[EL] Voter turnout

Thu Apr 10 07:41:05 PDT 2014

Paul, as always, has provided an exemplary intervention on behalf of what the literature of political science tells us about administrative changes and turnout.

I would make one correction (that will REALLY surprise Paul):  I am aware of research done in Florida around 2000 that examined the effects of Florida’s election law changes that allowed certain local elections to be conducted by mail.  These were, for sure, annexation and millage rate elections, and they may have been (I forget the details) regular municipal elections, too.

Huge turnout increases.

I would also add the research of Sarah Sled, whose PhD dissertation at MIT in 2008 was about all-mail elections and turnout.  Here is the link:  http://18.7.29.232/handle/1721.1/46634.  Here is an excerpt from the abstract:

The implementation of Vote By Mail produces turnout effects that increase in magnitude as the salience of the election decreases, with a range from 3.4 percentage points increase in the high salience category of presidential general elections to an increase in turnout of 15 percentage points in the low salience category of local special elections.

By the way, Sarah also finds the typical political science result, in so far as her investigation of whether VBM changes _outcomes_ turns up a big goose egg.

-cs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Stewart III
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Housemaster of McCormick Hall

Department of Political Science
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Gronke
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2014 9:50 AM
Cc: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Voter turnout

Larry

I assume you're asking mainly about administrative changes, right, because the political scientists will (predictably) chime in: make elections more relevant to citizens' everyday lives, make elections more competitive, increase media coverage of elections, improve the educational system.  And age the population so that everyone's over 60.  ;-)

I think it would be fair to say that the easiest reform that has predictably resulted in significant increases in turnout is same-day / election-day registration.  It requires technological improvements to the registration system, and I know our friend Dean Logan is ready for the budgetary infusion that may be needed!  (LA may be already moving in this direction.)

Coordinating municipal elections with presidential elections should result in substantial increases in turnout, but the tradeoff is topic that has been part of the political science literature for 50 years or longer (going back to Wilson's Amateur Democrats at least): the electorate includes a large number of irregular voters who are drawn in by the excitement and interest of the presidential contest.  The reason some states and localities moved their elections off cycle is precisely to *avoid* this.  Turnout is lower, but you get an electorate more predictably knowledgable about local issues.

My comments about the last reform may surprise you, given my affiliation and reputation, but the reform that I think could result in a substantial increase in turnout but for which we do not have systematic research is a fully vote by mail system.  I say this primarily because I have long suspected, and have lots of anecdotes indicating, that full vote by mail has it's largest turnout impact in low profile state and local contests.  But no one has looked at this in a systematic fashion to date.

---
Paul Gronke Ph:   503-517-7393
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On Apr 9, 2014, at 9:30 PM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net<mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net>> wrote:

I have been appointed as a member of the Los Angeles City Advisory Commission on Political Reform. I am a member of the sub-committee on research. The main charge of the commission is to look into actions that might increase turnout in municipal elections. Can anyone on the list provide some recent research on this subject? Nothing is off limits ? change of election dates, consolidation with other elections, early voting, expanded number of voting dates, etc.

Thanks,

Larry
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