Driving the news: Tennessee finished first in The Heritage Foundation’s 2026 Election Integrity Scorecard, with 87 points out of 100. Florida came in fifth, alongside Arkansas, Alabama and Louisiana in the top five.
Heritage said the scorecard measures election laws and safeguards across more than 50 best practices in 15 categories. Tennessee’s ranking reflects years of work to identify vulnerabilities, improve procedures and strengthen protections aimed at secure, accurate and transparent elections.
Florida’s result stands out for another reason. Twenty-six years ago, the state was defined by the disputed 2000 presidential election, recount fights and legal challenges. Since 2001, Florida has passed sweeping reforms that ended punch-card voting, improved recount procedures and set standards for provisional ballots.
Why it matters: The ranking puts a number on a basic political question: how much confidence can voters have in election administration? By this measure, Tennessee leads the country, and Florida shows that a broken system can be rebuilt over time.
Heritage said future rankings will place greater emphasis on enforcement, proof of citizenship requirements, election fraud investigations and compliance audits. That makes the scorecard less of a trophy and more of a pressure test for states that still lag.
The bottom line: The states at the top are treating election rules as a matter of public trust, not partisan theater. The ones at the bottom now have a public benchmark and a choice: keep the same system, or do the work to fix it.