[EL] data on polling locations closures & changes

[Doug Spencer]

Christian,

Jesse Yoder (Stanford Poli Sci grad student) has a working paper
<https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3178184> that looks at
changes to the location of polling places across the state of North
Carolina. He reports findings similar to (though smaller than) Dan's Pol
Behav piece. FWIW Jesse identifies the drop in turnout to search costs as
opposed to travel costs.

You also mentioned you were looking for polling place information across
the past few election cycles. The Election Administration and Voting Survey
(EAVS) collects this information from election administrators around the
country in even years. The data are not perfect, but they are the best
systematic nationwide numbers that I think exist. I'm attaching a
spreadsheet with self-reported number of polling places, number of poll
workers, and number of registered voters at the county level in 2016 and
2018. I did a bit of cleaning and am attaching an R script that reads in
the raw files and generates the attached numbers so you can see what I did
and make different choices if you prefer.

Best,
Doug

[image: email_signature.png]

On Tue, Sep 8, 2020 at 4:54 PM Thessalia Merivaki <liamerivaki at gmail.com>
wrote:

> This is the only story I had found about MS from 2018:
>
>
> https://mississippitoday.org/2018/10/24/free-from-federal-oversight-5-percent-of-mississippi-polling-locations-have-closed-since-2013/
>
> Lia Merivaki
>
> On Tue, Sep 8, 2020, 5:39 PM Christian Robert Grose <cgrose at usc.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> I am interested in the South (AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, TX,
>> VA).
>>
>> ------------
>> Christian Grose
>> Academic Director, USC Schwarzenegger Institute
>> Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
>> University of Southern California
>> http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1032675
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 8, 2020 3:35 PM
>> *To:* Christian Robert Grose <cgrose at usc.edu>
>> *Cc:* Election Law <Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] data on polling locations closures & changes
>>
>> Is this for “The South” or for jurisdictions formerly subject to the
>> preclearance requirement of Section 5 (which omits much of the South and
>> includes other areas)?
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On Sep 8, 2020, at 5:56 PM, Christian Robert Grose <cgrose at usc.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>> Hi all: Can anyone suggest recent academic research and/or data sources
>> for polling location closures/consolidations in the South? I am trying to
>> start a literature review and also see what data are available. There have
>> been a number of popular press stories on the topic, but I am not finding
>> as many systematic analyses of the number of polling locations across the
>> last several elections as I thought there might be.
>>
>> Thanks in advance. Feel free to reply privately or to the full list.
>>
>> ------------
>> Christian Grose
>> Academic Director, USC Schwarzenegger Institute
>> Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
>> University of Southern California
>> http://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1032675
>>
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