Following the 2020 election, a wave of voting restrictions in large or highly competitive states, including Georgia, Texas, Arizona, and Florida, put a national spotlight on the GOP’s all-out drive to make it harder to vote.
In response, a broad opposition mobilized to push back. A barrage of lawsuits was filed to protect voter access. Celebrities spoke out. Amid the outcry over Georgia’s sweeping suppression law, Major League Baseball moved its All Star Game out of Atlanta.
The attacks on voting following the 2024 election have been different — but perhaps no less dangerous. Instead of high-profile battles waged in key states, we’ve seen a handful of mostly smaller red states — many of which already weren’t making things easy for voters — pass laws imposing new restrictions, and largely escaping serious media scrutiny.
That’s a key takeaway from a Voting Rights Lab (VRL) analysis of state voting laws passed this year, which was provided to Democracy Docket now that all but a few state legislatures have adjourned for the year.
It wasn’t all bad news. Of the 100 election-related bills that became law across 35 states in 2025 (nearly 1,700 nationwide were filed) 30 improved voter access while 27 restricted it, VRL found. (The rest will have a mixed or neutral effect.) Combating racial discrimination, expanding early voting, and improving language accessibility were all key areas that saw progress.
Here are the most important new voting laws that will shape access to the ballot in 2026 and beyond:
Anti-voter bills
Of all the states that made it harder to vote this year, Utah takes the dishonorable top spot. Lawmakers eliminated universal mail voting, so Utah voters now must apply for an absentee ballot in order to vote by mail.
Previously, the state mailed ballots to all registered voters — a policy that has been shown to boost turnout.
“This is the only state we’ve seen repeal a mail voting law like this,” Liz Avore, senior policy adviser at VRL, told Democracy Docket. “It’s the most significant change around mail voting that we’ve seen since 2020.”
Utah wasn’t the only state to target mail voting. It was joined by Kansas and North Dakota in eliminating grace periods for late-arriving ballots — a new GOP obsession. Starting in 2026 in those three states, ballots won’t be counted if they arrive after 7 p.m. on Election Day, even if they’re post-marked on time.
“Everyday Kansans know that the mail requires time to arrive, especially in rural parts of the state, and that mail ballots are crucial for thousands of rural, disabled, and elderly Kansas voters to exercise their right to vote,” Micah Kubic of the ACLU of Kansas said in a statement after lawmakers overrode the veto of Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) to force that state’s bill into law.
Three Kansas advocacy groups filed a lawsuit in May asking the court to block enforcement.
Student voting rights also came under attack. Indiana became the latest state to remove student ID from the list of forms of accepted voter identification, following similar moves by several other states in recent years, including Ohio, Idaho and Montana.
Indiana’s law passed despite opposition from a state voting rights coalition that pointed out there’s no evidence that student ID cards are less reliable than other forms of photo ID. In Monroe County – home to Indiana University Bloomington, which has nearly 50,000 students – around two-thirds of students used student IDs to vote at the on-campus polling place in the 2024 general election, according to a lawsuit filed in May challenging the student ID ban*.
The GOP’s obsession with the myth of noncitizen voting made itself felt in Wyoming, which imposed a documentary proof of citizenship requirement on all voter registration applicants. The new law already faces a legal challenge*.
“We’ve seen these proof of citizenship bills just skyrocket over the past couple years,” Avore said, noting that 27 states introduced bills to impose a restrictive proof of citizenship requirement of some kind this year.
Still, Wyoming’s law isn’t as restrictive as the policy embraced by national Republicans. The state allows Real IDs to serve as proof of citizenship, which is not permitted under the federal SAVE Act supported by the GOP.
All of those states except Utah ranked well below average for voter turnout in 2024 — meaning voters already faced hurdles. Now those hurdles will only get higher.
Pro-voter bills
The Colorado Voting Rights Act tops the list of this year’s ambitious, pro-voter legislation to cross the finish line.
With the federal Voting Rights Act weakened by GOP attacks and a conservative Supreme Court, states are stepping up to ensure minority voters are protected from discrimination at the polls. Colorado becomes the sixth state to pass a state-level Voting Rights Act, which bars racial bias in voting.
“They kind of go about it in a few different ways, but the general gist of it is they’re designed to ensure that local policies and practices are not discriminatory to protected classes,” Avore said.
Voting advocates are calling it a model they hope other states will follow.
“In this time of uncertainty and national instability, Colorado is paving a different path by acting on its own to strengthen our right to vote,” Aly Belknap, Executive Director of Colorado Common Cause, said in a statement when the measure was signed into law last month.
Early voting access may be emerging as a rare expansive policy that Republicans, at least in some places and at some times, will support.
GOP-led Arkansas and Democratic New Jersey both made early voting easier this year, with Arkansas increasing early voting locations and New Jersey adding an extra day of early voting.
“Early voting has been one of the areas with bipartisan agreement we’ve seen over the past several years,” Avore said.
In Virginia, lawmakers took a big step toward restoring voting rights for people convicted of felonies. Virginia currently has one of the strictest rights restoration policies in the country – Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) has sole discretion to grant restoration of voting rights on a case-by-case basis.
Lawmakers voted to automatically restore voting rights upon a person’s release from incarceration, but since the change requires a state constitutional amendment, it’s not a done deal yet. The resolution must pass again in next year’s legislative session before it can be on the ballot for voter approval in November 2026.
“It’s about closing the book on Jim Crow-era laws in the former capital of the Confederacy,” Michelle Moffit, Director of Civic Engagement at Virginia Civic Engagement Table, said in a statement after passage of the resolution.
“Restoration is another area where we see some bipartisan movement,” Avore said, noting that Tennessee improved its voting rights restoration process this year, as well.
Maryland and Nevada both enacted laws boosting language accessibility for voters.
In Maryland, a new Language Assistance Program requires local election boards to provide online voting materials in designated languages and translators at polling places. The Nevada law requires that voting and election information posted on the state’s website is available in all languages required by federal law and in American Sign Language, and it establishes a telephone number for voters to receive translation assistance.
“With language accessibility now the law of the land in Nevada, we expect to see greater voter participation, fewer hurdles for voters, and a more representative democracy in 2026 and beyond,” All Voting is Local Nevada Campaign Manager Chanel Cassanello-Moran said in a statement.
And finally….
It’s also worth noting a few of the higher-profile bills that didn’t become law — in some cases unexpectedly. Both Texas and Florida saw failed efforts to pass documentary proof of citizenship bills along the lines of the SAVE Act. One factor that helped stop the Texas bill, Democracy Docket reported: The fear among GOP lawmakers that it could hurt their own voters.
Several election bills in Arizona also didn’t make it, despite swiftly passing the GOP-controlled legislature. Chief among them were a measure that would have eliminated in-person early voting and banned popular countywide vote centers on Election Day, and another that sought to shield county officials from prosecution if they refused to certify election results. Both were vetoed by Governor Katie Hobbs (D), who framed the bills as dangerous attacks on free and fair elections.
A Pennsylvania measure that would have created voter ID requirements failed to pass last month.
And in Nevada, a compromise between Democratic legislative leaders and Republican Governor Joe Lombardo would have implemented voter ID requirements while also expanding ballot drop box access. But Lombardo vetoed the bill, saying it didn’t do enough to verify mail voters’ identity. The episode shows just how hard it is for today’s GOP to approve almost any move to expand voting access, especially in competitive states.
* The plaintiffs in the Indiana student ID lawsuit and the Wyoming proof of citizenship lawsuit are represented by the Elias Law Group (ELG). ELG Firm Chair Marc Elias is the founder of Democracy Docket.