R46646 — Election Administration: Federal Grant Programs for States and Localities

States and localities have primary responsibility for administering elections in the United States, but Congress has tools it can use to support or shape their efforts if it chooses to do so. One of those tools is funding. Congress can use its power to provide—and set conditions on—funding to encourage or help states and localities to adopt, reject, implement, or maintain election administration policies and practices. Congress has used or proposed using funding to engage with election administration issues in various ways, including by directing federal agencies to use some of their funding to support state and local election administration work and by considering conditioning access to certain federal funds on adopting or rejecting specified election administration policies. Perhaps the most direct way in which Congress has used funding is by establishing and funding state and local grant programs specifically for election administration-related purposes. Congress first authorized major election administration-related grant programs for states and localities in response to issues with the conduct of the 2000 elections. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) set new requirements for the administration of federal elections and created the election administration-focused U.S. Election Assistance Commission. It also authorized elections-related grant programs. The main grant programs Congress authorized in HAVA were three programs that were designed to make funds available to the 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for (1) improving the administration of elections, (2) replacing lever and punch card voting systems, and (3) meeting the new requirements established by the act. HAVA also authorized grant programs to help meet some other needs Congress identified in the aftermath of the 2000 elections: improving electoral access for individuals with disabilities, conducting election technology research, encouraging youth voter participation, and facilitating poll worker recruitment. Only a few election administration-specific grant programs—aimed at reimbursing certain voting system replacement costs that were not covered by HAVA’s lever and punch card voting system replacement grant program, enhancing the collection of election data, and improving electoral access for military and overseas voters—have been authorized for states and localities since HAVA. Most of the funding Congress has made available to states and localities for election administration-related purposes has, instead, been appropriated under grant programs authorized by that act. Since HAVA was enacted in 2002, Congress has appropriated funding regularly for one or both of the act’s disability access grant programs and more intermittently for other elections-related purposes. The latter funding includes, most recently, funding for FY2018, FY2020, and FY2022 through FY2026. The first of those recent rounds of HAVA funding—provided by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018 (P.L. 115-141)—followed reports of foreign efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections. Ongoing security concerns and other challenges for election administration, such as the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020 election cycle, prompted further funding for HAVA grants in the FY2020, FY2022, FY2023, FY2024, and FY2026 regular appropriations acts (P.L. 116-93, P.L. 117-103, P.L. 117-328, P.L. 118-47, and P.L. 119-75), supplemental appropriations for FY2020 (P.L. 116-136), and continuing appropriations for FY2025 (P.L. 119-4). Congress has also considered authorizing or funding other elections-related grant programs for states and localities since the 2016 elections. For example, the House passed two bills in the 117th Congress—the Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act (H.R. 5746, passed 220-203) and a version of the For the People Act of 2021 (H.R. 1, passed 220-210)—that would have authorized multiple elections grant programs. Legislation introduced in the 119th Congress would authorize grant programs for various elections-related purposes, from improving the resiliency of voting systems against natural disasters to establishing independent redistricting commissions to complying with proposed voter registration requirements. The increased prominence of state and local elections grant programs since the 2016 election cycle might suggest questions about what role, if any, such programs could play in future federal election administration policy. Choices about how grant programs are structured can help determine how effective they are at achieving their intended purposes and what, if any, unintended consequences they might have. Information about the options available for structuring grant programs might, therefore, be of interest both to Members who are considering proposing a continuing role for such programs in federal elections policy and to Members who are weighing whether to support, oppose, or amend such proposals.

Curated by CRS — every bill listed in this report's relatedMaterials. Edge type cited_in_report, gold confidence.

• HR 7418 — STEADFAST Act · 119th Cong
• HR 4910 — Sustaining Our Democracy Act · 119th Cong
• S 2588 — Sustaining Our Democracy Act · 119th Cong
• HR 1467 — POLE Act · 119th Cong
• HR 160 — Restoring Faith in Elections Act · 119th Cong
• HR 158 — CLEAN Elections Act · 119th Cong
• HR 126 — Original Students Voicing Opinions in Today’s Elections (VOTE) Act · 119th Cong
• HR 5292 — Sustaining Our Democracy Act · 118th Cong
• S 630 — Sustaining Our Democracy Act · 118th Cong