Our friends at IssueLab have a round-up of public interest research on US voting and elections that provides a refreshingly substantive break from the faux empiricism of daily tracking polls and instant pundit scorecards.

IssueLab’s key findings:

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system translate into higher rates of disenfranchisement in communities of color, resulting in one of every eight adult black males being ineligible to vote.” — Sentencing Project

“28. 3 million voting age people in the U.S. experience physical difficulty, including grasping or handling small objects. 19.1 million have trouble seeing.” — Brennan Center

“In New Mexico, the number of “provisional ballots,” which are mandated under new federal voting rules, that went uncounted exceeded the margin of victory in the presidential race in 2004.” — People for the American Way

“Recent examination of the youth electorate suggests that efforts to engage young Americans in the democratic process focuses on college campuses, missing about half of young voters ages 18-29 who are not in college, including a disproportionate number of African-American and Latino voters.” — Project Vote

IssueLab’s database of third-party research is impressively deep, so there’s plenty more where that came from, on voting technology, felony disenfrachisment, voting rights and more.

–post by Jonathan Werve; image by Glynnis Ritchie via Issuelab (cc by/nc/sa)