Utilizing studies which validate voter turnout, previous researchers have been able to identify a strong tendency for individuals to report voting when they in fact did not. In this article, we assess the effectiveness of a new turnout question on reducing voter overreporting in the National Election Study. Providing respondents with socially acceptable excuses for not voting, we found that this alternate question significantly reduces the over-reporting of turnout in the 2002 National Election Study by about 8 percentage points. Moreover, our analysis reveals that with the new question wording, estimates of the turnout rate for those usually thought to be the least likely to vote are considerably lower than estimates using the traditional question. Thus, not only did the experiment work to significantly reduce over-reporting, the new question provides deeper insights into the voting behavior of the American electorate that has implications for both scholars and reformers.

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Problems in the 2000 presidential election, especially in Florida, initiated a large-scale shift toward new voting technology. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we report on the effects of changes in voting systems in Florida and Michigan. The variety of initial conditions and the numerous changes make these excellent case studies. We find that reforms succeeded in reducing the residual vote. Every change from old to new technology resulted in a decline in residual votes that was significantly greater than in areas that did not change voting equipment. The percentage of residual votes in the 2004 presidential race in localities that changed voting systems was well under 1 percent, representing a 90 percent reduction in error in Florida and a 35 percent reduction in Michigan. We run these analyses separately for undervotes and overvotes. Using ecological-inference techniques, we investigate the persistence of residual votes when technology changed and find very little persistence.

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