Countries holding competitive elections vary in the extent to which the administrative practices surrounding the voting process facilitate or impede voter participation. Differences in the requirements for voter registration, the distances voters must travel to reach a polling place, the mechanics of casting a ballot, and the provision of voter education, among other factors, pose varying obstacles to participation. This variation poses a puzzle that this dissertation addresses: Why do some democracies adopt election administration practices that lower barriers to voter participation, while others adopt practices that raise prohibitive obstacles to the participation of at least some citizens? More simply, why is it easier to vote in some democracies than in others? This dissertation develops the concept of election administration inclusiveness, consisting of numerous administrative and procedural factors that affect voter access to the ballot. To develop a theory of why election administration inclusiveness varies across countries and over time, the project undertakes an in-depth comparison of three country cases: Guatemala, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. The case studies document and explain the origins of striking differences in election administration inclusiveness across the three countries in their early years of democratic transition, as well as variation in inclusiveness within each case over time. The case studies draw on elite interviews and archival research carried out by the author in each country. The study identifies a number of factors that influence the choice of election administration practices that bear on voter access to the ballot box. Of particular significance are historical legacies of election fraud, patterns of partisan identification among voters, the composition of electoral commissions that conduct elections, and international political pressures.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was a response to the controversial presidential election of 2000. In accordance with HAVA requirements for federal elections, states were mandated to replace punch card voting systems and mechanical lever voting machines with more up-to-date systems that use current technology. As replacements, states selected optical scan (OS) and direct record electronic (DRE) voting systems. Computer scientists questioned the security of OS and DRE voting systems, and politicians questioned their accuracy. Thus, the goals of this research were to analyze the accuracy of election outcomes generated by electronic voting (e-voting) systems and to document whether e-voting machines were trustworthy (i.e., accurately recorded the voters' intent) and secure (i.e., votes were not altered). To achieve these goals, the author developed an embedded case study and incorporated ethnographic and quantitative techniques. The author observed election officials in two Missouri jurisdictions perform pre-election, Election Day, and post-election tasks. Specifically, the author observed election officials in Cape Girardeau County perform pre-election tasks, such as logic and accuracy (L&A) testing. In the state of Missouri, pre-election L&A testing involved loading the ballot and was considered finished when the e-voting system was ready for voters. The author identified pre-election adversarial strategies and then used a six-step risk analysis process to identify the most important risks. After following the steps, the author identified 11 e-voting components as high-level security risks. Additionally, the author observed election officials in St. Louis County, Missouri conduct the 2010 midterm election and post-election activities, which included the manual tabulation of ballots. Election Day culminated with unofficial outcomes generated from the e-voting systems, while the post-election activities yielded official outcomes. To analyze the accuracy of e-voting systems, the author computed confidence intervals for the differences between unofficial and official 2010 midterm election outcomes from statewide races in St. Louis County. Based on these confidence intervals, the author concluded that the e-voting systems used in the state of Missouri were between 99.768% and 99.774% accurate.

Over the course of the past 30 years, states across the nation have adopted early in-person voting laws. The bulk of academic literature on early in-person voting revolves around the policy’s effect on turnout. This research was conducted over the course of several decades, in different electoral contexts, measuring a diverse array of laws, and remains inconclusive. Meanwhile, the political discussion of voting rights and electoral reform has become increasingly polarized. The divisive views on early voting both in the academic community and in the political realm are indicators of a distinctive evolution of early voting. I argue that early voting reforms were implemented in three unique eras, characterized by different political motivations and an evolving early electorate. I use case studies in Texas, Florida, Missouri, and Massachusetts to explain this theory and provide a framework for more ordered future research.

Public bureaucracy finds itself in a strange place at the intersection of political science and public administration. Political science finds that, within representative democracy, discretion granted to bureaucrats threatens the nature of democracy by subverting politicians who represent the will of the people – bureaucracy vs democracy. At the same time, public administration holds that, in the interest of promoting democracy, bureaucracy should be objective in its implementation of policy in a way that eliminates the influence of politics from decision-making – politics vs bureaucracy. Those positions are seemingly contradictory in nature. From one perspective, bureaucracy is undemocratic because it is outside of politics, yet an overreach of politics into the bureaucracy yields undemocratic outcomes. Bureaucracy can facilitate democracy outside of politics. This study looks to empirically test whether local bureaucrats, who should be willing to act in-line with influential co-partisans, might still promote democratic outcomes for their constituents with their discretionary decision-making. Florida provides an empirical backdrop for testing bureaucracy’s impact on democracy with a natural experimental scenario created with the passing of new early voting limitations in 2011. Florida’s Republican (R) lawmakers passed House Bill 1355 (HB 1355), which was signed into law by Governor Scott (R), that dramatically limited the early voting days allowed for federal elections. HB 1355 changed the early voting (EV) period from fourteen (14) days to eight (8) days and eliminated the last Sunday before Election Day as well. The move was widely seen as a political calculation aimed at stifling the participation of Democrats in the 2012 General Election. In seeming lockstep, local Supervisors of Elections (SOEs) from both parties utilized their statutory discretion over the location of early voting sites to alter the distribution of sites before the 2012 General Election. I find that Republican SOEs did not distribute early voting locations in a way that negatively impacted early voting participation rates (EVPR) for their local precincts. Furthermore, I find that, all else equal, their decisions did not statistically impact EVPR differently than the EVPR in communities managed by Democrats. Republican SOEs did not add new costs to voters in their communities. I provide new evidence that demonstrates that bureaucrats can indeed limit the impact of undue politics from their influential co-partisans to promote more democratic outcomes.