Confidence in the conduct and results of American elections has declined and polarized along party lines in recent years. Can a nonpartisan public information campaign featuring election officials enhance trust in elections when delivered to skeptical voters during a contentious political contest? We analyze a preregistered, randomized field experiment conducted during the 2024 US presidential election in which conservative voters were randomly assigned to a control condition or to receive a multimodal messaging campaign designed by political professionals explaining protections on election integrity. In contrast to the large positive effects of informational messages found in recent survey experiments, we observed primarily null effects with respect to turnout (n = 147,488), general confidence in elections (n = 4740 to 4868), and perceptions of the frequency of fraud (n = 4925). We observed one hypothesized effect: an increase in trust in the vote-by-mail process (n = 6438). This study provides rigorous evidence from a real public information campaign on election integrity, yielding effect sizes in the field that are much smaller than those observed in prior survey settings.

Poll workers are responsible for the street-level implementation of American elections. The democratic process could not take place without them, as they are responsible for confirming voter eligibility, checking in voters once eligibility is confirmed, providing accommodations for voters with special needs, and assisting voters with any other logistical or technical issues in the process of casting their ballot. As they have so much responsibility, they also exercise considerable degrees of discretion in the process of voting. This makes it all the more remarkable that social scientists know little about who they are or where they come from. In an original study, we survey over 5000 poll workers in 19 counties across 10 states to examine the path to the polls for election workers. We test hypotheses examining pathways through impersonal pathways, such as media and outreach efforts by local elections offices, as well as through personal pathways, such as personal recruitment. We find that experienced poll workers were more likely to be recruited via personal pathways such as individual recruitment. New and inexperienced poll workers were more likely to have learned about becoming a poll worker through impersonal means such as media and official outreach. African American poll workers were more likely to report having been personally recruited or learned about being a poll worker through talking to people, regardless of their level experience.

We revisit the effect of ballot access laws on voter confidence in the outcome of elections. Previous research found weak or no relationship between voter confidence and election laws regulating ballot access. We argue this non-finding is conditioned by partisanship. Democrats and Republicans view election laws through a partisan lens, which is especially triggered when coalitions lose. Republican voters see ballot restrictions as a means of securing the vote against fraud; Democratic voters see ballot restrictions as voter suppression. We maintain that the conditional partisan effect that election laws have on voter confidence is triggered or attenuated when partisans’ candidates lose elections. We find that in states where ballot access is costly, voter confidence among partisans and supporters of the losing Presidential candidate is significantly higher for Republicans and significantly lower for Democrats than their counterparts in states with less costly ballot access laws. These effects are greater for Republican than Democrats. We discuss the implications of our findings on election ecosystems and voter confidence.

Early voting laws intended to increase voter turnout seem to have had little to no effect on turnout. Why? We argue that the effects of early voting on turnout are contingent on campaigns providing citizens with information about the election, their choices, and how to vote early. When campaigns do so, turnout increases because citizens are more likely to vote – and more likely to vote early. Using individual-level panel data, we show that direct campaign contact increases turnout exclusively via the use of early voting. Using county-level data, we show that campaign ad volume also increases turnout via an increase in early voting turnout. Our results affirm our expectation that campaigns facilitate the expected mobilizing effects of early voting. At the same time, the effects of campaigns on early voting are small in magnitude, and emerge only under campaign mobilization conditions that are more the exception than the norm.

Contrary to previous research and press accounts, we find limited evidence that persons who worked the polls in the past, including the 2020 election, are reticent to work in future elections. Our explanation focuses on the motivation and affect persons need to have to work the polls. Persons who believe their work at the polls is consequential for their community and who feel their work is valued, respected, and well-supported are highly motivated to work the polls in future elections. Conflict at the polls with voters and poll watchers, aspects of poll worker training, and collaborations with other poll workers have no appreciable impact on the willingness to work the polls. Only the magnitude and diversity of problems poll workers observed voters had casting their ballots are significant deterrents to working the polls. Our findings identify efficacious steps that local election officials can take to recruit and retain persons to work the polls in future elections.

Modern democracies pride themselves on enacting and implementing laws and procedures to ensure ballot secrecy. Notwithstanding these efforts, Gerber et al. (2013) show in 2008 and 2010 that a substantial portion of the electorate does not believe their ballot is secret, and a majority of voters freely share their vote choices with others. We demonstrate that similar dimensions of ballot secrecy exist across time. Although levels of psychological and social secrecy remain generally comparable from 2008 to 2020, our findings do diverge from Gerber et al. (2012) in terms of which groups are more likely to exhibit higher levels of insecurity as related to ballot secrecy. Chief among these is the partisan divisions that came to the forefront in the 2020 election, with Republicans and Democrats now significantly different in regard to their levels of psychological and social secrecy. More specifically, we find 2020 voters, especially Republicans, have grown even more insecure about the secrecy of their ballot and less inquisitive about others' vote choices. Our findings also demonstrate that voters who are in the political minority at the local level are less confident about the secrecy of their ballot, compared with those whose vote choices match the political majority.

We identify in-person early voting and no-excuse mail voting as antidotes for the depressing effect inclement weather has on voter turnout and the Republican dividend that accompanies rain and snow on Election Day. We offer and test an explanation for how voters utilize early voting to anticipate and avoid the costs of voting in bad weather. Replicating and extending Gomez et al (2007) analysis through the 2016 election, we confirm the remedial effect in-person early voting and to a lesser degree no-excuse mail voting has on turnout and the Republican advantage when bad weather coincides with Election Day. Our work makes an important contribution to understanding how election laws effect voter participation. We discuss how taking seriously treatment effect heterogeneity both in theoretical and empirical analyses might contribute to our understanding of the effects of election laws on voter participation.

Mit 1. Jänner 2020 ist die neue Verordnung (EU) 2019/788 über die Europäische Bürgerinitiative (EBI) in Kraft getreten. Sie löste jene Verordnung ab, die 2012 die Vorgaben des Vertrages von Lissabon "zum Leben erweckt" hatte. Rechtliche, organisatorische und technische Verbesserungen sollen das direkt-demokratische Instrument der EBI benutzerfreundlicher gestalten. Unter anderem wird die Online-Partizipation durch Schaffung eines einheitlichen Online-Sammelsystems vereinfacht.

We offer and test an expanded explanation for poll worker recruitment that focuses on how efficiency gains associated with in-person early voting and Election Day vote centers, worker compensation, and flexibility in poll worker assignments reduces demand for poll workers. Our thesis is that affording in-person voters freedom to choose where and when to cast their ballots, before and on Election Day, produces significant efficiencies in the conduct of in-person voting such that fewer, not more, poll workers are required. We test our hypotheses with a national panel survey of local election officials on the difficulty of recruiting poll workers for all federal elections between 2008 and 2018 and find strong support for our hypotheses. Our findings point to in-person Election Day precinct voting as a significant source of the difficulty in obtaining persons to work the polls. We identify several antidotes for resolving the paucity of persons to work the polls. We further identify those remedies that are widely available and politically amenable to adoption.

Despite growing evidence that Vote-by-Mail (VBM) elections boost voter turnout, previous research lacks a unified explanation for why VBM elections do so, making assessing the election reform challenging. We theorize that VBM has a dual effect of mobilizing uninformed voters by notifying them about upcoming elections (notification effect) and making voting more convenient for all voters (convenience effect). Our theory implies that the VBM effect for frequent voters is larger in midterm elections than in presidential elections, while in presidential elections, the VBM effect is larger for infrequent voters than for frequent voters. Using 27 million individual voting records from Colorado, North Carolina, and New Mexico and a difference-in-differences design with exact matching, we find supportive evidence for our expectations. Our results offer insight to assess the impact of VBM elections on voter turnout as well as fruitful topics for future research.

Objective To describe user-centered voting systems that would support the safe conduct of voting in a pandemic environment. Background The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated our democratic processes. Voters and poll workers feel threatened by the potential dangers of voting in business-as-usual polling stations. Indeed, significant problems were encountered in the recent 2020 primary elections in Wisconsin, where the National Guard had to be mobilized because so few poll workers reported to work, and more than 90% of polling places had to remain closed. Method We describe a number of possible user-centered solutions that would help protect voters and poll workers in times of pandemic, and also report the results of a survey that asked voters and poll workers about what kinds of systems might make them willing to vote. Results Political as well as safety considerations will need to be considered as these safer voting solutions are designed since, surprisingly, the kinds of solutions preferred depend on the political affiliation of the voters. Conclusion Human factors professionals have a large role to play in realizing the safe, successful implementation of these user-centered systems. Good human factors analysis can help minimize the risk to voters and poll workers. Moreover, human factors methods can help safeguard democracy by creating safe and well-engineered environments that are conducive to voting in the age of pandemics. Application Creating safe and effective voting solutions that protect voters and poll workers during pandemic outbreaks is crucial to the preservation of democracy.

This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted. We report results about four specific polling place operations and practices: the length of the check-in line, the number of voters leaving the check-in line once they have joined it, the time for a voter to check in to vote (i.e., verify voter's identification and obtain a ballot), and the time to complete a ballot. Long lines, waiting times, and times to vote are closely related to time of day (mornings are busiest for polling places). We found the recent adoption of photographic voter identification (ID) requirements to have a disparate effect on the time to check in among white and nonwhite polling places. In majority-white polling places, scanning a voter's driver's license speeds up the check-in process. In majority nonwhite polling locations, the effect of strict voter ID requirements increases time to check in, albeit modestly.

Nearly two-thirds of persons who receive an unsolicited ballot in the mail before Election Day choose to return their ballot in person, rather than through the less costly and more convenient U.S. Postal Service. Why? How and when voters choose to return their mail ballot is consequential to the administration of elections and the confidence voters have in the outcome of elections. We offer and test four explanations for how vote by mail voters choose to return their ballot, including the social rewards of voting, the costs of voting, trust in U.S. Postal Service and a preference to cast a ballot after campaigning ends. We find supporting evidence for each explanation conditioned by prior history of voting.

Vote by mail (VBM) elections, where every registered voter is mailed a ballot up to three weeks before each Election Day, have been touted as an antidote to various “problems” in representative democracy. Has the implementation of VBM solved the issues in modern elections as expected by policy makers? In this study, we answer this question by (1) examining whether adopting VBM elections in Colorado increased voter turnout overall and (2) disaggregating the turnout effect by politically relevant subpopulations. To assess the VBM effect, we compare people’s propensity to vote between the two states both in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections (i.e., before and after the adaptation of VBM elections in Colorado) based on official voter history and registration files. We find that the introduction of VBM in Colorado seems to increase voter turnout by 5.17 percent points overall. Moreover, we find some evidence that VBM elections boost turnout among racial minority groups and younger voters more than among the white and older electorates. One critical implication of such effects is that electoral reforms such as adopting VBM elections could fundamentally change the composition of active members of the electorate by reducing inequalities between overand under-represented groups. 1 This work is supported by The New Venture Fund. This manuscript is prepared for the 77th Annual Midwest Political Science Association Conference in Chicago, Illinois, April 4-7, 2019. The earlier version of this draft was presented at the 90th Annual Southern Political Science Association Conference in Austin, Texas, January 17-19, 2019. 2 Graduate student, Department of Political Science, Rice University. atsusaka@rice.edu. 3 Post-doctoral fellow, Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, Washington University in St. Louis. amenger@wustl.edu. 4 Lena Gohlman Fox Professor, Department of Political Science, Rice University. stein@rice.edu.