Resources

This report provides guidance to election officials to communicate about the work they are doing related to voter list maintenance.

This analysis suggests that documentary proof of citizenship requirements would affect voters across the electorate. While Democrats and Republicans possess some form of documentary proof at similar rates, Republicans’ reliance on birth certificates mean they may be more heavily impacted by documentary proof requirements than Democrats. Additionally, wealthier and more highly educated voters are more likely to have documentary proof than others.

The resources below are designed to help election officials manage the process of registering voters and creating, updating, and maintaining voter records.

CEIR has surveyed states about voter registration database security every two years since 2018. These surveys have demonstrated widespread best practices in respondent states.

This report focuses on two of the most salient topics in list maintenance policy discussions today: mobility and citizenship.

This report explores the legibility and readability of summary ballots printed by ballot marking devices and the ability of optical character recognition (OCR) applications commonly to voice (read) summary ballots. The report identifies typographic elements that might make it easier to read a ballot visually, the feasibility of using OCR to allow blind or low vision voters to hear their ballot read accurately, and whether there is a relationship between the design elements that support both visual and OCR-assisted reading.

In this report, authors analyze evidence on voting difficulties, potential solutions, and ideas for a new center - the Center on Disability and Voting - from data using surveys, focus groups, and interviews with key stakeholders.

Over the last two decades, states have implemented several innovative policies that streamline the process of voter registration, promote voter list accuracy, and create more options for eligible citizens to register or update their voter registration. Such policy innovations include online voter registration, same-day voter registration, and automatic voter registration. The number of states that have implemented at least one of these three voter registration methods increased from seven states in 2000 to 46 states in 2024.

Using Michigan's voter purge database from 2014 to 2018, this analysis finds that more Democratic leaning areas, denser/more urban areas, and areas with more Black residents had higher purge rates. Notably, while these mediation effects were significant, racial composition and median income (i.e. more black and poorer communities) remained a significant factor in voter purge rates.

This review of the literature was done for research to understand how voters approach the task of marking, reviewing, verifying, and casting a ballot. It includes not only research on voting systems and voting, but on related issues of trust, privacy, and mental models. This report is a companion to the research report NIST GCR 24-051 How Voters Review and Verify Ballots.

This report summarizes projections of how many people with disabilities would be eligible to vote in the November 2024 elections, using data from the Census Bureau’s 2018-2022 American Community Survey combined with Census Bureau population projections for 2024. The report breaks down key demographic characteristics of eligible voters with disabilities.

This report describes qualitative research conducted to gain deeper insights about how voters mark, review, verify, and cast their ballots. It is part of the work to update the human factors—accessibility, usability, and voter privacy—requirements in federal voting system standards and fill gaps in our understanding of how voters interact with ballot marking devices.