How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Between covering the horse race and trying to predict which party will control each chamber of Congress come January, it might have been easy to forget that, depending on where you live, voting has become harder this go-round.

That’s because, following the 2020 election, former President Donald Trump repeated debunked claims that the race was stolen from him (it was not). And his actions contributed to a number of GOP-led state legislatures to pass restrictive voting bills that altered everything from shortening the time period in which you can register to vote to limiting how you can return an absentee ballot.

Back in June, my colleague Elena Mejía and I did a state-by-state breakdown on where voting was getting harder. In total, we found that since the 2020 election, 24 states have passed 56 new laws that restrict voting. Some of the laws impact nearly every step of the voting process (I’m looking at you, Texas, Florida and Georgia). So if you still haven’t cast your ballot and want to know how your specific state made it harder to vote, I’d encourage you to explore our piece as it breaks down each step of the voting process and where things might look the same — or really, really different.

I’d also encourage readers to not be fooled by higher-than-usual turnout numbers during this year’s primary elections in a few competitive states, like Georgia. As I wrote earlier, primary elections tend to draw highly engaged voters who are both more experienced with navigating the polls and more partisan. We aren’t yet certain whether these restrictive laws will deter general-election voters, especially if they’re first-time or infrequent voters who are less familiar with the process. The economy and abortion will likely motivate a lot of voters to turn out this year. We just don’t know that for certain yet. We probably won’t know whether any of these laws had a large-scale effect on turnout until after all the ballots are counted.

To be clear, we’re not expecting even the most stringent laws to have a far-reaching effect on turnout or the horse race. What we are keeping an eye out for, though, is the impact these new laws have on everyday citizens. That’ll be what matters most when assessing how voting has gotten harder.

Overall, voting will look different — either by a little or a lot — in two dozen states this year. And that’s not something to brush aside. What’s more, after this year, it’s possible that we’ll see even more states pass restrictive legislation limiting voting rights since a lot of election deniers are running for office this fall — and most have a pretty good chance of winning.