Working Papers
Voting by Mail and Turnout: A Replication and Extension 
In a widely cited result, Southwell and Burchett report that Oregon’s much noted innovation of fully vote by mail elections increased turnout by 10%. In this paper, we attempt to replicate this finding; extend the analysis to additional years in order to test whether the estimated effect is due to “novelty” effects of the first three voting by mail elections; and broaden the geographic scope of the study to include Washington state (a unique that has adopted voting by mail county by county over a decade long period). When relying on the analytical techniques suggested by the original authors, we find no discernible impact of voting by mail on turnout, although we can replicate their results using an alterative methodology. Extending the time series to include ten additional years of voting by mail elections decreases the size of the estimated impact substantially. We conclude that any findings of increased turnout in Oregon due to voting by mail is a result of the novelty of the new voting method and the unique circumstances surrounding the first three vote by mail elections. However, we do find a discernible impact of voting by mail on turnout in Washington state.
The Effect of Voting by Mail in Washington: 1960-2008
Voting by mail is one type of convenience voting, popular among advocates for voting reform as a mechanism to increase voter turnout. Most of the empirical studies of mail voting are based on data from Oregon. This paper extends analysis of VBM to Washington State which, since 1994, has been incrementally adopting VBM on a county by county basis. We use a full information maximum-likelihood model with fixed effects to estimate turnout effects in Washington counties in four specifications covering 68 statewide elections between 1960 and 2008. We find VBM is associated with an statistically significant increase in turnout, ranging from 1.73 to 4.15 percent.
Presentations
Getting Out the Early Vote: Lessons for Progressives
This report comprises a summary of research on early voting, in so far as these bear on the question of how early voting may help or hinder progressive targeting efforts.
Paul Gronke and Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum
February 4, 2012, at Progressive Targeting Conference, The Center for American Progress.
Journal Articles
Early Voting Reforms and American Elections
The United States is in the midst of a reform era. After the controversy surrounding the 2000 election results, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. As a result of HAVA, every state in the nation was required to establish a statewide voter registration system by 2006. Disabled citizens are guaranteed access to the polls. America’s men and women in the armed forces have their ballots counted in a timely fashion. And Native Americans, Latinos, and other disadvantaged groups that have traditionally faced barriers to participation have had these barriers reduced or eliminated altogether. Since 2000, non-partisan groups, political parties, and candidate organizations have paid far closer attention to the mechanics of ballot counting. Legal challenges have forced some states to abandon mechanical vote-counting systems in favor of presumably more reliable technologies, such as optical character scanning and touch screen.
Paul Gronke. 2009. "Early Voting Reforms and American Elections." William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 17.2: 423-451.
The Psychological and Institutional Determinants of Early Voting
This paper examines early voting, an institutional innovation whereby citizens can cast their ballots a time and place other than on Election Day and at the precinct place. The paper draws on models of voter decision-making that conceptualize voting as a choice reached under uncertainty. Voters vary by a) their willingness to accept uncertainty, b) their cognitive engagement with the campaign, and c) their location in an institutional environment that makes early voting possible. We propose a multivariate model of early voting, contingent on a voter’s prior levels of political information, level of fixed political beliefs, and political information activity. These are also interacted with the institutional context (laws and procedures that allow early voting). At the descriptive level, we find most of the expected demographic and attitudinal patterns: early voters are older, better educated, and more cognitively engaged in the campaign and in politics. Because national surveys are ill equipped to capture nuanced campaign dynamics, many of the statistically significant relationships disappear in multivariate analyses. Regardless, revealing differences emerge between midterm and presidential election years that allow us to make important inferences about the demographic and participatory characteristics of early voters.
Paul Gronke and Daniel Toffey. 2008. "The Psychological and Institutional Determinants of Early Voting." Journal of Social Issues 64.3: 503-524.
Forms of convenience voting—early in-person voting, voting by mail, absentee voting, electronic voting, and voting by fax—have be- come the mode of choice for >30% of Americans in recent elections. Despite this, and although nearly every state in the United States has adopted at least one form of convenience voting, the academic re- search on these practices is unequally distributed across important questions. A great deal of literature on turnout is counterbalanced by a dearth of research on campaign effects, election costs, ballot quality, and the risk of fraud. This article introduces the theory of convenience voting, reviews the current literature, and suggests areas for future research.
Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum, Peter A. Miller and Daniel Toffey. 2008. "Convenience Voting." Annual Review of Political Science 11: 437-455.
Early Voting and Turnout
Early or convenience voting—understood in this context to be relaxed administrative rules and procedures by which citizens can cast a ballot at a time and place other than the precinct on Election Day—is a popular candidate for election reformers. Typically, reformers argue that maximization of turnout is a primary goal, and reducing barriers between voters and the polls is an important method for achieving higher turnout. Arguments in favor of voting by mail, early in-person voting, and relaxed absentee requirements share this characteristic. While there are good theoretical reasons, drawn primarily from the rational choice tradition, to believe that early voting reforms should increase turnout, the empirical literature has found decidedly mixed results. While one prominent study suggests that voting by mail is associated with a 10% increase in turnout, other studies find smaller—but still statistically significant—increases in turnout associated with other convenience voting methods.
Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum and Peter A. Miller. 2007. "Early Voting and Turnout." P.S.: Political Science and Politics 40: 639-645.
Book Chapters
Re-examining Voter Confidence as a Metric for Election Performance
Understanding Public Opinion
Voter confidence –– or the voter’s perception that his or her ballot will be counted accurately –– has been proposed as one of a few key metrics by which we can evaluate the performance of the American election system. In this paper, we subject this item to critical scrutiny, testing the hypothesis that voter confidence is less a function of experiences with elections and election administration, and more an expression of the respondent’s affective orientation toward the political system (trust and confidence in government) and their evaluations of current political debates. We test our hypothesis using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. We find that while voter confidence is strongly influenced by a respondents affective orientations and policy opinions, the individual’s experiences with election mechanics, poll workers, and the individual’s confidence in election administrators still play the largest role in influencing a voter’s confidence that her ballot is counted as she intends.
Paul Gronke, James Hicks and Timothy E. Cook. 2009. "Re-examining Voter Confidence as a Metric for Election Performance" in Understanding Public Opinion, ed. Barbara Norrander and Clyde Wilcox, 10: 197-215. CQ Press.
The Growth of Early and Non-Precinct Place Balloting: When, Why, and Prospects for the Future
America Votes! A Guide to Election Law and Voting Rights [Chapter 4]
In this chapter, we provide a road map to the changing terrain of voting in the United States, focusing on the emergence of a new roadside attraction—early voting in its many guises and forms. First, we describe the early voting policy regime, detailing the legal requirements and administrative procedures associated with each balloting method. Second, we briefly review how rapidly early voting laws have been adopted, and how many Americans are taking advantage of these laws. Finally, to give the readers some sense of how, where, and why of early voting, we review the main arguments made by proponents and opponents of early voting, and examine in detail how early voting reforms were implemented in Florida leading up to the 2004 campaign.
Paul Gronke and Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum. 2008. "The Growth of Early and Non-Precinct Place Balloting: When, Why, and Prospects for the Future" in America Votes! A Guide to Election Law and Voting Rights [Chapter 4], ed. Ben Griffith, 261-280. American Bar Association.
From Ballot Box to Mail Box: Early Voting and Turnout
Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform
Convenience voting reforms are attractive because of claims that increased convenience results in higher turnout, lower costs, and higher quality voter decision-making. This paper analyzes the first claims by examining the turnout effects impact of convenience voting reforms in general elections from 1980-2004. We compare the effects of convenience voting reforms to another common ballot change during this same period that have been shown to have a positive impact on turnout—the inclusion of referenda and initiatives on the ballots. The results indicate that convenience voting reforms cause a modest increase in turnout, and that many of the turnout effects are swamped by other ballot changes, such as the appearance of referenda. We conclude by pointing out the complex nature of the ballot and the voting process, making it unlikely that any one reform will act as a “magic bullet” to solve the problem of low turnout.
Paul Gronke, Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum and Peter A. Miller. 2008. "From Ballot Box to Mail Box: Early Voting and Turnout" in Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform, ed. Cain, Tolbert, and Donovan, Chapter 5. Brookings Institute Press.
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Other readings and resources on Early In Person Voting
- Fortier, John C. 2006. Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils. Washington, D.C.: AEI Press.
- Gronke, Paul, Benjamin Bishin, Daniel Stevens, and Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum. 2005. "Early Voting In Florida, 2004." In Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Washington DC. Also available at Earlyvoting.net
- Gronke, Paul et al. 2008. "Convenience Voting." Annual Review of Political Science, 11:437-455. Also available at Earlyvoting.net
- Kropf, Martha. 2006. "Should the Missouri Legislature Consider Early/Advance Voting." Missouri Legislative Academy, University of Missouri
- Stein, Robert M. 1998. "Introduction: Early Voting." Public Opinion Quarterly. 1998;62(1):57-69.
- Stein, Robert M. and Patricia Garcia-Monet. 1998. “Voting Early but not Often.” Social Science Quarterly 78(3): 657-671.