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Electoral reform projects seek to change the way that public desires are reflected in elections through electoral systems. Reform projects can include measures designed to reform political parties (typically changes to election laws); to redefine citizen eligibility to vote; to change the way candidates or political parties gain ballot access; to alter the methods for defining electoral constituencies and election district borders; to design or implement new ballot systems or new voting equipment; to tighten scrutineering (by the parties or other observers); to ensure safety of citizens voting; to limit the influence of bribes, coercion, and conflicts of interest; to regulate financing to candidates; to encourage participation and to provide alternative vote-counting procedures altering the rules by which the winners of legislature and executive offices are determined, e.g., runoff voting, instant runoff voting, approval voting, citizen initiatives and referendums, recall elections, or proportional representation (see voting systems for more examples).

There are many such movements globally, in almost all democratic countries, as part of the basic definition of a democracy is the right to change the rules. Political science is imperfect. Electoral reforms seek to make politics work a bit better, a bit sooner. The solution to the problems of democracy tend to be "more democracy." Electoral Reform is a permanent feature of any democracy.

In less democratic countries, elections are often demanded by dissidents; therefore the most basic electoral reform project is to achieve a transfer of power to a democratically elected government with a minimum of bloodshed (e.g. in South Africa in 1994). This case highlights the complexity of such reform. Such projects tend to require changes to national or other constitutions, and to alter balances of power. They are always by definition politically painful.

The United Nations Fair Elections Commission provides international observers to national elections that are likely to face challenge by the international community of nations, e.g. in 2001 in Yugoslavia, in 2002 in Zimbabwe, etc.

The United Nations standards address safety of citizens, coercion, scrutiny and eligibility to vote. They do not impose ballot styles, party diversity, or borders on electoral constituencies. Various global political movements, e.g. labor movements, the Green Party, Islamism, Zionism advocate various cultural, social, ecological means of setting borders that they consider "objective" or "blessed" in some other way. Contention over electoral constituency borders within or between nations and definitions of "refugee", "citizen", and "right of return" mark various global conflicts including Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, the Congo and Rwanda.

National electoral reform projects tend to be simpler and less focused on life-and-death matters. Australia and New Zealand held Royal Commissions to find the best form of "proportional representation" of parties in the legislature, and redesign ballots to select or elect these Members of Parliament.

Periodic redrawing of electoral constituency (or "riding" or "district") borders is conducted at regular intervals, or by statutory rules and definitions, if for no other reason than to eliminate malapportionment attributable to population movements. Some electoral reforms seek to fix these borders according to some cultural or ecological criteria, e.g. bioregional democracy which sets borders to fit exactly to ecoregions, to avoid the obvious abuse of "gerry-mandering" where these borders are set deliberately to favor one party or another, or just to improve management of the public's commonly-owned property.

Electoral reform in New Zealand began in 1986 with the report of the Royal Commission on the Electoral System entitled Towards A Better Democracy. The Royal Commission recommended that Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) be adopted instead of the current first-past-the-post system. After two referendums in 1992 and 1993, New Zealand adopted MMP. In 2004, some local body elections in New Zealand were elected using Single Transferable Vote instead of the block vote.

There are a number of groups in the United Kingdom campaigning for electoral reform including the Electoral Reform Society, Make Votes Count Coalition and Fairshare.

For 19th century reforms, see The Reform Bills. Also the Reform Act 1832, the Reform Act 1867 and the Representation of the People Act 1884.

Main article: Electoral reform in the United States

In 2002 the United States enacted the Help America Vote Act significantly reforming its electoral process. Electoral reform is a continuing process in the United States partially motivated by the fear of electoral fraud.

• Electoral Administration Act 2006

• A Handbook of Electoral System Design from International IDEA
• Electoral Design Reference Materials from the ACE Project
• Electoral Reform - from the ACE Project
• The Scope of Electoral Reform - from the ACE Project
• Recent electoral reforms - from the ACE Project
• Electoral Reform in Mexico (1998) - from the ACE Project
• Combatting Corruption through Electoral Reform in Thailand - from the ACE Project
• AEI-Brookings Election Reform
• Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project
• Fair Vote Canada
• Paul McKeever's Testimony to the Select Committee on Electoral Reform: No electoral system is more "democratic" than any other
• Electoral Reform Wiki
• Electoral Reform Society
• Wikia has a wiki about this topic: Electoral Reform