Key battleground states including Georgia and Ohio are moving to change election laws before 2024 voting.
According to Politico, a push is underway to change or scrap runoffs in Georgia, and Ohio Republicans are driving toward stricter voter ID laws.
Citing the nonprofit Voting Rights Lab, which supports expansive voter access, there are at least 100 election-related bills in eight states before this year's legislative session.
Better Ballot Georgia, a nonpartisan group advocating for replacing the system with instant runoff voting, is lobbying the state legislature to take up the reform, Politico reported. Instant runoffs would allow voters to rank their preferred candidates at the onset rather than coming back to the polls. The group also ran a digital ad campaign to press for the change.
"We are suffering from election fatigue at a level that I don't know has ever been experienced," Scot Turner, a former Republican state lawmaker involved with the effort, told Politico. "If we could get our elections over in November at a lesser cost with greater turnout, I think there's a real message there."
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, hasn't voiced a preference.
Ohio is the closest to changing its election law with a bill to require voters to show photo identification at the polls. Voters can now present alternative forms, such as utility bills and bank statements. The measure would also limit the number of days to request and return an absentee ballot, as well as eliminate early in-person voting on the Monday before an election, Politico noted.
The Republican-controlled Ohio legislature passed the bill but is still awaiting action from Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who hasn't said if he will sign or veto.
Democrats also are pursuing changes to election laws, including in Minnesota and Michigan, where the party is in control.
"I think the voters really gave us a mandate to continue to be a leader in the democracy business, in Minnesota," top election official Steve Simon told Politico. "This isn't a case where voters didn't understand what the candidates were about."
Michigan voters already have approved recent state constitutional changes that codified early voting in 2022 and mail voting in 2018.
Jocelyn Benson, the state's top election official, said her top priority for the upcoming year is figuring out ways to protect "the people in elections, and ensuring that they have all the support and resources they need to continue doing their work in this threatening and challenging environment."
Pennsylvania state Sen. David Argall, a Republican who chaired the state government committee this year, told Politico there's bipartisan support in his state for increasing pre-processing time for mail ballots.
Republican legislators included it in a broader package they passed that would have changed much of the voting process in the state, but outgoing Democrat Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed it in 2021, Politico noted.
"I have supported it in the past, I will support it in the future, but I don't think you can do just that one thing," Argall told Politico about pre-processing. "I think there's going to be too many other people saying, 'Plus this, plus this,' and that's where it gets complicated."
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