States Voting Rights Acts
A look at States Voting Rights Acts proposed in 2024
What Are State Voting Rights Acts?
State Voting Rights Acts (state VRAs) are state laws modeled on the federal Voting Rights Act. Like the federal VRA, state VRAs enable designated communities with a history of political exclusion and disenfranchisement (typically racial, ethnic, and linguistic communities) to challenge electoral laws and practices that create barriers to their political participation and dilute their voting power. This is done by creating causes of action that allow members of those communities or designated government agencies to bring lawsuits, and preclearance requirements, which require jurisdictions with a history of discrimination to receive permission before making changes to the electoral process that could affect protected communities. California became the first state to adopt its own VRA in 2001. Since then, five other states have adopted state VRAs, with Connecticut becoming the most recent adoption this year.
Interest in State Voting Rights Acts has grown as the Supreme Court has incrementally chipped away at the federal VRA in the decades since its passage.
Why are we tracking this?
Interest in state VRAs has grown in recent years as the Supreme Court has gradually weakened the federal VRA. Some voting rights advocates see state VRAs as a way to entrench the protections of the federal VRA into state law as well as an opportunity to go further and establish stronger protections than exist at the federal level.
State VRAs can also serve as vehicles for other reforms discussed in this report. The broad authority they provide courts to fix voting rights violations means that state VRAs can enable courts to use things like proportional representation as remedies to address discriminatory and dilutive election laws and policies.
Analysis
Introductions are up 90% from last year. This session we tracked 19 State Voting Rights Act (SVRA) bills: 16 proposals for new state VRAs, and three proposals amending existing state VRA legislation in Washington and New York. This is almost twice what we saw last year, where we tracked only 10 proposals in six states. Two of the 2023 proposals passed, one new State VRA in Connecticut and one law amending the existing state VRA in Washington. This year, despite having more proposed State VRA bills, just two bills passed in this category. The first was HF 4772 in Minnesota, creating a State VRA as part of a larger omnibus elections bill. This particular State VRA includes a private right of action, which is an important win in light of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent ruling in Arkansas State Conference NAACP v. Arkansas Board of Apportionment, which held that Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA) does not create a private right of action. The second was New York’s A 10357, which proposed amendments to strengthen New York’s existing VRA (passed along party lines in both houses, with one Republican Senator voting with Democrats).
Among the increase in proposals for this category, it’s worth pointing out that the bills proposing new state VRAs came from a mix of blue, red, and divided states — Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Florida, Maryland, and Arizona. However, since we started tracking this subject area, only blue states have passed State VRAs. Interest in State Voting Rights Acts has grown as the Supreme Court has incrementally chipped away at the federal VRA in the decades since its passage. This year, Minnesota lawmakers took action and now voters in Minnesota are guaranteed the right to sue if they experience race-based vote suppression or vote dilution.