In the US, all election functions are done at the county level, so it’s massively distributed. Policy is generally set at the county level and legislation at the state level. Coordination of election rules between states is only because of convention. Elections in Canada are more-or-less centralized: some functions are done by a central agency and some are done by returning officers in each electoral district.

Elections BC has just published a report explaining how a Canadian electoral agency works. It includes a section on voting, but it’s mostly about what goes on behind the scenes to result in an “elector” putting a ballot in a box. There’s a bit of a bias toward BC and federal jurisdictions, but an attempt has been made to generalize it for all provinces.

This report is mostly of interest to very hardcore politics geeks. The report notes that running an election is the largest project undertaken in a country (the Vancouver Olympics had 25,000 volunteers; Elections BC had 32,000 employees on May 12, 2009), so it might also be of interest to business geeks.

You should probably read it if you’re going to apply to be BC’s next Chief Electoral Officer. It’s also a manual on how to start a private election services provider, which I think is a fascinating thing to privatize.