Early voting has become one of the most contentious issues in election law. At present 39 states permit voters to cast a ballot before Election Day, sometimes as early as 45 days beforehand. Proponents argue that early voting periods increase voter turnout and thus promote democracy. Critics contend early voting increases election costs and leads voters to cast ballots before they have all the relevant information about the candidates.
Like virtually everything else in our politics today, the debate has given rise to an intense partisan and ideological divide. Democrats have pushed to expand early voting periods whereas Republicans have generally opposed such proposals. Wisconsin, in particular, is a flashpoint in the debate over early voting. In December the outgoing Republican legislature cut the state’s early voting period from 6 weeks down to 14 days, setting off a bitter public controversy. Earlier this month a federal judge blocked the reduction from going into effect.
For all the controversy it generates, does early voting actually increase turnout?
The answer is no. In an excellent new analysis of the issue on FiveThirtyEight, Nathaniel Rakich points out that academic and government studies of early voting have consistently found that it “doesn’t increase turnout — it just shifts when existing voters cast their ballots.” In fact, if anything, the evidence suggests that early voting drives down turnout. As Rakich explains:
“a more recent study by political scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison discovered that, when not accompanied by other reforms, early voting actually leads to lower turnout — perhaps because the social and campaign-driven pressure to vote is not as focused as it is when voting must all occur on a single day. Finally, the Government Accountability Office reviewed 20 early-voting studies in 2016 and found that most of them said that early in-person voting has either an insignificant or negative impact on turnout.”
Notwithstanding the turnout data, there is no doubt that voters appreciate the convenience of casting an early ballot. In the 2018 midterm elections an all-time record of 36 million people voted early (including me). But as Rakich argues, we should not oversell the benefits of early voting periods. The evidence indicates that they are modest at best.
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