Election-Campaign Law

Guest Column: Michael Hamner (University of Maryland) on EDR and Turnout

By Paul Gronke

The back and forth last week between me, Curt Gans, and Barry Burden about early voting and turnout on Rick Hasen’s election law listserv prompted this contribution from Michael Hanmer of the University of Maryland. He’s submitted it to election updates as a guest column:

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I read with interest the exchange about the turnout effects of voting by mail, early voting, and election day registration on the election law listserv. In the emails, Professor Burden notes that election day registration has the largest and most consistently positive impact on turnout.

It just so happens that I have a forthcoming book that examines why most election reforms, even election day registration, have relatively modest effects on turnout.

The most notable recent essay on election day registration is a report by Demos. It’s an excellent first cut, but I have a few suggestions to improve it.

I took a look at the Demos document and they take state turnout (using Michael McDonald’s data) for ID, IA, ME, MN, MT, WI, WY, and NC compared to the rest of the states, finding a 7 point difference in the favor of the EDR states. I didn’t check their calculation and assume it is correct but I have two concerns with what they have done.

First, this sort of analysis ignores the fact that these states, for the most part, already had high turnout rates before they adopted EDR. In my forthcoming book (hopefully next month), using a difference in difference approach I estimate that EDR had about a 4.5 point effect in MN and WI that was durable but find no real increase in the states that adopted EDR to avoid the NVRA (ID, NH, and WY). I use individual level CPS data so I could not examine IA and MT as the data were not available when I was writing.

Second, if one takes the approach Demos does then I think ND should be included and NC excluded as NC only has EDR during the early voting period; Demos acknowledges the details of the NC law but treats it the same as EDR in the other states.

Let me repeat that I agree with Demos and Burden: EDR does have a positive impact on turnout.  We just want to make sure we know as precisely as possible what that impact is.

Here is the citation to my forthcoming book: Hanmer, Michael J. 2009. Discount Voting: Voter Registration Reforms and Their Effects. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Full post as published by Election Updates on July 27, 2009 (boomark / email).