Who Converts to Vote-By-Mail? Evidence From a Field Experiment

Monroe, Nathan W.; Sylvester, Dari E.

doi:10.1089/elj.2009.0058

Cited by 22 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…While our experiment was designed to reduce the cost of voting by making it more convenient, any such effect was outweighed by the increased costs associated with requiring voters to learn new procedures. Such a mechanism may also be at play in recent findings by Monroe and Sylvester (2011) showing that low-propensity voters are less likely to respond to requests to become permanent voteby-mail voters: the cost of learning how to do so may outweigh the subsequent reduced cost of participation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Prepaid Postage on Turnout: A Cautionary Tale for Election Administrators

Michelson

Malhotra

Healy

et al. 2012

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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In collaboration with local election officials, we conducted a randomized field experiment in which postagepaid envelopes were provided to a random sample of 10,000 permanent vote-by-mail (VBM) voters in San Mateo County, California, in advance of the November 2, 2010, general election. We find that the treatment generated statistically significant but unexpected effects: postage-paid envelopes increased the probability that voters cast their ballots in person and decreased the probability that they cast their ballots by mail. These offsetting effects meant that the intervention produced no net change in voter turnout. We find that this pattern of countervailing effects is strongest among voters who frequently voted by mail in the past, those potentially most susceptible to disruptions in routine. Post-election interviews support the idea that the postage-paid envelopes created confusion for some voters. The results suggest that reforms designed to increase turnout by decreasing voting costs may have the unintended effect of disrupting routines. F or decades, scholars have conjectured that voter turnout rates would rise if the costs of voting were reduced. Early research (Key 1949) considered tangible costs, such as poll taxes; later authors (Kelley, Ayres, and Bowen 1967; Rosenstone and Wolfinger 1978) focused primarily on transaction costs, such as the inconvenience of registering to vote well in advance of an election. Recent years have seen a revival of this line of research in the wake of policy innovations designed to make voting more convenient:

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Prepaid Postage on Turnout: A Cautionary Tale for Election Administrators

Michelson

Malhotra

Healy

et al. 2012

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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show abstract

“…Because of the county registrars' discretion, it is not possible to use the discontinuity at 250 registered voters to estimate the effect with a regression discontinuity approach. Other research investigates the moderators (Monroe and Sylvester 2011;Arceneaux, Kousser and Mullin 2012) and informational consequences (Malhotra and Meredith 2011) of the all-mail precinct institution in California. 13 Berinsky (2005) argues that while convenience voting reforms may increase turnout, the reforms increase participation by higher socio-economic status citizens who already participate at high rates much more than they mobilize the low-participation segments of the population.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Identifying the Effect of All-Mail Elections on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen State

Gerber

Huber

Hill

2013

PSRM

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W hat effect does moving to all-mail elections have on participation? On one hand, all registered voters automatically receive a ballot to return by mail at their convenience. On the other hand, the social aspect of the polling place, and the focal point of election day, is lost. Current estimates of the effect of all-mail elections on turnout are ambiguous. This article offers an improved design and new estimates of the effect of moving to all-mail elections. Exploiting cross-sectional and temporal variation in county-level implementation of all-mail elections in Washington State, we find that the reform increased aggregate participation by two to four percentage points. Using individual observations from the state voter file, we also find that the reform increased turnout more for lower-participating registrants than for frequent voters, suggesting that all-mail voting reduces turnout disparities between these groups.

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“…6 It seems obvious that for a voting reform to be effective voters must be informed about it. Several studies have examined the effect of mobilization efforts on encouraging registrants to switch their method of voting (Monroe and Sylvester 2011;Smith and Although the trend is toward reforms that make voting easier, some reforms adding restrictions have passed in recent years, such as photo identification requirements. 6 Indeed, Stein and Vonnahme's (2011) extensive literature review identifies no studies of the effect of randomized mobilization efforts on usage of a convenience voting reform.…”

Section: Political Reform and Voter Mobilizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of E-mail on the Use of New Convenience Voting Methods and Turnout by Overseas Voters: A Field Experiment to Address Their Challenges with New Technology

HanmerMichael¹,

HerrnsonPaul²,

SmithClaire³

2015

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Research on absentee and early voting laws has led many scholars to conclude that these convenience voting methods do little to boost turnout. But most of this work has evaluated these methods well after their implementation and without consideration for how information campaigns about them might alter voter behavior. Voter mobilization research shows that impersonal communications produce little-to-no effect on turnout. But we know much less about how mobilization might influence changes in the method of voting. Using a field experiment during the 2010 midterm primary and general elections in Maryland, we demonstrate that e-mail messages with concise subject lines that appeal to relevant reference groups combined with an easy-to-use electronic absentee ballot delivery system, increase the likelihood that overseas voters will use a new technology when they participate in elections. Our findings have scholarly and practical implications for election reform, campaign communications, and voter mobilization.

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Who Converts to Vote-By-Mail? Evidence From a Field Experiment

Cited by 22 publications

References 28 publications

The Effect of Prepaid Postage on Turnout: A Cautionary Tale for Election Administrators

The Effect of Prepaid Postage on Turnout: A Cautionary Tale for Election Administrators

Identifying the Effect of All-Mail Elections on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen State

The Impact of E-mail on the Use of New Convenience Voting Methods and Turnout by Overseas Voters: A Field Experiment to Address Their Challenges with New Technology

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