Republicans, who have largely bought into former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, say these measures are necessary to ensure the integrity of the election. Democrats say they are intended to make it harder for readers who traditionally support the Democratic Party to vote.
Most of the measures have been supported by Republican state legislators and opposed by Democrats, but the divide is not purely red and blue. And the debate over each law sometimes boils down to fine print.
IDENTIFICATION OF THE VOTER
Ten US states have imposed stricter requirements for reader identification since 2020, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and the Voting Rights Lab, which track voting legislation across the country.
Opponents of reader identification measures do not oppose requiring readers to verify their identity when voting – which is already the norm in all states – but rather the means used to verify them.
Unlike many European democracies, where government-issued IDs are more ubiquitous, studies have found that millions of American voters do not have photo IDs.
Two of the most controversial laws of 2021 have changed the identification rules for absentee or absentee ballots.
Georgia now requires readers who do not have a driver’s license or state ID to attach a photocopy of another government-issued ID to their application to vote by mail, which many readers are not always able to produce easily. Previously, the identity of absent readers was verified by comparing signatures.
Texas law allows readers to use a broader set of credentials when requesting and dropping off an absentee ballot. But it automatically rejects them if the voter uses an identification number different from the one he provided when registering on the electoral lists.
In the March primaries in Texas, election officials rejected one in eight mail-in ballots, according to data from the secretary of state’s office. That rate — 12.4% — far exceeded the 0.8% mail-in ballot rejection rate forecast by Texas in the 2020 presidential election. Officials blamed most of that increase on new law, according to local media.
Advocates of the Georgia and Texas measures say they are necessary to ensure readers are who they say they are, and cite studies that show some reader ID laws have failed. not lower the participation rate. Opponents say there is no need for tougher ID rules because voter fraud is already extremely rare, and cite studies showing that voter ID laws in states such as North Carolina have reduced the participation of readers of color.
VOTING BY CORRESPONDENCE
Mail-in voting laws are particularly complex in the United States. Only 11 countries worldwide do not require readers to provide an excuse to vote by mail, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), based in Stockholm.
Two-thirds of American states fall into this category. But since 2020, 18 states have passed laws making it harder for readers to request, receive or cast mail-in ballots, according to the Brennan Center and the Voting Rights Lab.
Some state laws have restricted mail-in voting in one way while relaxing it in other ways. Kentucky’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law that allows readers to fix mail-in ballots if they make mistakes, but also limits the period for requesting mail-in ballots.
Proponents of limiting mail-in voting say it increases the cost of organizing elections and creates more opportunities for ballots to be intercepted by unwitting recipients who could cast them fraudulently. Proponents of expanding mail-in voting say limiting it hurts readers who cannot get to a polling station.
KEEPING OF LECTORAL LISTS
Unlike many democratic countries, the United States does not have mandatory reader registration through a centralized system. Therefore, states should periodically review their lists of registered voters to ensure that they are up to date.
As of 2020, seven states have passed laws that make it easier to delist readers. Advocates of these laws say they are necessary to ensure that only eligible readers are kept on the list. But opponents say the laws make it harder for readers to know they’ve been expunged or to remedy wrongful expungements.
In April, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law legislation he said would improve election security by requiring election supervisors to clean up voter rolls every year instead of every two years, and creating a statewide Bureau of Election Crimes and Security to investigate election “irregularities”. Readers’ advocates have criticized the law, saying it creates more opportunities for readers to be wrongfully removed from lists and intimidated by investigators from the new bureau.
PARTISAN ADMINISTRATION VERSUS NON-PARTISAN ADMINISTRATION
The United States has one of the most fractured election administration systems in the world. In most US states, elections are overseen by elected or appointed state officials. In each county, elections are managed by local officials such as clerks and judges, sometimes in conjunction with nonpartisan or bipartisan election commissions.
Few state-level election laws sought to change election management authority ahead of the hotly contested 2020 election, in which Trump falsely blamed his loss on voter fraud.
But since that election, 25 states have passed laws that have shifted power away from traditional election managers and, in many cases, ceded control to partisan actors, according to the Voting Rights Lab. Advocates of the laws, who were overwhelmingly Republican, argued that they would increase scrutiny of local election officials.
Such laws are unusual in other democracies. The human rights body, the Council of Europe, adopted guidelines in 2010 that call for high-level positions in election management bodies to be “dispersed between parties” in order to to ensure balance.