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There’s no federal election to look ahead to this year, but there’s a lot of important activity on voting and election policy that our Votebeat reporters will be following.
We’re expecting movement on several fronts in 2025, including legislation to fight the (nonexistent) scourge of noncitizens voting, national policy fights over voter access, budget brouhahas, and continued turnover of election officials and workers. Meanwhile, local elections still need to go off as planned.
Here’s what our reporters are looking out for this year in the states they cover:
Arizona: A push to speed up results
For the first time in four years, Arizona is starting the year without any open court challenges to election results. The recurring false claims about elections appear to be on hiatus as Republicans in the state celebrate Donald Trump’s victory and local wins. Still, many of the Republicans who won in November campaigned on the idea that our elections needed fixing. Now that they are in office, some voters may expect them to take action.
Five of Arizona’s 15 counties have new county recorders administering their elections, and many of them were elected on platforms of major change. They will soon make decisions such as how to clean county voter rolls, where people can vote early, and how many ballot drop boxes are available. We’ll keep an eye on their work.
Leading the charge statewide, surely, will be Gina Swoboda, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, who recently announced she will run to keep her position. Swoboda is still contracted, for the upcoming year, to serve as Arizona Senate Republicans’ elections policy adviser. Her knowledge of how elections work is reflected in one of the first bills of the new session, which begins Monday: a somewhat in-the-weeds proposal from Sen. President Warren Petersen that would very effectively speed up final election results.
Republican leaders’ main election-related mission of the session will be convincing Gov. Katie Hobbs — along with other Democrats and voting rights advocates — that we need to trade voting convenience for faster results. And now that Republicans have a larger majority, Democrats might have to negotiate if they want any of their proposals to survive.
With state Sen. Wendy Rogers leading the Judiciary and Elections Committee, prepare for election conspiracists to be given a solid platform and others to be silenced, as in years past. And expect to see discussion of some of the most extreme proposals to upend elections, such as eliminating early voting and countywide voting.
It’s not clear if any other Republicans will step up to block those proposals from getting to the governor’s desk, now that Sen. Ken Bennett has lost his seat to former state Rep. Mark Finchem. But as long as Hobbs is still in office, it’s clear those proposals stand virtually no chance of becoming law.
—Jen Fifield
Michigan: Preparing for 2026, and a political shift
In Michigan, 2025 will set the tone for next year’s statewide elections, when voters will choose a new governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. No one has officially announced plans to run for secretary of state yet to replace the term-limited Jocelyn Benson as the state’s top election official, but it sounds like some well-known legislators and county clerks are interested.
Benson herself is likely to announce a bid for governor in the next few months. Detroit’s three-term mayor, Mike Duggan, said he’s running for governor, too, leaving a wide open mayoral race this year in the state’s largest city. Several council members and former House Speaker Joe Tate are potentially considering running. The Detroit race will be a test once again of what the city’s changes to its ballot-counting setup, combined with expanded access to early and absentee voting, mean for the speed of results.
The Michigan Legislature is preparing to start its new session this week, with Republicans controlling the House. Bryan Posthumus, the new majority leader, has made clear that new safeguards to prevent noncitizen voting are a priority for him. The Republican from Rockford wants voters to show proof of citizenship when registering and wants to tighten the ID requirements for when voters actually cast their ballot, although it isn’t clear yet how exactly a proof of citizenship requirement would work in Michigan.
If lawmakers don’t take up the proposal — which is unlikely to gain traction in the Democrat-controlled Senate — a group called the Committee to Protect Voters’ Rights appears prepared to launch a signature-gathering effort, called Prove It, Michigan, to get the proposal on the ballot for voters to approve directly.
—Hayley Harding
Pennsylvania: Eyes on Supreme Court races, and decisions
The nation’s eyes may not be as focused on Pennsylvania’s election administration as they were in 2024 (phew!), but there’s still plenty going on, even in an “off” election year. Seats on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and local municipal races, including a mayoral race in Pittsburgh, will be on the ballot.
Speaking of the state Supreme Court, several pending cases could see a decision this year. We are awaiting a final ruling in a Washington County case on whether counties are required to notify mail voters if they make errors on their ballots that could disqualify them. And the high court has yet to address whether rejecting a mail ballot for lacking a proper date violates the state constitution.
The state Legislature starts a new two-year session this month. The last two sessions, following the 2020 election, saw little movement on election law changes. Perhaps the reduced scrutiny will leave more room for action. We’ll be looking at the priorities of both parties and what bills are on the horizon.
—Carter Walker
Texas: Push for voting restrictions continues
After a contentious but otherwise smooth presidential election which provided victories for state Republicans, it’s not yet clear whether in 2025 Texas will expand or further restrict voting access as the legislature prepares to convene.
Democratic lawmakers are again proposing bills that would allow voters to register to vote online. Such a proposal would require bipartisan support to get to the governor’s desk. Across the aisle, Republicans have filed legislation that would require voters to show proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. But some election officials wonder how Texas can pull this off without first improving its current paper-based voter registration system, which has in some cases led to disenfranchisement of voters.
Republicans have also filed legislation to end the countywide polling place program, which allows voters in participating counties to cast their ballot at any voter center in their county on election day. Conservative activists have spread baseless claims of voter fraud in their campaign to get rid of countywide voting. The same activists also support legislation that would limit the use of electronic voting equipment and encourage counting ballots by hand, which takes longer and is less accurate.
—Natalia Contreras
Wisconsin: Activity in all three branches
This year could be transformative for election policy in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ideological majority may flip, a new state budget will get passed, and the state legislature is all but certain to make at least small changes in how elections are conducted.
The April election to replace retiring liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will have critical implications for election policy. In that election, liberal candidate Susan Crawford faces conservative Brad Schimel, a Republican former attorney general. The outcome will not only determine the ideological balance of the seven-member court, but could also shape the way key policy and political fights are resolved. With the Democratic governor and Republican Legislature often at odds, many of those fights end up in the state’s highest court.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission’s budget request seeks funding to subsidize local governments’ election offices, something the agency states is critical since federal COVID-19 relief funds used for that purpose are dwindling. The agency is also requesting $2 million to conduct audits, bolster voter accessibility programs, and cooperate with legislative requests. The Legislature rejected a similar request last budget cycle.
In the Legislature, election officials are likely to lobby for new processes to speed up ballot counting, while Republicans are likely to continue trying to enshrine election policy in the state constitution. The next two years could also see a boost in constitutional proposals — a politically powerful method for Republicans because the governor can’t veto those measures.
Some political observers expect Wisconsin’s state Senate to flip from the GOP to Democrats after the 2026 midterms, so Republicans may see this session and the constitutional amendment strategy as their last hope to enshrine their preferred policies in the state constitution, including photo ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements.
—Alexander Shur
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica at jhuseman@votebeat.org.
