Since January 2025, state legislatures across the country have introduced more than 430 bills designed to restrict ballot access, curtail voter registration, reduce polling infrastructure, and limit mail voting. This is not a spontaneous eruption of legislative activity. It is a coordinated campaign, and its targets are documented: Black voters, young voters, and low-income voters in competitive states.
The Suppression Map is the Reconstruction Institute’s systematic record of that campaign. Every entry is sourced, tracked by status, and assessed for its specific impact on Black voter access. This document is updated as bills move through legislatures, are signed into law, or face legal challenge.
I. The Architecture of Suppression
Voter suppression in 2025–2026 does not arrive in a single bill. It arrives as a system — layered restrictions stacked across six categories that, taken individually, each appear modest, but operating together, produce a coordinated obstacle course targeted at specific communities. The Reconstruction Institute documents all six.
Each category targets a different moment in the voting process — registration, access to the polls, the act of casting a ballot, and the return of that ballot. A voter can clear every obstacle in one category and face another. That is the design. The goal is attrition through exhaustion, not a single decisive barrier that could be challenged in isolation.
II. State-by-State Tracker
The following table documents significant restriction legislation in the Institute’s primary target states. Status reflects the most recent verified legislative or judicial action as of May 11, 2026.
| State | Bill / Action | Category | Estimated Impact on Black Voters | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | SB 1 — Photo ID hardening; eliminates non-photo ID alternatives | Voter ID | ~180,000 registered Black voters currently using non-photo ID alternatives | Enacted |
| Georgia | HB 974 — Shortens absentee ballot request window to 11 days before election | Mail Ballot | Black voters use absentee voting at higher rates in metro Atlanta counties; estimated 240,000 affected | In Litigation |
| Georgia | SB 221 — Authorizes State Election Board to replace county election officials | Election Administration | Targets counties with majority-Black electorates; Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton counties specifically named | Enacted |
| Texas | HB 1243 — Bans 24-hour voting and drive-through voting statewide | Polling Access | Harris County (Houston) operated drive-through sites used by 127,000 voters, majority Black and Latino | Enacted |
| Texas | SB 9 — Expands voter roll purge authority; 30-day notice requirement eliminated | Registration | Previous purges in Texas removed 95,000+ voters; disproportionate impact on renters and mobile populations | Enacted |
| Florida | HB 7037 — Restricts third-party voter registration organizations; $250K daily fines | Registration | Effectively dismantles voter registration drives; organizations registered 350,000+ Black voters in 2022 cycle | In Litigation |
| Florida | SB 7050 — Requires re-registration for vote-by-mail; eliminates standing requests | Mail Ballot | ~430,000 voters had standing VBM requests; Black voters in South Florida disproportionately enrolled | Enacted |
| Wisconsin | AB 220 — Bans student ID use for voting; requires proof of Wisconsin residency | Voter ID | Targets HBCU enrollment and UW system students; estimated 60,000 students affected | Pending Governor |
| Arizona | HB 2492 (reactivated) — Proof of citizenship required for federal elections | Registration | 1 in 10 registered voters may lack documentary proof of citizenship; impact concentrated in Maricopa County | In Litigation |
| North Carolina | SB 747 — Eliminates same-day registration; shortens early voting by 3 days | Registration / Early Voting | Same-day registration used at higher rates by Black voters in Mecklenburg and Wake counties | Enacted |
| Mississippi | HB 1310 — Requires photo ID for absentee ballot application and return | Mail Ballot | Mississippi’s Black population is 38%; absentee use concentrated in Delta counties with majority-Black electorates | Enacted |
| Tennessee | HB 512 — Counties may close polling places with 30-day notice; no minimum proximity requirement | Polling Access | Shelby County (Memphis) has already proposed consolidating from 167 to 34 polling locations | Enacted |
III. The Sunday Voting Pattern
One tactic in the 2025–2026 cycle deserves specific attention because its racial targeting is unambiguous and its history is documented: the elimination of Sunday early voting.
“Souls to the Polls” is a decades-old tradition in Black churches across the South. Congregations vote together on Sunday afternoons following services. The practice is not incidental — it is organized, efficient, and culturally embedded. It produces turnout. That is why it has been a target.
In 2016, a federal appeals court struck down North Carolina’s early voting restrictions, finding that the legislature had requested data on voting patterns by race and then “target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision.” Sunday voting was specifically identified as a mechanism used disproportionately by Black voters. The legislature eliminated it. The court called it out by name.
In the 2025–2026 cycle, 19 bills across 11 states have targeted Sunday early voting hours specifically. Of those, 8 have been enacted. None of the enacted bills offer an alternative accommodation for voters whose weekday work schedules make weekday voting more difficult.
The pattern is not new. What is new is scale and acceleration. Restrictions that required years of litigation to challenge in 2013–2018 are being enacted and re-enacted faster than litigation can respond, in part because Shelby County v. Holder (2013) eliminated the preclearance requirement that would have required federal approval before any such law took effect.
IV. What Litigation Has — and Has Not — Stopped
Of the 94 bills enacted into law in the Institute’s tracking window, 31 face active legal challenge. That figure represents a meaningful litigation response. It also means 63 enacted restrictions are currently in force with no pending legal challenge — whether because the challenge has not been filed, the resources to file do not exist, or the post-Callais legal landscape has made a successful challenge unlikely.
“We are litigating in a context where the court has systematically dismantled the tools Congress gave us. Preclearance is gone. Section 2 now requires proof of intent. We are fighting with fewer weapons against more laws, faster.”
Senior counsel, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, May 2026The Supreme Court’s April 2026 decision in Louisiana v. Callais significantly narrows the litigation path for Section 2 challenges. By requiring proof of intentional discrimination — a standard that is difficult to meet without explicit legislative statements — the decision renders many of the enacted restrictions effectively immune from challenge under the Voting Rights Act, even when their racial impact is demonstrable and documented.
Litigation under the Equal Protection Clause remains available but faces its own heightened evidentiary standard. The result is a legal landscape in which suppression legislation can be enacted, enforced, and applied to an election cycle before any judicial remedy can take effect — if a remedy becomes available at all.
V. The 2026 Electoral Stakes
The Suppression Map is not a historical document. Every bill tracked here is aimed at a specific election: the 2026 midterm cycle. The timing is not coincidental. The districts and states most heavily targeted by restriction legislation are, without exception, the same districts and states where Black voter turnout was decisive in 2020 and 2022 and where competitive federal and state legislative races will be decided in November 2026.
The overlap between targeted restriction and electoral competitiveness is not ambiguous. These states are being targeted because Black voters are decisive in them. The legislation is timed to be in force for November 2026. The objective is not to reform election administration. The objective is to change election outcomes by reducing specific turnout.
Conclusion: Suppression Is the Strategy
This tracker documents facts. More than 430 bills. 28 states. 94 enacted into law. 31 under legal challenge. A legal landscape that has been systematically narrowed to reduce the viability of federal remedies. A timeline aligned with competitive elections where Black voters are decisive. And a set of restriction tactics that, in every category, bear documented disproportionate impact on Black communities.
Voter suppression in 2025–2026 is not a series of isolated policy decisions. It is a coordinated electoral strategy. Individual bills can be characterized as administrative reform. The pattern cannot. When the same restriction appears across multiple states within the same legislative cycle, targeted at the same communities, timed for the same election, that is not coincidence. That is coordination.
The Reconstruction Institute will continue updating this tracker through November 2026. Every bill that moves, every challenge that is filed or decided, every election that is affected will be recorded here. The suppression is organized. The documentation must be equally so.
This is the record. It is not complete. It will not stop growing until the laws stop passing.