Elections in the United States don’t only happen on Election Day. They happen in the weeks ahead as election officials process voter registrations, mail absentee ballots and administer early voting.

So, how is mail voting going across the country? Or early voting at the polls? And what should Americans know about potential federal interference ahead of Election Day? Check in with election experts and Votebeat on Oct. 27.

Votebeat's reporters watch and report on vote counting and other key election processes. Help keep them in the room by donating today.

As a former California voter, I used to spend lots of time poring over the pros and cons of the ballot measures I was being asked to consider — and there were lots! One year, there were 20 initiatives on the ballot. I’ve been asked to decide whether farm animals should live in more humane conditions, whether to ban certain animal traps used by hunters, and whether to allow slot machines at race tracks.

This year, California voters will be asked to weigh the fate of 14 initiatives, which puts the state on par with Colorado for the most on the ballot this November. And quite a few of them center on election-related issues.

Other states have them, too. There are 145 ballot measures before voters in 39 states this November, including 39 focused on election issues, a new record high, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“The amount of election-related measures appearing on the ballot has escalated pretty steadily for more than the last 10 years,” said Helen Brewer, senior policy specialist on elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The measures this year run the gamut from endorsing redrawn congressional maps to a new high of six voter identification measures. 

Between 2004 and 2025, voters approved 10 of 13 voter ID ballot measures, said Nicole Fisher, a staff writer at Ballotpedia, the nonpartisan online political encyclopedia and election site. Thirty-six states now have some kind of voter ID law.

One of the most closely watched such initiatives this year is in California, where voters are considering a Republican-backed change to the state constitution that would require voters to provide ID. The measure would also require people voting by mail to provide the last four digits of a government ID number, such as a driver’s license.

Polling on the proposal shows that the measure faces an uphill battle.

Voters in Arizona are showing much stronger support in polls for a similar measure, Proposition 144, which would change the state constitution to require people to provide voter ID before casting a ballot in person or by mail.

The measure leaves it up to state lawmakers to figure out how to write the law if it  passes. Various voting rights groups, including the ACLU of Arizona, warn that the measure could make it harder for Arizonans to vote by mail, which is the main way most residents cast ballots. 

Meanwhile, a ballot measure in  Alaska asks voters to toss out their current system for choosing political candidates, which puts the top four candidates on the general election ballot and uses ranked choice voting to choose the winner. Measure 2 would replace the system with a traditional partisan primary. Alaskans rejected a similar proposal in 2024 by 743 votes.

Alaska’s ranked choice voting process has been in the spotlight this year because incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Republican, is facing a challenger with the same name. Republicans tried — and failed — to force the lesser-known Dan Sullivan off the ballot. President Donald Trump just flew to Alaska to campaign for the senator, who faces a tight race against a Democratic candidate, former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who is narrowly leading in the polls.

Unlike voter ID proposals, ballot measures to overhaul primary elections have fared poorly in recent years. In 2024, 11 states and the District of Columbia had measures that would have revamped their systems for choosing candidates; only the District of Columbia approved one, said Fisher.

Fisher said the spike in election-related ballot measures may be an extension of the attention such issues are getting from Trump, his supporters, and those challenging his preferred policies.

Trump has made election reforms a cornerstone of his second term. He has unsuccessfully pushed Congress to enact nationwide voter ID laws. He’s signed two election-related executive orders that have largely been neutered by the courts. And he pushed Republicans across the country to take the unusual step of redrawing congressional maps.

“We definitely do see some partisanship on both sides related to these measures,” Fisher said.

Voters in three states — Missouri, Colorado and Maryland — will be deciding the fate of redistricting proposals next month. Of the three, Missouri’s has followed the most tortured path to the ballot, involving multiple state and U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

Missouri’s measure asks voters to approve or reject new congressional lines drawn last fall by the Republican-controlled legislature that weakened Democratic chances in the state. The messy litigation meant the new lines were used for the primary election, but won’t be in place for the general.

Polling shows voters are evenly split on the measure, Proposition A.

Voters in six states will face measures explicitly restricting voting to U.S. citizens, continuing a trend that has seen voters approve every such proposal since 2018. Noncitizen voting is already prohibited in federal elections, and none of the six states with ballot measures currently allows it in statewide elections.

In another setback for Trump’s efforts to inject more federal control into elections, a federal judge last week struck down the Trump administration's plan to check state voter rolls against federal immigration databases. Judge Sparkle Sooknanan’s 78-page ruling found the U.S. Department of Justice’s efforts to collect voter rolls from states and use them to check for noncitizens illegally casting ballots is illegal. Most states refused to comply, often citing privacy laws, though some states agreed to give the Trump administration unredacted voter rolls.  Courts have so far dismissed 26 Justice Department lawsuits seeking to force  states to comply. The ruling constricts the Trump administration from using its Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, program, a federal tool the administration was using to verify voter citizenship once it obtained the voter rolls. This week, Votebeat spoke to Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Campaign Legal Center, about the implications. 

Let’s start from the beginning: What did the judge rule?

This case has to do with the Department of Justice’s voter list maintenance policy. It's DOJ's new policy of requesting from all of the states their unredacted voter rolls, and then disclosing those voter lists to other federal agencies using [a federal data tool] to identify purportedly ineligible voters, and then demanding that states remove voters from the rolls based on their analysis. 

So what the judge ruled in this case is that that entire kind of scheme is unlawful —that DOJ does not have the statutory authority to engage in voter list maintenance. That is a legal obligation given to the states that DOJ does not really play a role in, other than to enforce, make sure that the states are complying with federal law, and that the way in which DOJ went about doing this violated the Privacy Act and the Paperwork Reduction Act, and is arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. So basically, DOJ does not have the lawful authority to do this, and went about doing it in a way that violates several kinds of procedural federal laws. 

What is the impact of the ruling?

This is closely related to the 31 lawsuits that DOJ brought against the states who used to turn over their voter rolls to the federal government. DOJ has lost 26 of those 31 cases and hasn't won any. But there were a number of states who voluntarily turned over their voter files to DOJ — states like Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Iowa. And so this case covers not just DOJ's unlawful demands to the states that refused to turn their voter rolls over, but also their collection of voter rolls — even from states that were willing — and what they had been attempting to do with them. The judge has said now that the whole program is unlawful. 

The Supreme Court in a separate case overruled this judge to say that the Trump administration can temporarily resume using its expanded SAVE system to help states verify voters’ citizenship. How does this case relate?

The SAVE case at the Supreme Court was about what modifications the Department of Homeland Security was making to the SAVE system. And you know the Supreme Court stayed a lower court decision, basically allowing DHS to make those modifications and make it available to the states to conduct list maintenance. 

This case is about what DOJ is doing, and so even though we have now the stay in the Supreme Court League of Women Voters case that allows the SAVE system to move forward and allows states to use it, DOJ still does not have any statutory authority to engage in voter list maintenance or or to demand and collect every state's unredacted voter file and create a kind of master federal voter registration list. The Supreme Court decision says that, for now, the government can continue to make changes to the SAVE system and make the SAVE system available to the states for them to use. But this ruling says that DOJ cannot be the one who takes the voter file from the states and runs it through SAVE and then tells the states what voters to remove. So states can opt in to use the SAVE system if they want to, but DOJ cannot compel the states to turn over their voter files and run it. 

It's really a separation of powers issue. The Department of Justice is not the entity that is supposed to be doing all of this. Maintaining the voter rolls is not their job. They don't have the legal authority to do that. I do encourage you to read the ruling because it is, I think, pretty clearly written and a pretty kind of brutal takedown of DOJ's entire scheme to try and vacuum up all of the state's voter rolls. 

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From Votebeat National: From martial law to banning voting machines, election skeptics urge Trump to take extreme action

Trump’s Attacks on Voting Raise Fears He Will Try to Challenge Midterm Results, New York Times

America’s elected officials are living in fear, New York Times

Trump administration sues California to block state from counting alleged noncitizen mail-in ballots, AP

US intel officials postpone classified threat briefing for election officials after technical difficulties, CNN

FACT FOCUS: Social media posts falsely claim ballots marked by a poll worker will be disqualified, AP

How Claims of Widespread Noncitizen Voting Fall Apart, New York Times

America’s election officials are ready for trouble, Economist (Paywall)

Trump rejects international election monitors, breaking 2-decade tradition, Hill

Elon Musk settles fraud lawsuits over his $1 million giveaways to 2024 election voters, CNN

Justin Heap's office called in FBI to investigate bogus election allegations against Maricopa County Board, KPNX 

South Dakota’s federal-only voter list grows to nearly 6,000, surprising some who are on it, South Dakota Searchlight

North Carolina elections board to notify 1,392 voters flagged as potential noncitizens, NC Newsline

Troops loitering near D.C. ballot box were not guarding it, National Guard says, Washington Post

Ballots From November Special Statewide Election To Be Destroyed, Riverside Record 

These 35 States Are Deciding Who’ll Run Their Elections, Bolts 

Federal authorities seek voter records from 3 Connecticut towns ahead of election, officials say, CT Insider