MANY STATES HAVE ENACTED NEW VOTER PROTECTION MEASURES

America First Policy Institute Reveals Which States Improved the Integrity of Their Elections

The mission of the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Center for Election Integrity (CEI) is to make it easy to vote, but hard to cheat. Many states have been proactive in this pursuit; and, in their most recent legislative sessions, successfully enacted voter protection measures to help restore faith, trust, and confidence in the election process.

CEI is happy to announce seven states have introduced, passed, and codified into law a variety of election integrity measures that now better protect every single legally cast vote and every legal voter.

Last year, CEI set out to inform the public about which states have laws in place designed to safeguard elections. CEI developed a color-coded, interactive, online map to rate states across three key areas of voter protection clearly designed to make it harder to cheat: (1) requiring photo identification to vote, (2) prohibiting ballot harvesting, and (3) returning ballots to election officials by Election Day. As a tie-breaker for those states between colors, CEI considered whether a state had banned private money from being illegally used to influence public elections – commonly known as Zuckerbucks.

States colored red have no key voter protection laws in place, yellow colored states have some key voter protection laws in place, and green colored states have key voter protection laws in place. There is an additional notation of black lines in some states that indicate where laws were on the books but, for various reasons, were not followed in the 2020 election.

In 2022, many legislatures and governors listened to the American people’s desire for more secure elections and responded. Polling shows the measures indicated on the map are popular with between 82% to 85% of Americans.  

Because of these responsible actions, CEI will be making the following changes to its color-coded, interactive, online map to reflect the steps made by these states to protect their voters (in alphabetical order):

• Kentucky moves from red to green; now prohibits Zuckerbucks and requires photo ID.
• Mississippi moves from yellow to green; now prohibits Zuckerbucks.
• Missouri moves from red to green; now prohibits Zuckerbucks, eliminates drop boxes and ballot harvesting, and requires photo ID.
• Oklahoma moves from yellow to green; now prohibits Zuckerbucks.
• Pennsylvania moves from red to yellow; now prohibits Zuckerbucks.
• South Carolina moves from yellow to green; it now prohibits Zuckerbucks and bans ballot harvesting.
• Utah moves from red to yellow; now prohibits Zuckerbucks.

It is also worthy to note that in a few states, the legislatures passed significant election integrity reform, but in some cases governors vetoed these measures. For example:

• Pennsylvania: the governor vetoed PA HB1300, which included comprehensive election reform, such as voting machine evaluation and auditing, mail in ballot regulation, increasing penalties for fraud, and much more.
• Wisconsin: the governor vetoed 11 bills, which would have enacted reforms such as voter list maintenance, prohibiting ballot harvesting, better regulations on absentee voting, and requiring photo ID.
• Michigan: the governor vetoed H 4128 and H 4127, which would have enacted better voter roll maintenance procedures.
• North Carolina: NC S 725 banned Zuckerbucks but was overridden by the governor. NC S 326 would have banned Zuckerbucks and required ballots returned by Election Day, but was also vetoed by the governor.
• In Arizona and Michigan, there are pending statewide proposals that would require photo ID to vote, but those measures remain stalled in the process and have not yet passed.

CEI congratulates these states on their incredible achievements and looks forward to more updates on the map as more states work to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.