The 2000 presidential election focused attention on the problem of unrecorded votes, in which a person casts a ballot but fails to record a valid vote for a particular contest. Although much recent research has evaluated voting technologies and their effects on unrecorded votes, there has been little research on the effects of ballot design. We argue that the same theories used to design and evaluate self-administered surveys can be used to analyze ballot features. We collect and code paper-based ballots used in the 2002 general election from 250 counties in 5 states. We code the ballots in terms of several graphic design elements, including the content and location of ballot instructions and the layout of candidate names and office titles. Our analysis suggests that several ballot features are associated with unrecorded votes (both overvotes and undervotes) in the gubernatorial contests. We also find that ballot design features exacerbate the racial disparity in unrecorded votes. Ballot design can be an important factor in determining whether voters are able to cast a ballot accurately, which can influence the legitimacy of elections. The 2000 presidential election and the Florida recount controversy illuminated the phenomenon of unrecorded votes (in which some voters come to polling places but fail to cast a valid vote for a particular contest). Roughly 2 million voters (almost 1 out of every 50 to cast a ballot) failed to cast a valid vote for president in the 2000 election (Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 2001). The Florida imbroglio prompted a new wave of research on election administration and a flurry of election reform laws in Congress and

This county-level study examines factors associated with the rate of voided presidential ballots in the 1996 elections. Evidence indicates that voided ballots are significantly more prevalent in counties with higher percentages of African Americans and Hispanics. The relationship between voided ballots and African Americans disappears, however, in counties using voting equipment that can be programmed to eliminate overvoting. The rate of voided ballots is lower in larger counties and in counties with a higher percentage of high school graduates. The rate of voided ballots declines as the number of presidential candidates on the ballot increases, but only up to a point, and then rises with further increases. Lever machines generate the lowest rates of voided ballots among types of voting equipment, with punch card systems generating the highest rates.

State and local election officials play an important role in implementing election laws and administrative rules. There is some suspicion that election officials may tilt rules and procedures to help a favored party, prompting recent proposals for nonpartisan election administration in the United States. We examine the impact of state and local election officials on provisional voting in the 2004 presidential election, the first national election in which provisional voting was required by federal law. We find suggestive evidence of partisanship in the selection of state rules governing the counting of provisional ballots. We also find conditional partisan effects in the casting and counting of provisional ballots. In 2004, provisional ballots were more likely to be cast and counted in heavily partisan jurisdictions administered by an election authority of the same party. Additionally, other state-level administrative features (prior experience with provisional voting, a statewide registration database, and rules for counting provisional votes cast in the wrong precinct) strongly affected provisional voting in 2004. Election administration in the United States should be subjected to more scrutiny.

The question of why some people vote in American national elections and others do not has been the focus of a vast literature in social science. This study builds on previous work emphasizing the political relevance of civic norms prescribing social cooperation. County‐level census response rates were used to measure the strength of civic norms in counties represented in the 1992 National Election Study (NES). The analysis shows that a person's likelihood of voting increases with the census response rate in the county of residence, controlling for the usual set of factors associated with turnout. The probability of voting was also correlated with the incidence of cooperative behavior in other arenas, such as giving to charities or willingly serving on juries. These findings provide support for the importance of cooperative norms in explaining political participation. In addition, the relationship between voting and county‐level census response was significantly greater among respondents who read newspapers more often; hence, newspapers evidently are one means by which social expectations are communicated.