Voters in nearly half the country will face new voting restrictions, according to new report

Americans in more than half of the country’s states will face new restrictions on voting rights this year that were not in effect during the last presidential election in 2020, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.

In total, changes to voting rules have been imposed in 28 stateswith restrictions that were not in effect in the last presidential election and in at least 21 of those states, voters in the 2024 elections They will face restrictions they have never encountered before in a presidential or midterm election.

Against absentee voting and voting by mail

New laws seek to restrict voting by maila method that former President Donald Trump and his allies baselessly called fraud following his 2020 White House defeat, even as top Republican officials now encourage voting by mail this year.

Alabama and Idaho, for example, have enacted laws this year that They impose criminal penalties in some cases for assisting with absentee voting.

New Alabama law imposes criminal penalties to anyone submitting another voter’s mail-in ballot application. It also criminalizes the distribution of a previously completed absentee ballot application.

Idaho’s new law makes it a crime to any person picks up or delivers another voter’s mail-in ballot, except election officials, postal workers, those receiving compensation, family members, household members and caregivers.

Again, elderly voters, voters with disabilities, and voters with limited transportation are more likely to feel the effects of this change.

Idaho’s new law increases the chances that naturalized citizens are mistakenly removed from the voter rolls. The law requires election officials to compare voter registration information with Bureau of Motor Vehicle records to identify suspected noncitizens.

In North Carolina, a potential presidential battleground in November, a state law requires that mail-in ballots must be received by 7:30 p.m. on Election Day to be counted. Last year, lawmakers They eliminated a three-day grace period so that those ballots reached the local election offices.

Bills to regulate artificial intelligence

Another trend noted in the report is that there is a wave of bills seeking to regulate AI-generated material in elections.

By increasing the sophistication of traditional deceptive practices, Generative AI can make it easier for bad actors to spread disinformation that undermines confidence in elections and suppresses votes.

As the use of deepfakes and other AI-generated election content increases, State legislators across the country have taken steps to regulate it.

Until May 3, Legislation had been introduced in at least 39 states to protect against AI content, and at least nine had enacted laws requiring notices that the message was manipulated, according to the Brennan Center.

Laws prohibiting non-citizens from voting even though it is already illegal

Some politicians claim that non-U.S. citizens are voting in significant numbers. Actually, non-citizen voting is extremely rare.

It is already a federal crime and a crime in all states for non-citizens to register and/or vote.

But At least 24 states have introduced 54 bills reiterating that only American citizens can voterequire people to present proof of citizenship at the time of registration or direct election officials to find and cancel non-citizen voter registrations.

However, some efforts to further ban noncitizen voting are restrictive because they risk disenfranchising eligible voters, such as bills that create documentary proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration or that impose list maintenance activities that are likely to remove eligible citizens from the rolls.

Keep reading:
• Trump and Johnson team up to announce unnecessary ban on non-citizen voting
• Trump campaign and RNC will ask thousands to monitor vote counting
• How can you vote by mail in the 2024 elections?