Changing Access to Voting in the Aftermath of the 2020 Election

Abstract

This paper explores the enactment of election laws that either restricted or expanded access to the polls in the aftermath of the 2020 election. It tests two hypotheses to explain these enactments. The partisan hypothesis states that Republican-controlled state governments will be more likely to enact restrictive laws, Democratic-controlled state governments will be more likely to enact expansive laws, and split-control state governments will be mixed. The electoral threat hypothesis states that passage of party-favored reforms will be more likely in states where the opposition party is the strongest. We measure enactments in two ways—by the presence of enacting expansive or restrictive laws and by the number of major provisions contained in these laws. We generally find that the hypotheses are more successful in explaining the number of provisions rather than the binary variable of bill enactment. The electoral threat hypothesis is the most successful in predicting passage of restrictive legislation. The partisan hypothesis is most successful in predicting passage of expansionary legislation. We conclude the paper by discussing the results of the statistical analysis and speculating on the applicability of this analysis to the enactment of other types of election laws that have become prominent more recently.