CEIR has surveyed states about voter registration database security every two years since 2018. These surveys have demonstrated widespread best practices in respondent states.
Resources
Use our resource library to explore the latest research in the field of election science.
This research finds that when automatic voter registration (AVR) is endorsed by Democratic leaders, Republicans (and independents) expect AVR to reduce the fairness and legitimacy of elections, while Democrats are generally resistant to partisan cues.
This book examines how elections are run in the United States, highlighting recent innovations in voter registration, voting options, and voter convenience, among other things. Hale and Brown's analyses is supported by original data gathered from state and local election officials and policymakers across the United States.
In this article, using data from Orange County, California, the researchers develop two methods for evaluating the quality of voter registration data as it changes over time: (a) generating audit data by repeated record linkage across periodic snapshots of a given database and monitoring it for sudden anomalous changes and (b) identifying duplicates via an efficient, automated duplicate detection, and tracking new duplicates and deduplication efforts over time.
This article, written during the COVID-19 pandemic, discusses the overarching trend of poll worker shortages in U.S. elections. Authors identify potential strategies to address shortages, rooted in the practices of state and local election officials. While the pandemic serves as the backdrop for this article, its recommendations remain relevant to elections today.
This study investigates the reliability of Florida’s voter registration files through a phone survey, asking respondents to verify their records. Authors find 17.7% of registrants fail to verify at least one identifying piece of information.
The 2020 State-by-State Compendium cites statutory requirements for serving as a poll worker in each state, including voter registration qualifications, age, residency, political affiliation, term requirements, compensation, and training, among others.
In this paper, authors explore the demographic and professional profiles of local election officials (LEOs), finding that most are female, white, over 55, and earning just over $50,000 a year. They also found that women were more likely to be paid less than their male counterparts. The paper presents additional findings related to job satisfaction and the role of election administration in facilitating female leadership.
This research develops and applies a method to estimate how many people voted twice in the 2012 presidential election. It estimates that about one in 4,000 voters cast two ballots, although an audit suggests that the true rate may be lower due to small errors in electronic vote records.
This resource provides strategies for election officials for recruiting and retaining election workers. It features direct examples from local jurisdicitions that have had success implementing these strategies.
This research argues that local challenges remain when maintaining voters’ registration and voting history information, which undermines the quality of voter lists and the integrity of the electoral process. It analyzes Mississippi’s Statewide Election Management System (SEMS) records and finds that voter registration and voting history errors are linked to the county’s active and inactive registered voter rates and demographic characteristics.
This analysis focuses on whether counties that had previously been “covered” purged voters at a higher rate than noncovered counties after the coverage formula was struck down. It finds increases in purge rate of between 1.5 and 4.5 points in formerly covered jurisdictions post-Shelby, compared with counties that had not been subject to preclearance. Most of the increase came immediately, as the effect in 2014 is substantively and significantly higher than that in 2016.