Resources

Partisan actors in the United States have recently politicized trust in election administration. This paper suggests solutions for election officials to rebuild trust in democratic processes.

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.

Report summarizing ways election officials can use public information campaigns to restore voter trust in election administration.

In this paper, authors analyze access to vote by mail and other voting methods among Native voters. Authors begin by examining the historical, structural inequities in access to mail services on reservations and utilize data on precinct locations, post office locations, drop box locations, and Election Day voting sites to show how limited access to these sites and services adversely impacts Native voters when compared to both rural and urban Arizona voters.

This working paper evaluates communication strategies—such as voter education, official messaging, corrections, or prebunking—that aim to increase confidence in elections.

This panel explores a new set of conservative principles to build trust in elections.

State vote by mail policies have been expanded to facilitate voting by people with disabilities, but rely on voter signatures to verify an individual's identity. This report examines how signatures and signature comparison are used in elections, explores the uses and types of signatures in other contexts, and discusses alternatives being developed that could be used in elections.

This white paper reviews literature related to trust in elections.

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

After discussions with election officials from Los Angeles County, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas, this project used messaging experiments with nearly 8,500 Americans following the 2022 U.S. midterm elections to measure the impact on trust. It found that state and local election officials can be strongly effective at increasing trust in their own state elections.

In this video, Thad Kousser explores the MIT Election Data + Science white paper about communicating with voters to build trust in elections.

Accessible vote-by-mail is critical in enabling voters with disabilities to cast their ballot privately and independently. This report reviews current elections offices' practices in administering accessible vote by mail and considers their innovations and current challenges.