Mail-in voting doesn’t give either political party an edge, study says
As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the United States, many states looked to mail-in voting to allow people to cast their ballots without risking exposure to the virus.
But views on mail-in ballots have largely broken down by party lines. President Donald Trump has threatened swing states that expanded vote-by-mail efforts ahead of the General Election in November, saying without evidence that mail-in voting increases voter fraud.
A new study by Stanford University political scientists found that vote-by-mail does not change turnout for political parties or the share of votes Republicans and Democrats would win in the election, at least, they say, if this was a normal year.
“In response to COVID-19, many scholars and policy makers are urging the United States to expand voting-by-mail programs to safeguard the electoral process, but there are concerns that such a policy could favor one party over the other,” the researchers said.
If every voter was mailed a ballot, the Stanford group said, it would not change turnout or who won the election.
“These conclusions support the conventional wisdom of election administration experts and contradict many popular claims in the media. Our results imply that the partisan outcomes of vote-by-mail elections closely resemble in-person elections, at least in normal times,” they say.
Democratic organizations have been trying to promote vote-by-mail for November’s General Elections, the Associated Press reports. But Republicans are running a well-funded campaign to “undermine public confidence in mail-in voting,” according to the AP.
The Stanford researchers published the results of their study Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
The researchers said they came to the conclusion after looking at election data from 1996 to 2018 on the three states “that implemented universal vote-by-mail in a staggered fashion across counties.”
The study had three primary takeaways: “We find that 1) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to affect either party’s share of turnout, 2) universal vote-by-mail does not appear to increase either party’s vote share, and 3) universal vote-by-mail modestly increases overall average turnout rates, in line with previous estimates.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 1:19 PM with the headline "Mail-in voting doesn’t give either political party an edge, study says."
