DEMO: http://pica-pole.com/voterdata/voterindex.php
jQjuery/datatables.net with a single file php-crud-api to 500,000-person voter database. The key here is that the search is via an ajax to the mysql database to return a major json data grab (limited to 5,000 records), but datatable/jQuery handles all the paging and sorting ... fast and minimal hit on the database server.
https://github.com/mevdschee/php-crud-api
RESTful api for crud to mysql or PostgreSQL or Microsoft SQL server.
this works ... like magic ... pay attention to transform output vs regular output. ... ?transform=1 does it at the server ... php_crud_api_transform.js does it at the client.