Evaluating Elections

This book explores how the tools of public management and policy evaluation can generate the data to improve elections.

In a world of competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring the integrity of electoral conduct is critical. Evaluating Elections provides an overview of why the systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used to give election officials tools to improve elections.In competitive and contested democratic elections, insuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance is important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates and political parties. Journalists, election administrators and even candidates often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state's elections and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election.