Journal of Public Administration Research And Theory, 2018, 602–617 doi:10.1093/jopart/muy025 Article 10 Advance Access publication May 24, 2018 Article Partisanship, Bureaucratic Responsiveness, and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article-abstract/28/4/602/5003204 by Harvard Library user on 17 November 2018 Election Administration: Evidence from a Field Experiment Ethan Porter*, Jon C. Rogowski† *George Washington University; †Harvard University Address correspondence to the author at [email protected]. Abstract Though political candidates, observers, and voters often express concern about partisan meddling in supposedly neutral elections, existing research has not directly studied partisan bias among elec- tion administrators. We report results from a field experiment conducted in Wisconsin during the 2014 general election. Local election clerks were sent an information request from a putative constituent, randomizing the sender’s partisanship. Our findings are mixed. Overall, partisan email-writers were somewhat more likely to receive responses from local election clerks than email-writers who provided no partisan signal, though these effects are driven mostly by greater responsiveness to Republican constituents. We also find some evidence of increased responsiveness to requests from copartisan constituents, particularly among Republican municipalities. However, we find no evidence that local institutional context moderates the effects of the partisan treatments. Our findings provide new evi- dence about the presence of partisan biases from administrators in ostensibly neutral settings and raise important questions about the capacity for insulating election administration from partisan influences. Potential voters confront a myriad of informational decisions “may affect whether some people are able to deficits. In addition to deciding which candidate to cast a vote” (Kimball, Kropf, and Battles 2006, 448). support, they must also assemble information about Scholars, policymakers, and international organi- how, where, and when to cast their votes. As the zations widely agree about the importance of neutral “administrators of democracy” (Moynihan and Silva election administration for democratic health. As the 2008), local election officials (LEOs) are well-posi- European Commission for Democracy through Law tioned to mitigate such informational deficits. Whether (2008, 38) argues, “Only transparency, impartiality, and they do so without bias—that is, whether election independence from politically motivated manipulation officials work on behalf of ordinary voters without will ensure proper administration of the election pro- taking into account the attributes of those voters—is cess.” Similarly, the Office for Security and Co-operation central to contemporary debates over election admin- in Europe (2013, 29) advises member countries that istration and integrity. Understanding potential biases “[n]o election-administration body should act in a par- among election administrators is critical because their tisan manner or exhibit partiality in the performance of its duties.” The nature of electoral administration has important implications for the success of democratic We thank Barry Burden, Dan Butler, Jonathan Homola, Will Howell, Betsy transitions (Pastor 1999) and perceptions of legitim- Sinclair, Michelle Torres, Patrick Tucker, Ariel White, three anonymous reviews, and the Editor for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge acy (Anderson et al. 2005; Kropf and Kimball 2013). Barry Burden for sharing some of the data used in this project and Stephanie A report by the US Commission on Federal Election Langella and Enrique Rodriguez for providing excellent research assistance. Reform (2005, 49) therefore concluded that “[t]o build © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Public Management Research Association. 602 All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 2018, Vol. 28, No. 4 603 confidence in the electoral process, it is important that of administrative burden (Burden et al. 2012; Herd elections be administered in a neutral and professional et al. 2013), we argue that changes to election laws and manner.” Election administrators’ success in doing so procedures can impose administration burden on local may also shape their professional reputations which officials, who can then exercise discretion in determin- help to secure bureaucratic autonomy from political ing whether to help mitigate learning costs for con- principals (Carpenter and Krause 2012). stituents or instead pass those burdens along to them. Although it may be desirable for election officials Building on a design used to study biases among to be immune to political biases and interested only in street-level bureaucrats (Einstein and Glick 2017; Jilke, tallying the vote, history suggests that elections may Van Dooren, and Rys Forthcoming; White, Nathan, and Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/jpart/article-abstract/28/4/602/5003204 by Harvard Library user on 17 November 2018 not always be characterized by the neutral administra- Faller 2015), we conducted an email-based experiment tion. A rich set of examples, including the post-2000 with LEOs in Wisconsin during the week before the US presidential election battle in Florida and more 2014 midterm elections. Do election officials respond recent controversies in Gabon, Kenya, and Nicaragua, differently to requests for information based on voters’ suggests that partisan meddling in supposedly neutral putative partisan affiliations? Are they equally respon- elections is not uncommon. Recent literature docu- sive to both co- and counter-partisans? And how does ments tremendous heterogeneity in how election laws the potential for partisan bias vary across local parti- and procedures are implemented by local administra- san and institutional contexts? tors and poll workers (Alvarez and Hall 2006; Atkeson In 2014, Wisconsin offered an ideal laboratory to 2010) and suggests that the administration of local help answer these questions. We find some evidence elections tends to favor an official’s preferred political of differential responsiveness based on the partisan- party (Bassi, Morton, and Trounstine 2008; Burden ship of the putative constituent. Overall, requests from et al. 2013; Kimball, Kropf, and Battles 2006; Kropf, constituents that were accompanied by a partisan cue Vercellotti, and Kimball 2013; Stuart 2004). Similar received somewhat greater rates of response, and these discretion on the part of election officials can also lead patterns were driven primarily by greater responsive- to race-based bias in election administration (Atkeson ness to requests from Republican constituents. We find et al. 2010; Cobb, Greiner, and Quinn 2010; White, some conditional evidence of partisan bias, with greater Nathan, and Faller 2015). responsiveness to Republican email-writers among In this article, we report results from an audit study clerks serving Republican municipalities. However, designed to learn about the neutrality of election we find no similar response patterns to requests from administrators. More specifically, we study the rela- Democratic email-writers among clerks in Democratic tionship between LEOs’ responsiveness to requests for municipalities. Our results are robust across a wide information about an upcoming election and the puta- range of additional analyses, and we find no evidence tive partisanship of voters. Though recent scholarship that the effects of the partisan treatment were signifi- reports results from a number of audit studies con- cantly conditioned by the mode of clerk selection, ducted with public officials (for a review of this litera- municipality size or administrative resources, or county ture, see Costa 2017); few if any of these studies focus partisan context. The findings suggest that partisanship on identifying potential partisan biases. In doing so, we can shape the behavior of local administrators in even contribute to a conversation about partisan influence ostensibly neutral contexts and raise new questions in election administration that has been long ongoing about how administrative institutions can be designed among academics, practitioners, and policymakers. to mitigate against potential partisan influences. Like most street-level bureaucrats, election adminis- trators have wide discretion over the distribution of Partisanship and Election Administration scarce resources, including their own time and energy, Street-level bureaucrats such as LEOs have wide dis- which may result in biased patterns of responsiveness cretion over how they interpret and implement formal (Alvarez and Hall 2006; Burden et al. 2012; Lipsky policies. According to Lipsky (1980, xii), “the decisions 1980). Suspicion of partisan bias in election adminis- of street-level bureaucrats, the routines they establish, tration (e.g., Burden et al. 2013; Kimball, Kropf, and and the devices they invent to cope with uncertain- Battles 2006; Kropf, Vercellotti, and Kimball 2013) ties and work pressures effectively become the public has led voices from across the political spectrum to policies they carry out.” Scholarship on representative call for nonpartisan reforms.1 Building on the theory bureaucracy advocates for public administrators such as street-level bureaucrats to hold attitudes and values that reflect the constituencies they serve and argues