Whose absentee votes are returned and counted: The variety and use of absentee ballots in California

Absentee voting is becoming more prevalent throughout the United States. Although there has been some research focused on who votes by absentee ballot, little research has considered another important question about absentee voting: which absentee ballots are counted and which are not? Research in the wake of the 2000 presidential election has studied the problem of uncounted ballots for precinct voters but not for absentee voters. Using data from Los Angeles County – nation's largest and most diverse voting jurisdiction – for the November 2002 general election, we test a series of hypotheses that certain types of voters have a higher likelihood that their ballots will be counted. We find that uniform service personnel, overseas civilians, voters who request non-English ballots and permanent absentee voters have a much lower likelihood of returning their ballot, and once returned, a lower likelihood that their ballots will be counted compared with the general absentee voting population. We also find that there is little partisan effect as to which voters are more likely to return their ballots or have their ballots counted. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the implications of our research for the current debates about absentee voting

The American Internet Voter

Since the creation of the Internet, there have been a seemingly never-ending number of books and analyses about the role of the Internet in Politics. Many of these books fail to keep in mind that the behavior of elites--well-educated and politically active individuals who often represent the peer group of these authors--is not generally representative of the behavior of the public at large. Pundits and political campaign, but few have systemically examined the role of the Internet in participatory politics for the average voter. Instead of relying on case studies, this paper uses nationally representative survey data from 2004-2008 to determine how the general public uses--or does not use--the Internet in their political lives. We then consider whether the patterns of use for this technology appear different in the November 2008 General Election cycle. We focus our concerns in the context of increasing polarization of both some fraction of the American electorate and the policy platforms of elected officials

Competition between Discrete Random Variables, with Applications to Occupancy Problems

Consider $n$ players whose "scores" are independent and identically distributed values $\{X_i\}_{i=1}^n$ from some discrete distribution $F$. We pay special attention to the cases where (i) $F$ is geometric with parameter $p\to0$ and (ii) $F$ is uniform on $\{1,2,...,N\}$; the latter case clearly corresponds to the classical occupancy problem. The quantities of interest to us are, first, the $U$-statistic $W$ which counts the number of "ties" between pairs $i,j$; second, the univariate statistic $Y_r$, which counts the number of strict $r$-way ties between contestants, i.e., episodes of the form ${X_i}_1={X_i}_2=...={X_i}_r$; $X_j\ne {X_i}_1;j\ne i_1,i_2,...,i_r$; and, last but not least, the multivariate vector $Z_{AB}=(Y_A,Y_{A+1},...,Y_B)$. We provide Poisson approximations for the distributions of $W$, $Y_r$ and $Z_{AB}$ under some general conditions. New results on the joint distribution of cell counts in the occupancy problem are derived as a corollary.Comment: 21 page

Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring the Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts

This paper examines the effect of an entire campaign using a randomized field experiment here the treatment consists of campaign decisions made by a campaign manager. In contrast to the majority of the field experiments found in the contemporary get-out-the-vote literature, this paper studies the actual behavior of a campaign within a particular election as opposed to studying particular mobilization tactics. Thus, the campaign itself chooses which method to contact each individual within the randomly assigned treatment group. Contacts are made via face-to-face canvassing, phone calls, emails, and doorhangers and consist of experienced volunteers making partisan appeals. We observe a large treatment effect of campaign contact despite a small number of face-to-face contacts, suggesting that the targeting strategy of the campaign manager is particularly effective

Whose Absentee Votes Are Counted?

Absentee voting is becoming more prevalent throughout the United States. While there has been some research focused on who votes by absentee ballot, little research has considered another important question about absentee voting: Which absentee ballots are counted, and which are not? Research following the 2000 presidential election has studied the problem of uncounted ballots for precinct voters, but not for absentee voters. To study which absentee ballots are counted we use data from Los Angeles County – the nation’s largest and most diverse voting jurisdiction – for the November 2002 general election. We develop three hypotheses regarding the likelihood that various types of ballots will be counted, which we test with our unique absentee voting dataset. We find that uniform service personnel, overseas civilians, and language minority voters have a much higher likelihood that their ballots will not be counted compared with the general absentee voting population. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the implications of our research for the current debates about absentee voting.Carnegie Corporation of New York; IBM Researc

Whose Absentee Votes Are Counted: The Variety and Use of Absentee Ballots in California

Absentee voting is becoming more prevalent throughout the United States. While there has been some research focused on who votes by absentee ballot, little research has considered another important question about absentee voting: Which absentee ballots are counted and which are not? Research following the 2000 presidential election has studied the problem of uncounted ballots for precinct voters but not for absentee voters. Using data from Los Angeles County -- the nation’s largest and most diverse voting jurisdiction --for the November 2002 general election, we test a series of hypothesis that certain types of ballots and voters have a higher likelihood that their ballots will be counted. We find that uniform service personnel, overseas civilians, voters who request non-English ballots and permanent absentee voters have a much lower likelihood of returning their ballot, and once returned, a lower likelihood that their ballots will be counted compared with the general absentee voting population. We also find that there is little partisan effect as to which voters are more likely to return their ballots or have their ballots counted. We conclude our paper with a discussion of the implications of our research for the current debates about absentee voting.Carnegie Corporation of New York; IBM Researc

Flooding The Vote: Hurricane Katrina and Voter Participation in New Orleans

The flooding of New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina resulted in a massive and rapid exodus of individuals from New Orleans to locations around the United States. In the midst of the hurricane recovery, the City of New Orleans reelected Mayor Ray Nagin to a second term in office. Arguments regarding when this election would be held were largely driven by views regarding the impact of the diaspora on the voting population in New Orleans. With more than half of the city’s population gone, the unknown was who would be able to vote. We use voting record data from twenty election cycles, GIS-coded flood depth data, and census data to examine the voting behavior of registered voters in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. We apply a variety of statistical techniques, including propensity score matching methods, to compare the mayoral turnout of registered voters across flood depths. We find that registered voters who experienced more than six feet of flooding were more likely to participate in the mayoral election than registered voters who experienced less flooding. We attribute this to their increased motivation to participate in municipal politics in conjunction with voter mobilization efforts in the wake of Katrina. Our finding about the characteristics of the voters who participated in the mayoral election given the flooding provides us insights into the scope of change for the political landscape of New Orleans after the hurricane

Rational Voters and the Recall Election

The 2003 California recall election presented voters with a pair of choices. The first was whether or not to recall Gray Davis as Governor of the state. They were then faced with a list of 135 potential replacement candidates, one of whom would be chosen in the event Davis lost on the initial recall question. The two ballot questions were formally separate questions, but they were interrelated and conditional in nature. If I vote in favor of recalling Davis as Governor, whom should I support to replace him? Alternatively, voters who opposed recalling Davis as Governor had to decide who to vote for as replacement candidate to try to insure that, if Davis were recalled, an acceptable replacement candidate would be elected

How Much is Enough? The "Ballot Order Effect" and the use of Social Science Research in Election Law Disputes

Previous empirical research and other related research from survey methodology holds that candidates listed first on an election ballot may gain some measure of advantage from this ballot placement. Using data from the 1998 general election in California, we test whether a candidate’s relative position on the ballot has any statistical effect on vote shares. We find little systematic evidence that candidate vote shares benefit from being listed first on the ballot. We show that there is not a primacy ballot order effect (defined as being listed first on the ballot) in every contest, that when the effect exists it is often very small, and that the effect is evenly distributed between primacy and latency (defined as being listed last on the ballot). We consider how courts should balance the concern over ballot order effect against other interests, such as the costs and potential confusion associated with rotation and randomization