Del 0 - Voting, Elections, and the Political Process

Resilient Voter

Stressful Polling Places and Voting Behavior

Häftad, Engelska, 2019

AvShauna Reilly,Stacy G. Ulbig,USA) Reilly, Shauna (Northern Kentucky University

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The Resilient Voter: Stressful Polling Places and Voting Behavior provides a new perspective on the role voting barriers play, demonstrating that they not only discourage participation but also affect the quality of votes cast. Offering an interesting and unique approach to the study of voting barriers, Shauna Reilly and Stacy G. Ulbig investigate the possibility that complicated ballot language, provisional voting, and long polling place lines cause some voters to cast ballots in a manner contradictory to their preferences.Building on arguments that stressful polling place conditions subject citizens to stress that can prevent them from casting complete ballots or even choosing to vote at all, the authors ask whether those who endure polling place frustrations and persevere to cast a ballot might become so stressed by their experience that they are unable to mark their ballots in a manner consistent with their standing policy preferences. Using a creative experimental design, the authors examine the ways in which complex ballot language, registration difficulties, and long polling place lines affect voters’ stress levels, and how such anxieties translate into the willingness to cast a complete ballot and the ability to vote in a manner conforming to previously expressed preferences.The authors demonstrate that even though most voters prove remarkably resilient in the face of some potentially stressful polling place barriers, they are not immune to all polling place conditions. Further, they illustrate that some segments of the electorate tend to be more vulnerable to polling place stressors than others and illustrate the ways in which the compound effects of multiple barriers can exert an even wider impact.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2019-10-28
Mått151 x 222 x 12 mm
Vikt308 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieVoting, Elections, and the Political Process
Antal sidor192
FörlagBloomsbury Publishing Plc
ISBN9781498533546

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Chapter 1: Voting Barriers: The Obstacle Course of Electoral ParticipationChapter 2: Sweating the Vote: Polling Place Stress as a Voting BarrierChapter 3: Studying Polling Place Stress: An Experimental ApproachChapter 4: Can You Read Me? Ballot Access Complexity and Voter BehaviorChapter 5: Does a Placebo Ballot Lead to a Voting Headache? Provisional Ballots and Voter BehaviorChapter 6: The Waiting is the Hardest Part? Polling Place Wait Times and Voter BehaviorChapter 7: Are the Barriers Higher for Some Voters? The Conditional Effects of Polling Place StressorsChapter 8: Dealing with Polling Place Stressors: Conclusions and ImplicationsAppendix A: Subject RecruitmentAppendix B: Pre-Test SurveyAppendix C: Post-Test, Mock Election BallotAppendix D: Measures, Coding, and Distribution of ResponsesBibliography

Reilly (Northern Kentucky Univ.) and Ulbig (Sam Houston State) hypothesize that stress introduced into the voting process can have negative consequences for voters, causing some to decline to complete their ballots or to vote in ways inconsistent with their true policy preferences. Compelling introductions to each chapter pull from recent events covered in the news media and in previous research. The new contribution is data from a mock election experiment conducted at a large undergraduate university, with participants randomly assigned to having to wait to cast their ballots or being challenged at the polling place and directed to complete a provisional ballot. Prior to voting, participants completed a survey indicating their preferences on various issues; those issues were then incorporated into constitutional amendment ballot items on marijuana, abortion, and same-sex marriage. The estimated effect sizes are small and rarely statistically significant. Provisional ballots and long, arbitrary, and unexplained wait times do not seem to make voters more stressed or less able to express their preferences at the polls (at least in this one experiment). Further research is needed, but if the findings hold, this is good news for those who face adversity at the polls.Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students through faculty.