A Comparative Study of Electronic and Paper Ballot Systems in Modern U.S. Elections

In-person voting processes that rely on paper ballots have long dominated voting processes in the United States. However, following the implementation of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states rapidly adopted new voting technologies that dramatically changed the in-person voting experience. Since then, states have continued to adopt new voting technologies as new challenges and opportunities have emerged. Although scholarship has demonstrated that new voting technologies can offer benefits, reported improvements to the in-person voting experience are inconsistent. Despite changes in voting equipment and voting methods, voters continue to wait in long lines, affecting turnout and voter confidence. Using observational time studies from three elections, this analysis uses discrete-event simulation to investigate the effect of voting equipment type on voting process performance. We find that the paper-based voting process experiences longer voter wait times at ballot marking than alternative processes when controlling for the quantity of voting equipment. Through a posteriori analyses, we demonstrate that wait times compound as turnout increases when resource allocation is not adjusted. Increasing the number of available voting stations (i.e., privacy booths) in the paper-based voting process by one reduces wait times by 26.38%. These findings reinforce that election planning and policies must be flexible and able to account for voting equipment type to effectively serve voters.