State Voting Laws Roundup: 2025 in Review

Between January 1 and December 31, 2025, at least 16 states enacted 31 restrictive voting laws.¹ That tally includes two Ohio laws that were not part of our October roundup: one enacted after the publication of our previous roundup² and one enacted last March.³ Thirty of those laws and parts of an omnibus law in Utah are set to be in effect for the 2026 midterms.⁴
The newly enacted law in Ohio does not allow election officials to count mail ballots received after Election Day, except for military and overseas voters’ ballots.⁵ Kansas, North Dakota, and Utah passed similar laws in 2025.⁶ Previously, these 4 states allowed mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted so long as they were received within a set period after Election Day. Recent research on the changes to the Ohio receipt deadline suggests that thousands of valid votes in the 2024 election would not have been counted under the new rules. 

These laws come alongside litigation seeking to prohibit states from counting mail ballots received after Election Day, including a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court this spring. Currently, 30 states allow at least some ballots received after Election Day to count.⁷ 

State lawmakers have sought to limit mail voting for years, and 2025 was no exception. At least 7 states passed 8 laws restricting mail voting,⁸ headlined by a Utah law that, among other things, eliminates universal mail voting starting in 2029.⁹  

As covered in the October 2025 roundup, restrictive laws in 2025 also featured trends such as tightening existing ID requirements for voting or registration, as well as expanding the use of unreliable data to update state voter rolls in ways that are likely to remove eligible voters.

Between January 1 and December 31, 2025, at least 7 states enacted 8 election interference laws.¹ All are on track to be in effect this November.
The 8 laws include legislation enacted by Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Utah granting partisan state officials power over local election administration that could allow them to influence election outcomes.² Iowa’s law, for example, grants the secretary of state wide discretion to take over county-level recounts.

Elsewhere, Indiana and New Hampshire both enacted laws that could hamper election administration by instituting flawed ballot-counting requirements.³  
 

At least 25 states enacted 30 expansive voting laws in 2025.¹ All the expansive laws were discussed in our prior roundup, and all are slated to be in effect for the midterms.² Common themes included expanding voter registration opportunities, mail voting access, and ballot accessibility for voters with disabilities. 

This is the second lowest number of expansive laws passed in the last five years. The year with the lowest total (2022), however, also had far fewer restrictive laws (11). This is the first time since at least 2021 that there were more restrictive laws than expansive ones. The expansive laws enacted each year during that period outnumbered restrictive laws by at least 1.5 times.

A constitutional resolution that the Nevada Legislature passed in a special session in November is not included in our expansive law count. NV S.J.R. 1 would enshrine in the state’s constitution several existing provisions that provide broad access to voters, including universal vote by mail. For the state’s constitution to be changed, the amendment must be approved by next year’s legislature and then by voters in the 2028 general election.

Ballot Measures

Although we don’t track ballot initiatives, voting-related initiatives can still affect voters and access to the ballot box, and we do track legislation that can result in ballot measures. In October, we reported on several upcoming ballot measures, including one in Maine that would have been one of the most restrictive changes to voting laws all year.¹ Among other things, it would have eliminated automatic mail voter status for seniors and people with disabilities, banned prepaid postage for mail ballot return envelopes, expanded opportunities for frivolous challenges to voter eligibility, and required voters to show photo ID to vote in person or by mail. In November, 64 percent of Maine voters rejected that ballot measure.

Some state legislatures pre-file bills at the end of one year for consideration in the next. Likewise, many state legislatures carry over bills introduced but not passed in one year’s session to the next. At the start of this year’s sessions, both the pre-filed bills and the carryovers are pending in their respective legislatures. The substantive trends in the pre-filed and carryover legislation resemble those seen in recent years.

Pre-filed Legislation

At the end of 2025, legislators in at least 13 of the 32 states that allow pre-filing for this year’s upcoming sessions had pre-filed 113 voting bills. This is up from the 82 pre-filed voting bills at the end of 2023. 

Of the pre-filed bills, at least 6 bills in 4 states are restrictive. Each extends trends from 2025 legislation. For example, a Missouri bill¹ would require Americans to show a passport or birth certificate when registering to vote. The Brennan Center has tracked similar legislation, including in our last roundup, and explained how such show-your-papers policies disenfranchise eligible American voters. A pre-filed bill in Arizona would shorten the deadline for returning mail ballots by hand and require voters to present ID when returning a mail ballot,² and a Virginia bill would shorten the mail voting period by 15 days.³

Missouri is the only state in which legislators pre-filed election interference bills before the end of 2025, with a total of 2 such bills. The first⁴ requires hand-counts of almost all ballots in the state, and the second⁵ creates an office within the secretary of state’s office with extensive power to investigate alleged violations of election law. Such investigations are normally conducted by district attorneys.

On the other hand, there are 15 pre-filed bills in 5 states that would expand access to voting, including constitutional amendments in Virginia to automatically restore voting rights upon release from incarceration to people with felony convictions.⁶ Bills in Arizona would establish both automatic and same-day voter registration,⁷ while one in Alabama would expand disability access by allowing voters to designate someone to deliver their absentee ballot application.⁸  

Carryover Bills

Of the legislation that will carry over into the 2026 legislative session, 187 bills in 23 states would restrict access to voting. Seventy-eight of these would curb access to mail voting; 59 would create stricter ID requirements for registration or in-person voting; and 37 would either require voters to provide a passport, birth certificate, or similar document to register or expand voter purges in ways that are likely to remove eligible voters.

Thirty-six election interference bills are carrying over in 17 states, including 11 that would institute hand-counting procedures that often result in inaccurate results. Hand-counting some ballots is a useful way to verify results, but using this method improperly or to tally all ballots leads to more errors than machine counting, especially when done on compressed timelines. Of these 11 bills, 4 would require all ballots to be counted by hand, 2 would permit local officials to order full hand-counting, 2 would permit political parties to decide which ballots are hand-counted, and the remaining 3 would institute similarly flawed hand-counting approaches.

Of the 258 expansive carryover bills in 24 states, 66 would make it easier to vote by mail, 18 would require voting materials to be available in non-English languages, and 35 would restore voting rights to some people with past criminal convictions. While 36 states allow for carryover bills, one-third of this year’s expansive carryovers (72) are in New York, similar to 2024.