Resources

In this paper, authors utilize "policyscape" and "policy drift" as lens to conceptualize stability and change in election administration. More specifically, policy drift helps to explain a disconnect between the current service expectations from these offices and existing models of staffing and workforce development. These conclusions were reached through interviews with local election officials in Oregon.

The 2025 Local Election Official Survey gathered insight on the views of 858 local election officials related to federal cuts to election security services, resource constraints, worries of political interference, experiences of threats and harassment, and the use of artificial intelligence in elections.

This report uses data from the Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) Threats and harassment Database (THD) to identify and discuss trends in threats and harassment against election officials between 2022 and 2024. BDI found that election officials faced an elevated risk of threats around election time during the period studied. BDI publishes updated analyses of the THD every month.

This review of the literature was done for research to understand how voters approach the task of marking, reviewing, verifying, and casting a ballot. It includes not only research on voting systems and voting, but on related issues of trust, privacy, and mental models. This report is a companion to the research report NIST GCR 24-051 How Voters Review and Verify Ballots.

This Brennan Center survey reports on local election officials’ experiences with security, threats, funding, staffing, and preparation for the 2024 election environment. It is relevant because trusted, timely, and nonpartisan communication is one of the main tools election officials and civic groups use to counter distrust. For this dataset, it helps capture the most recent post-2020 trust environment and the continuing effects of election denial, security concerns, and polarization.

Administering Elections provides a digest of contemporary American election administration using a systems perspective. The authors provide insight into the interconnected nature of all components of elections administration, and sheds light on the potential consequences of reforms that fail to account for this.

In this paper, Michael Greenberger examines the effect of poll worker recruitment policies, local demographics and political characteristics on poll worker recruitment, finding that less restrictive poll worker requirements can ease recruitment efforts. However, underlying demographics and income levels also help identify where recruitment may be difficult. He claims that the U.S. Election Assistance Commissions report on poll worker recruitment is incomplete, particularly for states formerly covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

This report aims to support election officials in strengthening poll worker programs and recruitment. It outlines state legal frameworks for serving as a poll worker, including voter status and residency, age requirements, and compensation. It also highlights state, local, and political party strategies for improving poll worker recruitment, such as community partnerships, targeted outreach, and improved training programs.

This report summarizes projections of how many people with disabilities would be eligible to vote in the November 2024 elections, using data from the Census Bureau’s 2018-2022 American Community Survey combined with Census Bureau population projections for 2024. The report breaks down key demographic characteristics of eligible voters with disabilities.

This report describes qualitative research conducted to gain deeper insights about how voters mark, review, verify, and cast their ballots. It is part of the work to update the human factors—accessibility, usability, and voter privacy—requirements in federal voting system standards and fill gaps in our understanding of how voters interact with ballot marking devices.

This report and the guidelines contained therein explain how a successful accessible RCV ballot works for voters with disabilities. The goal of this work was to create a universal design for a Ranked Choice Voting ballot that would work for the most voters without special settings needed.

The 2024 Local Election Official (LEO) Survey provides insight into the challenges and successes facing election administrators, including job satisfaction, experience with threats and harassment, and hiring and funding challenges. It also highlights LEOs’ perspectives on the performance of U.S. elections and their role in voter education and engagement.