Voters in some battleground states will find it easier to cast ballots this year than in previous presidential elections, while in other pivotal states, voters will face new obstacles, according to a report released Thursday by the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.
Many of the changes to states’ election rules are focused on the protocols for mail ballots, with some states creating new limits on access to ballot drop boxes and tightening various deadlines in the process. Other states have sought to lower barriers to mail voting.
The Brennan Center report illuminates how, after the 2020 election, state legislators of both parties became keenly focused on remaking election rules – both in response to former President Donald Trump’s lies about mass fraud driving his defeat, as well as to how the Covid-19 pandemic transformed voter habits. This year’s election between Trump and his newly anointed Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, is expected to be close, with recent polling showing the race tightening in key states since President Joe Biden dropped out.
Among the closely watched states that have made voting harder since 2020, according to the Brennan Center’s analysis, are Florida and North Carolina.
In North Carolina, a 2023 law moving up the state’s deadline for when mail ballots must be received by election officials would have affected 11,600 ballots, the Brennan Center said, had the law been in place in 2020. Previously, mail ballots received up to three days after the election could be accepted, but the new law – enacted by the GOP legislature over the veto of Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper – makes 7:30 p.m. of Election Day the receipt deadline. Additionally, a requirement that photo ID be shown in order to vote in North Carolina will be in effect for the first time in a presidential election. Florida voters, meanwhile, will face new obstacles for casting mail ballots thanks to a 2021 law that constrained the use of ballot drop boxes and limited the assistance voters can receive from others, among other new regulations.
In some battleground states, voters will find more options for voting. Nevada has made permanent the universal mail balloting system it set up for the pandemic, and it has improved voter access on tribal lands. Michigan voters will be able to register online for a mail ballot, as part of a raft of 2023 laws that streamlined the mail voting system. Other recent Michigan laws extend the timeline for early in-person voting while adding other forms of identification to meet the voter ID requirement.
In some of the most contested states in the 2020 election, the picture is mixed but trends towards a more restrictive landscape for exercising the franchise. Arizona added hours to in-person early voting and passed other bills that will make voting easier in specific circumstances. But it has also imposed new requirements – including a proof of residency for certain voters – that are subject to ongoing litigation. An election overhaul bill passed by Georgia lawmakers in 2021 was a national flashpoint and the target of legal challenge. Thursday’s Brennan report notes the Georgia law’s drop box limits, its tougher ID rules for mail voting and how it tightened the timeline for applying for a mail ballot and when those mail ballots can be sent out.
The think tank included in its analysis so-called “election interference” laws that Brennan describes as making election officials more vulnerable to partisan meddling. One such law cited in the report is Georgia’s overhaul of its state election board, while in Texas, state legislators targeted the county containing Houston – a Democratic stronghold – with a law that dismantled the county’s election administrator’s office.
