Who actually runs an election in the US, the UK and Brazil?

Who runs an election depends on the country, and the answers are very different. In the United States, thousands of local jurisdictions run the vote, each under rules set by its state. In the United Kingdom, council staff run the vote locally, under a returning officer who declares the result, while an independent body called the Electoral Commission sets standards. In Brazil, one court system, the Electoral Justice, runs the whole thing from voter lists to the official certificate.

Start with the United States. The Constitution leaves it to each state to set its own election procedures, so there is no national election office. Instead, thousands of jurisdictions are responsible for running their own elections, and the local officials in charge are either elected or appointed. The method can even differ inside one state. So two neighbouring towns can run an election in slightly different ways.

In the United Kingdom, the people who run the vote are mostly employed by the local council's electoral services department. The Electoral Commission, an independent agency created in 2001, regulates party and election finance and sets standards for how elections should be run. On the night, it is the returning officer who is responsible for declaring the result.

Brazil takes the opposite approach. Its Electoral Justice, headed by the Superior Electoral Court, handles voter registration, vote collection, tabulation and the formal certification of the outcome. The Electoral Code of 1932 created it, taking the running of elections away from the legislature and giving it to the courts.

Whatever the system, the job is the same: people have to organise a huge amount of logistics and stay impartial while doing it. In 41 of the 50 US states, even high school students can serve as student election judges.