Trust But Verify: Toward Increasing Voter Confidence in Election Results (PDF)
Like several other states around the country, Tennessee has commenced a thorough review of its entire election process, including pollworkers, absentee balloting, and early voting. The state’s first report, however, examines only its voting machines and concludes there is a need to adopt both voter-verified paper trails and stronger audit requirements.

Read the report here (PDF).
Featured Resources
Ned Foley’s post on Election Law @ Moritz delves into the issue of uncounted ballots. This category includes absentee ballots either wrongly rejected or arriving late (usually from overseas) and provisional ballots that haven’t yet been evaluated.
The Election Administration and Voting Survey is used to report on the method by which the electorate votes on a whole, and specifically on overseas voters and the implementation of NVRA.
This report explores a range of dimensions of turnout in the 2008 election, including the relationship between early voting and election day registration and individuals going to the polls.
Although the Senate recount in Minnesota resulted in a winner, questions still remained regarding the classification of unopened, rejected absentee ballots. A district court concluded that these ballots are public data and that the plaintiffs, state television news organizations, may view them.
Research Projects
FairVote develops and promotes practical strategies to improve elections at the local, state and national levels.
As part of its broader research focus on elections, campaign ethics, campaign finance, and the legislative process, the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland is engaged in research projects on voting technology and ballot design specifically.
The mission of the VoTeR center is to advise state agencies in the use of voting technologies and to investigate voting solutions and voting equipment to develop and recommend safe use procedures for their usage in elections.
Part of the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, the Election Administration Research Center (EARC) aims to improve the administration of elections.
This project aims to evaluate the current state of reliability and uniformity of U.S. voting systems; to establish uniform attributes and quantitative guidelines for performance and reliability of voting systems; and to propose specific uniform guidelines and requirements for reliable voting systems
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
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The Brookings Institution
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