Replay: Books and Ballots Conversation on Encouraging Innovations in Election Administration Funding

Lessons and ideas from a national challenge exploring election funding challenges

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.