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Mail voting is under unprecedented federal pressure heading into the 2026 midterm elections. From the White House to the Supreme Court to Congress, a series of developments is threatening a form of voting that tens of millions of Americans rely on—and that was relatively uncontroversial until just a few years ago. This explainer examines how mail voting became a partisan battleground, what the current federal threats mean for mail voting, and what states, election officials, and advocates can do in response.

Litigation over election results serves an important role in legitimizing the democratic process, but when these challenges drag on for months, they can undermine that legitimacy and leave citizens without representation. North Carolina’s 2024 Supreme Court race, for example, took six months of post-election litigation to resolve, and some observers worry that similar delays could affect control of Congress in 2027. This Explainer examines the gaps in state laws that increase the risk of prolonged election contests and shows how state supreme courts can use their supervisory and rulemaking powers to ensure prompt resolution of such proceedings.

"With federal redistricting lawsuits increasingly difficult, state laws offer gerrymandering opponents another path. Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And at least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School."

"Advocates fear Florida’s approach could become a blueprint for other states to follow. “It definitely seems to fulfill what people warned would happen,” said Derek Clinger, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “We’ve just seen this whole package of reforms going through that make every aspect of the process more difficult,” he added."

Following the 2024 election, we updated our survey of election-related lawsuits to help understand the role of litigation in our elections. This update underscores key themes from our survey of litigation from 2018 to 2022: litigants continue to file election suits at high rates, primarily in state courts, and most often presenting claims related to election administration and the mechanics of voting.

Ahead of Election Day 2024, courts—and especially state courts—continue to be inundated with election-related lawsuits. As in 2020, courts may see a deluge of post-election litigation as well. A recurring question in these pre- and post-election cases is whether the plaintiffs waited too long to sue. Under the longstanding equitable doctrine of “laches,” courts sometimes reject claims as untimely even when plaintiffs satisfy the applicable statute of limitations if, in fairness, the claims should have been brought sooner. This Research Note offers a 50-state survey of laches doctrine in the election context.

In roughly half of U.S. states, state constitutions confer rights of direct democracy, allowing the people to make law directly through statutes or constitutional amendments. The exercise of direct democracy rights can lead to power struggles with state legislatures. In particular, state legislatures sometimes respond to successful ballot measures by passing new laws that make ballot measures harder to use. Disputes over these new burdens on direct democracy frequently land in state courts. This Report considers how state courts have responded to these power struggles, with special attention to case law analyzing process-altering legislation under state constitutional direct democracy rights.

This report analyzes an often-overlooked set of state entities that hold substantial power: judicial conduct commissions. These entities, which exist in every state, are primarily designed to protect the public from judicial misconduct and have broad authority to investigate and sanction state judges. As state courts gain increasing attention, the public and scholars should likewise attend to the entities that oversee them.

Every 10 years, following the federal census, states are required to redraw their congressional and legislative district maps. In the majority of states, the duty to redistrict rests with the state legislature. Because line-drawing decisions can have significant electoral consequences, the redistricting process is often highly contentious. An especially prominent concern is with partisan gerrymandering—that is, the adoption of maps that unduly advantage one political party over another. This report assesses the rise of state court litigation as one important tool for curbing partisan gerrymandering and provides a state-by-state analysis of the viability of state partisan gerrymandering claims.

The U.S. constitution is quite difficult to change — however, state constitutions are relatively easy…to the extent that 70 state constitution amendments were passed in 2022. Emily Lau, Staff Attorney fort he University of Wisconsin’s State Democracy Research Initiative talks about these “living” documents and the efforts that this non-partisan group is making to make the fifty state constitutions available, and searchable at 50constitutions.org