Resources

In this paper, authors find that strict voter ID laws impose a disproportionate burden on minority voters and have significant negative effects on turnout among racial and ethnic minority groups.

In this paper, Cantoni Indicates that extending the distance to a polling place by a quarter mile decreases voter turnout by one to three percentage points, with a greater impact observed in areas with higher proportions of non-white voters.

This tool helps election officials understand how long it will take for lines to dissipate after predictable early-morning or late-day surges of voters at polling places. Calculates projected line lengths and wait times during these surge periods to support staffing and resource planning.

This tool provides eight key questions election officials should consider when designing or reviewing a ballot. These questions focus on layout, instructions, typography, and formatting to help minimize voter errors and undervoting.

In this paper, authors argue that ballot-marking devices cannot ensure that the paper ballot accurately reflects the voter's choices because voters rarely verify the printed ballot carefully enough to detect errors or manipulation.

In this paper, authors test whether voters can detect malicious manipulation of ballot-marking devices, finding low detection rates and showing that signage and poll worker prompts can modestly improve verification rates.

In this paper, authors generate voter wait-time estimates using an indifference-zone generalized binary search method to optimize and determine resource allocation, such as electronic poll books and voting machines, to reduce wait times.

This tool helps election officials determine the capacity of a modified polling place system under various social distancing measures and identify where process bottlenecks may have shifted in response to those changes.

This system allows poll workers to hand out tickets to voters waiting in line. Tickets are printed on demand and include a QR code with a date and time for the voter to return, available in English and Spanish. When voters return, the QR code is scanned, and they proceed to vote, reducing physical wait times.

This tool can be used to estimate outside queue capacity needs, average voter wait times, and the number of voters who will wait too long, given social distancing constraints that limit the number of people allowed inside a polling place at one time.

This paper compares in-person versus absentee voting, finding that voters randomly assigned to in-person voting reported significantly higher levels of voter confidence than those assigned to absentee voting.

This resource is a curated hub of tools developed by university researchers and the civic tech community to help election officials manage in-person polling place operations, including resource allocation, queue management, capacity planning with social distancing, and poll worker management.