A roundup of recent voting news
Welcome back to The Good, The Bad, The Ugly — your go-to source for the latest in voting rights. In Kentucky, a bipartisan bill moving through the legislature would automatically restore voting rights to people who have completed felony sentences. In Arizona, the House advanced a measure that would eliminate flexible voting centers and restrict in-person voting. And at the federal level, President Trump is pushing an executive order requiring proof of citizenship and voter ID at polling locations across the country.
So, buckle up as we break down the wins, the setbacks, and the urgent fights ahead in the battle for our democracy.
The Good
In Kentucky, SB 80 has cleared a key Senate committee and would automatically restore voting rights to people once they’ve fully served a felony sentence — excluding those convicted of treason, election fraud, crimes against children, and violent or sexual offenses. The bill would also remove language from the state constitution that still uses the words “idiots and insane persons” to describe those who can’t vote.
Kentucky is one of only two states that do not automatically restore voting rights upon completion of a sentence, leaving hundreds of thousands of residents without a clear path back to the ballot box. A 2019 executive order restored rights to more than 200,000 people with nonviolent convictions, but a constitutional amendment would protect that right from being rescinded by future governors.
What’s next? If the full Senate passes SB 80, Kentucky voters would have the final say at the ballot box in November.
The Bad
In Arizona, the House of Representatives passed HCR 2016, a proposed constitutional amendment that would eliminate countywide voting centers and on-site early-voting locations and require all in-person votes to be cast exclusively at designated precinct polling places and only on election day.
For voters in large counties where the ability to vote at any convenient location has become the norm, the change could mean longer commutes to a single assigned polling place and less flexibility around busy work and family schedules, raising real concerns about whether the new structure could make it harder for everyday Arizonans to participate in the democratic process.
What’s next? The measure now heads to the Arizona Senate, and if passed, Arizona voters will have the final say at the ballot box.
The Ugly
Ugly: At the federal level, President Trump is directing his White House counsel’s office to explore an executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration and photo ID at polling locations across the country. With the SAVE America Act stalled in the Senate, the administration is testing whether executive authority can accomplish what Congress won’t approve — even though courts have already blocked a similar executive order, ruling that the Constitution assigns election authority to states and Congress, not the president.
What’s next? The executive order still has no clear legal path forward, and any attempt to implement it will likely face immediate court challenges — a fight the administration has already lost once. It’s also worth noting that the problem the order aims to solve is not well-supported by evidence: voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S. Repeated investigations, including those launched by proponents of stricter voting laws, have found fraud occurring at a rate of 0.0025%.