Who makes election laws?

The Constitution gives state legislatures the authority to pass election laws. But because the pandemic made many people fearful of going to crowded indoor polling places in 2020, state election officials, courts, and governors adopted extraordinary measures to limit close human contact while people cast ballots. Many states dramatically expanded no-excuse mail-in balloting and early voting, and nine states began mailing all registered voters absentee ballots whether or not they requested them. Thirty-eight states, plus Washington, D.C., employed drop boxes for absentee ballots, up from only 13 in 2016. The new voting methods were popular. Nearly 102 million people voted early in 2020, almost doubling the 58 million who did so in 2016; 65 million people voted by mail, up from 33 million four years earlier. But a recent Stanford University study found that it was the intense opposition and loyalty to Trump that motivated so many people to vote, not absentee ballots. “Voter interest was really driving turnout,’’ said researcher Jesse Yoder.