Explore a database of all voting machines ever used in US elections, including how they worked, where they were used, and security concerns for each.

A technician bought an old, likely-decommissioned voting machine from 2013 and took it apart to see how a would-be hacker might be able to exploit its vulnerabilities. Get a sense of the needs for secure, up-to-date voting machines with this...

This University of California, Santa Barbara archive compiles presidential election data from 1789 to the present, including popular vote totals, turnout figures, and contextual resources that explain how the electoral process and political landscape have evolved.

This interactive tool lets users explore the outcomes of every US presidential election from George Washington's uncontested 1789 victory through 2024, showing how electoral votes, state results, and shifting coalitions shaped each race.

Ever wonder how much of each group make up the American voting bloc? Find raw data from the '16 and '18 elections broken out by a variety of factors (click on "validated voters database" link).

The USA has seen some crazy elections. Election fraud is vanishingly rare now, but here are the craziest cases of election fraud in U.S. history.

What’s actually at stake when someone casts their vote in a US election? CNN’s “Election 101” podcast series provides ten episodes summarizing some of the basics of democratic elections. The ins and outs of voting are highlighted in 15-minute episodes on voter registration and voting by mail. Additional segments highlight how the electoral system works, how ballots are counted, the Electoral College, why it takes so long to get election results, and more.

This Pudding interactive analyzes every mention of "democracy" in the Congressional Record over 145 years, charting how the word shifted from a partisan label to a concept, and tracking when lawmakers warned the system itself was under threat.

Presidential pollsters in the US have had some embarrassing failures. Here’s a catalog of those miscalls, from the scholar who literally wrote the book on them.

Pollsters track more than just politics: From civil rights to war declarations, go back and see how people felt about major events in the US with this timeline.

This article breaks down demographic data to show what it means for American elections. According to the latest US Census, the US is growing increasingly diverse. As the population becomes more diverse, so does the electorate.

Since 1965, federal oversight has blocked thousands of state-level voting changes—including redistricting plans—by requiring approval for measures that could affect minority representation, a process scaled back by the Supreme Court in 2013.

On their YouTube channel, Malware historian Daniel White has documented what happens when various types of malware—mostly from the 1980s and 90s—run on a computer or Nokia cell phone. The demonstrations were safely conducted within virtual machines—older operating systems run within contained windows of modern software, resembling a picture-in-picture setup.

In settling on the rules for how the US elects presidents, the Founding Fathers coalesced around a system built on two inputs: Votes from individual voters, and the accumulation of votes from specially chosen Electors. The latter comprise the US Electoral College, and this Washington Post article explains why it exists, how it works, and how its 538 electors collectively decide presidential elections.

As of May 2025, the US Wind Turbine Database maps and provides technical specifications for 76,051 onshore and offshore turbines from 1,794 projects, ranging from small installations to large-scale wind farms.

To get a sense of the grim state of data security today, take a look at this infographic from TruthFinder that explains why 2018 was the year of the data breach tsunami.

Computational methods are convincing a number of judges that some state district maps are drawn illegally. Here's a simple overview of how it works.

This podcast episode examines the closest attempts in US history to eliminate the Electoral College, focusing on a major 1960s reform push—and why, despite broad support, it ultimately failed.

Botnets are a network of computers that have been infected with a variant of malware that coordinates and leverages them for automated mass attacks such as data theft and crashing servers. This interactive map highlights where botnets have been located between 2014-2020.

Based on input from redistricting experts and political scientists, this resource identifies and ranks the most extreme congressional gerrymanders of the 2020s, examining how map design, cracking, and packing reduce competition and distort representation across states.

The Community Explorer is an interactive tool that brings the power of big data and machine learning to the equity-related policy discussion. Search by economic profile and county and see the country from a different lens.

Signed into law in 1965, the Voting Rights Act aimed to end racial discrimination in voting. This resource traces its creation and explains how later court rulings have weakened its enforcement power over time.

The US Border Patrol's first automated surveillance system launched in 1970 with 177 ground sensors installed along a single section in California. The sensors had already been used in Vietnam, along the so-called McNamara Line, and were connected by radio transmitters to magnetic-tape computers. They were implemented to target people defined by law and deportable aliens.

The red–blue color scheme used on election night maps emerged in the 20th century as television networks adopted color graphics to make results easier to follow. The association of red with Republicans and blue with Democrats later became standardized.

In this article, Silver weighs the Electoral College's flaws—especially popular-vote inversions—against its advantages, arguing it can limit the effect of surplus votes in heavily one-sided states and encourage broader competition.