Voting rights, current through 2026 — and what’s coming in 2028.

The House passed its version 218-213 in early 2026, almost entirely along party lines. In the Senate, it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster; Republicans hold 53 seats, and the bill has now failed multiple cloture votes, including a narrower photo-ID-only version that fell short 52-48 just before the Senate’s August 2026 recess. Four Republican senators have joined Democrats in opposition at various points. Leadership has said they intend to bring it back for another vote when the Senate reconvenes in September.

Separately, President Trump signed Executive Order 14399 on March 31, 2026, directing the Election Assistance Commission to require documentary citizenship proof (such as a passport) on the federal voter registration form, and tying certain federal election funding to state compliance. This followed an earlier March 2025 version of the same push, which a federal court permanently enjoined in January 2026.

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Court held that Louisiana’s use of race as a factor in drawing a second Black-opportunity congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. In practice, the ruling makes it substantially harder for voters of color to challenge redistricting plans under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act on the grounds that a map dilutes their electoral power — the primary tool used for decades to contest exactly this kind of map.

Separately, and under direct political pressure to shore up the House majority ahead of the midterms, Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina redrew their congressional maps mid-decade — a break from the usual once-a-decade schedule tied to the census. California responded with Proposition 50, a ballot measure voters approved in November 2025 authorizing a new, Democratic-favorable map of its own.

A trial court had found Texas’s new map deliberately targeted the seats of five Black and Latino members of Congress; the Supreme Court granted the state a stay allowing the map’s use in 2026 regardless, while the underlying case continues. Commentators across the political spectrum agree the Callais ruling’s largest effects will play out beyond this cycle, as more Republican-controlled state legislatures gain freer rein to redraw maps ahead of the 2028 elections without the Voting Rights Act challenge that used to constrain them.