The Cost of Voting in 2022
Not only is Nebraska in the middle of the nation geographically, but the Cornhusker State also lands in the center of a 50-state ranking that measures the amount of time and effort it takes to vote.
This year’s rankings are the first since new voting laws were passed by state legislatures across the country after the 2020 election. Last year, 19 states passed 33 laws restricting voting. Twenty-five states expanded voting access in 2021, resulting in some significant changes to the rankings. Nebraska ranks 25th nationally in terms of how easy it is for voters to cast a ballot, according to the new study of voting laws in all 50 states called the 2022 Cost of Voting Index. The nonpartisan academic study examined the time and effort required to cast a ballot in each state following a number of new laws passed in statehouses around the country following the 2020 election.
Researchers based the rankings on 10 categories, including poll hours, access to early in-person voting and vote-by-mail, ease of registration, and more. Here’s how the states are stacked up.
Overall, Nebraska’s ranking slipped five spots from 2020 (No. 20). Why? Legislative action in almost every statehouse means ease of voting across the nation is always shifting; comparatively, Nebraska has not made sweeping changes in that time that seriously affect election access. By essentially standing pat, it was surpassed this year by states that codified pandemic-era changes since 2020 to ensure continued ballot access.
In addition, the study draws a distinction between early voting and in-person absentee voting, which, looks a lot like early voting but is not the same thing, because it can be limited to county election offices rather than more numerous polling sites. So states like Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were considered to have zero days of early voting in the study, even though they have as many as 30 days of in-person early absentee voting.
The study was authored by Scot Schraufnagel of Northern Illinois University, Michael J. Pomante of States United Democracy Center, and Quan Li of Catalyst, and appeared in the latest edition of Election Law Journal. See the full report here.