Doubts about ballot secrecy persist and depress voter participation in the U.S.🚫
New experiments suggest private groups can help. 🔥
* A nonpartisan nonprofit sent mail emphasizing ballot secrecy to nonvoters during the 2014 election, 🗳️ resulting in a ~1 percentage point turnout increase among recently registered voters.
* This effect is precisely estimated and robust across different state political contexts. ✅
But wait: 🔍
* The increase was not statistically significant when compared to standard voter mobilization appeals (reminder + encouragement). 🤔
This finding has important implications for understanding how campaign messaging influences elections in the U.S.🃏 and points toward future research directions. 💡
| Non-Governmental Campaign Communication Providing Ballot Secrecy Assurances Increases Turnout: Results from Two Large Scale Experiments was authored by Alan S. Gerber, Gregory Huber, Albert H. Fang and Andrew Gooch. It was published by Cambridge in PSR&M in 2018. |
