Bolstering Funding and Practices for Resilient Elections

Free and fair elections are the bedrock of representative democracy. The U.S. elections system, as disperse and complicated as it may be, has reflected the will of its citizens and promoted peaceable transfers thousands of times via federal, state, and local elections.

Today, this essential foundation is under stress. Election administrators continually lack the support and resources needed to efficiently administer electoral processes. The public servants that staff local election offices work well over a year to facilitate candidate filings, procure and test voting equipment, and communicate important information to voters. Low budgets, limited staff, outdated equipment, and ever-increasing public scrutiny have placed historic strains on our election system. Moreover, jurisdictions often compete for high-demand resources, and technology infrastructure costs continue to grow.

In our federal system of government, the responsibility of determining the “time, place, and manner” of elections lies with the states. Decentralization is a feature not a bug: election results tabulated locally keep voters closely involved in their own democratic process and limit the possibility for widespread manipulation. Election work is so vital that in 2017, the Department of Homeland Security officially designated elections as a critical infrastructure. But just as local needs, based on the unique composition of their own populations, vary wildly, so do the various combinations of funding streams.

In February 2024, our institutes invited administrators and policy experts to join us at a symposium to examine why understanding how the more than 8,000 election jurisdictions across the country are funded is such a complex issue. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be. As the researchers, practitioners, and experts in this report show, more funding allows for more efficiency in administering an election.

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