Vote16USA is a national campaign, organized by Generation Citizen, that aims to support efforts to lower the voting age on the local level, help start new local campaigns, and elevate the issue's prominence on a national level.
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More than halfway into the year, and with most state legislative sessions concluded, the full scope of voting changes spurred by the 2020 election is coming into view.
As of last week, 18 states have enacted 30 laws that limit voting access, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a liberal public policy institute at New York University Law School that has been tracking state voting legislation. At the same time, 25 states have signed into law 54 measures that expand access to the ballot box.
And more voting changes are sure to come. Thirteen state legislatures are still in session, and additional states, like Texas, may convene for special sessions.
Since the start of the year, more than 400 bills tightening voting rules have been introduced across nearly every state. This wave of restrictions is "the most aggressive" the Brennan Center has seen in more than a decade of tracking such laws. And the proposed changes are in large part motivated by false claims of voter fraud in last year's election.
Arkansas and Montana, with four new laws each, are tied for enacting the most voting restrictions this year. Arizona is a close second with three new laws.
Most of the restrictive voting measures approved this year focus on rolling back mail voting access by limiting the availability of drop boxes, shortening the time voters have to apply for an absentee ballot and limiting who can return another voter's mailed ballot. Other laws impose new identification requirements and increase maintenance of voter rolls, which could lead to the unintended removal of eligible voters.
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In half the states where voting easements have been approved, those laws have mostly been focused on expanding access to early in-person and mail voting, as well as voter registration. A handful of states have also taken steps to restore voting rights to people with past felony convictions.
"Many of the states in which voting is already comparatively more accessible are the same as those enacting policies to further strengthen voting access, deepening a national divide such that the promise of the right to vote depends increasingly on where Americans happen to live," the Brennan Center wrote in its report.
Once again, the good-government organization urged Congress to take action to mitigate these voting restrictions by passing the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Since House Democrats passed the For the People Act in March, the sweeping democracy reform legislation has been stuck in the evenly split Senate with no clear path forward. The VRAA has yet to be introduced in this Congress.
All eyes have been on Texas, but there are several other states making changes to their voting laws, too.
Texas is once again in the voting rights spotlight after GOP lawmakers this weekend revived a bill to tighten the state's election rules.
In May, Democratic lawmakers blocked the first round of voting restrictions by staging a dramatic walkout. But now in the special session, Republicans are getting a second chance to advance their legislative priorities.
And while much of the attention is on Texas, several voting restrictions have gained traction under the radar in 13 other states. RepresentUs, a prominent democracy reform advocacy group, released a report last week highlighting these lesser-known measures that impact more than 35 million voters overall.
So far this year 35 anti-voter bills have been enacted across 18 states, according to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab. In its report, RepresentUs identified 27 of them as "especially worrying and underpublicized cases."
Here are some of the recently enacted voting changes you may have missed:
Arkansas and Iowa have limited in-person early voting options. Voting by mail and access to ballot drop boxes have also been restricted in five states: Arkansa, Idaho, Iowa, Montana and Wyoming.
Additionally, a handful of states have adopted tougher rules for voter identification, including requiring an affidavit to cast a provisional ballot (Arkansas) and mandating photo ID at the polls (Montana and Wyoming).
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Three states — Arizona, Kansas and Kentucky — have all reduced the power the secretary of state has over elections. For instance, a new law in Arizona gives the attorney general the authority to defend state election laws, rather than the secretary of state.
Seven states have rolled back or completely prohibited local and state election officials from using private money for election administration. This came in response to the Center for Tech and Civic Life, funded by Mark Zuckerberg, providing $350 million in grants for last year's elections. Banning such funds could make paying for elections difficult when help from the federal government is lacking.
Several states have also made changes to the voter registration process. Arizona and Iowa have ramped up their voter roll maintenance, which could inadvertently disqualify eligible voters. Iowa also cut its registration period by four days. Montana will no longer allow residents to register and vote on Election Day. And voters in Utah will now have less time to update their party affiliation before a primary election.
More voting changes are sure to come, though, as legislative sessions, regular and special, are still ongoing in 17 states and Washington, D.C.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that a 2017 voter registration law must be stricken in its entirety.
The New Hampshire Supreme Court last week struck down four-year-old voter registration rules, finding they imposed "unreasonable burdens on the right to vote."
In a unanimous 4-0 decision on Friday, the court concurred with a lower court's ruling that found the law unconstitutional, and therefore must be stricken in its entirety. Critics said the law made the state's voter registration process convoluted and confusing, especially for college students.
This victory for voting rights advocates came on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that some decried as particularly damaging to minority voters. On Thursday, the high court's conservative majority ruled to uphold two restrictive voting laws in Arizona.
The New Hampshire law, which was drafted and passed by Republicans in 2017, created a new process for people who registered to vote within 30 days of an election, or on Election Day itself, without a photo ID. Such people were then required to fill out forms and provide documentation to prove they were New Hampshire residents.
The law allowed those voters to cast a ballot if they did not have the necessary documents immediately available, but if they missed a deadline for submission, the voters could have been subject to wrongful voting penalties, including a fine of up to $5,000 and a misdemeanor charge.
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The New Hampshire Supreme Court agreed with the Superior Court's 2020 ruling that found this process was difficult to navigate and potentially deterring people from registering to vote, as well as overly burdensome on voters.
The Superior Court also ruled that this law had an "unequal impact" on young people, in particular college students, because they tend to change addresses often and therefore need to update their voter registration information more frequently.
The New Hampshire chapter of the League of Women Voters, which was one of the plaintiffs challenging this law, said the ruling was "a fitting reminder that voting rights are at the heart of our democracy."
"Today's ruling struck down a harmful voter registration law designed to penalize voters and limit who can participate in our elections," the nonprofit organization said in a statement. "While we are pleased with this verdict, we must ensure that further attempts to restrict voting rights in New Hampshire will be curtailed by this ruling. We will continue to be vigilant if more voter suppression bills move forward in committee hearings this fall."
On Friday, Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who signed this measure into law in 2017, said it was "disappointing that these common sense reforms were not supported by our Supreme Court."
"But we have to respect their decision, and I encourage the Legislature to take the court's opinion into account and continue working to make common sense reforms to ensure the integrity of New Hampshire's elections," he said.
In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to promote voting access through federal agencies.
GOP Senators on Tuesday evening blocked their Democratic colleagues' attempt to advance the For the People Act, the sweeping election reform bill. This partisan gridlock in the evenly split Senate ensures a rocky path forward for any of the Democrats' legislative priorities.
However, there are still ways the federal government, namely the executive branch, can promote voter education and access to the ballot box. In March, President Joe Biden issued an executive order asking agencies to evaluate how they can, within their purview of the law, encourage voter registration and participation.
Federal agencies are expected to present their strategic plans for promoting voting access in late September. And voting rights experts want to make sure they stick to this promise.
With fewer than 100 days left until the plans are due, the Campaign Legal Center sent letters to six federal agencies outlining recommendations and best practices for promoting voting access. The agencies include the Department of Education, Election Assistance Commission and General Services Administration, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service.
Dana Paikowsky, one of the Campaign Legal Center experts who helped draft the letters, said her organization wanted to show how "the government could be creative and innovative in thinking about how to create more pathways to democracy, instead of fewer."
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Each of these six agencies already serves populations of Americans that often face barriers to the ballot box — including people who are nonwhite, Native American, disabled, low-income, young or incarcerated — so they are uniquely positioned to engage with people about voting, Paikowsky said.
Here are some of the recommendations the Campaign Legal Center outlined:
Biden's executive order directed these agencies to modernize Vote.gov to improve user experiences. The Campaign Legal Center recommends that this website also include resources for people with past felony convictions to verify their voting eligibility. The democracy reform nonprofit offered its own tool, RestoreYourVote.org, as a reference.
"Few people realize that, in every state in the United States, at least some segment of the incarcerated population retains their rights to vote," the Campaign Legal Center wrote in its letter to BOP. These individuals who are still eligible to vote are largely being held in jail pretrial or for minor misdemeanor offenses.
"The federal government interacts with more eligible voters than any other entity in the United States, and so we wanted to emphasize the ways in which the federal government can leverage those interactions," said Valencia Richardson, one of the Campaign Legal Center's experts who helped draft the letters.
"We really provide ways the government can leverage the resources they already have and the programs they're already implementing to integrate voter-friendly and voter-accessible information and resources to eligible voters," Richardson said.
At a time when GOP-led states are enacting stricter voting rules to shore up election integrity and Congress is stalled by partisan dysfunction, the Campaign Legal Center experts said protecting the health of American democracy is of the utmost importance. The executive order, they said, provides a pathway for voters to both understand their rights and have the tools necessary to exercise those rights.
But Richardson and Paikowsky also emphasized that the strategic plans submitted by federal agencies in September, regardless of whether they include the Campaign Legal Center's recommendations, are just the first step in a long process to making democracy more inclusive and accessible.
"Part of what we need to see is long-term dedication and persistence," Paikowsky said. "You can't be a proponent of democracy by taking one step. […] You're coming back to the table every time to say, 'OK, what have we missed and how can we make voting easier, how can we make things more accessible, how can we make our democracy work better and include more people's voices?'"
