Brennan Center for Justice
Voting Law Changes in 2012
Over the past century, our nation expanded the franchise and knocked down myriad barriers to full
electoral participation. In 2011, however, that momentum abruptly shifted.
State governments across the country enacted an array of new laws making it harder to register or
to vote. Some states require voters to show government-issued photo identification, often of a type
that as many as one in ten voters do not have. Other states have cut back on early voting, a hugely
popular innovation used by millions of Americans. Two states reversed earlier reforms and once again disenfranchised millions who have past criminal convictions but who are now taxpaying members of the community. Still others made it much more difficult for citizens to register to vote, a prerequisite for voting.
These new restrictions fall most heavily on young, minority, and low-income voters, as well as on voters with disabilities. This wave of changes may sharply tilt the political terrain for the 2012 election. Based on the Brennan Center’s analysis of the 19 laws and two executive actions that passed in 14 states, it is clear that:
• These new laws could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to
cast ballots in 2012.1
• The states that have already cut back on voting rights will provide 171 electoral votes in 2012–
63 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency.
• Of the 12 likely battleground states, as assessed by an August Los Angeles Times analysis of
Gallup polling, five have already cut back on voting rights (and may pass additional restrictive
legislation), and two more are currently considering new restrictions.2
States have changed their laws so rapidly that no single analysis has assessed the overall impact of such moves. Although it is too early to quantify how the changes will impact voter turnout, they will be a hindrance to many voters at a time when the United States continues to turn out less than two thirds of its eligible citizens in presidential elections and less than half in midterm elections.
This study is the first comprehensive roundup of all state legislative action thus far in 2011 on voting
rights, focusing on new laws as well as state legislation that has not yet passed or that failed. This
snapshot may soon be incomplete: the second halves of some state legislative sessions have begun.
