Dear Voter

Goodness, voting mail shenanigans are in the news. I hope to find time to blog about this experiment that has got political scientists at Dartmouth and Stanford in hot water. But for now, a quick post on another technique—this one the fruit of partisan politics, rather than an attempt at knowledge production—designed to affect voting outcomes. Nudges sometimes leverage social norms about what most people do or what most people think people ought to do to make it more likely that individuals so nudged will do that thing, too. Images (click to enlarge) and links after the jump.

Here's a get-out-the-vote nudge that seems to have rankled quite a few Democratic voters:

 

From Twitter, here's a more troubling one from the GOP in Iowa that falsely implies that the public voter rolls will indicate for whom people voted (source: Twitter):

 

Also from Twitter, here's a voter report card, also from the NY dems:

 

From Citizens for a Better Florida, a PAC-funded Electioneering Communications Organization, a pair of flyers that recipients are also describing as "creepy" (H/T commenter "FL Voter"):

Comments

[FL Voter]

Another example, naming names: http://www.saintpetersblog.com/archives/164903

[Observer]

Nice little voting record you have there. Hate to see something happen to it...

[Observer]

It does indicate a major issue - it was one thing when public records were sitting in a moldy courthouse basement, where it actually took some effort to retrieve them, and it's a very different thing when all public records are immediately retrievable on the internet, to anyone who is interested.

Oregon has a web page where you can find out if your Facebook friends have voted (Oregon has vote-by-mail), and bug them if they haven't yet:

https://didtheyvote.org

[FL Voter]

I wonder if we will see Georgia Pacific or other employers including these things with their "voter information" packets for employees?