Default | NEWS

8/20/2009

Vote centers may help get out the vote
Rice research examines efforts to increase voter turnout

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

People have been trying to increase voter turnout for decades, using a variety of reforms that would ease the challenges would-be voters face each election. Two Rice political scientists have released their findings that indicate one new concept -- Election Day vote centers (EDVCs) -- actually increases "voter turnout generally, and among infrequent voters in particular."

	BOB STEIN

Working with a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Bob Stein, the Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of Political Science, and former Rice graduate student Greg Vonnahme, now an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, found EDVCs are more effective than previous efforts, like relaxed absentee voting, vote by mail and in-person early voting.

The research, based on polling data from counties in Colorado and Texas, is aimed at understanding voters' feelings about the entire voting process. Stein and Vonnahme looked for evidence that EDVCs could encourage voters where other methods had failed. "The opportunity costs of voting on Election Day (i.e., the benefits forgone by not pursuing a more valued activity) are sufficient to deter many from voting on Election Day," they wrote in the Journal of Politics. Previous efforts to increase turnout have missed their mark, they added. "Simply put, electoral reforms have mainly been used by those who otherwise would have been most likely to vote without them."

EDVCs, Stein and Vonnahme explained, "are nonprecinct-based locations for voting. The sites are fewer in number than precinct-voting stations, centrally located to major population centers (rather than distributed among many residential locations) and rely on countywide voter registration databases accessed electronically at each polling site. Voters in the voting jurisdiction (a county) are provided ballots appropriate to their voter registration address."

Larimer County in northern Colorado dropped its 143 precinct-based polling places in 2003, replacing them with 22 Election Day vote centers. It was the first county in the country to move to EDVCs. Weld County, which is adjacent to Larimer, continued with precinct-based voting.

A new study indicates that Election Day vote centers actually increases "voter turnout generally, and among infrequent voters in particular."

From 1990 through 2000, voter turnout was higher in Weld than Larimer County. "Turnout in Larimer County, however, increased at a faster rate than in Weld County after Larimer County’s adoption of Election Day vote centers in 2003," Stein and Vonnahme noted. The increase in Larimer County came despite the fact that many voters actually had to travel greater distances to vote at the EDVCs.

"(T)he convenience of voting might not directly correspond to the distance between where people live and their polling site," the authors hypothesized. "For example, a person might prefer to vote at a polling location that is two miles from their house but on the way to work rather than a polling site that is only a mile away from their house but in the opposite direction."

In a separate study, Stein and Vonnahme conducted exit polls of 538 voters at 10 vote center locations in Lubbock, Texas, last November. For comparison purposes, they also interviewed 251 voters at six precinct sites in Potter County and 402 voters at five precinct sites in Randall County. "The results," they wrote, "tentatively suggest the EDVCs increase voter turnout, particularly among less engaged voters."

In addition, the Lubbock survey "results also show that EDVCs seem to increase voters’ satisfaction with polling place operations," said Stein and Vonnahme, which may help explain the higher turnout. The exit polls found voters were generally pleased with the length of lines, availability of parking and the helpfulness of poll workers.

The researchers cautioned that the findings are far from conclusive. The areas studied are small and may have unique characteristics, and the studies cover only a short time frame. However, they concluded that EDVCs are the first reform that seems to have led to higher voter turnout overall and, perhaps more importantly, among infrequent voters.