Publications

Political science has strong theoretical expectations about the conditions in which people vote “correctly,” that is, in a way consistent with their true preferences and all information known, and the extent to which they display what Converse (1964) defined as “constraint,” i.e., the ability of people to make choices that fit together in a clear ideological way. Yet, outside of surveys, we have little evidence about how people actually behave in the voting booth, because voting is a private act.

State election audit systems that provide electronic records of each cast vote (CVRs) offer a novel way to overcome this limitation. We exploit the availability of CVRs in South Carolina and San Francisco, California to conduct novel tests of correct voting and ideological constraint among the mass public. In both jurisdictions, we merge available cfscores to candidates on the ballot in a given election cycle. We then utilize several million individual cast votes in each election to infer voters’ partisan preferences, and then to determine the extent to which people vote for the “correct” (or most ideologically proximate) candidate in non-partisan races (where there is no party signal on the ballot).

We further employ the San Francisco data to study the extent to which voters show constraint. California elections are ideal for this effort because of the large number of ballot initiatives that voters must decide on in any given election. By coding the voter’s partisanship and capturing their choices on initiatives, we can gain unprecedented insight into voting behavior. Our paper will result in substantially improved insight into both whether people vote correctly in “real” elections, and whether they can reach constrained decisions on ballot questions, absent strong partisan signals.

Scholarly work has missed the key reason for the extraordinary levels of political polarization and poor governance in American politics in recent years. Contrary to the appearance that strong party leaders dictate member behavior, we argue that weak party discipline produces polarizing rhetoric in lieu of actionable policy proposals. We attribute this weak discipline to the rising number of safe House districts that play into the hands of extreme primary electorates. First, we provide comprehensive historical evidence of the rise of safe seats in U.S. House districts and show that this trend coincides with the greater divergence of legislators’ preferences not just between but also within parties. Second, we demonstrate that representatives from safer districts-and especially those from the GOP-have more ideologically extreme and divergent preferences across multiple alternative measures. We then use redistricting as a plausible source of exogenous variation in electoral competition and corroborate that seat safety causes ideological extremism. Finally, we explore the potential mechanisms behind this relationship, showing that the more-extreme ideological tendencies in safer seats are likely present due to a combination of more extreme electorates, primary challengers, and donor influence there, which can all undermine legislators’ willingness to support their party agendas.

This paper explores the relationship between election results in 2020 and the passage of election laws that either expanded or restricted (sometimes both) access to the polls in subsequent state legislative sessions. The primary dependent variable is the net valence of laws passed in the wake of the 2020 election, restrictive or expansive. The primary independent variables are the partisan composition of state government, the closeness of the 2020 election, and the interaction of the two.

Although there has been considerable attention to efforts to restrict access to the polls, many states have actually passed laws expanding access. This paper will advance the field by coding the net results of state legislative activity in 2021 and 2022, characterizing the landscape of proposed vs. enacted legislation, and showing the relationship between the two.

One additional topic the paper will address is the degree to which the diffusion of the “big lie” has led to less competitive states to jump on the restrictive bandwagon. That is, we hypothesize that the 2021 legislative sessions were primarily motivated by the immediate reaction to the outcome of the 2020 election, thus leading to a sharp divide in the types of state that passed restrictive or expansive legislation. By 2022, partisan attitudes about election administration were more diffuse, leading to a reduction in the relationship between the valence of legislative actions and the partisan competitiveness and control of the state.

As early voting has become a staple of American elections, empirical studies of its effects have zeroed in on questions related primarily to voter turnout – for example, whether this and other forms of convenience voting increase aggregate turnout (e.g. Burden et al. 2014), and whether such reforms influence the partisan composition of voters (Kaplan and Yuan 2020). Fewer studies, however, have drilled down on the ways in which early voting affects elections themselves.

In this paper, we present two studies that speak to the interaction between early voters and late voters emerging from early voting reforms. First, using a sample from the 2020 CCES, we explore how early and late voters perceive the act of voting early, the benefits and downsides associated with casting an early vote, and the persons who do and do not avail themselves of early voting opportunities. Second, we study the social effects of early voting using an hour-long experiment (conducted in summer 2021) that combined a DPTE-style campaign experience with a small-group deliberation in which information from the campaign was shared among participants.

In the hyperfederalized American electoral system, in which voting equipment can vary by county, a key question is whether this variation is related to inequalities in residual voting across demographic groups .A persistent concern regarding voting equipment is that some types are more reliable than others incorrectly recording the choices voters make via ballots. A related concern is that county election jurisdictions with fewer financial resources may have lower quality voting equipment, and these areas tend to be more populated by poor individuals and racial minorities. Two questions are assessed in this paper: (1) Are more racially diverse and lower income counties less likely to have quality voting equipment, and (2) does lower quality voting equipment in such counties lead to a higher rate of residual voting among these groups relative to non-Hispanic whites and the middle class and affluent. To evaluate these questions, this study merges American nationwide county-level data on polling place equipment from Verified Voting from 2016 with county-level vote count and turnout data from the Election Assistance Commission and the Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Elections. The polling place equipment examined includes paper ballots, optical scan ballots, and digital recording electronic (DRE) voting. Multivariate regression analyses, with residual voting as the dependent variable, and polling place equipment and county demographic variables as key independent variables, is used to assess the outcomes of interest. Ultimately, this study shows that the U.S. is a mixture of equality and inequality when it comes to election machines and residual voting across difference demographic groups.

Poll workers operate on the front lines of American elections. They are the individuals most directly responsible for confirming voter eligibility and deciding whether to issue prospective voters standard or provisional ballots. Using individual level demographic data on poll workers and data on the racial and ethnic makeup of precincts in the city of Chicago, this paper examines the relationship between descriptive representation amongst poll workers, poll workers’ connection to the neighborhood where their assigned precinct is located, and the number of provisional ballots cast during the 2018 midterm elections. While I find no significant effects of descriptive representation for Black and Hispanic / Latinx residents, there is some evidence suggesting that the number of White poll workers in a precinct moderate provisional voting in precincts with higher Hispanic / Latinx populations. I also find no significant relationship between poll workers’ connection to their neighborhood and provisional voting rates. Practical data limitations and the demographic context of the city of Chicago may explain these limited substantive findings.

Electoral reforms have been cast into the forefront of political discussions as states con-template how best to provide access to voting while limiting the spread of CoVid-19. Adding fuel to the fire, these laws being heavily challenged on the grounds of creating partisan ad-vantages or inducing fraud. While a wealth of scholarship has investigated whether enactment of certain electoral reforms advantage one party’s supporters over another, less attention has been paid to how the administration of these reforms affect party supporters, and particularly to whether these administrative decisions may be intentional. Further, what electoral administration-focused research does exist mostly concentrates on state/county wide votes, racial and ethnic groups, or socioeconomic classes. To contribute to the literature and ongoing dialogue over electoral reforms, this study investigates 1) whether areas with more young people get more or less voting sites for early voting and same-day registration, and 2) if so, if there a partisan effort behind any differences. Young people often lack political resources and experience while tending to vote Democrat, suggesting they might be influenced by electoral reforms (particularly same-day registration) and their administration while also a potential tar-get of partisan electoral engineering. Using a series of different model specifications and data covering presidential and midterm elections from 2012-2018, results indicate that counties with higher percentages of young people receive less voting sites for early voting, and this is especially true in states with same-day registration. Further analyses suggests elected and appointed official partisanship plays a role. Though both parties provide less sites to young voters, Republicans consistently provide less than Democrats.

Many states allow some form of non-traditional precinct voting, from voting early in-person to various forms of mail-assisted balloting. Research on how these voting reforms impact voter participation has produced a wide range of mixed findings. We review this literature and describe how the research designs and measures used by past studies may have biased their results. We then offer a new theoretical approach for testing the relationship between convenience voting reforms and voter turnout that addresses some of the pitfalls in previous measurements of reforms. We also identify best practices for how to implement our new measures using a difference-in-difference research strategy that is robust to many confounding factors and describe a potential sustainable database for undertaking this research over time.

Absentee ballots preserve the ability of voters to participate in elections in the event they are unable to vote in person. Texas has used absentee voting for over 95 years, however the law requires an excuse must be given for why an accommodation is necessary. Using a survey experiment from a statewide survey, I breakdown how the threat of contracting a disease is likely to alter voter behavior. The results show that population density and recognition of a public health threat provide additional marginal effects beyond difference of opinion by party. When all voters face a public health crisis, like the coronavirus pandemic, voters are more likely to consider voter convenience in their interest for fair and legitimate elections.

Are voters as polarized as political leaders when it comes to their preferences about how to cast their ballots in November 2020 and their policy positions on how elections should be run in light of the COVID-19 outbreak? Prior research has shown little party divide on voting by mail, with nearly equal percentages of voters in both parties choosing to vote this way where it is an option. Has a divide opened up this year in how voters aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties prefer to cast a ballot?

We address these questions with two nationally diverse, online surveys fielded from April 8-10 and June 11-13, of 5,612 and 5,818 eligible voters respectively, with an embedded experiment providing treated respondents with scientific projections about the COVID-19outbreak. We find a nearly ten-percentage point difference between Democrats and Republicans in their preference for voting by mail in April which has doubled in size to nearly twenty-percentage points during the pandemic. We also find that support for national legislation requiring states to offer no-excuse absentee ballots has emerged as an increasingly polarized issue.