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 239 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.
Weekly highlights
The big takeaways from the past week's legislative actions.
Lawmakers in 27 states acted on 239 bills over the last week, 102 more than last week. Thirty-nine state legislatures are in regular or special sessions.
- No bills were enacted this week. No bills were enacted during the same week in 2025, two bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, and one bill was enacted during the same week in 2023.
- Legislators acted on 216 bills in 2025 and 274 bills in 2024 during the same week.
- Eighty-five of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 54 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 100 are in states with divided government.
- The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (107), campaign finance (74), and election dates and deadlines (52).
- The numbers in this newsletter include 2,889 bills. We are actively processing bills filed since Jan. 21 as legislative activity ramps up for 2026.
In the news
A glance at what's making headlines in the world of election law.
- On Jan. 28, the California Supreme Court declined to take up an appeal seeking to reinstate Huntington Beach’s voter ID policy, permanently blocking it from taking effect. A three-judge panel of California Court of Appeal judges ruled in November that state law blocks Huntington Beach’s voter ID requirement for local elections. Voters in the city approved the voter ID requirement in 2024.
- On Jan. 27, a Virginia circuit court judge blocked a proposed constitutional amendment to allow the state to engage in mid-decade redistricting from being submitted to voters in April. Judge Jack S. Hurley Jr. ruled that the process the Legislature used to approve the amendment violated state law. Supporters of the amendment have said they will appeal the decision. To read more about redistricting in Virginia, click here.
- On Jan. 27, the South Dakota House of Representatives rejected a bill that would have banned paid circulators for ballot measures in the state on a 28-38 vote. Supporters of House Bill 1087 said it would help limit out-of-state influence on the petition process, while critics argued the legislation would violate a 1988 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
- On Jan. 27, students at three North Carolina universities filed a federal lawsuit against the state board of elections, arguing that a decision to remove early voting sites at North Carolina A&T University, Western Carolina University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro makes it harder for students to vote. The lawsuit seeks to restore the sites before early voting begins next month.
Key movements
A look at what bills are moving and where.
No bills were enacted in the past week. No bills were enacted during the same week in 2025, two bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, and one bill was enacted during the same week in 2023. To see all enacted bills, click here.
Two bills passed both chambers of a state legislature. To see the full list of all bills awaiting
gubernatorial action, click here.
No bills were vetoed in the past week. No bills have been vetoed so far this year. No bills were vetoed during this period in 2025, 2024, and 2023. 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
All bills
We are following 2,889 election-related bills, including bills carried over from the previous year.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 1,320 (45.7%)
- Republican: 972 (33.6%)
- Divided: 597 (20.7%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 1,377 (47.7%)
- Republican: 1,134 (39.3%)
- Bipartisan: 253 (8.8%)
- Other: 125 (4.3%)
We were following 2,180 bills at this point in 2024. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 980 (45%)
- Republican: 845 (38.8%)
- Divided: 355 (16.3%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 975 (44.7%)
- Republican: 995 (45.6%)
- Bipartisan: 151 (6.9%)
- Other: 59 (2.7%)
See the charts below for a comparison of total bills between 2024 and 2026 and a breakdown of all 2026 legislation by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.
