Identifying and Minimizing the Risk of Election Subversion and Stolen Elections in the Contemporary United States

WHEN THE 2000 ELECTION REVEALED WEAKNESSES in U.S. election administration, scholars gathered what they knew about the topic. While scholars had not done extensive research on election administration issues, there was some: training election officials,1 punchcard voting machines,2 roll-off,3 straight-party voting,4 the consequences of the Australian ballot,5 and, of course, ballot design.6 Research conducted in the wake of the 2000 election made it starkly clear that because of the hyper-decentralization of elections in the United States, data were not centralized, nor were concepts consistently defined. Even data basic to an election, such as “voter turnout,” was not consistently defined across states or local jurisdictions. Scholars went to work. Elections and election data collection have improved since 2000.7 Scholars and practitioners continue to advance the theoretical and scientific study of election administration, and they are helping improve the day-to-day operations of election administration in the United States. In fact, an interdisciplinary group that includes both scholars and election officials—Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration, or ESRA—has met each summer since 2017. This group's annual conference “brings together election experts from academia, state and local government, non-profits, and research institutes to develop empirical approaches to the study of how law and administrative procedures affect the quality of elections in the United States.”8 Often with guidance from election officials, scholars have examined such important and timely topics as how to operate elections during a pandemic,9 voting rights and disenfranchisement,10 how the public regards elections and their legitimacy,11 and straight-party ballots, as well as other aspects of ballot design.12 Paul Herrnson and colleagues have analyzed the straight-party box on office-block ballots using experimental research (of course, experiments increase confidence in causal inference). Their work is based on usability theory and research: “systems with simple, straightforward, end-to-end design, involving fewer steps, requiring little user memory, giving confirmation of one's actions, and providing system-based help are more effective than systems that have added complexity, require individuals to remember previous actions, do not provide assistance with cognitive tasks, and are inefficient.”13 Election science scholars are still collecting and centralizing data from local jurisdictions (counties and townships) around the nation. One of the latest data points gathered is how much local jurisdictions spend to administer elections.14 While ESRA is a nascent organization, scholars have been publishing important election science research—many times in major journals—for quite some time.

Following the 2020 election, there has been renewed scrutiny of election administration in the United States. Given that election officials typically operate behind the scenes, media coverage of them represents one of the few opportunities for voters to learn about who oversees elections in their states. Drawing on literature on media effects, public opinion, and election administration, I seek to evaluate the conditions under which state election officials receive news coverage. How frequently does the media consider election administrators to be “newsworthy,” and in what contexts are they covered? When problems arise in election administration, how are election officials portrayed, and what might voters learn about them? To answer these questions, I collect and analyze an original dataset of more than 1,100 newspaper articles mentioning the state-level chief election officials in 10 states across 4 election cycles (2016–2022). Using a novel codebook, I manually code my data across a range of criteria to evaluate the election officials’ newsworthiness (“newsworthiness index”) and the conditions under which they are covered. My results suggest that media coverage referencing election officials occasionally elevates them as highly newsworthy actors. In line with literature on negativity bias in the media, news coverage of election officials is dominated by articles reporting on problems in the electoral process. Moreover, when election officials make headlines, a greater share of that coverage is problem related than not. These results have implications for the information that voters may acquire about their election officials through the media. Despite having a relatively low profile, chief election officials who do find themselves in the media spotlight may discover that their salience to constituents is often in the context of a problem occurring in election administration.

The 2020 presidential election saw election officials experience physical and social media threats, harassment, and animosity. Although little research exists regarding animosity toward US election officials, observers noted a sharp increase in 2020 in animosity toward US election officials. The harassment of election officials hindered their work in administering a free and fair election and may have generated doubts about electoral integrity. Our study: (1) Proposes a unique measurement and modeling strategy applicable across many social media networks to study toxicity directed at officials, institutions, or groups; (2) Collects a novel dataset of social media conversations about election administration in the 2020 election; (3) Uses joint sentiment-topic modeling to identify toxicity from the reactions of the public and election officials, and uses dynamic vector autoregression models to determine the temporal structure of the toxic conversations directed at election officials; (4) Finds that the level of animosity toward election officials spikes immediately after the election, that hostile topics overall make up about a quarter of the discussion share during this period, increasing to about 60% following the election, and that hostile topics come from left- and right-wing partisans. Our article concludes by discussing how similar data collection and topic modeling approaches could be deployed in future elections to monitor trolling and harassment of election officials, and to mitigate similar threats to successful election administration globally.

Many roots of American public administration are found in political and electoral reform. Its early developments were not based on theory but had their genesis in issue-by-issue situations. Electoral processes were and continue to be legitimate objects of public administration concern, the more especially so because elections and the way they are administered are a base on which representative democracy stands. The recent emphasis on civism in public administration offers an opportunity to reemphasize electoral processes which have integral importance to the political system. With declining percentages of eligible voters casting ballots in American elections it may soon be the case where we give an election and hardly anybody comes. All-mail or optional mail balloting elections offer an opportunity to reverse this deplorable decline. Uniquely among the nations of the world, local governments in the United States have conducted approximately 1,000 all-mail ballot elections in eight states in the past decade.I All-mail ballot elections are becoming routine in seven of the eight, New York being the exception where only one experimental election was held in Rochester. At least one contested election for city council seats has been held, in Gresham, Oregon.2 In round numbers, approximately 80 elections by all-mail balloting have been held in Kansas, 400 in Oregon, 350 in California, 40 in Montana, 12 in Washington, 15 in Missouri, and 6 in Nebraska, the most recent state to adopt enabling legislation. This article does not deal with the technical processes of holding mail-ballot elections. Each state's procedures vary somewhat from the others governing such matters as the number of days prior to the election by which ballots must be delivered, the time during which ballots are returnable, processes for counting the ballots, necessity for local ordinances to supplement state authorization, training for conducting elections including signature verification, ballot receptions, procedures for recounts, batching and data entry, and similar activities involved in election administration. This article concentrates on the three most important benefits from an array of advantages. These include (1) a decrease in overall costs of holding elections; (2) increased voter participation/convenience; and (3) an increase in the integrity of elections as a result of more time for voters to consider issues before casting their ballots. It also facilitates the ability of the elderly, infirm, handicapped, and those temporarily unable to participate on a specific time and date to vote. All-mail balloting is, however, a barrier to voting by those with no fixed address, but in-person voting at polling places rarely deals with that issue either. * This article summarizes the results of nearly 1,000 elections conducted entirely by mail in the United States in the past decade. It focuses on three of the main advantages of this uniquely American method of election administration: (1) markedly improved participation rates and increased convenience for the handicapped and others unable to get to the polls for in-person elections, (2) lower election administration costs per eligible voter or eligible voter voting, (3) increased integrity of the electoral processes. Presently operable in seven states, all-mail balloting has great promise for more truly determining the will of the majority through greater participation in free and fair elections-the bedrock of democracy. As election administrators and legislators become more familiar with the experience, it is reasonable to anticipate greater use of all mail balloting, particularly at the local level. This new way of doing one piece of the public's business is squarely in the tradition of American public administration reforms.

Much has been said since the 2000 presidential election regarding the administration of elections in the United States, particularly about how election administrators are selected and to whom they are responsive. Unfortunately, there has been little research on the different administrative structures that are possible and the preferences of Americans regarding these different administrative options. In this article we present the results from a national survey of American adults in which we asked them their preference for whether elections should be run by partisan or nonpartisan officials, whether the officials should be elected or appointed, and whether the administration of elections should be by a single unitary executive or by an election board. In addition to eliciting the basic preferences of Americans about these administrative choices, we also undertake a deeper analysis of these data to determine the underlying patterns in support for the different administrative options.

Election reformers commonly decry the participation of overt partisans in the administration of U.S. elections. Reliance on partisan actors to run elections in the United States makes it an outlier in comparison to other developed democracies. But focus on partisan involvement as a chief evil in U.S. election administration bears risk. Since the 2020 election particularly, both the political right and left have stoked fears that partisans “rig” U.S. elections. This has contributed to astronomic distrust of election outcomes and alarming targeting of election workers (and their families) with threats of violence and harassment. This chapter seeks to reframe the debate, suggesting that a fixation on partisan participation in election administration misses the mark. It contends instead that addressing single-party domination of state and local election administration should be the focus of reform.

The sometimes violent movement to reject the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election draws our attention to the topic of trust in the institution of American election administration. An examination of this topic must make an important distinction between trust in elections (a psychological construct) and the trustworthiness of election results (a legal construct). The history of election administration in the United States is full of examples of efforts to increase the trustworthiness of elections to ensure that results are based on fair and competent administration. The resilience of these efforts was on display following the 2020 election, as formal institutions rejected claims that the election was fraudulent. Still, the past two decades have seen a decline in trust in American elections that has primarily been driven by a slow but steady decline in trust among Republicans. Surprisingly, the increased polarization in trust most recently has been due more to Democrats suddenly becoming more trusting. Election officials must continue to try to overcome attacks on trust in the system, but it is unclear how long they can sustain the legal system guaranteeing free and fair elections without broad-based public trust in how we administer elections.

Securing elections and democracy in the United States requires adaptation and innovation in the field. The adoption and implementation of new strategies and procedures is not without risk. Ensuring the system is solvent and secure, once viewed solely under the purview of states and local governments, the security of elections in the United States has evolved to be an issue of concern and investment at all levels of government. The increased involvement of federal agencies in the administration of elections in the United States has created new opportunities for the development of intergovernmental relationships and resources. Discussed in this case is the role of the Department of Homeland Security in election administration, as experienced by one election administration expert.

Although states and local governments administer elections in the United States, the federal government has also occasionally enacted laws that regulate election administration. Most prominent among these laws are the National Voter Registration Act, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, and the Help America Vote Act. With its recent attempt to enact the For the People Act, Congress has demonstrated an interest in more aggressively regulating election administration. This chapter discusses both the promise and the challenges of federal election laws, with an emphasis on federal election administration laws (and excluding the Voting Rights Act). It discusses the good that these laws can accomplish, but also the difficulties enforcing them. It explains how federal election administration laws fit into voting rights scholarship, and suggests avenues for future research. Building on these insights, it concludes by suggesting novel ways that the federal government could effectively administer elections while retaining the benefits of local election administration.

In what circumstances should there be a private right of action to sue for violations of federal election statutes. Lying at the intersection of federal courts and election law, this question has arisen in several recent cases, as private litigants have increasingly called upon federal courts to resolve election disputes. The question was before the U.S. Supreme Court in Brunner v. Ohio Republican Party (“Brunner”) which alleged that a state chief election official had failed to follow the requirements of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (“HAVA”) pertaining to statewide voter registration lists. In a one-paragraph, unanimous per curiam opinion, the Court held that a political party could not sue, reversing the lower courts’ conclusion that there was a private right of action. The brevity of the Brunner decision masks the significance and complexity of the larger question. To be sure, the issue in Brunner was a straightforward one under existing private-right-of-action doctrine, which requires an “unambiguously conferred” individual right. The problem is this doctrine fails to account for the vital role that federal courts play in overseeing elections in the United States, especially in pre-election litigation. The availability of a private right of action is especially critical in election cases – and the existing doctrine especially ill-fitting – for both conceptual and practical reasons. On a conceptual level, election cases typically involve non-individuated or collective interests. It follows that the Court’s insistence on an unambiguously conferred individual right makes little sense in election cases. Existing doctrine is also problematic from a practical perspective, given the absence of any institution besides the federal courts with the ability to ensure consistency in the interpretation of federal law. The ultimate consequence is to leave the interpretation of federal election law in the hands of state and local officials, except in those rare instances when the U.S. Attorney General decides to sue. This is particularly troubling given the partisan affiliation of most state and many local election officials, which creates an inherent conflict of interest and makes federal judicial oversight especially important. The Court’s stringent approach to private rights of action is therefore ill-suited to federal election law disputes, because they involve quintessentially public rights for which a federal judicial forum is essential. In Brunner, the Court failed to consider the distinctive character of election controverises. In fact, both the lower courts and the Supreme Court got it wrong in this case – even though they arrived at diametrically opposite conclusions. The lower courts incorrectly applied existing precedent, which foreclosed private enforcement of HAVA’s matching requirement. But the Supreme Court was also incorrect, in failing to reconsider this precedent to account for the especially important role the federal courts play in electoral disputes. Though faithfully applying existing doctrine, the Court missed an opportunity to correct – or at least limit – a line of precedent that has unfortunate consequences in the realm of election law. The Article concludes that, in the appropriate case, the Court should revisit Brunner and relax the standard for private enforcement of federal election statutes under Section 1983.

Local election administrators stand at a key intersection in the United States’ election system managing registration, ballot access, early and Election Day voting, and reporting election outcomes. The elections policy landscape within which these administrators and their offices operate has rapidly changed over the past quarter century, yet because of the complex and decentralized nature of elections, there has been not much progress made in applying theories of policy stability and change to election administration. This research begins to rectify this using “policyscape” and “policy drift” as two lenses to conceptualize stability and change in election administration. The research shows that policy drift helps to explain a disconnect between the current service expectations from these offices and existing models of staffing and workforce development, shown from an inductive analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with election officials in the State of Oregon. Finally, we argue that research on local election administration needs more theory building and would benefit from the use of qualitative research to understand the nuances and details of election administration and the needs of administrators.

Federal elections in the United States are conducted almost entirely at the state-level with no assistance from an electoral management body. The current federal election administration procedures lead to lower voter participation rates compared to other industrialized nations, specifically when considering Canada. Canadian federal elections are administered entirely through a national electoral management body, and Canadian voters are subjected to uniform procedures throughout the country. On the other hand, American citizens living in different states have significantly different voting experiences. By comparing the legal frameworks governing voter registration in both countries, this article will explore how processes such as automatic voter registration in Canada contrast with more restrictive policies in the U.S. Additionally, the article investigates the role of voter identification laws in each country, analyzing their potential effect on voter turnout. Through this comparative analysis, this article attempts to highlight the ways in which registration and identification procedures influence participation rates and the broader implications for the democratic process in the United States. To ameliorate the failures of the current system, this article proposes that the United States create a federal electoral management body and ensure that states have broad voter registration and identification procedures. If these changes can be added to our current system, it is likely the United States will experience an increase in voter participation.

Electoral Vulnerabilities in the United States: Past, Present, and Future

Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States. Voting system can involve transmission of ballots and votes via private computer networks or the Internet. Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. The aim of this paper is to people who have citizenship of India and whose age is above 18 years and of any sex can give their vote through online without going to any physical polling station. Election Commission Officer (Election Commission Officer who will verify whether registered user and candidates are authentic or not) to participate in online voting. This online voting system is highly secured, and its design is very simple, ease of use and also reliable. The proposed software is developed and tested to work on Ethernet and allows online voting. It also creates and manages voting and an election detail as all the users must login by user name and password and click on his favorable candidates to register vote. This will increase the voting percentage in India. By applying high security it will reduce false votes.

This paper examines how individual-level partisanship and state-level factors affect perceptions of electoral integrity in the United States. We find that evaluations of the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election national outcome were only modestly conditioned by the quality of election administration in a person’s state. Perceptions of electoral legitimacy were much more substantially conditioned by motivated reasoning associated with a person’s partisanship, the partisan context Republicans resided in, and Republican partisans’ residence in a swing-state where final results from 2020 were delayed due to late-counted ballots. Overall, estimated effects of the quality of election administration on confidence in elections are null or modest. Partisan factors associated with Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” about the 2020 US presidential election were the strongest forces predicting lack of confidence in US elections and perceptions that election officials were altering results. These factors were not evident in 2016. We discuss how these findings may reflect a fundamental alteration of attitudes among Republican voters and elites about the legitimacy of democratic elections in the US, rather than reflecting cyclical variation in partisan confidence associated with which party won the past election.