Lisa Handley

Dr. Handley has been involved in electoral assistance in more than a dozen countries, serving as a consultant on issues of democratic governance – including voting rights, electoral system design, electoral boundary delimitation and electoral dispute resolution – for the United Nations, the United Nations Development Fund (UNDP), the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), and International IDEA. In the last couple of years she has participated in election missions in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Georgia, Kosovo, Liberia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Sudan and Yemen. In the United Sates, Dr. Handley’s clients have included the U.S. Department of Justice, numerous civil rights organizations, and scores of state and local jurisdictions. In addition, she has served as an expert in dozens of voting rights court cases. Dr. Handley has been actively involved in research, writing and teaching on the subjects of democracy-building and election administration generally and on voting rights and boundary delimitation more specifically. She co-authored a book (Minority Representation and the Quest for Voting Equality), as well as numerous articles, on these subjects and served as the lead writer for Boundary Delimitation for the Administration and Cost of Elections Project (ACE). She has taught political science and methodology courses at several universities, most recently George Washington University. Dr. Handley has also assisted in the development of training curricula and trained election officials in several countries including Commonwealth African election officials in Mauritius, and election officials in Azerbaijan, Jamaica, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Dr. Handley is the President of Frontier International Consulting, an election consulting firm that specializes in voting rights and electoral boundary delimitation. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from George Washington University.

Thematic Areas of Expertise