New US state voting laws present most intense voter suppression threat in decades

Proliferation of new legislation comes in response to false claims about the 2020 election

Since the 2020 election, lawmakers in all but eight states have attempted to pass laws that would create new election investigation agencies, establish criminal penalties for election offenses or further empower law enforcement officials to investigate such crimes, according to an analysis by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

The proliferation of election crime legislation represents the most intense voter suppression threat in decades and comes in direct response to former president Donald Trump's lie that the 2020 election was fraudulent.

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. Those include 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.