The Impact of the Pandemic on the Administration of the 2020 Election

• In Event: Election Administration: Impact of Voting Rules in the States

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on how citizens voted in the 2020 election. States responded to the pandemic by implementing no-excuse absentee voting, proactively mailing ballots to all registered voters, increasing the number of days for early voting, or reducing the number of locations for in-person Election Day voting. Changes in voting policies, and ensuing court challenges, created new opportunities for participation, sowed confusion, influenced voter turnout, and affected how many feel about the legitimacy of the election. Given the significance of the changes, and the debates state governments are likely to hold over whether to make them permanent, it is important to understand the forces that fostered them. Using a new dataset, we assess the impact voter partisanship, control over state government, election procedures in place prior to the pandemic, and other state-level factors had on the voting procedures a state put in place. We hypothesize that Democratic control, a Democratic-leaning electorate, a high level of citizen confidence in their state’s electoral institutions, and a tradition of electoral innovation, resulted in policymakers making it easier to vote.

Authors

• Paul S. Herrnson, University of Connecticut

• Michael J. Hanmer, University of Maryland, College Park