STATE ELECTIONS LEGISLATION DATABASE (2011-2025)

Author: Joseph Loffredo

Institution: MIT

Date: 2025-01-31

DESCRIPTION

This dataset is the product of scraping the National Conference of State Legislature's "State Elections Legislation Database" and Voting Rights Lab's "Legislative Tracker." The code for producing this dataset can be found in this GitHub repo: https://github.com/jloffredo2/state-elect-law-db. See the code subfolder for all relevant code.

If you are using this dataset, please cite it and provide, NCSL and Voting Rights Lab with proper citation as follows:

National Conference of State Legislatures. 2024. State Elections Legislation Database. www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/elections-legislation-database.aspx (January 31, 2025).

Voting Rights Lab. 2024. Legislative Tracker. https://tracker.votingrightslab.org/pending/search (January 31, 2025).

To access tidy versions of these databases, use the following files:

• output/ncsl_bill_database.csv: NCSL "State Elections Legislation" database in .csv format
• output/ncsl_bill_database.Rdata: NCSL "State Elections Legislation" database saved as a R data frame
• output/vrl_bill_database.csv: VRL "Legislative Tracker" database in .csv format
• output/vrl_bill_database.Rdata: VRL "Legislative Tracker" database saved as a R data frame

COLUMN MAPPINGS

All datasets have a similar structure and following the column label/definitions below.

IDENTIFICATION

• UUID Unique identifier in the form STATE-YEAR-BILLNUM (can be used to join datasets)

• YEAR Year tracking organization has tagged bill

• STATE State bill is introduced in

• BILLNUM Bill number

• AUTHORNAME Last name of bill author

• AUTHORPARTY Party affiliation of bill author

STATUS

• BILLSTATUS Current bill status
  • Adopted
  • Enacted
  • Failed
  • Override Pending
  • Pending
  • To Congress
  • To Executive
  • Vetoed
• BILLOCATIOM Bill location in legislative process
• INTRODUCEDDATE Date bill is officially introduced
• LASTACTIONDATE Date of bill's last action
• NCOAUTHORS Total number of coauthors
• NDEMCOAUTHORS Number of Democratic coauthors
• NREPCOAUTHORS Number of Republican coauthors

TOPICS

Each topic indictator takes the value 1 if the organization has tagged the bill to a given topic, 0 otherwise.

• AUDITS Audits-Post Election
• AVAPPL Absentee Voting-Application for
• AVBDIS Absentee Voting-Distributing Ballots
• AVBRET Absentee Voting-Returning Ballots
• AVDLIN Absentee Voting-Deadlines
• AVELIG Absentee Voting-Eligibility
• AVEVIP Absentee Voting-Early Voting/In-Person Absentee
• AVMIOV Absentee Voting-Military/Overseas
• AVMISC Absentee Voting-Misc.
• AVMOVE Absentee Voting-MOVE Act
• AVNOEX Absentee Voting-No Excuse
• AVPERM Absentee Voting-Permanent Status
• BACAND Ballot Access-Candidates
• BACURE Ballot Return, Verification, and Cure
• BALDES Ballots-Format & Design
• BAMEAS Ballot measures
• BAPART Ballot Access-Parties
• CANQUL Candidates-Qualifications for Office
• CANRTR Candidates-Resign to Run
• CANWDW Candidates-Withdrawal/Death
• CANWRI Candidates-Write-in
• CNTEST Contests
• CRIMES Election Crimes
• CYBSEC Cybersecurity
• DATART Election Data-Collection/Retention of
• DGVOTE Digital/electronic voting
• DUALFU Fusion/Dual-Party
• ECONPV Electoral College-National Popular Vote
• EDHOLI Election Day Holiday
• ELAUTH Shifts in Election Authority
• ELCOST Cost/Funding of Elections
• ELDATE Dates of Elections
• ELECOL Electoral College
• ELEING Electioneering
• EMEDIS Emergencies/Disasters
• EOCAMP Election Officials-Campaign Activities
• EOGENR Election Official-General (anything broadly related to election official)
• EOLOCA Election Officials-Local
• EOSTWD Election Officials-Statewide
• EPLOCL Local election procedures
• EXPOLL Exit Polling
• FILING Offices-Method of Filling
• INVOTE Internet Voting
• LNCACC Language accommodations
• MAILVO Mail Voting
• MISCEL Miscellaneous
• POLPAR Political Parties
• POLWAT Poll Watchers
• PPACES Polling Places-Disabled Access
• PPGENR Polling Places-General (nonspecific)
• PPLOCA Polling Places-Locations
• PPPROC Polling Places-Arrangement of/Procedures at
• PPVCEN Polling Places-Vote Centers
• PPVHRS Polling Places-Hours
• PREDEF Precinct Definition
• PRIDAT Primaries-Dates
• PRIMIS Primaries-Misc.
• PRIPUS Primaries-Presidential
• PRIRNF Primaries-Runoff
• PRITYP Primaries-Types
• PROVOT Provisional Voting
• PTDRES DREs-Paper Trail
• PWCOMP Poll Workers-Compensation
• PWMISC Poll Workers-Misc.
• PWQUAL Poll Workers-Selection/Qualifications of
• PWTRAI Poll Workers-Training
• PWYOTH Poll Workers-Youth
• RECALL Recall elections
• RECOUN Recounts
• REDIST Redistricting
• REGAGY Registration-Agencies
• REGAPP Registration-Application Form/Content
• REGATO Registration-Automatic
• REGCVL Registration-Centralized Voter List
• REGDRI Registration Drives
• REGDTE Registration-Deadline
• REGEDY Registration-Election Day/Same Day
• REGELE Registration-Electronic
• REGGEN Registration-General
• REGIDR Registration-ID Required
• REGLST Registration-List Maintenance
• REGMSC Registration-Misc.
• REGONL Registration-Online
• REGPRE Registration-Preregistration
• REGSDL Registration-Sale/Distribution/Use of Lists
• REPRES Election Results/Canvass, Reporting of
• RUNOFF Run-Off Elections
• SPELEC Special Elections
• STVOTE Straight Ticket Voting
• TECHSS Voting Equipment/Technology-Selection & Standards
• TFSCIC Task Forces/Study Commissions/Interim Committees
• VACNCY Vacancies
• VCOUNT Counting Votes
• VEDINF Voter Education/Information
• VOTAFW Voters-Absence from Work
• VOTAGE Voters-Age
• VOTAST Voters-Assistance to
• VOTEME Alt Voting Methods (Ranked Choice, etc)
• VOTFVR Voters-Felon Voting Rights
• VOTMQU Voters-Miscellaneous Qualifications
• VOTRID Voter Identification
• VOTSEC Voting security (polling places, drop box, counting)
• VSSCST Voting System Testing/Security/Storage
• VTDROP Ballot Drop-off Locations
• VTRCHA Challenges to Voters

ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONAL COLUMNS

• VRLRATING VRL's coding of overall bill impact
  • Anti-voter = R
  • Pro-voter = E
  • Mixed/Unclear = M
  • Neutral = N
• BILLTEXTURL URL to access bill's text
• BILLSUMMARY Organization's summarization of bill

MISC DATA

If using R, use rjson::fromJSON() to transform these values into an R vector.

• COAUTHORS JSON string listing all coauthors
• HISTORY JSON string of bill's history log
• BILLTEXTURL URL to bill text

VRL PROVISION RATINGS

The Voting Rights Lab dataset also codes whether provisions related to certain topics are Anti-voter, Pro-voter, Neutral, or Mixed/Unclear. You can find those codings in output/vrl_provisions.csv or output/vrl_provisions.RData. What appears in the dataset follows the same VRLRATING mapping as above. The files in output/vrl_process_check.csv and output/vrl_process_check.RData are used to check handcoding for some of my ongoing projects.