Early Voting, Simultaneity and Political Discussion

• In Event: The Effects of News and Ads on Participation

Abstract

As early voting has become a staple of American elections, empirical studies of its effects have zeroed in on questions related primarily to voter turnout – for example, whether this and other forms of convenience voting increase aggregate turnout (e.g. Burden et al. 2014), and whether such reforms influence the partisan composition of voters (Kaplan and Yuan 2020). Fewer studies, however, have drilled down on the ways in which early voting affects elections themselves.


Among normative treatments of the issue, Thompson (2004) argues that the democratic principle of simultaneity demands a rejection of early voting, both because that principle guarantees election outcomes reflecting a single collective will, and because fairness demands that voters have equal information. An extreme version of these concerns is that an election outcome might hinge on information differences between early voters and Election Day voters. Evidence consistent with this concern can be found in experimental work by Battaglini et al. (2007), and in empirical work by Meredith and Malhotra (2011), who find differences in voting patterns between early voters and Election Day voters. Could pivotal information that comes to light only late in a campaign theoretically be, at least for some voters, crucial to voting “correctly” (Lau and Redlawsk 1997)? Evidence consistent with this comes from media studies support this: Dunaway and Stein (2013) find evidence that early voting significantly affects the volume and nature of campaign coverage.



Arguably a more important place to look for connections between early voting and information flows, however, is in interpersonal discussion networks. Although most voters make vote choice decisions before the campaign begins in earnest (Campbell et al. 1960), “campaign deciders” are more volatile (Fournier et al. 2004), and potentially susceptible not only to campaign events, but to information conveyed through social networks. Early voting, moreover, adds a dimension to the social provision of information: a temporal dynamic alongside traditional dimensions such as disagreement and expertise. Specifically, early voting creates a division in the electorate—and in discussion networks—between voters who have already cast a ballot and those who have some probability of voting between a given point in time and Election Day. Grosser and Schram (2007), for example, find that the turnout decisions of late voters can be influenced by information about early voters. This distinction may not be apparent in all networks (if early voters do not advertise the fact that they have voted), but when the distinction is present, we argue that the flow of information can be influenced in a variety of ways, including by reshaping the nature of discussion itself.



In this paper, we present two studies that speak to the interaction between early voters and late voters emerging from early voting reforms. First, using a sample from the 2020 CCES, we explore how early and late voters perceive the act of voting early, the benefits and downsides associated with casting an early vote, and the persons who do and do not avail themselves of early voting opportunities. Second, we study the social effects of early voting using an hour long experiment (conducted in summer 2021) that combined a DPTE-style campaign experience with a small-group deliberation in which information from the campaign was shared among participants.

Authors

• Todd Makse, Florida International University

• Anand Edward Sokhey, University of Colorado, Boulder

• Drew Seib