A Year of Five Elections for the City/County of San Francisco (PDF)
Most voters across the country have the opportunity to go to the polls twice a year: for a primary and for a general election. Thanks to front-loaded presidential primaries and special contests, however, some jurisdictions are being faced with the challenge of mounting more elections this year. In San Francisco, for example, there will have been five elections between November 2007 and November 2008; a new report highlights various issues that this frequency of contests has raised and makes recommendations for improvement going forward.

Read the report here (PDF).
Featured Resources
Providing another look at the long-troubled administration of elections in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, this report finds problems with the handling of optical-scan ballots, with damaged voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs), and potential corruption of the election database.
What can voters expect when they go to the polls on November 7? A new report from electionline.org looks at issues voters may encounter in the areas of voting technology, voter identification requirements, voter registration databases, and third-party voter registration.
This Executive Summary provides the results of two studies commissioned by the Maryland State Board of Elections to investigate the technical and usability issues of various voting products with verification features.
Part of a broder initiative of the National Academies, this paper reviews issues pertinent to the development of new electronic voting systems and defines criteria for evaluating system designs.
This report explores the usability of various voting systems and examines different ways in which local election administrators can maximize the usability of their systems. Particular areas of focus include residual vote rates and voter confidence in voting systems.
Research Projects
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.
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
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.
Electionline.org provides daily news updates on election reform issues, as well as deeper analysis of selected topics, including recent reports on voter registration, recount procedures, and the progress in implementing the Help America Vote Act since 2002.
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 American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
www.aei.org
The Brookings Institution
www.brookings.edu
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