August 29, 2025
By Ethan Rice, Staff Writer
In this week’s Ballot Bulletin, we cover 36 bills state legislatures acted on in the past week.
Weekly highlights
The big takeaways from the past week’s legislative actions.
Lawmakers in five states acted on 36 bills over the last week, nine more than last week. Eleven state legislatures are still in regular or special sessions.
- Three bills were enacted this week. Two bills were enacted during the same week in 2024, none were enacted in 2023, and none were enacted in 2022.
- Legislators acted on 22 bills in 2024 and 23 in 2023 during the same week.
- Fifteen of the bills acted on this week are in states with Democratic trifectas, 17 are in states with Republican trifectas, and four are in states with a divided government.
- The most active bill categories this week were election types and contest-specific procedures (11), campaign finance (11), and voter registration and list maintenance (7).
- We are currently following 4,774 bills. At this time in 2023, the last odd year when all states held legislative sessions, we were following 2,892 bills.
In the news
A glance at what’s making headlines in the world of election law.
- On Aug. 26, the Texas House of Representatives passedSB12, a bill giving the attorney general authority to independently prosecute election-related offenses. The bill now heads to Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
- On Aug. 26, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruledthat a Pennsylvania law requiring voters to write the date on mail-in ballot envelopes puts an unnecessary burden on voters. Circuit Judge D. Brooks Smithwrote, “Because of the commonwealth’s date requirement, an inadvertent typographical error or a flipped number or even a stray pen mark in the date field will remove the ballot contained within the return envelope from consideration. And the voter may never be the wiser.”
- On Aug. 23, a group of 13 Texas voters filed a lawsuit against the state alleging that newly redrawn congressional districts are racially discriminatory. The plaintiffs said the new maps are “intentionally destroying majority-minority districts and replacing them with majority-Anglo districts.” Andrew Mahaleris, Gov. Greg Abbott’s(R) press secretary, said the maps allow “more Texans to vote for the candidate of their choice.”
- On Aug. 21, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a legislative package of three bills allowing voters to decide on new congressional districts this November. ACA8 allows voters to decide whether to adopt new maps in the next election, SB280 establishes timelines and procedures for the special election, and AB604 establishes the new districts.