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David J. Motz (Washington State Elections Division), The Pew Center on the States
A mailing campaign undertaken by the Washington Secretary of State focused on registering eighteen year-olds around the state to vote early. This report discusses the results of that campaign.
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National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The first of its kind from a federal agency, this election administration survey gathers data on voter registration, absentee and provisional ballots, type of voting equipment used, and more. Data is available by state.
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electionline.org
Electionline.org's analysis of the 2006 elections reveals some problems, but no proverbial perfect storm of equipment malfunctions, close races, and contested results. The report also highlights a number of things that went right on November 7, and offers some suggestions for the future.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report summarizes data collected nationwide on a range of topics, including overall voter turnout; provisional balloting; voting machines; and poll workers and polling places.
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Colorado Department of State, Elections Division
This report examines a number of problems that occured in Montrose County, CO during the 2006 general election; these issues include voting machine programming errors and problems with electronic pollbooks.
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Using results from a survey of local officials, this report examines how jurisdictions administer elections for absentee voters overseas., Overseas Vote Foundation
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electionline.org
This resource provides an overview of various pieces of legislation regarding election day registration that are pending at the state level.
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electionline.org
This resource provides an overview of various pieces of legislation regarding voting by mail that are pending at the state level.
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electionline.org
This resource provides an overview of various pieces of legislation regarding voter identification that are pending at the state level.
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Democracy Corps and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research
The proportion of citizens who voted early grew substantially in 2008, and this new analysis examines the demographics of who votes early, and why they do so.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
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.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report provides the results from an evaluation of five projects to improve election data collection in 2008. Overall, the grantees increased their level of core data collection, improving to 80 percent of the core data from less than half in 2006.
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National Association of Secretaries of State
Laws governing post-election procedures vary from state-to-state, but these comprehensive databases from the National Association of Secretaries of State can aid voters and election officials alike in determining what rules apply in their jurisdiction.
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Overseas Vote Foundation
For many overseas voters, the process of casting a ballot is anything but smooth. This report examines the extent of problems with registration and ballot transmission and makes a series of recommendations to improve the system.
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electionline.org
This report examines a range of issues and trends that arose during the 2008 primary season, with a particular emphasis on the challenges created by record levels of voter turnout.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The EAC recently released the results of the 2008 UOCAVA survey, which aggregated information on how many UOCAVA ballots were sent, received, and counted. It is the primary tool by which Congress, federal agencies and the public can monitor the compliance with UOCAVA.
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Voter Registrars Association of Virginia and Michael McDonald and Matthew Thornburg (George Mason University)
This study uses surveys of general registrars and electoral board members to find significant variation in election administration practices across jurisdictions in the commonwealth.
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Project Vote
As election officials continue to prepare for the November midterm elections, Project Vote has assembled comprehensive recommendations to improve election administration in 11 states.
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John C. Fortier, American Enterprise Institute
Election Day may have been November 7, but countless citizens across the country cast their ballots in advance.
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Hans A. von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation
This analysis from the Heritage Foundation examines allegations related to a 1994 election in Alabama, arguing that absentee balloting is particularly prone to fraud.
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Orange County Grand Jury, Orange County, California
Because an increasing number of voters in Orange County are requesting absentee ballots, the Orange County Grand Jury issued this report, which examines the procedures used to handle count such ballots.
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Division of Public Interest Advocacy, New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate
This report catalogues progress that has been made in New Jersey on compliance with legal requirements for voting accessibility, but also highlights various continued issues in terms of inaccessible polling places.
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Electronic Frontier Foundation
Submitted as part of an initiative at the National Research Council of the National Academies, this paper argues that voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) can not be made accessible for individuals with disabilities.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
This report examines the progress of the Department of Defense and the Election Assistance Commission in developing a secure and usable system by which citizens living overseas and serving in the military can vote in federal elections.
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Ted Selker (Massachusetts Institute of Technoloy) and Sharon Cohen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Selker and Cohen find that voters detect many more errors using the VVAATT system than they do with the VVPAT system.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
The GAO analyzes how select states maintain their voter registration lists and determines which additional data could facilitate the process.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
On Wednesday, February 8, 2006, Senator Barack Obama delivered a keynote address to inaugurate the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project. Senator Obama's address was followed by a discussion of the past and future of election reform among experts in election law, technology, and administration.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
On Friday, September 22, 2006, the Election Reform Project hosted a conference entitled "The 2006 Elections--Are We Ready?" After a keynote address by Congressman Rush Holt (D-N.J.), panelists discussed the progress that has been made since the election debacle of 2000 and the hurdles that remain.
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AEI-Brookings Project on Redistricting
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Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
This report provides a brief overview of the proposals advanced for election reform as part of an initiative by the Brennan Center and the Lawyers' Committee. Areas for reform include voter registration, electronic voting systems, and election administration.
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Alec Ewald (Union College), Columbia Human Rights Law Review
Ewald’s essay seeks to refute the argument that convicts should be disenfranchised because they might otherwise use their votes to weaken criminal justice laws.
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Wendy R. Weiser and Jonah Goldman, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
Part of a new initiative launched by the Brennan Center and the Lawyers' Committee, this report highlights reform proposals on a range of topics, including voter registration, electronic voting systems, election administration, and disenfranchisement issues.
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Randolph C. Hite, U.S. Government Accountability Office
This report focuses on the various challenges faced by state and local governments regarding electronic voting machines, and argues that more cooperation across jurisdictions is needed to address these problems.
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Randolph C. Hite (U.S. Government Accountability Office), Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives, U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
In this testimony, the director of the GAO's Information Technology Architecture and Systems office outlines the need for intergovernmental cooperation in order to address the wide range of problems with electronic voting systems.
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Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
This commentary examines a new proposal by Ohio's Secretary of State for a pilot program of voting by mail in the state.
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Election Data Services
On Election Day, one-third of the nation's voters will use new voting machines. A new report from Election Data Services describes the changes, highlights geographic patterns, and discusses what lessons past changes may have for this election.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report examines a variety of alternative voting methods used in particular states around the country, including early voting, Election Day as a holiday, voting-by-mail, vote centers, and weekend voting, and makes recommendations about the feasibility of their widespread adoption.
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Nonprofit Voter Engagement Network
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.
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The AAPD’s Disability Vote Project supports full polling place and voting machine access for the disabled, among other things.
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The American Center for Voting Rights Legislative Fund was established to educate the public about the importance of the electoral process, to increase civic engagement in elections, and to support election reform.
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The ACLU presents its positions on felon disenfranchisement, absentee voting, and the maintenance of voter registration lists, among other things.
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The Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) extended civil rights to disabled citizens. The ADA has been cited to defend the rights of the disabled in the face of numerous voting technology reforms.
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Division of Elections, Florida Department of State
Florida’s Division of Elections attributes the continuing drop in the Florida over- and undervote rate to a statewide voter education campaign and voters' facility with new voting machine technologies.
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Michael McDonald, George Mason University
While the concerns raised by election reform experts about the efficacy of Florida's proposal to redo its presidential primary by mail were many, this analysis highlights specific issues related to the accuracy of the addresses that would have to be used under such a proposal.
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The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Michael McDonald (George Mason University, The Brookings Institution)
The Brennan Center and McDonald argue that a report of alleged voter fraud submitted to the New Jersey Attorney General in September 2005 suffers from several serious methodological flaws.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The EAC's annual report on 2008 spending provides detailed information regarding states’ usage of HAVA funds, as well as data on competitive grants distributed by the EAC. Of the $2.96 billion they received from the EAC, states have spent 76% and are expected to use remaining funds in 2010.
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Karen Handel, Georgia Secretary of State
Under the Voting Rights Act, any state-level change to voter registration rules must be approved by the U.S. Department of Justice. Georgia’s proposed VoteSafe program, designed to keep private the addresses of victims of domestic violence, was approved by the Department of Justice.
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InfoSENTRY Services and the Arkansas Secretary of State
Drawing on site visits, interviews with election officials, survey of county officials, and review of election documents, this report finds significant problems in the administration of the May 2006 primary election in Arkansas.
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Richard Celeste, Dick Thornburgh, and Herbert Lin, editors, Committee on a Framework for Understanding Electronic Voting, National Research Council of the National Academies
This report frames the current debate over electronic voting by identifying the questions most in need of answering.
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Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The EAC's organizational issues have received significant attention in both the election reform community and in the broader media, and this report summarizes a set of recommendations on how to improve the way the agency functions.
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electionline.org
Electionline.org’s survey of state election directors shows that most states use 'top down' rather than 'bottom up' lists; that states differ over producing the lists 'in house' or outsourcing the work; and that most states conduct registration purges in localities instead of at the state level.
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Office of the Texas State Auditor
This report contains the results of an extensive audit of Texas's statewide registration database and makes recommendations on how to improve its quality.
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Edward B. Foley, Election Law @ Moritz
This essay lays out an argument for the use of "Election Contest Law Audits" as a mechanism for easing the resolution of disputes over the outcome of elections.
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Sharon B. Cohen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In this paper, Cohen uses a field experiment to compare the effectiveness of paper versus audio vote verification trails and finds that participants were approximately ten times as likely to notice an error in an audio trail as in a paper trail.
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Jonathan A. Goler (MIT), Edwin J. Selker (MIT), and Lorin F. Wilde (MIT), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
The authors analyze differences in voting performance between reading disabled and non-reading disabled voters using full-faced and page-by-page systems in order to develop new interfaces that reduce the errors of disabled and non-disabled voters alike.
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Laura Seago, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
A case study on the registration process employed by Selective Service officials provides insight into how government agencies can collaborate to create accurate voter registration files.
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electionline.org
Despite moving to DRE systems only relatively recently, many states are returning to paper-based systems or are considering doing so. This report looks at six states that have made such a move and examines whether more states are likely to follow.
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Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform, The Century Foundation
This report provides practical recommendations in the areas of voter registration and identification, provisional voting, and voting technology certification to help states meet HAVA deadlines.
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Laurin Frisina (University of Rochester), Michael C. Harron (Dartmouth), James Honaker (UCLA), and Jeffrey B. Lewis (UCLA)
This paper provides an initial analysis of the issue of undervotes during the 2006 election in Florida's 13th Congressional District.
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Paul Gronke (Reed College), The Early Voting Information Center at Reed College
This memorandum to the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform advises best practices for a vote-by-mail system based on the experience of Oregon, the only state with an all vote-by-mail system.
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Marc Mauer and Tushar Kansal, The Sentencing Project
Mauer and Kansal present the findings of the first national survey of the re-enfranchisement process in 14 states with permanent disenfranchisement laws. They recommend, among other things, that the states repeal the laws and begin recording re-enfranchisement data regularly.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the Federal Voting Assistance Program, Department of Defense
The EAC advises states on when to mail absentee ballots and how to distribute and receive them, as well as recommends states to inform voters by maintaining up-to-date websites and publish voter guides, among other things.
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Thomas M. O'Neill (Eagleton) and Timothy Vercellotti (Eagleton), Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University and Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University
In this presentation, the authors' analysis suggets that stricter voter identification requirements can be associated with lower turnout and makes recommendations for action by the EAC on issues related to voter ID.
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Lawrence Norden and Margaret Chen (Brennan Center), David Kimball (U. of Missouri-St. Louis), and Whitney Quesenbery (Usability Professionals' Assoc.), Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report examines a range of common ballot design problems, reviews state laws that stand as obstacles to good ballot design, and makes policy recommendations for the future.
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Paul S. Herrnson, Center for American Politics and Citizenship, University of Maryland
Herrnson examines the effect of different types of electronic voting machines on voter satisfaction, voters’ needs for assistance, and the accuracy of votes cast.
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Richard L. Hasen (Loyola Law School), Washington and Lee Law Review
Hasen assesses the current state of election administration in the United States and suggests reforms in voter registration, election administration, and the role of the courts in election jurisprudence
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Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
As dictated by state law, jurisdictions nationwide vary greatly in the structure of their election governing bodies. This analysis argues, that for many functions, these bodies should be bipartisan.
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David C. King, Harvard University
This study, following up on massive ballot shortage problems in Boston during the November 2006 elections, outlines 14 steps for improving the administration of elections in that city.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Erik K. Antonsson (Caltech), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
In this article, the authors give a brief summary of recent problems with voting technology and the difficulties of studying it. They also make recommendations about how to build "a science of elctions."
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The Pew Center on the States
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.
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David Beirne, Election Technology Council
This report presents an industry perspective on a range of issues related to voting systems, and makes recommendations for incorporating industry representatives into the regulatory process.
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Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, Center for Democracy and Election Management (American University)
The final report of the Commission, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, urges reforms in voter identification and registration, provisional balloting, voter access, election administration, and more.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Thad Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
In this report, R. Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall explore how thorough and standardized chain of custody procedures can help avert election fraud and make recommendations regarding best practices for their implementation.
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Teresa James, Project Vote
In recent months, "voter caging" has become an important part of the voting integrity debate, and this report from Project Vote examines the history of the practice.
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Matt Bishop (University of California, Davis), Office of the California Secretary of State
This report, part of California's top-to-bottom review of its voting systems, highlights various potential vulnerabilities that exist with the machines used in the state.
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Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
Examining every step of the election system experienced by voters, this report looks at a range of issues in California, discusses obstacles to reform, and makes recommendations for going forward.
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Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This report summarizes the sessions of the VTP's October 2006 conference on voter authentication and registration issues, as well outlining a set of recommendations to the EAC that grew out of the event.
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National Association of Secretaries of State
This website, produced by the National Association of Secretaries of State, provides information for voters on determining if they are registered, the location of their polling place, and identification requirements for voting, as well other information related to participating in elections.
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Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith, and S. Christian Wheeler, Stanford Graduate School of Business
Using data from the 2000 election in Arizona and from a field experiment, a new study by researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business finds that the type of polling place can have an effect on voting decisions.
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National Network on Election Reform
The National Network on Election Reform presents what it believes are the shortcomings of both the process and findings of the Carter-Baker Commission
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Jessica Ring Amunson and Sam Hirsch (Jenner and Block, William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
Most scholarship on the 2006 race in Florida's 13th Congressional District has focused on the 18,000 undervotes that may have affected the election's outcome. This article, however, focuses on the contest procedures used in the dispute and makes recommendations for reform.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Under the Help America Vote Act, first-time voters are required to show identification when they go to the polls. This new study examines how administrators in six states have chosen to comply with that regulation and recommends best practices for use by other jurisdictions.
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electionline.org
This report explores the rules, practices, and impact of post-election audits of voting machines, with a special emphasis on California, Minnesota, Nevada, Arizona, and Connecticut.
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electionline.org
This report from electionline.org examines and assesses the efforts of various groups of poll watchers, from researchers to partisans.
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electionline.org
This report examines partnerships to improve election administration in Georgia, Ohio, Connecticut, Idaho, and Maryland, and explores prospects for future cooperation in other areas of the country.
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The National Research Commission on Elections and Voting, Social Science Research Council
The final report of the Commission identifies specific questions in ten election reform areas especially in need of further scientific research
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Fred Hessler and Matt Smith, Fujitsu Consulting
This report examines the problems with voting technology and election administration during the November 2006 elections in Denver, Colorado.
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Board of Elections in the City of New York
One of the last municipalities in the last state to become compliant with the mandates of HAVA, New York City selected an electronic voting system to replace its exist lever system. Choosing Election Systems and Software, the Board of Elections made the January 14 deadline imposed by the state.
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Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
This analysis explores the possibility of using a coin flip or a holding a new election in situations like that in Minnesota following the 2008 election, and concludes that, despite their other drawbacks, traditional election contests remain the best way to resolve very close races.
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Collaborative Audit Committee, Cuyahoga County, Ohio and the Center for Election Integrity
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.
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Election Technology Council
This report summarizes the recommendations of a group of voting technology vendors on proposed amendments to HAVA, particularly as related to paper trails, audits, and disclosure of source code.
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Center for Democracy & Election Management, American University
The website of the Commission, co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker, III, contains the full text of the final report, hearing testimony, and related news and analysis
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Jonathan A. Goler (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Edwin J. Selker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Goler and Selker investigate the effect of different electronic voting systems on the performance of reading disabled voters and find that a design incorporating features of both touch screen and full-faced LED Direct Record Electronic (DRE) systems is ideal
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L. Paige Whitaker, Congressional Research Service
This report summarizes concisely the major points made and lines of reasoning offered by the Supreme Court in its various decisions upholding Indiana's voter identification law.
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Dēmos
Demos’s preliminary analysis of 1,000 provisional ballot complaints and questions registered in the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) during the 2004 election reveals poll workers' widespread misunderstanding of state or local procedures governing the ballots
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Thad Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
In this paper, to be published in the Policy Studies Journal, Alvarez and Hall examine the current model of election administration and explore alternatives that could give administrators more control over the process.
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Pamela S. Karlan, Stanford Law School
Karlan examines the causes and consequences of the apparent turn of public opinion against felon disenfranchisement laws and its implications for future litigation
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IFES and UNDP
The survey aims to help election management agencies throughout the world plan their budgets by identifying cost-management practices and measures of cross-country comparisons.
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Henry E. Brady and John R. McNulty, University of California, Berkeley
Brady and McNulty take advantage of a consolidation of polling places that took place in Los Angeles in 2003 to measure the degree to which a change of polling place decreased turnout.
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Office of the California State Auditor
In this report, state auditors examine the use of poll worker training guidelines issued by the California Secretary of State's office, and makes recommendations for improvement in training programs employed at the county level.
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United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
In this opinion, the 7th Circuit upheld Indiana's law requiring voters to present identification at the polling place by a 2-1 majority, arguing that it does not represent an excessive burden.
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Alec Ewald (Union College), The Sentencing Project
Ewald documents the implementation of felony disenfranchisement law and finds, among other things, broad variation and misunderstanding in interpretation and enforcement and contradictory policies within states.
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Ryan S. King, The Sentencing Project
This report provides a state-by-state analysis of laws governing voting by current and former felons with a focus on changes that have been made in the past ten years.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) & Jonathan Nagler (NYU), Demos
Alvarez and Nagler critique an analysis of data on voter registration at public assistance agencies. This research finds that results attributing the decline of voter registration to PRWORA are overstated.
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Christopher Uggen (University of Minnesota) and Jeff Manza (Northwestern University), American Sociological Review
Uggen and Manza examine the political consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the U.S. with data from legal sources, election studies, and inmate surveys and find that disenfranchisement laws have played decisive roles in several recent federal elections
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Edward B. Foley, Election Law @ Moritz
This piece looks at a recent proposal for a rating system for states' election administration systems; Foley points out the strengths in such an idea and also makes suggestions for further consideration.
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Walter R. Mebane, Jr. (Cornell University)
As states increasingly turn to electronic voting equipment over paper ballots, they require new methods to detect and deter fraud. Walter R. Mebane, Jr. of Cornell University explores novel methods of how to identify electronic fraud and maintain confidence in our voter systems.
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Michael Hanmer, University of Maryland, College Park/i>
In this new book, Michael Hanmer argues that to understand how these institutional arrangements affect outcomes, it is necessary to consider the interactions between social and political context and these laws.
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Michael J. Pitts & Matthew D. Neumann, Indiana University of Law- Indianapolis
This research examines the effect of Indiana’s photo identification requirement on counting provisional ballots in the 2008 general elections.
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United States Government Accountability Office
This report examines the changes made in the Federal Voting Assistance Program between the 2000 and 2004 elections. It also highlights the many challenges related to military absentee voting that remain, particularly as the program incorporates new technology.
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Daniel K.N. Johnson and Kristina M. Lybecker, Colorado College
States have changed their voting technologies substantially over the past six years in response to the Help America Vote Act, and this study examines whether counties with certain socioeconomic characteristics were more likely to make such changes quickly.
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Bernie Buescher, Colorado Secretary of State
As part of a project conducted on behalf of the Colorado Secretary of State, the Elections Division has recently made available for comments a draft voter registration form. It will be accepting comments until October 30, 2009.
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Q2 Data and Research LLC
This report, commissioned by the EAC, examines the electronic transmission practices implemented by four states--Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, and Montana--and addresses the various challenges such procedures present.
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Election Science Institute
This report outlines the results of a study carried out by a multi-disciplinary team of experts during the Cuyahoga County Primary Election of May 2006 that examined both new electronic voting technology and the administrative procedures associated with it.
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John Pawasarat, Employment and Training Institute, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
This study provides a demographic analysis of those citizens in Wisconsin lacking the types of photo identification that would be necessary in the face of new requirements for voting. It concludes that elderly persons and minorities would be among those seriously affected by a new policy.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Concluding that an initial study did not yield sufficient conclusions on the issue of voter identification, the EAC has called for additional, more comprehensive research on the subject.
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David Kimball (University of Missouri-St. Louis) and Martha Kropf (University of Missouri-Kansas City)
Kimball and Kropf examine the impact of early and absentee voting on unrecorded votes in the United States and find little average difference between unrecorded votes cast in a precinct polling station and those cast via early or absentee ballots.
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Paul Herrson (University of Maryland), et. al.
This paper summarizes a number of different studies on the usability of electronic voting systems, showing that, by and large, such systems work well.
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Daniel P. Tokaji (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University), George Washington Law Review
Tokaji examines problems in the 2004 election, including voting equipment, voter registration, and provisional balloting, and recommends avoiding future difficulties by upgrading technology, deciding litigation prior to the election, and establishing clear administrative rules, among other things
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Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum, and Peter A. Miller, Early Voting Information Center at Reed College
This paper re-examines the question of whether early voting increases voter turnout, concluding that such an effect is limited.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Delia Bailey (Washington University in St. Louis), and Jonathan Katz (Caltech), Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project
In this paper, the authors document the effect of voter identification requirements in the 2000-2006 elections, examining both aggregate and individual-level data.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Undertaken in collaboration with Design for Democracy, this report from the EAC seeks to identify best practices in the areas of ballot design, polling place signage, and other voter information materials.
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Robert Stein (Rice University) and Greg Vonnahme (University of Alabama)
This study explores voters’ opinions of vote centers, finding that voters rate them better than traditional polling places and that poll workers are especially important under this alternative model.
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National Task Force on Election Reform, The Election Center
Election officials investigate controversial administration issues in the 2004 election and suggest reforms in voter registration, early, absentee, and provisional balloting, voting technology, and election administration
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Center for Democracy and Election Management
This supplemental report provides in-depth information on each state's election system.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report, undertaken by the EAC in partnership with two consultants, reviews the existing literature on "election crimes," develops a working definition of that term, and lays out suggestions for further research on the issue.
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Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
This piece discusses whether states are prepared for a variety of emergencies that could affect their successful administration of elections, and recommends a set of questions for consideration when developing a plan to deal with such situations.
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Lorraine Minnite (Barnard College), Dēmos
This analysis explores Election Day Registration (EDR) as a potential threat to voting integrity, concluding that states with EDR have not experienced increased amounts of voter fraud.
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Dēmos
Election Day Registration is an increasingly popular way to ease the registration process, and this report outlines a set of best practices for implementing such a policy.
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Robert M. Stein (Rice University) and Greg Vonnahme (Rice University)
Stein and Vonnahme study the use of county-wide Election Day Vote Centers in Larimer County, Colorado, where they have been in use since 2003. They conclude that the centers have increased voter turnout within the county.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Jonathan Nagler (New York University), Dēmos
This report examines the potential effects of election day registration in Iowa, concluding that overall turnout could increase by nearly five percent.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Jonathan Nagler (New York University), Dēmos
This analysis explores the potential turnout-boosting effects of Election Day Registration (EDR) in Massachusetts.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Jonathan Nagler (NYU), Dēmos
The latest in a series of analyses, this paper examines the potential effects on turnout of implementing Election Day Registration in Nebraska.
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Office of the Ohio Secretary of State
This report takes a comprehensive look at Ohio's election system, report highlighting both successes and failures and making a range of recommendations.
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Office of the Ohio Secretary of State
The Ohio Secretary of State conducted this legislative analysis of House Bill 260, the election enhancements bill introduced by State Representatives Dan Stewart and Tracy Heard.
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A computerized system for recording and analyzing data about voting problems before, during, and after elections
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Hasen’s blog covers issues in election reform, as well as campaign finance, redistricting, and the Supreme Court nomination process
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Hawaii Office of Elections
In response to a request by the Election Commission, the Hawaii Office of Elections produced this report outlining the plan for the 2010 elections. A focus of this report is the effect of the reduced budget for the office on staffing and the number of precincts which will be open for the elections.
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electionline.org
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.
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electionline.org
Prior to November's historic election, electionline.org examined a broad range of issues that voters potentially confronted when going to the polls.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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electionline.org
Electionline.org surveys the state of election reform in 2006 and compares it to that of 2000. The report provides state-by-state data in the areas of voting systems, voter ID requirements, provisional voting, and more.
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The nonpartisan Institute seeks to create auditable and transparent election systems by uniting county election officials and citizens with expert researchers and engineers
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Charles Stewart, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This paper explores whether voters who used specific types of machines in the 2008 election encountered more problems than other voters, and whether voter confidence varied by the type of system used.
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Alvarez and Hall provide research and analysis on election reform, voting technology, and election administration
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The project aims to objectively investigate the accuracy of American elections by creating and analyzing a nationwide database of precinct-level election data
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electionline.org
This report examines Election Day Registration (EDR), which is often offered as a way to increase voter turnout. Contrasting Montana's EDR program (which was new in 2006) with Minnesota's (which has been in place for more than 30 years), the authors examine potential promises and pitfalls of EDR.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
This report summarizes the variety of voting systems used in the states, territories, and the District of Columbia, how these systems are certified, the other procedures used to ensure their security and accuracy, and how problems with the systems are addressed.
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Electoral Commission of the United Kingdom
This report details a range of election administration challenges faced in the United Kingdom, and makes recommendations for reform.
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Jan Leighley (University of Arizona) & Jonathan Nagler (NYU- Wilf Family Department of Politics)
This paper examines the impact of electoral laws on turnout in elections. The authors find that by aggregating turnout among different demographic groups, they can estimate the impact of electoral reforms over time.
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Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
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.
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Duncan Buell and Carter Bays (University of South Carolina), Committee on a Framework for Understanding Electronic Voting, National Research Council of the National Academies
In this paper, the authors explore problems with the particular electronic voting system being adopted by South Carolina and urge more extensive testing and review.
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David Dill and Will Doherty, Verified Voting
This report details arguments about the shortcomings of electronic voting machines, focusing on anecdotal information from the 2004 election.
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Barbara Simons, Verified Voting
Simons details flaws and issues that have arisen with Diebold and ES&S voting machines and recommends alternative designs and more extensive certification procedures to guard against malicious code and other threats.
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National Association of Secretaries of State
This report examines preparations states are taking to accomodate an expected surge in voter turnout for the 2008 presidential election.
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Project Vote
Based upon election data collected since the passage of HAVA, this Project Vote memo recommends adopting a number of policies in order to increase the number of provisional ballots counted in future elections.
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Tojaki's blog focuses on issues of election reform, the Voting Rights Act, and the Help America Vote Act.
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Stephen T. Mockabee, J. Quin Monson & Kelly D. Patterson, Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy, Brigham Young University
A pilot study examined the effectiveness of combining in-person training with on-line educational tools. Those who participated in on-line training performed better, were more confident in their work, and knew the specifics of their job better than those who had not participated in on-line training.
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Gracia Hillman (U.S. Election Assistance Commission), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
This article, authored by a member of the federal Election Assistance Commission, provides an overview of the EAC's involvement with voting systems, including its Voluntary Voting System Guidelines and its testing and certification programs.
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VoteID 2009
This is a collection of papers presented at the VoteID 2009 Conference, the Second International Conference on E-voting and Identity, held in Luxembourg from September 7-8, 2009. The papers cover a wide range of issues, including voting technology in the United States and around the world.
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VotersUnite.org, VoteTrustUSA, Voter Action, and Pollworkers for Democracy
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Mary K. Garber, Florida Fair Elections Center
This report finds that the increase in the no-valid-vote rate in the 2008 presidential race in Florida was due to excessive overvoting statewide, not to the change in voting technologies.
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John Fortier (AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project), Subcommittee on Elections, U.S. House Committee on House Administration
In this testimony, John Fortier summarizes the history of absentee voting and voting by mail, and offers a series of cautions about embracing its expansion.
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Jennifer S. Rosenberg & Margaret Chen, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report studies voter registration systems in sixteen countries and in four provinces in Canada, assessing different technologies. From these results the authors propose strategies taken from these countries' experiences that can be applied to voter registration in the United States.
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Lisa J. Danetz and Scott Novakowski, Dēmos
This report examines North Carolina's successful efforts at increasing compliance with the National Voter Registration Act's mandate that states provide opportunities for voter registration in state public assistance offices.
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Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota
This report explores how Minnesota's recount processes were employed in Franken/Coleman election contest, arguing that while the system functioned quite well, reforms can be made.
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Walter R. Mebane, Jr. (Cornell University) and David L. Dill (Stanford University)
After an in-depth statistical analysis of data from Sarasota County, Mebane and Dill lay out a number of patterns occuring among the over 18,000 undervotes, but conclude that a complete explanation based on voter, machine, or ballot characteristics cannot be reached without further investigation.
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Fairvote presents research and advocacy in a variety of election reform issues
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United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued its decision regarding the state of Washington’s law prohibiting the right to vote for felons. The court’s decision, that the law violated civil rights protections, conflicts with three other federal appeals court decisions.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
This study from the GAO examines security problems currently confronting electronic voting systems, how federal and nonfederal organizations have responded, and what further action ought to be taken
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
This report looks at the EAC's program to accredit laboratories that certify voting equipment for use in federal elections, finding some effective procedures while also identifying room for improvement.
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Lawrence Norden with Jessie Allen, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report provides an overview of reform proposals growing out of a summit convened by Ohio's Secretary of State to examine comprehensively the state's entire election system.
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Jessica Leval (AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project), Roll Call
In this piece, the Election Reform Project's Jessica Leval argues that further reforms are needed to make voting for soldiers serving overseas easier.
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Election Law Blog
In this series of guest posts on Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog, various election reform experts look back at the 2008 election and make recommendations for future reform.
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Besty Sinclair (University of Chicago), Thad Hall (University of Utah), and R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This report examines issues of voter participation following Hurricane Katrina and its unique challenges for election administrators.
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Conny McCormack
Written by the former Los Angeles County clerk, this report summarizes the challenges that Florida is facing this fall as local jurisdictions are complying with a new state law requiring the use of optical scan ballots for early voting.
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Foley's blog explores a wide range of election reform issues from a legal perspective.
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Michael C. Harron (Dartmouth College) and Jeffrey B. Lewis (University of California, Los Angeles)
Using evidence from Pasco County, the authors find that electronic voting systems diminish voter error rates, but also increase the number of affirmative votes in judicial retention races and therefore may affect voters' incentives in low information races.
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Steven Huefner, Daniel Tokaji, and Edward Foley with Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
This report takes an exhaustive look at the complete election administration systems of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, highlighting both successes and failures, and making suggestions for reform.
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Nabajyoti Barkakati (U.S. Government Accountability Office), Task Force on Florida-13, U.S. House Committee on House Administration
Part of the GAO's continued investigation into the large number of undervotes in the 13th District of Florida in 2006, this report summarizes the results of testing already completed and discusses whether future testing should be pursued.
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Daniel P. Tokaji, Yale Law & Policy Review
Although states are continuing to pass laws and reach decisions to comply with the mandates of HAVA and related laws, Daniel Tokaji argues that the United States still lacks a well-functioning independent electoral management body.
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Common Cause
Voting by mail is being considered by increasing numbers of states, and this report summarizes its advantages and downfalls and lays out a set of potential best practices.
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The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was enacted following the 2000 presidential election. Providing for the acquisition of better voting technology and the creation of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), the passage of HAVA represented a landmark event in electoral reform.
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Robert Abrams and Arthur J. Fried, The Century Foundation
After presenting an overview of HAVA requirements and how these changes will affect elections in New York. the authors provide information regarding New York's current level of compliance (as of 2003) with HAVA and useful recommendations on how to implement changes.
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electionline.org
In this report, researchers at electionline.org explore a variety of issues related to America's poll workers, including state requirements for training, compensation, and absenteeism penalties.
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Theodore Allen, Mikhail Bernshteyn, and Chris Rockwell, Franklin County, Ohio Board of Elections
In an attempt to avoid the up-to-five hour long lines that plagued some Ohio jurisdictions in 2004, the Franklin County Board of Elections has analyzed the underlying issues and made recommendations to improve the process for this November.
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Dēmos
Demos finds that four of the five states with the highest turnout of the voting-eligible population in the 2004 presidential election all employ Election Day Registration (EDR)
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electionline.org
This explores how voters in jurisdictions around the country obtain and complete voter registration forms and how much time before the election they have to do so. It also emphasizes the ways in which voter registration procedures have failed to keep pace with technology.
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John Fortier, Thomas Mann, & Norman Ornstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
We reflect on the state of election administration in the United States almost a decade after 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.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Morgan Llewellyn (Caltech), and Thad Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This paper examines public perceptions of the voter registration process and argues that efforts to reform the voter registration process should be carefully targeted to certain segments of the population who have the most difficulty with the existing system.
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Steven Carbo and Joyce Kirschner, Dēmos
Highlighting three key factors, this report examines why a bill implementing same-day registration was successful in North Carolina.
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Thad Hall (Utah), J. Quin Monson (BYU), and Kelly Patterson (BYU), Institute of Public and International Affairs, University of Utah
Poll workers are an integral part of ensuring that Election Day runs smoothly, and this study finds that they can also play a major role in shaping voters' confidence in the electoral process.
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Elizabeth A. Bennion (Indiana University-South Bend) & David W. Nickerson (University of Notre Dame)
Studies on college campuses demonstrate that face-to-face interactions, rather than direct mail or e-mail contact prove to be the more effective method of registration for voters, especially those who are most likely not to vote.
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Peter P. Swire and Cassandra Q. Butts, Center for American Progress
Taking a broader look at the issue of voter ID, this report examines the increasing importance of identification in American society and lays out a set of what its authors term "progressive principles for identification systems."
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The EAC presents its biennial report to the U.S. Congress on the influence of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) on the administration of federal elections from 2002 to 2004
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The Election Assistance Commission recently published its eighth report on implementation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which focused on the administration of the November 2006 and November 2008 elections.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Required biennially by law, this report examines the impact of the "Motor Voter" law in the federal elections of 2005 and 2006 and lays out recommendations for continued improvement in the law's implementation.
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Michael J. Hamner (Georgetown University) and Michael W. Traugott (University of Michigan), American Politics Research
In this article, the authors analyze the effects of voting by mail beyond voter turnout, including its impact on roll-off and straight-ticket voting.
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Michael W. Traugott (University of Michigan) et. al.
The authors find that the adoption of new voting technology, especially the elimination of punch cards and lever machines, in Florida between the 2000 and 2004 elections helped reduce the residual vote rate
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Noel H. Runyan, Voter Action and Dēmos
This report examines a number of accessibility issues presented by current electronic voting systems and makes recommendations for reform.
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Office of the Kentucky Attorney General
This report, part of Kentucky's recent review of its certification of voting systems, highlights a number of changes that could be made to improve the process.
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Committee on State Voter Registration Databases, National Research Council
Maintaining accurate registered voter rolls requires coordination and energy both to add first-time registrants to the database and maintain accurate registration information for existing voters. This report provides recommendations to improve the accuracy of voter registration databases.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Alvarez and Hall examine difficulties one encounters when using the EAC's Election Day Survey data and recommend strategies for improved data collection in future surveys.
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Sharon J. Laskowski et. al., National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce
This NIST report presents recommendations to improve voting system usability and accessibility based on NIST's review of research, guidelines, standards, and evaluation methodologies.
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Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation
This Century Foundation study explores various proposals to increase voter turnout, including Election Day registration, making Election Day a national holiday, and provisional ballot reform.
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James D. Pettler , Governing Insights Perspective
This report lays out ways for states to effectively and correctly choose appropriate new voting technology and argues for more transparency in the status of various forms of election technology.
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Roy G. Saltman, National Institute of Standards and Technology
In a new report written for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Roy Saltman argues for the importance of auditing direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines and explores several alternatives for doing so.
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Indiana Election Division
The Indiana Election Division published its Outreach Library for the 2010 elections. Among the resources available for both voters and election officials are guides for military and overseas voters, voter identification requirement outlines, and a handbook for election officials.
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Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
On March 12, 2008, the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration held a hearing to explore issues related to in-person voter fraud.
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Alexander Trechsel (European University Institute), R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), and Thad Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
While the U.S. struggles with using electronic voting systems in its polling places, other countries have been exploring the prospect of internet voting. This study explores internet voting in Estonia, where such a system has been in place for two national elections.
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Candice Hoke, Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
The security risks inherent in internet-based voting today pose significant barriers to the adoption of this method in nationwide elections. The author suggests changes to both internet security and the allocation of election tasks to improve the applicability of the internet in elections.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Jeff Jonas (IBM), William E. Winkler (Census Bureau) & Rebecca Wright (Rutgers), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Exploring the ways in which technology can be better utilized to improve the accuracy of voter registration databases can provide valuable guidance. Researchers undertook a pilot project to determine the feasibility of using database matching to identify voters in Oregon and Washington.
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Stephen Ansolabehere (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and David M. Konisky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Political Analysis
Ansolabehere and Konisky find that introducing voter registration requirements to counties not previously possessing them depresses turnout, but to a lesser degree than previously thought
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Thomas Basile, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
This law review article explores a range of the legal issues the Supreme Court confronted in the Indiana voter ID case.
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Jody Herman and Douglas Hess, Project Vote
This report examines Colorado's compliance with the public assistance agency provisions of the National Voter Registration Act, and finds that the state has made some progress recently but that room for improvement still exists.
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Douglas Hess, Project Vote
In this report, the author examines the dramatic decline in the number of citizens registering to vote at public assistance agencies in Missouri, concluding that the state is largely out of compliance with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
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Stephen Ansolabehere (Harvard University), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This study finds that, despite the absence of laws requiring it, many voters—especially African-Americans and Hispanics—are being asked to show ID at the polls; they also have to wait in longer lines and are more likely to have problems with registration.
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Dr. Claire M. Smith, Overseas Vote Foundation
This research report reviews the success of policy initiatives to reach overseas voters.
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Election Law @ Moritz
This resource, framed around ten general issue areas, examines which states are likely to experience different election administration problems in November.
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Dean C. Logan, Records, Elections, and Licensing Services Division, King County Department of Executive Services
Dean C. Logan, director of elections in King County, Washington, explores the benefits of shifting to an all vote-by-mail system and suggests a practical timeline to implement the change.
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State of Minnesota District Court, County of Ramsey
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.
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The Committee’s Voting Rights Project presents its positions on felon disenfranchisement and election reform, as well as links to its National Commission on the Voting Rights Act and the Election Protection Coalition
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The League presents its positions on election reform as well as various resources
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Marion Superior Court, Civil Division
The opinion in the case of League of Women Voters of Indiana, Inc. v. Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State.
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Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
This piece, drawn from a talk given by Representative Holt, discusses the importance of voter confidence in voting systems and offers a set of policy prescriptions for ensuring that trust.
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Todd Rokita, Indiana Secretary of State
This letter, from the Indiana Secretary of State, was written the day after the Indiana Court of Appeals handed down its decision on the state’s voter ID laws. It outlines the impact of the ruling on State laws and the Secretary’s plan to argue his case in front of the Indiana Supreme Court.
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Committee on a Framework for Understanding Electronic Voting, National Research Council of the National Academies
Drawing on testimony from federal, state, and local officials, this report assesses the readiness of electronic voting systems in the November 2006 elections. Election officials express concern about a number of areas, including the implementation of HAVA and state legislative requirements.
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Zachary Markovits and Douglas Spencer
, University of California, Berkeley Survey Research Center
Relatively little quantative research has assessed how polling places actually function on Election Day; this report uses data from election observers who collected data on poll workers, voting machines, and voting regulations.
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Election Law @ Moritz
Despite wide press reports indicating that Election Day 2006 went smoothly, Foley argues that, perhaps, we should not issue a ringing endorsement of the nation's electoral system just yet.
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James G. Gimpel, Ann Marie Leonetti, Joshua J. Dyck (University of Maryland) and Daron R. Shaw (University of Texas)
This study finds that early voting is most popular in neighborhoods filled with time-pressured individuals and that early voters spread the word, creating a spatial effect among individuals with less significant time constraints.
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Douglas Spencer (University of California, Berkeley) and Zachary S. Markovits (Pew Center on the States)
Through an Election Day field study, the authors examine the commonality of lines at polling stations. They find inefficiencies in all three steps of casting a ballot, which they define as voter arrivals, voter is served by poll workers, and voter interaction with voting machine.
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Benjamin Highton (University of California, Davis), PS: Political Science & Politics
Using precint-level data from Franklin County, Ohio, Highton finds a causal link between voting machine scarcity and lower voter turnout. He notes, however, that much of the association between machine availability and voter turnout is caused by factors other than machine availability.
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Jessica Leval and Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
On December 4, the Election Reform Project co-sponsored an event looking back at the 2008 election. Here, staff summarize the conference's highlights.
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Walter Mebane (University of Michigan), William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal
While a number of explanations have been offered to explain the high undervote rate in Florida's 13th Congressional District in 2006, this study focuses on whether mechanical failures were to blame and concludes that a range of machine events could have contributed to the problem.
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Brennan Center Task Force on Voting System Security, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Drawing on surveys from hundreds of election officials around the country, this report examines the degree to which 120 potential threats to electronic voting machines would be successful in altering the outcome of a hypothetical statewide election.
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Lawrence Norden, Jeremy M. Creelan, David Kimball, and Whitney Quesenbery, Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law
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.
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Lawrence Norden, Jeremy M. Creelan, Ana Muñoz, and Whitney Quesenbery, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Part of the Brennan Center's broader analysis of voting technology, this report explains the legal requirements for accessible systems, explores the demographics of disabled voters, and examines six different systems on a wide range of accessibility criteria.
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Lawrence Norden, et. al., Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report explores a wide range of issues regarding voting technology by laying out sets of key principles to maximize security, accessibility, and usability while considering cost, and then evaluating available systems based on these criteria.
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National Association of Secretaries of State
This NASS document provides a state-level review of voter registration list maintenance practices.
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Jessica Leval (AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project), Roll Call
Casting a ballot remains persistently difficult for overseas military voters. In this analysis, the Election Reform Project’s Jessica Leval proposes ways to make voting easier for this particular population, including simplifying the process and incorporating the Internet into procedures.
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Sharon J. Laskowski and Janice Redish, National Institute of Standards and Technology
In this paper, Sharon Laskowski and Janice Redish analyze ballots from several recent elections around the country, highlight the best practices in the field, and argue for the importance of accessible language.
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
After reviewing some specifics of voting processes in the United States and the provisions of the Help America Vote Act, this paper lays out a roadmap for future reseach on electronic voting, with particular emphasis on reliability and access.
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Princeton University, New York University School of Law, and the University of Pennsylvania
On April 6 and 7, 2006, scholars and policymakers met in Princeton, New Jersey, to discuss the implementation of the Help America Vote Act, as well as the Voting Rights Act and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
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Curtis Gans, Center for the Study of the American Electorate, American University
In this article, Gans examines the effects of state-level reforms in the areas of absentee and early voting and finds little evidence that these reforms succeed in boosting voter turnout.
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Justin Leavitt, Wendy R. Weiser, and Ana Muñoz, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This national survey presents the first comprehensive summary of state voter registration practices following the Jan. 1, 2006 HAVA requirement of statewide registration databases, as well as recommendations for improvements.
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R. Michael Alvarez (California Institute of Technology), Jonathan Nagler (New York University), and Catherine H. Wilson (Northwestern University), Dēmos
Alvarez, Nagler, and Wilson find that adopting Election Day registration (EDR) in New York could improve the state's long-run turnout rate, especially among those who have the most difficulty registering, without increasing administration costs or fraud
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Common Cause
This report surveys four major studies on the reliability and vulnerability of direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines.
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Donald F. Norris, National Center for the Study of Elections, Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research
In a telephone study of 800 Maryland voters, the state's new voting system received largely favorable ratings on issues of efficiency, reliability, and trustworthiness. Many respondents, however, also displayed a lack of familiarity with concepts like paper trails and voting receipts.
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Charles Stewart III, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
This paper summarizes what the existing evidence about the performance of the voting process in 2004 and proposes a comprehensive system of performance measures that would allow citizens and officials to assess the quality of the voting system in future elections.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Thad Hall (Utah), and Brian Roberts (Utah), Institute of Public and International Affairs, University of Utah
Absentee voters currently serving in the military present unique challenges for election administrators at all levels of government, and this report examines ways to overcome these particular obstacles.
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Wendy R. Weiser, Adam Skaggs, Christopher Ponoroff & Lawrence Norden, The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
For Ohio, with an outdated and inefficient registration process, modernizing its voter registration system is a priority.
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Daniel Tokaji (Moritz College of Law) and Thad Hall (University of Utah), Election Law @ Moritz
In this essay, the authors argue that the federal government should not only establish mandates for the running of elections, but also be responsible for providing funding to states and localities to administer them in exchange usable and accurate data about how elections are administered.
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Christopher Patusky, Allison Brummel, and Timothy Schmidt, Fels Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania
Using data from a national voter complaint hotline from 2006, the authors examine particularly problematic aspects of election administration in the United States.
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National Association of Secretaries of State
This NASS factsheet summarizes the different provisions of the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act, which was signed into law on October 28, 2009.
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Election Data Services
This report summarizes the state of the nation's voting systems for the 2008 election, highlighting the fact that fewer jurisdictions are using electronic equipment than in 2006.
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
Some of HAVA’s provisions faced an early test during the 2004 general election. In a recent study, the U.S. Government Accountability Office explored the law's implementation and the challenges faced by election officials.
Read the report. |
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NACo, a national organization representing county governments, provides legislative, research, and technical services to members and liaises with other levels of government
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The NACRC is a professional organization of elected and appointed county administrative officials that aims to engender dialogue and help share ideas
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A nonpartisan professional organization for Secretaries of State and Lieutenant Governors, the NASS maintains election reform resources, including fact sheets, surveys, and election office contact information by state
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The NCSL, a bipartisan organization for state legislators and their staffs, provides research and technical assistance on a variety of subjects, including elections, campaigns, and redistricting
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Technology Administration, United States Department of Commerce
The NIST aims to improve voting technology by maintaining the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program and the National Software Reference
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Social Science Research Council
This project of the Social Science Research Council, which concluded its work in September 2005, provides a national clearinghouse of data, independent research, and other resources for election reform
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Also known as the “Motor Voter Act,” the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to provide individuals with the means to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license, to offer registration opportunities at certain state offices, and to allow citizens to register by mail.
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Estelle H. Rogers, Esq., Project Vote
Focusing on the four major provisions of the National Voter Registration Act, Project Vote’s report reviews implementation of voter registration programs at the state level.
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Estelle H. Rogers, American Constitution Society for Law and Policy
The NVRA was meant to increase registration levels across the country and as a result, increase participation in elections. Despite the fifteenth anniversary of NVRA in 2008, registration problems remain an issue, as Estelle Rogers, a Consulting Attorney with Project Vote finds.
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NVRI details its election law litigation and resources
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David B. Muhlhausen and Keri Weber Sikich, Center for Data Analysis, The Heritage Foundation
In this analysis, researchers at the Heritage Foundation attempt to replicate the results of researchers at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, arguing that some of the earlier findings are unfounded.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Lonna Rae Atkeson (University of New Mexico), and Thad Hall (University of Utah)
Taking a wide angle look at election administration in New Mexico, this report utilizes researcher observations on election day, as well as survey data from voters and pollworkers.
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Lonna Rae Atkeson (University of New Mexico), R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), and Thad Hall (University of Utah)
This report summarizes the results of an extensive post-election audit conducted in Bernalillo County, New Mexico and makes a variety of recommendations for future reform.
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Office of the New York State Comptroller
As states have relaxed the rules for absentee voting, more and more citizens have taken advantage of the option. This audit identifies several issues with the process in New York and proposes reforms.
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R. Michael Alvarez (California Institute of Technology) and Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), IBM Center for The Business of Government
Alvarez and Hall investigate the challenge of creating electronic transaction standards (ETS) for election administration in order to make elections less expensive and more accurate, and advocate a greater role for the EAC implementing them
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National Institute of Standards and Technology
A two-day workshop sought to decide upon a common data format for voting systems. Setting the requirements for a common data format will encourage transparency, interoperability, integration, and eventually assist in the transition to an electronic system of recordkeeping.
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Pew Center on the States
While voting has become more convenient for many, overseas military voters have been experiencing significant difficulty in voting. This study highlights the specific challenges they face and recommends reforms.
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Paul Herrnson (University of Maryland), et. al.
This paper, part of the University of Maryland's larger initiative on technology and ballot design, discusses the results of a field experiment designed to measure the degree to which voters, using a number of different electronic voting systems, are able to complete voting tasks as intended.
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Survey Research Center at the University of Georgia and the Office of the Georgia Secretary of State
Using data collected via exit polls at the three sites in Georgia during the 2006 election, this paper reveals that voters generally found the electronic voting system with a paper trail easy to use and expressed high levels of confidence in the systems' accuracy and security.
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Edward B. Foley (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University), Election Law @ Moritz
Law professor Foley draws comparisons between the unrest following the Mexican elections of July 2006 with potential problems that may arise during the fall 2006 elections in the United States, particularly in Ohio.
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Ohio State Senate
The Ohio State Senate approved legislation to reform various aspects of the elections process. Among the measures are enhancements to early voting rules, adoption of a matching system between voter registration files and driver’s license data, and compliance with the recently passed MOVE Act.
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U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging
In this hearing, the Senate Special Committee on Aging explored a variety of unique election administration issues presented by elderly voters.
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Election Technology Council
This report explores the concept of open source software as it applies to voting systems, suggesting areas in which it may benefit the market but cautioning against a too-enthusiastic embrace of the technology.
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OVC advocates the use in public elections of open voting systems, those systems with open source software and voter verifiable paper ballots
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Election Law @ Moritz, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, and the Georgetown Law Supreme Court Institute
On October 20, the Election Reform Project co-sponsored an simulated adjudication of a hypothetical Supreme Court case, McCain v. Obama. In a unanimous decision, the special panel ruled in favor of counting the case's disputed provisional ballots.
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The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) promotes democratization by observing election administration in over fifty regions and offering election assistance when necessary.
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Project Vote
This Project Vote study analyzed efforts in South Dakota, Kansas and Delaware to implement paperless voter registration systems.
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Committee to Modernize Voter Registration
The Committee to Modernize Voter Registration, composed of former state and federal lawmakers, state election administrators, election law experts, and academics was recently formed to advocate for an automated, transferable system to replace today's out-of-date and patchwork system.
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Arthur Keller et. al., Open Voting Consortium
In this paper, the authors express skepticism regarding the integrity of existing electronic voting systems. Alternatively, they call for the implementation of auditing and verification tools.
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David Andersen, Rutgers University
This paper investigates investigates the effect of voter identification requirements on the number of provisional ballots cast in 2006.
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PFAW presents various election reform resources, as well as its positions on voter registration, pending election reform legislation, and more
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Adam Skaggs & Jonathan Blitzer, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report examines how statewide permanent voter registration is implemented in several states across the country, and suggests that this policy should be incorporated into all states' voter registration reforms.
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Adam J. Berinsky (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), American Politics Research
Berinsky concludes, contrary to popular opinion, that electoral reforms that ease restrictions on casting ballots in fact increase socioeconomic biases in the composition of the voting public. He advocates shifting the focus of electoral reform from institutional changes to political engagement
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Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation
in advance of the 2004 general election, Wang examines a number of election reform issues, with particular emphasis on registration procedures, provisional balloting, and voting technology.
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James Gimpel and Jason E. Schuknecht, Political Geography
Authors use voter turnout records to determine the effect of polling place accessibility on voter turnout, and find that easy accessibility does in fact raise turnout.
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Daniel Tokaji, Election Law @ Moritz
This essay provides a wide-angle view of the ongoing controversy related to voter fraud allegations and the Department of Justice, with suggestions on where the debate may go from here.
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Lorraine C. Minnite (Barnard College, Columbia University), Project Vote
This report takes a wide-angle look at voter fraud, offering a definition of the term, suggesting that the problem is not nearly as widespread as some claim, and calling for better data collection and election administration as a way to improve public discourse and create better policies.
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John R. Logan (Brown University)
John R. Logan of Brown University analyzes the impact of voter displacement due to Hurricane Katrina on the results of New Orleans’s recent mayoral race. He finds that although black voters turned out in lower numbers than whites did, the displacement was not decisive in the election.
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UConn Voting Technology Research Center
This report discusses the results of a post-election audit of Connecticut's memory cards, finding that while all cards used in the election were properly programmed, there is still room for improvement.
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Lawrence Norden (NYU), Aaron Burnstein (UC Berkeley), Joseph Lorenzo Hall (UC Berkeley), and Margaret Chen (NYU), Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at UC Berkeley School of Law
In this report, researchers from the Brennan Center and the Samuelson Clinic survey current literature on post-election audits and make recommendations for future audit policy.
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Ronald L. Rivest (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Rivest introduces the concept of preliminary voting, by which a voter may cast a preliminary ballot before the close of elections but must visit the polling site on Election Day to confirm the vote officially, as a potentially convenient and cost-effective compromise to Internet voting
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Dan Seligson (electionline.org) and Tova Andrea Wang (The Century Foundation), electionline.org
In this report, the authors provide a detailed review of election reform progress in the key 2004 primary election states.
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Micah Altman (Brookings), Thomas Mann (Brookings), Michael McDonald (Brookings), and Norman Ornstein (AEI), Brookings AEI
Brookings and AEI are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. An advisory board of experts and good government groups was convened to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans.
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Arthur M. Keller, et. al., Open Voting Consortium
This paper explores the privacy issues involved in implementing electronic voting systems.
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Daniel Tokaji, Election Law @ Moritz
Though redoing the Florida presidential primary by mail struck many as an appealing option, this piece outlines a variety of security and administrative concerns related to such a plan.
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Phillip J. Peisch, Georgetown Law Journal
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.
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Paul S. Herrnson (University of Maryland) et al.
This study finds high usability ratings among a variety of electronic voting machine interfaces (optical scan, touch screen, buttons and dials, membrane buttons), but sees variation depending on machine characteristics and the voting tasks required
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Timothy Vercellotti and David Anderson, Rutgers University
This paper, presented at the 2006 meeting of the American Political Science Association, explores ways in which voter turnout is negatively affected by different voter identification rules ranging from simply requiring voters to state their names to mandating that they present photo identification.
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Heather S. Heidelbaugh, Logan S. Fisher, and James D. Miller, Harvard Journal on Legislation
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.
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Edward B. Foley (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University), Election Law @ Moritz
Foley analyzes the circumstances in which provisional ballots of unregistered voters will be counted.
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The Pew Center on the States
This analysis finds that 70% of the more than two million provisional ballots submitted nationwide during the 2008 election were counted. It also finds that the major reason for rejected provisional ballots was that the voter was not registered in the state.
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Advancement Project
This report explores the rejection rates for provisional ballots in 2006, examines the causes of these rejections in Florida and Ohio, and makes recommendations for reform
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Paul Gronke and Daniel Krantz Toffey, Early Voting Information Center
This paper explores the determinants of early voting, finding a number of expected trends: early voters are older, better educated, and more cognitively engaged in the campaign and in politics.
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Dēmos
In a survey conducted with public assistance agencies in 40 states and the District of Columbia, Dēmos asked about the feasibility of implementing an upgrade of voter registration databases based upon the records kept by these agencies.
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David Konisky and Michael A. Powell, Institute of Public Policy, Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri
This report from researchers at the University of Missouri explores public opinion on a select set of issues, including Election Day registration, voting by mail, photo identification requirements, and early voting.
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Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic (University of California, Berkeley), A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE)
This response to the Election Assistance Commission’s proposed voluntary guidelines calls for transparency in machine certification and source code and a voter-verified audit trail (VVAT), among other things
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Jeff Manza (Northwestern University) and Christopher Uggen (University of Minnesota), Perspectives on Politics
Manza and Uggen investigate the impact of disenfranchising nonincarcerated felons by examining the history of the laws in the United States, their political impact in recent elections, and their associated racial dynamics
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Edward Foley, Election Law @ Moritz
In this piece, Edward Foley summarizes a number of issues relating the use of provisional ballots when a voter believes his or her name has been unduly purged from the voter rolls.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission highlights key steps administrators should follow when implementing new voting systems. A more comphrensive guide will follow.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Part of a series, this guide provides advice for election officials on issues such as testing voting systems at the national and state levels and how to read certification numbers.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Following a similar document for new voting systems, the Election Assistance Commission released a set of guidelines for election officials on issues such as on software security, physical security, personnel security, and the security of the voting machines themselves.
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Mark DiCamillo, Survey Practice
The implementation of convenience voting practices like vote-by-mail and early voting raises questions concerning the effect of these changes on turnout. Research based on turnout in California studies the effect of the increasing number of vote-by-mail voters in presidential elections.
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National Governors Association, National Conference of State Legislatures, and American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators
This report examines the expected total costs of implementing the Real ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005 and setting new requirements for the documentation required to obtain the state-issued identification that may soon be required to vote.
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Governor's Commission on Strengthening Utah's Democracy
Convened to provide guidance to the state of Utah in the areas of election law, the Commission made recommendations regarding voter registration. Joining a number of other groups in proposing automatic voter registration, the Commission adopted all of its recommendations unanimously.
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electionline.org
Electionline.org’s survey of state election directors regarding procedures to recount and audit ballots reveals different practices throughout the country
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The Century Foundation
This project of The Century Foundation contains research and commentary on election reform issues, including complete materials from the 2001 National Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford
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Project Vote
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.
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Nathan Cemenska, Election Law @ Moritz
With states facing record numbers of new registrants for this election cycle, this analysis examines the challenges that may arise, including with third-party registration groups and with the matching of social security and/or driver's license numbers.
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Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Election Assistance Commission
While the controversy over the EAC-commissioned report on election crimes has faded somewhat since the report's release in December 2006, the issue returns to the spotlight with the release of the results of the EAC's internal investigation into how the contract was handled.
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Maryland Office of the Attorney General
Various jurisdictions in Maryland experienced polling place problems during the 2006 primary election, and this report summarizes the findings of an extensive investigation into their causes by the Maryland Attorney General's office.
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Special Investigations Unit, Milwaukee Police Department
The result of an extensive investigation by the Milwaukee Police Department, this report summarizes findings on various claims of voter fraud during the 2004 election.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report summarizes the ways in which individual states have used the nearly $3 billion distributed by the federal government under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA).
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Office of Voting Systems Technology Assessment, Office of the California Secretary of State
This report from the California Secretary of State highlights a software glitch that resulted in the deletion of almost 200 ballots from in the official results in one county last November and describes several other issues with the package that require attention before the next election cycle.
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Douglass R. Hess & Jody Herman, Project Vote
Although ethnic diversity of the U.S. has been increasing, voter registrations have not followed this trend. A new report finds that although the voting population is still unrepresentative of the American population at large, the 2008 voting population was more diverse than in years past.
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American Association for the Advancement of Science
The Research Database on the U.S. Voting System and Voting Technology provides access to empirical and analytical research about voting and elections to inform evidence-based reforms.
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Stephen Ansolabehere (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Charles Stewart III (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), The Journal of Politics
Ansolabehere and Stewart III find that in presidential races the residual vote rate increases as one moves from paper ballots to optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, DRE’s, and punch cards. Lever machines and punch cards perform poorly in gubernatorial and senatorial races
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The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and Spencer Overton (George Washington University School of Law), The National Network on State Election Reform
This response to the report of the Carter-Baker Commission rebuts its recommendations for a national, mandatory voter ID card, the use of social security numbers in voter registration, and only limited felon re-enfranchisement
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Erika Wood, Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law
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Nabajyoti Barkakati (U.S. Government Accountability Office) , Task Force on Florida-13, U.S. House Committee on House Administration
Fifteen months and three rounds of testing later, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has issued its final report on the high undervote rate in the 2006 election in Florida’s 13th Congressional District.
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Office of the Vermont Secretary of State
This report explores an effort undertaken by Vermont during the 2008 election aimed at serving the state’s elderly population by sending trained workers to residential care facilities; it outlines the various benefits of such an approach.
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Jody Herman, Douglas R. Hess, and Margaret Groarke, Project Vote
This literature review organizes research on NVRA into two categories: the impact of NVRA on overall registration and turnout, and its effect on equality in participation.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
An Election Reform Project task force analyzes the EAC's Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) and makes recommendations for its improvement.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project VVSG Task Force
The EAC is currently considering a new set of standards that future voting systems will have to meet in order to earn federal certification. In this report, a task force convened by the AEI-Brookings Election Reform project analyzes that document and makes recommendations for its improvement.
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King County Citizens’ Elections Oversight Committee, King County, Washington
This report, aimed at assisting officials in this Seattle-based county with purchasing decisions, examines particular issues at the intersection of voting-by-mail and voting technology.
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Rhode Island General Assembly
After three consecutive years’ of governor vetoes, the Rhode Island assembly succeeded in enacting into law a teen voter pre-registration bill. It joins Hawaii and Florida, as well as Puerto Rico, in permitting pre-registration for teenagers.
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Tova Andrea Wang, Demos
Tova Andrea Wang makes the case for modernizing voter registration practices in the states, in the context of the upcoming gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. Both states have large percentages of recently naturalized and first generation Americans.
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Supreme Court of Florida
The Florida Supreme Court ruled on the constitutionality of Sarasota County’s charter election law amendments, finding that state law does not bar individual counties from creating their own election laws.
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Ariel J. Feldman, J. Alex Halderman, and Edward W. Felton, Princeton University
This paper presents a complete study of a Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machine. Analysis of the machine shows that it is vulnerable to extremely serious attacks, the mitigation of which require changes to the its hardware and software and the adoption of more rigorous election procedures.
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Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
This is the statement by Senator Charles Schumer, the Chairman of the Committee on Rules and Administration, in support of the MOVE Act, given on October 22, 2009.
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The Sentencing Project presents research and advocacy to urge reconsideration of felon disenfranchisement laws
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Election Protection Coalition
The EPC’s preliminary analysis of complaints registered in the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) during the 2004 presidential election reveals problems in registration processing, absentee balloting, machine errors, voter suppression or intimidation, and provisional ballots
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electionline.org
This electionline.org briefing finds that the number of provisional ballots counted varied widely by and within states and that the use of statewide voter registration databases did not necessarily decrease the number of ballots counted, though it might have decreased the number cast
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Daniel Tokaji, Election Law @ Moritz
In this piece, Tokaji examines the issues at stake in the congressional election in Florida's 13th District, including the possibility that voting technology, ballot design, and election administration procedures may have impacted the outcome of the election.
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National Conference of State Legislatures
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Sean Greene, electionline.org
This report from electionline.org provides a preview of the election reform issues likely to be tackled at the state level in the upcoming year.
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University of Alaska, Anchorage
The second of two reports, this analysis lays out a set of recommendations for improving Alaska's election system, both in terms of technology and procedures.
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Center for Democracy and Election Management
This report reviews the election process across all fifty states, using the Carter-Baker Commission’s recommendations as guidelines.
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Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Different states have different requirements regarding community-based voter registration drives, and this report summarizes the relevant laws in all fifty states.
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Voting Technology Research Center
Post-election audits determine whether discrepancies between hand and machine ballot counts exist. Analysis of the 2008 election results in Connecticut find discrepancies in the vote counts caused by hand counting errors or vote misallocation, not as a result of machine tabulations.
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Nabajyoti Barkakati (U.S. Government Accountability Office), Task Force on Florida-13, Committee on House Administration, House of Representatives
This testimony summarized the progress made thus far by the GAO into the problems experienced in Florida in 2006, and lays out additional questions for analysis.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
This report outlines the preliminary findings of two consultants retained by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission as part of the EAC's examination of voter fraud.
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Daniel Castro, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
As the debate over direct recording electronic (DRE) machines continues, this report argues against a paper requirement, such as the one proposed by pending legislation in the House of Representatives.
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David C. Kimball (University of Missouri-St. Louis) and Martha Kropf (University of North Carolina-Charlotte), Review of Policy Research
Kimball and Kropf provide data on the party affiliation and selection methods for the over 4500 local election officials in the United States and discuss the considerable variation in selection procedures among jurisdictions.
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Traci Burch, The Sentencing Project
This report examines the impact of criminal convictions on voter registration and turnout, using North Carolina as a case study.
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Indiana Vote Centers Delegation
This report, written by a bipartisan Indiana delegation after observing the performance of county-wide vote centers in Colorado, examines the applicability of such centers to their own state.
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Ted Selker (MIT), Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project
The House of Representatives recently concluded that machine malfunction was not likely the cause of the high undervote rate in the 2006 election in Florida's 13th District. In this report, Ted Selker reaches a similar conclusion, laying out evidence that bad ballot design was the likely culprit.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Stephen Ansolabehere (MIT), and Charles Stewart III (MIT), Policy Studies Journal
This paper explores whether certain voting systems work better in some places than in others. Though the authors do not find evidence of such an effect, they do argue that punch cards work poorly in all regions and calls for greater consistency and transparency in the reporting of election results.
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Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
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Brian Kavanagh (Dēmos), Lucy Mayo (Dēmos), Steve Carbo (Dēmos), and Mike Slater (Project Vote/ACORN), ACORN; Dēmos; Project Vote
This joint report finds that numerous states are failing to comply with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993’s public assistance requirements and offers policy recommendations to states, federal agencies, and advocates so that they can meet their federal obligations
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Dr. William Jeffrey, Technical Guidelines Development Committee, National Institute of Standards and Technology
This testimony, by the chair of the committee charged with making recommendations to the EAC about voting technology, summarizes likely changes to voting technology standards.
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U.S. House Committee on House Administration, Elections Subcommittee
On August 2, 2007, EAC Chair Donetta Davidson and Vice-Chair Rosemary Rodriguez testified before Congress on issues related to oversight of their agency.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
In recent testimony before the U.S. House Committee on House Administration, the Election Assistance Commission discussed its efforts to implement the Help America Vote Act and what we should expect to see in the November, 2006 elections.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
In testimony before the U.S. House Committee on House Administration, the members of the Election Assistance Commission and the Secretaries of State of Iowa, New Mexico, Indiana, and Kansas discussed the implementation of the various provisions of the Help America Vote Act of 2002.
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U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
On June 7, 2007, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to examine proposed legislation to prevent deceptive practices and voter intimidation.
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Library of Congress
A federal legislation search engine
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Andrew Regenscheid and Nelson Hastings, National Institute of Standards and Technology
This report examines a number of security issues that arise with the transmission of UOCAVA ballots and recommends implementing a set of best practices to improve the process in the future.
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Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation
Preventing non-citizens from voting is an argument commonly employed by supporters of voter ID legislation; this analysis examines this problem and makes suggestions for solutions.
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National Institute of Standards and Technology
As part of a workshop on threats to voting systems, state and local election officials, researchers, lawyers, vendors, and others from the public and private sectors submitted threat analyses of voting systems.
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The National Commission on Federal Election Reform
The comprehensive report of the Commission, co-chaired by former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, Lloyd Cutler, and former Representative Robert Michel, contains recommendations that served as the basis for HAVA.
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Office of the California Secretary of State
The California Secretary of State recently began an effort to complete a full, top-to-bottom review of all voting machines used in that state.
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Scott Novakowski, Dēmos
The National Voter Registration Act requires states to offer voter registration forms at public assistance agencies, and this report examines five states (North Carolina, Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Missouri) that have had exceptional success in implementing this policy.
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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electionline.org
The Voting Rights Act's language minority provisions have consequences for election administrators nationwide, and this report highlights the challenges the requirements present, the role technology plays in the implementation of the provision, and pending litigation and legislation on the topic.
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Joseph Hall (University of California, Berkeley)
To what extent should the software code for electronic voting machines be available to the public? Hall explores the tradeoffs between expediency and transparency and concludes that giving the code to qualified individuals is the optimal solution.
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Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations
The first in a series of reports examining Tennessee's election system, this study examines its voting machines and lays out recommendations for improving them.
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Justin Levitt, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This paper explores a number of issues in the current debate over voter fraud, offering a definition of the term, analyzes common types of alleged fraud, and evaluates a set of individual case studies.
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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission was established by the Help America Vote Act (2002) in order to serve as a resource for information and review
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The voluntary guidelines update those passed in 2002 and are effective in December 2007
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
On July 13, the Election Assistance Commission held a public meeting to hear testimony on issues of polling place signage and ballot design from advocates and state officials.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Election Assistance Commission (EAC) stakeholders and representatives of other certification programs provide testimony regarding the implementation of the EAC Voting System Certification Program
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Representatives from voter registration agencies, state boards of elections, voter registration organizations testified before the EAC on the efficacy of the NVRA.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The EAC will hear testimony on vote counting and recounting from representatives of Washington, Virginia, and California, as well as from election reform scholars.
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The FEC enforces the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), discloses campaign finance information, and oversees the public funding of Presidential elections
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The research of the GAO, an independent and nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, includes election reform issues
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The Committee on House Administration is charged with the oversight of Federal elections, as well as the daily functions of the U.S. House of Representatives
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The jurisdiction of the Committee on Rules and Administration encompasses Federal elections, among other things
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Edward B. Foley, Election Law @ Moritz
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.
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Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation
This article reviews the numerous issues and controversies involved in the implementation of electronic voting machines.
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Douglas R. Hess and Scott Novakowski, Project Vote and Dēmos
This report outlines the shortcomings of the NVRA's implementation over the past twelve years, and highlights particular areas for reform.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The survey reports statistics provided by the states and concludes, among other things, that many states are not currently tracking data in the manner HAVA requires and that states store data in different formats, which impedes data collection.
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The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) provides overseas and military citizens with “back-up” ballots when their application to vote is valid, but they have not received their general ballot in time.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
As mandated by HAVA, the EAC analyses data on UOCAVA voters in the 2006 election, highlighting the challenges they face and making recommendations for improving the process in the future.
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Daniel Weaver, Alison McNeely, and Adam Fogel, FairVote
As part of a broader project to assess whether swing states are prepared for the resource challenges presented on Election Day, this report analyzes the situation in the state of New Mexico.
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George Mason University
The Project provides accurate election statistics, electoral laws, research reports, and other useful information regarding the U.S. electoral system
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Wendy Weiser, Michael Waldman, and Renee Paradis, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
The 2008 election cycle saw record numbers of new registrants, but many argue that there is still work to be done. This report summarizes the current state of registration policy in the United States and make a number of recommendations for reform.
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Thad Hall, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Overseas and military voters present unique challenges for election officials, and this report surveys the state of the research on addressing these needs.
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Benjamin Bederson and Paul Herrnson, Center for American Politics and Citizenship, University of Maryland
After Maryland adopted new Diebold voting machines. the authors conducted field testing on them and offer practical suggestions to improve access and reliability.
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Verified Voting is composed of an educational and a lobbying organization devoted to “championing reliable and publicly verifiable elections.” Verified Voting strongly favors the institution of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trails (VVPAT).
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AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Timothy J. Ryan, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Matt Weil, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Jamie Hester, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, Election Reform Project intern Jamie Hester examines voting machine irregularities in New Jersey's presidential primary and calls for more transparency from systems manufacturers for investigating similar incidents in the future.
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Paul Herrnson (University of Maryland), et. al. , AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
On Election Day, many voters are presented with a "straight-party option" on their ballots; here, Paul Herrnson and his team of researchers analyze the implications of that capability for voter accuracy.
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David Kimball (University of Missouri, St. Louis) and Martha Kropf (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
Drawing on their extensive research on ballot design, David Kimball and Martha Kropf present a set of "dos and don'ts" for designing good ballots.
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Ted Selker (Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project), AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Norman Ornstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this Roll Call column, the Election Reform Project's Norm Ornstein takes on a variety of "big picture" election reform issues addressed by new legislation in Congress.
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Jessica Leval, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, the Election Reform Project's Jessica Leval reviews Heather Gerken's book, The Democracy Index, which details a proposal for creating a ranking system for state and local governments based on the performance of their elections.
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Molly Reynolds, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this analysis, the Election Reform Project’s Molly Reynolds looks at what responses from a 2008 survey can tell us about what the public prefers in terms of election reform proposals—and the limits of relying on such data in this particular area.
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Jessica Leval, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this analysis, the Election Reform Project's Jessica Leval describes administrative problems--both ones encountered as a individual voter, and ones that affected the city as a whole--in the recent District of Columbia primary.
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Matthew Weil and Timothy J. Ryan, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Jessica Leval and Jennifer Marsico (AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project) and Clinton Reeder (American Enterprise Institute), AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, Election Reform Project staff examine a number of steps that election officials in Utah have taken to increase the security of their direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting systems.
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Jessica Leval, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
Nearly one million Americans living overseas requested absentee ballots in 2004--but only a third were successfully cast. The Election Reform Project's Jessica Leval examines the issue of overseas voting and makes recommendations for improving the process.
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Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, the Election Reform Project's examines evidence on problems with New Jersey's electronic voting machines and makes recommendations for reform.
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Matthew Waring and David Waterman, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
Estimates put the number of poll workers needed for the 2008 election at nearly two million. This analysis explores the ways that a variety of jurisdictions address the challenges of recruiting, training, and retaining these workers.
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Matthew Corritore, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
This analysis from the Election Reform Project looks at a growing problem faced by election administrators--a shortage of poll workers--and makes suggestions on how local officials can ensure they have enough competant individuals to make Election Day run smoothly.
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Timothy J. Ryan, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Jessica Leval, AERI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this new piece, the Election Reform Project’s Jessica Leval reviews The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform, by Frederic Charles Schaffer, summarizing Schaffer’s major points and examples, and assessing his proposals for mitigating the potentially negative effects of policy change.
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Matt Weil, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Matthew Corritore and Molly Reynolds, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, staff from the Election Reform Project review the current state of play in the election reform research field.
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Norman J. Ornstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Jessica Leval and Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this analysis, Election Reform Project staff summarize a range of relevant research presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association and highlight a number of directions that future research is likely to take.
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Molly Reynolds, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Annabelle Burgett, Jessica Leval, and Jennifer Marsico , AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
This analysis highlights the increasing importance of the Hispanic electorate and examines a number of the particular election administration issues that that community faces.
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Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
When the U.S. Senate reconvened to start the 111th Conngres, it did so with only one senator from Minnesota. Here, the Election Reform Project’s Jennifer Marsico examines ways that reforms to the election administration system could improve the recount process in that state.
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Jessica Leval and Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
Over the past three decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of absentee and early voters. This piece summarizes a range of early voting options and addressing several pending questions on the topic.
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Timothy J. Ryan, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Norman Ornstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this Roll Call column, the Election Reform Project's Norman Ornstein reacts to the Supreme Court's decision in the Indiana voter ID case by laying out a common sense approach for moving forward.
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Blake Hulnick and Daniel O’Brien, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Andrew Rubenstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
This analysis examines a number of issues related to voter confidence, its determinants, and what steps election administrators might take to help increase it.
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Timothy J. Ryan, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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Evan McGinnis, Jessica Leval, and Jennifer Marsico, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
In this piece, Election Reform Project staff members examine the unique issues presented by two groups of voters: the homeless and ex-felons.
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Norman J. Ornstein, AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project
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U.S. Government Accountability Office
This GAO survey examines local election officials’ views on managing voter registration lists and provisional ballots in the 2004 election
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
The Election Assistance Commission has produced voluntary guidelines for the statewide computerized voter registration lists that HAVA mandates.
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Technical Guidelines Development Committee, U.S. Election Assistance Commission
In preparation for their final release in 2008, the EAC has released a draft of its new guidelines for voting machines.
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The Vote by Mail Project serves as a source for education and advocacy efforts on behalf of vote by mail systems, which have become increasingly popular on the West Coast.
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Scott Doyle (Office of the Clerk and Recorder, Larimer County, Colorado)
Doyle, Clerk & Recorder of Larimer County, Colorado, explains his county's experience with countywide Election Day vote centers.
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Robert Reiling, E. Kent Moore, and Linda Phillips, Tippecanoe County, Indiana Board of Elections and Registration
The state of Indiana, for example, piloted vote centers in three counties in 2008, and a report from one county summarizes their experience, highlighting voters’ satisfaction with the process and the cost savings produced by the switch.
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Michael A. Carrier (Rutgers University School of Law), St. John's Law Review
Carrier examines flaws in electronic voting, including reduced transparency and security controls, as well as vote counting flaws in the 2004 election. Carrier concludes with suggestions to improve vote counting, including voter-verifiable paper trails, open source software, and random audits.
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Stephen Ansolabehere (MIT) and Nathaniel Persily (Columbia Law School), Columbia Law School Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper Group
Voter fears of fraud have been offered as a justification for the strict ID requirements enacted in Indiana and elsewhere, but as the authors of this article find, citizens' perceptions of fraud have no relationship to whether or not they turn out to vote.
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Still’s blog discusses issues in election, voting, and campaign finance law, among other things
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Eugene H. Spafford (Purdue University), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
In this article, the author highlights the importance of voter confidence in voting systems and examines how to increase that confidence as election reforms are enacted.
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Morgan Llewellyn (Caltech), Thad Hall (Utah), and R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This report examines some of the determinants of voter confidence in elections, looking specifically at support for a winning candidate and access to a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT).
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Matt Barreto (University of Washington), Stephen A. Nuño (University of California, Irvine), and Gabriel R. Sanchez (University of New Mexico)
Drawing on exit poll data from 2006 collected in California, New Mexico, and Washington, this paper concludes that immigrant and minority voters are significantly less likely to provide multiple forms of identification.
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Spencer Overton, George Washington University Law School
This study examines various perspectives on the creation of a photo identification requirement for voters, and argues that careful review of existing research, as well as new empirical examinations, are necessary before lawmakers implement new policy.
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Center for Democracy and Election Management, American University
This report explores one of the fundamental claims being made in the Indiana voter ID case--that a large number of people would be dienfranchised because they lack the necessary ID--and suggests that the problem may not be as widespread as some have argued.
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U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Recognizing the increasing use of the internet by voters to obtain information about all aspect of the elections process, this study examines web sites aimed at providing information about where and when to vote, how to request an absentee ballot, and a range of other information.
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Myrna Perez, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report examines voter purges (the removal of individuals from the voter rolls), summarizing types of purges and the problems associated with them and making policy recommendations for the reform of their use.
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Daniel Tokaji (Election Law @ Moritz), Harvard Law and Policy Review Online
Voter registration issues proved to be one of the most persistent problems affecting voters' experiences during the 2008 election. In this article, Dan Tokaji examines a range of legal and policy issues that arose and proposes a framework for reform.
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Wendy Weiser, Michael Waldman, and Renee Paradis, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Challenges faced by some new registrants in 2008 highlighted the need to modernize the overall system and procedures involved in the registration process. This report makes a series of recommendations for reform in this area.
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Eric A. Fischer and Kevin J. Coleman, Congressional Research Service
Fischer and Coleman identify characteristics of ideal voter registration systems but conclude that states currently lack of standards measuring successful implementation as well as metrics for those standards.
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Ted Selker and Alexandre Buer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
In this paper, the authors highlight several ways that improper removal could occur under current list matching procedures and argue for several measures to guard against the accidental removal of registered voters from the rolls.
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Office of the Georgia Secretary of State, Elections Division
This study evaluates the experience of both voters and election officials with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) pilot program in three Georgia counties during the 2006 election.
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Office of the Missouri Secretary of State
This report explores a wide range of topics related to the 2006 elections in Missouri, including the accuracy of voter registration lists, voter identification issues, and accessibility of equipment for disabled voters.
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Dēmos
Rather than submit a provisional ballot, some unregistered voters are able to both register and vote on Election Day. Same Day Registration has been enacted in nine states and the District of Columbia. This memo explores this policy’s effect on turnout.
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Michael Shamos (Carnegie Mellon University), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
After briefly exploring the history of the manipulation of elections in the U.S., this article discusses the inevitablity of a certain level of error and lays out a set of approaches, drawn from engineering, to examine the issue of security.
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Paul Gronke and Peter A. M. Miller, Early Voting Information Center
This paper attempts to replicate widely-cited results from a prior study that show that voting-by-mail increases turnout in Oregon. They conclude that any increases derive from the novelty of a new voting technique and from unique circumstances surrounding the first three vote-by-mail elections.
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June Lagmay, City Clerk, Los Angeles, California
Responding to a request regarding the feasibility of adopting a vote-by-mail system in Los Angeles, the City Clerk wrote this memo. In it she discusses the potential impact of this change on voter turnout and the cost of implementing such a program.
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The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, The Century Foundation, and Common Cause
This report examines ten states with a history of election problems and potentially close races in the 2006 election cycle. Asking "are we any better off today than we were two years ago?," the authors explore issues including voter registration, voter identification, and pollworker recruitment.
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Tova Wang, Common Cause
In this analysis, Tova Wang assesses the 2008 election, arguing that work remains to be done despite the lack of a catastrophic meltdown.
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Tova Wang, Samuel Oliker-Friedland, Melissa Reiss, and Kristen Oshyn, The Century Foundation and Common Cause
Examining ten states that are likely to be very competitive during the 2008, presidential election, this report summarizes a variety of challenges they are likely to face in areas including voter registration, voter identification, and poll worker recruitment and training.
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The VRA effectively prohibited discriminatory denial of the right to vote. Its passage ended the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other methods used to disenfranchise minorities.
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The Alabama Alliance to Restore the Vote and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Using information from Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, this report documents the failure in Alabama to enforce 2003 law designed to expedite voter resoration rights to people who have completed their sentences for certain crimes.
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Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
In March of 2007, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project held a workshop designed to bring researchers and industry representatives together in an effort to identify key questions in voting technology.
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Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
This VTP working paper reviews aspects of voting during the 2008 elections: the people involved, the process that took place, and the technological aspects of voting. Hall also discusses the state of voting technology in the U.S. and around the world, and suggests improvements.
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Daniel P. Tokaji (Moritz College of Law, Ohio State University), Election Law @ Moritz
Tokaji assesses the history of problems in voting technology, the current state of affairs, and suggestions for future reform.
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Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Drawn from a symposium held at Harvard, this paper suggests best practices for the implementation of new voting technology, strongly endorses voter-verified paper trails, and calls for increased poll worker training.
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National Institute of Standards and Technology
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommends that the EAC broaden the scope of its definition of voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPAT) currently contained in its 2005 voluntary voting system guidelines. NIST also proposes a scheme to audit VVPATs effectively.
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Daniel Tokaji, Election Law @ Moritz
In this analysis piece, Dan Tokaji argues that Congress--whose primary election reform-related attention is focused on the paper trail debate--should instead be focusing on issues like ID requirements and statewide voter registration databases.
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Eric A. Fischer and Kevin J. Coleman, Congressional Research Service
The CRS surveys more than 1,500 local election officials in fifty states regarding their views on voting systems, HAVA, and voting system vendors
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David Jefferson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of California/U.S. Department of Energy), National Academy of Engineering of the National Academies
In this article, the author, a computer scientist, summarizes a number of potential explanations for the undervote problem in Florida's 13th Congressional District in 2006, and offers several ideas for future progress.
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Daniel Tokaji, Election Law @ Moritz
In this analysis, Daniel Tokaji examines a controversy in Wisconsin related to its new statewide voter registration database, and highlights several problems that could occur nationwide this November.
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Myrna Perez, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
This report reviews individual state guidelines regarding registration when voters move, and finds that they are inconsistently applied, confusing to both voters and officials, and that current federal and state law protections are overly limiting.
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Richard Niemi (University of Rochester), Michael Hanmer (University of Maryland), and Thomas Jackson (University of Maryland)
This paper examines the question of where college students can and should vote, concluding that college towns cannot exclude them from registering, but that they can require those wanting to register to demonstrate residence in other ways.
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Tova Andrea Wang, The Century Foundation
Is voter fraud at the polling place really a problem? In this piece, Tova Wang presents one perspective on the issue, arguing that the situation has been significantly overstated.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), and Morgan Llewellyn (Caltech), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Alvarez, Hall, and Llewellyn's survey examines public preferences for election administration-whether elections should be run by partisan or nonpartisan officials, whether the officials should be elected or appointed, and whether elections should be administered by a single individual or commission.
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Adam J. Berinsky, Nancy Burns, and Michael W. Traugott, Public Opinion Quarterly
The authors analyzed the effects of Oregon's Vote by Mail provisions using individual-level turnout data. Though the system raised overall turnout, it did so by making it easier for regular voters to continue voting, rather than by introducing new voters. is obtained in a counterintuitive way.
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Edward Foley, Election Law @ Moritz
In this analysis, Edward Foley examines a range of issues surrounding the judges who might hear the Franken-Coleman election contest in Minnesota and makes recommendations to help reach a fair outcome.
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R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech), Thad E. Hall (University of Utah), and Betsy Sinclair (Caltech), Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
Alvarez, Hall, and Sinclair find that certain types of absentee ballots and voters have higher likelihoods of their ballots being counted but that partisan composition is not a significant determining factor.
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electionline.org
Bringing their expertise in election reform with them, the electionline.org staff traveled to various potential hotspots around the country on Election Day. Read their analysis of election administration procedures, the impact of new laws and requirements, and more.
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Thad Kousser and Megan Mullin, University of California, San Diego and Temple University
Taking advantage of a "natural experiment" in California, this report challenges the assumption that voting by mail will increase voter turnout across the board while highlighting other potential costs and benefits.
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M.V. Hood III and Charles S. Bullock III , University of Georgia
In this paper, the authors examine one specific aspect of the debate over voter identification by analyzing which segments of the population possess driver's licenses and how those individuals are likely to vote.
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Civil Grand Jury for the City/County of San Francisco
Faced with mounting five elections in one twelve month period, the San Francisco Department of Elections has faced a wide range of administration challenges; this report examines those issues and makes recommendations for improvement.
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J. Alex Halderman (Princeton), Hovav Schacham (UC San Diego), Eric Rescoria (RTFM, Inc.), and David Wagner (UC Berkeley), USENIX/ACCURATE EVT 2008
While the debate over the efficacy of abandoning recently acquired electronic voting systems continues across the country, this report makes recommendations on how jurisdictions can increase the security of the systems they already have in the interim.
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Project Vote
In this report, Project Vote examines issues in the security and administration of various forms of voting by mail and lays out recommendations to improve the process.
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