State of Advocacy: Legislative Update

On today's episode, we are breaking down the 2026 state legislative season and how the landscape affecting nonprofit advocacy is shifting across the country. We are recording this in mid-June, and while most states have wrapped up for the year, not all have, so you are going to want to look at your state to get a sense of what's enacted, what's moving, and what's dead. What we're seeing this year is not just incremental change, but a rapid expansion of state-level regulation over campaign finance, ballot measures, voter access, and increasingly, what we are calling foreign influence laws or national security-style frameworks applied to civil society.   Attorneys for this episode Maggie Ellinger-Locke Susan Finkle Sourlis Natalie Ossenfort   Shownotes Overview ·      This year, 46 states plus DC held legislative sessions. ·      We tracked roughly 1,000 bills that could impact nonprofit advocacy. ·      Of those bills that have now become law, almost half relate to state campaign finance and / or ballot measure processes. ·      Perhaps the biggest story of the 2026 legislative session is the expansion of laws that borrow concepts from national security and apply them to nonprofit advocacy. New Campaign Finance Laws ·      Louisiana increased the threshold triggering disclosure for certain campaign contributions. ·      West Virginia now not only prevents the public disclosure of certain contributor information, but also created a new criminal penalty for violations of the disclosure prohibition. ·      Kansas eliminated the requirement for political committees to disclose the names of vendors when reporting disbursements New Ballot Measure Procedures ·      Ballot measure legislation accounted for 20% of the bills we monitored, about 350 pieces of legislation. Here, we saw 22 laws enacted across 13 states plus DC. ·      Both Wisconsin and Utah now require signature gatherers to be at least 18 y.o. ·      New York now requires legislators to draft questions at an 8th grade reading level or below, and Maryland did something similar. ·      South Dakota eliminated the requirement to place ballot measures on a separate ballot from candidate elections. ·      In Missouri, voters will decide this August whether to approve a change to that state's ballot measure procedures. Currently, in order to pass, measures need a simple statewide majority, but under Amendment 4, a majority in all eight of the state's congressional districts would be required. New Lobbying and Ethics Laws ·      This type of legislation constituted about 13% of all bills we tracked. ·      In Minnesota, certain lobbying communications conveyed to the public must now include a disclaimer to identify the lobbying principal, who is responsible for the communication. Laws Related to Law Enforcement Presence at the Polls and Voting ·      Legislation was enacted in California, Maryland, New Mexico, and Connecticut to restrict law enforcement presence at the polls. ·      The new Connecticut law also removed the statutory list of reasons required to vote absentee, effectively allowing no-excuse absentee voting. It also permits 17-year-olds who will be 18 by election day t