Effects of VBM on voter turnout among partisan subgroups in Washington and Utah.

Effects of VBM on voter turnout among partisan subgroups in Washington and Utah.

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Recently, mandatory vote-by-mail has received a great deal of attention as a means of administering elections in the United States. However, policy-makers disagree on the merits of this approach. Many of these debates hinge on whether mandatory vote-by-mail advantages one political party over the other. Using a unique pairing of historical county-l...

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Context 1
... short, VBM does not have modest or even large effects on Democratic candidates' performance in elections. Figure 3 displays results from individual-level voter file data in Utah and Washington with individual, county-year linear time trends, and year fixed effects (robustness checks for this dataset are shown in fig. S11). ...
Context 2
... and year fixed effects (robustness checks for this dataset are shown in fig. S11). While the overall turnout effects (i.e., all groups pooled) are modest and statistically significant, none of the effects across Republicans, Democrats, or Independents are statistically significant at traditional levels. However, the main point of interest in Fig. 3 is the fact that VBM has consistent effects across subgroups; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents see similar, statistically indistinguishable effects. In all models in Fig. 3, the differences in effects among these groups is not statistically significant. For example, the P value for the difference between the coefficients ...
Context 3
... none of the effects across Republicans, Democrats, or Independents are statistically significant at traditional levels. However, the main point of interest in Fig. 3 is the fact that VBM has consistent effects across subgroups; Republicans, Democrats, and Independents see similar, statistically indistinguishable effects. In all models in Fig. 3, the differences in effects among these groups is not statistically significant. For example, the P value for the difference between the coefficients estimated in model 6 (Republicans in the pooled sample) and model 9 (Democrats in the pooled sample) is 0.41: not statistically significant despite a higher degree of statistical power. ...

Citations

... The growing use of mail balloting poses a unique challenge for election administration. In short, the availability of mail ballots promises to increase voter participation (1,2) and satisfaction (3). Yet, precisely because mail ballots are sent to individuals outside a polling place, states must impose a series of procedural requirements on mail balloting (4). ...
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The rise of mail balloting has led to concerns that procedural requirements can lead to “lost votes by mail.” We theorize how procedural requirements can affect the incidence and form of lost votes and highlight three measurement issues with equating lost votes and rejected mail ballots. First, coverage: Not all rejected mail ballots are documented. Second, substitution: Some people whose mail ballot is rejected may subsequently successfully vote, in particular if they were notified in time to take action. Third, deterrence: Others may not return their mail ballots if they expect them to be rejected. While rejected mail ballots could over- or underestimate lost votes, a case study of Pennsylvania’s 2022 general election reveals at least 47% more lost votes than rejected mail ballots. These lost votes could prove electorally consequential in Pennsylvania given the number of mail ballots cast and the substantial partisan splits on mail versus in-person ballots.
... Early research found that making registration and voting more convenient did not have strong partisan consequences (Wolfinger and Rosenstone, 1980), with early studies of absentee voting arguing that it only seems to boost partisan vote shares in places where a particular political party is already strong (Patterson and Caldeira, 1985). This has generally been confirmed in more recent research (Gerber, Huber and Hill, 2013;Thompson et al., 2020;Barber and Holbein, 2020;Bonica et al., 2021). ...
... Typically the observational studies have used ecological or survey data, not individual micro-level data, and have not used methods that are appropriate for causal inference. Exceptions are a number of more recent studies, which typically take advantage of staggering adoption of universal voting by mail across counties where transitions to voting by mail have occurred gradually within or across a number of western states (Washington, Utah, and California in particular) (Gerber, Huber and Hill, 2013;Thompson et al., 2020;Barber and Holbein, 2020;Bonica et al., 2021). We provide a summary of the research literature on universal voting by mail in the paper's Supplementary Information, Table SI.1. ...
... The counties' self-selection into treatment could lead to endogeneity bias if the selection is in part based on turnout history, or omitted variable bias if the selection is correlated with county characteristics that are unobservable or not subject to control. 3 Another important issue is how universal voting by mail was typically implemented in these states, usually as part of a package of different reforms, including the elimination of neighborhood polling places and the use of an extended period of pre-election voting opportunities. The elimination of polling places that accompanied universal voting by mail as cost-saving measures in several states' election reforms may reduce turnout (Gerber, Huber and Hill, 2013;Keele and Titiunik, 2018) and therefore explain the null or 2 Barber and Holbein (2020) noted the violation of the parallel trends assumption in the cross-county study (page 3). Thompson et al. (2020) and Barber and Holbein (2020) address this violation by making parametric assumptions about the underlying turnout trends (linear or quadratic) absent the policy. ...
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Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, some American states had transitioned to universal voting-by-mail, where all registered voters receive a mail ballot. But due to the pandemic, universal voting-by-mail was suddenly used in a larger number of states in 2020. Here we study a unique situation in which registered voters in some legislative districts in Los Angeles County were subjected to universal voting-by-mail in the March 2020 primary. Using difference-in-differences and geographic boundary-based designs on individual-level records, we take advantage of this within-jurisdiction situation to estimate the causal effects of universal voting-by-mail on voter turnout and on who votes. Our results indicate that voter turnout increased by 3 to 4 percentage points for voters who do not automatically receive a mail ballot, and the increase is generally larger for registered partisan voters than those without a party affiliation.
... The use of mail-in ballots has increased in recent years, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic as a means for voters to reduce their risk of exposure to the virus, with a large share of the US electorate (43 percent) casting ballots by mail in 2020 (United States Census Bureau 2021). While the mail-in ballot is meant to increase the convenience and accessibility of voting, evidence suggests that voting by mail has only a modest effect, if any, on increasing electoral participation in recent elections (Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott 2001;Southwell 2009;Monroe and Sylvester 2011;Gronke and Miller 2012;Barber and Holbein 2020;Amlani and Collitt 2022). Several studies suggest that voting by mail mainly changes "how people vote" (or voter retention) rather than "who votes" (or voter recruitment), including during the 2020 election amid the COVID-19 pandemic (Monroe and Sylvester 2011;Thompson et al. 2020;Yoder et al. 2021). ...
... Several studies suggest that voting by mail mainly changes "how people vote" (or voter retention) rather than "who votes" (or voter recruitment), including during the 2020 election amid the COVID-19 pandemic (Monroe and Sylvester 2011;Thompson et al. 2020;Yoder et al. 2021). Notably, numerous studies have failed to find evidence that voting by mail confers any specific partisan advantage (Barber and Holbein 2020;Amlani and Collitt 2022). ...
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Do Donald Trump’s attacks on voting by mail influence how some Canadians view mail-in ballots? The Trump effect on views and behaviors surrounding voting by mail has been well documented in the United States. North of the border, more Canadians than ever voted by mail in the last general election. In this study, we consider how right-wing populism is associated with trust in voting by mail among Canadians. Specifically, we seek to test two main hypotheses. First, we consider whether Canadians holding populist views—and, in particular, those holding right-wing populist views (would-be Trump supporters)—are less trusting of voting by mail. Second, we consider whether political media exposure amplifies this association. We analyze data from both the 2021 Canadian Election Study and Democracy Checkup Survey. We find that those who hold populist views clearly have less trust in voting by mail. This is especially true among right-leaning individuals. Furthermore, as in the United States, this effect is moderated by one’s level of political media exposure, with higher levels of political media exposure amplifying the effect of populist views on trust in voting by mail. Our findings, therefore, suggest that the politicization of mail-in voting by President Trump has important implications for the legitimacy of the electoral system not only in the United States, but also in Canada and potentially in other parts of the world.
... Thompson et al. (2020) conduct a comprehensive study of all-mail elections from 1996 to 2018 in three western states but find only modest effects of vote-bymail on voter turnout. Barber and Holbein (2020) similarly find modest effects on turnout in western states and counties with all-mail elections. Kousser and Mullin (2007) examine the impact of limited or discretionary VBM elections on aggregate voter turnout (versus mandatory statewide mail voting). ...
Article
This research examines the effectiveness of ballot access reforms which may increase voter turnout. While many reforms are designed to reduce individual costs of voting—to register, obtain, and cast a ballot—their impacts should be observable in the aggregate. U.S. states determine and administer rules concerning the conduct of elections, so the success of those rules should be measured for statewide elections. Existing research focuses on presidential elections. Yet if reforms influence levels of voter participation, stronger evidence of attracting peripheral voters should be found in midterm elections. This research examines state variation in electoral law on registration and voting in statewide, general elections from 2000 to 2018. Voting reforms evaluated include same-day registration, no-excuses absentee voting, early voting, and all-mail voting. Simple and multivariate analysis, including state-level demographic controls, suggest only limited effects of electoral innovations on voting-eligible turnout, in both midterm and presidential elections. Reforms designed to increase turnout produce at best modest positive effects.
... More commonly, the state may aim to make voting more convenient with measures such as early voting, mail-in voting, easier (automatic) registration, or polling place consolidation. Those measures do not need to influence election outcomes, even if they increase turnout (e.g., Barber and Holbein (2020) on mandatory vote-by-mail). ...
Article
It is well known that incumbents enjoy advantages in elections. Among others, they may use public resources to increase their electoral chances by mobilizing specific social groups to vote. In the 2020 presidential elections, the Polish government organised a competition: small municipalities with the highest turnout could win a fire truck. We exploit the threshold of 20,000 that arbitrarily divided municipalities into competing and non-competing for this public good and apply the quasi-experimental Regression Discontinuity Design. The competition aimed to increase the turnout in districts supporting the incumbent president. However, we find no evidence of any significant impact of the competition on the turnout or support for the incumbent around the threshold. We discuss why similar practices are common despite this result.
... As discussed previously, in 2020 several states adopted all-mail voting reforms on an emergency basis, providing an opportunity to study the turnout effects of vote-by-mail policies anew (McDonald 2022). Using a difference-in-difference design, Barber and Holbein (2020) find turnout rates in Washington and Utah in 2020 increased a modest 1.8 to 2.9 percentage points due to vote-by-mail. Employing a similar research design, and adding California to the mix, Thompson et al. (2020) also find vote-by-mail adoption resulted in an increase in turnout in the 2020 election. ...
... Numerous pieces of recent research show the importance of forms of mail voting and election administration in structuring the ability to vote in recent election cycles, including the 2020 election. Some of these studies (Barber and Holbein 2020;Ritter and Tolbert 2020) show that certain forms of mail voting can increase voter turnout; other studies (Baringer, Herron, and Smith 2020;Collingwood and O'Brien 2021;Lamb 2021;Ritter and Tolbert 2020) also show that state election administration factors, including mail ballot rejection procedures, the proximity of mail ballot drop box locations to voters, and the overall quality of performance of a state's election administration, shape how mail voting laws are implemented and the overall ability of individuals to vote via mail. ...
... However, rather than boosting turnout, their main effect is that more voters cast a ballot by mail or early and in-person instead of on Election Day (Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott 2001). Universal VBM elections, which lower the costs of participation the most, have been shown to result in only a modest increase in turnout (Barber and Holbein 2020;Berinsky et al. 2001;Gerber, Huber, and Hill 2013;Gronke and Miller 2012;Kousser and Mullin 2007;McGhee, Paluch, and Romero 2020;Southwell 2009;Southwell and Burchett 2000;Thompson et al. 2020). NEAV and EIPV, which more modestly effect voting costs, can have the opposite effect (Brady and McNulty 2011;Burden et al. 2014;Corvalan and Cox 2018). ...
... Despite partisan disagreement, most research shows that neither party gains much advantage when a new voting method is introduced (Stein 1998; Karp and Banducci 2000;Berinsky et al. 2001;Hassell 2017;Southwell and Burchett 2000;Barber and Holbein 2020;Thompson et al. 2020;Amlani and Collitt 2022). For example, there was virtually no difference in the rates by which Democrats and Republicans used mail ballots nationwide in 2016 even though the universal VBM states lean more Democratic (Stewart 2020a). ...
... The results also provide no support for the expectation that individuals in states that had convenience voting methods prior to 2020 were more likely to vote than those in states that had recently adopted them (H3). Overall, our results are consistent with prior findings that show that convenience voting has little influence on turnout (Barber and Holbein 2020;Berinsky et al. 2001;Gerber, Huber, and Hill 2013;Gronke and Miller 2012;Kousser and Mullin 2007;McGhee, Paluch, and Romero 2020;Southwell 2009;Southwell and Burchett 2000;Thompson et al. 2020). ...
... Rainfall on Election Day tends to benefit the Republican Party in the U.S. presidential election because the negative effect of rainfall on turnout is larger on Democratic supporters (Gomez et al., 2007) and rainfall may change voters' risk preferences and lead them to embracing more conservative views (Horiuchi & Kang, 2018). If convenience voting may only shift the timing of voting among voters with particular ideological views, their active participation may affect party vote shares (see Barber & Holbein, 2020;Thompson et al., 2020). Alternatively, severe weather disruptions like the typhoon in this study may also change voters' political preferences. ...
Article
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This study examines the dynamic nature of voting in modern elections with wide voting windows. Our stylized two-period model predicts that, if voters are not myopic, turnout in the current period tends to increase as the costs in the other period increase. The model also predicts that overall turnout does not always decrease even when the costs increase. We test these predictions using novel data from Japan’s General Election in 2017 with a weather disruption caused by a powerful typhoon. Our analyses show that the tremendous costs on Election Day shifted the timing of voting and did not decrease overall turnout in 2017, as compared to 2014. Our model and findings build a new benchmark to understand how voters decide their timing of voting. This study also has implications for the unprecedented popularity of early voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
... Our study examines how turnout changes as a function of making voting by mail easier, and whether there is a partisan electoral advantage from doing so. While there is already much work on the subject, prior to the 2020 general election, studies evaluating these relationships have been limited to a handful of states that conducted elections exclusively by mail (Barber and Holbein 2020;Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott 2001;Gerber, Huber, and Hill 2013;Gronke and Miller 2012;Kousser and Mullin 2007;McGhee, Paluch, and Romero 2020;Southwell 2009;Southwell and Burchett 2000b;Thompson et al. 2020). In contrast, 1,664 counties across 30 states made it easier, by varying degrees, for their residents to vote by mail in the 2020 general election. ...
... Consistent with previous findings (Barber and Holbein 2020;Hassell 2017;Southwell and Burchett 2000a;Thompson et al. 2020), we find no significant partisan advantage associated with making voting by mail easier. Presidential vote share at the county level does not appear to be functionally related to the ease with which voters can cast their ballots by mail. ...
... Theoretically, by eliminating a trip to a polling place on Election Day, voting by mail is less costly for a prospective voter than voting in person, making them more likely to turn out (Downs 1957). There is much empirical support for this proposition, with documentation of small and positive impacts of moving to VBM-only elections on turnout in Colorado, Washington, Utah, and Oregon (Barber and Holbein 2020;Berinsky, Burns, and Traugott 2001;Gerber, Huber, and Hill 2013;Gronke and Miller 2012;Kousser and Mullin 2007;McGhee, Paluch, and Romero 2020;Southwell 2009;Southwell and Burchett 2000b;Thompson et al. 2020). ...