Here’s a pop quiz: How do elections work in the U.S.?
- Accurately and transparently, given all the double-checking built into the voter registration, voting and ballot counting processes.
- Differently, at least a little bit, depending on the state or jurisdiction.
- With support from the professionals who have chosen to work as election officials and the 700,000 others serving as temporary election workers.
- All of the above.
The short answer is, of course, D.
For a longer answer, see “Helping America Vote: Election Administration in the United States,” a free PDF book from the bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the National Conference of State Legislatures. (NCSL members can request a hard copy at [email protected].)
The title references the Help America Vote Act of 2002, the most recent major federal legislation to address elections.
Even though federal laws matter, “elections are a state responsibility; the Constitution is clear on that,” Tim Storey, NCSL’s chief executive officer, says. “It’s no wonder that procedures vary across the states and territories. It is impossible to give a single answer to how elections work without diving deep into details.”
Instead, the 190-page “Helping America Vote” primer offers a procedural overview. It starts with how electoral districts and precincts are created, then covers candidate filing, ballot design, voter registration, casting ballots either on or before Election Day, election certification and results auditing.
The book also addresses the complex web that governs elections, plus voting technology, the specific needs of military and overseas voters, how presidential elections compare with all other elections, and alternative voting methods.
The book is 100% descriptive and 0% prescriptive. NCSL and the EAC recognized that those who are new to election policymaking and administration, namely lawmakers, needed a soup-to-nuts explanation of the steps involved in running accurate, secure and accessible elections.
“It’s a great resource for the most fundamental and best practices across the country,” says Don Palmer, one of the four EAC commissioners. “If you are interested in audits, go to the audit chapter. You’ll find plenty of ideas. The same with any other question. There’s a chapter on it.”
To balance the reference-book style, each chapter also includes an interview with an election official who brings that topic to life. Common threads from these 19 interviews? Election officials will make just about anything lawmakers want to have happen, happen—they just need time and resources. And they will do their work outside the reach of politics. They focus on “what can work, not for your party and not for my party, but for the American people,” Tom Hicks, another EAC commissioner, says.
“‘Helping America Vote,’ we hope and expect, will be a reference that election officials and others can dip into to get what they want, when they want it,” Storey says. “And because it does not include state-by-state data, this book will be evergreen, with a yearslong shelf life.”
For state information, NCSL and the EAC both offer resources that are updated as needed as states adjust their processes.
Wendy Underhill directs NCSL’s Elections and Redistricting Program.
Other Books on Election Administration
“How We Vote,” by Kathleen Hale and Mitchell Brown (Georgetown University Press, 2020), focuses on the roles of election officials and provides academic analysis. Similarly, “Local Election Administrators in the United States: The Frontline of Democracy” (Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 2024) gathers essays from leading scholars in the field of election science.
The venerable “Election Administration in the United States,” by Joseph P. Harris (Brookings Institution, 1934), is now available as a PDF from the National Institute of Standards and Technology. It’s interesting to see that the issues identified in the 1930s are still relevant almost a century later: determining who is eligible to vote and how to verify that; deciding where and how voting takes place; securing processes and votes.