No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Election Administration, Voting Options, and Turnout in the 2020 US Election
Abstract
COVID-19 had a major impact on how some states administered the 2020 election and little effect on others. Using a new dataset, we identify the options states introduced to make voting safer, the measures they took to encourage voters to use these options, and the options’ effects on voter turnout. We show that most states introduced few, if any, significant changes in voting policies. We identify relationships between the states’ responses and preexisting election policies, party control of government, and other state characteristics. We also demonstrate the introduction of safe voting options had an effect on aggregate voter turnout. The results give insights into factors that influence election policymaking and the prospects for future election reforms.
... The pandemic posed unprecedented challenges to election administration (Congressional Research Service 2020; Persily and Stewart 2021;Fortier and Stewart 2021). The U.S. Constitution assigns the major responsibility for conducting elections to the states, and the states' responses varied greatly (Stanford- MIT Healthy Elections Project 2021;Herrnson, et al. 2022). Some revamped election procedures and others instituted minimal change. ...
... The laws, procedures, and other aspects of election administration that define each state's ''electoral ecosystem'' (Alvarez, Atkeson, and Hall 2013, 31) were the starting points from which policymakers addressed the pandemic. Moreover, the political traditions, geography, and population characteristics that shaped these ecosystems (Keyssar 2000;Hasen 2012;Goodliffe et al. 2020;Gronke et al. 2007;Biggers and Hanmer 2015) also influenced the election policies state officials adopted in response to the pandemic (Herrnson et al. 2022). ...
... State-level policymakers mostly adopted positions consistent with those of national party leaders, in part, because there were more COVID-related deaths in Democratic strongholds than in Republican areas. 2 States under unified Democratic control were the most likely to introduce either universal VBM elections or NEAV and to mail absentee ballot applications to registered voters, and states under Republican control were the least likely. States under divided control-where both parties have influence over election policy-fell in between (Herrnson et al. 2022). ...
... Governments and their institutions responded to this situation with various measures: postponing elections, expanding remote voting options, or restricting the proximity of polling places to reduce the risk of contagion. Of the options used, Krimmer et al. (2021) reported in-person voting with security measures, absentee voting, and i-voting, while Herrnson et al. (2022) noted more elections in which more voters used the remote voting option (e.g., absentee voting was exceptionally allowed for all). Between February 2020 and February 2022, at least 160 countries and territories decided to hold national or subnational elections despite concerns related to COVID-19, of which at least 130 held national elections or referendums (International IDEA, 2022b). ...
... In addition, we found some recommendations and articles on the potential impact on electoral systems and turnout in the post COVID-19 period (Delfi.en, 2020;Herrnson et al., 2022;Krimmer et al., 2020). However, we have not found any studies that look at the intention to use i-voting to find out how this type of voting is affected by the COVID-19 crisis. ...
This article presents an empirical study of influence of the domain-specific factors of trust in the electoral system and administration, trust in technology, citizens' attitudes toward voting, and COVID-19 conditions on the intention to use i-voting. The study examines and assesses the relationships and effects of the various factors that influence the intention to use i-voting. Survey data from 633 adult Slovenian citizens were collected in 2022, when voters were still burdened by the pandemic and needed to visit the polling place at least five times to participate in all scheduled voting. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data and develop the model. The study provides important findings, such as (1) trust in the voting system has a significant impact on voters' intention to use i-voting, (2) fear of COVID-19 does not persuade people to use i-voting, and (3) previous attitudes toward voting do not have a significant impact on voter intention to use i-voting.
Are voters as polarized as political leaders when it comes to their preferences about how to cast their ballots in November 2020 and their policy positions on how elections should be run in light of the COVID-19 outbreak? Prior research has shown little party divide on voting by mail, with nearly equal percentages of voters in both parties choosing to vote this way where it is an option. Has a divide opened up this year in how voters aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties prefer to cast a ballot? We address these questions with two nationally diverse, online surveys fielded from April 8 to 10 and June 11 to 13, of 5,612 and 5,818 eligible voters, respectively, with an embedded experiment providing treated respondents with scientific projections about the COVID-19 outbreak. We find a nearly 10 percentage point difference between Democrats and Republicans in their preference for voting by mail in April, which had doubled in size to nearly 20 percentage points in June. This partisan gap is wider still for those exposed to scientific projections about the pandemic. We also find that support for national legislation requiring states to offer no-excuse absentee ballots has emerged as an increasingly polarized issue.
This book is an attempt to explain the origins of the political system Key described. A complex topic with wide ramifications, it has received less attention than it deserves. As Sheldon Hackney remarked in a recent review article, "One of the unsolved, even unposed riddles of twentieth-century southern politics is why a two-party system did not develop after disfranchisement." The solution to this riddle, I suggest, lies not in the period after disfranchisement and the establishment of the direct, statewide white primary, but in a study of the movements which sought to bring about those electoral changes. If so, then questions about the genesis of the electoral changes are important to political scientists and historians investigating not only the nineteenth century but also the twentieth. I have attempted in this book to cover in detail the movements for suffrage restriction in each of the eleven ex-Confederate states. I have also treated intensively the changes in Northern opinion toward suffrage and the South, the identity and objectives of the restrictionists and their opponents, and the purposes and efficacy of the particular alterations in the political rules. My interpretation of the change from the post-Reconstruction Southern political system to the twentieth-century system rests on a thorough analysis of election statistics using a technique heretofore rarely used by historians—Leo Goodman's ecological regression method. By employing Goodman's method, I have been able to obtain estimates of the percentages of blacks and whites who voted for each candidate, as well as the proportion who did not vote, in every presidential and gubernatorial election and in many primaries and referenda in the South from 1880 to 1910. For most of these elections, these are the first estimates based on a relatively sophisticated statistical procedure that have ever been made. These statistics allow the most firmly based answers that we have so far to such questions as: to what extent did blacks and whites, respectively, favor the Populists? What percentage of voters from each party favored disfranchisement in the various referenda? To what extent did the massive declines in votes turnout represent only the disfranchisement of blacks? To what extent did whites also stop voting?
Unlike citizens in nearly all other democracies, most U.S. citizens bear the responsibility for registering to vote. We test whether states can help citizens overcome the barriers to registration and turnout using a simple postcard. To do this, we leverage a new program that brings states together to improve the quality of their voter registration rolls and generate lists of eligible but unregistered citizens. Using a unique list of eligible but unregistered citizens from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, we partnered with the Pennsylvania Department of State’s Office to conduct a large-scale voter registration field experiment prior to the 2016 election. We provide new tests of traditional theories related to lowering the costs of registration as well as new theories related to promoting government responsiveness. We find that contact in the form of a single postcard from the Department of State led to a one percentage point increase in registration and a 0.9-point increase in turnout, regardless of the content of the postcard. Registration effects were strongest among young, first-time voters. Importantly, new registrants voted at a rate far exceeding rates found in previous registration drives.
In response to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), many scholars and policy makers are urging the United States to expand voting-by-mail programs to safeguard the electoral process. What are the effects of vote-by-mail? In this paper, we provide a comprehensive design-based analysis of the effect of universal vote-by-mail—a policy under which every voter is mailed a ballot in advance of the election—on electoral outcomes. We collect data from 1996 to 2018 on all three US states that implemented universal vote-by-mail in a staggered fashion across counties, allowing us to use a difference-in-differences design at the county level to estimate causal effects. We find that 1) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to affect either party’s share of turnout, 2) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to increase either party’s vote share, and 3) universal vote-by-mail modestly increases overall average turnout rates, in line with previous estimates. All three conclusions support the conventional wisdom of election administration experts and contradict many popular claims in the media.
Our research uses principal component analysis and information on 33 different state election laws, assembled in seven different issue areas, to create a Cost of Voting Index (COVI) for each of the 50 American states in each presidential election year from 1996 through 2016. In addition to providing detailed description of measurement and coding decisions used in index construction, we conduct sensitivity analyses to test relevant assumptions made during the course of index construction. The COVI reported in the article is the one that is the most theoretically sound and empirically indistinct from the other index construction options considered. We also test the construct validity of the COVI using both state-level and individual-level voter turnout. After controlling for other considerations, we find aggregate voter turnout is lower in states with higher index values and self-reported turnout also drops in states with larger index values.
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 locations of EIP voting for the 2016 General Election. This discretion yielded a patchwork of election practices across the state, providing us with a set of natural experiments to study the effect of changes in early voting hours on voter turnout. Drawing on individual-level voting records from the North Carolina State Board of Elections, our research design matches voters on race, party, and geography. We find little evidence that changes to early opportunities in North Carolina had uniform effects on voter turnout. Nonetheless, we do identify areas in the presidential battleground state where voters appear to have reacted to local changes in early voting availability, albeit not always in directions consistent with the existing literature. We suspect that effects of changes to early voting rules are conditional on local conditions, and future research on the effects of election law changes on turnout should explore these conditions in detail.
Election reform has allowed citizens in many states to choose among convenience voting methods. We report on a field experiment that tests messages derived from theories about government responsiveness, choice, information, and convenience on the methods that citizens use to vote, namely early voting, absentee voting by mail, and absentee voting using a ballot downloaded from the internet. We find that any treatment discussing a downloadable ballot increases its usage, and the only treatment to increase use of the early voting option emphasized its implementation as a response to citizen demand. Treatments presenting the full range of convenience voting options increase turnout slightly. The most effective treatments also influence the behavior of others in the recipient’s household. Overall, the results demonstrate the efficacy of impersonal messages on voter behavior. The results have implications for the abilities of election administrators and political campaigners to structure the methods voters use to cast their ballots.
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 stems from using the state legislature as the unit of analysis. We depart from existing scholarship by using the state legislator as our unit of analysis, and we cover the entirety of the period when restrictive voter ID laws became a frequent agenda item in state legislatures. Beyond the obviously significant effect of party affiliation, we find a notable relationship between the racial composition of a member’s district, region, and electoral competition and the likelihood that a state lawmaker supports a voter ID bill. Democratic lawmakers representing substantial black district populations are more opposed to restrictive voter ID laws, whereas Republican legislators with substantial black district populations are more supportive. We also find Southern lawmakers (particularly Democrats) are more opposed to restrictive voter ID legislation. In particular, we find black legislators in the South are the least supportive of restrictive voter ID bills, which is likely tied to the historical context associated with state laws restricting electoral participation. Finally, in those state legislatures where electoral competition is not intense, polarization over voter ID laws is less stark, which likely reflects the expectation that the reform will have little bearing on the outcome of state legislative contests.
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 period from a total of 14 days to eight, eliminated early voting on the Sunday immediately preceding Election Day, and reduced the total number of hours that early voting polling stations were required to be open. We assess the effects that these changes might have on Florida voting by analyzing early voting patterns from the 2008 General Election in this state. By merging a Florida voter file with county-level records of approximately 2.6 million early voters, we are able not only to identify which types of voters cast early ballots in the run-up to the 2008 General Election, but also to determine the precise days of the two-week early voting period in which various voter types cast their ballots. We find that Democratic, African American, Hispanic, younger, and first-time voters were disproportionately likely to vote early in 2008 and in particular on weekends, including the final Sunday of early voting. We expect these types of voters to be disproportionately affected by the recent changes to Florida's voting laws that altered the practice of early voting across the state.
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 likelihood that a state government adopts such a law. Voter ID laws have evolved from a valence issue into a partisan battle, where Republicans defend them as a safeguard against fraud while Democrats indict them as a mechanism of voter suppression. However, voter ID legislation is not uniform across the states; not all Republican-controlled legislatures have pushed for more restrictive voter ID laws. Instead, our findings show it is a combination of partisan control and the electoral context that drives enactment of such measures. While the prevalence of Republican lawmakers strongly and positively influences the adoption of voter ID laws in electorally competitive states, its effect is significantly weaker in electorally uncompetitive states. Republicans preside over an electoral coalition that is declining in size; where elections are competitive, the furtherance of restrictive voter ID laws is a means of maintaining Republican support while curtailing Democratic electoral gains.
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 significant early voting participation drops and that voters who cast ballots on the final Sunday in 2008 were disproportionately unlikely to cast a valid ballot in 2012. Florida’s decision to truncate early voting may have diminished participation rates of those already least likely to vote.
The proportion of votes cast before election day has risen steadily over the last two decades. Previous research asked how early voting has impacted voter participation. In this article, we ask how early voting has affected the flow of information to voters through the mass media. By increasing the number of days voters are able to vote, are we also increasing the number of days that candidates and campaigns continuously disseminate campaign-related information to the news media? Is news coverage of campaigns quantitatively and qualitatively different when opportunities to vote early are available and utilized? Our expectation is that early voting significantly influences the volume and nature of campaign news coverage. We study the effects of early voting on campaign news coverage of gubernatorial and Senate races in 2006 and 2008. Our findings reveal that the volume and content of campaign news coverage is significantly influenced by early voting.
[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource: Appendix for Early Voting and Campaign News Coverage—Alternative Model Specifications.]
In the 2004 election, 30 states offered the option to vote before Election Day with no excuse (National Conference of State Legislators, 2004), up from 26 in 2002. For parties, interest groups, and campaigns that have begun early voting campaign efforts, have the efforts changed the composition of the electorate—or are early voters largely similar to Election Day voters? By examining two battleground states from the 2002 midterm election in which the partisan, interest group, and campaign efforts were highly competitive, we are able to analyze this question. Drawing upon a unique panel survey including early, absentee, and Election Day voters in the 2002 Arkansas and Missouri midterm elections, we are able to analyze demographic and attitudinal information about voters, as well as issue preference and vote certainty over time. We show that early voters and Election Day voters are largely similar. We also show that while there is weak evidence that issue preference of early voters may change over time, vote choice is firm. Thus, we conclude that early voting campaigns may have limited effectiveness in mobilizing new voters or persuading voters to change their minds.
The 2000 presidential election was a wake-up call to elected leaders, public officials, and election scholars. The electoral fiasco—most prominent in Florida, but also taking place in states like New Mexico and Ohio—revealed many deficiencies in voting equipment (Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 2001). In addition to faulty equipment, registration mix-ups and problems with absentee ballots led to the loss of as many as six million votes (Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 2001). Confusing ballots, like the butterfly ballot in Florida's Dade County, were found to have led voters to vote incorrectly (Wand et al. 2001). While these problems have, no doubt, existed for a long time, the closeness of the 2000 presidential race and the fact that the number of lost votes had the power to change the election outcome have brought election administration questions to the forefront of policy making. Results were first presented at “The Future of Election Reform and Ethics in the States,” hosted by Kent State University, Department of Political Science, Columbus, Ohio, January 16–17, 2007, and the following paper was presented at the Midwest Political Science Association's Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–15, 2007. Data were collected by monies generously provided by the University of New Mexico's Research Allocation Committee. We'd like to thank Luciana Zilberman, Lisa Bryant, Alex Adams, David Magleby, and the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy at Brigham Young University for their assistance with this project. Of course, any errors are our own.
Previous election reforms designed to increase turnout have often made voting more convenient for frequent voters without significantly increasing turnout among infrequent voters. A recent innovation—Election Day vote centers—provides an alternative means of motivating electoral participation among infrequent voters. Election Day vote centers are nonprecinct-based locations for voting on Election Day. The sites are fewer in number than precinct-voting stations, centrally located to major population centers (rather than distributed among many residential locations), and rely on county-wide voter registration databases accessed by electronic voting machines. Voters in the voting jurisdiction (usually a county) are provided ballots appropriate to their voter registration address. It is thought that the use of voting centers on Election Day will increase voter turnout by reducing the cost and/or inconvenience associated with voting at traditional precinct locations. Since 2003 voters in Larimer County, CO have balloted at one of 32 vote centers. Precinct voting in Larimer ended in 2003. To test the efficacy of Election Day vote centers, we have collected individual vote histories on voters in Larimer and a control county (i.e., Weld, CO) that used precinct voting on Election Day for the years 1992–2004. We find significant evidence to support the hypothesis that Election Day vote centers increase voter turnout generally, and among infrequent voters in particular.
This book compares the demographic characteristics and political views of voters and non-voters in U.S. presidential elections since 1972 and examines how electoral reforms and the choices offered by candidates influence voter turnout. Drawing on a wealth of data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and the American National Election Studies, the book demonstrates that the rich have consistently voted more than the poor for the past four decades, and that voters are substantially more conservative in their economic views than non-voters. The book finds that women are now more likely to vote than men, that the gap in voting rates between blacks and whites has largely disappeared, and that older Americans continue to vote more than younger Americans. The book also shows how electoral reforms such as Election Day voter registration and absentee voting have boosted voter turnout, and how turnout would also rise if parties offered more distinct choices. Providing the most systematic analysis available of modern voter turnout, this book reveals that persistent class bias in turnout has enduring political consequences, and that it really does matter who votes and who doesn't.
This book explores the wide variation across states in convenience voting methods—absentee/mail voting, in-person early voting, same day registration—and provides new empirical analysis of the beneficial effects of these policies, not only in increasing voter turnout overall, but for disadvantaged groups. By measuring both convenience methods and implementation of the laws, the book improves on previous research. It draws generalizable conclusions about how these laws affect voter turnout by using population data from the fifty state voter files. Using individual vote histories, the design helps avoid bias in non-random assignment of states in adopting the laws. Many scholars and public officials have dismissed state election reform laws as failing to significantly increase turnout or address inequality in who votes. Accessible Elections underscores how state governments can modernize their election procedures to increase voter turnout and influence campaign and party mobilization strategies. Mail voting and in-person early voting are particularly important in the wake of Covid-19 to avoid election day crowds and ensure successful and equitable elections in states with large populations; the results of this study can help state governments more rapidly update voting for the 2020 general election and beyond.
We address the frequent critique that voter registration is a barrier to participation in the US. Institutional reforms to voter registration produce only small impacts on participation. We show the registration barrier can be reduced without changing laws or administrative processes using official communication seeking to change individual political behavior. In collaboration with state election agencies in two states, we conducted large-scale field experiments using low cost postcards aimed at increasing registration among eligible but unregistered citizens. The experiments find statistically and substantively significant effects on registration and turnout in subsequent elections. The research partnership with election officials is unusual and important for understanding electoral participation. Further, the population targeted for registration is broader than prior experiments on voter registration in the US. The results provide important insights about voter registration as a barrier to political participation, plus practical guidance for election officials to reduce this barrier.
Americans are changing in terms of when and where they vote. We endeavor to find out whether these changes have affected the voting experience. Americans offer myriad reasons for not voting (Current Population Survey [CPS] 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). Most of these excuses are beyond immediate remedy. There may be one exception: the way we conduct and administer our elections. Voting place practices have undergone considerable change in the last decade and may offer the most immediate if not direct means of enhancing the voters’ experience at their polling places and possibly voter participation. In this chapter, we ask whether contemporary polling place practices are related to the experiences voters have when voting and whether these practices directly or through voter experiences and other covariates have a nontrivial and appreciable effect on the likelihood of voting. Our thesis is that when and where voters cast their ballot significantly impact the voter’s experience and the likelihood an eligible voter will actually vote. We find that when voters have a choice of where and when to vote rather than being limited to voting on one day and at a location most proximate to their residence, they are more likely to report a positive voting experience and are more likely to vote. Specifically we find that voters who cast a ballot before Election Day report a more positive voting experience than Election Day voters. Further we find that voters report more favorable voting experiences when they vote in larger voting places – voting places that are more centrally located, where voters work, shop, recreate, and travel, and that have accessible parking, a large number of voting stations, and a large number of poll workers.
Policymaking in the realm of elections is too often grounded in anecdotes and opinions, rather than in good data and scientific research. To remedy this, The Measure of American Elections brings together a dozen leading scholars to examine the performance of elections across the United States, using a data-driven perspective. This book represents a transformation in debates about election reform, away from partisan and ideological posturing, toward using scientific analysis to evaluate the conduct of contemporary elections. The authors harness the power of newly available data to document all aspects of election administration, ranging from the registration of voters to the counting of ballots. They demonstrate what can be learned from giving serious attention to data, measurement, and objective analysis of American elections.
Policymaking in the realm of elections is too often grounded in anecdotes and opinions, rather than in good data and scientific research. To remedy this, The Measure of American Elections brings together a dozen leading scholars to examine the performance of elections across the United States, using a data-driven perspective. This book represents a transformation in debates about election reform, away from partisan and ideological posturing, toward using scientific analysis to evaluate the conduct of contemporary elections. The authors harness the power of newly available data to document all aspects of election administration, ranging from the registration of voters to the counting of ballots. They demonstrate what can be learned from giving serious attention to data, measurement, and objective analysis of American elections.
Over a decade has passed since Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, largely in response to the problems experienced in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. Despite the appropriation of more than $3.5 billion, there are still persistent problems with the administration of elections in the United States. Some encompass technical problems involving computerized voting equipment, voter lists, and the software used to manage them, but many others are rooted in more traditional issues of candidates and political parties attempting to advantage themselves at the expense of their opponents. Indeed, contemporary elections provide many opportunities for those participating in election administration to manipulate the system intentionally for partisan advantage or to introduce inconsistencies across jurisdictions as a result of the discretion granted to state and local officials. This study focuses on a key area where partisan manipulation and local variation may be most prominent: provisional ballots. Provisional ballots are important because they offer voters who otherwise would be denied the right to vote an opportunity to cast a ballot – at least in many cases. The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project (2001) provided one of the first arguments in favor of provisional voting and estimated that provisional ballots might have saved 1.5 million votes from being lost in 2000.
In the U.S., there is wide variation from state to state in the institutional arrangements– for example, registration laws– that structure the environment in which citizens decide whether to vote and parties decide whom to mobilize. This has important consequences for who gets elected and the policies they enact. Hanmer argues that to understand how these institutional arrangements affect outcomes, it is necessary to consider the interactions between social and political context and these laws. He tests this theory by examining how the factors that influence the adoption of a set of registration laws affect turnout, the composition of the electorate, and party strategies. His multi-method research design demonstrates that the effect of registration laws is not as profound as either reformers would hope or previous studies suggest, especially when reform is a response to federal legislation. He concludes by arguing for a shift in the approach to increasing turnout.
In competitive and contested democratic elections, ensuring integrity is critical. Evaluating Elections shows why systematic analysis and reporting of election performance are important and how data-driven performance management can be used by election officials to improve elections. The authors outline how performance management systems can function in elections and their benefits for voters, candidates, and political parties. Journalists, election administrators, and even candidates all often ask whether recent elections were run well, whether there were problems in the administration of a particular state’s elections, and how well elections were run across the country. The authors explain that such questions are difficult to answer because of the complexity of election administration and because there is currently no standard or accepted framework to assess the general quality of an election. © R. Michael Alvarez, Lonna Rae Atkeson, and Thad E. Hall 2013.
This article tries to understand American voter turnout rates in a historical perspective. In order to do this, the pool of eligible voters, the voting procedures, and the political circumstances surrounding the elections in a given period should be addressed. The article discusses the four eras in American participation: Founding Era, Party Machine Era, Segregation Era, and Nationalization Era. The Founding Era witnessed the lowest voter turnout rates in American history due to measurement error. The Party Machine Era serves as an indicator of the important role political parties played in organizing American society. The Segregation Era marks a period of retrenchment in voter turnout. The overwhelming voting trend during the Nationalization Era has been a tearing down of walls, not building them. An active area of research is how procedural changes affect voter turnout, from how people are registered to when and how they cast their ballots.
The apparent decline in voter participation in national elections since 1972 is an illusion created by using the Bureau of the Census estimate of the voting-age population as the denominator of the turnout rate. We construct a more accurate estimate of those eligible to vote, from 1948-2000, using government statistical series to adjust for ineligible but included groups, such as noncitizens and felons, and eligible but excluded groups, such as overseas citizens. We show that the ineligible population, not the nonvoting, has been increasing since 1972. During the 1960s the turnout rate trended downward both nationally and outside the South. Although the average turnout rates for presidential and congressional elections are lower since 1972 than during 1948-70, the only pattern since 1972 is an increased turnout rate in southern congressional elections. While the voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971, the lower turnout rate of young voters accounts for less than one-fourth of reduced voter participation.
Recent elections have witnessed substantial debate regarding the degree to which state governments facilitate access to the polls. Despite this newfound interest, however, many of the major reforms aimed at increasing voting convenience (i.e., early voting and no-excuse absentee voting) were implemented over the past four decades. Although numerous studies examine their consequences (on turnout, the composition of the electorate, and/or electoral outcomes), we know significantly less about the factors leading to the initial adoption of these policies. We attempt to provide insights into such motivations using event history analysis to identify the impact of political and demographic considerations, as well as diffusion mechanisms, on which states opted for easier ballot access. We find that adoption responded to some factors signaling the necessity of greater voting convenience in the state, and that partisanship influenced the enactment of early voting but not no-excuse absentee voting procedures.
Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in state legislation likely to reduce access for some voters, including photo identification and proof of citizenship requirements, registration restrictions, absentee ballot voting restrictions, and reductions in early voting. Political operatives often ascribe malicious motives when their opponents either endorse or oppose such legislation. In an effort to bring empirical clarity and epistemological standards to what has been a deeply-charged, partisan, and frequently anecdotal debate, we use multiple specialized regression approaches to examine factors associated with both the proposal and adoption of restrictive voter access legislation from 2006–2011. Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs. These findings are consistent with a scenario in which the targeted demobilization of minority voters and African Americans is a central driver of recent legislative developments. We discuss the implications of these results for current partisan and legal debates regarding voter restrictions and our understanding of the conditions incentivizing modern suppression efforts. Further, we situate these policies within developments in social welfare and criminal justice policy that collectively reduce electoral access among the socially marginalized.
Political representation should be a key issue for poverty scholars. Schattschneider said more than 30 years ago, “[t]he flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.” How do election reforms affect the composition of the electorate? In 2005, Adam Berinsky made the argument that election reforms such as early voting magnify the existing socioeconomic bias in the electorate. This occurs because early voting may retain those who comprise the highest SES, rather than stimulating the turnout of new voters who may be of lower SES status. This paper advances a test of Berinsky's hypothesis by examining early voting in North Carolina in 2008 using the state's voter registration database. The analysis shows that despite on-the-ground mobilization efforts, those who voted early were primarily those of higher income who had been registered a long time, though they were not necessarily those who had voted habitually in the past. Normatively, this work raises questions about who has access to the franchise and who appears to be left behind.
Early or convenience voting—understood in this context to be relaxed administrative rules and procedures by which citizens can cast a ballot at a time and place other than the precinct on Election Day—is a popular candidate for election reformers. Typically, reformers argue that maximization of turnout is a primary goal, and reducing barriers between voters and the polls is an important method for achieving higher turnout. Arguments in favor of voting by mail, early in-person voting, and relaxed absentee requirements share this characteristic. While there are good theoretical reasons, drawn primarily from the rational choice tradition, to believe that early voting reforms should increase turnout, the empirical literature has found decidedly mixed results. While one prominent study suggests that voting by mail is associated with a 10% increase in turnout, other studies find smaller—but still statistically significant—increases in turnout associated with other convenience voting methods. This work is supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project, and the Charles McKinley Fund of Reed College. Thanks to Caroline Tolbert and Daniel Smith for sharing data with us, and to David Magleby for comments on an earlier version of this paper. All responsibility for interpretations lay with the authors.
We explore the effects of state-level election reforms on voter turnout in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 presidential elections. Using a cost-benefit model of political participation, we develop a framework for analyzing the burdens imposed by the following: universal mail voting, permanent no-excuse absentee voting, nonpermanent no-excuse absentee voting, early in-person voting, Election Day registration, and voter identification requirements. We analyze turnout data from the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Current Population Surveys and show that implementation by states of both forms of no-excuse absentee voting and Election Day registration has a positive and significant affect on turnout in each election. We find positive but less consistent effects on turnout for universal mail voting and voter identification requirements. Our results also show that early in-person voting has a negative and statistically significant correlation with turnout in all three elections.
Helping America Vote is focused on the conflict between values of access and integrity in U.S. election administration. Kropf and Kimball examine both what was included in HAVA and what was not. Widespread agreement that voting equipment was a problem made technology the centerpiece of the legislation, and it has remedied a number of pressing concerns. But there is still reason to be concerned about key aspects of electronic voting, ballot design, and the politics of partisan administrators. It takes a legitimacy crisis for serious election reforms to happen at the federal level, and seemingly, the crisis has passed. However, the risk is still very much present for the electoral process to fail. What are the implications for democracy when we attempt reform?.
A number of electoral reforms have been enacted in the United States in the past three decades that are designed to increase turnout by easing restrictions on the casting of ballots. Both proponents and opponents of electoral reforms agree that these reforms should increase the demographic representativeness of the electorate by reducing the direct costs of voting, thereby increasing turnout among less-privileged groups who, presumably, are most sensitive to the costs of coming to the polls. In fact, these reforms have been greatly contested because both major political parties believe that increasing turnout among less-privileged groups will benefit Democratic politicians. I review evidence from numerous studies of electoral reform to demonstrate that reforms designed to make it easier for registered voters to cast their ballots actually increase, rather than reduce, socioeconomicbiases in the composition of the voting public. I conclude with a recommendation that we shift the focus of electoral reform from an emphasis on institutional changes to a concentration on political engagement.
In recent decades, a majority of states have instituted some form of early or convenience voting, whether in person or through the mail. With the availability of these options, the cost to citizens of participating in elections has invariably declined while the cost to government of administering these options has invariably increased. With this reduction in the cost of participation, one would expect that turnout would increase. It is still not clear, however, whether the expansion of the opportunity to vote has actually increased participation, and if so, for whom. Using both individual and aggregate analyses, we examine whether the institution of these alternatives does in fact increase turnout. We also consider whether the impact of convenience voting is felt immediately after enactment or whether it takes multiple election cycles for any effect on turnout to be manifested. At the individual level, we find no main effect for the availability of any form of early or convenience voting on the probability that an individual will vote, nor do we find any interactive effect between efforts of the campaign and the availability of such voting alternatives. In the aggregate, convenience voting seems to produce a short-lived increase in turnout, one that disappears by the second presidential election in which it is available. These methods, then, would appear to offer additional convenience for those already likely to vote. If, however, the goal of these reforms was to get more people to show up at the polls, we argue that state governments are not seeing a return on their investment.
Objective. This article examines the correlates of early voting and its effect on voter turnout and electoral support for candidates. Methods. Aggregate data for early and election day balloting in Texas counties (N = 254) are analyzed for the 1992 presidential election. Additional data on the implementation of early voting in Texas counties were collected through a mail questionnaire sent to Texas county election clerks. Results. Early voting is strongly influenced by new voter registration, wealth, and the proportion of the population that is Hispanic. The location of early voting sites at socially familiar and frequented venues has a positive effect on the incidence of early voting, independent of the number of total early voting sites available in the county. The partisan mobilization of new voters through voter registration and early voting had a significant and positive effect on balloting for the Democratic presidential candidate in 1992. Conclusions. Unlike with previous electoral reforms (e.g., motor-voter registration), there is evidence to support a partisan impact from early voting in the 1992 Texas presidential election. This effect, however, was mediated by the campaign activities of parties and their candidates.
This research examines factors that have influenced state choices about methods of voter identification practices in the current environment of election administration reform. State voter identification practices have been an active area of state policy action since 2000. Rival explanations for state adoption of voter identification requirements are analyzed for three national election cycles following the 2000 presidential election. State voter identification practices are classified according to levels of relative stringency and in terms of variation from federal requirements for voter identification under the Help America Vote Act of 2002. State decisions to adopt more stringent forms of voter identification are significantly influenced by intrastate factors including Republican Party control of state government, traditionalist state political culture, and greater levels of racial/ethnic diversity. Federal review of election practices under the Voting Rights Act is positively associated with more moderate approaches to voter identification but is not significant over this time period.
State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. But the impact of these reforms vary, often in surprising ways that cast insights into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2008 presidential election. The results show that reforms such as election day registration have a consistently positive effect on turnout. By contrast, the most popular reform – early voting – is actually associated with lower turnout. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences, reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals, and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.
This article examines early voting, an institutional innovation whereby citizens can cast their ballots a time and location other than on election day and at the precinct place. Early voting has been proposed as way to expand the franchise, by making voting more convenient, and extend the franchise, by encouraging turnout among those segments of the population who are unable or unwilling to vote using traditional methods. The article draws on models of voter decision making that conceptualize voting as a choice reached under uncertainty. Voters vary by (a) their willingness to accept uncertainty, (b) their cognitive engagement with the campaign, and (c) their location in an institutional environment that makes early voting possible. We propose a multivariate model of early voting, contingent on a voter's prior levels of political information, level of fixed political beliefs, and political information activity. These are also interacted with the institutional context (laws and procedures that allow early voting). At the descriptive level, we find most of the expected demographic and attitudinal patterns: early voters are older, better educated, and more cognitively engaged in the campaign and in politics. Because national surveys are ill equipped to capture nuanced campaign dynamics, many of the statistically significant relationships disappear in multivariate analyses. Regardless, revealing differences emerge between midterm and presidential election years that allow us to make important inferences about the demographic and participatory characteristics of early voters.
We examine the relative performance of voting technologies by studying presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial election returns across hundreds of counties in the United States from 1988 to 2000. Relying on a fixed-effects regression applied to an unbalanced panel of counties, we find that in presidential elections, traditional paper ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes (i.e., “residual votes”), followed by optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, direct register electronic machines (DREs), and punch cards. In gubernatorial and senatorial races, paper, optical scan ballots, and DREs are significantly better in minimizing the residual vote rate than mechanical lever machines and punch cards. If all jurisdictions in the United States that used punch cards in 2000 had used optically scanned ballots instead, we estimate that approximately 500,000 more votes would have been attributed to presidential candidates nationwide.
Election administrators and public officials often consider changes in electoral laws, hoping that these changes will increase voter turnout and make the electorate more reflective of the voting-age population. The most recent of these innovations is voting-by-mail (VBM), a procedure by which ballots are sent to an address for every registered voter. Over the last 2 decades, VBM has spread across the United States, unaccompanied by much empirical evaluation of its impact on either voter turnout or the stratification of the electorate. In this study, we fill this gap in our knowledge by assessing the impact of VBM in one state, Oregon. We carry out this assessment at the individual level, using data over a range of elections. We argue that VBM does increase voter turnout in the long run, primarily by making it easier for current voters to continue to participate, rather than by mobilizing nonvoters into the electorate. These effects, however, are not uniform across all groups in the electorate. Although VBM in Oregon does not exert any influence on the partisan composition of the electorate, VBM increases, rather than diminishes, the resource stratification of the electorate. Contrary to the expectations of many reformers, VBM advantages the resource-rich by keeping them in the electorate, and VBM does little to change the behavior of the resource-poor. In short, VBM increases turnout, but it does so without making the electorate more descriptively representative of the voting-age population.
2020 November general election turnout rates
- Michael P. McDonald
Non-profits providing vote by mail support to city and county election offices
- Ballotpedia
Ballotpedia. 2020. Non-profits providing vote by mail support to city and county election
offices. https://ballotpedia.org/Non-profits_providing_vote_by_mail_support_to_city_and_
county_election_offices#cite_note-1, accessed February 12, 2021.
Only 24% of Trump supporters view the coronavirus outbreak as a 'very important' voting issue
- Amina Dunn
Dunn, Amina. 2020. Only 24% of Trump supporters view the coronavirus outbreak as a
'very important' voting issue. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/facttank/2020/10/21/only-24-of-trump-supporters-view-the-coronavirus-outbreak-as-a-veryimportant-voting-issue/ accessed February 12, 2021.
Absentee and early voting: Trends, promises, and perils
- John C Fortier
Fortier, John C. 2006. Absentee and early voting: Trends, promises, and perils. Washington,
DC: AEI Press.