Contents

• Introduction
• Overview of Grant Programs
• General Improvements Grant Program
• Voting System Replacement Grant Programs
• Requirements Payments Program
• Disability Access Grant Programs
• Election Technology Research Grant Programs
• Youth Voter Participation and Poll Worker Recruitment Grant Programs
• Election Data Collection Grant Program
• Potential Considerations for Congress
• Role of Federal Grant Programs
• Options for Legislative Proposals
• Uses of Funds
• Amount of Funding
• Recipients of Funding
• Availability of Funding
• Administration of Grant Programs
• Concluding Observations

Summary

States, territories, 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 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; 52 U.S.C. §§20901-21145) set new requirements for the administration of federal elections and created the election administration-focused U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC). It also authorized election administration-related grant programs.

The main grant programs Congress authorized in HAVA were three programs to make funds available to the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands for (1) making certain general improvements to election administration, (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 of the 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, FY2022, FY2023, FY2024, and FY2025. 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 inclusion of further funding for HAVA grants in the FY2020, FY2022, FY2023, and FY2024 regular appropriations acts (P.L. 116-93, P.L. 117-103, P.L. 117-328, and P.L. 118-47), 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, in the 117^th Congress, the House passed two bills—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. The 119^th Congress's Original Students Voicing Opinions in Today's Elections (VOTE) Act (H.R. 126) and Restoring Faith in Elections Act (H.R. 160) would authorize grant programs for providing 12^th graders with voter registration information and for complying with new voter registration requirements, respectively.

The increased prominence of state and local elections grant programs since the 2016 election cycle might suggest questions about what, if any, role 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.

Introduction

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.¹ 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 or practices.

Congress has used or proposed using funding to engage with election administration issues in various ways. It has directed federal agencies to use some of their funding to support state and local elections work,² for example, and authorized more general grant programs that have been used to fund elections-related projects.³ Members have also introduced bills that would condition access to certain federal funds on adopting or rejecting election administration policies.⁴

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.⁵ This report focuses on those types of grant programs.⁶ It starts with an overview of the election administration-related grant programs Congress has authorized for states and localities to date and the funding it has appropriated for them. It then introduces some issues that may be of interest to Members who are considering whether or how to authorize new election administration-related grant programs for states or localities or appropriate further funding for existing programs. That latter part of the report describes some of the reasons Members might support or oppose authorizing or funding elections grant programs—such as differing views about the proper role of the federal government in funding election administration—and some of the options available to Members who choose to propose new elections grant programs or funding.

Overview of Grant Programs

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 highest-profile problems in 2000 were in Florida, where issues with the vote count delayed the resolution of the presidential election for weeks. However, subsequent hearings and investigations found that election administration issues were widespread and that, due to variations in state and local policies and procedures, they varied across jurisdictions. Elections experts reported that voter registration problems prevented many otherwise eligible voters from casting ballots, for example, and that the lever and punch card voting systems used by some jurisdictions failed to record votes at disproportionately high rates.⁷

Congress responded to the issues with the administration of the 2000 elections, in the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA; 52 U.S.C. §§20901-21145), by setting new requirements for the administration of federal elections and creating the election administration-focused U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC).⁸ It also authorized elections-related grant programs.

The main grant programs Congress authorized in HAVA were three programs to make funds available to the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (referred to hereinafter as the "HAVA states") for (1) making certain general improvements to election administration, (2) replacing lever and punch card voting systems, and (3) meeting the new requirements established by the act (for details of the formulas for allocating funding under these programs, see Table 1). HAVA also authorized grant programs to help meet some of the 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 (see Table 2 for appropriations for each grant program by fiscal year).

Since HAVA was enacted in 2002, Congress has appropriated funding regularly for one or both of its 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 FY2025. 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 inclusion of further funding for HAVA grants in the FY2020 and FY2022 through FY2024 regular appropriations acts (P.L. 116-93, P.L. 117-103, P.L. 117-328, and P.L. 118-47), supplemental appropriations for FY2020 (P.L. 116-136), and continuing appropriations for FY2025 (P.L. 119-4).

The following subsections provide broad overviews of the election administration-related grant programs Congress has authorized for states and localities to date. For more detailed information about the grant programs, see Table 1, Table 3, and Table 4.

General Improvements Grant Program

The issues with the administration of the 2000 elections varied by jurisdiction. Poll worker shortages were a particular issue in some localities, for example, while unreliable voting systems caused many of the problems in others. Congress authorized this general improvements grant program to help each HAVA state make the improvements to its election administration processes that it considered most pressing.⁹ HAVA prohibited use of the grant funding for legal judgments and most litigation-related costs, but otherwise made it available for general improvements to the administration of federal elections and other specified purposes (see Table 3 for details).

Congress appropriated funding for the general improvements grant program the first fiscal year after HAVA was enacted (FY2003; see Table 2 and Table 3 for details of authorized and appropriated funding for this and other elections grant programs). It has also provided further funding in more recent years, in response to developments such as foreign efforts to interfere in elections and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Congress included $380 million for funding authorized by these provisions of HAVA in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2018; $425 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020; $400 million in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act; $75 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022; $75 million in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023; $55 million in the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024; and $15 million in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025.

The appropriations acts that provided those more recent funds included substantive provisions that modified or supplemented some of the parameters of the grant program, such as by adding a match requirement. Explanatory statements accompanying the FY2018 and FY2020 regular appropriations acts also provided more information about Congress's intentions for the funding. For details of differences between the general improvements grant program as authorized by HAVA and the more recent funds, see Table 4.

Voting System Replacement Grant Programs

The punch card voting systems some jurisdictions used in 2000 contributed to the problems with the Florida vote count. Voters were supposed to indicate their preferences on punch card voting systems by punching out pieces of card—known as "chads"—next to their selections, but issues with incompletely punched chads made it difficult to discern some voters' intentions.¹⁰ Problems with the lever voting machines some jurisdictions used in 2000, such as the potential for jammed levers and the lack of a paper trail that might be used to recover votes cast on a jammed machine, were also reported in election postmortems.¹¹ Congress authorized HAVA's lever and punch card voting system replacement grant program to help HAVA states replace both types of system.

Some states that used lever or punch card voting systems identified the issues with those systems early and started replacing them before the November 2000 elections. The earliest of those adopters were not eligible for HAVA's lever and punch card voting system replacement grant program because they were no longer using lever or punch card systems by November 2000 and awards under the program were based on the number of precincts that used such systems in the November 2000 general election (see Table 1 for more on the formula used to allocate these funds). To avoid discouraging states from taking early action to improve their election systems in the future, Congress authorized and funded a voting system replacement reimbursement grant program in the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution, 2003 (P.L. 108-7).¹² Grants awarded under that program, which were capped at $4,000 per precinct and $15 million for the program as a whole, were designed to reimburse HAVA states for costs they incurred in obtaining certain types of voting equipment prior to the November 2000 general election.

Requirements Payments Program

Meeting the election administration requirements established by HAVA involved significant financial investments for many HAVA states, and Congress authorized a requirements payments program primarily to help cover those costs.¹³ Recipients could also use requirements payments for more general election administration improvements if they either had already met the HAVA requirements or limited their spending on such improvements to the minimum amount they were guaranteed for requirements payments for a given fiscal year (see Table 1 for more on guaranteed minimums). As with HAVA's general improvements grant program, recipients of requirements payments were prohibited from applying them to legal judgments or most litigation-related costs.

As enacted, HAVA authorized a total of $3 billion for the requirements payments program over the period from FY2003 through FY2005. The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act of 2009—which set new requirements for the voting and registration processes used by individuals covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986 (UOCAVA; 52 U.S.C. §§20301-20311)—amended HAVA to also authorize such sums as necessary for FY2010 and subsequent fiscal years to help HAVA states meet the new MOVE Act requirements.¹⁴

Disability Access Grant Programs

Congressional testimony by representatives of the disability community highlighted particular challenges individuals with disabilities and older Americans faced in accessing the electoral process in 2000. Such challenges included, among others, polling places that were inaccessible to individuals with certain physical disabilities and the often limited options for individuals with visual impairments to cast a ballot privately and independently.¹⁵ HAVA authorized two grant programs to help address such challenges: (1) a polling place accessibility grant program, and (2) a protection and advocacy (P&A) system grant program.

As authorized, HAVA's polling place accessibility grant program was to be available to the HAVA states and units of local government.¹⁶ Grants awarded under the program were to be used for improving the accessibility of polling places to individuals with disabilities and conducting activities, such as voter outreach campaigns and election worker trainings, to help share information about polling place accessibility.

P&A systems are state-level systems that are charged with empowering and advocating for individuals with disabilities.¹⁷ HAVA made P&A system grant funds broadly available to HAVA state P&A systems for helping ensure full participation in the electoral process by individuals with disabilities, and the Protection and Advocacy for Voting Access (PAVA) Program Inclusion Act (P.L. 117-182) extended eligibility for the program to the P&A systems serving the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) and Native Americans in the Four Corners region of the country (American Indian consortium). HAVA prohibits use of the funds for initiating or participating in elections-related litigation and specifies that 7% of the funding appropriated for the grant program for any given fiscal year is to be distributed to other organizations to provide training and technical assistance with activities funded under the program.¹⁸

Election Technology Research Grant Programs

Election technology shortcomings, such as the unreliability of lever and punch card voting systems, contributed to the issues with the administration of the 2000 elections. One approach Congress took to addressing such shortcomings, as described in the "Voting System Replacement Grant Programs" section of this report, was authorizing funding to help replace lever and punch card voting systems. Another was authorizing funding for research into better systems. HAVA's voting technology improvements research grant program and voting technology pilot program grant program were intended to facilitate development and testing of new voting technologies.¹⁹

The MOVE Act, which set new requirements for the voting and registration processes used by UOCAVA voters and authorized new appropriations for requirements payments to help HAVA states meet them, also authorized funding to help improve UOCAVA election technologies. The act's UOCAVA election technology pilot program grant program was intended to fund testing of new election technologies for use by individuals covered by UOCAVA.²⁰

Youth Voter Participation and Poll Worker Recruitment Grant Programs

Young people participated in the 2000 elections at lower rates than their older counterparts,²¹ and some of the issues with the administration of the 2000 elections were caused by a shortage of qualified poll workers.²² Congress authorized two grant programs in HAVA that were aimed at addressing one or both of those issues.²³ HAVA's mock elections grant program was designed to fund activities, such as simulated national elections and quiz team competitions, to help encourage students and their parents to engage with the electoral process.²⁴ The Help America Vote College Program, which was to be developed by the EAC, was intended to use grant-making and other activities to encourage students at institutions of higher education to serve as poll workers and state and local election officials to take advantage of their services.²⁵

Election Data Collection Grant Program

Election data can help policymakers identify potential improvements to election administration processes. For example, data indicating that mail ballots are being rejected at particularly high rates in a given locality might encourage the locality to review its ballot design, voter education, or election worker training processes.

The EAC collects data from state and local election officials after each regular federal general election—using a survey known as the Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS)²⁶—but Congress found that some EAVS data quality and response rates were lower than expected.²⁷ It responded by including language in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2008 (P.L. 110-161) to establish and fund an election data collection grant program. Grant awards under this program, which were to be available in the amount of $2 million to each of five HAVA states, were to be used to improve the collection of data for the November 2008 regular federal general election.

Potential Considerations for Congress

Proposals to provide funding for election administration-related grant programs gained new traction after the 2016 elections. Prior to the 2016 election cycle, Congress had not funded broad-based elections grant programs for states or localities since the FY2010 appropriations for HAVA's requirements payments program,²⁸ and it was not generally considered likely to do so.²⁹ However, developments like the emergence of election interference as a significant issue in the 2016 election cycle and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020 cycle have introduced election administration challenges that have been ongoing, difficult for states and localities to manage alone, or both.³⁰

As described in the "General Improvements Grant Program" section of this report, Congress has responded to such challenges, in part, by providing $380 million for HAVA grant funds for FY2018, $75 million for FY2022, $75 million for FY2023, $55 million for FY2024, $15 million for FY2025, and a total of $825 million in regular and supplemental appropriations for FY2020. Some Members have also proposed legislation to establish new elections grant programs for states or localities. Some of those proposals would authorize grant funding for a limited number of fiscal years, while others, such as the 118^th Congress's Sustaining Our Democracy Act (H.R. 5292/S. 630), would have established a program and trust fund to provide for ongoing funding.

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. The following subsections introduce some issues that may be of interest to Members who are considering whether or how to propose a role for similar grant programs and to Members who are weighing whether to support, oppose, or amend such proposals.

Role of Federal Grant Programs

A central debate in elections policy is over the role the federal government should play in election administration. Some say that Congress should facilitate or mandate changes in the way elections are conducted in order to advance certain objectives, such as ensuring that all eligible voters have access to the ballot or protecting the integrity of the electoral process.³¹ Others see a more limited role for the federal government, suggesting that the state and local officials who are primarily responsible for administering elections are best positioned to identify and implement the right election administration policies for their jurisdictions.³²

That debate has carried over to some discussions of state and local elections grant programs. Federalism considerations have informed some deliberations about how to structure election administration-related grant programs for states and localities (see the "Options for Legislative Proposals" section of this report for selected examples). Such considerations have also prompted some to question whether to authorize or fund elections grant programs at all. Some have opposed elections grant programs for states or localities on the grounds either that they would constitute federal overreach in and of themselves or that they could lead to such overreach.³³

In addition to such general objections, some have voiced opposition to individual proposals to authorize or fund elections grant programs on more specific grounds. They have noted that some states still have funding remaining from previous appropriations for the grant program a given appropriations bill would fund, for example, or suggested that Congress does not yet have enough information to determine whether further funding for the program is warranted.³⁴ Some Members might also disagree with the objectives of a proposed grant program or think that other congressional tools, such as federal requirements or nonfinancial assistance from federal agencies, would be better equipped to achieve them.

Given the nature of its subject, this report tends to focus on how election administration-related grant programs for states and localities have played or might play a role in federal election administration policy. As the above discussion suggests, however, a prior question in any given case might be whether they should play such a role. Either as a general principle or in specific instances, Congress might choose not to authorize election administration-related grant programs for states and localities or not to fund them.

Options for Legislative Proposals

The "Role of Federal Grant Programs" section of this report describes cases in which Members might oppose proposals to authorize or fund election administration-related grant programs for states or localities. There are also circumstances in which Members might favor such proposals. State or local elections grant programs might appeal to Members who are hesitant to set federal requirements for election administration, for example, or who want to engage with aspects of election administration for which Congress's authority to set requirements is limited.³⁵ Grant programs might also appeal to Members who believe that funding is the best way to achieve certain election administration objectives or that states and localities either cannot or should not be solely responsible for financing election administration.

Most of the funding Congress has made available to states and localities for election administration-related purposes to date has been appropriated under grant programs authorized by HAVA. Members who are interested in proposing further elections grant funding for states or localities might consider whether to continue appropriating funding under existing grant programs or to establish new grant programs that are tailored more specifically to current needs.³⁶

In either case, Members might also consider exactly how to structure the grant programs. Choices about how grant programs are structured—whether they are made in authorizing legislation like HAVA or substantive provisions of appropriations acts like Division B of the CARES Act—can help determine how effective the programs 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 new grant programs or funding and to Members who are weighing whether to support, oppose, or amend such proposals.

Previous legislative proposals suggest some possible questions about how to structure election administration-related grant programs for states and localities, some options for answering them, and some of the considerations that have informed choices among such options in the past. The following subsections introduce some of those questions, options, and considerations (for examples of how the options have been implemented in previous legislative proposals, see the Appendix). The discussion in these subsections is intended to be illustrative rather than to provide a comprehensive accounting of all of the factors that might inform choices about elections grant programs. Congressional clients may contact the author of this report for more detailed discussion of considerations that might be relevant to specific legislative proposals.³⁷

Uses of Funds

• Are grant funds limited to use for specific activities or available for more general purposes?
• Are grant funds intended to finance voluntary activities or help meet federal requirements?
• Are any uses of grant funds prohibited or prioritized?

State and local officials who are open to receiving federal elections grant funding have tended to express a preference for funding with minimal restrictions.³⁸ The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) reauthorized a resolution in February 2024, for example, that urged Congress not to set further conditions on HAVA funds than are laid out in the act.³⁹ Some election officials have also advocated for funding flexibility in congressional testimony, arguing against limiting the purposes for which federal funding may be used or attaching funding to federal requirements.⁴⁰

As the officials primarily responsible for administering elections, state and local officials might have particular insight into the election administration problems that are most pressing in their jurisdictions and the proposed solutions to those problems that are most likely to be effective. State and local officials will likely also play a prominent role in implementing—and helping determine the success of—any federal funding initiatives. Such considerations might lead Members to favor general-purpose grant programs that are intended to help fund voluntary rather than mandatory activities.

Members might choose to limit use of grant funds to more specific purposes or attach funding to federal requirements, on the other hand, if they have a particular solution to an election administration problem in mind or if they want to encourage consistency in the way states approach a given aspect of election administration. For example, HAVA's lever and punch card voting system replacement grant program aimed to solve the reliability problems with those voting systems specifically by replacing them. The act's requirements payments program was attached to requirements to help standardize certain practices, such as having a centralized statewide voter registration list, across states.⁴¹

The above discussion focuses on two options available to Congress: (1) limiting use of grant funds to specific activities, and (2) making funds available for more general purposes. There are also some other alternatives that might appeal to Members who are interested in a middle ground between those options. One possible intermediate approach, which Congress used with HAVA's P&A system grant program, is to make grant funds broadly available for general purposes but prohibit some specific uses of the funds. Another, which the House has explored in some recent consolidated and Financial Services and General Government appropriations bills, is to prioritize use of the funds for a particular activity, such as replacing direct-recording electronic voting machines, but permit them to be used for more general purposes under certain conditions.⁴²

Amount of Funding

• Is the total amount of federal funding authorized for the grant program specified?
• Are grant recipients required to contribute to funding grant activities?
• How is funding allocated to grant recipients?
• Are eligible recipients guaranteed minimum—or subject to maximum—award amounts?

Congress might use grant programs either to help states or localities conduct a particular activity or to encourage them to do so. Whether a given grant program is intended to facilitate elections activities or incentivize them might affect how much funding Congress chooses to make available for the program. If the objective of a given grant program is to enable states to perform an activity, for example, the amount of funding Congress chooses to provide for the program might be based on the actual costs of conducting the activity.

Congress has sometimes also required grant recipients to contribute some of the total funding for grant activities, such as by providing matching funds. The 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico were required to match 5% of the federal funding they received in FY2018 HAVA general improvements grant funds, for example, and 20% of the funds for subsequent years.⁴³

Requiring grant recipients to contribute to funding grant activities might have some advantages. For one thing, it increases the total amount of funding available for grant activities without further increasing federal investment. Some have also suggested that, by requiring potential grantees to make a case to state or local authorities for providing matching funds, match requirements might encourage grant recipients to think more carefully about how to deploy grant funds.⁴⁴

Match requirements may also come with trade-offs, however. For example, some have suggested that requiring a 20% match for CARES Act HAVA funds at a time when there were other pressing demands on state budgets and some state legislatures had suspended their sessions due to COVID-19 made it difficult for some states to access the funds.⁴⁵ States with more limited resources may also find it more challenging to meet match requirements in general than better-resourced states.

A proposal was offered, during the HAVA debate, to address that last trade-off by linking the percentage of federal funding states were required to match to their level of financial need.⁴⁶ That proposal was not adopted, but variations among states have factored into other decisions about elections grant programs. For example, Congress chose to use nondiscretionary formulas to allocate some HAVA funds due to concerns that competitive grant processes would disadvantage states with more limited resources for grant-writing.⁴⁷ The formulas Congress set out in HAVA were also structured to reflect variations among states. Allocations of lever and punch card voting system replacement grant funds varied with the number of precincts that used such systems in the November 2000 general election, for example, and allocations of general improvements grant funds and requirements payments vary by voting-age population.

Recipients of Funding

• Is grant funding available—directly or indirectly—to local officials?
• Is grant funding available to election officials or to other state or local entities?
• Which jurisdictions or entities are eligible for the grant program?

State-level election officials have been the direct recipients of most of the funding Congress has made available for election administration-related grant programs to date, and they have generally had discretion over whether or how to share the funds. In most states, however, most of the day-to-day work of administering elections is done at the local level.⁴⁸ Local officials are often both responsible for most elections-related spending and most familiar with the specifics of election administration needs.

There may be compelling administrative reasons to distribute elections grant funding at the state level—some localities might have difficulty meeting federal grant compliance requirements, for example, and it might be easier for the federal agencies charged with administering grant programs to coordinate with the states than with thousands of local jurisdictions—but some Members have explored ways to involve local officials in either spending grant funds or helping decide how they are spent.⁴⁹ HAVA required the HAVA states to submit detailed state plans for use of their requirements payments, for example, and directed them to include local officials on the committees that developed the plans. Bills have also been introduced that would have required states to pass some elections grant funding through to localities or allowed local officials to apply for elections grant funds if their state officials opted not to do so or authorized them to apply.⁵⁰

Some election administration-related grant programs have also been directed to non-elections-specific entities rather than to election officials. Although election officials are a natural choice for carrying out most election administration tasks, certain elections-related activities might be a better fit for entities with other subject matter expertise. Congress directed one of HAVA's disability access grant programs to P&A systems, for example, because P&A systems were thought to be particularly well-equipped to help improve electoral access for individuals with disabilities.⁵¹

HAVA's P&A system grant program highlights another potential question about recipients of election administration-related grant funds: which jurisdictions or entities should be eligible for funding? HAVA defined "state" as including the 50 states, DC, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and that definition was used to set eligibility for a number of elections grant programs, including HAVA's P&A system program.⁵² That meant that CNMI—and, in the case of the P&A system grant program, the P&A system serving the American Indian consortium—was generally not eligible for funding Congress appropriated for HAVA's state grant programs.

Congress has subsequently provided for some exceptions to that general rule. The PAVA Program Inclusion Act, which was enacted in 2022, amended HAVA to extend eligibility for the P&A system grant program to the P&A systems serving CNMI and the American Indian consortium. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020; Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022; Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023; Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024; Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025; and CARES Act also included provisions that made their HAVA general improvements grant funds available to CNMI.

Congress might choose to base eligibility for any future state elections grant programs on the current HAVA definition of "state." Alternatively, it might amend the HAVA definition to include CNMI or follow the PAVA Program Inclusion Act in extending eligibility for new or existing grant programs to CNMI or other entities on a case-by-case basis.⁵³

Availability of Funding

• Is there a statutory deadline by which the agency that is charged with administering the grant program must distribute the grant funding?
• Are grant recipients required to obligate or spend grant funds or complete grant-funded activities by a certain deadline?
• Are appropriations for the grant program authorized for a limited number of fiscal years or on an ongoing basis?

Some states require gubernatorial or state legislative approval to claim, use, or match federal funds, and the procurement processes states and localities use to acquire resources like voting systems can take months or years to complete. The potential for such delays at the state and local levels and the emergency nature of certain elections spending have sometimes led Congress to encourage prompt distribution of elections grant funds. The CARES Act, for example, directed the EAC to distribute its HAVA grant funds within 30 days of the act's enactment.

Congress might also set deadlines by which grant recipients must obligate or spend their funds or complete grant-funded activities. Such deadlines can help ensure that funds are spent within a specified time period. Awards under certain HAVA grant programs, such as most of the funding Congress has provided under the act's general improvements grant program and requirements payments program, were made available to recipients without fiscal year limitation, and recipients were permitted to keep and use any interest the funds generated. That offered an incentive to save grant funding for future needs or ongoing costs rather than spending it quickly, and a few states have reported still having grant funds or interest in their accounts 20 years after grant funding was appropriated.⁵⁴

Deadlines may also have downsides, however. Some have argued that the deadlines for certain grant programs, such as HAVA's lever and punch card voting system replacement program, helped incentivize spending that was not well-tailored to the program's objectives.⁵⁵ NASS also expressed concern that the deadline for obligating CARES Act funding could introduce complications for use of the funds, and some states cited the deadline as a barrier to spending their shares.⁵⁶

One possible way to encourage timely spending without setting deadlines could be to provide for ongoing funding for certain election administration-related purposes.⁵⁷ Some states have reported that they waited to spend some of their HAVA grant funds so they would have funding available to cover unexpected expenses or meet future iterations of ongoing needs.⁵⁸ State and local officials have also referred to election security in particular as "a race without a finish line" and requested regular funding from Congress for security-related expenses.⁵⁹ Providing for regular federal funding could help assure states that they would have the resources to handle ongoing or unexpected costs without caching current grant funds.

Some Members might be hesitant to provide states or localities with ongoing elections funding, however, due to federalism-based considerations. As suggested by the "Role of Federal Grant Programs" section of this report, some Members might view ongoing funding for state or local elections grant programs as federal overreach or a path to such overreach. That view might also be shared by some state and local officials, who might be wary of such ongoing federal involvement in election administration.

Administration of Grant Programs

• Are details of grants administration, such as the contents or frequency of spending plans or reports, specified in bill text, specified in report language, or left to the discretion of the federal agency charged with administering the grant program?
• Which agency is charged with administering the grant program?
• Is the administering agency encouraged or required to collaborate or consult with other agencies or stakeholders?

Congress might choose to leave decisions about details of grants administration, such as the information potential grantees are required to provide about their spending plans, to the discretion of the federal agency that is charged with administering a given grant program.⁶⁰ In some cases, however, Congress might determine that there is particular information it needs to conduct effective oversight of a grant program and include specific administrative conditions in bill text or report language.⁶¹ HAVA required recipients of requirements payments to file and update detailed state plans for the payments, for example, and the CARES Act required recipients of its HAVA funds to report on their spending within 20 days of each election they held in the 2020 federal election cycle.

Such additional administrative conditions may help Congress gain better insight into how grant funds are being used, how well a given grant program is working, and whether further funding for the program is warranted. However, they might also come with trade-offs. For example, the short turnaround time for CARES Act reporting raised concerns for some about whether election officials could comply with the act's reporting requirements while also fulfilling their other post-election responsibilities, such as conducting the canvass. NASS indicated that this might be a challenge in a letter to Congress,⁶² for example, and some Members proposed legislation to modify the requirement.⁶³ In general, Congress might consider how to balance oversight needs against administrative demands to ensure that it can get the information it needs to evaluate grant programs without overly burdening grantees or administering agencies.

The administering agency for most of the election administration-related grant programs Congress has authorized for states and localities to date is the EAC. With subject matter expertise in election administration and relationships with the state election officials to whom most grant funds have been directed, the EAC has been a common choice of agency to administer elections grant programs.

However, Congress has sometimes determined that an agency with other subject matter expertise or relationships with other state or local officials is a better fit for a given grant program or that the EAC should collaborate or consult with other agencies. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was charged with administering HAVA's disability access grant programs,⁶⁴ for example, and the U.S. Department of Defense has administered the MOVE Act's UOCAVA election technology pilot program grant program.⁶⁵ The National Institute of Standards and Technology was directed to assist the EAC with administering HAVA's voting technology improvements research and voting technology pilot program grant programs, and some have envisioned a similar collaboration between the EAC and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on an election security grant program.⁶⁶

Concluding Observations

Congress has tended, historically, to take a circumscribed approach to federal involvement in elections funding. HAVA authorized a grant program to help replace lever and punch card voting systems, for example, but left the costs of maintaining or upgrading the replacement systems to states and localities. Appropriations for election administration-related grant programs for states and localities have also typically been authorized for a limited number of fiscal years rather than on an ongoing basis.

State and local elections grant programs took on a prominent role in federal election administration policy following foreign efforts to interfere in the 2016 election cycle and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the 2020 cycle. Congress appropriated a total of more than $1.4 billion under HAVA's general improvements grant program between FY2018 and FY2025 and advanced other proposals to authorize or fund state or local elections grant programs through parts of the legislative process.

However, the amount of funding provided for elections grants has generally decreased over that period. Whereas Congress appropriated $380 million for general improvements grants for FY2018 and $825 million for FY2020, it provided $75 million for each of FY2022 and FY2023, $55 million for FY2024, and $15 million for FY2025.

An open question, therefore, might be whether the post-2016 prominence of state and local elections grant programs reflects potential interest among Members in increased federal involvement in election administration funding or whether the recent appropriations were more isolated responses to immediate challenges. Does Congress foresee authorizing or appropriating further elections grant funding for states or localities or engaging with state and local elections policy in other ways, such as by conditioning access to certain federal funding on adoption of certain policies? If Members are interested in further grant funding, would it be provided on a time-limited or ongoing basis? Would new grant programs or funding be intended to help states and localities respond to specific challenges like the ones presented by election interference and the COVID-19 pandemic or to advance broader elections objectives, such as ensuring that all eligible voters have access to the ballot or protecting the integrity of the electoral process?

Previous legislative proposals suggest some of the options available to Congress for structuring elections grant programs for states and localities and some of the considerations that have informed choices among those options in the past. Information about such options and considerations might be helpful both to Members who are considering proposing new state or local elections grant programs or funding and to Members who are weighing whether to support, oppose, or amend such proposals.

Appendix. Selected Options for Structuring Grant Programs

The "Options for Legislative Proposals" section of this report lists some questions that may be relevant to Members who are considering developing or evaluating proposals to authorize or fund elections grant programs for states or localities. The table below presents some of the options for answering those questions that have been explored in previous legislation. The table is intended to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. It also includes only answers that have been offered explicitly in legislation or report language, not answers that might be provided by other federal guidance on grant programs or appropriations or at the discretion of the federal departments or agencies that are charged with administering elections grant programs.

Footnotes