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This conversation explored the unique challenges of rural election administration and the research behind it.

Joining the discussion:

• Dr. Cameron Wimpy, Director of the Institute for Rural Initiatives (IRI) at Arkansas State University

• Jennifer Clack, Election Coordinator, Craighead County, Arkansas

• Sydney Romine, Election Director, Surry County, North Carolina

IRI was recently awarded a grant to explore how election administration practices vary across the urban-rural spectrum. Dr. Wimpy recently hosted the Rural Election Administration Symposium to map out some of the challenges and opportunities that distinguish rural election administration. The discussion took a deeper look at this research effort and heard some of Dr. Wimpy's initial findings as well as the firsthand experience of election practitioners.

Books & Ballots is a webinar series – now found on Substack and as a podcast on Spotify – hosted in partnership with Ready for Tuesday, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), and MIT Election Data + Science Lab (MEDSL).

Note: TJ Pyche is now with Ready for Tuesday.

There are more than 10,000 election jurisdictions in the United States. The majority of these are small townships or counties generally located in rural areas of our country. And while election administrators adhere to the same laws and regulations, rural election officials face different challenges than those faced in the large, urban jurisdictions.

Join us on March 26 at 1 p.m. for a conversation exploring the unique challenges of rural election administration and the research behind it.

Dr. Cameron Wimpy is the director of the Institute for Rural Initiatives (IRI) at Arkansas State University. IRI was recently awarded a grant to explore how election administration practices vary across the urban-rural spectrum. He recently hosted the Rural Election Administration Symposium to map out some of the challenges and opportunities that distinguish rural election administration.

The discussion will take a deeper look at this research effort and hear some of Dr. Wimpy’s initial findings as well as the firsthand experience of election practitioners Jennifer Clack of Craighead County, Arkansas, a symposium participant, and Sydney Romine of Surry County, North Carolina, who has attended a number of Election Science, Reform, and Administration (ESRA) conferences to learn about the intersection of elections administration and academic research.

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Books & Ballots is a webinar series – now found on Substack and as a podcast on Spotify – hosted in partnership with Ready for Tuesday, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), and MIT Election Data + Science Lab (MEDSL).

In this Q&A, we discuss his path from local journalism to election administration scholarship, what “practice” really means in the journal’s title, what makes a practitioner submission compelling, and why academic work is deeply relevant in a fast-moving professional environment. We also cover his alternate career plans involving Wheel of Fortune.

This conversation is the first in an ongoing Books & Ballots Q&A series highlighting the people shaping election administration from different angles – research, practice, policy, and everything in between.

The Journal of Election Administration, Research, and Practice is now fully open access. Anyone can read it online without creating an account or providing an email address.

The journal is available on the Election Center’s website, and all articles are free to read and share.

How did you get into election administration research? What was your path?

Like a lot of people, I didn’t start out thinking I would work in elections.

I came to Auburn for my undergraduate degree in journalism and worked in news for a while, mostly at small-town newspapers at the local level. I entered the industry right when the bottom was really falling out in the mid-2000s.

I eventually went back to school and earned an MPA from Jacksonville State University in Alabama. After that, I returned to Auburn to begin a Ph.D. program. While there, I connected with faculty members involved in election administration research, especially given Auburn’s relationship with the Election Center and the broader body of research in that area.

That experience really opened my eyes. Like many people, when I thought about elections before that, I thought primarily about the political side – campaigns and running races. I hadn’t fully appreciated the government and administrative side of elections: the many different ways they’re run, how systems operate, and the wide variation across jurisdictions.

Learning about those differences and the operational complexity of running elections captured my imagination. I ended up working closely with faculty studying election administration and ultimately wrote my dissertation in that area.

You’re the managing editor of the Journal of Election Administration, Research and Practice. As you work to grow the journal, what gap was it created to address? What’s its broader purpose?

A lot of it goes back to what we talked about earlier.

We accept articles from both the academic side and from practitioners and policy professionals. The goal is to bring those groups together. That idea isn’t unique to elections, but you often hear that academics who study a field aren’t always connected to the day-to-day realities of the people actually doing the work.

Mitchell Brown, Kathleen Hale, and the group that founded the journal wanted to help bridge that gap. I came on a bit later, but the vision was to create a space where practitioners could publish about their everyday experiences, operational challenges, and policy questions, alongside academic research.

One of the features I really like is that we invite practitioners to respond to academic papers. They can offer feedback such as, “This aligns with what I see in my office,” or “It would have been helpful to focus more on this aspect, given how it plays out in practice.”

The broader purpose is to build that bridge between research and practice and strengthen the connection between the two communities. That’s the central idea behind the journal and what we’re working to accomplish.

When you think about who reads the journal, is it the same group of people who write for it? Who is the audience you’re trying to cultivate?

Yes, it’s largely the same group.

We’re focused on people involved in elections and those interested in election policy. That includes practitioners, researchers, and policy professionals. The field is so varied that it’s easy for people to become cloistered within their own state or locality and assume that the way they run elections is the way it’s done everywhere.

One of the most eye-opening aspects for readers is seeing just how many different ways elections can be administered. That exposure can spark ideas, encourage adaptation, and create connections across jurisdictions.

Ultimately, we’re trying to grow a community. When people understand they’re not alone in the challenges they face, it strengthens the field. Building community builds resilience, generates new ideas, and helps make election administration stronger overall. That’s what we’re aiming to do with the journal.

The word “practice” is in the title of the journal. What does that mean in real terms? How does it shape what you publish and what you seek out?

We’re not overly restrictive about what we publish, but we do prioritize work that focuses on the everyday concerns practitioners face. “Practice” means we’re looking for articles grounded in what election officials actually do day to day.

From the academic side, that often includes research examining how practitioners carry out their jobs, how policies affect their work, and how administrative systems function in real-world settings. We’re especially interested in research that connects directly to operational realities rather than staying purely theoretical.

Highlighting practice is important because election officials often feel overlooked, even within their own local governments. Outside of major election cycles, their work can be out of sight and out of mind. They may receive limited funding and attention despite the complexity and responsibility of their roles.

By emphasizing practice, we aim to bring that work to the forefront, make practitioners feel seen, and strengthen the broader election community.

If I’m an election official or practitioner on the non-academic side and I’m submitting something to the journal, what makes a submission compelling? What makes you want to publish it?

One thing we appreciate is voice.

Academic writing tends to be formal and structured, and it needs to be. It’s designed to be precise and minimize ambiguity. Practitioner submissions don’t have to follow that same model. In fact, we don’t want them to feel overly formal or stiff.

We’re looking for writing that’s clear, accessible, and grounded in real experience. It can be conversational. It should sound like you. We want readers to connect with what you’ve lived and what you’ve learned. It shouldn’t feel like a slog to get through.

Some of the strongest pieces we’ve published are firsthand accounts of how election officials responded to emergency events. We’ve run several articles about how officials navigated elections in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Those pieces almost read like short epics. You see the obstacles they faced, the decisions they had to make on the fly, and the pressure of preparing for an election just weeks after a major disaster. Readers can relate to that and learn from it.

We also have a practitioner reflection section where officials can talk about their personal experiences and how those experiences fit into the broader election landscape.

We want submissions that are interesting and thoughtful, even when they tackle complex issues. We’re not trying to simplify the field, but you don’t need an enormous vocabulary or highly technical language to make an impact. Clear, authentic, experience-driven writing is compelling to us.

And we’re always looking for new submissions.

Election administration has changed rapidly over the last decade. Academic journals are not always seen as fast-moving or immediately responsive. How do you keep the journal relevant in a rapidly changing environment?

A lot is changing quickly in election administration. At the same time, many of the core operational elements remain relatively constant. That balance helps.

We publish articles on topics that are both timely and foundational. For example, in a previous issue we included work on ranked choice voting and how it is implemented. In the current issue, we are finalizing an academic article on social media usage in elections. These topics may respond to current developments, but they also address structural questions that do not disappear after a single news cycle.

Academic research often involves longer-term studies, but that does not mean it becomes irrelevant quickly. In many cases, the findings remain useful a year or two later because the underlying administrative questions persist.

Another factor is the diversity of election systems across states. There is always something to examine because states approach policies differently. An article can serve as an educational resource. For example, someone may want to understand how same-day voter registration works in practice. We try to publish both policy-oriented perspectives and academic analyses so readers can see the issue from multiple angles. That gives them a fuller picture of what has worked, what challenges have emerged, and what might be improved.

Ultimately, readers decide how to apply what they learn. If a policy already exists in their state, they may use the research to strengthen it. If they are considering adopting something new, the journal provides material they can reference when answering questions from legislators or local officials. Even if an article is not about something that happened yesterday, it can still offer practical value for decision-making and long-term planning.

If you weren’t working in election administration or election administration-focused research, what would you be doing instead?

I always tell people my dream job would be to take over for Vanna White when she retires from Wheel of Fortune. Hopefully that won’t be for a long time.

It just seems like a great job. You press the letter, it lights up, and you get paid – what I assume is a decent amount of money – to do it.

Editor’s Note: Books & Ballots conversations are now being reposted to Spotify as part of our effort to make these discussions more accessible. You can now listen to full webinar recordings as podcast episodes, whether you’re commuting, traveling, or catching up between meetings. Be sure to follow the show on Spotify so you don’t miss future conversations.

What does it really mean to trust elections?

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In this recorded episode of Books & Ballots, we focused on public perceptions of elections — whether voters believe elections are free, fair, and conducted properly. Often described as “trust” or “confidence,” these perceptions shape how people experience and interpret the electoral process.

Academic researchers have spent years studying trends in election confidence, partisan differences, and the factors that influence public attitudes. In this conversation, three leading scholars shared findings they recently presented at the Southern Political Science Association Conference, unpacking the patterns, shifts, and insights they’re seeing in the data.

Joining the discussion:

• Dr. Lonna Atkeson (latkeson@fsu.edu), Florida State University LeRoy Collins Eminent Scholar in Civic Education and Political Science and Director of the LeRoy Collins Institute.

• Dr. Thad Kousser (tkousser@mail.ucsd.edu), Associate Dean of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego and Co-Director of the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections.

• Dr. Mara Suttmann-Lea (csuttmann@conncoll.edu), Associate Professor of American Politics at Connecticut College and Andrew Carnegie Research Fellow.

Together, they explore what the research says about public confidence in elections, how those attitudes have evolved, and what it all means for election administrators, policymakers, and voters. Additional resources from their research are below

Books & Ballots is now hosted on Substack and is a partnership of The Elections Group, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), and the MIT Election Data + Science Lab (MEDSL).

Resources

Dr. Suttmann-Lea’s research

Suttmann-Lea, Mara, Thessalia Merivaki, and Rachel Orey. 2025. “When Election Officials Speak, Do Voters Listen? Trust-Building Communications, Information Seeking, and Voter Confidence in the 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections.” Political Communication.

Mara Suttmann-Lea and Thessalia Merivaki. 2024. Voter Education Report for the US Election Assistance Commission. US Election Assistance Commission.

Merivaki, Thessalia, Mara Suttmann-Lea, Mary-Catherine McCreary, and Tyler Daniel. 2024. “The #TrustedInfo2022 Dataset: States’ Trust-Building Social Media Campaigns during the 2022 Election Cycle.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 24(4): 468–78.

Mara Suttmann-Lea and Thessalia Merivaki. 2023. “The Impact of Voter Education on Voter Confidence: Evidence from the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 22(2): 145–65.

Election Official Communications Tracker Beta Version 2.0 (with Lia Merivaki)

Dr. Kousser’s research

Kousser, Thad, Lauren Prather, Laura Uribe, Theodoros Ntounias, Seth Hill, Mindy Romero, Cheryl Boudreau, Jennifer Merolla, Jennifer Gaudette, Mackenzie Lockhart. 2026. Trust in American Elections Has Declined Since 2024, Broad Concerns about ICE at Polling Places in 2026. Report from the UC San Diego Center on Transparent and Trusted Elections.

Gaudette, Jennifer, Seth J. Hill, Thad Kousser, Mackenzie Lockhart, and Mindy Romero. 2025. “Can Official Messaging on Trust in Elections Break Through Partisan Polarization?” British Journal of Political Science 55: e16.

Kousser, Thad, Jennifer Gaudette, Seth Hill, and Mindy Romero. 2025. “Can Informational Videos Increase Trust in Elections?” UC San Diego Center on Transparent and Trusted Elections.

Lockhart, Research Mackenzie, Jennifer Gaudette, Seth Hill, and Thad Kousser. 2025. “Can Prebunking Messages Convince Voters to Trust Delayed Results?” UC San Diego Center on Transparent and Trusted Elections.

Prather, Lauren, and Thad Kousser. 2025. “Can Election Facility Tours Increase Trust in Elections?” UC San Diego Center on Transparent and Trusted Elections.

Lockhart, Mackenzie, Jennifer Gaudette, Seth J Hill, Thad Kousser, Mindy Romero, and Laura Uribe. 2024. “Voters Distrust Delayed Election Results, but a Prebunking Message Inoculates against Distrust.” PNAS Nexus 3(10): pgae414.

Thad Kousser, Lauren Prather, Laura Uribe, and Alex Zhao. 2025. How Did Trust in Elections Change After the 2024 Elections. UC San Diego Yankelovich Center Report.

Dr. Atkeson’s research

Atkeson, Lonna Rae, Eli McKown-Dawson, and Robert M. Stein. 2025. “The Costs of Voting and Voter Confidence.” Political Research Quarterly 78(1): 22–37.

Atkeson, Lonna Rae, Eli McKown-Dawson, Jack Santucci, and Kyle L. Saunders. 2024. “The Impact of Voter Confusion in Ranked Choice Voting.” Social Science Quarterly 105(4): 1029–41.

Atkeson, Lonna Rae, R. Michael Alvarez, and Thad E. Hall. 2015. “Voter Confidence: How to Measure It and How It Differs from Government Support.” Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy 14(3): 207–19.

Atkeson, Lonna Rae, and Kyle L. Saunders. 2007. “The Effect of Election Administration on Voter Confidence: A Local Matter?” PS: Political Science and Politics 40(4): 655–60.

The first featured presentation will be delivered by Derek Clinger of the State Democracy Research Initiative. He will discuss a proposal outlining how states could leverage unclaimed funds to support election administration. Following his presentation, Derek will take questions from participants.

The event will take place on Wednesday, March 4, at 12 p.m. ET. You can register here or by clicking below.

Register

If you’d like to review the full proposal in advance, it is available here.

For additional information, please contact Brandon Fincher at finchrb@auburn.edu.

The challenges of election administration funding are well known. Addressing them at scale requires thinking outside the box.

In 2025, Auburn University and the Election Center put out a call for ideas on innovative election funding solutions. Teams from across the country submitted proposals designed to encourage creative thinking and new collaborations between election officials and researchers. A panel of national experts evaluated the proposals and selected several contest winners, whose ideas will be translated into toolkits and other practical resources for election officials over the coming year.

In this webinar, we sat down with members of that expert panel to talk through the challenges of election funding, key takeaways from the contest and symposium, and what it will take to build solutions that actually work for election administrators.

The conversation features Professor Mitchell Brown (Auburn University), Professor Charles Stewart (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Matt Weil (Bipartisan Policy Center), and Karen Brinson Bell (Advance Elections).

This webinar is part of the 2026 Books & Ballots series, a partnership of The Elections Group, the Center for Election Innovation & Research (CEIR), and the MIT Election Data + Science Lab (MEDSL), focused on connecting research and practice in the mechanics of democracy.

They’ve been the best kind of conversations, where people share what they’ve tried, what worked, what didn’t, and what they wish they’d known sooner.

About two years ago, after the annual Election Science, Reform, and Administration Conference, we started calling a subset of these conversations Books & Ballots. The idea was simple: bring the research (“books”) into conversation with the real-world work of administering elections (“ballots”).

Now, as the series heads into its third year – in collaboration with partners at the Center for Election Innovation & Research and the MIT Election Data + Science Lab – this Substack is the new home for those conversations.

Here you’ll find recordings and takeaways from our webinars and workshops, along with practical insights drawn from both research and lived experience. We’ll continue to focus on ideas you can use in your own office, whether that’s improving hiring and training, planning budgets, or designing better processes.

My hope is that this space makes good thinking more accessible and a little less abstract.

I’m glad you’re here.

For most voters, vote centers seem simple: instead of traveling to an assigned precinct, they can cast a ballot at any location in their area. But behind the scenes, significant planning, coordination, and logistics are required to get those centers up and running smoothly.

In this webinar, we explored the implementation and administration of vote centers. Researchers shared insights from recent studies, and local election officials discussed lessons learned and practical considerations from their own experience operating vote centers.

The election workforce is the backbone of American democracy, responsible for implementing complex election systems with integrity, accuracy, and transparency. While many programs have focused on supporting chief election officials and poll workers, far less attention has been given to the staff who handle the day-to-day operations — coordinating logistics, ensuring compliance, communicating with the public, and keeping election offices running smoothly.

In this conversation, we explored what it means to train and support the full bench of talent within election offices. The session featured ongoing research from the Center for Election Innovation & Research examining gaps and needs in workforce training, persistent challenges, and promising approaches that offices and partners across the field could consider.

How can engineering tools help election officials solve complex operational challenges? What innovations are available to support planning, resource allocation, and ballot management? And how can election administrators partner with STEM professionals to build the next generation of solutions?

In this webinar, we spoke with the Engineering for Democracy Institute (EDI) about tools designed specifically for election administrators. The session highlighted practical applications including VoteTime.app to estimate voter wait times, VBMTime.app to project vote-by-mail processing workloads, BallotStorage.app to calculate warehouse space and storage costs, and VoteLayout.app to design polling place layouts.

EDI also shared how engineering methods and direct collaboration with election officials are improving efficiency, resilience, and planning, and discussed opportunities to engage with STEM professionals through its Science for Election Needs (S4EN) initiative.

How can mail ballots be verified more quickly and accurately? What practices help prevent avoidable ballot rejections? And how can tabulation be made safer — and quieter — for election workers?

In this webinar, researchers and practitioners from the Engineering for Democracy Institute, King County (WA), U.S. Digital Response, the University of Southern California, and the University of Pennsylvania explored these questions and shared practical strategies to improve mail ballot verification, processing, and tabulation. The conversation highlighted real-world approaches election offices can use to strengthen both efficiency and security.

Who volunteers to be a poll worker? How do poll workers view their role? And how might recruiting trusted groups — like veterans and military families — strengthen trust in elections?

In this webinar, The Elections Group and the Center for Election Innovation and Research highlighted research from the Election Science, Reform, & Administration (ESRA) conference focused on what motivates people to serve as poll workers.

Professors Anita Manion, David Kimball, Matt Lamb, and Michael Hanmer shared and discussed their findings on poll worker motivations, beliefs, and recruitment strategies, and what those insights mean for election offices in practice.

This session was part of the Books & Ballots series, a partnership with the Center for Election Innovation & Research and Arizona State University’s Mechanics of Democracy Laboratory.

Elections are an essential government function. In this webinar, we looked at how they are funded — and what happens when funding falls short — focusing on the practical realities election offices face at the state and local levels.

Researchers from the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) and the Elections and Voting Information Center (EVIC) shared insights on common funding challenges, strategies for budgeting critical needs, and ways election offices can strengthen financial planning and long-term sustainability.

In this webinar, we spoke with researchers about election administration spending in local jurisdictions — examining what the data shows about how elections are funded, where costs fall on local governments, and what those spending patterns mean for administrators and policymakers.

We spoke with researchers from the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement about their work on election worker recruitment, retention, and satisfaction, and how election offices could apply those insights to strengthen their workforce.

In this webinar, we were joined by Will Adler of the Bipartisan Policy Center and Paul Manson, a faculty member at Portland State University and research director for the Elections & Voting Information Center, to discuss their research on the election administration workforce and how it could be helpful to election officials.