Resources

This paper examines which voters are disenfranchised by voter ID laws, finding disproportionate impacts on Latino and Black voters who are more likely to lack required identification.

Philadelphia officials randomly sent 46,960 Philadelphia registrants postcards encouraging them to apply to vote by mail in the lead-up to the June 2020 primary election. While the intervention increased the likelihood a registrant cast a mail ballot by 0.4 percentage points —or 3%—many of these additional mail ballots counted only because a last-minute policy intervention allowed most mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to count.

This analysis shows that the implementation of vote by mail causes a significant decrease in voter confidence in Washington and Colorado. However, this decrease appears to be temporary, disappearing after only a single election cycle.

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.

This paper explores how voting experiences and fraud perceptions influence voter confidence, revealing that negative voting experiences, particularly long wait times, are linked to decreased confidence and increased perceptions of fraud.

Focusing on natural experiments in Texas and Indiana, this research finds that 65-year-olds turned out at nearly the same rate as 64-year-olds, despite the fact that only 65-year-olds could vote absentee without an excuse in these states. Being just old enough to vote no-excuse absentee did not substantially increase Democratic turnout relative to Republican turnout.

This analysis of the Florida general elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 shows that voters inexperienced with mail voting disproportionately submit ballots that end up rejected due to (1) late arrival at elections offices or (2) signature defects on return envelopes. Inexperienced mail voters are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected compared to experienced mail voters.

This report reviews multiple topics related to conducting the 2020 general election, including meeting the challenge of voting in person during the COVIS-19 pandemic.

In this paper, authors analyze how transitioning to vote centers impacts voters' experiences, noting that inadequate implementation may result in longer waits and increased voter dissatisfaction.

All mail voting in Colorado had a positive overall turnout effect of approximately 8 percentage points—translating into an additional 900,000 ballots being cast between 2014 and 2018.

With Maine as a case study, the research shows that, in the past four general elections, over 10% of vote-by-mail ballots arrived at local elections offices either on Election Day itself or one day earlier. Moreover, of the vote-by-mail ballots most vulnerable to postal delivery disruptions, a greater share of them were cast by unaffiliated voters and Democrats than by Republicans.

This paper examines how changes in Election Day polling place locations affect voter turnout. The authors analyze voter behavior in three presidential elections in North Carolina (2008 - 2016), finding that these changes reduce Election Day voting on average, but that the reduction is offset by substitution into early voting.