Residual Vote Research Articles

Special Issue Introduction – Quality of Elections. Definitions and Measures

The study of the quality of elections is spreading very rapidly. This article aims to provide a general overview of the state of the art to introduce an empirical analysis of the quality of elections for the Italian parliament. After reviewing the definitions of ‘quality of elections’, the article thoroughly examines the two main measurement tools. One is based on the experts’ perceptions and promoted as part of the Electoral Integrity Project. The other is based on objective data called the Elections Performance Index. Finally, the article applies the measurement method based on the residual vote to the Italian case.

Auditing the 2020 General Election in Georgia: Residual Vote Rates and a Confusing Ballot Format

The 2020 general election in the United States took place against the backdrop of a pandemic and countless claims about voter fraud. The presidential race in Georgia was extremely close, and in thi...

Making Every Vote Count: The Important Role of Managerial Capacity in Achieving Better Election Administration Outcomes

AbstractA public agency's capacity to implement policy and achieve valued public outcomes has been a long‐running area of research in public administration. Many articles provide theory and empirics regarding the capacity to implement policy, but relatively few examine multiple types of agency capacity within the same analysis. This article develops a model based on the election administration literature in political science and public administration to examine the effects of managerial capacity, financial capacity, and technology on the election management outcome of the residual vote rate in North Carolina election jurisdictions. The results indicate that higher levels of management capacity and technology significantly reduce problems with voting as measured by the residual vote rate. Financial capacity shows a negative association with the residual vote rate but is not significant. The article concludes by discussing how studying election administration provides an important and uniquely good administrative context for developing administrative theory.

Making Votes Count with Internet Voting

This paper reassesses the claim that electronic voting systems help voters to avoid common mistakes that lead to their votes remaining uncounted. While prior studies have come to mixed conclusions, I provide new, more robust evidence based on a case study of extended Internet voting trials in Geneva canton, Switzerland. The trials almost exclusively involved referendum votes. For causal identification I exploit the unique circumstance that federal safety legislation created a near-natural experiment, with some of the canton’s municipalities participating in the trials and others not. Using difference-in-differences estimation, I find that the residual vote rate decreased by an average of 0.3 percentage points if municipalities offered the possibility to vote online in addition to (mostly optically scanned) paper ballots. For cantonal measures, which are located towards the bottom of ballot papers in Geneva, the reduction increases to 0.5 percentage points. These remain relatively modest effects, and I find no evidence for a knock-on effect on electoral outcomes. However, on average only around 20% of votes were cast online where the opportunity existed, and online voting was most popular among voters with high levels of education. Despite the small effect sizes, the results of this study therefore point to the potential of Internet and, more generally, electronic voting technology to reduce avoidable voter mistakes.

Abstention, Protest, and Residual Votes in the 2016 Election

ObjectiveWe analyze the significant increase in the residual vote rate in the 2016 presidential election. The residual vote rate, which is the percentage of ballots cast in a presidential election that contain no vote for president, rose nationwide from 0.99 to 1.41 percent between 2012 and 2016.MethodWe use election return data and public opinion data to examine why the residual vote rate increased in 2016.ResultsThe primary explanation for this rise is an increase in abstentions, which we argue results primarily from disaffected Republican voters rather than alienated Democratic voters. In addition, other factors related to election administration and electoral competition explain variation in the residual vote rates across states, particularly the use of mail/absentee ballots and the lack of competition at the top of the ticket in nonbattleground states. However, we note that the rise in the residual vote rate was not due to changes in voting technologies.ConclusionOur research has implications for the use of the residual vote as a metric for studying election administration and voting technologies.

Residual Votes and Abstentions in the 2016 Election

This paper provides a preliminary analysis of the increase in the residual vote rate from 2012 to 2016, when it increased from 0.99% to 1.87% nationwide. It is reasonable to assume that this spike in the residual vote rate is due to a rise in abstentions. However, there are currently other trends in election administration, such as an increasing reliance on vote-by-mail, that could also be driving up the residual vote rate. And, even if the recent up-tick in the residual vote rate is primarily due to an increase in abstentions in 2016, it is not a priori obvious that the source of new abstentions was equally distributed among disaffected Democrats and Republicans. The analysis in this paper relies on a combination of public opinion data and election returns to address these issues. We find, first, that the increase in abstentions in 2016 was most likely due to disaffected Republicans, rather than an across-the-board phenomenon. We also confirm that the increase in the 2016 residual vote rate was not due to changes in voting technologies between 2012 and 2016. We address three issues in the conclusion that this analysis raises: (1) the potential for the growth of protest voting in the U.S., (2) the likelihood that there is a significant under-reporting of voter abstentions in public opinion surveys, leaving a role for aggregate analysis to study this phenomenon, and (3) cautions about the use of the residual vote rate as a metric to gauge the accuracy of voting technologies.

Using Spatial Techniques and Counterfactual Design to Examine Voting System Performance

This article proposes an alternative research design using geographic discontinuity to assess the performance of voting systems, focusing on InkaVote, a voting system employed in Los Angeles County, California. It also demonstrates how a geographic information system (GIS) can be integrated with statistical analyses to improve causal inference. With this new methodology, the article compares the performance of the InkaVote system in the 2004 and 2006 elections and examines whether the introduction of a paper ballot reader (PBR) in 2006 improved the performance of the system. The findings show that the PBR implementation was effective, as it reduced the residual vote rate by about one percentage point.

Of Money, Machines, and Management: Election Administration from an Administrator's Perspective

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the almost $4 billion it authorized for election improvements changed the way America votes. State and local jurisdictions upgraded voting technology to solve the residual vote problem, highlighted by the 2000 presidential election in Florida. They also adopted statewide voter registration lists and made other election administration improvements. This essay explores the impact of modernized voting technology from the perspective of a local and state election administrator. It considers both the short- and long-term impacts of these changes, particularly in terms of ongoing expenses, sustaining improvements, and the shift in power relationships between federal, state, and local policy-makers and election administrators. The essay concludes with thoughts on where the U.S. could go next to continue the modernization of its election systems.

Voting Technology, Vote-by-Mail, and Residual Votes in California, 1990–2010

We examine how the growth in vote-by-mail and changes in voting technologies led to changes in the residual vote rate in California from 1990 to 2010. In California’s presidential elections, counties that abandoned punch cards in favor of optical scanning enjoyed a significant improvement in the residual vote rate. We also conduct the first analysis of the effects of the rise of vote-by-mail on residual votes. Regardless of the election, increased use of the mail to cast ballots is robustly associated with a significant rise in the residual vote rate.

Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites

This study inquires as to the nature of racial regularities in residual voting that exist under post–Help America Vote Act conditions. Even with modern, optical scan voting machines, there were significant differences among black, Hispanic, and white residual vote rates in the city of Chicago during the Municipal Election of 2011 and the Illinois General Election of 2010. Moreover, these residual vote rates varied with the availability of, respectively, black, Hispanic, and white candidates for office. Hispanics often had the highest residual vote rates among the three major race groups in Chicago, and there were instances in the aforementioned 2011 and 2010 Chicago elections in which a group of voters chose not to vote for anyone rather than vote for a dominant candidate of a different race than the voters themselves. Thus, even holding constant electoral administration and voting technology, the role of race in residual voting remains prominent.

Adding Up the Costs and Benefits of Voting by Mail

Adding Up the Costs and Benefits of Voting by Mail

Voting Technology, Vote-by-Mail, and Residual Votes in California, 1990-2010

This paper examines how the growth in vote-by-mail and changes in voting technologies led to changes in the residual vote rate in California from 1990 to 2010. We find that in California’s presidential elections, counties that abandoned punch cards in favor of optical scanning enjoyed a significant improvement in the residual vote rate. However, these findings do not always translate to other races. For instance, find that the InkaVote system in Los Angeles has been a mixed success, performing very well in presidential and gubernatorial races, fairly well for ballot propositions, and poorly in Senate races. We also conduct the first analysis of the effects of the rise of vote-by-mail on residual votes. Regardless of the race, increased use of the mails to cast ballots is robustly associated with a rise in the residual vote rate. The effect is so strong that the rise of voting by mail in California has mostly wiped out all the reductions in residual votes that were due to improved voting technologies since the early 1990s.

In the Margins: Recounts, Victory and Error in the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Elections

In very close elections, the margin of error for the system of collecting and counting votes may be greater than the margin of victory for a candidate, such that recounts are unable to determine winners. We identify the electoral contests in which the margin of victory for the winning candidate was less than the margins of error for technologies and organizations that administered the election: in 2000, forty eight Electoral College votes, fifteen US House races, one US Senate seat, and one Governor; in 2004, sixteen Electoral College votes, four US House races, one US Senate seat, and one Governor. In each case, the legitimacy of electoral outcomes comes more from elections officials than the electorate, because in very close races the voting process cannot reveal electoral intent. We evaluate three ways of measuring error in an election. First, we theorize organizational error, and calculate a residual vote rate as one way of expressing error in election administration. Second, we theorize technology error, and calculate a residual vote rate as one way of expressing error in the voting technologies. Finally, we theorize a form of user error, and calculate a ratio of Election Day incidents to voting-eligible population as one way of expressing user error. We compare the strengths and weaknesses of these metrics. Public policy solutions are offered, such as run-off elections, standardized data reporting about error rates, more rigorous exit polling, and open source technology solutions.

Losing Fewer Votes

Problems in the 2000 presidential election, especially in Florida, initiated a large-scale shift toward new voting technology. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal data, we report on the effects of changes in voting systems in Florida and Michigan. The variety of initial conditions and the numerous changes make these excellent case studies. We find that reforms succeeded in reducing the residual vote. Every change from old to new technology resulted in a decline in residual votes that was significantly greater than in areas that did not change voting equipment. The percentage of residual votes in the 2004 presidential race in localities that changed voting systems was well under 1 percent, representing a 90 percent reduction in error in Florida and a 35 percent reduction in Michigan. We run these analyses separately for undervotes and overvotes. Using ecological-inference techniques, we investigate the persistence of residual votes when technology changed and find very little persistence.

Voting Technology, Ballot Measures, and Residual Votes

An increasing number of public policy issues are decided by ballot measures in the United States. We examine residual votes (the difference between the total ballots cast and the votes cast in a particular contest) on ballot issues and the presidential contest in 34 states that had issues on the ballot in the 2004 election. Residual vote levels for ballot issues are substantially higher and more varied than for the presidential contest. Residual votes in both types of contests are a function of ballot features, voting technology, campaign context, and demographic measures. However, some factors, especially voting machinery, have different effects on residual votes for president than on residual votes for ballot issues. A case study further indicates that full-face electronic voting machines sharply increase the number of residual votes on ballot measures. The results have implications for direct democracy and election reform in the United States.

Poll Workers and the Vitality of Democracy: An Early Assessment

The aftermath of the 2000 election has been a time of constant learning in regards to election administration in the United States. Both scholars and policy makers initially focused primarily on voting technology and on which voting technologies were best at capturing votes. In early 2001, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project developed the “residual vote” metric; numerous studies have since examined residual vote rates across different voting platforms. Congressional reform of elections—exemplified in the “Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002” (P.L. 107-252)—also focused largely on voting technology, with HAVA imposing new standards for voting equipment and providing states with one-shot funding to aid in its purchase. Authors are listed alphabetically. The data collection in Cuyahoga County, Ohio was funded by the Election Science Institute (ESI) through a contract with the Cuyahoga County Commission. We are grateful to Steven Hertzberg of ESI for his assistance in the data collection. The Utah poll-worker survey was funded by the Institute of Public and International Affairs (IPIA) at the University of Utah. Steven Snell of the Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy (CSED) at Brigham Young University provided valuable research assistance for this project.

Residual Vote in the 2004 Election

Residual Vote in the 2004 Election

Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the 2000 Presidential Election

AbstractWhat effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

Residual Votes Attributable to Technology

We examine the relative performance of voting technologies by studying presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial election returns across hundreds of counties in the United States from 1988 to 2000. Relying on a fixed-effects regression applied to an unbalanced panel of counties, we find that in presidential elections, traditional paper ballots produce the lowest rates of uncounted votes (i.e., “residual votes”), followed by optically scanned ballots, mechanical lever machines, direct register electronic machines (DREs), and punch cards. In gubernatorial and senatorial races, paper, optical scan ballots, and DREs are significantly better in minimizing the residual vote rate than mechanical lever machines and punch cards. If all jurisdictions in the United States that used punch cards in 2000 had used optically scanned ballots instead, we estimate that approximately 500,000 more votes would have been attributed to presidential candidates nationwide.

Black Candidates and Black Voters: Assessing the Impact of Candidate Race on Uncounted Vote Rates

Numerous studies show that the rate at which African-Americans cast ballots with missing or invalid votes, i.e., the African-American residual vote rate, is higher than the corresponding white rate. While existing literature argues that the plethora of African-American residual votes is caused by administrative problems or socioeconomic factors, we show using precinct-level data from two recent elections in Cook County, Illinois, that the African-American residual vote rate in electoral contests with black candidates is less than half the rate in contests without black candidates. African Americans, therefore, are able to reduce their residual vote rate when they wish to do so. We present complementary findings for white voters, whose residual vote rate often substantially increases in contests which feature dominant black candidates.