Thousands of local elections, with different rules.
Why this is the way America votes

CARTERSVILLE, Ga.

In Louisiana, any voter can cast a ballot in person during early voting ahead of Election Day. But just across the state line in Mississippi, all voters don’t have this option. In Arizona, a person must show ID to vote, while no such requirement exists in neighboring Nevada.

This is how America votes.

Instead of one national election under one set of rules that voters everywhere must follow, the U.S. elects its president through more than 10,000 local elections — each conducted under rules set by state and, to some extent, local governments.

10,000+ election jurisdictions

The rules can and do vary from state to state – and sometimes, within a state and even a county.

This highly decentralized system exists because the nation’s Founding Fathers in drafting the Constitution gave authority over elections to the states, rather than the federal government. While Congress has the power to regulate – and has done so to pass such laws as the Voting Rights Act – the Constitution makes clear that states have primary authority to set the “times, places and manner” for elections.

State lawmakers approve the laws that govern the voting process in their states – and this can vary widely, depending on how they think elections should work.

There also is no national election agency that administers the presidential contest, as often exists outside the U.S. And when it comes to doing the day-to-day work of running an election, the responsibility falls to officials at the local level — usually a clerk or election supervisor – with help from staff and volunteers.

What may seem disorderly, with the sheer number of election jurisdictions and various laws, is actually by design. Still, confusion about how elections are run and laws that differ from state to state helped fuel conspiracy theories still swirling today about the 2020 election, including the false claim that the presidential election was stolen.

In fact, there was no widespread fraud or tampering with the vote. And rules that differ don’t mean an election was inaccurate or that fraud occurred.

“While election laws and regulations differ from state to state, the common threads of bipartisanship, transparency and professionalism undergird the work of election administrators,” said Jennifer Morrell, a former election official in Utah and Colorado.

“In every state, policy makers are charged with creating the rules, election officials are responsible for carrying them out, and voters – regardless of party affiliation – are bound to them.”

Election jurisdictions range from urban counties like Los Angeles, with millions of voters, to tiny places such as Dixville Township, New Hampshire, where registered voters — this year there were six — turn out at midnight to cast the first ballots of the 2024 presidential primary.

The differences in U.S. election laws range from how voters receive a ballot to what it takes to have it counted and whether a person can walk up to a polling place on Election Day and register to vote or must plan weeks ahead.

It can get complicated — quickly.

For example, in most states, people have several days or even weeks leading up to Election Day to cast their vote through early voting. But four states – Alabama, Delaware, Mississippi and New Hampshire – don’t offer early voting.

In the states that do have it, the period when early voting is available can vary, from three days to more than seven weeks before an election.

For those states that do offer early, in-person voting, this experience can range from using a voting machine at a countywide vote center to filling out an absentee ballot inside a local election office.

While every state has mail voting, some send mail ballots to all registered voters whether they want one or not. In others, voters must request a mail ballot. In some states, voters must provide a reason – such as a disability or being away from home – for not being able to go to their polling place.

And 36 states require or request ID to vote, while 14 states and D.C. don’t, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Yet for all the differences in election rules, experts say it’s a strength that the nation’s elections are so decentralized.

“There are policies that people of good faith can have disagreements about,” said David Levine, a former local election official in Idaho who is now a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy. He noted voting preferences often fall along geographical and political lines and there are advantages to allowing for differences.

“We have a history in this country of having a decentralized system. Most states – red or blue – like to have the ability to experiment and innovate,” he said.

“It allows jurisdictions to innovate and experiment and make policies that work for their voters,” Levine added. “And in many ways, it makes it harder to rig a national election.”

To pull off stealing a presidential election, it would require large numbers of election workers in the most competitive counties across the country who are willing to risk prosecution, prison time and fines while working with officials from both parties willing to look the other way. And everyone somehow would have to keep quiet – a highly unlikely scenario.

There are also shared practices and security measures in place across the country that together work to ensure that only eligible voters can cast a ballot and only one ballot is counted for each.

All states have a multi-step process for verifying mail ballots, typically starting with regular reviews to ensure the list of eligible voters and their addresses is as accurate and up to date as possible. This includes work by election officials to verify the ballot is legitimate, checking the voter’s name and address on the ballot envelope to ensure it’s the same person who was sent the ballot and – in most cases – matching a voter’s signature or ID information to the voter file.

All election offices also have measures in place to ensure that every registered voter casts only one ballot, and officials conduct post-election audits that in many cases include a hand count of a pre-selected number of ballots to ensure tabulators counted correctly.

It’s work that never really ends. All around the country, election offices are constantly receiving voter registration applications, checking eligibility, scanning death and court records and removing ineligible voters from the rolls.

“One misnomer, a misunderstanding, is that we only work around an election,” said Joseph Kirk, election supervisor in Bartow County, Georgia. “It’s a full-time job when we’re not having an election. When we are having an election, we work 60 hours a week.”

Electronic Voting Technician Beth Howard works at the Bartow County Election office, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, left, speaks with Bartow County Election Supervisor Joseph Kirk at the county election office, Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga.

That was the case on a cold and rainy day in January, when Kirk and his staff at the elections office north of Atlanta were getting ready for Georgia’s March 12 presidential primary.

Inside a former state office building, county election workers were reviewing ballots, testing voting machines, processing absentee ballot requests and making plans for the county’s roughly 76,000 active voters to cast their ballots.

In Georgia, voters have access to automatic voter registration, three weeks of early voting, no-excuse mail ballots and at least one ballot drop box per county. Next door in Alabama, these options are not available.

“We have a lot of communities in the United States,” said Kirk, who oversees the office. “What works for one may not work for another.”

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