Do Drop Boxes Improve Voter Turnout? Evidence from King County, Washington
Abstract
Considerable interest among academics and practitioners alike centers around identifying ways to improve voter turnout and voting parity across various subgroups in the U.S. population. Many scholars have investigated convenience voting and found mixed results in terms of its effects on turnout and its composition. A relatively new but unstudied method of voting is via ballot drop box, a method states and voters have increasingly turned to. We exploit the placement of over 30 new drop boxes in King County, Washington, the home of Seattle, during the 2016 election to investigate their effect on turnout. We find that distance to the closest ballot drop box increases one's probability of voting but primarily in off-year elections and primaries. We find mixed results for heterogeneous treatment effects. Implications are discussed.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Barreto Matt, Nuno Stephen, and Sanchez Gabe. 2009. “The Disproportionate Impact of Voter-id Requirements on the Electorate—New Evidence from Indiana.” PS: Political Science and Politics 42(1): 111–116.
Bartels Larry. 2009. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Brady Henry and McNulty John. 2011. “Turning Out to Vote: The Costs of Finding and Getting to the Polling Place.” American Political Science Review 105(1): 115–134.
Buhian Venice. 2016. “King County Adds Spanish and Korean Ballots, Boosts Voter Outreach.” Seattle Globalist. August 18.
Capitol Hill Seattle Staff. 2016. “As Seattle Voters Turn in Another Uninspiring Turnout, County Plan Would Quadruple Ballot Drop Boxes.” Capitol Hill Seattle. February 15.
Chamberlain Gary. 1980. “Analysis of Covariance with Qualitative Data.” Review of Economic Studies 47(1): 225–238.
Collingwood Loren. 2017. “Rvoterdistance: Calculates the Distance Between Voter and Multiple Polling Locations.” <https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/Rvoterdistance/index.html>.
Connelly Joel. 2015. “Is King County Voters Turnout Dropping…” Seattle PI Blog. September 30. <blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2015/09/30/is-king-county-voter-turnout-dropping-because-there-are-few-places-to-drop-off-votes/>.
DelReal Jose. 2014. “Voter Turnout in 2014 Was the Lowest Since WWII.” Washington Post. November 10. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2014/11/10/voter-turnout-in-2014-was-the-lowest-since-wwii/>. Accessed November 1, 2016.
Desilver Drew. 2017. “U.S. Voter Turnout Trails Most Developed Countries.” Pew Research Center. <http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/15/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/>. Accessed December 3, 2017.
Dyck Joshua and Gimpel James. 2005. “Distance, Turnout, and the Convenience of Voting.” Social Science Quarterly 86(3): 531–548.
File Thom. July 2015. “Who Votes? Congressional Elections and the American Electorate: 1978–2014.” U.S. Census Bureau. July. <https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p20-577.pdf>.
Gilens Martin. 2012. Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gimpel J. G. and Schuknecht J. E. 2003. “Political Participation and the Accessibility of the Ballot Box.” Political Geography 22: 471–488.
Greene W. H. 2003. Econometric Analysis, Fifth Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Greene Sean and Ueyama Kyle. 2015. “Vote-By-Mail Rates Double Since 2000.” Pew Charitable Trusts. <http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2015/4/29/vote-by-mail-practices-more-than-double-since-2000>. Accessed November 29, 2017.
Gronke Paul, Galanes-Rosenbaum Eva, Miller Peter, and Toffey Daniel. 2008. “Convenience Voting.” Annual Review of Political Science 11: 437–455.
Gronke Paul and Miller Peter. 2012. “Voting by Mail and Turnout in Oregon: Revisiting Southwell and Burchett.” American Politics Research 40(6): 976–997.
Hajnal Zoltan, 2010. America's Uneven Democracy: Race, Turnout, and Representation in City Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hamilton Randy. 1988. “American All-Mail Balloting.” Public Administration Review 48:860–866.
Jeffe D. and Jeffe S. 1990. “Absence Counts: Voting by Mail.” American Enterprise 1: 19–22.
King County. 2016. “Citizens Vote with Their Feet, Support New Ballot Drop Box Locations.” King County Council News, August 23. <http://www.kingcounty.gov/council/news/2016/August/08-23-RDB-electionsGAO.aspx>.
King County Elections. 2016. “Election Results: General Election, November 8, 2016.” <http://aqua.kingcounty.gov/elections/2016/nov-general/results/results.pdf>.
King County Elections Office. 2016. “Ballot Drop Off Locations: A Plan to Improve Voter Access.” <kingcounty.gov/∼/media/depts/elections/about-us/reports/bdol-expansion-plan.ashx?k=en>.
King County Newsroom. 2016. “King County to Quadruple Ballot Drop Box Locations and Expand Outreach.” February 10. <http://kingcounty.gov/depts/elections/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/2016/february/10-ballot-drop-boxes.aspx>.
Kousser Thad and Mullin Megan. 2007. “Does Voting by Mail Increase Participation? Using Matching to Analyze a Natural Experiment.” Political Analysis 15(4): 428–445.
Maciag Mike. 2014. “Voter Turnout Plummeting in Local Elections.” Governing. October. <http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-voter-turnout-municipal-elections.html>.
Magleby D. 1987. “Participation in Mail Ballot Elections.” Western Political Quarterly 40: 79–93.
Mutch R. 1992. “Voting by Mail.” State Legislatures 18: 29–31.
National Conference of State Legislators. 2016. “All Mail Elections.” March 8. <http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/all-mail-elections.aspx>.
Robusto Carl C. 1957. “The Cosine-Haversine Formula.” American Mathematical Monthly 64(1): 38–40.
Rosenstone Steven and Hansen John. 1993. Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America. New York: Macmillan.
Secretary of State. 2007. Washington State's Vote-by-Mail Experience.
Southwell Priscilla and Burchett Justin. 1997. “Survey of Vote-by-Mail Senate Election in the State of Oregon.” PS: Political Science & Politics 30: 53–57.
Southwell Priscilla and Burchett Justin. 2000. “The Effect of All Mail Elections on Voter Turnout.” American Politics Quarterly 28(1):72–80.
Southwell Priscilla. 2016. “Inconvenience and Vote by Mail: Should Other States Follow the Northwest?” in King Bridget and Hale Kathleen (eds.). Why Don't Americans Vote? Causes and Consequences, ABC-CLIO, 78–85.
Stein Robert and Vonnahme Greg. 2008. “Engaging the Unengaged Voter: Vote Centers and Voter Turnout.” Journal of Politics 70(2): 487–496.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2016. “QuickFacts, King County, Washington: Map.” <https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/map/kingcountywashington/PST045216>.
Wolfinger Raymond E. and Rosenstone Steven J. 1980. Who Votes? New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Election Law Journal
Volume 17 • Issue Number 1 • March 2018
Pages: 58 - 72
Copyright
Copyright 2018, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.
History
Published in print: March 2018
Published online: 1 March 2018
Published ahead of print: 6 February 2018
Topics
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Export Citation
Export citation
Select the format you want to export the citations of this publication.
View Options
Access content
To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access.⚠ Society Access
If you are a member of a society that has access to this content please log in via your society website and then return to this publication.