The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration, March 28, 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 846 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

The big takeaways from the past week’s legislative actions. 

Lawmakers in 45 states acted on 846 bills over the last week, 241 more than last week. 

  • Forty-four bills were enacted this week. Twenty-six bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 40 bills were enacted in 2023, and 18 bills were enacted in 2022.
  • Legislators acted on 266 bills in 2024, 261 in 2023, and 199 bills in 2022 during the same week. 
  • Two hundred eighty-eight of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 433 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 125 are in states with a divided government.  
  • The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (144), campaign finance (92), and voter registration and list maintenance (65).
  • We are currently following 3,883 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,254 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 26, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed HB0300, a bill ending the state’s universal absentee/mail-in voting system. To receive a ballot and vote through the mail, voters must now request to be added to the mail-in voting list before 2029.
  • On March 25, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden (R) signed HB1066, a bill requiring 30 consecutive days of residency in order to vote in the state. Previously, the residency requirement for voter eligibility was 30 nonconsecutive days.
  • On March 25, the Kansas Legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto of SB4, a bill that changes the deadline for county election officers to receive mail-in ballots from the third day after the election to 7 p.m. on Election Day. The override, which requires a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, passed 30-10 in the Senate and 84-41 in the House. One Republican in the Senate and three in the House joined Democrats in opposing the override. 
  • On March 25, President Donald Trump (R) issued the 101st executive order of his second term titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” The order includes changes to federal election administration guidance and procedures for voter registration, absentee/mail-in voting, ballot counting, and election equipment.  
  • On March 20, the New York Supreme Court ruled 6-1 against a 2022 New York City law allowing legal noncitizens to vote in the city’s elections. The court said, “the New York constitution as it stands today draws a firm line restricting voting to citizens.”

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

Forty-four bills were enacted in the past week. Twenty-six bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 40 in 2023, and 18 in 2022. To see all enacted bills and their full summaries, click here.

  • Arkansas (Republican trifecta)
  • Mississippi (Republican trifecta)
  • New Mexico (Democratic trifecta)
  • South Dakota (Republican trifecta)

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

  • Montana (Republican trifecta)
  • North Dakota (Republican trifecta)
  • Nebraska (Republican trifecta)

Governors vetoed nine 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.

  • Kentucky (divided government)

State legislatures overrode one gubernatorial veto this week. 

  • Kansas (divided government)

The big picture

Zooming out to see the macro-level trends in election policy so far this year. 

Enacted bills

Forty-four 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 3,883 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,444  (37.2%)
    • Republican: 1,853 (47.7%) 
    • Divided: 586 (15.1%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,473 (37.9%)
    • Republican:  1,933 (49.8%)
    • Bipartisan: 278 (7.2%)
    • Other: 199 (5.1%)

We were following 2,254 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,198 (53.1%)
    • Republican: 730 (32.4%) 
    • Divided: 326 (14.5%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1016 (45.1%)
    • Republican: 835 (37%)
    • Bipartisan: 264 (11.7%)
    • Other: 139 (6.2%)

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.