Voting laws in swing states could shape 2024 election

Legislatures have made some rules that govern elections tighter or looser in the run-up to this fall’s vote, depending on whether Democrats or Republicans have been in charge.

Voting in Michigan will be easier for many people this fall than it was four years ago. There will be nine days of early voting. All mail ballots will have prepaid return postage. And every community will have at least one drop box for absentee ballots because of a measure adopted by voters with the support of the state’s top Democrats.

Voters casting ballots in North Carolina, where Republicans enjoy a veto-proof legislative majority, will see dramatic changes in the opposite direction. For the first time in a presidential election, voters there will have to show an ID. More votes are expected to be thrown out because of new absentee ballot return deadlines.

And courts will soon decide whether to allow a law to go into effect that would reshape the state’s elections boards and could result in fewer early-voting sites.

The two states illustrate how much voting has changed since the last presidential election. Whether Americans will have an easier or harder time casting a ballot than they did in 2020 will depend on where they live and whether Democrats or Republicans have been in charge.

“It’s really kind of a tale of two democracies,” said Liz Avore, a senior adviser at the Voting Rights Lab.

States across the partisan spectrum abruptly changed their voting policies in 2020 to provide more options at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. Many eased the criteria for voting by mail, and some sent absentee ballot or ballot applications to all voters. Election officials installed ballot drop boxes, set up curbside voting programs and in some cases extended the deadlines for returning absentee ballots.

Former president Donald Trump has baselessly accused Democrats of using the loosened rules to rig the 2020 vote, turning election policy into the object of hyperpolarized disagreement.

Particularly in swing states, Republicans have generally pushed for tighter laws, such as voter ID requirements and limits on mail-in voting, in the name of election integrity. Democrats have advocated eliminating barriers that could suppress voter participation, such as making rules for registering to vote and casting ballots more flexible.

Some states have made the rules they established in 2020 permanent or further expanded options for voting. Others have enacted restrictions that go beyond what were in place before 2020 and made it easier to challenge others’ voter registrations and ability to cast ballots. Not all the rules are set yet; some could change because of last-minute legislation and a wave of litigation.

Nowhere are the changing rules more important than in the seven states most likely to determine the presidential election. Many of those states were decided by tiny margins in 2016 and 2020 and are again expected to be crucial.

Some voters may have a tougher time casting a ballot than they did in 2020 in the battleground states of Georgia and North Carolina, where Republicans hold legislative sway. Voting could be more difficult in Wisconsin, as well, but the picture in the state, which has a Democratic governor and a Republican-dominated legislature, may change soon because of cases pending before the state’s liberal-majority Supreme Court.

Voters will probably have an easier time voting than they did four years ago in two other swing states, Michigan and Nevada. In the latter, Democrats had unified control of state government until last year.

In Arizona, voting rules this year will be roughly the same as they were four years ago, while in Pennsylvania, some changes will make it easier to vote, and others will make it harder, according to a review by the Voting Rights Lab. In both states, control of state government has been divided.

“We’ve just seen really an unprecedented wave of elections legislation in the past few years,” Avore said. “The success of our democracy at large is going to depend on the ability of election officials to adjust to these new systems.”

Some of the changes since 2020 are sweeping. Others appear minor but can add up when combined with other tweaks to voting laws. “As a group, these laws have a big impact,” said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice.

MELINA MARA/WASHINGTON POST In Nevada, changes in voting laws during the pandemic that made it easier for people to vote have been made permanent. Not so in many other states.