Resources

This paper examines the barriers that Native Americans face
when trying to register and participate in elections. Through conducting several field hearings, authors uncover several important findings related to polling place access and first generation voting barriers that prevent them from casting a ballot.

In this paper, Cantoni Indicates that extending the distance to a polling place by a quarter mile decreases voter turnout by one to three percentage points, with a greater impact observed in areas with higher proportions of non-white voters.

Authors describe the difficulties that vote-by-mail presents for Native American voters. Specifically, “members of the 574 federally recognized tribes” face barriers to political participation to a greater degree than any other racial or ethnic group. The authors also define measures that can be taken to level the field, all while respecting social distancing.

In this paper, authors generate voter wait-time estimates using an indifference-zone generalized binary search method to optimize and determine resource allocation, such as electronic poll books and voting machines, to reduce wait times.

This resource is a curated hub of tools developed by university researchers and the civic tech community to help election officials manage in-person polling place operations, including resource allocation, queue management, capacity planning with social distancing, and poll worker management.

In this paper, authors find that strict voter ID laws impose a disproportionate burden on minority voters and have significant negative effects on turnout among racial and ethnic minority groups.

In this paper, authors estimate the effects of American Indians' group consciousness on their political interests, voting rates, and support for co-ethnic candidates. They find that American Indians who have higher levels of group consciousness are more likely to support co-ethnic candidates, but little effect on their political participation and interest.

This paper analyzes how vote centers influence voter turnout in various election types in Texas, showing that their effect depends on the election context and voter demographics.

This paper finds that large numbers of voters do not perceive their ballots as secret and harbor doubts about the institution's ability to keep them private, with perceptions varying by voting method and polling place design.

In this MS thesis, Bernardo investigates how ballot-length metrics (words, questions, selections, pages, sheets, bilingual status) affect voting errors during the 2018 Rhode Island midterm election. He uses logistic regression models that control for municipal- and precinct-level demographics to analyze machine-based, human-machine interaction, and ballot-marking errors. Bernardo finds that longer ballots and urban precincts significantly increase the odds of voting errors, with implications for ballot design and jurisdiction-level oversight.

In 2015, the Center for Civic Design outlined six priority areas for improving the usability and accessibility of election systems. This report details progress toward incorporating these priorities into the VVSG 2.0. It also details related efforts by election community stakeholders to implement these priorities.

In this MS thesis, Houghton develops a methodology to estimate voter arrival rates at polling stations using electronic poll book transaction logs. It includes service time observations collected through time studies during the 2018 Rhode Island midterm election across seven precincts. The study applies a Hidden Markov Model to infer voter arrival patterns from the check-in records. Finds that e-pollbook logs offer a scalable, less labor-intensive alternative to manual observation for estimating arrival rates.