University of Minnesota, Humphrey School of Public Affairs

The Election Academy at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School of Public Affairs works to identify, recruit and train the next generation of elections officials nationwide. This project will develop recommended solutions to design problems that have a strong impact on elections, and help build design skills among elections administrators. It will develop specific recommendations about ballot and voter information design for use by elections administrators, and apply design techniques to common election administration challenges such as polling place layout. This project builds on an earlier, $75,000 grant that resulted in a series of ballot design guides for election officials.

This grant will support a nationwide effort to improve the design of election guides, voting instructions, paper ballots, and electronic voting systems in order to minimize voter confusion and error. Funds will be use to publish a series of Field Guides for Election Design that summarize best practices in ballot design, and to deliver these guides to election officials in jurisdictions representing at least half (50%) of the nation’s registered voters in time for use in the 2012 elections.

To support Action Research in Building Institutions for Sustainable Development, under the direction of Zbigniew Bochniarz, in collaboration with G. Edward Schuh, Rochard S. Bolan, Harald von Witzke, Andrzej Kassenberg, Eva Kruzikova, Janos Vargha, and Marie Leigh Livingston.

To support the conference "A New Paradigm for Foreign Aid."