Delaware

A single State Department of Elections — commissioner, bipartisan board, and a director-deputy pair per county — administers registration, ballots, machines, and the count statewide. There are no county election authorities at all. Among the most centralized systems in the country, and the exact opposite pole from Wisconsin's 1,851 clerks.

Delaware amends its constitution by two-thirds votes in two consecutive General Assemblies — with no voter ratification, and no statewide initiative or referendum exists. A ballot-measure model has nothing to model: the statewide ballot question is a category that does not occur here.

No judge in Delaware is ever elected. The governor appoints to 12-year terms with Senate consent, and Article IV requires partisan balance: the Supreme Court sits exactly 3–2 between the major parties, with bare-majority caps across the Superior and Chancery courts. The challenge to it died at the Supreme Court on standing.

Each municipality runs its own elections under its own charter, on its own date, with its own franchise — beach-town charters enfranchise non-resident property owners, Fenwick Island and Henlopen Acres let entities vote by certificate, and Newark abolished LLC voting only after one property manager cast 31 votes through 31 LLCs in a 2018 referendum.

The closed primary lands the second Tuesday after the first Monday in September — among the nation's latest — with party switches locked since late May. Cycles split everything: governor and insurance commissioner ride presidential years; AG, auditor, and treasurer ride midterms; and the register of wills flips cycles by county — midterm in New Castle and Sussex, presidential in Kent.

Kent County is governed by a Levy Court. Deeds are indexed by 33 hundreds — a medieval unit surviving in legal use only here. The clerk of the peace issues marriage licenses. And the elected sheriff has no arrest authority at all — process and sales only, by statute, upheld by the state Supreme Court.

One at-large House seat, continuously since 1823 — Delaware has never drawn a congressional district in its history, so an entire delta class simply vanishes. Below it: no townships, and nearly three-quarters of the population lives unincorporated, served directly by three counties.

The 2022 ruling struck no-excuse mail voting and same-day registration as unconstitutional; early voting survived 2024 on standing. The constitutional fix passed its first leg this April — but needs a second legislature, so 2026 runs excuse-only absentee with a fourth-Saturday registration deadline.