Last spring, the spread of COVID-19 forced lockdowns in many states in the United States, and disrupted election administration at the tail end of the Democratic presidential primaries. As we’ve discussed previously, the pandemic led to poll closures in many areas that disproportionately impacted underserved communities of color, and in fact led to decreased turnout in those areas.

In the lead up to the 2020 United States presidential elections, voters were faced with a deluge of changes to voting in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes required voters have accurate and trusted information to ensure all who wished to do so were able to safely cast a ballot and have it counted.

Ranked-choice voting (RCV), or broadly the ability to rank candidates according to voter preferences, has been a topic of close interest for several years. Maine was the first state to use RCV in federal elections, starting with the congressional election in 2018. This was expanded to include the first-ever ranked-choice presidential primary in 2020. After being used twice, we can begin to inquire into its impact on the voters and the political process in Maine.

Oh, that word. Elections. Did an involuntary shiver just run down your spine?

America’s multilayered system of governments and administrative jurisdictions creates some of the most complex combinations of ballots among Western industrialized democracies, with the U.S. Census finding over 89,000 governmental sub-state governments.

Amidst the cacophony of breaking news we live through each week, “election hacking” has become a familiar refrain in US politics. It’s trotted out routinely by wonks and politicians of all stripes in discussions on the 2016 elections; it looms over conversations about the midterms later this year.