Name: Universal vote-by-mail doesn’t benefit any political party, study finds
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Universal vote-by-mail doesn’t benefit any political party, study finds

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This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareRepublican officials in recent weeks have sought to portray universal vote-by-mail as a partisan issue.President Trump that the policy would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Georgia’s Republican speaker of the House would be “extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.” Partisanship concerns also motivated Wisconsin Republicans’ in the state’s primary election last week.But these notions are patently incorrect, according to that reaffirms and expands upon years of prior research: No party benefits when a state switches to universal vote-by-mail.The question has taken on new relevance in the context of the novel coronavirus pandemic, when in-person voting raises health risks to both voters and poll workers.AdvertisementUniversal vote-by-mail typically works like this: Ballots are automatically sent to all registered voters, who in turn are supposed to fill them out and mail them back to election officials. In some states, such as Colorado, voters have the additional option of either dropping off ballots at specified locations on Election Day or voting in person at those same locations., Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah have universal vote-by-mail. A sixth state, California, allows its counties to implement vote-by-mail at their discretion.In a number of these states, vote-by-mail was rolled out at the county level on a staggered basis. This setup allowed a team of political scientists at Stanford University to conduct a natural experiment: “By comparing counties that adopt a vote-by-mail program to counties within the same state that do not adopt the program, we are able to compare the election outcomes and turnout behavior of voters who have different vote-by-mail accessibility but who have the same set of candidates on the ballot for statewide races,” they write.AdvertisementTo test partisan effects, they compiled a data set containing county-level election results as well as public voter file data containing the party registration of voters in California and Utah. The data covered elections from 1996 to 2018.After controlling for county-level differences, the data showed “a truly negligible effect” on partisan turnout rates. The effect on partisan vote share was similarly indistinguishable from zero.One thing they did find was a modest boost in across-the-board turnout. “Vote-by-mail causes around a 2-percentage-point increase (estimates range from 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points) in the share of the voting-age population that turns out to vote.”None of these findings would come as a surprise to other political scientists who have studied the issue. have similar findings.AdvertisementThe Stanford study, however, “should increase our confidence in these views,” the authors write, “both because our data permits a stronger research design than was previously possible and because our data set runs through the 2018 midterm elections, allowing for the most up-to-date analysis available.”The study does come with one big caveat: It can’t predict what (if any) effect universal vote-by-mail might have in the midst of a pandemic, simply because that situation throws so many additional variables into the mix. Would older people fearing for their health be more likely to participate with vote-by-mail, thus creating a partisan advantage for Republicans? Would otherwise disaffected younger voters be more likely to vote, creating an advantage for Democrats? It’s impossible to say.Nonetheless, the findings do underscore that partisan opposition to vote-by-mail over electoral concerns is a standpoint with no basis in empirical reality. CommentsGift ArticleTOP STORIESThe Culture of MediaSometimes the news is the story. Follow our team of columnists and reporters who write about the media.Try a different topic or to save your preferences

This article was published more than&nbsp;2 years agoCommentGift ShareRepublican officials in recent weeks have sought to portray universal vote-by-mail as a partisan issue.President Trump that the policy would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” Georgia’s Republican speaker of the House would be “extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia.” Partisanship concerns also motivated Wisconsin Republicans’ in the state’s primary election last week.But these notions are patently incorrect, according to that reaffirms and expands upon years of...

Universal vote-by-mail doesn’t benefit any political party, study finds

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