Voting Systems and Election Reform: What Do Election Officials Think?

After the completion of the highly successful 2004-2005 capstone project, "Voting Systems and Election Reform: What Do Election Officials Think?", the Congressional Research Service agreed with the principal investigators from the school that another study would be useful after the 2006 election. The second study focused on three topics:1. a follow-up survey on selected questions from the previous study to identify trends relating to issues of interest, such as attitudes toward electronic voting and demographic characteristics of election officials; 2. an examination of selected new questions, in particular the experiences and perceptions of officials about compliance with the requirements of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that went into effect in January 2006; and 3. an in-depth exploration of selected topics through structured interviews with a sample of election officials. One example is the role vendors play in decisions about the purchase of voting systems — an issue about which the earlier survey provided somewhat contradictory results.The follow-up study was useful to the relevant congressional committees as they considered possible revisions to the Help America Vote Act in light of experiences in the 2004 and 2006 elections