Challenges to Democratic Elections and Election Administration

There are many concerns confronting democratic elections and election administration in the US and abroad. In 2025, President Trump signed an executive order requiring proof of citizenship to vote in US elections; only half of the US adult citizen population has a valid visa, which would have significant effects (the courts have blocked implementation of the order for now). Misinformation about elections and political candidates is widespread, with no signs of abating given AI and deepfakes. The Pew Research Center reports that many Americans have difficulty identifying accurate information about US elections. The Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) notes that many Americans are not confident in US election processes and connect this with the astounding variation in election procedures throughout the country. There continue to be challenges to striking the best balance between voter access and voting integrity in the US and other worldwide democracies. In this issue for Politics and Governance, the goal is to collect and feature research articles from leading scholars in the US and cross-nationally, and to identify solutions to the problems currently besetting elections and election administration in democracies.

This thematic issue will feature research on current concerns confronting elections and election administration in the US and democracies abroad. Topics covered in this issue address misinformation and disinformation in elections, AI and election administration, funding quality election administration, evaluating local election administration, convenience voting including voting by mail, building trust in elections, making sense of the role of the judiciary in protecting or diminishing the right to vote, balancing voter access measures (like mail voting) with voting integrity measures (like voter ID laws), and deepening understanding and suggesting improvements to be made for election administration in democratic elections. In this thematic issue, we will promote a heightened understanding of elections and election administration in the US and abroad in the 2020s.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Politics and Governance is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.