Voting rights legislation across country looks to both

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Voting rights legislation across country looks to both restrict, expand access



A new report looked at proposed state bills and how they would affect elections.

It's been less than three months since the U.S. saw a record-breaking election turnout, and state leaders across the country are introducing legislation that changes how their localities would operate future elections.

But one watchdog group is already raising flags over some of these bills, particularly ones in key swing states.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan, independent organization that analyzes election rules, released a study Tuesday that found 28 states have introduced 106 bills that would restrict voting access by various means, including mandating voter ID and adding more conditions for requesting mail-in ballots.

At the same time, 35 states have introduced over 400 bills to expand voter access, including ones that would increase access to mail-in ballots and increase early voting, the report said.

By comparison, there were 35 similarly restrictive voting bills in 15 states and 188 similarly expansive voting bills introduced in 28 states in February 2020, according to the study.

Eliza Sweren-Becker, voting rights and elections counsel for the Brennan Center, told ABC News state legislators are reacting to the overwhelming turnout during last year's election, where over 155 million Americans cast a ballot. Sweren-Becker warned that any of these bills would have a major effect on turnout.

"I think the big overall takeaway is: Democracy reform as an issue is not going away just because we’re not in a presidential year," she said.

Here are some of the biggest bills and proposals that have been introduced in statehouses.

Restrictive bills and proposals

Swing state Pennsylvania, which has a Republican majority in the state legislature, has 14 election-related bills that the Brennan Center called restrictive, the most of any state so far.

President Joe Biden won the state with just 81,660 votes in November, with a large number of votes coming from mail-in ballots, according to election results.

The state adopted "no-excuse" absentee ballot voting in 2019, which means people do not need a reason to request an absentee mail-in ballot. However, there are three different proposals announced by leaders in the Pennsylvania state legislature that look to remove that provision, according to the Brennan Center report. Another Pennsylvania bill would allow election offices to reject absentee ballots solely based on mismatched signatures.

Sweren-Becker noted that the Pennsylvania state courts ruled last year that absentee ballots couldn't be rejected just on mismatched signatures alone.

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