Voting in the United States involves over 10,000 different offices/systems, with each system having its own rules for tracking voter registration and elections. Throughout the nation, the further scattering of voting rules that has occurred since 2020 has exacerbated the relative confusion and relative expense disparities among states and among municipalities. Several recent articles about election infrastructure describe pressing concerns regarding election costs, underfunding, limited availability of services, security, staffing, and inconsistencies among election administrations at local, state, and federal levels. Other aspects of the American voting process, not listed here, are potentially significant as well.
Research election infrastructure at either the local, state, or federal level in the United States, identify a related problem that your group wants to address, and devise an innovative proposal to improve it. Your project should ultimately strive to help an aspect of the American voting process be more efficient, secure, safe, and consistent.
Get started here.
Reference resources provide a starting point for your research projects.
Credo Reference
Credo Reference provides hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and more in one place. Below is a sample of keyword searches in Credo Reference related to this topic.
Call Numbers and Subject Headings
You can use the list of call numbers and subject headings below as keyword searches in our catalog and databases, or you can go to these sections of the library to find books on these topics.
- JK1846 – 1929 Suffrage
Books
Books from Lane Library
All books in this list are located either in the Franzen Center on Floor 3A or are e-books.
- Democracy in America? : what has gone wrong and what we can do about it / JK275 .P344 2017
- Citizenship in hard times : how ordinary people respond to democratic threat / JK1759 .G587 2022
- Give us the ballot : the modern struggle for voting rights in America / JK1846.B47 2015
- Our Nation At Risk: Election Integrity As a National Security Issue / JK 1975 .087 2024
- The Future of Election Administration / JK1976 .F87 2020
- Voting technology : the not-so-simple act of casting a ballot / JK1985.V68 2008
- The American nonvoter / JK1987 .R34 2017
- On Account of Race / KF4755 .G65 2020
- Much sound and fury, or the new Jim Crow? : the twenty-first century’s restrictive new voting laws and their impact / ebook
- Uncounted : the crisis of voter suppression in America / ebook
- How we vote : innovation in American elections / ebook
- Voter suppression in U.S. elections / ebook
- 100% democracy : the case for universal voting / ebook
- How we vote : innovation in American elections / ebook
- Voter’s Rights / ebook
- Securing the Vote : Protecting American Democracy / ebook
- Electronic Elections : The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy / ebook
- Why American Elections Are Flawed (And How to Fix Them) / ebook
- State Voter ID Requirements : Issues, Considerations, Variation / ebook
- Subsidizing Democracy : How Public Funding Changes Elections and How It Can Work in the Future / ebook
- Election Meltdown : Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy / ebook
- Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections / ebook
Books from other libraries
WorldCat: Search for books not available at Lane Library and borrow from other libraries for free through interlibrary loan.
Articles
Databases
The following databases are useful places to search for articles. Contact a librarian if you would like more information on how to search for articles on your specific topic.
- Academic Search Complete: Wide range of academic disciplines, including for scholarly and popular journals.
- JSTOR– Full-text archive of scholarly journals in the arts and sciences. Issues from the past three to five years may not be available.
- New York Times: Access to news and archival content from NY Times. If you run into a paywall, here is more information on how to sign up.
- ProQuest Research Library: Includes both popular and scholarly periodicals covering a variety of subjects, with over 3300 titles available in full text.
Get articles from other libraries
If you cannot find a full-text version of the article you need, request it through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is a free service that allows you to borrow books and articles from other libraries. Find answers to frequently asked questions about ILL here.
Government sources, Statistics, Websites
Government sources
- Election Security Topic: America’s Cyber Defense Agency resources on Election Infrastructure
- Election Security Topic (DHS): Department of Homeland Security resources on Election Infrastructure
Statistics
- CIA World Factbook : Background information on each country in the world.
- National Center for Education Statistics: primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations.
- ProQuest Statistical Abstracts: Over 1400 indexed tables of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
- US Census Bureau: Access to data from federal surveys and censuses.
- World Almanac: Annual book with political, economic, scientific, and educational statistics. / Lane Library AY67 .N5 W7.
