The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration, March 21, 2025

By

Ballotpedia staff

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 605 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 605 bills over the last week, 28 fewer than last week. 

  • Twenty-four bills were enacted this week. Sixteen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 30 bills were enacted in 2023, and 13 bills were enacted in 2022.
  • Legislators acted on 433 bills in 2024, 351 in 2023, and 306 bills in 2022 during the same week. 
  • One hundred forty-one of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 383 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 81 are in states with a divided government.  
  • The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (180), campaign finance (139), and voter registration and list maintenance (82).
  • We are currently following 3,741 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd-year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,005 bills.

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 20, the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee heard testimony on election-related bills the Senate is currently considering. Among these bills were SB16, which requires prospective voters to submit proof of citizenship to register, and SB76, which would eliminate the state’s countywide polling place program. Click here to see bills Texas legislators have introduced so far this year. 
  • On March 18, a U.S. district court dismissed a challenge to criminal penalty provisions of Georgia SB202, a 2021 elections bill prohibiting anyone except poll workers from distributing food or drinks at polling places within 150 feet of voters waiting in line. The bill also required voters to provide a photo ID in order to cast absentee ballots and limited the number of absentee ballot drop boxes. 
  • On March 17, the South Dakota Legislature passed two bills related to ballot measures. HB1184 would change the deadline for submitting petition signatures from May to February in general election years. HB1169 would require voters from each of the state’s senatorial districts to sign constitutional amendment petitions for those amendments to be put on the ballot. 
  • On March 17, the Kansas Legislature passed SB6, which would prohibit ranked-choice voting in the state. Eleven other states have banned the use of ranked-choice voting statewide. 
  • On March 12, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed 10 election-related bills into law. Arkansas has enacted 24 pieces of election-related legislation so far this year, more than any other state.

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

Twenty-four bills were enacted in the past week. Sixteen were no bills enacted during the same week in 2024, 30 in 2023, and 13 in 2022. To see all enacted bills and their full summaries, click here.

  • West Virginia (Republican trifecta)

Thirty-two bills passed both chambers of state legislatures. To see all bills awaiting gubernatorial action and their full summaries, click here.

  • Arkansas (Republican trifecta)
  • Kansas (divided government)
  • Mississippi (Republican trifecta)
  • Montana (Republican trifecta)
  • Nebraska (Republican trifecta)
  • West Virginia (Republican trifecta)

Governors vetoed no bills in the past week. No bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, one bill was vetoed in 2023, and one bill was vetoed in 2022. 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

Eight 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 3,741 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,374  (36.7%)
    • Republican: 1,795 (48%) 
    • Divided: 572 (15.3%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,406 (37.6%)
    • Republican:  1,881 (50.3%)
    • Bipartisan: 264 (7.1%)
    • Other: 190 (5%)

We were following 2,005 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,174 (58.6%)
    • Republican: 549 (27.4%) 
    • Divided: 282 (14.1%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 939 (46.8%)
    • Republican: 688 (34.3%)
    • Bipartisan: 243 (12.1%)
    • Other: 135 (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.