Resources

This report draws on ethnographic interviews with naturalized U.S. citizens to explore why so eligible immigrant voters don't participate in elections. Researchers found that voting barriers go beyond language, including distrust of government, the overwhelming logistics of adjusting to life in the U.S., and gaps in civic literacy. The report offers practical recommendations for election officials to remove barriers to new citizens participating in civic life.

This report surveys the public's views on election administration and reform, examining what voters value most in the voting experience and which changes they believe would improve it.

In this paper, authors develop models to estimate voter service times from voting machine log data, providing election officials with a scalable approach to analyze and improve polling place operations.

In this book, authors analyze whether systematic outcomes arise from distinctive election policies in the American states. They establish a cost of voting index to evaluate which states have a higher cost of voting, how this cost impacts who votes, and whether there is a correlation between the cost of voting and minority populations.

This research focuses on whether voters’ confidence is shaped by the racial or ethnic representation of poll workers and election staff.

This report highlights key trends in voter turnout among voters with disabilities in the 2018 elections. Authors note an increase in turnout among these voters compared to the 2014 midterms. They found that employed voters with disabilities were just as likely to vote as employed voters without disabilities, suggesting a link between employment and political participation.

This report provides practical recommendations for reducing polling place wait times by improving line measurement and the management of polling place resources.

In The Turnout Gap, Fraga provides a comprehensive analysis of the causes and consequences of racial and ethnic disparities in voter turnout. Examining voting for Whites, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans from the 1800s to the present, Fraga documents persistent gaps in turnout and shows that elections are increasingly unrepresentative of the wishes of all Americans.

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 paper finds that Black and Latino voters generally wait longer in line to vote than white voters. These instances occur with longer wait times, usually observed in neighborhoods with higher minority populations compared to predominantly white neighborhoods.

This PhD dissertation examines U.S. election administration through three empirical studies. Three core contributions: (1) documentation of racial disparities in voter wait times across polling places, showing that Black and Latino voters wait significantly longer than white voters due to differential resource allocation; (2) analysis of how the partisan and demographic composition of jurisdictions predicts administrative resource levels; and (3) estimation of the downstream turnout consequences of long waits, showing that each additional hour of waiting reduces the probability of future voting. Chapters were subsequently published in Political Science Quarterly and Electoral Studies. Advisor: Gary King.

This paper finds that voters with disabilities face significant barriers to in-person voting, including inaccessible polling places and equipment, which contribute to lower turnout rates among this group.