Resources

In this paper, authors examine ballot tracking use, local election official communication related to
ballot tracking options, how ballot tracking impacts ballot rejection, and the impact of ballot
tracking on voters’ information levels and attitudes about election integrity.

These graphics, prepared by The Elections Group, are intended for use by election officials to help bring public attention to the ballot curing process and the need for voters to take steps to ensure their vote is counted.

This paper demonstrates that layout method and path directionality significantly affect average voter travel distance within a polling place and presents ways layout can be used to design more efficient in-person voting systems.

Even before the 2020 election, this reseach finds that voter turnout across the states is consistently higher in every general election over the past decade in states with greater shares of overall ballots cast by mail. Drawing on turnout data from the 2012-2020 Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Cooperative Election Study (CES), authors find states with greater usage of mail voting experience higher overall voter turnout.

This issue brief provides an overview of absentee and mail voting in the U.S.. Authors provide a brief history of mail voting, and note an increase in mail voting since the COVID-19 pandemic. It spotlights Oregon's early adoption of vote-by-mail (VBM) and explores current discourse regarding whether VBM increases voter turnout, and concerns over electoral integrity.

In this PhD dissertation, Houghton develops advanced algorithmic methods to model voter arrival behavior and vote center utilization to support election resource and capacity planning. Three core contributions: (1) compares voters’ demographic characteristics across three vote center types during the 11-day voting period across multiple elections; (2) analyzes how voters choose among multiple available vote center locations by using graph-based methods to analyze network data and perform statistical community detection; and (3) uses spatial access metrics as input to a genetic algorithm to optimize location selection for vote center siting decisions.

The analysis suggests that ballot drop boxes and automatic ballot notification systems are crucial for reducing the attack surface to ensure secure and reliable operations.

This tool provides three resources to help election officials write and design poll worker manuals that make it easy for poll workers to quickly find information, even in stressful situations on Election Day. It includes best practices, templates, and a toolkit.

This publicly available tool helps election offices plan for in-person voting by estimating voter wait times. Voters can also use it to estimate how long they will wait in line, based on factors such as ballot questions and polling place resources.

While rejected mail ballots could over- or underestimate lost votes, a case study of Pennsylvania’s 2022 general election reveals at least 47% more lost votes than rejected mail ballots.

In this paper, authors use simulation to study how COVID-19-era polling location consolidation strategies affected voter wait times and resource allocation in Rhode Island, with lessons for future election planning.

This toolkit provides nonpartisan operational best practices and starter templates for social media, press releases, and voter-facing communications to help election offices respond to planned or unplanned polling place closures and maintain operational continuity.