Even as many in the United States are focused on the threat of biological terrorism, some are turning their attention to last year's national crisis -- election difficulties and reform. Four reports, released this week by the General Accounting Office (GAO), give a wealth of information on how elections are currently conducted in the United States, what contributed toward votes going uncounted in...

Always one with a timely exhibition that reflects both historical concerns and issues of immediate expediency, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has created this website as the online incarnation of one of their current exhibits, “Vote: The Machinery of Democracy”. Through a host of relevant items (such as one of the controversial butterfly ballots used in Palm Beach County,...

Released in June 2001 amidst some controversy, this draft report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) finds, among other things, that African-American voters in Florida were at least nine times more likely than other voters to have their ballots rejected in last year's presidential election and that the state's poorer counties were much more likely to use voting systems with...