The Downstream Effects of Funding Elections: Black Voter Turnout in Georgia

• In Event: Partisanship and Voting Among Black Americans

Abstract

Does election funding in one election have downstream effects for increasing voter access in subsequent elections? In particular, does increased election funding avoid polling place closures, leading to increased turnout among voters of color? U.S. local election officials at the county level make decisions about how many polling locations to open, including election day polling sites, early voting polling sites, and the number of dropboxes in a county. I argue that funding nonpartisan election administration plays a key role in increasing downstream voting turnout and the number of polling places, especially since Shelby v. Holder (2013) no longer required states and localities to submit polling consolidations and changes for preclearance. This article examines the impact of increased election administration funding in counties in Georgia in the January 2021 runoff election for U.S. Senate. The USC Schwarzenegger Institute nonpartisan democracy grants program allocated $1.4 million in funding for opening new polling locations – including early voting locations – in Georgia prior to the November 2020 election. This paper examines the downstream impact of these grants on the next election in 2021. The analysis shows that these philanthropic grants had important downstream effects in the 2021 Georgia runoff. Counties that opened new early polling locations in the November election were more likely to keep those locations open in the 2021 runoff. In a 2SLS model, voter turnout in the 2021 election appears to have been affected by the increased grant funding in 2020 for the counties. In the 2020 election, in a field experiment, some local officials were randomly encouraged to apply for the grant funding to open new polling places and a control group was not. Using this random encouragement in an instrumental variables model to predict the percentage of voters in the November 2020 election in the first equation; and then to predict the percentage of voters in the January 2021 election in the second equation shows increased turnout in the runoff. Analyses are conducted for Black voters, white voters, and Latinx voters as Georgia records voters by race and ethnicity. In the 2020 election, the impact of funding was greatest among Black voters; and I hypothesize this will again be the case in the January 2021 runoff. Results examining the impact of funding elections on polling places and Black voter turnout are robust to the inclusion of other independent variables measuring demographic data, past voter turnout, and other variables. The policy implications for voting rights are that local and state governments can avoid polling place closures by increasing expenditures on local election administration. Counties that close more polling places may be first to close them in Black, Latinx, and Asian American communities. Additional implications are discussed regarding election funding, voter turnout among voters of color, and implications for the possibility of a new voting rights preclearance formula are discussed.

Authors

• Christian R. Grose, University of Southern California

• Ayojide Emmanuel Hospidales