Even in non-election years, improving election integrity is a winning issue for state legislators. Proof of their interest is in the laws adopted by several states in the early months of 2025, laws that have produced considerable improvements in how those states secure and manage their elections.
Since 2021, The Heritage Foundation has been tracking the laws of every state (and the District of Columbia) governing the conduct of elections—local, state, and federal—and ranking them in its Election Integrity Scorecard. With the latest round of updates, recognition is due to Arkansas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming for their legislative improvements.
Utah made the largest strides, improving by a total of eight points. Utah’s Legislature addressed several important issues affecting the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls. The state now uses the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement Program and jury questionnaires to identify noncitizens who have registered to vote. It also adopted procedures for investigating anomalies in the number of individuals registered at a single address and the validity of a voter registration when an absentee ballot is returned as undeliverable.
Importantly, Utah has moved away from the practice of automatically mailing absentee ballots. By 2029, voters who are eligible for mail-in ballots will have to request them.
Wyoming’s new legislation earned it an impressive five-point gain on the Election Integrity Scorecard. Like Utah, Wyoming has adopted the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement Program to help officials identify noncitizens who register to vote. Additionally, Wyoming passed a ban on all private funding of the elections, a practice that certain well-heeled groups have used as a partisan device for driving voter turnout in urban districts.
The state also passed a formal ban on ranked choice voting, the controversial practice of instructing voters to pick multiple candidates and then reallocating the votes to produce an artificial majority.
West Virginia, for its part, directed state election officials to remove a registration from the state’s voter rolls when comparisons with other state agency databases reveal that the registration is duplicative or otherwise invalid.
Finally, Arkansas earned a point for requiring an additional witness whenever a care facility administrator assists a resident of that facility with marking a ballot. That brings Arkansas’ total improvement on the year to two points, putting the state among the nation’s best performers at No. 6 overall.
Happily, no state has declined in its overall score through this point in 2025, though it should be remembered that we cannot award a state any less than zero points per question even if the state persists in making counterproductive choices.
States with part-time legislatures will soon be winding down their sessions. But time remains for legislators to make the security of future elections a present priority. Given the progress of the last few months, we can reasonably hope to see more such improvements this year.
Jack Fitzhenry is a legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jack Fitzhenry.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
It’d be nice to see a chart indicating where all fifty states rank. I’m guessing new york and california would be at the bottom.
2026 is looking better all the time!
Election Integrity is crucial to be in place throughout every Voting State in America. I have witnessed bad Elections. One recent being, Biden getting into the office of President. To this day that election, in my humble opinion, was fraught with corruption at the highest level of the Democrat Party and its supporters. So not to repeat itself Safeguards must be a strict priority, for all intent and purposes, as Election Integrity to exist for sake of all American Citizens.
What Utah is doing should be a standard everywhere, not anomaly, apply the existing law to avoid and prevent the fraud ,there won’t be need for special forces to oversee that all is done correctly according to the law.
Great to hear. Everybody knows why the crooked Democ-RATs imported millions or illegal aliens- to help them CHEAT in the next elections. THAT is the reason they FIGHT like HELL against any voter ID requirements. Democ-RATs truly are the epitome of EVIL.
In order for our elections to be truly trusted, fair and transparent EVERY state needs to do the following: 1) One day Holiday elections, 2) NO early voting, 3) use paper ballots, 4) hand count, 5) maintain clean voter rolls, 6) it should be the citizens responsibility to register to VOTE NOT any governmental department (this is how this mess of over/invalid registrations has transpired in the first place!), 7) require US citizen picture ID to vote, 8) dispose of outdoor ballot boxes, and 9) strictly limit mail in ballots that must arrive at the BOE no later than election day. Then and only then can we TRUST our ELECTIONS.
Action to correct voting irregularities is being slowly but surely!
Doubtful that many voters will soon forget the obviously fraudulent election outcome that was “delivered to us” in 2020. At least, since then, the polling results have reflected a better understanding of the candidates and their parties’ intentions.
I think Tennessee should be ranked close to the top in vote integrity.
What I have seen happening is that finally there’s a clarification being made between the classification of being given a permanent resident status which is only good as long as the individual commits no criminal acts and the limits of what they are entitled to which never included the ability to vote UNLESS they became citizens of the United States, which many never did because they had permanent residency. Those individuals who stayed as permanent residents never thought they were denying citizenship to their children but they did, because they thought they could use the birth in the USA as an automatic claim to citizenship but could not since they were not at legal citizen status.
The corrupt Left-wing progressive socialist Commie Democrat’s heads are exploding. And I’m sure the ACLU, the Soros-backed dirty judges and DAs, and other America-despising activist scum will be suing and trying to block such Common Sense initiatives for voting/election integrity.
Does the writer of this article agree with the findings of AG Bill Barr that the 2020 election was fair & not rigged? Explain why or why not agree with our AG on this.