Election officials are hard at work to deliver fair, secure and accurate elections – despite a constant flow of attacks

Voting machines are tested at the Wake County Board of Elections on Sept. 17, 2024, in Raleigh, N.C. Allison Joyce/Getty Images by Mitchell Brown, Auburn University The 2024 election is rife with controversy, from the politics of the campaigns to the politics surrounding the administration of elections. Accusations of wrongdoing and ineptitude continue to plague election officials, despite their explanations of legal compliance and process. This is not new. During the 2016 election season, there was a growing narrative in the media and elsewhere that U.S. elections were poorly run. These accusations came from the left and the right, with concerns ranging from voter suppression to rigged machines. My colleagues and I have been studying election administration intensely for many years. When these accusations were made, they struck us as both odd and incorrect. We traveled around the country to visit election offices. We did surveys, we interviewed people, we ran focus groups, we toured election offices. In 2020, my colleague Kathleen Hale and I published a book on innovation in election administration. Among our conclusions: U.S. elections are not broken, and while fragmented and sometimes confusing, the system is functioning well, despite myriad pressures on it. The 2020 election...