Map shows US states where voting is harder

How easy is it to vote in your state?

While many American states have increased voting access in recent years, data from the Center for Public Integrity has found that 26 have made voting less accessible since 2020.

Newsweek spoke to Allyson Shortle, associate professor in American politics at the University of Oklahoma, to learn more about these discrepancies.

“Restrictions have historically been passed in ways that make it harder for political independents and Democratic voters—especially Black American voters—to vote,” Shortle told Newsweek. “For example, gerrymandering has diminished the Democratic share of the vote, most predominantly in Southern and Midwestern states.”

To explore how voting accessibility has changed since 2020, Shortle and her colleague Kathryn Schumaker, senior lecturer in American Studies at the University of Sydney, took a fine comb through recent data from the Center for Public Integrity.

Over this period, voting became less accessible in 26 states, more accessible in 20 and unchanged in four. Of the 26, Shortle and Schumaker found, 74 percent were in the South or Midwest. The most significant losses in voting access had occurred in Southern states with large populations of Black voters.

There was also a stark divide in the political leanings of these states: 25 out of the 26 were Republican. Only one Democratic state, New Hampshire, had seen a restriction in voting access during this period.

“Voting access does not inherently favor one party or another,” Shortle said. “However, in practice, voting restrictions tend to be legislated and executed by Republican legislatures, and these laws predominantly favor Republican candidates.”

The map below shows this variability:

So, what do these restrictions actually involve?

“Gerrymandering, strict voter-id laws, and the closure of in-person polling sites are just a few of the methods states use to restrict the vote,” Shortle said.

Other restrictions include cumbersome registration processes, restrictive absentee and vote-by-mail rules, frequent and aggressive voter roll purges and reduced Election Day ballot drop box availability.

Shortle said that many of these restrictions had been introduced as a result of former President Donald Trump‘s evidence-free claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election. She gave her home state of Oklahoma as an example.

“In Oklahoma, the governor recently bragged about purging over 400,000 voters from the state’s voter roll in an effort to clamp down on possible voter fraud. While some of these voters were either dead or already disenfranchised due to felony convictions, many others had simply been “inactive” voters who had not voted since 2016.

“The governor’s possible presumption in purging these voters is that these voters have moved elsewhere and therefore should be removed. But in reality, this preemptive action discourages voting by law-abiding U.S. citizens who vote in some, but not all, elections. Some of the disenfranchised Oklahomans may have simply missed the status verification notice—which was sent in the mail and required respondents to mail their response back to the state. Others may not have received the notice at all.”

These restrictions also appear to have affected voter turnout rates across the U.S. in the 2022 midterm elections. From Shortle’s analysis, “high barrier” states had an average turnout rate of 45.8 percent, compared to 49 percent for “low barrier” states. The national average was 46.2 percent.

“Voting should be easy,” Shortle said. “Democracy works best when voters are able to vote easily and have their voices heard.”

She continued: “Culture war-driven mental health degradation will likely be the most bipartisan outcome Americans have seen in decades. We need to do better—for democracy’s health, but also for Americans’ personal health.”

More details of the analysis can be read in Shortle and Schumaker’s article for The Conversation.