U.S. elections are highly decentralized, with much of the responsibility for election administration residing with local election officials (LEOs). There are thousands of such officials, many of whom are responsible for all aspects of election administration in their local jurisdictions—including voter registration, recruiting pollworkers, running each election, and choosing and purchasing new voting systems. These officials are therefore critical not only to the successful administration of federal elections, but also to the implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252 ), the Uniform and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA, P.L. 99-410 , as amended) and other federal statutes. Nevertheless, there has been little objective information on the perceptions and attitudes of LEOs about election reform. Such information may be useful to Congress in deliberations about federal election reform activities. This report discusses the results of three scientific opinion surveys that were designed to help fill that gap in knowledge about principal local election officials. The surveys were performed pursuant to projects sponsored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). The projects were developed in collaboration with and the surveys performed by faculty and students at the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, and the Center for Applied Social Research at the University of Oklahoma. The university teams developed and administered the surveys, in consultation with CRS, to samples of LEOs from all 50 states, with a response rate of approximately 40% for each survey. The responses were analyzed by CRS for purposes of this report. See the Appendix for information on the methods used in the surveys and analyses. The surveys were administered following the 2004, 2006, and 2008 federal elections. While they were not identical, many of the questions were the same, and comparisons of the results are discussed where appropriate. The findings may be useful to Congress as it considers funding for HAVA, oversight of its implementation, and possible revisions to current law. The report begins with a description of some characteristics of local election officials and their jurisdictions. That is followed by a discussion of perceptions and attitudes of LEOs about the different kinds of voting systems used in different jurisdictions—lever machines, punchcard ballots, hand-counted paper ballots, central-count optical scan (CCOS), precinct-count optical scan (PCOS), and direct-recording electronic (DRE) systems such as "touchscreens." The report then describes how HAVA has affected local jurisdictions and the opinions LEOs expressed about the law. The section after that discusses other election administration topics covered in the 2006 and 2008 surveys—preparations for election day, election-day incidents, characteristics of pollworkers, and attitudes about nonpartisan election administration. The final sections discuss caveats to consider in interpreting the results, and potential policy implications of the findings. There are about 9,000 local election jurisdictions in the United States. In most states, they are counties or major cities, but in some New England and Upper Midwest states, they are small townships—for example, more than 1,800 townships in Wisconsin. The number of registered voters and polling places in a jurisdiction reported by LEOs also varies greatly ( Figure 1 and Figure 2 ). The reported number of registered voters ranged from fewer than 100 to more than 1 million, with a median of about 12,000 in 2006 and 13,000 in 2008. That 8% increase was consistent with the reported 7%-10% increase in the number of registered voters nationwide during that period. Although LEOs were not asked to report the number of voters in their jurisdictions in the 2004 survey, in 2008 they were asked how the number changed from 2004 to 2008. About two-thirds reported that the number of registered voters had increased between 2004 and 2008, and about one-fifth reported a decrease ( Figure 3 ). The number of polling places in a jurisdiction averaged about a dozen, ranging from 0 to 1,000 or more, with about 15% of jurisdictions in each election having only one polling place and a similar percentage having more than 50. The number of election personnel working in a jurisdiction, in addition to the local election official, also varied greatly, from none to more than 10,000, including pollworkers. The 2008 survey also asked about the number of employees other than pollworkers. The median was 5, with a mean of 17 and a maximum of 800. The number of registered voters, polling places, and pollworkers was about 10 times greater in county jurisdictions than in townships. LEOs from counties reported an average of about 56,000 registered voters, while those from townships averaged 6,000. There were 40 polling places per county on average, and 3 per township. Counties had about 290 pollworkers and townships 30. Given such diversity and other differences among states—such as wealth, population, and the role of state election officials—responsibilities and characteristics of LEOs are likely to vary greatly. Nevertheless, some patterns emerged from the surveys. According to the survey results, the typical LEO is a white woman between 50 and 60 years old who is a high school graduate. She was elected to her current office, works full-time in election administration, has been in the profession for about 10 years, and earns under $60,000 per year. She belongs to a state-level professional organization but not a national one, and she believes that her training as an election official has been good to excellent. As with any such description, the one above does not capture the diversity within the community surveyed: About one-quarter of LEOs are men, about 5% belong to minority groups, about 40% are college graduates, and about 10% have graduate degrees (see Table 1 ). LEOs range from under 25 to more than 80 years of age, and have served from 1 to 50 years. More than half were elected rather than appointed to their posts. Reported salaries range from under $10,000 to more than $120,000. Most belong to at least one professional organization. The demographic profile of LEOs is unusual, especially for a professional group. They differ from those of other local government employees. For example, according to U.S. Census figures, while women comprise a higher proportion of the local government workforce than men overall, men comprise a higher proportion of local government general and administrative managers. About 20% of those managers are members of minorities. The patterns do not appear to be a result of the fact that most LEOs are elected, as the demographic characteristics of legislators appear to be largely similar to those for local government managers. The average tenure in the current position declined by about one year from 2004 to 2008, with the proportion of LEOs who had served for two years or less in their current positions rising to 18% in 2008 from 11% in 2004 (see Figure 4 ). Thus, there appeared to be a small increase in job turnover over the three elections. However, there was no significant change in average age ( Figure 5 ). Other trends across the surveys included a decrease in the proportion of LEOs who were elected, an increase in both the percentage who worked full time and in the amount of time they spent working on elections, an increase in salary, and a decrease in the proportion who expressed a slightly to strongly conservative ideology. The survey was not designed to identify the causes of such changes, but at least some appear to be consistent with the impacts of federal and state election reform on local jurisdictions. That reform led to increased funding for election administration, changes in voting systems used by many jurisdictions, and an increased workload for many election officials. For example, the survey found that those who reported that they worked full-time on election administration increased from 66% in 2004 to 72% in 2008, while those who reported that they spent more than twenty hours per week on election duties increased from 41% to 49%. The increasing complexity of elections and the increased federal role after the passage of HAVA have focused more attention on the role of professionalism in election administration. Given that change, it might be expected that election officials who began serving more recently would have more formal education than those who have served for longer periods. Such a pattern could yield a statistical association between the highest education level attained and the number of years in service as an election official. In fact, there was a small but significant relationship, with LEOs who did not have a college degree averaging 11-12 years of service and those with graduate degrees averaging 8-9 years. However, there was no significant change in the overall distribution of maximum education level over the three surveys ( Figure 6 ). Reported salaries of LEOs increased about 7% per year, from an estimated average of $45,000 in 2004 to $51,000 in 2008 ( Figure 7 ). LEOs in jurisdictions with larger numbers of voters tended to have somewhat higher salaries and education levels, and were more likely to be male. In 2008, the median salary for LEOs in jurisdictions below the median size in numbers of voters was $40-50,000; it was $50,000-$60,000 for LEOs in larger jurisdictions. More than 20% of LEOs in larger jurisdictions had attended graduate school, while 10% of those from smaller jurisdictions had. LEOs were male in about 20% of jurisdictions below the median size, and in 30% of those above. The survey also examined other factors related to election administration as a profession. More than two-thirds (70%-74%) of LEOs reported belonging to at least one professional association. Of those, more than three-fourths belonged to a state association, 30% to a regional one, and about 20% to the three major national or international associations (see Figure 8 ). Altogether, about 40% of LEOs who belonged to at least one association were members of a national or international one, with more than half belonging only to a state or regional association.