在几十个中选举改革法律改变规则关于选民如何投票，一些人还削弱了州秘书对选举的权力，或将选举管理的某些方面转移到党派性很强的机构，如州议员本身或不均衡的两党选举委员会。
“将党派行为者纳入选举管理...当你在2020年发生的事情的背景下理解它时，这确实是一个令人担忧的趋势，”保护民主协会(Protect Democracy)的法律顾问杰西卡·马斯登(Jessica Marsden)说，该协会是由白宫法律顾问办公室和司法部的前行政部门官员创立的非营利组织。
与美国民主中心和法律促进会合作，保护民主分发备忘录对州立法机构试图“将选举管理政治化、刑事化和干预选举管理”的“特别危险的趋势”发出警告。
投票权实验室的国家级分析账单跟踪器和法案描述，美国广播公司新闻确定了至少九个州，包括战场亚利桑那州和佐治亚州，今年迄今已颁布了11项法律，通过增强党派实体对选举过程的权力或转移国务卿与选举有关的责任来改变选举法。
每项法律都是由共和党州长或共和党控制的立法机构投票推翻民主党州长的否决而制定的。
这些新法律包括一项要求阿肯色州地方选举委员会将违反选举法的投诉提交给由五名共和党人和一名民主党人组成的州选举专员委员会，而不是他们各自的县书记员和地方检察官;另一个通常禁止堪萨斯州的行政和司法部门修改选举法;还有一项是赋予俄亥俄州立法领袖干预挑战州法规的案件和挑战重划选区地图的案件的权力。
对官员2020年行动的强烈反对
其中一些变化似乎是对官员们去年在大选前后采取的行动的直接报复。
亚利桑那州民主党国务卿凯蒂·霍布斯(Katie Hobbs)不能再代表该州参加捍卫其选举法规的诉讼。这一权力现在完全属于共和党司法部长，但只能持续到2023年1月2日霍布斯的任期结束。
在肯塔基州，共和党国务卿和民主党州长安迪·贝希尔因两党合作给予选民前所未有的缺席和提前投票选择而受到称赞，该州法律现在明确反对在紧急状态下进行这种协调。贝希尔否决了这项限制其办公室紧急权力的法案，但共和党占多数的立法机构投票否决了他。
在蒙大拿州，时任州长的民主党人史蒂夫·布洛克利用他的紧急权力授权各县为6月份的初选和11月份的选举进行全邮件选举。每个县都选择在6月份这样做，该州约80%的县，包括人口最多的8个县，在11月份这样做了。但今年4月，共和党州长格雷格·吉安福特签署了一项法案，禁止州长改变选举程序，除非立法机构批准。
“这是前所未有的，以我自己都想不到的方式，”国家在家投票研究所的国家政策主任奥黛丽·克莱恩告诉美国广播公司新闻。“感觉确实有反弹，对选举的真正运作方式确实存在误解。”
对佐治亚州选举法案中所谓“接管”条款的担忧
佐治亚州在3月底颁布的全面的选举法修改，激起抗议,抵制呼吁和企业愤怒投票程序的改变。
布莱恩·坎普州长和其他共和党人捍卫法律“使投票变得容易，作弊变得困难”，但民主党人，包括坎普2018年的对手斯泰西·艾布拉姆斯，将其描述为“吉姆·克劳2.0”
马斯登和克莱恩都指出，它的条款转移了对选举的控制，是迄今为止颁布的最令人担忧的条款之一。
这项法律解除了共和党国务卿的职务布拉德·拉芬斯佩格谁顶住了时任总统唐纳德·特朗普的直接压力“找到”足够的选票推翻选举，作为国家选举委员会的主席和投票成员，该委员会调查潜在的欺诈和违规行为。
但两位专家强调的条款是允许州议员要求对地方选举委员会进行“绩效评估”。如果目前有三名共和党人和一名民主党人的州选举委员会确定审查产生了足够的证据证明法律规定的不当行为或疏忽，该州将任命一名负责人，承担当地多人委员会的责任，包括雇用和解雇权力，以及认证选举。
足够多的共和党议员已经呼吁对倾向民主党的富尔顿县进行绩效评估，该县是佐治亚州人口最多的县，也是2020年几起选举阴谋的目标。离任何潜在的“接管”都很远，这是民主党人对这一过程的描述，但最多四个县可以同时有一名负责人。
马斯登认为，“接管”如何影响未来选举的结果尚不清楚，但这个概念本身给选举过程注入了“混乱和不确定性”。
极端法案消亡了，但对未来选举的不安没有消失
马斯登指出，一些最极端的立法从未通过。在亚利桑那州一项法案会给州立法机关有权以简单多数票取消总统选举人的认证，直到就职典礼在委员会中结束。
她警告说，该法案的失败不是一种“保障”，因为这正是一些共和党人去年希望发生的事情，即在特朗普输掉的关键战场州任命支持他的选民，但毫无根据地声称，如果不是因为不存在的大规模选民欺诈，他会赢。
特朗普可能会在2024年寻求复出，但他仍然表示，这应该已经发生了。他在周三的一份声明中再次抨击坎普，称他没有召集选举人来任命新的选举人，坎普当时表示这是非法的。
但是前总统的仇杀反对官员谁没有屈服他对选举的要求并不像共和党人现在对美国选举普遍缺乏信任那样对选举进程造成损害。根据7月份的一份报告，在共和党人中，65%的人仍然认为乔·拜登总统不是合法当选的美联社/NORC民意调查。
克莱恩承认，实现完全的无党派选举是不可能的。但必须存在的是“两党制衡”——就像在选票标记不清楚的情况下，让共和党和民主党的二人组一起决定选民的意图——并在同一组基本事实下运作。
她说，例如，一个勾号清楚地表明了选民的意图，尽管选民应该在选票上填写整个椭圆形。
当美国人不再相信围绕选举的一系列事实时，会发生什么?
“我想我们都在纠结这些问题，”克莱恩说。“把它交给两党团队可能是我们能得到的最接近一种完美的制衡体系的方式。但当我们不能就基本事实达成一致时，就变得更加困难了。”
Nearly a dozen new state laws shift power over elections to partisan entities
Among the dozens ofelectionreform lawschanging rulesregarding how voters cast ballots, several have also diminished secretaries of states' authority over elections or shifted aspects of election administration to highly partisan bodies, such as state legislators themselves or unevenly bipartisan election boards.
"Inserting partisan actors into election administration ... is really a worrying trend when you understand it in the context of what happened in 2020," said Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by former executive branch officials in the White House Counsel's Office and Department of Justice.
Partnering with States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracydistributed a memoraising the alarm over the "particularly dangerous trend" of state legislatures attempting to "politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration."
Analyzing the Voting Rights Lab's state-levelbill trackerand bill descriptions, ABC News identified at least nine states, including battlegrounds Arizona and Georgia, that have enacted 11 laws so far this year that change election laws by bolstering partisan entities' power over the process or shifting election-related responsibilities from secretaries of state.
Each law was enacted by a Republican governor or by Republican-controlled legislatures voting to override Democratic governors' vetoes.
These new laws include one that requires local election boards in Arkansas to refer election law violation complaints to the State Board of Election Commissioners -- made up of five Republicans and just one Democrat -- instead of their respective county clerks and local prosecutors; another that generally bars the executive and judicial branches in Kansas from modifying election law; and one giving Ohio state legislative leaders the power to intervene in cases challenging state statutes and cases challenging redistricting maps.
'Backlash' to officials' 2020 actions
Some of these changes appear to be in direct retaliation to actions officials took last year around the election.
Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its election code. That power now lies exclusively with the Republican attorney general -- but only through Jan. 2, 2023, when Hobbs' term ends.
In Kentucky, where the Republican secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear were heralded for their bipartisan collaboration to give electors absentee and early voting options they'd never had before, state law now explicitly opposes such coordination during a state of emergency. Beshear vetoed this bill, which curtails his office's emergency powers, but the Republican-majority legislature voted to override him.
And in Montana, then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, used his emergency powers to authorize counties to conduct all-mail elections for the June primary and November election. Every county opted to do this in June, and about 80% of the state's counties, including the eight most populous, did in November. But in April, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a bill barring the governor from changing election procedures unless the legislature signs off on it.
"This is unprecedented in ways that I couldn't have even dreamed up myself," Audrey Kline, the national policy director for the National Vote At Home Institute, told ABC News. "It does feel like there's a backlash, and there's really a misunderstanding about how elections really work."
Concern over so-called 'takeover' provision of Georgia election bill
Georgia's sweeping election law rewrite, enacted at the end of March,spurred protests,boycott callsandcorporate outrageover changes to the voting process.
Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans havedefended the lawas "making it easy to vote and hard to cheat," but Democrats, including Kemp's 2018 opponent, Stacey Abrams, described it as "Jim Crow 2.0."
undefinedMORE: Trump demands Georgia secretary of state 'find' enough votes to hand him win
Both Marsden and Kline pointed to its provisions shifting control over elections as among the most concerning enacted so far.
The law removed Republican Secretary of StateBrad Raffensperger, who withstood direct pressure from then-President Donald Trump to"find" enough votesto overturn the election, as chairman and a voting member of the State Election Board, which investigates potential fraud and irregularities.
But the provision the two experts highlighted is one allowing state legislators to request a "performance review" of local election boards. If the State Election Board, which currently has three Republicans and one Democrat, determines a review yields enough evidence of wrongdoing or negligence under the law, the state will appoint a superintendent who takes on the local, multi-person board's responsibilities, including hiring and firing power, and certifying elections.
Enough Republican lawmakers have already called for a performance review in Democratic-leaning Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia and the target of several 2020 election conspiracies. It's a long way from any potential "takeover," which is how Democrats describe the process, but up to four counties could have a superintendent at once.
How a "takeover" could impact a future election's outcome is unclear, but the concept itself injects "confusion and uncertainty" into the election process, Marsden argued.
Extreme bills die, but unease for future elections doesn't
Some of the most extreme pieces of legislation introduced never passed, Marsden noted.In Arizona, a bill thatwould have giventhe state legislature power to undo the certification of presidential electors by a simple majority vote up until the inauguration died in committee.
The bill failing isn't a "safeguard," she warned, because this is exactly what some Republicans wanted to happen last year to appoint electors supporting Trump in key battleground states he lost, but baselessly claimed he would've won if not for nonexistent mass voter fraud.
Trump, who may seek a comeback in 2024, still says it should have happened. He again attacked Kemp in a statement Wednesday for not calling one to appoint new electors, which Kemp said at the time would have been illegal.
But theformer president's vendettaagainst officialswho did not bendto his demands around the election is not as damaging to the election process as the widespread lack of trust Republicans now have in U.S. elections. Among Republicans, 65% still believe President Joe Biden was not legitimately elected, according to a JulyAP/NORC poll.
undefinedMORE: Pro-Trump Republicans determined to oust GOP incumbents who supported impeachment
Achieving full nonpartisan elections, conceded Kline, is not really possible. But what must exist are "bipartisan counterbalances" -- like having a Republican-Democratic duo determine voter intent together when a ballot marking is unclear -- and operating under the same set of basic facts.
A checkmark, for example, clearly indicates a voter's intent, she said, even though voters are supposed to fill in the entire oval on a ballot.
What happens when Americans no longer believe in the same set of facts around elections?
"I think we're all wrestling with these questions," Kline said. "Leaving it up to a bipartisan team is probably as close as we can get to a perfect sort of check-and-balance system. But when we can't agree on basic facts, it becomes more difficult."
