The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent and bipartisan commission established by the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA), will retire the standards currently used to test and federally certify voting equipment, known as Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) versions 1.0 and 1.1, on November 16, 2023. A new version of the VVSG, version…
As of June 8, 2023, former President Donald Trump (R) leads in both RealClearPolitics’ (RCP) Republican presidential primary polling average and PredictIt’s Republican presidential primary market. Trump’s polling average currently stands at 53 percent, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) at 22 percent. No other candidate has more than a 10 percent polling average.…
Texas lawmakers sent SB1070 to Gov. Greg Abbot (R) on May 29, 2023, positioning the state to become the eighth to withdraw from ERIC this year, and the ninth overall. Elsewhere, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed SB1135 on May 26, a bill including provisions that would have effectively withdrawn Arizona from ERIC. ERIC is…
The percentage of all enacted election-related bills dealing with single or multiple topics has stayed consistent from 2022 to 2023. As of May 2023, 53.5% of enacted bills address a single topic (61 of 114 bills), compared to 55.6% (158 of 284) of bills enacted by the end of 2022. Enactment of omnibus-style election bills,…
Ten states are considering legislation related to ballot collection, or ballot harvesting, while three states have enacted legislation on the topic so far in 2023. In 2022, seven states enacted bills while 15 others considered legislation. The number of bills and states considering ballot collection measures is smaller in 2023 than last year. Most legislation…
Utah is among the top three states enacting the highest percentage of their introduced election-related legislation for the second year in a row. It is the only state among the top three in 2022 and 2023. Utah lawmakers enacted 12 of the 29 election-related bills (41.4%) introduced in 2023 and nine of 18 in 2022…
The North Dakota State Senate voted to sustain Gov. Doug Burgum’s (R) veto of HB1273 on April 19, 2023. The bill would have prohibited the use of approval or ranked-choice voting methods in the state. Twenty-eight Senators voted to override the veto while 19 voted to sustain. In the North Dakota Senate, a two-thirds majority…
The North Dakota House of Representatives voted on April 10, 2023, to override Gov. Doug Burgum’s (R) veto of HB1273. The bill would ban the use of ranked-choice and approval voting methods in the state. Ranked-choice voting is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. Approval voting allows voters to…
State legislatures are considering a similar number of bills related to ranked-choice voting in 2023 sessions as they did last year, but the number of measures prohibiting or banning RCV has nearly doubled. So far this year, South Dakota and Idaho have enacted such prohibitions, joining Florida and Tennessee who became the first states to…