States’ administration of elections overall improved by 6 percentage points between 2012 and 2016, according to the Elections Performance Index (EPI) released today by the MIT Election Data & Science Lab.
As many readers will know, the index, which was developed and managed by The Pew Charitable Trusts before being transferred to MEDSL in 2017, provides a nonpartisan, objective measure of how well each state is faring in managing national elections. When it launched in 2013, it provided the first comprehensive assessment of election administration in all 50 states and Washington, D.C.; it now includes data from every federal U.S. election since 2008. It’s calculated using 17 indicators that cover the broad scope of issues involved in managing elections, providing specific metrics for election officials, voters, and policymakers to compare their state with its own past performance, as well as the performance of other states.