Local Election Officials Show Discrimination in Voter Information

Voting and Elections @APSR 2 datasets Dataverse

Do local election administrators provide different information based on voters' ethnicity? We used field experiments contacting over 7,000 officials across 48 U.S. states.

Methodology: Email-based contact using aliases to measure response rates and quality of voting info provided

Key Findings:

Latino-alias emails received significantly fewer responses than non-Latino white aliases (p < .01)
Responses from officials sent to Latino aliases were lower in quality regarding voter information

This suggests potential discrimination impacts access for minority voters under current ID laws. Our findings highlight systematic bias in bureaucratic service provision.

Article card for article: What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials

What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials was authored by Ariel R. White, Noah L. Nathan and Julie K. Faller. It was published by Cambridge in APSR in 2015.