Politics and Governance (ISSN: 2183–2463) 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 306–318 DOI: 10.17645/pag.v9i2.3938 Article The Impact of Input Rules and Ballot Options on Voting Error: An Experimental Analysis J. S. Maloy * and Matthew Ward Department of Political Science, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA 70503, USA; E‐Mails: [email protected] (J.S.M.), [email protected] (M.W.) * Corresponding author Submitted: 15 December 2020 | Accepted: 22 March 2021 | Published: 15 June 2021 Abstract When election reforms such as Ranked Choice Voting or the Alternative Vote are proposed to replace plurality voting, they offer lengthier instructions, more opportunities for political expression, and more opportunities for mistakes on the ballot. Observational studies of voting error rely on ecological inference from geographically aggregated data. Here we use an experimental approach instead, to examine the effect of two different ballot conditions at the individual level of analysis: the input rules that the voter must use and the number of ballot options presented for the voter’s choice. This experiment randomly assigned three different input rules (single‐mark, ranking, and grading) and two different candidate lists (with six and eight candidates) to over 6,000 online respondents in the USA, during the American presidential primary elections in 2020, simulating a single‐winner presidential election. With more expressive input rules (ranking and grading), the dis‐ tinction between minor mistakes and totally invalid votes—a distinction inapplicable to single‐mark ballots—assumes new importance. Regression analysis indicates that more complicated input rules and more candidates on the ballot did not raise the probability that a voter would cast a void (uncountable) vote, despite raising the probability of at least one viola‐ tion of voting instructions. Keywords American politics; election administration; election reform; Ranked Choice Voting; voting behavior; voting experiments Issue This article is part of the issue “The Politics, Promise and Peril of Ranked Choice Voting” edited by Caroline Tolbert (University of Iowa, USA). © 2021 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu‐ tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction to reform debates when observations of past experience seem insufficient on their own. When voters, activists, and politicians consider the mer‐ Here we report results from an experiment designed its and demerits of election reform, it is natural for to shed light on the problem of voting error in the them to consult previous experience. They want to know American context. A standard preoccupation of anti‐ about the past record not only of the status quo but reform discourse in the USA is the danger of disori‐ also of any proposed changes of electoral rules or pro‐ ented or confused voters. As cities and states around the cedures. Innovative proposals, however, have little or no country consider switching from plurality voting rules or previous experience to recommend them. Unless they two‐round systems to Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), for want to rule out innovation altogether, democratic soci‐ example, a plausible suspicion suggests that significant eties must be prepared to substitute experiments for numbers of voters would in effect get counted out by experience when issues of election reform are debated. making more mistakes on more complicated ballots. RCV Academic research can contribute experimental insights has an observable track record in the USA since the early Politics and Governance, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 306–318 306 2000s (in addition to various short‐lived applications in a secondary focus on the possibility that the num‐ the early and middle decades of the twentieth century). ber of options on the ballot may also be a signifi‐ Various non‐ranking forms of voting—e.g., “range” (grad‐ cant factor inducing voting error. Before surveying prior ing candidates with more than two possible scores) and observational and experimental evidence on these ques‐ “approval” (grading candidates with only two possible tions, several conceptual difficulties with our three main scores)—have seen only a handful of implementations variables—input rules, ballot options, and voting error— in the last few years. Voting experiments can therefore require clarification. shed light on common intuitions or suspicions about the likely effect of relatively novel reforms on voting error. 2.1. Input Rules RCV and other ballot reforms are proposals for funda‐ mentally changing input rules, or the structure that the Our primary explanatory variable for voting error is the ballot imposes on how voters insert their judgments into input rule on the ballot. The Super Tuesday 2020 exper‐ the count. Another issue that may complicate voters’ task, iments randomly assigned three different types of input and lead to more error, is the number of options on the rule and recorded how voters used their ballots with ballot for any given contest. More complicated input rules each of the three: exclusive (or single‐mark), ranking, and and more options on the ballot could both theoretically grading. Respectively, these three input rules were called exacerbate problems of voting error. Observational stud‐ Check, Rank, and Grade within the experiment. ies have difficulty confirming these relationships because Researchers in electoral studies are familiar with the real public elections never offer more than one ballot two types of ballot structure studied by Rae (1967): cat‐ type or more than one list of candidates (or parties) for egorical and ordinal. These correspond to the Check the same contest and the same voters. Our experimen‐ and Rank input rules in the experiments reported here. tal analysis of this question is based on random assign‐ The Check ballot’s input rule is categorical (or exclu‐ ment of different conditions in the two independent vari‐ sive) because it requires the voter to indicate a single ables (input rules and ballot options) to examine their favorite candidate or party to the exclusion of all others. effects on the dependent variable (voting error). We find It presents an all‐or‐nothing choice. The Rank ballot is that, when over 6,000 subjects in four American states ordinal in the sense that it allows a hierarchy of prefer‐ cast votes in a hypothetical election for US President in ence to be indicated across multiple options on the bal‐ March 2020, just prior to the primaries conducted on lot, in order from a first preference to a second prefer‐ “Super Tuesday” in multiple states, both factors had a ence to a third preference, and so on down the list. minor impact on error. More complicated input rules and RCV in the USA, similar to the Single Transferable more plentiful ballot options both raised the likelihood Vote (STV) in Scotland and the Supplemental Vote (SV) that voters would make at least one mistake on their bal‐ in English cities (Lundberg, 2018), is one example of a lots. Yet the increase in minor mistakes did not result in recent reform that substitutes ranking for exclusive input more void (uncountable) ballots. Ballots that allow the rules. RCV is usually called the Alternative Vote (AV) out‐ ranking or grading of candidates offer more opportuni‐ side the USA. Using this latter label, a public referendum ties for political expression and, correspondingly, more in Great Britain in 2011 rejected AV as a replacement for opportunities for mistakes by voters—but not necessar‐ plurality elections for the primary legislative assembly, ily an increase in void votes or disfranchised voters. the House of Commons. RCV (or AV), STV, and SV differ Several challenges for conceptualization of the main in certain respects, but what they have in common is a variables—input rules, ballot options, and voting error— ranking input rule that allows voters to rank more than are addressed in Section 2. Next, we review observa‐ one candidate for the same office. tional and experimental literatures on issues related to Yet the design of voting experiments today should go voting error, in Section 3. Our hypotheses are presented beyond Rae’s binary classification of ballot types, which in Section 4, and details of our experimental design and was based on observed variation in input rules in estab‐ our analytic approach appear in Sections 5 and 6, respec‐ lished democracies in the 1960s. Election reform now tively. Section 7 analyzes our results. involves a wider range of input rules to choose from. For example, the Cumulative Vote uses an input rule 2. Conceptual Framework: Input Rules, Ballot Options, that gives the voter multiple votes to distribute across and Voting Error as many or as few candidates as the voter chooses, pro‐ vided that the ballot’s budget of votes (the maximum Recent theoretical work on election reform has identi‐ number to be distributed in one contest) is not exceeded. fied a dilemma for alternative types of input rules, fea‐ The Approval Vote and the Range Vote (the latter is some‐ turing a potential zero‐sum game between the qualities times called the Evaluative Vote in Europe or the Grade of expression and accessibility (Maloy, 2019, pp. 90–91). Point Average [GPA] system in the USA) allow voters to Do more expressive, and therefore more complicated, grade as many or as few candidates as they choose on input rules inevitably produce more confused voters? a certain numeric scale. Approval, by definition, offers Our primary intention is to examine this proposition only two possible levels of support (“approve” or “disap‐ through experimental treatments on input rules, with prove”), while the GPA family of input rules offers three Politics and Governance, 2021, Volume 9, Issue 2, Pages 306–318 307 or more levels of support. Thus, after the commonly In the analysis below, we observe the crucial distinc‐ used exclusive type of ballot, there are not one but three tion between a “mismarked” and a “void” ballot.