The Act of Voting: Easy or Hard?
JANUARY 2008
The Act of Voting: Easy or Hard?
On February 5, voters in 15 states arrived at polls for presidential primaries and find a wide variety of voting equipment. A new book explores a wide range of questions about how voters interact with their voting systems, while the Center for American Politics and Citizenship’s web site makes available a range of earlier research by the book’s authors.
Featured Resources
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.
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.
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.
Research Projects
Election Law @ Moritz, run through Moritz College of Law at the Ohio State University, contains both explanation and commentary on a wealth of election reform issues from a legal perspective.
This project aims to evaluate the current state of reliability and uniformity of U.S. voting systems; to establish uniform attributes and quantitative guidelines for performance and reliability of voting systems; and to propose specific uniform guidelines and requirements for reliable voting systems
Electionline.org provides daily news updates on election reform issues, as well as deeper analysis of selected topics, including recent reports on voter registration, recount procedures, and the progress in implementing the Help America Vote Act since 2002.
As part of its broader research focus on elections, campaign ethics, campaign finance, and the legislative process, the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland is engaged in research projects on voting technology and ballot design specifically.
The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
www.aei.org
The Brookings Institution
www.brookings.edu
© Copyright 2006, AEI
and The Brookings Institution