What is the impact of major court rulings on voter ID laws? How are states ensuring voter registration lists are accurate? Which new voting system designs are being developed for the marketplace? Finding these answers and other information about elections policy can quickly eat up the kind of time that a lawmaker, legislative staffer or elections administrator can hardly afford to spend. But that was life before the Elections Administration Research Database, a new tool launched today by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The database brings together more than 1,900 reports that, altogether, address a wide range of elections topics. It is supported by generous funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The collection includes reports dating back to 2000 and reflects a variety of perspectives, from election administrators to nonprofit organizations to academic researchers. The reports are grouped by subject, author, publication and state and can be searched by a combination of these categories, or by date ranges or a specific article title.
We expect the database to serve as a quick guide to useful elections research, especially for state legislators. After all, lawmakers introduced 2,384 elections bills in 2013. So far in 2014, they’ve added 2,171 more. These totals reflect an interest in improving the way elections are run.
Fortunately, elections administrators and policy researchers have long focused on specific ways to improve the elections process and have shared their findings in publications.
Full Article: NCSL Launches Elections Administration Research Database > National Conference of State Legislatures.