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Hope and Experience: Election Reform through the Lens of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
We launched the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project in June 2005 with the encouragement and financial support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Five years later we bring the project to a close. We take this opportunity to reflect on the state of election administration in the United States almost a decade after the extended and controversial Florida vote count in the 2000 presidential election and suggest how additional changes in technology, election law and administrative practices might further strengthen American elections in the years ahead.
Featured Resources
This article explores the ways that various states distribute authority for the purchase of new voting technology, and argues that the procurement process can be improved through cooperation and shared responsibility.
This issue brief summarizes the case in favor of modernization of voter registration procedures. It notes that more than two million voters were unable to vote in the 2008 election as a direct result of issues with registration.
This study highlights the recent success in Missouri of voter registration in public assistance agencies from August 2008 through May 2009, which is mandated in the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Missouri registered over 112,000 new voters in one year through public assistance agencies.
This article explores the constitutionality of poll watcher statutes, arguing that laws permitting their presence at voting locations are permissible under the U.S. Constitution.
This paper examines how overall voter confidence has changed since the 2000 presidential elections. The decisions at the state level regarding voting systems have been very intensely politicized, which have affected the attitude of voters towards individual technologies.
Research Projects
Directed by early voting scholar Paul Gronke and housed at Reed College, the Early Voting Information Center provides news and research on and a state-by-state overview of early voting issues.
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.
Project Vote is a national nonpartisan, nonprofit 501(c)(3) that works to empower, educate, and mobilize low-income, minority, youth, and other marginalized and under-represented voters.
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.
Election Law @ Moritz, run through Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, contains both explanation and commentary on a wealth of election reform issues from a legal perspective.
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