Elections in the United States are run by thousands of local jurisdictions, each with their own voting methods, staffing requirements, location layouts, and procedures. As a result, what is understood about the voting process tends to come from isolated reports. Collecting systematic, comparable data is essential to the study of American elections, helping to improve accessibility, reduce administrative burden, mitigate associated costs, and strengthen public trust in the system.
Every Minute Counts: Voter Operations & Experience (EMC*VOX) is a pilot program that supports this need by standardizing the collection of systematic data on the voting process at scale. The project brings together a cross-institutional team of researchers from universities across the United States to observe polling places at voting sites nationwide.
To do this, the Engineering for Democracy Institute, in collaboration with the Elections Research Center, has developed a digital timer application specifically programmed to represent the unique stages of the voting process in each state.
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