Daniel A. Smith

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• PhD
• Professor at University of Florida

We undertake a comprehensive examination of restrictive voter ID legislation in the American states from 2001 through 2012. With a dataset containing approximately one thousand introduced and nearly one hundred adopted voter ID laws, we evaluate the likelihood that a state legislature introduces a restrictive voter ID bill, as well as the likelihoo...

In mid-2011, the Florida legislature reduced the state’s early voting period from fourteen days to eight and eliminated the final Sunday of early voting. We compare observed voting patterns in 2012 with those in the 2008 General Election and find that racial/ethnic minorities, registered Democrats, and those without party affiliation had significan...

With few exceptions, voter turnout continues to decline in the United States. Although normative theorists, journalists, and defenders of participatory democracy frequently suggest that citizen-initiated ballot measures can increase voter turnout, previous research has not supported this claim. Yet, in the past 25 years, usage of direct democracy h...

We argue that the rich information environment created by ballot measures makes some policy issues more salient, shaping voters' positions on broad topics such as the importance of the economy. This in turn may affect candidate choice for national and statewide elected office. We theorize that the creation of state-specific issue publics may be the...

Might voters’ experience with how they cast ballots affect their confidence in votes being accurately counted? We analyze how vote modality shapes voters’ confidence in the accuracy of the vote count, particularly when one method of voting is called into question to challenge the legitimacy of an election. Drawing on a large panel survey of validat...

We introduce a typology of election administration harms and apply it to empirically study the consequences of ballot design. Our typology distinguishes between individual, electoral, and systemic harms. Together, it clarifies why ballot design can be a particular vulnerability in election administration. Using both ballot‐level and precinct‐level...

We examine presidential elections in the American South. Our empirical starting point is the 2008 election of Democrat Barack Obama. We discuss political dynamics leading up to this historic contest but focus our analysis on the last four elections concluding with the defeat of President Trump in 2020. Tapping into recent southern politics scholars...

How did the pandemic impact turnout of young voters living in university communities? Leveraging the mandatory vacating of Florida college students living on campuses and drawing on administrative data from Florida’s voter file, we argue that on-campus registered young voters who had to leave their university housing in the days prior to Florida’s...

How much of a role did the COVID-19 pandemic play in determining the 2020 General Election outcome? Just as the state of the economy influences candidate vote choice, we argue that concerns over personal and public health can affect candidate vote choice in the presidential contest. We argue that voters who are concerned about becoming ill will be...

Voters use salient issues to inform their vote choice. Using 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) data, we analyze how short-, medium-, and long-term issues informed the vote for president in the 2020 election, which witnessed record-setting participation. To explain the dynamics of presidential vote choice, we employ a voter typology advanced by...

Might elite cues affect how we vote? Extant literature focuses on effects of elite cues on candidate evaluation or policy preference, but we know little about how they might affect vote method preferences. Drawing on a large survey of validated Florida voters, including those who regularly vote by mail, we find that retrospective and prospective mi...

Following the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, news outlets reported that registered Republicans were leaving the party in droves. Drawing on millions of individual-level voter registration records in Florida, we place post-riot party-switching in broader context. We investigate whether Republicans were more likely to experience gre...

Natural disasters can uproot peoples’ lives in a matter of minutes, leaving behind immeasurable hardships on the people and places that they strike. We examine the impact on voter turnout of one such force majeure in the days leading up to a midterm election. Leveraging the randomness of a rapidly developing, unpredictable Category 5 hurricane, we...

Although most ballots in the United States have historically been cast in-person, Americans are increasingly voting by mail, a trend that accelerated in the 2020 General Election. Mail ballots can be rejected after being cast, and our analysis of the Florida general elections of 2016, 2018, and 2020 shows that voters inexperienced with mail voting...

Is there an optimum method to elicit public records from election officials? Using a field experiment that randomly assigned the wording and email domains used to solicit public records, we test how county election offices respond to requests under given conditions. We find that the response rates of Florida’s 67 Supervisors of Elections (SOE) to a...

How might personal concerns for one’s health, and public health more generally, affect candidate vote choice during the COVID-19 crisis? In this, study we leverage a national survey conducted in the United States during the earliest phase of the pandemic, and an original survey fielded in Florida as positive COVID-19 rates were rising, to assess ho...

Because of the COVID-19 threat to in-person voting in the November 2020 election, state and local election officials have pivoted to mail-in voting as a potential solution. This method of voting—while safe from a public health standpoint—comes with its own set of problems, as increased use of mail voting risks amplifying existing discrepancies in r...

Since the onset in early 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, mail-in voting rates in states that have held elections have surged, presumably reflecting the fact that voting by mail is a relatively safe mode of ballot casting during a public health crisis. Matters of health notwithstanding, postal delivery disruptions can place mail-...

Are more politically knowledgeable registered voters more likely to cast their ballots prior to Election Day when given an option to do so? We argue that individuals with high political knowledge are more likely to take advantage of convenience voting opportunities because they have command over static-general facts, enabling them to make informed...

Lines at the polls raise the cost of voting and can precipitate unequal treatment of voters. Research on voting lines is nonetheless hampered by a fundamental measurement problem: little is known about the distribution of time voters spend in line prior to casting ballots. We argue that early, in-person voter check-in times allow us identify indivi...

What are Americans’ views on liberal democracy? Have their attitudes changed since the 1950s? How do their attitudes about liberal democracy shape political behavior, such as vote choice? We replicated McClosky’s (1964) seminal study on a module to the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Our exploration of 26 survey questions reveals bot...

Might additional opportunities to cast a ballot prior to Election Day increase the probability that an indi- vidual turns out to vote? More narrowly, does convenience voting have differential effects, altering the method of how some registrants cast their ballot? Scholars disagree as to whether convenience voting bol- sters turnout, or even if it a...

This study investigates the reliability of Florida’s voter registration files through a phone survey, asking respondents to verify their records. We find 17.7% of registrants fail to verify at least one identifying piece of information. Applying the total survey error (TSE) framework, we classify these errors as due to coverage error, measurement e...

This study is the most comprehensive analysis of the election of black state legislators in the American South. We start with the election of Leroy Johnson to the Georgia Senate in 1962, the first African American to win a state legislative seat in the modern South. We also document the election of all subsequent African Americans who were the firs...

Since the adoption of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993, states have taken significant steps to modernize the voter registration process and to minimize errors in managing voter registration lists. Reforms such as Online Voter Registration, Election Day Registration, youth pre-registration, as well as Automatic Voter Registration d...

North Carolina offers its residents the opportunity to cast early in-person (EIP) ballots prior to Election Day, a practice known locally as “One-Stop” voting. Following a successful legal challenge to the state’s controversial 2013 Voter Information and Verification Act, North Carolina’s 100 counties were given wide discretion over the hours and l...

Provisional ballots constitute a failsafe for voters who have their registration or voter identification questioned by poll workers. Scholars have yet to examine who is more likely to cast a provisional ballot, and more importantly, why some provisional ballots are rejected. We suggest that beyond individual-level factors, there are administrative...

This chapter examines how Floridians have changed their voting habits in the recent elections to rely heavily on early in-person voting and absentee voting.A majority of Floridians now vote before election day in general elections.

This chapter assesses how Florida’s county election administration performed in the 2016 general election.With allegations that vote totals are now “rigged,” the performance of the election administrators is crucial to maintaining election legitimacy and US democracy.

This chapter assesses changes in presidential election returns at the Florida county level between 2012 and 2016. Florida has been a perennial swing state since 1992, and it was once again a toss-up in 2016 when Republican Donald Trump narrowly defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton. We show that, with respect to density, Democratic presidential nominee...

The surprise outcome of the 2016 presidential election continues to raise more questions as experts grapple with the evidence for why most prognosticators considered a Hillary Clinton victory almost certain. This article uses the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data to show that a primary explanation for why the election of Donald Tru...

Prior research predicts that election administration changes that increase voting costs should decrease participation, but it fails to consider that some interpret those changes as attacking their franchise. Drawing on psychological reactance theory, this study tests whether such perceived attacks might instead activate those citizens. It leverages...

Who signs ballot initiative petitions? Do they fit a particular socio-political and demographic profile of a likely voter, or are they peripheral voters who become engaged in the political process due to the issue at hand? And are some citizens who sign petitions more likely to have valid signatures than others? Scholars have been slow to assess wh...

On account of poor living conditions, African Americans in the United States experience disproportionately high rates of mortality and incarceration compared with Whites. This has profoundly diminished the number of voting-eligible African Americans in the country, costing, as of 2010, approximately 3.9 million African American men and women the ri...

What is the minimum black population necessary to elect African-American state lawmakers? We offer the most comprehensive examination of the election of black state legislators in the post-Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) era. We begin by charting changes in the partisan affiliation of state legislators and the percentage of black legislators from 1971...

Despite the expansion of convenience voting across the American states, millions of voters continue to cast ballots at their local precincts on Election Day. We argue that those registered voters who are reassigned to a different Election Day polling place prior to an election are less likely to turn out to vote than those assigned to vote at the s...

Online voter registration (OVR) is an election reform that has recently taken hold in more than half of the American states. Election administration observers have marveled at both the rapid diffusion and bipartisan support associated with legislative passage of OVR. We examine the likelihood a lawmaker voted in favor or against OVR in legislatures...

The amount of time that voters wait in line while casting their ballots has been a matter of consternation in electorates across the world and a subject of ongoing academic research in the field of election administration. With this as context, we offer here a study of voting lines that combines observed voter arrival times and measures of precinct...

We examine state legislator behavior on restrictive voter identification (ID) bills from 2005 to 2013. Partisan polarization of state lawmakers on voter ID laws is well known, but we know very little with respect to other determinants driving this political division. A major shortcoming of extant research evaluating the passage of voter ID bills st...

Objective Some scholars report that the partisanship of local election administrators affects which voters will cast provisional ballots and which ballots will be rejected, raising serious questions about voting rights and the application of uniform election laws within the American states. Our goal is to demonstrate that casting a provisional ball...

Gerrymandering requires illicit intent. We classify six proposed methods to infer the intent of a redistricting authority using a formal framework for causal inferences that encompasses the redistricting process from the release of census data to the adoption of a final plan. We argue all proposed techniques to detect gerrymandering can be classifi...

Members of Congress grant access to outsiders as a means of alleviating policy and electoral uncertainty. But just who is granted this access, and which members are more likely to grant it? In an experiment conducted in the spring of 2010, one of the authors called the offices of each member of the Senate, first as a private citizen and then as a r...

In mid-2011, the Florida state legislature passed House Bill 1355 (HB 1355) and in so doing placed new regulations on community organizations that historically have helped eligible Floridians register to vote. Among the legal changes promulgated by this bill were new regulations on the operations of groups like the League of Women Voters and a new...

Over the past 30 years an increasing number of American states have made it more convenient for voters to cast early ballots. Despite the rapid diffusion of what is known as early in-person voting and praise for this practice by voting rights advocates and election administrators alike, a new Florida law in 2011 truncated the state's early voting p...

Generally speaking, campaign-related contact motivates voters. One form of such contact not much explored in the voter mobilization literature is the petitioning for ballot initiatives that occurs with considerable frequency in about half the states and even more localities. Using newly-available data that allow us to match individual petition sign...

Do ballot measures affect congressional voting behavior? Examining the issues of gay marriage, campaign finance, and minimum wage, we test if the results of statewide ballot initiatives inform congressional roll call votes on legislation occupying the same issue space. Theoretically, we expect signals from ballot measures—which provide precise info...

Most colleges and universities stipulate that public service is a requirement for tenure and promotion. Yet many political science faculty and their respective administrators pay only lip service to this “third leg” of a scholarly career, relying on teaching and research to shape most career decisions. This reality is particularly surprising in the...

Did Barack Obama's successful candidacy for President in 2008 contribute to the passage of Florida's Amendment 2 by turning out newly registered African Americans who voted for Obama and then cast ballots in favor of constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage? If one looks at reportage by in the mainstream media, punditry in the blogosphere...

Of the three mechanisms of direct democracy — the initiative, the popular referendum, and the recall — the initiative is by far the most widely used form of direct democracy in the American states. Two dozen, mostly western American states currently permit their citizens to serve as Election Day lawmakers. With the initiative process, citizens part...

Research has found that states using initiatives and referendums have higher turnout, particularly in midterm elections. Existing research has not examined who is mobilized to vote when issues appear on statewide ballots. Building on work by Campbell (1966. “Surge and Decline: A Study of Electoral Change.” In Elections and the Political Order, eds....

We demonstrate that direct democracy can affect the issues voters consider when evaluating presidential candidates. Priming theory assumes that some voters have latent attitudes or predispositions that can be primed to affect evaluations of political candidates. We demonstrate that: (1) state ballot measures on same sex marriage increased the salie...

Between 1898 and 1918, voters in 20 American states adopted constitutional amendments granting citizens the power of the initiative. The embrace of direct democracy by voters invites inquiry into why some state legislatures opted to delegate to citizens the power of the initiative, while others did not. Drawing on an original data set, this article...

Local Democracy Under Siege: Activism, Public Interests, and Private Politics. By HollandDorothy, NoniniDonald M., LutzCatherine, BartlettLesley, Frederick-McGlatheryMarla, GuldbradsenThaddeus C., and MurilloEnrique G.Jr.. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 302p. $75.00 cloth, $22 paper. - Volume 6 Issue 2 - Daniel A. Smith

Political elites are generally reluctant to alter the status quo unless a change will benefit them. Scholars have found that institutions, and the rules governing them, tend to evolve in ways that maintain equilibrium, preserving the status of winners. Are voters—when presented the opportunity—more likely than elites to alter political institutions...

Did ballot measures banning same-sex marriage swing the 2004 general election for President George W. Bush? In 2004, activists and state legislators placed anti—gay marriage questions on the general election ballots of 11 states. All of the ballot measures passed easily, receiving on average roughly 70 percent support.1 Pundits argued that the marr...

Political scientists are increasingly turning to direct democracy, as practiced in the American states, to investigate a broad range of questions dealing with median voter preferences and policy responsiveness, minority interests, theories of representation, policy implementation, political knowledge and behavior, citizen engagement, mobilization a...

House congressional campaign committees (CCCs) have increasingly relied on incumbents for financial support during the past decade. To raise money for their party's CCC, incumbents can (a) contribute to the CCC through their own principal campaign committee and/or leadership PAC or (b) broker contributions from donors. The authors argue that direct...

This article surveys recent studies by political scientists that examine the "educative effects" of ballot measures on political participation and civic engagement, as well as their impact on candidate elections. ... Political trust, or an individual's attitude toward state government, is another potential educative effect of direct democracy. ......

The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.

Direct democracy is currently flourishing in the American states. The mechanisms of direct democracy, specifically the initiative, affect issues of representation in two fundamental ways. In reviewing the scholarly literature on direct democracy, we first highlight the instrumental outcomes of ballot propositions and how they directly or indirectly...

Scholars have begun examining what Progressive reformers called the educative effects of direct democracy, especially the effect ballot initiatives have on voter turnout. Research based on aggregate-level voter age population (VAP) turnout data indicates that ballot measures increase turnout in low-information midterm elections but not in president...

In the wake of the 2004 election, there was rampant speculation that ballot measures prohibiting gay marriage were pivotal in securing victory for President Bush in several swing states because they mobilized evangelical Protestants to the polls. We examine this popular assumption using county-level data from two presidential battleground states—Oh...

Scholars have devoted considerable attention to both the fiscal and policy impact of tax and expenditure limitation ballot initiatives. This article instead examines how statewide anti-tax measures come to be placed before the general public for popular votes. It critically assesses six anti-tax measures on statewide ballots in 1996, questioning th...

Disclosure statutes have not been the focus of much scholarly attention, particularly in the legal academy. This lack of attention is unfortunate because the design of disclosure laws is crucial in several ways. First, the constitutional test applied to campaign finance laws, including disclosure, requires that statutes be narrowly tailored to serv...

This body of research not only passes academic muster but is the best guidepost in existence for activists who are trying to use the ballot initiative process for larger policy and political objectives. -Kristina Wilfore, Executive Director, Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and Foundation Educated by Initiative moves beyond previous evaluations of...

In 2000, Ghana's landmark elections ushered in a new era of democracy. Scholars, however, have yet to scrutinise the structural underpinnings of the country's electoral system. This article offers a detailed assessment of Ghana's bloated voters' register, patterns of voter turnout and the lingering accusation of electoral irregularities in the Volt...

Since its inaugural use in Oregon in 1904, direct democracy—as practiced in twenty-seven American states—has garnered its share of defenders and critics. While the debate over the merits and drawbacks of citizen lawmaking remains as contentious as ever, critics and proponents alike usually concur that two extra-legislative tools—the “citizen” initi...

The role of the media, both state‐owned and private, is an important and often overlooked component of any election, particularly those occurring in developing countries. Unfortunately, the existing academic literature on the subject is thin, especially concerning the recent flurry of democratic elections in Africa. This article briefly revi...

vote were not the same, there was little public clamour for voting reform at the national level. Indeed, the general public remained remarkably disengaged from the entire post-election struggle. There were some signs of electoral reform at the state and local level, most especially in Florida where local politicians clearly did not desire a repeat...

Previous research on the initiative process tends to underestimate the involvement of political parties in ballot measure contests as well as the impact of partisanship on initiative voting. Focusing on recent ballot contests in California, we find that the two major party organizations in California are actively using ballot initiatives to bolster...

Recent macro-level studies examining the indirect effects of direct legislation on public policy in the American states are decidedly mixed. This study tests whether the macro-level logic of legislative behavior in response to ballot initiatives holds true at the micro-level for individual legislators. I examined the determinants of legislative vot...

Why are some statewide citizen initiatives in the American states successful at the polls and others not? Quantitative studies tend to emphasize the aggregate spending of the proponents and opponents of ballot measures when explaining ballot results. Substantial evidence, though, indicates that an array of nonmonetary variables also influence the o...

During the months immediately preceding California’s June 1978 primary election, Proposition 13, the fractious property tax ballot measure, received a dizzying amount of media attention. Newspaper columnists from California and around the country swapped partisan barbs, debating ad infinitum the initiative’s merits and faults. In public forums, pol...

In 1992, Douglas Bruce, a non-practicing lawyer and landlord from Colorado Springs, Colorado, successfully "mobilized" popular support for Amendment 1, a ballot initiative that has restricted the taxing and spending powers of state and local governments in Colorado. For most Coloradans, "Douglas Bruce" is now a household name. Using a historical pe...

This article examines a pattern of public/private activity found in the United States that falls beyond the theoretical parameters of most interest group research. For nearly 15 years, labor-management councils have contributed to the making of industrial policy in several of the American states. Yet, labor-management councils have not received amp...

Studies have demonstrated that state ballot initiatives are associated with higher voter turnout, however existing research has not examined which voters are mobilized by initiatives. We test whether, 1) initiatives mobilize people who do not fit the profile of regular voters, and 2) whether initiatives activate people who resemble regular voters....