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Results from a 2020 field experiment encouraging voting by mail.

ABSTRACT: The ability to cast a mail ballot can safeguard the franchise. However, because there are often additional procedural protections to ensure that a ballot cast in person counts, voting by mail can also jeopardize people's ability to cast a recorded vote. An experiment carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates both forces. Philadelphia officials randomly sent 46,960 Philadelphia registrants postcards encouraging them to apply to vote by mail in the lead-up to the June 2020 primary election. While the intervention increased the likelihood a registrant cast a mail ballot by 0.4 percentage points (P = 0.017)-or 3%-many of these additional mail ballots counted only because a last-minute policy intervention allowed most mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to count.

SUBMITTER: Hopkins DJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7848624 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Results from a 2020 field experiment encouraging voting by mail.

Hopkins Daniel J DJ Meredith Marc M Chainani Anjali A Olin Nathaniel N Tse Tiffany T

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20210101 4

The ability to cast a mail ballot can safeguard the franchise. However, because there are often additional procedural protections to ensure that a ballot cast in person counts, voting by mail can also jeopardize people's ability to cast a recorded vote. An experiment carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates both forces. Philadelphia officials randomly sent 46,960 Philadelphia registrants postcards encouraging them to apply to vote by mail in the lead-up to the June 2020 primary elect ...[more]

PMID: 33468656

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