Ensuring Voting Access Across the Electorate

Major features of barriers and related best practices that have been subject to research include: 

• Level of internet access
• Transportation difficulties
• Challenges registering to vote
• Polling place accessibility, layout, and location
• Usability and accessibility of voting systems and voting materials
• Legal restrictions affecting those with mental, cognitive, or developmental disabilities
• Required assistance in polling places and with voting by mail
• Value of voting by mail along with difficulties of voting by mail
• Treatment by poll workers and election officials
• Voting system guidelines catching up with new technologies

This research has established important practices that increase the quality of the voter experience and/or confidence in elections, including:

• Having disability groups involved in polling place location/design.
• Having critical interactions and all communications from election offices to voters being available in accessible formats.
• Adopting a universal design approach, to decrease the need for specialized equipment and training.
• Continuing efforts to ensure that ballots and voting instructions are in plain language.
• Recognizing the value of voting by mail for many people with disabilities and adopting policies to make it easier to use. 
• Providing poll worker training and disability checklists for in-person voting. 
• Providing voting information not only on websites but also in a wide variety of formats. 
• Working with Tribal leaders to improve outreach, to equalize access to drop boxes, early voting sites, Election Day polling places, and to train Native poll workers.
• Allowing government issued identification documents with non-traditional addresses to be accepted for registration and voting, and allowing mail-in ballots to be counted if postmarked prior to Election Day. 
• Increasing postal access on reservations and improving the routing of letters. 
• Better understanding if Native voters are removed from the voter rolls at higher rates than other voters. 
• Pre-registration for younger people and on-campus polling places.

The following are some of the gaps that would benefit from short-and long-term academic-election official research collaborations:

• What are new technologies that use an accessible universal design approach to make the voting experience easier and more uniform. 
• Better understanding the number of accessible voting stations needed to serve voters who prefer to use them, and the impact of how jurisdictions offer access to accessible voting systems.
• Improving guidance for setting up polling places and training that focuses on how to support voters with disabilities to maximize independence and privacy.
• Establishing policies and practices on signature matching and curing rejected ballots, particularly given that aging and disability can affect manual dexterity and signatures.
• Levels of access to voting information, and the voting process, for those in institutions such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and jails.
• Collecting systematic data to map the locations of all drop boxes, early voting sites, polling places, and post offices in states with Native lands. 
• Adding and improving voting information for Native voters with limited English skills.
• Better understanding the lack of Native poll workers. 
• Studying whether “one size fits all” laws and policies are tenable as rural areas continue to experience population declines and diminishing resources.
• Developing a definition of “rural” that best captures issues for election administration and the voter experience in rural areas
• Studying the impact of policies and practices such as portable registration, early voting, and residency rules on young people.
• Effects of polling place changes on younger voters.
• More research on impact of vote-by mail policies on younger voters.