January 15, 2026 9:16AM # Election Policy Roundup By [Walter Olson](https://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson) --- SHARE Listen to this article Generated with [ ElevenLabs](https://elevenlabs.io/) AI technology. Loading the [Elevenlabs Text to Speech](https://elevenlabs.io/text-to-speech) AudioNative Player... ![Crowd of people wave small American flags on the National Mall with the US Capitol in the background](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs_2x/public/2021-01/GettyImages-157417912.jpg?itok=n7qMyzov) Number 19 in our [series of occasional roundups](https://www.cato.org/search?query=%22election+policy+roundup%22) on election law and policy: - Here’s the deal, says the US Department of Justice to states: We’re going to send you lists of voters we think are ineligible, and you’re going to take them off the rolls. That “would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution” \[[Jonathan Shorman, Stateline](https://stateline.org/2025/12/18/trumps-doj-offers-states-confidential-deal-to-wipe-voters-flagged-by-feds-as-ineligible/)\]. Related: “Explainer: Can the Federal Government Force States to Hand Over Citizens’ Voter Information?” \[[Derek Clinger, State Democracy Research Initiative (University of Wisconsin Law School)](https://statedemocracy.law.wisc.edu/featured/2025/explainer-can-the-federal-government-force-states-to-hand-over-citizens-voter-information/)\]. - Of interest to everyone involved in the practicalities: “Reform Meets Reality: How Ranked Choice Voting Impacts Election Administration” \[[Lily Kincannon, Theo Menon, and Michael Thorning, Bipartisan Policy Center](https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigration-agents-using-chokeholds-citizens)\]. Plus: [Summarized highlights from Martin Austermuhle](https://bsky.app/profile/maustermuhle.bsky.social/post/3m7scwkd3uk26) (a “longer runway is better,” switching to ranked-choice voting for the first time “is better done in off-cycle elections,” and outside groups should be recruited to help with voter education). - Important but under-covered topic: Who pays for election administration? Look up how your state does it \[[Center for Election Innovation and Research](https://electioninnovation.org/research/who-pays-for-election-admin/)\]. - “States should amend their laws to significantly narrow the circumstances in which recounts take place” \[[Derek Muller, NYU Law Democracy Project](https://democracyproject.org/posts/america-s-recount-addiction)\]. - Fulton County, Georgia, administrators failed to follow proper security steps in the 2000 election, but no, this doesn’t amount to a big national story \[[Jason Shepherd, PeachPundit](https://peachpundit.com/crosss-latest-smoking-gunjust-more-pop-and-plastic-than-proof/) (“sloppy paperwork is not equivalent to tampering with ballots,” and no evidence of the latter is evident); [Scot Turner, same site](https://peachpundit.com/more-on-the-315000-fulton-votes-story/) (violation of the rulebook in the handling of legitimately cast votes calls for “accountability, not retroactive vote deletion”); and [Stephen Richer, The Dispatch](https://thedispatch.com/article/georgia-fulton-county-2020-voting-count/) (“I suspect the \[Georgia\] AG’s investigators will find that some election workers simply forgot their training.”)\] - Sounds hard to scale, though: Researchers threw 200 Pennsylvanians of diverse political views and backgrounds together for a few days of discussion and found considerable depolarization and the emergence of areas of common agreement \[[Holly Otterbein, Politico](//www.politico.com/news/2025/07/02/polarization-experiment-pennsylvania-deliberative-democracy-00436139)\]. ##### Related Tags [Politics and Society](https://www.cato.org/politics-society) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).