Increasing rainfall due to climate change: a potential driver of decreasing voter turnout among those who already tend to abstain from voting?

Adding Up the Costs and Benefits of Voting by Mail

Election day registration is among the solutions suggested for remedying low voter turnout in the United States. This analysis uses a quasi‐experimental time‐series design to test the hypothesis that states adopting election day registration increase voter turnout in comparison to states that do not reform their election procedures. The similarities in the time series of voter turnout in the experimental and control states suggest that observed changes in states adopting election day registration resulted from extraneous factors.

During the final weeks of the 2018 general election, #VoteTogether coordinated a series of non-partisan election festivals designed to encourage voter turnout in targeted precincts across the country. Building on prior experiments that assessed the effects of Election Day festivals on voter turnout in municipal, state, and presidential elections, the current study evaluates this get-out-the-vote tactic in the context of federal midterm elections. A total of 57 pairs of precincts were randomly assigned to treatment or control; in treatment locations, local groups received small grants to coordinate pre-event publicity and hold outdoor festivals near polling locations on Election Day. A separate experiment evaluated the effectiveness of festivals held at early voting centers; here, random assignment determined which of seven pairs of locations received a festival. Festivals held on Election Day appear to have had no positive effect on turnout in 2018. Insufficient pre-event publicity may have undercut the effectiveness of this tactic. On the other hand, festivals held in early voting centers were highly effective, raising turnout by 3.5 percentage points.

An i-voting system may promote electoral participation by reducing travel cost and time to polling places, especially among youth who are more accustomed to technological changes. We study the linkage between travel costs on election day and voter turnout by comparing past electoral participation with stated voting behavior in a hypothetical i-voting system. We believe that the link between transportation costs, i-voting, and voter-turnout emerges as an interesting opportunity to disentangle the mechanism behind the expected increase in political participation after diversifying voting channels. Data were collected using an online questionnaire that was disseminated among Chilean university students. Binary and bivariate probit estimates show that conventional turnout probability among university students is negatively affected by travel costs on election day. Interestingly, whereas political interest and democracy valuation still augment the probability of voter turnout with i-voting, travel-to-polling-station costs are not statistically relevant.

Does Election Day weather affect voter turnout? Evidence from Swedish elections

In this article we study the effects of Election Day vote centers on voter turnout. Specifically we examine Texas and Colorado's experience with alternative arrangements for the number and location of Election Day voting places and its impact on voter turnout in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We test our hypotheses at both the aggregate (i.e., county) and individual levels. We find evidence that vote centers increase voter turnout in presidential and midterm elections, and particularly among infrequent voters in midterms.

What’s Your Plan to Vote?

Electoral security has serious implications on the survival of democracies, because security is a significant part of an election management process as it influences the level of political participation among the electorates, either during campaign rallies, and coming out to vote on election days. Voter turnout is seen as an important indicator of the state of health of any democracy, old or new, consolidated or in transition. Apart from this, voting is the most important form of political participation especially on Election Day. In Nigeria, there have also been allegations of complicity by incumbents, politicians and security operatives in facilitating electoral fraud during elections as these have affected the level of political participation in terms of voter turnout. This paper examined the intertwining influence of electoral security and voters’ turnout in the 2019 gubernatorial election in Abia State of Nigeria. Anchoring our discourse on the theory of the postcolonial state which sees the Nigerian state as privatized and used only as an instrument for primitive accumulation, with data drawn from both primary and secondary sources, and a qualitative descriptive method of analysis, findings revealed that; voter were inaccurate as this was manipulated to favour the incumbent. Also, there was a low turnout of voters during the 2019 gubernatorial election in Abia state as a result of massive deployment of political thugs and coercive instrument of the state (security agents) with the clear intention of rigging the election. This move created fear among the voters who felt that the whole electoral process was flawed. The paper recommends amongst others that; there is need to carry out electoral reforms for effective guarantee of security of the electoral process as this will in turn encourage high voters’ turnout in subsequent elections in Abia State.

Free public transit and voter turnout

Voter turnout may be the most widely hailed indicator of the robustness of a democracy. While it is true that lack of participation in a democratic system might sometimes indicate contentment, democratic reformers generally believe that more voter involvement is a good thing. Federal and state reforms have sought explicitly to increase registration and turnout rates. Initiatives such as the Voting Rights Act and provisions for overseas voters have been targeted at specific groups in society, while others, such as “motor voter” legislation and Election Day registration (EDR), have been aimed at the electorate as a whole. This chapter assesses levels of voter registration and turnout across the states, with a focus on the 2008 and 2010 elections, and how those rates are shaped by demographic, political, and policy factors at the state level. This “view from the top” produces several conclusions. First, and perhaps surprisingly, a measure of registration based on the Current Population Survey (CPS) is often superior to one based on official state reports. Second, there is a great deal of inertia in turnout rates and especially registration rates, suggesting that state efforts to influence these rates have only limited effect in the short run. Third, there is substantial variation across states, more so than over time, indicating that state factors are quite important. Fourth, although registration and turnout rates are correlated, states vary significantly in the degree to which registrants actually vote. Fifth, turnout rates, and to a much lesser degree registration rates, are influenced by state election laws, suggesting they are appropriate indicators of election performance that can be influenced by state policy makers. Finally, there has been a convergence of states over time in terms of turnout that is likely the result of changes in demographics, campaigns, and election practices.

The concern of voter turnout during general election is a serious problem. As such, the study found that civic engagement influences significantly voter turnout during general election in Tanzania. The findings based on primary data and descriptive statistics and a logistic regression model identified how civic engagement influences maximum voters turnout. These include putting names of voters before election day, authority to enforce law protecting voters, communities to know the importance of voting, Further, logistic regression model also deepens the finding that civic engagement influences voters turnout by establishing gender system on voting and emphasis youth's registration before election and .to encourage voters so that they know importance of voting. Conclusion is that voter turnout requires well organised and arranged packages of civic engagement. Recommendation is to emphasis on civic engagement as it explores voters' interest specifically democratic system and transparency.

The concern of voter turnout during general election is a serious problem. As such, the study found that civic engagement influences significantly voter turnout during general election in Tanzania. The findings based on primary data and descriptive statistics and a logistic regression model identified how civic engagement influences maximum voters turnout. These include putting names of voters before election day, authority to enforce law protecting voters, communities to know the importance of voting, Further, logistic regression model also deepens the finding that civic engagement influences voters turnout by establishing gender system on voting and emphasis youth's registration before election and .to encourage voters so that they know importance of voting. Conclusion is that voter turnout requires well organised and arranged packages of civic engagement. Recommendation is to emphasis on civic engagement as it explores voters' interest specifically democratic system and transparency.

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.

The rising costs of election administration in an era of fiscal stress have motivated some local officials to test the feasibility of ideas for reducing election costs while enhancing voter convenience and perhaps even increasing voter turnout. One such pilot project in a suburban community in the South involved replacing precinct-based voting on election day with a vote center that all voters could use regardless of their precinct of residence. A comparison of election costs across two municipal elections showed that replacing precinct-based voting with an election day vote center resulted in substantial cost savings. While there was no statistical difference in voter turnout in municipal elections held before and after implementation of the pilot project, voters were highly satisfied with the convenience of the vote center as well as other aspects of their voting experience. The findings suggest that an election day vote center can be a viable strategy to control election costs and enhance voters’ perceptions of the convenience of voting.

Rainfall, population density and voter turnout