Early Voting and Turnout

Gronke, Paul; Galanes-Rosenbaum, Eva; Miller, Peter

doi:10.1017/s1049096507071028

Cited by 111 publications

(80 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…We also do not yet understand 7 Smets and van Ham 2013. 8 Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, and Miller 2007;Stein and Garcia-Monet 1997. 9 Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980;Wolfinger, Highton, andMullin 2005.…”

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confidence: 99%

Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout

Goodman¹,

Stokes²

2018

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Voting models assume that voting costs impact turnout. As turnout declined across advanced democracies, governments enacted reforms designed to reduce costs in order to increase participation. Internet voting, used in elections across a dozen countries, promises to reduce voting costs dramatically. Yet identifying its effect on turnout has proven difficult. In this article, we use original panel data of local elections in Ontario, Canada and fixed effects estimators to estimate internet voting's effect. The results show internet voting can increase turnout by 3.5 percentage points, with larger increases when vote by mail (VBM) is not yet adopted, and greater use when registration is not required. Our estimates suggest that internet voting is unlikely to solve the low turnout crisis, and imply that cost arguments do not fully account for recent turnout declines.Voter turnout is one of the most widely examined areas of political science. Interest in understanding turnout has only grown as electoral participation has declined in advanced democracies over the past several decades.1 Low electoral participation calls democracy into question, and undermines government legitimacy, political representation and equitable public policies.2 To raise participation levels, politicians and administrators often consider electoral reforms, such as compulsory voting or universal voter registration. Differences in electoral rules have been shown to account for variations in turnout across advanced democracies, 3 and some electoral reforms can even affect public policy by changing who participates. 4 But perhaps the simplest and most common electoral reforms aim to reduce voting costs by increasing convenience. Convenience voting options include early voting, extended polling hours and postal voting. 5 These reforms respond to the theory -proposed in basic, rational choice models of voter turnout -that turnout is a function of voting's relative costs and benefits.

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confidence: 99%

Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout

Goodman¹,

Stokes²

2018

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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“…More instrumental methods to entice young people back to the polls include making the polls more accessible by early voting (Gronke, 2007;Nichols, 2010), more liberalized absentee voting provisions (CIRCLE, 2010c), electoral day registration (Knack and White 2002), and all-mail voting, as occurs in Oregon and Washington (Southwell, 2009). CIRCLE has shown that states that allowed for Election Day registration averaged 59% turnout among 18-19 year olds, as compared to 50% in other states (Kawashima-Ginsberg et al, 2009).…”

Section: Possible Remediesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young Voters after the 2008 Election: A Disappearing Act?

Southwell¹

2016

JPL

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This study examines the decline in voter turnout among young voters between the 2008 and 2012 elections. Our findings suggest that those young voters who dropped out of the electorate in 2012 were more likely to express feelings of alienation, as measured by the American National Election Studies indices of trust and efficacy. Such "dropout" voters were also more likely to have voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 election. These findings are crucial, as the level of alienation in the 2016 election appears to be even higher, and may influence the outcome of the election.

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“…In response to this observation, jurisdictions across the United States are embracing methods of "convenience voting," such as noexcuse absentee balloting and voting in person before Election Day. Indeed, over the past two decades, casting ballots other than at the precinct place on the day of an election has become commonplace in American politics (Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, & Miller, 2007;Gronke et al, 2008). Among the variety of convenience voting options presently in use, there is a " [r]apidly expanding list" of U.S. jurisdictions that offer early in person (EIP) balloting opportunities to their electorates (Gronke et al, 2008, p. 441).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Federal courts even acknowledged recently that minority and low-income voters often exhibit higher propensities to vote EIP compared with other socioeconomic and demographic groups (Hasen, 2013; Obama for America [OFA] v. Husted, 2012 [see Preliminary Pretrial Order]). Thus, there is no clear-cut answer to the aforementioned "who" question, and this ambiguity creates a demand for new empirical research on the topic (e.g., Gronke et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Racial Context of Convenience Voting Cutbacks

Weaver

2015

SAGE Open

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Classic models of democratic political behavior imply that eliminating opportunities to vote early in person (EIP) negatively affects the political participation of voters who prefer to use that option. Nevertheless, several U.S. state legislatures recently passed or proposed laws to scale back their EIP voting operations. Such efforts have met with opposition, as both academic researchers and federal courts have found that minority voters, especially African Americans, now utilize EIP voting at significantly higher rates than White voters. Prior to the 2012 presidential election, this argument was central to a federal court's decision to temporarily block legislation in Ohio that sought to cut several days from the state's EIP voting period. A post-election legal battle is reconsidering this matter, and the outcome will shape Ohio's voting rules going forward. This article contributes empirical results to the discourse by estimating EIP voting take-up rates, by race, during the 2008 and 2012 U.S. presidential elections in Ohio's three largest counties. Ecological inference models reveal that African Americans in all three study areas voted EIP at substantially higher rates than White voters during both elections. These results are supported by decile tables that report early voting behavior for relatively racially homogeneous geographies, and by geovisualizations that depict direct relationships between the spatial distributions of minority persons and EIP voting usage. Collectively, the findings suggest that the potential effects of Ohio's proposed policy changes would not be equally distributed between racial groups.

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Early Voting and Turnout

Cited by 111 publications

References 18 publications

Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout

Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout

Young Voters after the 2008 Election: A Disappearing Act?

The Racial Context of Convenience Voting Cutbacks

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