USA TODAY Voting Rights Project: How we did itThe USA TODAY Network gathered information across America to create this voter guide to help you understand how voting laws are changing.
In Colorado, 93% of voters vote by mail.
Mississippi does not allow early voting, no-excuse absentee voting or online voter registration, which are commonplace in many other states. Mississippi is one of only three states to impose lifelong voting bans on people convicted of certain felonies.
Claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election spread by former President Donald Trump and his supporters caused several states to take action to change voting laws ahead of the 2022 midterms and the next presidential election in 2024.
America is a collection of 50 states, the District of Columbia and territories all with different voting laws, and many of those states have drastically changed laws since the historic Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many of those changes have come in recent years.
Voting rights in America are at a turning point.
In the wake of the controversy and false claims about the 2020 presidential election, more states are currently changing laws making it harder instead of easier for millions of Americans to vote.
Many of those changes disproportionately impact people of color and the poor.
With newsrooms in nearly every state, the USA TODAY Network gathered information across America to create this voting rights guide to help you understand how voting laws in your state and across the nation are changing ahead of the 2022 midterm election. The guide also provides information you need to register to vote and cast your ballot.
A team of editors, reporters, graphic artists and others worked for several months collecting data from state legislatures and secretaries of state to uncover what state leaders across America are doing to make voting easier or harder.
For example, in Michigan Republican lawmakers have tried to pass strict voter ID laws and other changes. But because of the state's divided government, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has stopped them.
In Arizona, voting by mail has been pretty uncontroversial since it launched in 1991, but that changed when the state became one of the closest in the nation between Trump and President Joe Biden.
This year, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a law to require proof of citizenship to vote by mail. The Department of Justice has sued the state over the new law. The state legislature introduced more than 100 bills targeted at voting this year. Nearly all of them failed due to a small group of Republicans.
Trump had no problem winning the 2020 election in Florida, but that has not stopped the state’s Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis from changing the state’s voting laws. New laws signed by DeSantis make it tougher to vote by mail, limit the use of ballot drop boxes and create an Election Crimes and Security investigative force to pursue whatever allegations of wrongdoing it chooses.