State lawmakers across the country have introduced thousands of bills to change the way the election is run after former President Donald Trump falsely blamed his 2020 loss on voter fraud. Hundreds have become law.
Even with supporters of Trump’s election largely defeated in this year’s midterms, advocates on both sides of the election debate are bracing for another round of election-related legislation. Republicans are eager to tighten election rules further while Democrats, who have taken control of two more state houses, will seek to make voting easier.
Minnesota’s newly re-elected Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon said he has spoken to several secretaries of state eager to push for changes in the vote. Losses to election-denying candidates in top races have emboldened some Democrats to advocate for expanded voting rights.
“Voters spoke loud and clear about what they wanted and didn’t want, both when it came to this office and all these other issues,” said Simon, who defeated a Republican challenger who repeated some of the Trump lies about the 2020 election.
Democrats won a majority in both houses of the Minnesota Legislature in November, giving Simon a good chance to pass changes. He plans to urge lawmakers to adopt automatic voter registration and allow high school students to pre-register.
States regularly make adjustments to their election laws, some subtle, some dramatic. But experts have never seen an explosion of legislation like the one that followed the 2020 presidential election, when more than 3,600 election bills were introduced, according to the Voting Rights Lab, which tracks the legislation.
Liz Avore, the group’s senior adviser, said 22 states over the past two years have expanded access to the ballot, 10 have created new restrictions, and five have expanded access in some respect while creating new barriers in others. This, she said, has created a divide in the United States in which “your ZIP code determines your access to our democracy.”
This gap looks likely to widen next year. Legislatures won’t meet until January at the earliest, so it’s unclear how many bills are being drafted and on what topics. But Texas, where the Legislature only meets once every two years and lawmakers can “pre-introduce” bills for the next session, offers some insight.
The Associated Press has identified nearly 100 election-related legislative proposals already introduced in the state, both to increase access to the polls and to further restrict it. That includes one that would allow the best attorney in the state to appoint a prosecutor who specializes in election crimes, testing the limits of a court ruling earlier this year that found the attorney general lacked the power to prosecute electoral crimes.
Another would appoint a group of peace officers to serve as election marshals who would investigate allegations of election missteps. This would follow the example of Florida, where officers from a special election unit have already made a handful of arrests – including people who mistakenly thought they were eligible to vote under a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring the right to vote to certain criminals. Critics called the unit a political tool of the governor.
Matt Simpson, senior attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, said current election legislation proposed in the state, such as increasing criminal penalties for election crimes and creating election marshals, is “extreme ” and “very intimidating” for voters. He said these approaches are mostly political and don’t address real voting issues, such as high rejection rates of mail-in ballots and ballot applications due to widespread confusion over ID numbers. required.
“It’s certainly the case that the Texas election doesn’t have widespread fraud,” Simpson said. “These bills, these concerns that are being raised, are solutions in search of a problem.”
The reliability of elections in Texas was underscored by the release earlier this month of an audit by the office of the secretary of state. The 359-page audit of the 2020 elections in the state’s two largest Democratic counties and the two largest Republican counties found some “irregularities,” but they were largely related to holding elections during a pandemic.
“In most cases, the audit found that counties were following their procedures and clearly documenting their activities,” the audit said.
Ohio is another Republican-controlled state where lawmakers continue to push for restrictions.
The state is expected to draw national attention next year after Republicans signaled they could try again to place on the May ballot a measure requiring a 60% majority for any future constitutional amendments to pass. This provision could limit the ability of Ohio voters to rein in GOP gerrymandering or otherwise counter the majority Republican legislature, such as codifying abortion rights.
Republicans failed to muster enough votes in the lame December session to set the higher threshold for passing amendments on the ballot, but they did pass a sweeping overhaul of election law. The bill adds a photo ID requirement for voters and provides them for free, codifies a directive requiring one ballot box per county and eliminates early voting on the Monday before Election Day – county officials had said that had interfered with their final preparations. The legislation also reduces the window for receiving mail-in ballots after the election from 10 days to four.
Republican Senator Theresa Gavarone said taking steps to tighten voting booth access and speed up vote counting was aimed at improving “perception, trust and integrity” in the election.
“People, perception matters,” Gavarone said. “Whether you want to believe it or not, the goal should not only be to secure our elections, but it is imperative that we give people who doubt the results of our elections a reason to participate.”
Suffrage advocates were outraged.
“This legislation will make it unnecessarily more difficult for seniors, students, rural Ohioans, active duty military and other eligible Ohioans to vote,” said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters Ohio.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s office said it was reviewing the legislation.
Democrats are plotting their own efforts, particularly in two states where they have taken control of legislatures and retained governorship — Michigan and Minnesota.
Michigan voters not only gave Democrats control of the state legislature, they also passed Proposition 2, a sweeping ballot initiative that expanded early and mail-in voting. Democrats are already preparing to strengthen the measure in the legislative session.
“There’s going to have to be quite a bit of implementing legislation next term, and I look forward to working with the Legislative Assembly and the governor’s office to pass it,” the county clerk said. ‘Ingham, Barb Byrum, a Democrat, in an interview.
Michigan State Department spokesman Jake Rollow said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson will likely ask lawmakers to allocate $100 million a year to local election offices and propose new measures against the broadcast false electoral information. A Democratic state lawmaker has also proposed imposing penalties on people who lobby election workers, a key cause for Democrats in state legislatures after conspiracy theorists targeted election officials after the election. 2020 presidential.
In Minnesota, Simon said he also wants to increase penalties for threatening or interfering with election workers. He said he would push for a range of other reforms, including pre-registering high school students so they can quickly join voter rolls at the age of 18. Younger voters lean toward the Democrat, but Simon said he’s not trying to promote his party.
He said he simply wanted to make the electorate more representative of the people, a goal he also pushed when the statehouse was split between Republicans and Democrats.
“These are reforms that will benefit everyone,” he said.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan, and Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
Nicholas Riccardi et Acacia Coronado, The Associated Press