2025 Annual Report

January 27, 2026

Read about our year of impact on elections in our 2025 Annual Report

Designing restoration of rights information

August 17, 2020

Information about voting rights after prison is a key to returning citizens voting.

Center for Civic Design Research Report - Updates from the front line of civic design research

Language access helps with acculturation

April 27, 2020

Getting access to the ballot and being an informed voter takes more than translation.

Preparing to mail ballots

April 21, 2020

Design tips for making vote-by-mail envelopes U.S. Postal Service friendly.

Scaling-up voting by mail for the 2020 elections

April 8, 2020

Seven questions to ask to help you make critical decisions (and a tool kit to help you get started)

An invitation to redistricting

March 23, 2020

What happens when citizens lead the design of an application for their own effort to redraw district lines.

Small changes make a big difference in vote-by-mail

February 5, 2020

Easy ways to make vote-at-home envelopes work better for voters (and the post office.)

Questions to ask while designing a ballot: A checklist for usable ballots

January 28, 2020

8 questions to ask when reviewing a ballot with a downloadable checklist

Experiences of new citizens in American civic life

January 13, 2020

There’s a wide gap between what it takes to pass a civics test and what you need to know to be an informed voter.

Using your website to fight misinformation

January 10, 2020

Quick ways to make your website the source of trustworthy, accurate, and useful information about voting and elections.

Ensuring that voters verify their ballot needs a holistic approach

November 14, 2019

To make sure voters check their printed ballots, reminders need to be woven into the entire voting experience.

The tiny journey of marking and casting a ballot

September 12, 2019

A well-designed voting system considers the steps in marking, reviewing and verifying a ballot.

Having impact – a mid-year update for 2019

July 17, 2019

Where have we worked? In 33 states or 65% of the country, representing 39% of the voter turnout in 2018.

Voting in your pajamas is great. Now let’s make sure everyone can do it.

May 15, 2019

We want voting to be easy. But as we move to voting at home, let's not leave people with disabilities behind

Put navigation instructions where voters need them

April 5, 2019

Are voters missing contests because they don't see instructions to turn the ballot over?

Ballot marking devices make voting universal

February 24, 2019

Ballot marking devices help many kinds of voters mark, review, and verify their votes.

Solving election problems, upstream and down: Center for Civic Design in 2018

January 25, 2019

We’re all about ensuring that voters can vote the way they intend -- and all of the election administration activities that support participation.

Don’t legislate ballot design (there’s a better way to improve ballots)

January 16, 2019

Ballot design standards ensure that ballots help voters mark their choices accurately and vote as they intend.

Typography makes ballots easy to read

January 14, 2019

Way back in 2000, the election director in Palm Beach County wanted to make the text on the ballot larger...

Helping vote-by-mail ballots make their way to the voter and back again

November 3, 2018

How to help vote-by-mail ballots get to voters and back to the elections office.

Designing great language support for voter registration

September 28, 2018

Language support can be a challenge. Starting with plain language helps everyone, especially people with low English proficiency.