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A new expanded study from The Meyers Report grades the written election rules of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and 51 countries. The United States averages 53 out of 100 — a failing grade. The 51 other countries average 85.3, a solid B. No American jurisdiction earns an A or a B. Arkansas, the top U.S. score at 79, would rank only 40th if it were a country.
The report, released October 18, measures the laws and policies on the books, not how any particular election was administered. It scores 31 risk areas weighted by probability and severity, drawing on NIST, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and the Carter-Baker Commission. The heaviest weights go to mail-in ballots (11 points) and the absence of voter identification (10 points).
The central finding is blunt: the United States counts well and verifies poorly. Paper ballots, certified scanners frozen after certification, and scheduled roll maintenance for address changes, deaths, and felons are nearly universal across U.S. jurisdictions. The deficits sit at the front of the process — who is allowed to register and vote, and who holds the ballot after it leaves official custody.
Citizenship is taken on faith.
Only four U.S. jurisdictions require documentary proof of citizenship at registration: Arizona, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming. Thirty-eight accept a signed oath. Five U.S. jurisdictions permit some non-citizen voting in local elections.
Voter ID is the largest single gap.
Thirty-seven countries require a government photo ID with no exception form; only eight U.S. jurisdictions do, and Connecticut is not one of them. Forty jurisdictions score zero on voter ID because an affidavit or exception form substitutes for identification.
The world does not vote by mail.
Thirty-nine countries prohibit mail voting entirely; 38 U.S. jurisdictions allow no-excuse or universal mail voting, including Connecticut.
Custody is lost after the ballot is mailed.
Forty-six countries prohibit third-party ballot collection; six U.S. states do, while 20 U.S. states allow unlimited collection. Sixteen U.S. jurisdictions accept ballots after election day, including Illinois which accepts ballots as late as 14 days. Forty-seven countries require in-person return of an absentee ballot, while just 13 U.S. jurisdictions do.
Registration stays open and leaves government hands.
Forty-eight countries close registration before Election Day; 24 U.S. jurisdictions do. Twenty-three U.S. jurisdictions keep list maintenance inside the government, while 30 rely on an outside vendor, mostly ERIC. Note that nine states have left ERIC since 2022.
States carried by Donald Trump in 2024 average 62.1. The seven 2024 battlegrounds average 52.7. The 19 states carried by Kamala Harris plus D.C. average 42.2 — and every one of them earns an F. All three C-grade states are red. Connecticut, which voted for Harris, falls into the blue-state group that scored an F across the board with a score of 44. The report notes that the gap between red and blue states is not in the counting rules, where the groups are close, but in verification and chain of custody: citizenship documentation, closing same-day registration, prohibiting ranked-choice voting, and requiring photo ID without an exception form.
Gary Meyers, founder of the 43-year-old research organization, put it this way in the accompanying press release: “Every country that wants an honest election writes down the same rules, and so do the countries that only want to look honest. The United States is the one place where a voter can attest to who they are, sign for their citizenship and hand their ballot to a stranger, all under the law.”
For Connecticut readers the findings land close to home. The state permits same-day registration during early voting and on Election Day, allows voters to cast a ballot after signing an affidavit in lieu of ID, and has moved to no-excuse absentee voting following a 2024 constitutional amendment. Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas’s office has faced repeated questions from election-integrity groups and state Republicans about list maintenance, inactive registrations, and the volume of same-day registrations recorded in Mansfield during the 2024 presidential election — more than 2,500 in a single town that hosts the University of Connecticut. Local officials defended the process while Republicans once again raised concerns.
Additionally, the same pattern of list-maintenance problems has drawn formal scrutiny in Connecticut. On September 22, 2026, Fight Voter Fraud, Inc., a Middletown-based organization, filed a sworn Affidavit of Complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission (SEEC) alleging systemic failures by registrars in all 169 Connecticut towns to keep voter rolls accurate under state law, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Help America Vote Act. The complaint cites incomplete annual canvasses, failure to move non-voters to inactive status, thousands of duplicate registrations, and placeholder dates of birth or registration still appearing on the rolls; the group simultaneously delivered the same package to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Linda Szynkowicz, the Founder and CEO of Fight Voter Fraud, told the Centinal that SEEC has formally accepted her complaint. "I'm grateful that our SEEC complaint filed on September 24, file number 2026-124, has been accepted for investigation," she said. She looks forward to getting the voter rolls cleaned.
Note that the Meyers Report does not claim that any state’s election was stolen or that any particular ballots were fraudulent. It grades the written rules against a risk-management framework and against the practices of the rest of the world. Its authors note that several authoritarian countries score well on paper and caution against assuming their elections are run that way. They also observe that the lowest-scoring countries after Somalia are other English-speaking common-law democracies that rely heavily on attestation and postal voting — Canada (52), Australia (54), New Zealand (60), Ireland (62), and the United Kingdom (64). The American pattern, the report says, is a common-law pattern, not a uniquely democratic one.
The study ends with five recommendations to Congress, including a federal floor for photo identification in federal elections, documentary proof of citizenship on the federal registration form, and an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act so that registration closes 14 days before a federal election. It also offers five recommendations to the states, led by closing the affidavit exception in photo-ID laws and bringing absentee ballots back inside official custody.
Don't expect Connecticut’s Democrat-controlled legislature or the Secretary of the State to treat the findings as a prompt for tighter verification rules. The data, as graded by the report, places the state’s written rules among the lowest-scoring jurisdictions in the country and well below the international average. And we've already been told by at least one poll worker in Fairfield County that they were reminded they need not ask voters for photo ID. What could possibly go wrong?
The Meyers Report shares knowledge, views, unbiased facts and welcomes fact-based divergent opinions. It is a 501(c)3 and is not supported by any special interest group, lobby, or political ideology. The discussion group has been ongoing since 1982. All contributors share their knowledge without compensation. The group's expert contributors have first-hand knowledge in their specialties and include Democrats, Independents, Libertarians and Republicans. You can learn more about The Meyers Report here: https://meyersreport.news/about-us/
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