Distance, Turnout, and the Convenience of Voting^*

Abstract

Objectives. This research examines how distance factors into the costs associated with political participation. We hypothesize that the political geography of a voter's residence affects not only the likelihood that he or she will vote, but whether the voter will choose between traditional Election Day voting or nontraditional means, such as casting an absentee ballot by mail, or going to an early-voting site. Methods. Using a geographic information system (GIS), we calculate Manhattan-block distances between voter residences and their respective precinct and nearest earlyvoting sites in Clark County, NV for the 2002 mid-term election. We then use these calculated distances to predict, with multinomial logistic regression, the likelihood of nonvoting, precinct voting, and nontraditional voting. Results. Our evidence suggests that the cost of traveling to reach a traditional voting site is associated with nonvoting to a point, but the relationship between distance and participation is nonlinear. Distance to traditional voting sites is also highly associated with choosing to vote by mail. Would-be nonvoters are more inclined to use proximate election-day sites than proximate early-voting sites, probably because they decide to vote so late in the campaign. Conclusions. Our findings have important implications for democratic theory, ongoing efforts to reform the electoral process, and the practice of voter mobilization.Understanding the sources of political participation and, perhaps more importantly, the character of abstention, is an ongoing concern of political scientists, journalists, pundits, nonprofit advocacy groups, and others bent on electoral reform. It is fair to say that political participation research remains one of the most widely studied topics in American political science today. 1 The explanations for political participation, however, vary considerably in their implications for how proactive policymakers, intent on increasing turnout, might reform the system to increase participation. Although attitudinal and social-psychological explanations have proven to be the most fruitful in explaining nonvoting generally (Rosenstone and n Direct correspondence to James G.

Explaining Turnout Decline in Post-Communist Countries: The Impact of Migration

“…The studies about the influence of distance to the polling station on turnout clearly identify a negative, nonlinear relation (Bhatti, 2012;Brady and McNulty, 2011;Dyck and Gimpel, 2005;Haspel and Knotts, 2005;McNulty, Dowling, and Ariotti, 2009). For the context of our research, it is important to add that all these studies are about local elections and that the maximum distance to the polling stations is generally low.…”

“…Viewing turnout decision "as a conditionally cooperative response to cooperative decisions made by friends, family, neighbours, and coworkers" 5 In Denmark, most of voters are living at no more than 5 kilometers from a polling station (Bhatti, 2012). In US, the distance is generally below 10 miles for county level elections (Dyck and Gimpel, 2005), and half a mile in average for city level elections (Brady and McNulty, 2011). 6 Some empirical findings are quite relevant: an average increase of 0.3 miles to the polling station reduces the turnout by 3 percentage points (Brady and McNulty, 2011); for voters without a car the likelihood of voting drops from 0.664 at a distance of 0.01 miles to 0.418 at the median distance of 0.69 miles; if a car is available, voters are much less sensitive to changes in distance: the likelihood of voting drops from 0.444 to 0.392 over the same distance range (Haspel and Knotts, 2005); for those living 5 miles from a precinct site, nonvoting increases by 3.1 percent, and at 12 miles of distance, by 4.5 percent.…”

Convenience Voting Can Affect Election Outcomes

“…Whereas existing research has focused on turnout implications (e.g., Southwell and Burchett 2000;Berinsky et al 2001;Kousser and Mullin 2007) or partisan impacts (e.g., Stein 1998; Baretto et al 2006;Dyck and Gimpel 2005;Berinsky 2005), this article addressed a totally unexplored question: Does convenience voting affect election outcomes by eliminating late campaign information for some voters?…”

Spatial and Temporal Proximity: Examining the Effects of Protests on Political Attitudes

“…Scholars have increasingly utilized GIS to estimate the effect of space on political behavior (Enos 2010), accessibility to the ballot (Gimpel and Schukneckt 2003), and voter turnout (Dyck and Gimpel 2005;Haspel and Knotts 2005). We used the address information of LNS respondents to calculate their exact distance to every protest location.…”