Today, Project Vote is pleased to release Election Legislation 2014: Threats and Opportunities, the latest in our series of reports assessing election-related legislation introduced in state legislatures and the U.S. Congress this year.
Since 2006, Project Vote has been carefully monitoring election legislation to help keep the voting rights community aware of important developments and potential dangers. In this comprehensive new report, Project Vote’s Erin Ferns Lee reviews both the threats and opportunities represented by significant election bills that have been introduced in 2014.
Following the long lines of the 2012 elections, and in the wake of harmful Supreme Court rulings in 2013, there has been an increased awareness of voting rights issues, and a growing consensus that reform is needed. Encouragingly, in 2014, we have seen a surge in proposals to increase access to the polls, with over 140 potentially beneficial pieces of legislation introduced around the country.
However, as the report shows, these pro-voting reforms continue to meet strong partisan resistance, as only eight of these common-sense reforms have passed into law. Meanwhile, new efforts to restrict access to registration and voting continue to be proposed.
“There is indeed a growing bipartisan effort to make voting more accessible and better suited for 21st century American elections,” writes Lee in the report. “But old habits die hard.”
In Election Legislation 2014: Threats and Opportunities, Lee summarizes the status of nearly 200 bills introduced around the country. To make this information more useful to you in your work, we are making individual tables and maps from this report available as stand-alone attachments. You can download these items, as well as the full report, here. See today’s press release here.