Redistricting and election rules remain unsettled for 2026

2026 election – With less than six months until the 2026 general election and state primaries already underway, two developments last week underscored how quickly election rules can shift. States are redrawing congressional maps after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Cal

Less than six months until the 2026 general election, and state primaries are already underway.. You would expect the rules of the road for the midterms to be settled by now.. Instead. last week brought two separate reminders that election administration can be thrown off schedule. costing money and confusing voters midstream.

In several states, redistricting after the U.S.. Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v.. Callais is reshaping congressional maps in the middle of active nomination periods.. Louisiana moved fastest.. After the Callais decision ruled Louisiana’s congressional map unconstitutional, Gov.. Jeff Landry issued an emergency executive order suspending the state’s May 16 congressional primary for U.S.. House candidates, despite voting having already started.. Approximately 42,000 voters had already cast absentee ballots with those races on them.

Under Landry’s order, the rest of the primary will proceed, but votes in those U.S.. House races will not count.. Legal challenges to the order remain pending. and voters and election officials are left in a difficult position: scrambling to administer a nomination process that has been partly halted while also planning for the possibility of additional elections.. Louis Perret, the Lafayette Parish clerk of court, warned that adding another closed party primary for U.S.. House elections would be expensive.. He said. “This election cost about $212. 000 to $215. 000. and so if we still go forward … and have to add the other closed party primary. that’s going to be more money. ” and estimated the statewide cost at around $8 million.

Florida is also dealing with the logistics of a new map.. Gov.. Ron DeSantis. a Republican. signed a new map on May 4. and county election supervisors say they are preparing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars sending voters updated information about their new districts and clarifying where they will be voting.

Alabama has petitioned courts to let it use a previous version of its congressional map, a move that would require new primary elections this summer. A state fiscal note attached to the legislation estimates the change could cost $4.5 million over two fiscal years.

Tennessee. which enacted a new map on Thursday. also passed a law that eliminated the requirement for counties to notify voters by mail when precincts and polling places change.. The Tennessee Coalition for Open Government said counties can still be reimbursed by the state if they choose to send the mailings. but the policy change shifts the burden toward voters to figure out where they should go.. The coalition wrote. “When polling places or precincts are changed. more effort should be made to reach affected voters. not less.”

Virginia’s disruption was even sharper.. The state Supreme Court overturned the congressional map voters passed in a referendum late last month. citing problems with the process lawmakers followed in putting it on the ballot.. The result is that the millions of dollars the state spent on the election were essentially for naught.. It also means state and local election officials will avoid the “very. very time-consuming. incredibly detailed process” of assigning voters to the new districts while preparing to administer the upcoming August primary election. according to Chris Piper. who served as Virginia’s chief election official until 2022.. He said, “In order to make those changes, it takes quite a lot of work.”

When the Court’s Callais ruling is followed by emergency map changes and partial election suspensions. the pattern is immediate: states must either reverse course under legal pressure or keep going while voters and election workers adjust. and the result is repeated mid-cycle costs and uncertainty—whether that means ballots already cast becoming unusable. new district information being mailed at additional expense. or court decisions making prior election spending effectively pointless.

Redistricting is not the only development that could reshape the 2026 election. On March 31, President Donald Trump issued a second executive order on elections that would have given the U.S. Postal Service unprecedented control over mail ballots, prompting legal challenges right away.

Democrats, voting rights groups, and states filed lawsuits challenging the order.. On May 1, in a filing in a lawsuit consolidating some of those challenges, the U.S.. Department of Justice asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuits and not issue a preliminary injunction blocking the order.. The DOJ’s argument was that the lawsuits were premature because federal agencies had not even started to implement the order yet.

The executive order called for the creation of three separate lists of potential voters, including a list of citizens over age 18 residing in each state. But it did not specify what the lists had to do with each other or how they were supposed to work.

In statements accompanying the filing, leaders at the U.S.. Postal Service and Social Security Administration said they were still figuring out what the order means for them.. The DOJ also echoed concerns raised by critics. writing that the order provided no direction on what to do with the lists it created.. “The Order does not specify any particular purpose or intended use for the State Citizenship Lists. ” the department wrote in the filing. “and (other than their creation by the Department of Homeland Security … and transmission to States) does not require anyone inside or outside of the federal government to do anything with those lists.”

The administration’s lack of implementation at least makes it less likely the order will change anything for voters or election officials in the 2026 election. even if the courts decline to block it.. Still. with ongoing litigation. the status of implementation remains something election administrators will have to watch as the calendar moves toward summer and fall.

2026 election redistricting Louisiana v. Callais Jeff Landry Ron DeSantis Trump executive order U.S. Postal Service mail ballots Department of Justice primary elections Virginia Supreme Court