Does Vote-By-Mail Cause Voters to Gather Information About Politics?∗

Does Vote-by-Mail Cause Voters to Gather Information About Politics?∗ James Szewczyk Department of Political Science Emory University [email protected] June 28, 2019 Abstract In this paper, I examine the effects of vote-by-mail on voter behavior and voter knowledge. I argue that vote-by-mail electoral systems result in a more informed electorate, because voters have additional time with their ballot and access to resources to conduct research about races on the ballot that they know nothing about. I present the results of two empirical studies that support this prediction. First, I find that all-mail elections in Utah cause a 6.368 percentage point decrease in straight ticket voting. This is consistent with the logic that voters spend more time with their ballots when voting by mail relative to when they are voting at a polling place. Second, I estimate the effects of vote-by-mail on voter knowledge using an original repeated cross-sectional survey that was fielded during the 2018 general election in California. The research design exploits the implementation of the California Voters Choice Act (VCA), which resulted in five counties in the state switching to an election system in which all voters in the counties are sent a mail-in ballot. I find that the VCA causes an increase in voter knowledge and an increase in time that voters spend gathering information about the election. However, the reform does not affect the prevalence of political discussion or levels of knowledge about the party identification and ideology of candidates. ∗I thank the MIT Election Data and Science Lab and the Madison Initiative of the William Flora Hewlett Foundation for generously funding this research. I am also grateful to Tom Clark, Zac Peskowitz, Adam Glynn, participants at SPSA 2019, and participants at the 2019 State Politics and Policy Conference for helpful feedback on this project. 1 Introduction Scholars have extensively documented the low levels of political knowledge in the American public (e.g., Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996, Zaller 1992). A lack of information about politics among citizens can gen- erate a number of negative consequences for representative democracy. For example, changing information levels in the electorate has implications for voters’ choices at the ballot box as well as representation in government and policy outcomes. Indeed, increasing citizens’ knowledge about politics affects the behavior and preferences of voters. When information is provided to voters about candidates and parties prior to their ballots being cast, voters adjust their choices at the ballot box (Fowler and Margolis 2014, Klein and Baum 2001). Moreover, institutions that facilitate access to information about politics affect elected official behavior and policy outcomes (Snyder and Stromberg¨ 2010). As a result, institutional reforms that affect how voters gather political information will affect the quality of a democratic government. In this paper, I argue that an electoral reform, vote-by-mail, changes the behavior of voters in a way that increases the likelihood that they gather information about politics. Consequently, voters who reside in a jurisdiction that implements the use of mail-in ballots will be more informed than voters who cast their ballots at a polling place. Voters are able to obtain relevant political information when voting by mail because they have additional time with their ballots when voting. Voters can use this extra time to access resources on the Internet and consult their voter information guides to conduct research about the election. On the other hand, voters do not have the ability to use these information sources when voting at a polling place if they come across a race on the ballot that they do not know anything about. Previous research suggests that vote-by-mail will cause voters to spend more time filling out their ballots and be more informed. For example, Hanmer and Traugott (2004) argue that this will be the case when Oregon became the first state to implement all-mail elections. Further, other work exploits the staggered implementation of vote-by-mail in Washington and provides evidence in line with the argument that voters gather more information about politics when they receive their ballots through the mail. Szewczyk (2018) shows that there are changes in policy outcomes and elected official behavior that reflect a more informed electorate after the switch to vote-by-mail in the state. The results of this study indicate that there is a decrease in taxing and spending as well as a decrease in negative findings on accountability audits in Wash- ington’s municipalities after vote-by-mail is implemented. In addition, vote-by-mail causes a decrease in ballot roll-off on statewide ballot measures (Szewczyk 2018) and on other statewide races (Marble 2018) in 1 Washington. This is interpreted as evidence in support of the argument that voters take the time to gather political information when voting by mail. Despite this previous research on how vote-by-mail will cause increases in voters’ knowledge about elections and other work that examines the relationship between the reform and political information1, previous research has been unable to directly estimate the effects of vote-by-mail on voter knowledge. I expand our knowledge of this important electoral reform in this paper by directly answering the following question: does vote-by-mail cause voters to gather more information about politics than they would when voting at a polling place? In particular, I present the results of two empirical studies that take advantage of the staggered roll-out of all-mail election systems in Utah and California. In order to establish that vote-by-mail does indeed change how people vote, in the first study I estimate the effects of the implementation of all-mail elections in Utah on the prevalence of straight ticket voting. Voters in Utah have the option to make a single mark on their ballot to cast a vote for the member of a given political party in each individual race on the ballot; that is, cast a straight ticket vote. I argue that if citizens use more time to fill out their ballots when voting by mail, they will be less likely to use this straight ticket option because they will consider each race individually. Exploiting within-county changes in the use of compulsory vote-by-mail in Utah over time, I find that the electoral institution causes a 6.368 percentage point decrease in straight ticket votes. This is consistent with my theory of the relationship between vote-by-mail and voter behavior. In the second study, I directly estimate the effects of vote-by-mail on voter behavior and voter knowledge. I exploit a policy intervention in California, the Voter’s Choice Act (VCA), which resulted in five counties in the state switching to an all-mail electoral system during the 2018 primary and general elections. This provides exogenous variation in vote-by-mail use among Californians. I field a repeated cross-sectional survey of eligible voters during the 2018 general election in California that measures voter knowledge about statewide races on the ballot and voter behavior at two points in time: first, prior to when voters were sent mail-in ballots; second, after the election took place. I use the survey data to directly test my theory of how vote-by-mail affects voter knowledge and how citizens gather information about politics. I estimate the effects of the VCA on the outcomes of interest with a two sample two-stage least squares (TS2SLS) esti- 1For example, Meredith and Malhotra (2011) show how early voting options, like vote-by-mail, can result in individuals casting their votes differently than if they voted on election day when new information about candidates is revealed late in the campaign. 2 mation strategy. TS2SLS allows me to combine information from the California voter file and my original survey to examine the relationship between vote-by-mail and voter behavior. In the process of generating the TS2SLS estimates I calculate three quantities of interest. First, the first-stage model uses the California voter file data and reveals the effect of the VCA on the probability that registered voters use a mail-in ballot. I find that the VCA increases the likelihood an individuals uses vote-by-mail by 0.115. Second, I estimate the direct effect of implementing the VCA on voter behavior and knowledge with the original California survey data. These are the reduced form estimates and are interpreted as the intent-to-treat (ITT) effect or the net effect of a county implementing the VCA on the outcomes of interest. Third, I estimate the impact of actually using a mail-in ballot with 2STSLS. The 2STSLS estimates can be simply calculated as the ratio of the coefficients of interest from the reduced form and first-stage models. This quantity is the local average treatment effect (LATE) of using vote-by-mail and can be interpreted as the impact of everyone in a jurisdiction switching from voting at a polling place to using a mail-in ballot. The reduced form and TS2SLS estimates indicate that the VCA caused changes in voter behavior. Using a mail-in ballot results in voters increasing the amount of time they spent conducting research about the election. In addition, implementing the VCA caused an increase in the likelihood that voters are able to answer questions about the ballot measures that appeared on the ballot correctly. Vote-by- mail does not appear to affect the probability of political discussion or the types of information sources that voters report to use. 2 Political Information, Elections, and Vote-by-Mail Voters in the United States must make decisions about many races when voting.

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