Electoral Competition with Targeted Voting Costs

Abstract

How do voting restrictions affect election outcomes? This paper highlights how focusing on turnout or vote shares, as most empirical studies have done, may miss crucial policy effects from new restrictive voting laws. We use a formal model of electoral competition to show how changing voting costs can affect more than just voting behavior. Instead, voters and politicians respond, as turnout and platforms affect each other in equilibrium. We show that increasing voting costs for one party’s supporters leads that party to choose a more moderate platform and the opposing party to choose a more extreme platform. These effects are magnified as the share of voters in the affected group increases. Our analysis demonstrates that widening our lens beyond turnout and vote shares is important for assessing the impact of voting rights legislation.