Resources

The Voting Location and Outreach Tool is a publicly available tool that allows users to visualize data on the number, location, and historical use of Election Day vote centers and polling places, and to project equitable distributions of locations for upcoming elections.

This report provides federal guidance on accessibility standards for polling places under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the primary federal framework for polling place design.

This guide walks election officials through how to make election technologies such as online voter registration, polling place apps, and electronic poll books accessible to people with disabilities. It introduces the POUR principles as a framework for evaluating accessibility, recommends a layered testing approach for election systems, and points to free accessibility tools.

This resource is an open-access election management toolkit with calculators and tools to help election officials plan polling place resources, minimize wait times, and optimize poll worker and equipment allocation.

This simulation tool estimates potential voter wait times based on projected turnout, average time to vote for a specific ballot and equipment, and average check-in time per voter. It helps officials understand how different combinations of resources and voter loads translate into line lengths.

This tool uses queueing theory to calculate the minimum number of service stations (poll books, voting booths, etc.) at each step of the polling place process to meet a target maximum wait time. It offers both a web interface for simple models and a downloadable Excel spreadsheet for jurisdiction-wide planning across hundreds of polling places simultaneously.

The Voter Turnout Tool is one of two web-based applications offered by CID to help election officials and voting advocates plan election-related decision making and outreach. 

Use this tool to estimate how long it takes voters to mark a ballot.