Welcome to Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia's Weekly Election Policy Digest. Every Tuesday, we deliver the latest updates on election policy around the country, including nationwide trends and recent legislative activity.
In this week’s edition, we cover 23 bills state legislatures acted on last week and look at a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an expanded version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements program.
The state of election legislation in the U.S.
Lawmakers in seven states acted on 23 election-related bills last week. Five state legislatures are in regular or special sessions. Last week, nine bills were enacted, one bill passed both chambers of a state legislature, and no bills were vetoed.
Of the bills acted on last week, 13 (56.5%) are in states with Democratic trifectas, one (4.3%) is in a state with a Republican trifecta, and nine (39.1%) are in states with divided government. The most active bill categories last week were election types and stages, ballot measures, and ballot access (five each).
We are currently tracking 4,665 election-related bills across the country. The chart below breaks down the status of those bills based on where they stand in the legislative process:
Enacted bills
Nine bills were enacted or adopted last week:
- California (Democratic trifecta)
Bills passing both chambers
One bill passed both chambers of a state legislature last week:
- New Jersey (Democratic trifecta)
To see a full list of bills awaiting gubernatorial action, click here.
Vetoed bills
No bills were vetoed last week.
To see a list of all bills vetoed this session, click here.
All bills
The chart below shows all bills Ballotpedia is currently tracking, broken down by partisan sponsor.
We are currently following 4,665 election-related bills, including bills carried over from the previous year.
- Trifecta status
- Democratic: 2,009 (43.1%)
- Republican: 1,649 (35.3%)
- Divided: 1,007 (21.6%)
- Partisan sponsorship
- Democratic: 2,060 (44.2%)
- Republican: 1,886 (40.4%)
- Bipartisan: 446 (9.6%)
- Other: 273 (5.9%)
In the news
On Sept. 25, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that would have required Missouri to use the congressional map it enacted in 2025 — and used for its 2026 congressional primaries — for the Nov. 3 general election. The Supreme Court’s decision requires the state to use the map it enacted in 2022 for the general election, leaving in place the Sept. 3 Missouri Supreme Court ruling requiring the state to place a veto referendum to uphold or repeal the 2025 map on the November ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court previously stayed a federal district court order requiring the 2025 map to be used.
In an unsigned opinion with no public dissents, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, “At this late date, ordering reversion to the 2025 map in the midst of an ongoing election would usher in electoral chaos. The District Court and Court of Appeals should not enjoin or otherwise prohibit the use of the 2022 map in the 2026 congressional election in Missouri.”
The 2025 map was expected to shift one district, represented by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D), to Republicans. Heading into the election, Republicans hold six seats and Democrats hold two in the state's U.S. House delegation.
Here are other news stories from across the country:
- On Sept. 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit stayed a lower court ruling blocking an Ohio law requiring individuals registering to vote at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to provide documentary proof of citizenship. In a 2-1 ruling, the Sixth Circuit panel held that the proof-of-citizenship law did not make it harder for people to register to vote and that allowing the district court’s order to remain in place would irreparably harm the state of Ohio. On Aug. 25, a district court judge temporarily blocked the law, ruling that it violated the National Voter Registration Act.
- On Sept. 22, the Republican National Committee, the New Jersey Republican Party, and two state and federal lawmakers filed a federal lawsuit seeking to compel the New Jersey Department of State and five counties to provide records related to voter list maintenance. The lawsuit argues that the state’s response to the records requests violates the National Voter Registration Act. The RNC said it filed the records requests after Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) announced the state had mistakenly registered 300 non-citizens to vote.
- On Sept. 21, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that the state’s permanent absentee voting list was constitutional. State Sen. Gerald Hocker (R) filed a lawsuit on Aug. 5, alleging that the list unconstitutionally permitted ineligible voters to cast absentee ballots. Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice C.J. Seitz said that the law did not expand the group of eligible absentee voters beyond what is allowed in the state constitution.
Policy spotlight: U.S. Supreme Court allows use of expanded SAVE system ahead of the November elections
The story below is adapted from a recent Ballotpedia News story by Andrew Bahl.
On Sept. 25, the U.S. Supreme Court stayed a lower court ruling that blocked the federal government from using an expanded version of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system for voter registration and list maintenance. The SAVE system provides information about individuals' immigration and citizenship status.
The interim docket ruling allows the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to grant states access to the expanded version of SAVE ahead of the 2026 election.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which runs SAVE, describes the database as providing "point in time immigration status and U.S. citizenship information to federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal agencies.” USCIS is a division of DHS.
In 2025, President Donald Trump (R) issued an executive order requiring DHS to give state and local election officials free access to "appropriate systems for verifying the citizenship or immigration status of individuals registering to vote or who are already registered."
In response, USCIS made changes to SAVE, including pulling Social Security Administration records into the database and allowing states to conduct bulk searches.
In September 2025, the League of Women Voters and other parties filed a class-action complaint, alleging the changes to the database violated federal law. On June 22, 2026, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocked DHS from allowing states to access the expanded version of SAVE. Sooknanan said the changes violated federal data privacy laws and statutes governing administrative rules and regulations.
The U.S. Department of Justice appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which ruled 2-1 to deny the request to stay the decision. The federal government then sought a stay from the Supreme Court.
In an unsigned order, a majority of justices said that, on the merits, they would likely reverse the district court's ruling that the modified version of SAVE violated federal law. In addition, the order said that the lower court order would harm the federal government's ability to respond to inquiries from states and that it "inhibits the Federal Government's efforts to assist state and local agencies in the proper administration of the midterm elections."
The order said that while the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from using "any program the purpose of which is to systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters" within 90 days of a federal election, the modified SAVE database could still be used to search for individual voters.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she believes the modified database violates federal law and that "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the Government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take."
Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor joined Jackson’s dissent.
Nationally, 28 states have registered with the federal government to use SAVE for voter list maintenance or voter registration. Of those 28 states, 22 have Republican trifectas, two have Democratic trifectas, and four have divided government.
Some states have statutes requiring SAVE or other government data to be used to regularly check the citizenship status of registered voters or of individuals registering to vote for the first time. Currently, 27 states have statutes that require or authorize election officials to obtain citizenship data from state or federal agencies as part of the voter list maintenance process.