Resources

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.

This brief explains risk limiting audits, how they differ from fixed-percentage audits, and state adoption trends.

This resources provides a step-by-step protocol for test voting system usability and accessibility functions in use, including how well the ballot presents voters with options and allows them to confirm their choices while marking and verify their ballot before casting. This resources is intended for state certification programs and election offices evaluating a new voting system.

This paper uses geographic discontinuities at block boundaries to identify the causal effect of polling place assignment on voter turnout, finding that distance to and familiarity with a polling location matter for participation.

This report provides a comprehensive review of the existing literature on in-person voting to determine best practices and identify areas where more research is needed, covering both operational features and the voter experience.

The Voting Location Resource Calculator is an interactive simulation tool that helps election officials estimate voter wait times and identify potential bottlenecks in the voting process. Officials can enter data on existing voting locations, including steps required to vote, layout, and equipment, to simulate current conditions or test changes to resources and processes. Based on observational data from U.S. elections from 2018 to 2024.

In this paper, authors use simulation-optimization to identify voting equipment allocation requirements across different polling location consolidation strategies, providing guidance for jurisdictions considering consolidation.

This report details how American voters experienced the 2022 midterm election, based on a survey of 10,200 registered voters (including 200 from each state and D.C.), administered by YouGov. Key findings on in-person voting show mail ballot usage declined to 32%, down from 43% in 2020, while Election Day in-person voting increased to 50%. Most voters had short wait times, but racial disparities persisted. Disruptions at polling places were rare but measurable. Voter confidence varied significantly by party, with Republicans showing much lower confidence than Democrats. This is the only SPAE report on a midterm election cycle since 2014, enabling direct comparisons between presidential and midterm voting experiences.

Using this tool, NCSL tracks and classifies voter ID laws across all 50 states along two dimensions: whether they require voters to present an ID and whether the requirement is strict or non-strict.

Academic paper examining the use of audits following elections to improve voter confidence.

In this paper, authors compare electronic and paper ballot voting systems, examining how election laws directly impact operational efficiency and capacity, and what this means for polling place design and resource allocation.