Office of the Federal Register

• 1. Introduction

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  The Office of the Federal Register mostly handles paperwork nobody reads for pleasure. In May 2014, though, it opened its doors to an unusual kind of editing. Staff took part in an event called an editathon, aimed at improving entries about government agencies on a public reference site. It was an unusual pivot for an office based within the National Archives and Records Administration. There, it quietly handles some of the most consequential paperwork in American government. What does an office like this publish on an average day? And what unusual authority does it hold over the nation's most important paperwork?

• 2. Publisher of Record

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  The Federal Register is only the first name on the office's list of publications. Alongside it, the office also produces the Code of Federal Regulations, the Public Papers of the Presidents, and the United States Statutes at Large. Those four titles sit alongside others the office produces, covering more of the routine paperwork of federal government. Printing the government's paperwork, though, is only half of what keeps the office busy.

• 3. The Final Signature

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  The office examines two very different kinds of paperwork for the same thing: constitutional amendment ratification documents and Electoral College documents from the states. Both must clear the same bar, facial legal sufficiency, and both need an authenticating signature before they are accepted. Only once a state's paperwork passes that check does its count become part of the official record used to confirm a presidential election.