Distance as a cost of cross-border voting

Abstract

Globalisation and European integration have led to increased mobility, and a growing number of countries have enfranchised their emigrant citizens. However, the political participation of Nordic emigrants has hitherto been a scantly investigated issue. This article examines which factors influence the voting likelihood of emigrants; does distance influence as a cost of crossborder voting, and how does time lived abroad influences emigrants’ decision to vote in the parliamentary elections, both in homeland and in the country of residence. The statistical analyses are based on data collected from 1,067 Finnish emigrants in 2014. The results suggest that distance to the nearest polling station plays a significant role in the emigrant voting decision. Furthermore, we find that emigrants’ probability to vote in the homeland elections decline with time, whereas the probability to vote in the country of residence increases. This study provides a new understanding of voter behaviour in globalised world, and the findings of this article can be used to develop targeted interventions aimed at ameliorating transnational political participation.

Real and perceived voting costs: Lithuanian emigrants’ discourses on external voting difficulty

“…These concepts have so far been directly addressed by scholars much more widely outside of migration context. Yet, the importance of costs for emigrant (non)voting can be seen in the existing literature even when it does not explicitly utilize this framework—consider the role of distance that needs to be overcome to reach the voting booth or voting documents, for example (Belchior et al, 2018; Lafleur, 2013; Lafleur & Chelius, 2011; Peltoniemi, 2016b, 2018; Waldinger & Soehl, 2013). The present article contributes to this scholarship by making a case for an explicit use of Downs’ framework in migration context.…”

“…An important problem with Lithuanian external voting turned out to be receiving postal ballots very close to, or even after, the election. Not receiving the ballot by the election day implies that the only possible means to cast the vote remains the in-person option, making use of which at that point would incur unplanned and potentially high voting costs that likely only the most motivated would be willing to face (especially if the distance to the voting booth is large-see Peltoniemi, 2016bPeltoniemi, , 2018). In order not to discourage emigrants from further voting attempts, it is critical for policymakers and policy implementers to ensure that the ballots do reach the voters in time for them to satisfy the stamping and reception date requirements.…”

“…Whilst limited emigrant electoral participation has received increasing attention among migration scholars over the last decade (Belchior et al, 2018;Burgess, 2014;Burgess & Tyburski, 2020;Ciornei & Østergaard-Nielsen, 2020;Escobar et al, 2015;Lafleur & Chelius, 2011;Merelo, 2017;Waldinger & Soehl, 2013), very few works so far have focussed on Central and Eastern European (CEE) emigrant (non)voting (Ahmadov & Sasse, 2015, 2016a, 2016b. This is of particular concern given that emigration constitutes a significant contributor to decreasing turnout rates in the region (Kostelka, 2017).…”

The mobilizing effects of political media consumption among external voters

“…multiple studies showing that the propensity to vote decreases as the duration of the stay abroad grows longer (e.g. Ahmadov and Sasse 2016;Peltoniemi 2016;Chaudhary 2018;Finn 2020). A quite intuitive result, suggests that the connection with the political life of the country of origin weakens over time.…”

“…We further want to control for the influence of variables related to the experience of non-residency and ties to the country of origin (for more details on this relation see also Peltoniemi, Nemcok and Wass 2023in this special issue). As we discussed above, previous literature points towards findings that the time spent abroad affects the political behaviour of external voters by reducing the propensity to vote (Ahmadov and Sasse 2016;Peltoniemi 2016;Finn 2020). We also include a few variables that have been found relevant in other studies examining the political behaviour of external citizens: resident country language skills (e.g.…”