The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration, May 30, 2025

By

Ethan Rice

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 310 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

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

Lawmakers in 24 states acted on 310 bills over the last week, five more than last week. 

  • Twenty-one bills were enacted this week. Seventeen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 25 were enacted in 2023, and 12 were enacted in 2022.
  • Legislators acted on 146 bills in 2024, 174 in 2023, and 125 bills in 2022 during the same week. 
  • One hundred nine of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 164 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 37 are in states with a divided government.  
  • The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (87), campaign finance (55), and voter registration and list maintenance (46).
  • We are currently following 4,527 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,557 bills.

In the news

A glance at what’s making headlines in the world of election law.

  • On May 28, five Maryland voters filed a lawsuit alleging that public funding of the state’s closed primary system violates the state constitution. The plaintiffs allege that unaffiliated voters’ inability to vote in primary elections violates Article 1 of the Maryland Constitution, which says that qualified voters “shall be entitled to vote in the ward or election district in which the citizen resides at all elections to be held in this State.”
  • On May 28, the Texas Senate passed HB5138, a bill giving the state’s attorney general broader authority to prosecute election-related offenses. The bill requires law enforcement agencies to report possible election-related offenses and makes it mandatory (rather than discretionary) for the attorney general to prosecute these offenses.
  • On May 27, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the North Carolina State Board of Elections over the state’s voter registration practices. The DOJ alleges that because the board did not require voters’ driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers on official voter registration forms, it violated the Help America Vote Act.
  • On May 27, a New Hampshire House of Representatives committee approved SB222, a bill that would move the state primary election from the second Tuesday in September to the second Tuesday in June. The bill passed the state Senate on March 27. The bill now heads to the House floor for a full vote.

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

Twenty-one bills were enacted in the past week. Seventeen bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, 25 were enacted in 2023, and 12 were enacted in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.

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

  • Louisiana (Republican trifecta)
  • Nebraska (Republican trifecta)

One bill was vetoed in the past week. Fifty-one bills have been vetoed so far this year. One bill was vetoed during this period in 2024, no 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

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 22 weeks of each year.

All bills

We are following 4,527 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. 

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,673 (37%)
    • Republican: 2,114 (46.7%) 
    • Divided: 740 (16.3%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,732 (38.3%)
    • Republican: 2,196 (48.5%)
    • Bipartisan: 374 (8.3%)
    • Other: 225 (5%)

We were following 2,557 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

  • Trifecta status
    • Democratic: 1,329 (52%)
    • Republican: 850 (33.2%) 
    • Divided: 378 (14.8%) 
  • Partisan sponsorship
    • Democratic: 1,161 (45.4%)
    • Republican: 957 (37.4%)
    • Bipartisan: 299 (11.7%)
    • Other: 140 (5.5%)

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.