This ranking measures how well states run elections, not how many people vote or who wins. The backbone is the Elections Performance Index (EPI) built by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, a 19-indicator instrument covering data completeness, registration and mail-ballot rejection rates, wait times, website usability, post-election audits, and more. The latest edition, released April 16, 2026, incorporates the 2024 election; the prior edition covered 2022. Where the new edition's state-by-state table compresses (the 2024 scores cluster tightly, with ranks two through seven all rounding to 87 percent), this ranking also uses the fully documented 2022 EPI state scores, and it says so at each entry (MIT Election Lab, 2026; New Mexico Secretary of State, 2024 and 2026).
Two supplements sharpen the picture. Wait times and voter experience come from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), directed by Charles Stewart III at MIT, whose 2024 edition found average wait times fell for both Election Day and early voters. Audit practices come from Verified Voting's audit-law database, which documents which states require post-election tabulation audits and which use risk-limiting audits (RLAs), the statistical gold standard (MIT SPAE, 2025; Verified Voting).
The composite score is ordinal and analytical, 0 to 100, and this box is honest about its limits: no official national ranking of election administration exists, and EPI scores at the top are separated by rounding error. The framework is deliberately blind to party. States governed by Republicans and Democrats appear throughout the list, because well-run elections are an administrative achievement, not a partisan one. Turnout is excluded from the score; participation and administration are different measurements, and New Mexico proves it, ranking near the top here and 47th in turnout.
", "entries": [ { "rank": 1, "name": "New Mexico", "detail": "2022 EPI: 88 (1st). 2024 EPI: 87 (7th)", "score": "94", "blurb": "The only state with a documented number-one EPI finish (2022, at 88 percent) followed by a top-ten repeat in the 2024 edition at 87 percent, up 18 ranking spots since 2020 (New Mexico Secretary of State, 2024; New Mexico Secretary of State, 2026). State law requires post-election audits of vote tabulators, and the state has piloted risk-limiting methods (Verified Voting)." }, { "rank": 2, "name": "Michigan", "detail": "2022 EPI: 88 (2nd)", "score": "93", "blurb": "Ranked second in the nation in the 2022 EPI at 88 percent while implementing nine days of early voting and expanded mail rules adopted by voters in 2022 (Michigan Secretary of State, 2024; MIT Election Lab). Michigan then delivered a 74.7 percent turnout 2024 election with post-election audits at the county and state level (Ballotpedia, 2025; Verified Voting)." }, { "rank": 3, "name": "Colorado", "detail": "2022 EPI: 87 (top five)", "score": "92", "blurb": "Scored 87 percent in the 2022 EPI and pioneered the practice the rest of the country is adopting: Colorado ran the first statewide risk-limiting audit in 2017 and has required RLAs after every election since (MIT Election Lab; Verified Voting). Universal mail ballots with in-person options and ballot tracking round out the model." }, { "rank": 4, "name": "Vermont", "detail": "2022 EPI: 87 (top five)", "score": "90", "blurb": "Posted 87 percent in the 2022 EPI with universal mail-ballot delivery for general elections and consistently complete data reporting (MIT Election Lab). Vermont pairs small scale with high administrative transparency, and its 2024 turnout of 67.9 percent ran well above the national rate (UF Election Lab compilation, 2025)." }, { "rank": 5, "name": "Nebraska", "detail": "2022 EPI: 87 (top five)", "score": "89", "blurb": "The highest-ranked deep-red state, at 87 percent in the 2022 EPI, demonstrating that administration quality crosses party lines (MIT Election Lab). Nebraska requires post-election audits and reports election data with few gaps (Verified Voting)." }, { "rank": 6, "name": "Wisconsin", "detail": "Nation's highest 2024 turnout; decentralized but high-performing", "score": "87", "blurb": "Delivered the country's top 2024 turnout, roughly 76.6 percent, through 1,800-plus municipal clerks, with same-day registration and statutory post-election audits of voting equipment (MPR News, 2025; Verified Voting). Its 0.86-point presidential margin was counted, canvassed, and certified without incident (official returns, 2024)." }, { "rank": 7, "name": "Minnesota", "detail": "Second-highest 2024 turnout; long-time EPI top-tier state", "score": "86", "blurb": "A perennial top-tier EPI performer that turned out 76.4 percent of eligible voters in 2024, first in the nation among young voters, with same-day registration and required post-election reviews of precinct counts (Minnesota Secretary of State, 2025; Verified Voting)." }, { "rank": 8, "name": "Washington", "detail": "All-mail voting with statewide ballot tracking", "score": "85", "blurb": "Runs entirely vote-by-mail with signature verification, ballot tracking for every voter, and statutorily required audits, and posted 67.4 percent turnout in a state with no marquee 2024 contest (UF Election Lab compilation, 2025; Verified Voting). Washington also conducts risk-limiting audit pilots under state law." }, { "rank": 9, "name": "Oregon", "detail": "First all-mail state (2000); first automatic voter registration (2016)", "score": "84", "blurb": "The original all-mail state has run universal mail elections since 2000 and enacted the nation's first automatic voter registration law in 2016, with required post-election audits (Oregon Secretary of State; Verified Voting). Its systems have been copied, in whole or part, by at least seven states." }, { "rank": 10, "name": "New Hampshire", "detail": "Same-day registration; 74.4 percent 2024 turnout", "score": "82", "blurb": "Combines same-day registration with hand-count and machine-count audit procedures and delivered the nation's fourth-highest 2024 turnout at 74.4 percent (Ballotpedia, 2025). The SPAE's 2024 edition found high voter confidence nationally, and New Hampshire's short lines have been a consistent bright spot in that survey series (MIT SPAE, 2025)." }, { "rank": 11, "name": "Maine", "detail": "Same-day registration; 73.0 percent 2024 turnout", "score": "81", "blurb": "Maine's same-day registration and no-excuse absentee systems supported 73.0 percent turnout in 2024, and the state runs post-election audit pilots as it phases in risk-limiting methods (UF Election Lab compilation, 2025; Verified Voting)." }, { "rank": 12, "name": "Virginia", "detail": "Annual risk-limiting audits required by statute", "score": "80", "blurb": "Virginia law requires risk-limiting audits on a recurring statutory schedule, one of the few states to mandate them annually, and the state offers 45 days of in-person early voting (Verified Voting; Virginia Department of Elections). Its 65.9 percent 2024 turnout ran about 2 points above the national rate (UF Election Lab compilation, 2025)." }, { "rank": 13, "name": "Rhode Island", "detail": "Early adopter of risk-limiting audits (statute enacted 2017)", "score": "79", "blurb": "Rhode Island enacted a risk-limiting audit requirement in 2017, among the first states after Colorado, and has conducted RLAs in every federal cycle since 2020 (Verified Voting). A small state that punches above its weight on audit practice." }, { "rank": 14, "name": "Georgia", "detail": "Statewide audits including the 2020 full hand tally; RLAs required", "score": "78", "blurb": "Georgia law requires statewide post-election audits, and the state executed the largest hand-count audit in American history after the 2020 presidential election, then ran RLAs in subsequent cycles (Georgia Secretary of State; Verified Voting). Its 65.2 percent 2024 turnout exceeded the national average while its administration operated under the most litigation-heavy environment of any state (UF Election Lab compilation, 2025)." }, { "rank": 15, "name": "Utah", "detail": "Universal mail voting in a Republican-governed state", "score": "77", "blurb": "Utah moved to universal mail-ballot delivery statewide by 2020 under unified Republican governance, pairing it with signature verification and county audit requirements (Utah Lieutenant Governor's Office; Verified Voting). Alongside Nebraska, it is the standing proof that convenience infrastructure and conservative governance coexist." } ], "narrative": [ { "heading": "The instrument: what the EPI actually measures", "html": "The Elections Performance Index was built by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, with origins in a Pew Charitable Trusts project, primarily by and for election practitioners. It scores every state on 19 defined indicators: registration and absentee ballot rejection rates, data completeness, wait times, disability access, website usability, post-election audit adoption, turnout of registered voters, and more (MIT Election Lab, EPI project page). It is the closest thing American election administration has to an official scorecard, and it is deliberately nonpartisan in construction.
The trend it documents is improvement. In 2008, the national average EPI score was about 63 percent. In the 2024 edition, released April 16, 2026, it was 80 percent (MIT Elections Performance Index blog, 2026). Whatever else is contested about American elections, the machinery has gotten measurably better under governors and legislatures of both parties.
" }, { "heading": "2024: strong administration under maximum scrutiny", "html": "The 2024 election was administered under more legal and political pressure than any in modern memory, and the measured result was strength. The MIT Election Lab's summary of the new EPI edition is titled plainly: U.S. Election Administration Remained Strong in 2024 (MIT Elections blog, 2026). The companion Survey of the Performance of American Elections found average wait times fell for both Election Day and early voters, polling place disruptions were infrequent, and voter confidence was high across the board, with the long-standing partisan confidence gap narrowing considerably (MIT SPAE, How We Voted in 2024, 2025).
The federal data agrees. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission's 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey, released June 30, 2025, documented the same operational picture across thousands of local jurisdictions (EAC, 2025). Three independent instruments, one conclusion.
" }, { "heading": "Audits are the quiet revolution", "html": "The strongest trend in election administration over the past decade is the spread of post-election tabulation audits. Colorado ran the first statewide risk-limiting audit in 2017. Rhode Island enacted an RLA statute the same year. Virginia now requires them annually, Georgia requires statewide audits and executed a full hand tally of the 2020 presidential race, and states including Washington, Michigan, and New Mexico run RLA programs or pilots (Verified Voting audit-law database). A risk-limiting audit checks a statistical sample of paper ballots against machine counts, sized so that a wrong outcome would be detected with high probability.
This is a both-parties story, stated plainly. Republican-governed Georgia and Utah, Democratic-governed Colorado and New Mexico, and divided states like Virginia and Michigan all built audit regimes in the same decade. The SPAE found support for most election security practices rose from 2022 to 2024, particularly among Republicans (MIT SPAE, 2025). Verification is the rare election policy with a bipartisan adoption curve.
" }, { "heading": "What the ranking does not claim", "html": "Three disclosures keep this honest. First, the top of the 2024 EPI is a photo finish: New Mexico reports it ranked seventh at 87 percent with ranks two through six also rounding to 87 (New Mexico Secretary of State, 2026). Ordinal rankings at the top are separated by tenths of a point, and this report's composite reflects multi-edition performance, not one year's rounding. Second, administration is not participation: New Mexico ranks near the top here and 47th in 2024 turnout, while Texas, 46th in turnout, is not in the bottom tier of administration measures. Third, the wait-time indicator was not available for the 2024 EPI edition, so wait-time evidence here comes from the SPAE instead, and the report says so rather than papering over the gap (MIT Elections Performance Index, 2026; MIT SPAE, 2025).
Only actions matter here: statutes passed, audits executed, data reported, lines measured. States earn their place on this list by administrative record, and every claim above carries the name of the institution that measured it.
" } ], "settled": "The evidence settles that American election administration has improved dramatically and measurably: the national average EPI score rose from about 63 percent in 2008 to 80 percent in the 2024 edition, wait times fell again in 2024 per the SPAE, and post-election audits, including risk-limiting audits, spread to states governed by both parties. It is also settled that the top performers are politically diverse: New Mexico, Michigan, Colorado, Vermont, and Nebraska led the last fully published EPI table.", "contested": "What remains contested is weighting and interpretation. States clustered within a point of each other at the top of the EPI can be ordered several defensible ways, the 2024 edition lacks the wait-time indicator, and experts disagree about how heavily to weight convenience measures versus verification measures. Policy debates about voter ID, mail-ballot deadlines, and list maintenance also continue in good faith in both parties; this ranking measures administrative execution, not the wisdom of any state's policy choices.", "charts": [ { "type": "bar", "title": "Top five states, 2022 Elections Performance Index score (MIT Election Lab)", "unit": "EPI score (%)", "data": [ { "label": "New Mexico", "value": 88 }, { "label": "Michigan", "value": 88 }, { "label": "Colorado", "value": 87 }, { "label": "Vermont", "value": 87 }, { "label": "Nebraska", "value": 87 } ] }, { "type": "bar", "title": "National average EPI score over time, and 2024 reference points", "unit": "EPI score (%)", "data": [ { "label": "National avg 2008", "value": 63 }, { "label": "National avg 2024", "value": 80 }, { "label": "New Mexico 2024 (7th)", "value": 87 }, { "label": "New Mexico 2022 (1st)", "value": 88 }, { "label": "Michigan 2022 (2nd)", "value": 88 } ] }, { "type": "bar", "title": "2024 VEP turnout in top-ranked administration states", "unit": "% of VEP", "data": [ { "label": "Wisconsin", "value": 76.6 }, { "label": "Minnesota", "value": 76.4 }, { "label": "Michigan", "value": 74.7 }, { "label": "New Hampshire", "value": 74.4 }, { "label": "Colorado", "value": 73.1 }, { "label": "Vermont", "value": 67.9 }, { "label": "Washington", "value": 67.4 }, { "label": "Virginia", "value": 65.9 }, { "label": "Georgia", "value": 65.2 }, { "label": "New Mexico", "value": 55.5 } ] } ], "sources": [ { "title": "MIT Election Data and Science Lab, Elections Performance Index (interactive)", "url": "https://elections.mit.edu/" }, { "title": "MIT Election Lab, Elections Performance Index project page (19 indicators)", "url": "https://electionlab.mit.edu/research/projects/election-performance-index" }, { "title": "MIT Elections Performance Index blog, U.S. Election Administration Remained Strong in 2024 (2024 edition, released April 16, 2026)", "url": "https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/us-election-administration-remained-strong-2024" }, { "title": "MIT Elections Performance Index blog, The EPI Charts a Decade's Progress in Election Administration", "url": "https://elections-blog.mit.edu/articles/elections-performance-index-charts-decades-progress-election-administration" }, { "title": "New Mexico Secretary of State, New Mexico Continues to Rank Among Top 10 States for Election Administration (April 17, 2026)", "url": "https://www.sos.nm.gov/2026/04/17/new-mexico-continues-to-rank-among-top-10-states-for-election-administration/" }, { "title": "New Mexico Secretary of State, New Mexico's Elections Ranked Number One in Nation (2022 EPI, March 2024)", "url": "https://www.sos.nm.gov/2024/03/25/new-mexicos-elections-ranked-number-one-in-nation/" }, { "title": "Michigan Secretary of State, Michigan's elections ranked #2 in the nation by MIT Election Data and Science Lab (March 2024)", "url": "https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2024/03/22/secretary-benson-announces-michigan-elections-ranked-number-2-in-the-nation" }, { "title": "Charles Stewart III, How We Voted in 2024: A Topical Look at the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (MIT, 2025)", "url": "https://electionlab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/2025-07/HowWeVotedIn2024.pdf" }, { "title": "MIT Election Lab, New Report: How We Voted in 2024", "url": "https://electionlab.mit.edu/articles/new-report-how-we-voted-2024" }, { "title": "U.S. Election Assistance Commission, 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) Report (June 30, 2025)", "url": "https://www.eac.gov/news/2025/06/30/us-election-assistance-commission-releases-2024-election-administration-and-voting" }, { "title": "Verified Voting, Audit Law Database (post-election and risk-limiting audit requirements by state)", "url": "https://verifiedvoting.org/auditlaws/" }, { "title": "Pew Charitable Trusts, Elections Performance Index (origins and early editions)", "url": "https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/data-visualizations/2014/elections-performance-index" } ], "faq": [ { "q": "Which state has the best-run elections?", "a": "By the last fully published MIT Elections Performance Index table (2022), New Mexico ranked first at 88 percent, with Michigan second at 88 and Colorado, Vermont, and Nebraska at 87. In the 2024 edition released in April 2026, the top seven states all scored about 87 percent, with New Mexico seventh, so the leaders are separated by rounding." }, { "q": "What is the Elections Performance Index?", "a": "A 19-indicator scorecard of state election administration built by the MIT Election Data and Science Lab, covering measures like mail-ballot rejection rates, wait times, data completeness, and post-election audits. The national average rose from about 63 percent in 2008 to 80 percent in the 2024 edition." }, { "q": "Is election administration quality a partisan issue?", "a": "The data says no. The top EPI tier includes Republican-governed Nebraska and Democratic-governed New Mexico and Colorado, and audit requirements have been adopted in red Georgia and Utah, blue Colorado and New Mexico, and purple Virginia and Michigan. The 2024 SPAE also found the partisan gap in voter confidence narrowed considerably." }, { "q": "What is a risk-limiting audit?", "a": "A post-election check that hand-counts a statistical sample of paper ballots, sized so that if the machine count produced the wrong winner, the audit would detect it with a specified high probability. Colorado ran the first statewide risk-limiting audit in 2017, and states including Rhode Island, Virginia, and Georgia now require or conduct them." } ] }