This weekly update summarizing legislative activity affecting voting and elections is powered by the Voting Rights Lab. Sign up for VRL’s weekly newsletter here.
The Voting Rights Lab is tracking 2,158 bills so far this session, with 574 bills that tighten the rules governing voter access or election administration and 1,029 bills that expand the rules.
A New Hampshire bill that would create a stricter voter ID law and establish a new system of provisional ballots took another step forward last week, and Rhode Island enacted the Let RI Vote Act, which allows all voters to cast a mail ballot with no special reason or “excuse” required. Delaware’s House passed a bill to approve same day registration.
Arizona enacted a trio of bills that increase ballot and registration access. Louisiana enacted legislation expanding voter access during states of emergency and lawmakers sent bills to the governor that would increase election worker compensation as well as effectively ban secure ballot drop boxes.
Looking ahead: We’ll be watching to see if Gov. Kathy Hochul signs the New York Voting Rights Act, as well as legislation to meet the 10-day constitutional minimum for the state's voter registration deadline.
Here are the details:
Rhode Island creates no-excuse mail voting. On Tuesday, Gov. Daniel McKee signed the Let RI Vote Act ( S.B. 2007), which eliminates the requirement that voters have a special reason – or “excuse” – to vote by mail. Rhode Island is now one of 34 states that allow qualified voters to cast a ballot by mail with no excuse required. This new law also facilitates mail voting by allowing voters to request mail ballots online, requiring at least one drop box per municipality, and eliminating the requirement that voters get their mail ballots and mail ballot applications notarized or witnessed.
Arizona enacts legislation ensuring voters who apply for mail ballots, but do not return them, can still vote in person. Last week, Gov. Doug Ducey signed S.B. 1460, which allows voters who apply for mail ballots, but do not return them, to cast a regular ballot on Election Day (as long as the electronic poll book confirms that they have not returned their ballot). He also signed S.B. 1362, which allows voters with completed mail ballots to bring them to a polling place on Election Day, show ID, and insert the mail ballot directly into a tabulator without requiring the signature verification that all other mail ballots must undergo. Finally, Ducey signed S.B. 1170, which requires the Department of Game and Fish to provide voter registration services to people applying for a hunting, fishing or trapping license.
Louisiana expands voter access during states of emergency, and state lawmakers send bills to the governor that would ban drop boxes and increase election worker compensation. Last week, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed S.B. 258, which increases voter access during states of emergency by permitting the secretary of state to conduct early voting at times and locations accessible to affected voters. Also last week, the Legislature sent two other bills to the governor, including a bill that would effectively ban secure ballot drop boxes and one that would increase election worker compensation.
New Hampshire’s strict voter ID bill is signed by the speaker of the House and heads to the secretary of state. S.B. 418, which would make the state's voter ID law more restrictive, continues to advance through the legislative process. Now that the bill has been signed by the speaker of the House, it advances to the secretary of state’s office for signature and then to the governor. Current New Hampshire law allows voters without physical ID to cast a regular ballot if they complete an affidavit affirming their identity, under penalty of perjury. This bill would eliminate that alternative, and instead rescind their vote from the count if they are unable to show an ID within 10 days of the election. Most states with voter ID laws offer an alternative to ensure the identity of voters without ID can be verified through other means. This new bill would put New Hampshire in the minority.
The Delaware House passes same-day voter registration. The Delaware House of Representatives passed a bill that will allow voter registration to continue until the close of polls on Election Day. Under current law, the registration deadline is the fourth Saturday before Election Day. The bill now heads to the state Senate.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.