The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration, April 18, 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 509 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

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

Lawmakers in 38 states acted on 509 bills over the last week, 130 fewer than last week. 

  • Nineteen bills were enacted this week. Fourteen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 26 bills were enacted in 2023, and 16 bills were enacted in 2022.
  • Legislators acted on 253 bills in 2024, 182 in 2023, and 107 bills in 2022 during the same week. 
  • One hundred thirty-three of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 307 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 69 are in states with a divided government.  
  • The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (127), campaign finance (98), and ballot access (63).
  • We are currently following 4,324 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,406 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 April 16, the Arkansas Senate passed HB1878, a bill requiring county board of election commissioners to provide at least one early voting location in any city with a population of more than 15,000 people. The bill now goes to Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) for consideration.
  • On April 14, the North Dakota Senate passed HB1307, a bill codifying the supremacy of state election law over local election laws. Under current state law, cities or counties that have adopted a home rule charter can enact and enforce election laws that differ from state law.
  • On April 14, the League of Women Voters of North Carolina filed a lawsuit in U.S. district court to prevent the North Carolina State Board of Elections from invalidating certain voters’ ballots as part of ongoing litigation regarding a 2024 North Carolina Supreme Court election. The lawsuit “seeks to avert an unprecedented effort to change the results of a statewide election by discarding up to 5,509 votes from military and overseas voters five months after their votes were cast, confirmed, and counted.”
  • On April 13, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) signed SF75, a bill requiring officials in Johnson, Story, and Black Hawk counties to be elected from individual districts rather than at large. Candidates must live in the district in which they are running for election, and can only be elected by voters also residing in the district.

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

Nineteen bills were enacted in the past week. Fourteen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 26 bills were enacted in 2023, and 16 bills were enacted in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.

  • Iowa (Republican trifecta)
  • West Virginia (Republican trifecta)

Fifty-four bills have passed both chambers of state legislatures. To see the full list of all bills awaiting gubernatorial action, click here.

Governors vetoed no bills in the past week. Twenty bills have been vetoed so far this year. Thirteen bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, two bills were vetoed in 2023, and three bills were 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

Nineteen 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 16 weeks of each year.

All bills

We are following 4,324 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,594 (36.0%)
    • Republican: 2,065 (47.8%) 
    • Divided: 665 (15.3%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,660 (38.4%)
    • Republican: 2,126 (49.2%)
    • Bipartisan: 313 (7.2%)
    • Other: 225 (5.2%)

We were following 2,406 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,251 (52%)
    • Republican: 800 (33.3%) 
    • Divided: 355 (14.8%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1079 (44.8%)
    • Republican: 906 (37.7%)
    • Bipartisan: 281 (11.7%)
    • Other: 140 (5.8%)

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.