While many states run by Republicans passed new restrictions on voting in the wake of the 2020 election, the states where Democrats controlled most or all of the levers of government did the opposite and increased voter access and voting rights.

In total, 25 states enacted legislation to expand voter access and voting rights, while 19 states enacted restrictive election laws, according to a review of state laws by the Brennan Center for Justice , a nonprofit that supports voting rights. Some states expanded voter access in certain ways while restricting it in other ways.

States that President Joe Biden won in last years election, and where Democrats control the state legislature, accounted for the majority of the expansive voter access laws enacted in 2021. And, in large part, the increase in voter access and expansion of voting rights in these states followed on from the successful implementation of policies during the COVID-19 pandemic that were designed to make it easier to vote.

There is this emerging divide in America where places where its easier to vote pass these more expansive policies, and the opposite is true in places where it is already hard to vote, Jasleen Singh, a voting rights attorney with the Brennan Center, said.

Almost every state adopted emergency election rules in 2020 to ensure that people could vote without worrying about contracting the coronavirus in a crowded indoor space. These changes included allowing anyone to cast an absentee ballot, sending every voter an application for a mail ballot (or the ballot itself), opening drive-thru voting locations, placing absentee ballot drop boxes, easing voter registration rules, providing more time for ballots to arrive, and allowing voters an opportunity to correct errors on their mailed ballots. Americans responded to these changes by voting at the highest rate in a century.

The pandemic, and peoples use of these expanded policies, definitely signals to state legislatures that when these methods are available to make it easier to vote, people are going to use them, Singh said. And they turned out to be incredibly popular.