[EL] early voting drop off

Sun Feb 16 11:11:02 PST 2014

Paul,

Yup, that's what I mean, and I understand those problems, which is why I wondered if they is much data on it. I've not been aware of much. I'm also interested in all early voting, not simply voting by mail.

Thanks, this was helpful, if only to confirm what I suspected, and I was not aware of the Hanmer paper.

I am curious because my own anecdotal perception is that early voting is bad for voter knowledge on down ballot races. I think there is a logical reason to suppose this could be generally true, but I have no idea if in fact it actually is true. I don't know of anything that attempts to compare voter knowledge on down ballot races between early voters and election day voters, but looking at residual vote rates could be a place to start - lack of knowledge about down ballot races might start to show up in drop off there.

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

________________________________
From: Paul Gronke [paul.gronke at gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2014 1:10 PM
To: Smith, Brad
Cc: Election Law
Subject: Re: [EL] early voting drop off

Brad

Can you clarify if by "drop off" you mean the same thing as "roll off", or a voter not completing the full ballot?

Keep in mind that except for a very few studies (all, I think, involving Michael Hanmer and Michael Traugott through a relationship with Oregon election officials early in the 00's), we almost never have access to the actual ballot images, but have to infer indirectly by the residual voting rate.

And even if we did have ballot images, unless we can attach this to characteristics of the voter, we can't infer that roll-off is due to technology or to some characteristic of the voter that is correlated with technology.  For example, in the study that Stewart and I conducted in Florida (available at supportthevoter.gov<http://supportthevoter.gov>), we show that the highest residual voting rate in Florida in 2008 was in two precincts that were wholly contained within senior citizen care facilities.

Senior citizens use no-excuse absentee voting in Florida at higher rates than other groups in the population.  But there may be other reasons that older voters roll off more frequently in Florida than younger voters.  Is it vote by mail?  Is it the age of the voter?  Or, as Charles and I suspect, is it both--age + the makeup and format of the absentee ballot were interacting in such a way to make it harder for elderly voters to complete.

Ideally, we'd want to experimentally treat voters to different voting technologies but within the same or same set of contests because roll-off is affected by so many other things besides technology.    Obviously, we can't do that.  Some have tried to estimate by looking at very similar precincts where one precinct uses VBM and the other does not (these are all California studies).  Or we could examine the residual vote rate across different modes of balloting.

Finally, the most important reason that election day voting has much lower roll off in general is that voters, when they feed a ballot into an OCR or complete a ballot on a DRE, may be prompted if they cast an undervote.  Obviously, this does not happen with a by-mail ballot.

What I can dredge up from memory and my bibliography:

Hanmer, Michael J, and Michael W Traugott. 2004. “The Impact of Voting By Mail on Voter Behavior.” American Politics Research 32: 375–405. http://apr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/32/4/375.

Look at residual vote rates (and straight ticket balloting) on down ballot races during Oregon's VBM transition.  There was no noticeable increase or decrease in either.

Alvarez, R. M., D. Beckett, and C. Stewart. 2012. “Voting Technology, Vote-by-Mail, and Residual Votes in California, 1990-2010.” Political Research Quarterly 66(3): 658–70. http://prq.sagepub.com/cgi/doi/10.1177/1065912912467085 (February 16, 2014).

Compare residual vote rates in Presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial, and proposition contests across voting technology and across twenty years in California.  Residual vote rates overall are higher with VBM, are smallest in presidential contests, and then in order: propositions, governor, then senate.

---
Paul Gronke Ph:   503-517-7393
                        Fax: 503-661-0601

Professor, Reed College
Director, Early Voting Information Center
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland OR 97202

EVIC: http://earlyvoting.net

On Feb 16, 2014, at 8:49 AM, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu<mailto:BSmith at law.capital.edu>> wrote:

Does anyone have (or can you point me to studies) with info on drop off for early balloting vs. election day balloting. I'm curious if one or the other has more drop off in voting for down ballot offices.

Bradley A. Smith

Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault

   Professor of Law

Capital University Law School

303 E. Broad St.

Columbus, OH 43215

614.236.6317

http://law.capital.edu/faculty/bios/bsmith.aspx

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