The Direction of Democracy: Five Years of Deepening Divides in State Voting Policies

The 2020 election was a turning point for American democracy, prompting an unprecedented expansion of mail voting and early voting options, which was quickly followed by false claims of widespread voter fraud and a sustained election denialism movement. It also set off a wave of legislative activity in statehouses across the country, as some states moved to protect elections and expand voter access, while others moved towards restricting access to the ballot and undermining our democracy. This week, the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) released a first-of-its-kind report examining the result of these changes across the states. Using MAP’s Democracy Maps—which track more than 50 voting and election-related laws and policies across all 50 states and D.C.—this report provides a longitudinal analysis of how state election laws have changed since 2021 and offers an effective tool for understanding the landscape voters will face in the November midterms. The report’s findings point to a clear pattern. State election policy has not moved in a single national direction over the past five years. Instead, states are moving farther apart with the strongest policy environments showing further improvement and the weakest experiencing further decline. The impact on voters is significant: over 130 million eligible voters live in states that have become more restrictive since 2021. In the 18 states with Low or Negative scores, voters will encounter shorter early voting windows, stricter identification requirements, fewer or no ballot drop boxes, more limited mail voting options, and in some cases, documentary proof of citizenship requirements. In the states that improved, voters will find expanded registration options, broader mail ballot access, and in several states, state-level voting rights acts providing protections that didn’t exist five years ago.

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