Table Of Contentg
The Future of Election
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Administration Bro Ha A.
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Elections, Voting, Technology
Series Editor
Kathleen Hale
Department of Political Science
Auburn University
Auburn, AL, USA
This series examines the relationships between people, electoral pro-
cesses and technologies, and democracy. Elections are a fundamental
aspect of a free and democratic society and, at their core, they involve
a citizenry making selections for who will represent them. This series
examines the ways in which citizens select their candidates—the voting
technologies used, the rules of the game that govern the process—and
considers how changes in processes and technologies affect the voter
and the democratic process.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14965
Mitchell Brown · Kathleen Hale ·
Bridgett A. King
Editors
The Future
of Election
Administration
Editors
Mitchell Brown Kathleen Hale
Auburn University Auburn University
Auburn, AL, USA Auburn, AL, USA
Bridgett A. King
Auburn University
Auburn, AL, USA
Elections, Voting, Technology
ISBN 978-3-030-14946-8 ISBN 978-3-030-14947-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14947-5
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Foreword
Everyone should have a voice in improving election administration.
There are some who see competition—negative competition—and
try to maneuver territories for control. I don’t see it that way—I think
everyone should have a voice in the process. But this approach takes
time.
Shortly after the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC) first
opened in 2005, I walked in the door as their new Executive Director.
They had been working for eight months without many employees—
the ones there were people who came from the old Federal Election
Commission (FEC) Clearinghouse and from a few other federal agen-
cies. The EAC hired the general counsel first, and looking back, this
was a wise decision. We had a lot of federal regulations to deal with.
For a number of years, there were many rules about compliance that
we had to deal with in order to become a federal agency. Achieving full
compliance was a challenge, and Alice Miller in particular helped us get
through our first federal audit. The auditors came and lived in our office
for over six months, went through every sheet of paper, and made sure
we complied with every regulation out there.
v
vi Foreword
In addition to the audit, the other major work of our office at the
time was developing the voting systemcertification program. We
received a lot of criticism from Congress and some advocacy groups
because it was slow work—but that slowness was necessary. This kind
of work cannot be done overnight. Working with our partner organ-
ization the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST),
Commissioner Donetta Davidson served as the designated federal
officer and tirelessly worked with our staff and other stakeholders from
around the country for a long time to develop the program. The result
is that today we have a set of protocols with involvement and buy-in
from all sectors. Standards and processes change and evolve, but the
approach and infrastructure is there and it took almost ten years to
build. This type of work is murky, takes a long time, and involves a lot
of blood, sweat, and tears. It involves trial and error. It means working
with vendors and advocacy groups. But ultimately the outcome is worth
a process like this, one that is multifaceted, complicated, involves many
people, and takes time.
It’s like that in all aspects of our business. This year, I will celebrate
my 50th anniversary in elections, and none of the changes I’ve been a
part of happened overnight. They happened because someone had an
idea and worked for years to make it work.
There are many other examples. When Washington state first had the
idea of moving to voting by mail, the naysayers said it wouldn’t work,
that the United States Postal Service (USPS) couldn’t handle the load,
that voters wouldn’t accept it, and that there would be fraud. But today
the voters in Washington, Oregon, and Colorado love vote-by-mail and
if it went away they would be upset. Electronic pollbooks (EPBs) are
another example of this—voters were wary at first, jurisdictions were
reluctant to purchase them because of the kinks that need to be worked
out when adopting first-generation technology, but today EPBs help
the process. Another is early voting. Texas was the first state to adopt
this, and many people were reluctant, afraid of how hard it would be to
manage. But early voting has been a success there and spread around the
country.
To improve election administration systems, you need cooperation
between local election officials, state legislatures, and county boards.
Foreword vii
You need to work with other stakeholders. And you need to take the
time to work things out. There is nothing that has happened in our
business in the last 50 years that was an instantaneous success. Change
takes time and cooperation among officials, voters, legislators, vendors,
and community groups. People need to work together to make positive
change happen.
The next generation of positive reform is coming. There are new ways
for people to transmit ballots from overseas and sophisticated tracking
programs for absentee ballots. These are big services for voters, but their
development and spread require vendors, USPS, local election offices,
and other groups, all to cooperate and to support voter experiences and
consequently to enhance the confidence of voters.
There is also no crystal ball to know what’s going to happen 10 years
from now. But we can get there by including a plurality of voices to
help identify, prepare for, and address gaps. There are other issues that
we need to pay attention to and determine whether they are consist-
ent problems and concerns around the country—provisional voting
(particularly poll workers who make the process uneven across jurisdic-
tions); ballot layout; signature requirements and signature verification
rules that no longer make any sense; short periods for canvassing; and
so on. There are situations all around the country right now that need
greater scrutiny, and these things need to be examined by outside parties
who won’t make a buck off of the results of the research.
The Election Administration Program at Auburn University filled
a critical space when they helped to create the Certified Elections/
Registration Administrator (CERA) program with the Election Center
and later created the Election Administration Symposium Series. The
entrance of the academic community into election administration after
2000 was a good thing. But some parts of the election administra-
tion community have been more reluctant about this research in part
because they didn’t understand the value of good research and in part
because they were wary of bad research. It is important that we study
practical topics surrounding election administration so long as there is
feedback from practitioners. Academics who do this work in a vacuum
produce useless research. This is where Auburn University research-
ers have done a good job in comparison with many other academic
viii Foreword
researchers in this area. And this is the value of their Symposium
Series and this volume—bridging the gap between practitioners and
researchers.
If you look at a crossword puzzle and you call it the election process,
and then take some pieces out and lay them to the side, these pieces
become, or represent, the problems and issues in election administra-
tion today. These include things like ballot design, security, equipment,
provisional voting, and so on. Then you have to find people to help you
pick up the pieces and fill in the holes. When this is done, you have a
beautiful picture.
I know there are a lot of election officials who express concern that
other people are in their business, and others who feel that people are
stepping on their toes or encroaching on their territory. But no one
election official, advocacy group, or researcher owns this topic—there is
no single individual or organization who can solve this topic. Bringing
election officials at all levels together with researchers and other stake-
holders, like Brown, Hale, and King do in these volumes, pushes the
conversation forward and only helps in the long run. The Auburn
University Symposium Series is designed around panels with a great mix
of stakeholders—practitioners, academics, vendors, and advocates—
talking about important topics. These books put those conversations on
paper to help move conversation, policy, practice, and research in elec-
tion administration forward.
Loudonville, New York Tom Wilkey
Executive Director, United States
Election Assistance Commission (Retd.)
Executive Director, New York State Board of Elections (Retd.)
Tom Wilkey is a founding member of the Election Center and joined the Erie
County Board of Elections in Buffalo, New York. He joined the New York State
Board of Elections in 1979 serving as director of communications and voter
education, where he was responsible for the oversight of New York’s 62 county
election offices. Wilkey has served as executive director of the New York Board
of Elections, and as both a member and participant in numerous national
Foreword ix
committees involved in developing the National Voter Registration Act and the
Help America Vote Act. Wilkey served as president of the National Association
of State Election Directors and is a proud life member of the New York State
Election Commissioners Association. Most recently, Wilkey served as the first
executive director of the US Election Assistance Commission.
