To address questions raised in class recently.
From the NCSL: ELECTION COSTS: WHAT STATES PAY.
Pinning down how much it costs to administer an election is notoriously difficult. Part of the difficulty is that several levels of government—states, counties, municipalities and even special districts—have a hand in running (and paying for) elections.
Elections in the U.S. are usually run at the county level, though in several New England and Midwestern states they are run at the city or township level. This means that there are more than 10,000 jurisdictions that have primary responsibility for running elections in the country--and that’s not counting the subdivisions within those jurisdictions.
From the NCSL: THE PRICE OF DEMOCRACY: SPLITTING THE BILL FOR ELECTIONS.
Elections are in the news, and it is not just the upcoming midterm elections.
Questions about security, in particular whether our elections systems protect us from bad actors at home and abroad, are making headlines.
How much influence Russians and others may have had during the 2016 campaign period is very much on the minds of those concerned about the security of our voting systems. As well, questions persist about what efforts—thwarted though they were—were made to tamper with voter registration systems and elections more broadly.
The news on cybersecurity breaches is still evolving. It has legislators, the key decision-makers on elections policy, taking notice. They’re focused on security, of course, but also on election administration more generally: Who runs elections, and by extension, who pays for elections?
The short answer is that the states and territories run elections. The answer to who pays for them is more complicated. In the sections below, NCSL's new report, “The Price of Democracy: Splitting the Bill for Elections,” offers 10 key takeaways about election costs for legislators and other policymakers.
