Because of the coronavirus pandemic, for millions of voters the mailbox became the ballot box in the 2020 presidential elections—as mail-in voting went nearly nationwide. To many unfamiliar with election reform and election administration, the nation is in uncharted territory, with 83% of Americans eligible to cast mail-in ballots (in all-mail elections or no-excuse absentee mail voting) in 44 states. Suddenly a topic as mundane as voting by mail (and the US Postal Service!) was thrown into the national spotlight, as President Trump vocally claimed mail voting would lead to fraud. The public was primed that election results would be delayed while the mail ballots were counted. To the untrained eye, it appeared a sea change was about to hit American democracy.

But the reality is that 2020 is less of an anomaly than a continuation of the “silent revolution” in election administration that began decades earlier, when many states began to modernize and update their registration and voting laws. The Census’s Current Population Surveys show that the percentage of voters using alternative voting methods (in-person early voting or absentee/mail ballots) rose from just 14% in 2002 to almost 40% by the 2018 midterm elections. A week before the 2020 presidential election, more than 60 million votes had been cast—both the Democratic and Republican candidates were encouraging people to “vote early,” and voter turnout appeared to shatter records. The complexity of state laws governing elections—from the days before an election that people can vote early to the types of identification necessary to request an absentee mail ballot, cast a mail ballot, or vote in person—cannot be underestimated.

Kathleen Hale and Mitchell Brown’s excellent book, How We Vote, takes a deep dive into the changes occurring in state and local election processes. Despite the constraints of federal government inaction, the authors argue that innovation and change in election administration have moved forward at a breath-taking pace: “The evidence about election performance as a public administration function is, in fact, quite positive, despite much media coverage, publicity, and public opinion that suggests otherwise” (p. 3). In fact, constant change is one defining feature of this policy area. The authors bring a fresh perspective by analyzing election administration as public administration—drawing on public sector themes of cooperation, collaboration, governance, and measurement—for policy implementation and compliance. Substantive chapters focus on voting by mail, language-limited and limited-English speakers, provisional ballots, voting system technology and cybersecurity, and measurement of election administration performance, including Pew/MIT’s election performance index (EPI).

The authors develop “innovation” in the policy domain of election administration as a theory of change—leveraging the highly decentralized system of conducting elections in the United States—where state and local county governments take the lead. They go so far as to claim “innovations in the election administration system are occurring at perhaps the greatest rate in history of the country” (p. 223). This change is structured by four main factors or drivers: politics; professionalism; resources, including time and money; and demand. Yet no single factor alone is neither necessary nor sufficient. For each component of election administration discussed in the separate chapters, the authors indicate the intergovernmental actors involved (national, state, local, and nongovernment—the last is increasingly important) and summarize how politics, professionalism, resources, and demand affect efforts to modernize and update elections. The framework is useful for understanding this highly complex policy area.

Unlike in other policy domains, the US Constitution stipulates that the states shall oversee the conduct of elections, and as the authors note, the courts are increasingly deferential to the states; take, for example, controversial legal cases about counting mail ballots in 2020. While federal legislation—the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA 2002)—have spurred local innovation and provided some resources, the nation’s 8,000 election jurisdictions implement the laws of their respective states. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. The US federal system creates “opportunity structures” for local and state policy innovation in election administration, but change is not guaranteed. Some states have modernized rules for voter registration and voting, as well as election administration, whereas others are unreformed.

Although the decentralized system for conducting elections creates space for change and innovation, it also creates inequality. In 2020, six states (Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas) did not allow voters to request a mail ballot because of COVID-19. In some states, such as Arkansas, mail ballots must be notarized or signed by two witnesses. In many others, a simple signature from the voter on the back of the envelope is all that is needed. The story is where you live matters, and it does so more than you may think.

In a book about making elections accessible, the writing and language are smooth and fluid, drawing the reader into the illustrative cases and narratives. One illustrative example is Georgia’s 2018 midterm election in which Democrat Stacy Abrams ran against Republican Brian Kemp in a highly contested race for governor. Kemp was also serving as Georgia’s secretary of state at the time, overseeing the rules of the election in which he was competing. During that Georgia election, more than 50,000 voter registrations were purged (i.e., removed from the voter rolls) under the state’s “use it or lose it” rules. This approach removes people who have not voted for a number of years and is used in a handful of states. Ohio’s voter purge law was upheld by the Supreme Court, and Kemp was not alone. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach also simultaneously ran for governor in 2018 amid allegations of voter fraud. And although all-mail voting has been used without controversy in Oregon since 2000 (the result of a successful 1988 ballot initiative), 2018 witnessed the first widespread fraud linked to this voting method, when illegal ballot harvesting of absentee mail ballots by Republicans occurred in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District. The results of that election had to be thrown out and the election reconducted. This case is one of the only known cases of fraud with mail ballots.

How We Vote is broad and far-reaching, summarizing innovation areas for election administration from registration eligibility and access (including online voter registration and electronic pollbooks [EPV] and automatic voter registration [AVR]); convenience methods of voting (including early in-person voting, no-excuse absentee mail voting, all-mail voting, same-day registration); language access and outreach; provisional ballots, counting, certification, and auditing; election equipment and security; and measurement of quality election administration. One of the best quantitative measures of election administration performance, the Pew/MIT election performance index (EPI) that ranks the 50 states in terms of their average quality of election administration, is discussed and analyzed in chapter 8. Surprisingly, some Democratic states like California, rank very low on it. The election performance index is a 17-component summary index that takes account of various aspects of a state’s electoral system, including data completeness, disability- or illness-related voting problems, mail ballots rejected, mail ballots unreturned, military and overseas ballots rejected, military and overseas ballots unreturned, online registration availability, postelection audit requirements, provisional ballots cast, provisional ballots rejected, registration or absentee ballot problems, registrations rejected, residual vote rates, registration rates, turnout rates, voting information lookup tools, and voting wait times. More analysis of the EPI data throughout the book would have been valuable.

Hale and Brown argue that modernizing election administration in US states and localities is a story about context—what is possible in one place and one time and under one political party may not be possible in others. The book’s focus is on the “how” questions and about process. The introduction and the conclusion employ illustrative case studies—20 people whose interactions with election administrators illustrate the problems people face when trying to vote. Problems are posed by voters (Maya, John, etc.) and answered by election administrators (George, Martha). This dialogue helps bring the problems and solutions alive.

If there is a drawback to the book, it is that there is limited use and systematic analysis of empirical quantitative data (other than in chapter 8 and in some discussion in chapter 2) to explore whether quality election administration in the states and over time helps. For example, is overall voter turnout or by historically marginalized groups or youth higher? Does improved election administration reduce spoiled ballots and ballot roll-off or increase campaign voter mobilization efforts? Does it affect voter confidence that ballots will be counted? Would more employment statistics about state and local election officials be useful, including information on gender, diversity, seniority, salaries, and so on? With new empirical nonpartisan measures of election administration performance now available, matched with the theoretical framework presented by Hale and Brown, many of these critical questions can be explored in other ways by future scholars.