States of Reform 2024
The RepresentUs Legislative Landscape Analysis
It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system, that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.
Introduction
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Report by Anh-Linh Kearney, Policy Analyst |
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and Dave O’Brien, Policy Director |
In the case New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis birthed the metaphor “laboratories of democracy” when describing the autonomy that states possess in our federalist system of government. As an organization that works to pass pro-democracy reforms (and defeat anti-democratic ones), we want to learn as much as possible from the experiments on democracy happening across the country. How are states innovating and what is working? Perhaps the first thing you notice when you start researching democracy reform legislation is that it can be hard to wrap your arms around the various proposals introduced between all 50 states. Where are the biggest threats and opportunities? Which states are on the cutting edge?
In 2023, we launched the first edition of this report to track the most exciting reforms and experiments affecting our issue area with the hope that each year, we could watch that data set grow and track trends over time. In the first few years of this project, it will read like a weather report that states the obvious to those in the know. Now that the report is in its second iteration, we have the first opportunity to compare the data year to year – but lots of other factors are affecting that comparison and in many cases it’s too soon to make bold calls about legislative trends and patterns around democracy reform. Still, we can start to see how certain trends ebb and flow. And in a time of even greater pessimism about the future of democracy than before, we hope that this report provides a helpful historical status update of where our movement has been, which laboratories of democracy are running the most exciting and vibrant reform experiments, and perhaps offer a beacon of hope amidst a national political landscape where democracy is under attack.
Many of the subjects in this report cover our main areas of advocacy. Others are policies with exciting potential that we’re keeping an eye on. This list of proposals includes pieces of legislation that we supported and promoted as well as others that we opposed. A proposal’s inclusion in this report doesn’t necessarily mean that we support or endorse it.
Focus
We have tried to make this report as comprehensive as possible without being overwhelming. In that spirit, this report focuses on:
- Legislatures – This report only tracks proposals that were introduced in legislatures. It doesn’t include attempts by members of the public to place questions on the ballot through an initiative process. Referrals by legislatures to place ballot measures on the ballot for public approval are included in this report, but initiatives that qualify for the ballot through a signature drive, without first going through a legislature, are not. It also doesn’t include changes in rules and regulations by state agencies.
- Legislation – This report only tracks proposals that, if passed, would change the law. Bills and resolutions that would either change laws directly or refer questions to the ballot are included, while other legislative actions that wouldn’t change the law or otherwise affect how elections are conducted (such as committee hearings or symbolic resolutions declaring support or opposition to the subjects of this report) are not.
- States – This report only tracks proposals introduced in state legislatures. It doesn’t track proposals in Congress or local legislatures, like city councils. Many of these proposals would affect federal and local elections, but they are all introduced at the state level.
It’s our hope that, in a time of pessimism about the future of democracy, this report conveys how active and vibrant the democracy movement is. We also hope that democracy advocates will use the information in this report to inform their efforts, helping them to decide what and where the greatest opportunities and threats are.
Toplines & Major Trends
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Dive into each policy area we tracked
Ranked Choice Voting Report
Primary Reform Report
Proportional Representation Report
State Voting Rights Acts Report
Redistricting Report
Direct Democracy Report
Campaign Finance Reform Report
Vote-by-Mail Report
Background and Methodology
The data in this report comes from a wide network of resources provided by the leading organizations in each of these respective policy areas. We owe an enormous debt to organizations like FairVote, the National Conference of State Legislatures, Voting Rights Lab, National Vote at Home Institute, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, the Initiative and Referendum Institute, and the Brennan Center for their extremely helpful tools and resources. Our research team identified resources where these policies are tracked, and filled in any missing gaps with our own searches using Legiscan. Keep in mind that it’s nearly impossible for this search to be conclusive. Bills can change in a myriad of ways throughout the legislative process, specific terms are not always consistent from state-to-state, and some pieces of legislation will inevitably be left out. We have tried our best to be comprehensive, but achieving total coverage is often more of an aspirational process than a realizable endpoint.
Since legislative proposals can include multiple subjects (and even the lines between subject areas themselves can be blurry), many proposals appear in more than one section. A bill to adopt Alaska-style Top Four elections, for example, will appear in both the ranked choice voting and primary reform sections.
While numbers can be useful, numbers alone don’t reveal the effort that goes into passing a law or provide much insight into a legislative reform effort. Put simply, it’s very hard to pass a law. The vast majority of bills that get introduced in a year won’t be passed. Successful proposals are often unsuccessfully introduced for years before they finally get traction. Experienced advocates understand that sometimes even a small fraction of their proposals becoming law in a legislative session can be an extraordinary success. The best way to understand a movement’s overall legislative success is not to look at a single session in isolation but to look at trends over time, which we hope this report can provide in years to come.
Terminology
Each section contains definitions relevant to its subject matter, but there are a few terms that recur throughout the report.
- A bipartisan bill is a bill that is sponsored by a group of legislators who are members two different parties or members of one party and independent legislators.
- A committee bill is a bill produced by a legislative committee instead of an individual legislator. The rules for introducing committee bills vary by state, and committee bills often don’t include the names of individual legislators, which can make it difficult to determine the partisanship of their supporters.
- A state with a divided government is one where the governorship and the legislature, or the two chambers of the legislature, aren’t controlled by the same political party.
- A multipartisan bill is a bill sponsored by a group of legislators who are members of more than two parties, including independent legislators.
- A bill’s sponsor is a legislator who proposes or introduces it to the legislature for consideration.
- A study bill is a bill that creates a body or directs an existing body to research a particular issue and produce recommendations on what the state should do about it.
- A state with a governing trifecta is one where the governorship and both chambers of the legislature are controlled by the same party.1
A note on the categories used for our Toplines and Fast Stats analysis. “Total passed” or “Total passed by state legislatures” refers to the number of proposals that have successfully made it through a state legislature. This includes proposals that were vetoed by governors. “Vetoes” refers to proposals that have made it through a state legislature but were vetoed by the governor and therefore did not become law. “Total passing only one chamber” refers to proposals that were passed by one half of a state legislature (e.g., just a state senate or just a state house or representatives) but failed to make it through the other half. While these proposals didn’t make it far enough to become law (or even be vetoed), passing one chamber is an indication that a proposal has some significant momentum and political support. Finally, “proposals” and “pieces of legislation” are used throughout the report to reflect we track both bills and resolutions.
Acknowledgments
This report would not have been possible without the support and work of many individuals and organizations whom we wish to thank here. First, thanks to Emma Shoucair and Ariane Ivanier for research support on this project, it would not exist without them. This product was informed by excellent research by organizations like FairVote, National Vote at Home Institute, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, the Initiative and Referendum Institute, Unite America, Voting Rights Lab, the Brennan Center, the Campaign Legal Center, the Bipartisan Policy Center, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and Ballotpedia. We thank them for the resources and research they continue to provide to propel the movement forward. We’d also like to thank the numerous staffers, at our organization and at our partner organizations, for their thoughtful review and feedback on this report.
Links and Resources
The following reports and resources played a vital role in the creation of this report.
Footnotes
1 Nebraska, whose unicameral legislature has a single chamber, would be considered a trifecta state for the purposes of this report. We relied on Ballotpedia’s State government trifectas page to identify states with trifectas and divided governments.