Resources

This research conducts a systematic review of the European mail voting systems to identify a set of best practices for making voting by mail as easy as possible, while safeguarding the secrecy and security of the vote.

In this paper, authors explore whether reliance on algorithms or a hybrid system for verifying signatures allay or increase citizens' confidence in using them in elections. They find that respondents similarly trust automated and non-automated systems, but do not have a clear conception of the confidence threshold, set by policymakers, necessary for rejecting ballots.

In this paper, Carter takes an in-depth look at absentee/mail-in voting pre and post COVID-19 pandemic. The paper recommends that more states should expand their access to voting by passing no-excuse absentee/mail-in voting laws due to the positive impacts of expanded mail voting policies on voters during the pandemic.

This brief provides an overview of state policies related to absentee and mail voting. It discusses the potential advantages and disadvantages of voting by mail, outlines state policies for qualifying for and requesting an absentee ballot, and details how states process, verify, and count absentee/mail ballots. The brief concludes with key policy points related to by mail voting for policymakers to consider.

This report details how American voters experienced the 2024 general election. It is based on a survey of 10,200 registered voters, including 200 from each state plus D.C. Key findings from mail voting include: mail voting decreased to 29% from 43% in 2020; 37% of Democrats used mail voting compared to 24% for Republicans; few voters reported issue with requesting or completing a mail ballot; 3% of voters who returned their ballot via mail encountered disruptions.

At think link, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission houses a variety of reports, best practices guides and implementation tools (e.g., quick start guides) to help election officials manage mail voting processes and serve voters who use vote-by-mail or absentee voting options.

This video is part of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission's "Learning Lab" series. The video is focused on election mail and covers topics such as how to work effectively with the U.S. Postal Service during election periods, design and prepare election mail, communicate with voters about election mail, and safely handle election mail.

In this paper, authors invite the human factors and ergonomics community to engage with election administration research. The paper describes the complexity and scale of U.S. election administration and identifies open research challenges where human factors expertise is directly applicable, including accessible design, poll worker training, and error minimization.

In this MS thesis, the author investigates how voting equipment type (paper ballots, optical scan, and ballot marking devices) affects voting process performance across three elections at three locations. They use observational time studies and discrete-event simulation to model how different voting systems affect voter wait times, throughput, and overall process efficiency. The author find that performance improvements from adopting newer voting technologies are inconsistent across election contexts.

This paper synthesizes best practices for in-person voting across polling place access, check-in and wait times, polling place layout and design, ballot design, and the voter experience.

This is a publicly available training module that helps election jurisdictions build data skills through hands-on R exercises. The program shows election offices how to transform operational data into actionable decisions, such as improving staffing, resource allocation, and the overall voting experience.

The biennial comprehensive survey of election administration across all 50 states, five territories, and D.C., covering the 2024 presidential general election, achieved a 100% response rate. Key in-person voting findings include: more than 70% of voters cast ballots in person, split roughly evenly between Election Day and early in-person voting; mail ballot use declined to approximately 30%, down from 43% in 2020; more than 770,000 individuals served as poll workers; all states reported offering some form of in-person voting before Election Day; and ballot drop box use increased by nearly 10 percentage points from 2022 to 2024 in states that offered them. Two-thirds of voters cast ballots in person, reflecting a significant post-pandemic return to in-person voting. The survey also covers voter registration, UOCAVA voting, absentee voting, provisional balloting, and voting technology.