The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration, May 2, 2025

By

Ballotpedia staff

In this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 346 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

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

Lawmakers in 35 states acted on 346 bills over the last week, nine fewer than last week. 

  • Twenty-one bills were enacted this week. Eighteen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 76 bills were enacted in 2023, and nine bills were enacted in 2022.
  • Legislators acted on 109 bills in 2024, 140 in 2023, and 111 bills in 2022 during the same week. 
  • Eighty-seven of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 208 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 51 are in states with a divided government.  
  • The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (94), campaign finance (82), and voter registration and list maintenance (47).
  • We are currently following 4,415 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,446 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 29, the Colorado State Senate passed SB001, also known as the Colorado Voting Rights Act. The bill codifies provisions from the federal Voting Right Act into state law and allows voters to file election-related discrimination lawsuits in state court. 
  • On April 29, the Arizona Legislature passed HB2017, repealing in-person early voting and prohibiting vote centers where any voter within a county can cast a ballot. The bill also requires voting precincts to be capped at 1,000 registered voters.
  • On April 29, Wisconsin law firms Law Forward and Gass Turek LLC filed a lawsuit in Dane County Circuit Court seeking to reinstate fusion voting, a system allowing more than one political party to nominate the same candidate. The plaintiffs argue that “Wisconsin’s prohibition against a third party nominating a candidate also nominated by a major party forces a voter into an unappealing choice.”
  • On April 28, a U.S. district court judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging county processing of voter registration and mail ballot applications in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. State Rep. Jamie Walsh (R) filed the lawsuit last October, arguing that county officials failed to send out ballots to voters who requested them.

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

Twenty-one bills were enacted in the past week. Thirteen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 24 bills were passed in 2023, and eight bills were enacted in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.

  • Arkansas (Republican trifecta)
  • Missouri (Republican trifecta)
  • South Carolina (Republican trifecta)

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

One bill was vetoed in the past week. Twenty-eight bills have been vetoed so far this year. Two bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, one bill was vetoed in 2023, and no bills were vetoed in 2022. To see all vetoed bills, click here.

  • Colorado (Democratic trifecta)
    • CO SB077

The big picture

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

Enacted bills

Twenty-one 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 18 weeks of each year.

All bills

We are following 4,415 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,632 (37%)
    • Republican: 2,085 (47.2%) 
    • Divided: 698 (15.8%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,687 (38.2%)
    • Republican: 2,160 (48.9%)
    • Bipartisan: 345 (7.8%)
    • Other: 223 (5.1%)

We were following 2,446 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,255 (51.3%)
    • Republican: 831 (34%) 
    • Divided: 360 (14.7%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,089 (44.5%)
    • Republican: 933 (38.1%)
    • Bipartisan: 284 (11.6%)
    • Other: 140 (5.7%)

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.