North Carolina lawmakers made unaffiliated voter participation in partisan primaries a permanent feature of state election laws as part of a veto override of S747 on Oct. 10, 2023. As part of the omnibus election bill, political parties holding primaries in the state must allow unaffiliated voters to participate in their primaries. Previously, state law permitted but…
Voters in Louisiana approved Amendment 1, a ban on the use of private funding for election administration, by 72.56% on Oct. 14, 2023. With Saturday’s vote, Louisiana became the second state to enact a ban on private funding for election administration in the last week. North Carolina lawmakers overrode Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) veto of…
On July 20, Texas became the eighth state to resign from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in 2023, and the ninth state overall. ERIC is a multi-state voter list maintenance organization, initially established in 2012 by a group of chief election officials from seven states. By 2022, 33 states were participating members in ERIC.…
So far this year, two states, Michigan and Minnesota, have enacted extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs). They became the first states to enact new ERPOs since New Mexico and Virginia did so in 2020. The new laws in Michigan and Minnesota raise the total number of states with ERPOs to 21. ERPOs are also commonly…
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 Katie Hobbs (D) vetoed SB1135 on May 26, a bill including provisions that would have effectively withdrawn Arizona from ERIC.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…