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The Impact of COVID-19, Election Policies, and Partisanship on Voter Participation in the 2020 U.S. Election
... Following prospect theory, Republican fear of an electoral loss likely intensified risk tolerance for in-person voting, which was reinforced by partisan framing effects. In contrast, Democratic voter mobilization strategies, anticipating gains, emphasized risk aversion, directing voters to utilize early, mail-in ballot opportunities over waiting until Election Day (Herrnson & Stewart, 2023). If the election could be won through early voting, why take the unnecessary risk of voting in person? ...
... Consistent with prospect theory on loss aversion, we also find that risk tolerance for in-person voting could be driven in part by fear of electoral loss, which may have increased Republican receptivity to partisan elite and media efforts to discount pandemic-related risks to rally their voters on Election Day. The outcome of the election also raises questions about whether such Republican strategies were effective for voter mobilization (see Clinton, Lapinski, Lentz, & Pettigrew, 2022;Herrnson & Stewart, 2023). Democrats were more successful than Republicans at turning out absentee and early in-person voters. ...
To what extent will people turn out to vote under high-risk, high-cost circumstances? We examine the impact of risk tolerance on willingness to vote in person in the U.S. 2020 election during the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Our results are based on pre- and postelection surveys that indicated partisan Republicans were more willing to vote in person than Democrats or Independents, who preferred voting by mail. Using behavioral measures of risk-taking, we find that Republican in-person voting is predicted by greater generalized and pandemic-related risk tolerance compared with Democrats and nonpartisans. To explain risk tolerance, we employ prospect theory to illustrate how Republicans’ fear of electoral loss, alongside conservative elite and media efforts to downplay COVID-19 severity, likely influenced Republican readiness to assume risks of in-person voting during the pandemic. We urge scholars to consider the implications of risk tolerance for models of electoral behavior under high-risk and high-cost voting conditions.
While the evidence is clear that 2020 voters shifted away from Election Day voting in favor of vote-by-mail and early voting, we know very little about how health risk versus party polarization around risk assessment influenced how and when to vote. We rely on individual-level observational data in the form of high-quality official voter administrative records from the State of New Mexico to ask how pandemic-related risk factors, especially voter age along with partisanship influenced voter decision-making. To identify causal factors, we use a difference-in-differences design and hazard model that compare 2020 general election and primary voter behavior to 2018 and 2016. We find that age and party were large factors in vote mode decisions in 2020, but not in 2016 or 2018. We consider the implications of our findings on how health risk and partisanship interact to influence decision-making.
Background
Whether voting is a risk factor for epidemic spread is unknown. Reciprocally, whether an epidemic can deter citizens from voting has not been often studied. We aimed to investigate such relationships for France during the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) epidemic.
Methods
We performed an observational study and dynamic modelling using a sigmoidal mixed effects model. All hospitals with COVID-19 patients were included (18 March 2020–17 April 2020). Abstention rate of a concomitant national election was collected.
Results
Mean abstention rate in 2020 among departments was 52.5% ± 6.4% and had increased by a mean of 18.8% as compared with the 2014 election. There was a high degree of similarity of abstention between the two elections among the departments (P < 0.001). Among departments with a high outbreak intensity, those with a higher participation were not affected by significantly higher COVID-19 admissions after the elections. The sigmoidal model fitted the data from the different departments with a high degree of consistency. The covariate analysis showed that a significant association between participation and number of admitted patients was observed for both elections (2020: β = –5.36, P < 1e−9 and 2014: β = –3.15, P < 1e−6) contradicting a direct specific causation of the 2020 election. Participation was not associated with the position of the inflexion point suggesting no effect in the speed of spread.
Conclusions
Our results suggest that the surrounding intensity of the COVID-19 epidemic in France did not have any local impact on participation to a national election. The level of participation had no impact on the spread of the pandemic.
The 2020 election was both a miracle and a tragedy. In the midst of a pandemic, election administrators pulled off a safe, secure, and professional election. Still, lies of voter fraud have cemented in the minds of tens of millions of Americans that the election was rigged. As the first wave of the pandemic overtook the nation right as the presidential election season was beginning, most states responded by delaying their primaries and maximizing opportunities to vote by mail. We review how the quick actions of many states led to a salvaging of the primary season, but also led to two cautionary tales, from Wisconsin and New York, that illustrated the disasters that could befall both mail and in-person voters if the nation did not act quickly. We recount the combination of actions taken by governors, state legislators, health officials, judges, and civil society to adapt election administration to the exigent realities of the pandemic and to cope with the logistical challenges state and local election officials faced. We discuss metrics of success in the adaptations that took place — record-high turnout, widespread voter satisfaction, a doubling of mail voting without a concomitant increase in problems often associated with absentee ballots, and the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of new poll workers. We also explore how the competing narrative of dysfunction and a “stolen election,” propagated by President Trump and his supporters, led not only to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 1, but also to a historically deep chasm at the mass level between partisans in their trust of the election process and outcome. We conclude by noting that many states will be considering legislation that re-litigates the election by addressing non-problems, rather than building on the triumphs of the election.
This article investigates the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on electoral participation. We study the French municipal elections that took place at the very beginning of the ongoing pandemic and held in over 9,000 municipalities on March 15, 2020. In addition to the simple note that turnout rates decreased to a historically low level, we establish a robust relationship between the depressed turnout rate and the disease. Using various estimation strategies and employing a large number of potential confounding factors, we find that the participation rate decreases with city proximity to COVID-19 clusters. Furthermore, the proximity has conditioned impacts according to the proportion of elderly –who are the most threatened– within the city. Cities with higher population density, where the risk of infection is higher, and cities where only one list ran at the election, which dramatically reduces competitiveness, experienced differentiated effects of distance.
What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 US presidential election? Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in county-level voting for Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020. To account for potential confounders, we include a large number of COVID-19-related controls as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Moreover, we instrument the numbers of cases and deaths with the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories to sharpen our identification strategy. We find that COVID-19 cases negatively affected Trump’s vote share. The estimated effect appears strongest in urban counties, in states without stay-at-home orders, in swing states, and in states that Trump won in 2016. A simple counterfactual analysis suggests that Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower. We also find some evidence that COVID-19 incidence had a positive effect on voters’ mobilization, helping Biden win the presidency.
This paper studies the causal effect of local exposure to the COVID-19 on voting behavior and electoral outcomes using evidence from the regional elections held in Spain on July 12, 2020. Exploiting the variation in exposure to the COVID-19 and using a difference-in-differences identification strategy, we show that turnover was between and 2.2 and 3.3 percentage points lower in municipalities that experienced positive cases of COVID-19. However, we do not find evidence of changes in the vote shares to the incumbent parties at the regional or national levels. We further discuss fear as the potential mechanism driving our results.
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-level data that covers the past three decades and more than 40 million voting records from the two states that have conducted a staggered rollout of mandatory vote-by-mail (Washington and Utah), we use several methods for causal inference to show that mandatory vote-by-mail slightly increases voter turnout but has no effect on election outcomes at various levels of government. Our results find meaning given contemporary debates about the merits of mandatory vote-by-mail. Mandatory vote-by-mail ensures that citizens are given a safe means of casting their ballot while simultaneously not advantaging one political party over the other.
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.
Objective: To investigate possible reciprocal associations between the intensity of the COVID-19 epidemic in France and the level of participation at national elections.
Design: Observational study and dynamic modelling using a sigmoidal mixed effects model.
Setting: All hospitals where patients were admitted for COVID-19.
Participants: All admitted patients from March 18, 2020 to April 17, 2020.
Main outcome measures: Abstention and admission rate for COVID-19.
Results: Mean abstention rate in 2020 among departments was 52.5%+/-6.4 and had increased by a mean of 18.8% as compared with the 2014 election. There was a high degree of similarity of abstention between the two elections among the departments (p<0.001). Among departments with a high outbreak intensity before the election, those with a higher participation were not affected by a significantly higher number of COVID-19 admissions after the elections. The sigmoidal model fitted the data from the different departments with a high degree of consistency. The covariate analysis showed that a significant association between participation and number of admitted patients was observed for both elections (2020: B=-5.36, p<1e-9 and 2014: B=-3.15, p<1e-6) contradicting a direct specific causation of the 2020 election. Participation was not associated with the position of the inflexion point suggesting no effect in the speed of spread.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the surrounding intensity of the COVID-19 epidemic in France did not have any local impact on citizens participation to a national election. The level of participation to the 2020 election had no impact on the spread of the pandemic.
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.
In the last few years policy innovators have implemented a variety of new voting reforms aimed at increasing the ways voters can cast their ballot and with it voter turnout. While these efforts have largely suggested that the net effect of these reforms has been minimal, scholars have not analyzed the effectiveness of the use of these methods by partisan campaigns to increase targeted turnout or to change the methods voters use to cast their ballot. In collaboration with a state party organization, I examine the effect of a partisan get-out-the-vote effort using an absentee vote-by-mail push. I find that these get-out-the-vote efforts to target voters using absentee ballot request forms are effective at shifting more voters to vote absentee. However, while pushing absentee vote-by-mail balloting may bank votes for a campaign before Election Day, the overall effect of partisan campaigns’ use of absentee ballot efforts to increase turnout appears limited.
This paper uses a natural experiment to identify the effect of a procedural information cost on the electoral registration of young first-time voters. We exploit the fact that information about when the minimum age eligibility requirement is due, either at registration or election-day, is only meaningful for those turning 18 after registration closing day. Using a national dataset on Chilean registration over four elections, we provide evidence of a sharp discontinuity in the registration rate of those youngsters turning 18 at closing date. The effect is both sizable and robust, persists over time, and is similar across income groups.
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.
Could changing the locations of polling places affect the outcome of an election by increasing the costs of voting for some and decreasing them for others? The consolidation of voting precincts in Los Angeles County during California's 2003 gubernatorial recall election provides a natural experiment for studying how changing polling places influences voter turnout. Overall turnout decreased by a substantial 1.85 percentage points: A drop in polling place turnout of 3.03 percentage points was partially offset by an increase in absentee voting of 1.18 percentage points. Both transportation and search costs caused these changes. Although there is no evidence that the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters changed more polling locations for those registered with one party than for those registered with another, the changing of polling places still had a small partisan effect because those registered as Democrats were more sensitive to changes in costs than those registered as Republicans. The effects were small enough to allay worries about significant electoral consequences in this instance (e.g., the partisan effect might be decisive in only about one in two hundred contested House elections), but large enough to make it possible for someone to affect outcomes by more extensive manipulation of polling place locations.
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.
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.
Objective
We investigate the impact of a global health crisis on political behavior. Specifically, we assess the impact of Covid-19 incidence rates, and the impact of temporal and spatial proximity to the crisis, on voter turnout in the 2020 Brazilian municipal elections.
Methods
We use Ordinary Least Squares and Spatial Durbin Error models to evaluate sub-national variation in municipal-level Covid-19 incidence and voter turnout. We include controls for political, economic, health, and state context.
Results
Ceteris paribus, increasing deaths in the month leading up to the election from 0.01 to 1 per 1000 people is associated with a 5 percentage point decrease in turnout; higher cases and deaths earlier in the pandemic are generally associated with higher turnout. Covid-19 incidence rates in nearby municipalities affect local turnout in the same directions.
Conclusion
Higher Covid-19 incidence near the time of the election decreases voter turnout, while incidence farther from the election increases voter turnout.
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 disproportionately submit ballots that end up rejected due to (1) late arrival at elections offices or (2) signature defects on return envelopes. Inexperienced mail voters are up to three times more likely to have their ballots rejected compared to experienced mail voters, and this inexperience penalty varies by a voter’s party registration, race/ethnicity, and age. Our findings hold when controlling for additional voter characteristics and geographical fixed effects. The effect of inexperience on the likelihood of vote-by-mail ballot rejection risks exacerbating existing inequities in political representation already faced by younger and racial/ethnic minority voters.
Objective
To assess the association between United States county-level Covid-19 mortality and changes in presidential voting between 2016 and 2020.
Study design
County-level ecological study.
Methods
We analysed county-level population-weighted differences in partisan vote change, voter turnout, and sociodemographic and health status characteristics across pre-election Covid-19 mortality quartiles. We estimated a population-weighted linear regression of the 2020-2016 Democratic vote change testing the significance of differences between quartiles of Covid-19 mortality, controlling for other county characteristics.
Results
The overall change in the 2020-2016 Democratic vote was +2.9%, but ranged from a +4.3% increase in the lowest mortality quartile counties to +0.9% in the highest mortality quartile counties. Change in turnout ranged from +9.1% in the lowest mortality counties to only +6.2% in highest mortality counties. In regression estimates, the highest mortality quartile was associated with a -1.26% change in the Democratic 2020-2016 vote compared to the lowest quartile (p<0.001).
Conclusions
Higher county-level Covid-19 mortality was associated with smaller increases in Democratic vote share in 2020 compared to 2016. Possible explanations to be explored in future research could include fear of in-person voting in heavily Democratic, high-mortality counties, fear of the economic effects of perceived Democratic support for tighter lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, and general exhaustion that lowered political participation in hard-hit counties.
Objective
This article investigates the impact of public reactions to the Covid-19 panemic on voting for former President Donald Trump in the 2020 American presidential election.
Methods
The impact of the pandemic on voting is assessed by multivariate statistical analyses of representative national survey data gathered before and after the 2020 presidential election.
Results
Analyses show that voters reacted very negatively to Trump's handling of the pandemic. Controlling for several other relevant factors, these reactions affected voting for Trump and exerted a significant impact on the election outcome.
Conclusion
Before the onset of Covid-19 Trump had a very narrow path to victory in 2020, and the pandemic did much to ensure his defeat.
The democratic process in the United States was sorely tested in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Our electoral institutions survived that test, but the fragility of our democracy was exposed by a concerted effort to overturn the results of the presidential election, first in the courts and then with an insurrection at the nation's Capitol on January 6, 2021. We examine how this happened. Specifically, we will attempt to answer the following questions: How did the big lie evolve and what were its claims? How did the COVID pandemic and foreign interference complicate the voting process and contribute to the claims of fraud? How did the courts adjudicate the claims of fraud? Finally, how do we restore trust in the voting process?
President Donald Trump entered the 2020 campaign with liabilities that made his reelection bid daunting. Despite an enthusiastic support base, Trump was soundly defeated in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Trump's perceived mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and uprisings over racial inequality prevented him from altering the trajectory of the campaign that had been set in his first election. A unified Democratic Party rallied behind former Vice President Joseph Biden as the candidate most likely to defeat Trump and restore normalcy. Although Republicans fared reasonably well in subpresidential races, the verdict of voters resulted in the rare removal of an incumbent party after just 4 years in the White House.
We report the first study of the effect of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) on polling place consolidation and voting behavior. We draw upon individual-level observations from Milwaukee matched to similar observations in the surrounding municipalities to assess whether fewer polling places in the April 2020 presidential primary election decreased turnout in the city. We find polling place consolidation reduced overall turnout by about 8.7 points and reduced turnout among the Black population in the city by about 10 points. We conclude, based on these data, that polling place consolidation even accompanied by widespread absentee voting in the face of an emergency may result in disenfranchisement, particularly among Black voters.
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.
Purpose:
The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severely impacted both health and the economy. Absent an effective vaccine, preventive measures used, some of which are being relaxed, have included school closures, restriction of movement, and banning of large gatherings. Our goal was to estimate the association of voter turnout with county-level COVID-19 risks.
Methods:
We used publicly available data on voter turnout in the March 10 primary in three states, COVID-19 confirmed cases by day and county, and county-level census data. We used zero-inflated negative binomial regression to estimate the association of voter turnout with COVID-19 incidence, adjusted for county-level population density and proportions: over age 65 years, female, Black, with college education, with high school education, poor, obese, and smokers.
Results:
COVID-19 risk was associated with voter turnout, most strongly in Michigan during the week starting 3 days postelection (risk ratio, 1.24; 95% confidence interval, 1.16-1.33). For longer periods, the association was progressively weaker (risk ratio 0.98-1.03).
Conclusions:
Despite increased absentee-ballot voting in the primary, our results suggest an association of voter turnout in at least one state with a detectable increase in risks associated with and perhaps due to greater exposures related to the primary.
The Soldier Vote tells the story of how American citizens in the armed forces gained the right to vote while away from home.
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.
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.
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.
What effect does moving to all-mail elections have on participation? On one hand, all registered voters automatically receive a ballot to return by mail at their convenience. On the other hand, the social aspect of the polling place, and the focal point of election day, is lost. Current estimates of the effect of all-mail elections on turnout are ambiguous. This article offers an improved design and new estimates of the effect of moving to all-mail elections. Exploiting cross-sectional and temporal variation in county-level implementation of all-mail elections in Washington State, we find that the reform increased aggregate participation by two to four percentage points. Using individual observations from the state voter file, we also find that the reform increased turnout more for lower-participating registrants than for frequent voters, suggesting that all-mail voting reduces turnout disparities between these groups.
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.
In the most widely cited result on the turnout effects of voting by mail, Southwell and Burchett report that Oregon’s system increased turnout by 10 percentage points. We attempt to replicate this finding and extend the analysis to additional years to test whether the originally reported effect is due to the novelty of the first three voting by mail elections in 1995 and 1996. We are unable to reproduce earlier findings, either via replication or extending the time series to include 2010 electoral data. We find evidence for a novelty effect when all elections between 1960 and 2010 are included in our analysis, and a consistent impact of voting by mail on turnout only in special elections.
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.
Civil War History 50.3 (2004) 291-317
Absentee voting by Union soldiers during the Civil War was a new phenomenon in American history. When the war began, only one state allowed soldiers to vote outside their election districts, but by the presidential election of 1864, nineteen northern states had passed legislation permitting their soldiers in the field to vote. Nevertheless, historians have generally ignored this important political innovation. Only one monograph—written by a Union veteran—and a handful of articles has been published on the subject. This lack of interest may stem from the fact that absentee voting is such a common occurrence today. Every state allows for absentee ballots, and in at least one state all voters are required to mail their ballots to local officials to be counted in the elections. Today, most Americans are unaware that absentee voting has not always been an accepted practice.
When historians have addressed the question of the soldier vote in the Civil War, they have focused primarily on the partisan debates of the issue—the Republican support for permitting soldiers to vote and Democratic opposition to doing so—and that the army voted overwhelmingly Republican. Historians have overlooked the intricacies of this first large-scale instance of absentee voting. For example, scholars have very little idea of what polling in the field actually looked like. Moreover, historians have paid little attention to how the soldiers in the field were canvassed and how politicians at home took the ballot to them. Examining this last issue reveals the extent to which the parties went to win elections. As the battle over Lincoln's reelection loomed in late 1864, politicians from both parties were willing to alter traditional understandings of the role of the state and federal governments to win the election.
During the presidential election of 1864, many state legislators and party leaders faced the unusual dilemma of determining how to take the ballot to voters beyond state lines. With soldiers from every state spread across the continent, this problem weighed heavily on the minds of politicians, and they found themselves unprepared for the task of canvassing the troops. They knew that the soldiers' votes were crucial to winning the election and that "hard work must be done" to secure them.
This hard work was more than state and local politicians could accomplish on their own. Letters seeking aid flooded national party offices and federal departments in Washington. Under normal circumstances, local partisans oversaw all the happenings of election day, but with soldiers serving in every theater of the war, they had to look to national leaders for assistance. Consequently, Democrats from across the nation appealed to their party machinery in New York, while Republicans petitioned the federal government for support in turning out the army vote. Democrats often asked for pamphlets and ballots to distribute among soldiers, while Republicans requested aid in locating the troops and collecting their ballots. As a result of these appeals, the federal government assumed unaccustomed responsibilities during the elections of 1864. When it came time for soldiers to vote, the Lincoln administration played a crucial role in ensuring that all of their ballots were counted, and when problems arose from the canvassing in the field, the federal government claimed jurisdiction over criminal proceedings that, under normal circumstances, would have been tried in state courts.
New York offers a particularly useful vantage point for exploring these important changes in the right of suffrage. The law passed by the New York legislature required soldiers to vote by proxy—that is, to mail their ballots home rather than cast them at polls in the field. This procedure opened the door to a unique type of fraud in American electoral history and presented the federal government with a new opportunity to regulate elections. As charges arose concerning frauds, the central question was one of jurisdiction. Members of both parties disagreed about whether the state or the national government should try the accused forgers. Moreover, New York offers an interesting case study because the Democratic leaders at the state level were also national party leaders. When local party...
Proponents of vote by mail elections often argue that this type of election facilitates participation such that elevated levels of turnout occur. The research tests this assumption by analyzing 44 statewide elections (1980–2007) in the state of Oregon—the only state that conducts all of its elections by mail. The results of this analysis suggest that the vote by mail format is a major stimulus to voter participation in special elections in Oregon, while its effect on turnout in primary and general elections is positive, but fairly minimal.
Proponents of all-mail elections argue that this type of election facilitates participation such that elevated levels of turnout occur. The research tests this assumption by analyzing 48 statewide elections from the state of Oregon. This analysis suggests that the all-mail format is a major stimulus to voter participation, second only to the impact of a presidential contest.