From Rights to Votes: The Electoral Mobilization of System-Impacted People

• In Event: Collateral Consequences and Rights

Abstract

Felony disenfranchisement laws have historically prohibited millions of people from voting, with disproportionate impacts on Black and Hispanic groups. While, many states have passed reforms, removing legal barriers for more than 2 million people, these laws are patchwork. Many people may not realize their right to vote, as evidenced by very low registration and voting rates among people with felony convictions. This study employs a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of outreach interventions to increase registration and voting. The research team sent nonpartisan election-related text messages to system-impacted people across five states leading up to the November 2022 election. Receiving text messages increased the probability of new registrations by 1.4 percentage points, driven largely by increases of 4.0 percentage points and 5.2 percentage points for informational messages sent to people in California and Pennsylvania, respectively. Receiving text messages increased the probability of voting by 33.6 percentage points among newly registered voters, with effects mostly concentrated among people 50 years and younger. Although text messaging is a common method of outreach among the general population, it is an impactful intervention to convey nonpartisan information about voting rights to system-impacted constituencies who are often overlooked by traditional outreach efforts.

Authors

• Naomi Sugie, University of California, Los Angeles

• Emily Zhang, University of California, Berkeley

• Iris Zhang, Stanford University

• Daniela Kaiser, University of California, Irvine

• Kyle Winnen, University of California, Irvine