Photo by ksuzannec

How well are D.C. elections managed? Well, if we’re looking at 2008, pretty terribly, but things got better in 2010.

This week the Pew Charitable Trusts rolled out its Elections Performance Index, a collection of 15 indicators used to assess just how good the 50 states and D.C. are at managing elections.

In 2008, D.C. was damn near the bottom of the barrel, scoring 43 percent—one percentage point above dead-last Mississippi. Things improved in 2010, though, with D.C. moving up to 59 percent, 12 spots up from dead-last Mississippi.

What happened in 2008 that made D.C. elections so bad? During the city’s September primary, a mishap in the voting tabulation briefly cause votes that were never cast to show up in the results. Both the D.C. Board of Elections and its primary vendor were blamed for the problem and not communicating with voters about it. Things improved in 2010, though the elections board was criticized for the pace that it tabulated results—the final count of votes in the race between Mayor Adrian Fenty and challenger Vince Gray was not finalized until after midnight.

How about 2012? The organization hasn’t yet gotten around to judging electoral performance for the most recent balloting, though D.C. will likely get dinged for its long waits. In December, the Pew Center for the States said that voters in D.C. waited longer than voters anywhere else in the country to cast ballots.