Our Work

A recent episode involving a California sheriff who obtained a search warrant and seized more than 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 special election has raised the troubling possibility that a similar incident could occur while a state's vote-counting process is still underway. This Report explores these concerns and offers guidance to the state and local actors best positioned to address them.

On August 20, 2026, the State Democracy Research Initiative filed an amicus brief on behalf of eight legal scholars encouraging the court to be mindful of the Wisconsin Constitution's foundational democratic commitments. The brief explains that this constitutionally embedded democracy principle prevents mapmakers from seeking to suppress electoral competition and accountability and that such anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are justiciable. (The brief expresses no view on the ultimate merits of the plaintiffs' specific claim.)

On July 30, SDRI Legal Director Danielle Friedman spoke with Bob Bauer on Executive Functions. They discussed state criminal statutes that could apply to federal deployment of military or ICE and examine the limits of executive authority in the context of potential federal interference ahead of the November midterms.

State courts are encountering a new type of “vote dilution” claim, which asserts that certain election rules or practices are unconstitutional because they increase the hypothetical risk that fraudulent votes which will be cast, which would dilute the weight of “legal” ballots. These hypothetical vote dilution claims increasingly invoke state constitutional rights. With sparse, unsettled, and often conflicting precedent on these types of claims, state courts may understandably find these claims difficult to adjudicate, especially in the highly charged election space. This Report offers state courts context on these claims and analytical frameworks with which to evaluate them under state constitutions.

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.

Election administrators in the U.S. face persistent financial strain with local governments and their tax bases shouldering most costs while state and federal support remains limited. At the same time, states collect billions each year in unclaimed funds, which are assets like abandoned bank accounts and forgotten insurance proceeds. States are increasingly using unclaimed funds to support public programs like education and housing, but none have earmarked them for election administration.

The U.S. Justice Department has demanded states' complete, unredacted vote registration lists. States have mostly declined to provide their full, unredacted voter registration lists. This report examines the questions raised by the federal government's demands about the long-established authority of states to administer elections and the scope of the federal government’s role in the voter registration process.

In a case determining whether the state constitution prohibits election officials from excluding timely-received absentee ballots because they lack a written date on the return envelope, the State Democracy Research Initiative filed an amicus brief arguing that the practice is inconsistent with the Pennsylvania Constitution's democratic commitments.

Unlike the U.S. Constitution, which has no explicit voting rights guarantee, state constitutions both affirmatively grant the right to vote and list explicit, enumerated exceptions from that right. But state actors routinely overstep those bounds—a practice this article refers to as “disenfranchisement creep.” This article identifies two primary ways in which state actors disenfranchise people beyond the scope of state constitutions.