Election Ink and Turnout in a Fragile Democracy Karen E. Ferree
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Election Ink and Turnout in a Fragile Democracy Karen E. Ferree Robert Dowd University of California, San Diego University of Notre Dame [email protected] [email protected] Danielle F. Jung Clark C. Gibson Emory University University of California, San Diego [email protected] [email protected] December 5, 2015 Abstract Inking voters’ fingers after they cast their ballots is standard practice in elections in emerging democracies. Because of unreliable voting records and weak adminis- trative capacity, electoral procedures rely on inking to prevent double voting. While the putative e↵ect of inking is to decrease electoral fraud, it may unintentionally fa- cilitate turnout manipulation strategies. We explore the e↵ects of inking on turnout through a GOTV experiment we conducted in Kampala during the February 2011 Ugandan general election. Our results suggest that the e↵ects of practices like ink- ing that publicize turnout decisions are not always benign. In Kampala — an area of mixed political allegiance within a coercive semi-authoritarian regime — some potential voters responded to our relatively mild informational treatment about the use of ink by deciding not to vote. Acknowledgements: We gratefully acknowledge Barak Ho↵man, Craig McIntosh, and especially James Long, who contributed in essential ways to design and/or implementation stages of this project. We also thank David Nickerson, James Fowler, Zoli Hajnal, Eddy Malesky, Jesse Driscoll, Megumi Naoi, Claire Adida, Don Green, Guy Grossman, William Evans, Scott Mainwaring, Guillermo Trejo, Jaimie Bleck, Sarah Daly, Sean McGraw, Anke Hoe✏er and the participants of seminars at University of Notre Dame, Stanford University, Oxford University, and Yale University for their comments. Doreen Lwanga provided expert advice in the field. We are grateful for the excellent research assistance of Dennis Inbok Rhee, Drew Wagsta↵, and Kai Ostwald. This research was funded by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Introduction Inking voters fingers after they cast their ballots is standard practice in emerging democracies. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, an inked finger symbolizes a citi- zen’s participation in the electoral process. Ink o↵ers a relatively low cost, easy to implement solution to the challenging problem of double voting in countries with unreliable voting records and weak administrative capacity. However, while the putative goal of inking is to decrease electoral fraud, we argue that it may uninten- tionally undermine free and fair elections by enabling politicians and other actors to manipulate turnout. Inking makes the decision to vote visible. An inked finger identifies a voter not just when she emerges from the polling station, but until the ink on her finger wears o↵, a process that can take days or weeks. During this time, her decision to vote is public: easily seen by family and friends — as well as politicians, party supporters, security personnel, and community and religious leaders. By rendering the decision to vote visible, inking enables politicians and other actors to condition rewards and punishments on the presence of an inked (or un-inked) finger, thereby facilitating turnout manipulation strategies. Depending on the electoral context, such strategies may aim to either encourage or suppress turnout. Evaluating the relationship between electoral ink and turnout presents chal- lenges. Depending on the mixture of electoral strategies in a particular election, the e↵ects of ink vary, increasing turnout in some instances and depressing it in others. Studies ignoring this heterogeneity may underestimate the impact of inking on outcomes. The virtually universal adoption of ink further complicates evaluation e↵orts. Not only is there little variation in observational data, but randomization of the inking practice itself is infeasible. Finally, few credible measures of turnout exist in emerging democracies. Standard practice involves asking people if they voted, an approach that produces significant distortions if people misrepresent their behavior. To address these challenges, we pursue a novel strategy to evaluate the rela- tionship between ink and turnout. In a Get Out the Vote (GOTV) experiment conducted in Uganda’s capital city Kampala during the country’s February 2011 national elections, we manipulated information about the use of ink in the elec- 1 tion. We randomly assigned registered voters to one of three groups: a control group given a survey about mobile phone use; a treatment group that received the mobile phone survey plus a reminder to vote; and a treatment group that received the mo- bile phone survey, the reminder to vote, and an informational message explaining that ink would be used in the election allowing “everyone to know” whether or not a person had voted. Ugandan enumerators delivered these messages a few days prior to the election to registered voters; they returned to inspect fingers for ink during the days immediately after the election. We find the informational treatment about inking reduced the probability of having an inked finger, especially for younger and less educated voters — precisely the set of voters least likely to be familiar with inking practices and therefore most likely to respond to an informational treatment about them. These results indicate the plausibility of a link between the use of ink and voter turnout. They suggest that the e↵ect of practices like inking that publicize turnout may not be benign, in contrast to experiments in the United States that routinely find increasing turnout’s visibility raises participation (Gerber, Green and Larimer, 2008; Davenport et al., 2010; Mann, 2010; Sinclair, 2012). They also reveal that practices adopted to improve the quality of elections in one domain may have unintended consequences in others. We thus echo recent findings by Driscoll and Hidalgo (2014) suggesting that relatively innocuous interventions aimed at promoting electoral participation may backfire in some contexts. Studies of turnout behavior in emerging democracies might benefit from these insights, specifically examining institutional features of elections in addition to individual level factors like age, education, and partisanship emphasized in most extant work (Bratton, 1999; Bratton, Mattes and Gyimah-Boadi, 2005; Bratton, 2008; Isaksson, 2010; Kuenzi and Lambright, 2005, 2007). Only by placing voters in a specific political context can we make sense of their behavior. 2 Inking as a Standard Electoral Practice of Emerg- ing Democracies The first use of election ink dates to the early 1980s, when election officials began marking voters with ink detectable only with ultraviolet light. However, difficulties with administration (in particular, the need to equip polling stations with the special lights) promoted the adoption of visible, indelible ink as the standard by the mid-1980s (Cody, 1985; Meislin, 1982; Taubman, 1982; Wattenberg, 1986). Inking has since become an international norm in election administration. Virtually all emerging democracies use it to identify voters who have finished the process of casting a ballot. The attractions of the practice are straightforward. Establishing accurate voter registries is costly, difficult, and often controversial (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), 2010). Would-be voters in newer and poorer democracies frequently lack valid forms of identification to use for voter registra- tion or voting. Given these limitations, multiple voting presents a serious threat to election quality. If election administrators attempt to eliminate multiple voting by placing stringent criteria on registering and voting, however, they risk disenfran- chising large (typically poorer and less educated) parts of the population. Ink o↵ers a low-technology, relatively inexpensive solution. Polling station sta↵have only to mark an individual’s finger (or other part of the hand) with indelible ink after they vote. The ink can last from days to weeks, preventing voters from repeat voting. It can be delivered to polling stations along with election materials, requires no electricity to operate, and does not involve extensive training. Although used pervasively, controversies periodically surface regarding ink use. Several recent Malaysian elections, for example, have seen extensive discussions of inking in the popular press as well as policy reversals by the government. In response to public concern about multiple voting, the government purchased nearly 50,000 bottles of indelible ink from India for use in its 2008 General Election. Yet just days before the election, the Election Commission reversed its decision and abandoned the ink, citing claims that the ink might be used illicitly to mark 3 unsuspecting citizens prior to election day, preventing them from casting votes. It later emerged that the order to abandon the ink plans came from the Prime Minister’s cabinet, despite the Commission’s nominal independence (Weiss, 2009). Malaysia’s ink woes continued in its 2013 General Election, when the “indelible” ink proved to be removable with soap and water (Ostwald, 2013; Welsh, 2013). In nearby Philippines, political operatives gave rewards to potential opposition voters who allowed them to ink their fingers and so disqualify them from voting (Schedler, 2002). Ink controversies have also dogged elections in Afghanistan. In the 2004 Afghan elections, sta↵at some voting stations apparently used non-permanent ink instead of indelible ink, leading to extensive