State Innovations in Election Administration

This chapter considers a sample of election administration initiatives at the state level. Under the US federal system, the states retain considerable latitude to pass laws regarding the time, manner, and place of elections. In broad and historic terms, the role of the national government has been to focus on questions of equity in access and participation in order to protect individual rights (Ewald 2009). As discussed in earlier chapters of this book, the relationship between the national and state governments evolved as the national government stepped in to ensure de jure and de facto political equality. State latitude in election administration is reflected in the wide variety of state and local laws and practices that are discussed throughout this book. It is also reflected in the discretion awarded to states under national policy initiatives that frame modern elections. As we have noted, state discretion is a hallmark of the American federal system. States have taken advantage of this discretion, for example, in their approaches under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) in developing plans to convert to electronic voting systems, establish electronic voter registration databases, and coordinate activities between state and local election offices (Alvarez and Hall 2005; Hale and Brown 2013; Palazzolo and Ceasar 2005).