Christian Grose - (ZOOM ONLY) Enhancing Democracy: Does Funding Elections and Opening Polling Places Cause Higher Voter Turnout?

Date
-
Location
Zoom
Abstract

Does increasing election funding lead to increases in the number or polling places and increased voter turnout? In the U.S., local election officials make decisions about how many polling locations to open. These administrative decisions can impact voters and the ease of access to the polls. I theorize that administrative budgets provide for the ability for government officials to engage in discretionary activities to open more polling places, and this has a downstream effect of increasing turnout. Funding of nonpartisan election administration plays a key role in increasing voter access. This article examines the impact of increased election administration funding in counties in former Section 5 Voting Rights Act states, which are counties mostly in the South with histories of racial discrimination. A field experiment is conducted in which local election officials were randomly encouraged to apply for nonpartisan philanthropic funding from the USC Schwarzenegger Institute; and a control group of local election officials were not. All local election officials who applied received nonpartisan grants to open early voting polling locations, open election day polling locations, and hire additional poll workers. In total, about $2.5 million in funding to increase voter access was given to counties who were randomly encouraged and applied for the philanthropic nonpartisan funding for elections. Results of the field experiment show that the randomized encouragement led to a 3.9%-point increase in local officials applying for the funding compared to control group officials. In a 2SLS model, counties that applied for and received grant funding had more than a 1%-point increase in voter turnout in the 2020 general election for president compared to counties that did not receive funding. I also conduct correlational analyses of the Chan-Zuckerberg election funding; and examine election funding in the 2021 Georgia U.S. Senate runoff as additional tests. Additional work considers the “never takers” who were encouraged to apply but did not, and how this never taking is associated with race and ethnicity in the county. The policy implications for voting rights, voter turnout, and bureaucracy are discussed. I conclude that increasing the budget for local election administration leads to increased voter access, and that local election administrators can be encouraged to seek additional funding for elections. 

Biography

Christian Grose is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Southern California. He is the Academic Director of the USC Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy. He served as the Director of the Political Science and International Relations Ph.D. program in USC Dornsife College from 2015-18.

He is the author of more than 30 articles and chapters about American politics, public policy; legislative politics; executive politics; race and ethnicity; and political representation; including in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science; the Journal of Politics; the British Journal of Political Science; Political Research Quarterly; and Legislative Studies Quarterly. His book Congress in Black and White (Cambridge University Press) won the best book on race and politics award from the American Political Science Association. His research has been funded by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, and the MIT Election Data Science Center. Grose’s research has been profiled in the Washington Post, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and other media outlets.

Grose directs USC’s Fair Maps and Political Reform Lab, where researchers, students, and policy practitioners work together to generate new ideas to reform American democracy. He is also an expert in political reforms and voting rights, including the top-two primary and the independent redistricting commission. His research often uses field and survey experimental techniques to answer questions about public policy, political institutions, and elite behavior. Some of this research involves partnerships with practitioners and the community.

In 2020, Dr. Grose was named the Herman Brown Distinguished Scholar, an award given annually to a U.S. political scientist. He previously received the CQ Press award for the best paper on legislative studies presented at the American Political Science Association meeting. He is also a previous recipient of the Carl Albert award for the best dissertation in legislative politics from the American Political Science Association.

Grose has experience conducting innovative teaching and scholarship via both virtual online and in-person platforms.
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