The Carter Center is a non-partisan organization that is committed to promoting human rights and seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health through innovative, responsive programming. The Carter Center’s Rule of Law Program (RLP) works in partnership with lawyers, law schools, state bars, legal organizations, and the broader legal community in the U.S. to strengthen the rule of law and democratic processes.
In response to the controversies of the 2020 election cycle, RLP is implementing the Advancing the Rule of Law in U.S. Elections (ARLUSE) program. ARLUSE’s objective is to increase the knowledge of election law and practice in the U.S. among legal professionals and provide those professionals with the necessary experience and opportunities to strengthen the rule of law and its application in American elections.
With initial implementation in Georgia, the ARLUSE team developed an Election Law Training Manual, which outlines broad topics in election law such as Who Gets to Vote, Voting & Inclusion, Litigation Strategies, and more. The manual references Georgia-specific law and electoral issues throughout. Now that the ARLUSE team is expanding to Wisconsin, it seeks to hire a legal researcher to revise the manual to substitute Wisconsin election law, processes, and procedures for Georgia-specific content.
Purpose and Role: The Wisconsin Election Law Researcher will confirm the components of the manual that require revision, research the relevant Wisconsin election law, processes, and context that will inform those revisions, and revise the manual accordingly.
The Researcher will work in close coordination with and report to the Associate Director managing the ARLUSE program.
The ARLUSE team expects that the Researcher will spend approximately two (2) weeks to complete the deliverables below.
Responsibilities include:
- Review the Election Law Training Manual and identify the components that require revision to reflect Wisconsin election law, processes, and context.
- Research the identified and agreed-upon legal, procedural, and contextual updates.
- Revise the components of the manual to insert Wisconsin-specific laws, procedures, and context and remove the Georgia-specific equivalents. Components to edit range in length from a few sentences to two pages.
- Other related responsibilities as needed.
Key deliverables include:
- A concise outline (no more than two (2) pages) that identifies what components of the manual require revision to align with Wisconsin election law, processes, and context.
- Revised components of the Election Law Training Manual that replace Georgia-specific election content with Wisconsin’s and any relevant Wisconsin localities’ election laws, procedures, and context. The following is an illustrative list of what summarized Wisconsin-specific content the Researcher will need to include in the revised manual:
- Election laws, recent amendments, and statutory provisions;
- Any state protections for voters;
- Voter eligibility, registration, and identification requirements;
- Felony disenfranchisement/re-enfranchisement;
- Election inclusion issues, like disability, language, and unique voter access (absentee, student, military, etc.);
- Poll working framework;
- Ballot counting, recounting, and audits;
- Post-election litigation;
- Election crimes and security;
- Other deliverables as required.
Qualifications include:
- Education:
- Experience:
- Demonstrated legal research and writing skills.
- Minimum two (2) years of work experience in Wisconsin elections, state legislature, legal/academic community, or NGO/civil society organizations focused on elections and voting rights in Wisconsin.
- Commitment to working across partisan lines to strengthen American elections and the rule of law.
Time schedule: This position is deliverables based. It will begin June 1, 2024, and end July 1, 2024.
Location: The position will be remote.
To apply, please send a resume, three references, and a cover letter explaining your interest in and suitability for the position to us-elections-rol@cartercenter.org by May 24, 2024. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.
