In-Person Voting in Elections

How In-Person Voting is Measured

These two areas, while related, have often been studied separately. 

Operational features of in-person voting are typically measured using administrative data, queuing and simulation models, and field studies. Planning and execution for Election Day, outlined in law or regulation, occur well before voters begin voting.

Voter experience with in-person voting is most commonly measured through public opinion surveys and is often the framing researchers use when they want to know whether people trust the electoral process. These studies are typically conducted post-election, either as voters leave a polling place or through local or national surveys. For a deeper dive into the issue of trust in elections, refer to the voter trust key ideas page. 

What the Research Finds

Academic literature is full of research on the factors that influence operations and the voter experience for in-person voting. The White Paper on In-Person Voting: Best Practices and New Areas for Research provides a comprehensive summary of this literature as of 2024. Here are the most important points to keep in mind for operations and voter experience. 

How Operations Impact In-Person Voting

• Proximity to polling places matters. Increased physical distance and lower-quality facilities at assigned polling places have been shown to  reduce voter turnout, especially in non-white and lower-income communities. Accessibility also plays a role, as turnout is affected by how easily people can travel to these sites. Vote centers allow voters to vote anywhere in their jurisdiction, but if poorly managed, they can lead to severe congestion and reduced turnout. To prevent disparities and bottlenecks, election officials can use operations research, geospatial methods, and mapping tools to carefully plan where voting sites should be located and how best to allocate resources. 
• Long lines reduce turnout and create lasting impacts. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration set 30 minutes as the acceptable wait time for voters. The Commission warns that exceeding this threshold can significantly deter future election participation. Research on long lines indicates that for every additional hour a voter waits, their likelihood of voting in the next election decreases by one to three percentage points. Several strategies can help reduce long lines, including expanding access to early voting or vote-by-mail (i.e., spreading voter demand across more election days), improving electronic poll book functionality (i.e., speeding up check-in), and allocating additional resources to precincts (e.g., voting booths, poll pads, tabulators, paper back ups, manual ballot boxes) with historically long wait times (i.e., balancing complex localized systems).
• Photo ID requirements are among the most controversial topics. Voter identification laws are enacted by 36 states (23 require photo ID and 13 accept non-photo IDs) as of April 2026. These laws are classified along two dimensions: (i) whether photo identification is required to vote and (ii) the strictness of their enforcement. Voters least likely to hold an acceptable photo ID are disproportionately non-white, especially Latino and Black voters. The evidence on how these requirements affect overall turnout is mixed. When it comes to implementing voter ID, some research indicates poll workers can misunderstand the rules and apply them unevenly, sometimes substituting their own opinions about what voter ID laws should be for what state laws actually are. As voter ID laws become more common and stringent, understanding how poll workers actually implement these laws and how to train them in accordance with the statute is important.
• Polling place layout and design affect how smoothly voting flows. The physical arrangement of a polling place significantly affects operational efficiency during elections, including wait times, voters' perceptions of the voting system's usability and privacy, and voter flow and navigation. Despite the absence of national standards, layouts are set locally and vary in the placement of booths, stanchions, accessibility measures, equipment, and overall floor plans. They may be based on history, poll-worker experience, simple sketches, or detailed computer-aided designs. Although not always systematic, local layouts allow officials to adapt to each physical space, allocate resources efficiently, choose from a variety of venues, and provide accommodations required by HAVA and the ADA. 
• Ballot design directly impacts voting errors. The design of ballots and voting technologies can significantly hinder a voter's ability to accurately record their intended choices. Specific design elements, such as complexity, length, or poorly laid-out ballots, increase the risk that voters make mistakes or miss races entirely, increasing the likelihood of errors such as overvotes, undervotes, and marking errors. While ballot marking devices provide a paper verification (voter-verified paper audit trail, or VVPAT), research indicates varying success in voters' ability to check their choices and detect errors without explicit prompts. Recommended practices include, but are not limited to, writing instructions at an eighth-grade reading level, applying graphic design principles (shading and bold text), testing ballots for usability, and removing unnecessary text near ballot choices. Although these strategies significantly reduce unrecorded votes, especially among minority voters, they cannot eliminate the voter’s conscious choice not to vote for every contest. 

How In-Person Voting Impacts Voter Experience

• Most voters report positive experiences, but negative ones have an outsized effect. In 2024, roughly 90% of Americans reported positive in-person voting experiences and a high confidence that their in-person ballots will be counted correctly. However, even localized problems, such as long waits, equipment issues, or unhelpful poll workers, leave voters less satisfied. Lower in-person voter satisfaction due to poor polling place operations, in turn, lowers voter confidence in the integrity of the entire election process and makes voters less likely to vote in future elections (i.e., disenfranchisement).
• The method of voting affects how confident voters feel. Voting in-person can take place at a voter-assigned polling place (i.e., precinct) or a jurisdiction-assigned polling place (i.e., vote center). While the shift to vote centers can improve the user experience, careful implementation is necessary to prevent issues such as long wait times. Regardless of assignment type, in-person voters tend to report higher confidence and satisfaction than those using other methods. Voters often preferred paper ballots for security and electronic interfaces for usability. Yet, among in-person voters, those using paper ballots with optical scanners report higher confidence than those using direct-recording electronic devices. Ballot design also matters, with easier-to-understand ballots leading to higher levels of trust in the voting system. 
• Racial and ethnic gaps in the voting experience persist. There are notable differences that exist in the in-person voting experiences across racial groups. Patterns in the literature indicate that Black and Latino voters wait longer on average than white voters, and that voters in more densely populated areas face longer waits to begin voting. In 2024, that gap disappeared, with white, Black, and Hispanic voters experiencing wait times over 30 minutes at similar rates—around 13% each. This change marks a departure from previous elections and should be seen as a single-year anomaly worth monitoring in future elections, rather than proof that longstanding disparities have been addressed. Research in this area has demonstrated that representation matters in the voting experience, with the presence of poll workers of the same race/ethnicity as the voter shown to increase that voter’s confidence.