Resources

This brief provides recommendations for the U.S. Department of Justice Election Threats Task Force aimed at strengthening protections for election workers against threats of violence. Recommendations include issuing additional guidance for law enforcement, noting the limitations of federal laws protecting election officials and addressing them as well as identifying alternatives to criminal prosecution to help deter threats and esnure the safety of election workers.

This report provides a national overview of post-election audits, audit types, history, and state practices across the United States.

This report discusses ballot-accounting audits as a complementary check to tabulation audits, emphasizing reconciliation and chain of custody.

The guide provides a basic framework for testing risk limiting audits in diverse contexts by outlining foundational prerequisites and operational, legal and regulatory considerations

Research shows that printed ballots pose challenges for blind voters and low-vision voters, who cannot read them directly.
This is a report of a project examining the legibility of summary ballots printed by ballot marking devices. The goal of the investigation was to to identify aspects of design, layout, or typography that can make a summary-style ballot easier to read and to increase the likelihood that voters detect a mistake or change on their ballot.

This report examines election-related hurdles that hinder or prevent people with disabilities from participating fully in U.S. elections, including during the 2020 election cycle. It offers recommendations that policymakers can adopt to improve election accessibility for voters with disabilities.

This MIT Election Data + Science Lab analysis explains the 2020 “blue shift,” where later-counted ballots disproportionately favored Democrats, and why that pattern mattered for public interpretation of results.

This survey report focuses on election misinformation, fraud narratives, or public misperceptions and their effects on confidence in U.S. elections. It is relevant because beliefs about fraud and exposure to misleading claims are central mechanisms through which confidence in election outcomes rises or falls. For this dataset, it helps explain why the 2020 election became a turning point in public debates over fraud, mail voting, certification, and legitimacy.

This evaluation report examines philanthropy & trust-building in relation to the entry’s stated focus on election security; confidence; field-building. It is relevant to the dataset because it connects election rules, information environments, or administrative performance to public confidence and perceived legitimacy.

This United States Postal Service (USPS) report outlines the scope of election mail handled by USPS and identifies key service challenges including poorly designed ballot envelopes, tight state deadlines that don't align with postal delivery windows, and inconsistent postmarking requirements. The report identifies the "extraordinary measures" taken by USPS during election periods to effectively process and deliver election mail.

This guide takes a comprehensive look at ballot processing, tracing ballots from intake to tally and archiving, providing election officials with process descriptions, tracking forms, supply lists, and work roles. Election officials can edit this guide to match unique local/state needs and can use the guide to support staff trainings or helping observers understand what they’re watching.

This toolkit helps election officials design and produce the materials poll workers need to set up and operate a polling place or vote center, including layout diagrams, signage, and procedural materials. It covers both traditional polling places and vote center models.