• Laws reducing early and absentee voting days. At least nine states introduced bills to reduce their early voting periods, and four tried to reduce absentee voting opportunities. Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee, and West Virginia enacted bills to reduce early voting.
• Laws making it harder to restore voting rights. Two states—Florida and Iowa — reversed prior executive actions that made it easier for citizens with past felony convictions to restore their voting rights, affecting hundreds of thousands. In effect, both states now permanently disenfranchise most citizens with past felony convictions.

“These voting law changes are radical and completely unnecessary. They especially hurt those who have been historically locked out of our electoral system, like minorities, poor people, and students. Often they seem precisely targeted to exclude certain voters,” said Wendy. R. Weiser, report co-author and Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center. “After the Florida election fiasco in 2000, it became clear that the rules of election administration could affect outcomes. This time, those rules are being altered in a way that will likely hurt millions.”

“Significantly, these voting law cutbacks extend well beyond the most visible and controversial step to require government-issued photo ID that many citizens don’t have,” said report co-author Lawrence Norden, deputy director of the Democracy Program and former Chair of the Ohio Secretary of State’s bipartisan Election Summit and Conference. “An array of technical moves can add to significant barriers to the ballot. And it comes at a time when experience has taught us there are many ways to improve the voting process and expand access to the franchise while reducing costs.”

Proponents of these laws assert they are needed to combat voter fraud. An earlier Brennan Center study, The Truth About Voter Fraud, showed that such in-person voter impersonation is exceedingly rare. “You are more likely to be struck by lightening than to commit in-person voter fraud,” Waldman noted.

You can read a breakdown of the estimate of 5 million voters impacted here.

You can read more about how 11 percent of American citizens, or over 21 million citizens, do not possess a government-issued photo ID in Citizens Without Proof, another earlier Brennan Center publication.

Photograph of voting lever taken in January 2008 by  Pauljoffe at en.wikipedia; Photo of voting booth taken on the University at Buffalo's north campus in 2008.

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