Punch Card Technology and the Racial Gap in Residual Votes

Abstract

Votomatic-style punch card voting systems produce higher rates of residual voting than other technologies, but the effect of punch card voting systems is not uniform. Minority voters are less likely to have their votes properly recorded with punch card systems than are nonminorities. This racial gap occurs, for the most part, because punch card systems lead to higher rates of “undervoting” by minorities. When election administrators switch to other systems, such as optical scan systems, the racial gap is significantly reduced. Punch card voting systems, then, constitute a disproportionate obstacle to minority voting. This effectively gives less weight to votes cast by minorities than to votes cast by nonminorities, and arguably violates constitutional requirements for equal voting rights. The mechanism is similar to the literacy tests that were abandoned after the 1970 amendments to the Voting Rights Act.The authors are grateful to UC Berkeley's Survey Research Center for research support and are deeply indebted to Henry E. Brady. Our thanks also to the anonymous reviewers and to the editorial staff at Perspectives on Politics for their helpful suggestions and hard work on our behalf.