 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 97 are in states with a divided government.
- The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (261), campaign finance (142), and voter registration and list maintenance (102).
- We are currently following 3,475 bills. We were following 1,773 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 March 6, the Arizona Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the state’s 2023 Election Procedures Manual. Judge Lacey Gard said that the manual violated state law because Secretary of State Adrian Fontes (D) “did not substantially comply with its provisions because he provided a public-comment period encompassing only half the time the [Administrative Procedures Act] requires.”
- On March 6, a group of voters in Madison, Wisconsin, sued local election officials, alleging they were disenfranchised because officials failed to count absentee ballots accurately. In December 2024, the Madison clerk’s office issued a statement saying that 193 ballots from three city wards were not processed, but that these ballots would not have affected the outcome of the election.
- On March 4, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) vetoed WY HB0079, a bill that would have changed requirements for bond question approval on days other than a general election from a majority of ballots cast to a majority of ballots cast with the requirement that more than 25 percent of eligible voters participated in the bond election. Gordon said, “By invalidating a vote cast by a qualified elector in a bond election, based solely on a threshold established by the number of votes cast in a different general election, the State would disenfranchise the citizens who voted.”
- On March 4, a U.S. district court ruled that the Maryland State Board of Elections could not block access to the state’s voter rolls. Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections (RITE) sued the state in January 2024 on behalf of two citizens, challenging a board regulation that stopped them from conducting investigations into whether the state was adequately maintaining its voter lists.
- On Feb. 26, the Mississippi Senate approved a plan to alter 10 Senate districts to comply with a federal court ruling. On July 2, 2024, the court ordered the state to create two new majority-black Senate districts and one new majority-black House district by the end of the 2025 regular session.
Key movements
A look at what bills are moving and where.
Nine bills were enacted in the past week. There were no bills enacted during the same week in 2024, three in 2023, and four in 2022. To see all enacted bills and their full summaries, click here.
- Arkansas (Republican trifecta)
- AR SB211: Requires canvassers for initiative and referendum petitions to file an affidavit with the Secretary of State confirming the canvasser complied with all state laws.
- AR SB208: Requires petition canvassers to view a potential signatory’s photo identification to verify their identity before signing the petition.
- Connecticut (Democratic trifecta)
- CT HJ00047: Allows sixteen-year-olds to apply to become qualified voters at the age of eighteen.
- Montana (Republican trifecta)
- MT HB39: Repeals a prohibition of political parties from making contributions to judicial candidates.
- New Jersey (Democratic trifecta)
- NJ S3990: Changes the early voting period for all primaries to begin seven days before the primary date. Early voting currently begins four days before non-presidential primaries and six days before presidential primaries, respectively.
- Wyoming (Republican trifecta)
- WY HB0122: Changes the timeline for renewal elections for senior citizen service districts’ mill levy propositions.
- WY SF0009: Requires the Department of Corrections to restore a convicted nonviolent felon’s voting rights once they complete their sentence, including probation or parole, if the person would otherwise be eligible to vote.
Twenty-nine bills passed both chambers of state legislatures. To see all bills awaiting gubernatorial action and their full summaries, click here.
- Alabama (Republican trifecta)
- South Dakota (Republican trifecta)
- Tennessee (Republican trifecta)
- Virginia (divided government)
Governors vetoed one bill in the past week. No bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, 2023, or 2022. To see all vetoed bills, click here.
- Wyoming (Republican trifecta)
- WY HB0079: Changes the requirements for voters to approve bond questions on days other than a general election from a majority of ballots cast to a majority of ballots cast with the requirement that more than 25 percent of eligible voters participated in the bond election.
The big picture
Zooming out to see the macro-level trends in election policy so far this year.
Enacted bills
Seven 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 3,475 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 1,295 (37.3%)
- Republican: 1,648 (47.4%)
- Divided: 532 (15.3%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 1,309 (37.7%)
- Republican: 1,753 (50.4%)
- Bipartisan: 243 (7%)
- Other: 170 (4.9%)
We were following 1,773 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 908 (51.2%)
- Republican: 674 (38%)
- Divided: 191 (10.7%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 749 (42.2%)
- Republican: 768 (43.3%)
- Bipartisan: 137 (7.7%)
- Other: 119 (6.7%)
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.
