Sources & Methodology

1. Overview — Why a Tiered Hierarchy

Election-administration information in the United States lives in many places. The same fact — say, the registration deadline before a federal general election, the voter ID rule in a state, or the rule for cure of a rejected mail-in ballot signature — can be reported by the state election authority, NASS, the EAC, an academic publication, a journalist, a third-party advocacy site, and a private commercial site, and these reports may not all agree. We work from a tiered source hierarchy where higher-tier sources govern when sources conflict. This page sets out the tiers and lists the specific sources in each.

Every state guide on board-of-elections.org/ is built from the state's chief election authority's own .gov page, not from third-party summaries. Examples of Tier 1 sources:

Every U.S. state, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands) have their own state-level chief election authority, all sourced equivalently. The above is a representative selection of the largest agencies.

• Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) — 52 U.S.C. § 10301 et seq.
• National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA / Motor Voter) — 52 U.S.C. § 20501 et seq.
• Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) — 52 U.S.C. § 20901 et seq.
• Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) — 52 U.S.C. § 20301 et seq.
• Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE Act) — Pub. L. 111-84 (2009)
• Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) — 52 U.S.C. § 30101 et seq.
• Voter intimidation statutes — 52 U.S.C. § 20511; 18 U.S.C. § 594
• Americans with Disabilities Act, Title II — 42 U.S.C. § 12131 et seq. (state and local government election administration)
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act — 29 U.S.C. § 794
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act — 29 U.S.C. § 794d
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) — 15 U.S.C. §§ 6501–6506
• Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) — 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.
• Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) — 17 U.S.C. § 512
• U.S. Constitution provisions — Article I, Section 4 (Elections Clause); 14th Amendment; 15th Amendment; 19th Amendment; 24th Amendment; 26th Amendment

• State election codes — varying state statutes establishing the chief election authority, voter registration framework, ballot procedures, and counting rules
• State voter registration statutes — eligibility, deadlines, online vs. mail vs. in-person, automatic voter registration where state law provides, same-day registration where state law provides
• State voter ID laws — current state rules with citation; we describe what state law currently requires
• State absentee/mail-in ballot statutes — eligibility, request deadlines, return deadlines (postmark vs. receipt), drop-box rules, signature verification, cure procedures
• State early voting statutes — window, locations, hours
• State public-records / sunshine laws — request workflow, fee schedule, exemptions, response timeline
• State campaign finance laws — candidate, party, PAC, ballot-measure, lobbyist registration; state-level disclosure
• State recount and election contest statutes — automatic vs. requested recount thresholds, petition windows, costs, election contest jurisdiction
• State ballot-measure procedures — initiative, referendum, recall framework where state constitution provides
• State poll worker eligibility — age, residency, party-balance rules where state law provides
• State election crime statutes — voter fraud, voter intimidation, election worker interference
• State HAVA complaint procedures — administrative complaint process required by 52 U.S.C. § 21112

• U.S. Supreme Court election decisions — including Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000); Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U.S. 529 (2013); Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008); Brnovich v. DNC, 594 U.S. 647 (2021); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)
• U.S. Courts of Appeals decisions — federal circuit court rulings on state election rules
• Federal district court decisions — where they govern a current state rule
• State court decisions — including state supreme courts on state election law
• Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy — peer-reviewed
• EAC Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) — biennial federal data collection on election administration
• Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports on federal election administration
• OIG audits and inspections related to election administration
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine — consensus reports on election administration topics

8. Verification Workflow — Seven Steps Before Anything Goes Live

1. Identify the right authoritative source. State chief election authority page on the .gov domain, cross-checked against NASS at nass.org and NASED at nased.org.
2. Verify the URL is live. A human editor clicks every link before publication and confirms the destination is the actual page.
3. Dial-test phone numbers. Main line, voter help line, election complaint line, public-records line.
4. Verify addresses against agency contact pages and USPS ZIP+4 lookup. Main agency, separate elections division, county election offices — each captured separately where applicable.
5. Document election rules from the state’s own published guidance. Voter registration deadline, voter ID rule, absentee/mail-in framework, early voting window, provisional ballot rule, recount threshold.
6. Cross-reference federal layer. EAC, FEC, DOJ Voting Section, FVAP, CISA — each documented from the federal agency’s own page.
7. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews end-to-end, including a fresh check on the not-legal-advice notice and a neutrality review on any election-rule description that touches contested ground.

9. Pre-Election Heightened Review

10. FCRA Framework Reminder

Information on the site is general informational content drawn from public records and authoritative public sources. It is not a "consumer report" under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.) and board-of-elections.org/ is not a Consumer Reporting Agency. Do not use any content on this site to make employment, credit, insurance, tenant-screening, or any other FCRA-permissible-purpose decisions. For those purposes, use a CRA licensed for that purpose. Voter registration data is governed by state public-records law, not by us.

11. Sources We Avoid

• Partisan media outlets as authority on election rules — they may be useful for context but every claim is cross-checked to the agency’s own .gov page
• Election misinformation publications — outlets that have repeatedly published debunked claims about election outcomes or election administration are not authoritative for any factual claim and are not used
• Anonymous user-generated content as standalone authority on agency procedure
• Social media posts as standalone authority — agency social media accounts are valuable for breaking notices but every claim is cross-checked to the agency’s own .gov page
• Commercial voter-list vendors as authority on state voter registration rules — these are commercial intermediaries, not the state agency
• Other directory aggregator sites — we work to the original agency source, not to other directories that may themselves be working from stale data
• Candidate, party, or political committee publications as authority on neutral election-administration procedure — partisan publications may be useful for context but never as sole source on a state rule