Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout

Voting models assume that voting costs impact turnout. As turnout declined across advanced democracies, governments enacted reforms designed to reduce costs in order to increase participation. Internet voting, used in elections across a dozen countries, promises to reduce voting costs dramatically....

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:British journal of political science 2020-07, Vol.50 (3), p.1155-1167
Main Authors: Goodman, Nicole, Stokes, Leah C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absentee voting
Costs
Democracy
Design
Election results
Electoral reform
Internet
Local elections
Local government
Online voting
Participation
Political representation
Political science
Reforms
Registration
Towns
Voter behavior
Voter turnout
Voters
Voting
Voting machines
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Summary:Voting models assume that voting costs impact turnout. As turnout declined across advanced democracies, governments enacted reforms designed to reduce costs in order to increase participation. Internet voting, used in elections across a dozen countries, promises to reduce voting costs dramatically. Yet identifying its effect on turnout has proven difficult. In this article, we use original panel data of local elections in Ontario, Canada and fixed effects estimators to estimate internet voting’s effect. The results show internet voting can increase turnout by 3.5 percentage points, with larger increases when vote by mail (VBM) is not yet adopted, and greater use when registration is not required. Our estimates suggest that internet voting is unlikely to solve the low turnout crisis, and imply that cost arguments do not fully account for recent turnout declines.
ISSN:0007-1234
1469-2112
DOI:10.1017/S0007123417000849