In the last two years, at least 130 bills have been introduced across 42 states that would increase the involvement of law enforcement in the voting process, the analysis shows. Of those bills, 28 have passed in 20 states.
Some of these efforts have grabbed attention individually, like Georgia’s law making it a crime to hand out food or drinks – even water – to voters waiting in line or Florida’s creation of an entirely new law enforcement agency to police elections, the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which has already been criticized for bringing flimsy prosecutions.
Reveal’s first-of-its-kind analysis shows those bills were part of a larger movement, mostly led by Republican state lawmakers and fueled by conspiracy theories. While some of those efforts have so far failed, they show no sign of relenting, as the myth of voter fraud has become a central GOP platform.
Three trends from the analysis stand out:
- In 14 states, lawmakers have tried to empower law enforcement officials, such as prosecutors and police officers, to investigate suspected election crimes, arming them with new powers and requiring them to more aggressively pursue alleged offenses. In Tennessee, for example, Republican lawmakers in both legislative chambers filed bills that would have required at least 20% of investigators in the state Bureau of Investigation’s Criminal Investigation Division to be designated as election crime specialists, along with the same share of prosecutors in every district attorney’s office. While that effort didn’t succeed, others did. That includes Georgia laws giving a statewide investigative agency new subpoena powers and creating a new hotline for the attorney general to receive voter fraud complaints; a New Hampshire law requiring the state attorney general to investigate alleged misconduct by election officials, with power to revoke those officials’ voting rights; and a Utah law requiring election officials to look for possible cases of a person voting more than once, and to report any suspected fraud to police or prosecutors.
- Republican lawmakers have focused in particular on ballot collecting, a practice at the heart of false claims of fraud in the 2020 election. They’ve been inspired by Trump and the conspiracy theory film “2000 Mules,” with both falsely claiming that leftist groups rigged the 2020 election by exploiting what they call “ballot harvesting.” Ballot collecting, long legal in many states, allows a person or group to return other voters’ absentee ballots. Nineteen states introduced bills to criminalize it after the 2020 election, and six passed them. Iowa, for example, has made it a crime punishable by up to one year of imprisonment to turn in an absentee ballot for someone else, with a few exceptions.
- In 12 states, lawmakers sought to increase the penalties for existing election crimes, changing the classification of some to felonies from misdemeanors. This could mean the difference, in some cases, between charges punishable by fines and probation versus prison time or loss of your voting rights. In April 2021, South Carolina lawmakers introduced a bill that would sharply increase penalties for existing election crimes, including fraudulently voting or registering to vote. “Upon conviction,” the bill read, violators “must be imprisoned not less than thirty years without the possibility of parole.” The bill never gained traction, but in May, lawmakers succeeded in changing those and other voting offenses from misdemeanors to felonies, punishable by up to five years of imprisonment. It is one of five states that passed such laws.