Just days after the shocking news of a second assassination attempt against Donald Trump, early voting started all over the country. Absentee mail-in ballots are already going out to registered voters.

After all the controversies about the outcome of the 2020 election, the question naturally arises: what is the state of election integrity across the United States, and how secure will the 2024 election be?

While we are generally in better shape nationally than we were last time, much depends on what state you live and vote in. That is because the security of the election process depends almost entirely on state laws and regulations, as executed by state and local election officials.

It also depends on state attorneys general and secretaries of state. Are they willing to enforce good state election laws like voter ID? Or are they willing to violate their oaths of office and enter into collusive settlements with their political allies to waive requirements they dislike when they’re sued by partisan organizations like the League of Women Voters?

Two good things came out of the 2020 election. First, many state legislators finally recognized the vulnerabilities in our registration and voting process. And second, many grassroots groups sprang into existence, formed by concerned members of the public to train a much-needed watchful eye on their election officials, state laws, and administrative procedures.

To gauge the extent of election integrity and security in every state, the Heritage Foundation spent a year analyzing all 50 states and the District of Columbia and produced an “Election Integrity Scorecard” in December 2021. It provides an assessment of the laws, regulations, and administrative practices of each state and D.C. based on 50 different criteria, all best practices that Heritage recommended after extensive consultations with trusted election experts.

These best practices cover everything from ID requirements for both in-person and mail-in voting, to the measures needed to verify and maintain the accuracy of voter registration lists, to ballot trafficking prevention and full access to the entire voting and tabulation process for poll watchers. A perfect score is 100, meaning a state does everything Heritage recommends and doesn’t do any of the things we recommend against, such as allowing same-day voter registration.

No state scored 100 when we launched the Scorecard, and that is still the case. Encouragingly, however, 27 have improved their scores since 2021 by passing effective election reforms. These have included imposing voter ID requirements, implementing better procedures for removing ineligible individuals from voter registration lists, and banning ballot trafficking and ranked choice voting.

Nebraska had the most drastic improvement, upping its score by 23 points, followed by Oklahoma (+15), Indiana (+11), North Carolina (+9), Mississippi (+8), Ohio (+8), and Tennessee (+8).

The 10 states currently at the top of the list are Tennessee (90); Alabama, Florida, and Georgia (83 each); Oklahoma (82); South Carolina (81); Arkansas and Missouri (80 each); Indiana (79); and Louisiana (78). The worst states are California (30), Nevada (28), and Hawaii (27); Minnesota backslid by 6 points. New York is almost as bad with a score of only 45.

When I brief European election observers, which I do before every election, they are always shocked and astounded that the two states with the largest voting populations require no ID to vote, which is among the reasons why they have some of the most insecure and untrustworthy elections in the country. Committing fraud there is easy, and your chances of getting caught are minimal.

Meanwhile other states like have (finally) removed ineligible aliens who illegally registered to vote — 3,251 in Alabama, 6,303 in Virginia, and 6,500 in Texas. Any of whose votes could make the difference in a close election.

That said, in almost every state where these salutary reforms have been enacted, they have been subject to litigation. Often the Biden-Harris Justice Department, and its political allies like the NAACP and the ACLU, have led the legal attacks. Those cases may still result in changes to the rules, despite the fact that Election Day is only two months away.

And there’s another big problem this time around, created by the leftist effort to get as many voters as possible to vote by mail instead of in-person. Recently, the two national organizations representing secretaries of state and state election directors wrote the U.S. Postal Service complaining about the mishandling and mismanagement of election mail, including absentee ballots. This has resulted in numerous problems, such as delays that have effectively disenfranchised voters.

This could affect a significant number of Americans. According to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, mail-in ballots accounted for 43% of the electorate in 2020, a 20 percentage point increase from 2016, and this election may be conducted even more extensively by mail. But voters should do everything they can to vote in person to ensure their vote will be counted. If they want to vote before Election Day, they should do it at an early voting site instead of using the U.S. Postal Service.

The upshot is that many states have improved the integrity of their election process, while other states have either done nothing or actually made things worse. We should all hope that the winner in November achieves his or her victory by a significant margin. Otherwise, we will likely see contentious, multi-state litigation and a public relations fight that may make the 2020 election look relatively calm by comparison.

Republished from The Heritage Foundation.