[EL] Analysis of Participation Levels in WI's April 7th primary

[Pildes, Rick]

The well-regarded Wisconsin Election Commission has now released its study of WI's April 7th primary.  Here are two of the key findings, based on analysis of the data now available:


1.   With respect to an important question about whether the massive increase in absentee balloting, and whether this led to higher rates of these ballots being rejected or not returned, the WEC concluded that this had not been the case:



"The figures above are largely consistent with the percentage of ballots rejected or not returned in recent April elections. Both the ballot rejection and unreturned ballot rates were consistent with or lower than the previous rates. This comparison does not seek to downplay the concerns and experiences reported by voters who had difficulty receiving or returning their ballot or voters who could not meet the witness requirement due to COVID-19 concerns. It does demonstrate the Wisconsin vote by mail system for the April 7, 2020 election performed consistently with its performance in previous comparable elections, but there are still several opportunities for improvements."


2.    On the overall level of participation, the WEC concluded:



"While the COVID-19 pandemic produced an exceptional shift to vote-by-mail, it is not clear that the crisis influenced overall participation. The total ballots cast in the Spring Election and Presidential Preference Vote were not markedly different from previous spring elections."  That is consistent with the analysis Charles Stewart and I had done earlier:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/15/wisconsin-primary-had-extraordinarily-high-voter-turnout/



Of course, there were still a variety of problems that still occurred, not surprisingly given the circumstances.  I plan to do further analysis of turnout rates for black and white voters in Milwaukee, which had only five in-person polling places opened (see this Demos report:  https://www.demos.org/press-release/civil-rights-organizations-release-troubling-findings-wisconsin-voter-turnout-april).









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