Scope and Content Note
The records of the Elections Research Center span the years 1918-1992, with the bulk of the material concentrated between 1932 and 1992. The records consist of newspaper clippings, ballots, election returns, reports, notes, statistical data, voting district maps, printed material, and correspondence. The collection is arranged, filed, and numbered as received from the donor and organized into a General File , State File and Oversize .
The General File contains newspaper clippings, ballots, notes, and correspondence covering a variety of topics, namely voting and election matters of broad national and international interest. The material includes newspaper clippings documenting national coverage of the 1980 general election, the 1990 Census and resulting congressional reapportionment, and printed material regarding the 99th through 101st Congresses, among other topics. Newspaper clippings and printed materials regarding elections in Poland, Germany, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union are also comprised in this series, as are subject files regarding politician George C. Wallace. The correspondence in this series largely pertains to expenditures and funding requests for a voter registration project conducted by the Center between 1973 and 1977.
More extensive in scope and chronology is the State File , which contains newspaper clippings from local news outlets, sample ballots, notes compiled by Scammon, voting district maps, statistical data, and printed materials covering election campaigns and outcomes for all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Within each state is documentation of the biennial primary and general elections, which for most states ranges between 1956 and 1992. Some states, though not all, include separate coverage of gubernatorial and municipal elections, dating primarily from the early 1950s until the mid-1980s. Election returns and voting statistics by district for major American cities, including New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, among others, is also comprised within the State File . Of particular note are the sample ballots collected for several states, the majority of which date between 1932 and 1948 and illustrate the variety of mid-twentieth century American political parties and their logos. Significant ballot measures chronicled in this series include Oklahoma’s repeal of prohibition in 1959, and Virginia, North Carolina, and other states' attempts to maintain and later eliminate segregation in public schools. Also of note is a file pertaining to the creation of the District of Columbia's Board of Elections in 1955 and later, correspondence regarding the establishment of Home Rule in the District in 1973, for which Scammon served as a consultant.
With the exception of one file regarding the Stern Family Fund grant for a voter registration project in the General File , this collection does not document the Elections Research Center’s business operations or functions, nor does it chronical publication processes for the America Votes series or any other of the Center’s printed volumes. The collection does however serve as a comprehensive database of voting statistics throughout the United States for nearly half of the twentieth century. The inclusion of local newspaper clippings furthermore provides a local perspective on election matters at the voting district level.