Understanding Election Administration Systems

This chapter begins with a basic description of the structure of US election systems, the public institutions that are responsible for the conduct of elections. The second part of the chapter describes the different subsystems that make up the whole of election administration and shows not only how the formal institutions interact in the provision of elections but also how the subsystems involve other actors whose primary purpose is not necessarily elections but who still affect election systems. The third part focuses on the relationships between election systems and the external environment and among subsystems of electoral systems. Here, we explore how a change in one part of a system can affect another.