The Ballot Bulletin: January 17, 2025

Welcome to The Ballot Bulletin: Ballotpedia’s Weekly Digest on Election Administration. Every Friday, we deliver the latest updates on election policy around the country, including nationwide trends and recent legislative activity. 

In this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 198 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.

Weekly highlights

The big takeaways from the past week's legislative actions. 

Lawmakers in 22 states acted on 198 bills over the last week, 120 more than the previous week. 

• No bills were enacted this week. There was one bill enacted during the same week in 2024, none in 2023, and two in 2022.
• Forty-seven of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 126 are in states with Republican trifectas, and 24 are in states with a divided government.  
• The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (40), campaign finance (34), and voter registration and list maintenance (25)
• We are currently tracking a total of 668 bills. We were following a total of 757 bills at this time in 2023.

Note: Legislators file, in some cases, hundreds of bills per day. We are actively reviewing those bills to determine their relevance to election administration. As a result, during this period of heightened legislative activity, year-to-year comparisons may not yet account for all relevant bills introduced in 2025.

In the news

A glance at what's making headlines in the world of election law.

Here are some of the newsworthy election-related developments since our last edition.

• On Jan. 16, nearly 30 Republican members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly asked a federal court to grant them standing to challenge changes to the state's election regulations stemming from President Joe Biden's (D) Executive Order 14019. The order directed federal agencies to develop state-level voter registration programs in states that use agency services or programs. 
• On Jan. 14, the California Attorney General’s office filed an appeal in its challenge to a Huntington Beach voter ID law. The Orange County Superior Court dismissed the state's original lawsuit on Nov. 15. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill in September 2024 prohibiting local governments from enacting a requirement for a person to present identification to vote.
• On Jan. 10, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit challenging 60,000 ballots cast in a North Carolina Supreme Court race. Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin (R) previously filed challenges to approximately 60,000 voters' eligibility after two recounts showed his opponent, Allison Riggs (D), leading by several hundred votes.
• On Jan. 7, the U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint in U.S. district court alleging that the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, is violating the federal Voting Rights Act by electing city council members at-large rather than by district. The Department said the city's selection method for council members "results in Hispanic citizens not having an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice."

Key movements

A look at what bills are moving and where. 

No bills were enacted in the past week. There was one bill enacted during the same week in 2024, none in 2023, and two in 2022. To see all enacted bills, click here.

No bills passed both chambers of any legislature. To see all bills awaiting gubernatorial action and their full summaries, click here.

Governors vetoed no bills. No bills were vetoed during this period in 2024, 2023, or 2023. To see all vetoed bills, click here.

The big picture

Zooming out to see the macro-level trends in election policy so far this year. 

Enacted bills

No bills were enacted this week. The chart below shows the number of enacted bills in 2025 compared to previous years.

The chart below shows the number of bills enacted over the first 12 weeks of each year.

All bills

We are following 668 election-related bills this year, including bills carried over from the previous year. See the chart below for a breakdown of all legislation by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

• Trifecta status
  • Democratic: 147 (22%)
  • Republican: 453 (67.8%) 
  • Divided: 68 (10.2%) 

• Partisan sponsorship
  • Democratic: 263 (39.4%)
  • Republican: 317 (47.5%)
  • Bipartisan: 23 (3.4%)
  • Other: 65 (9.7%)

We were following 757 bills at this point in 2023. Below is a breakdown of those bills by trifecta status and partisan sponsorship.

• Trifecta status
  • Democratic: 389 (51.4%)
  • Republican: 311 (41.1%) 
  • Divided: 57 (7.5%) 

• Partisan sponsorship
  • Democratic: 327 (%)
  • Republican: 317 (%)
  • Bipartisan: 55 (%)
  • Other: 58 (%)