Barriers to Voting and Future Electoral Participation

You’re invited to join Maxwell Palmer, Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston University, for an American Politics Speaker Series discussion sponsored by the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and the Center for American Political Studies.

Registration is encouraged but not required. This event series will not be recorded.

This event is open to Harvard ID holders only. Lunch will be served.

Abstract

While voting by mail offers benefits to many voters, it also introduces potential new challenges and barriers, including that ballots must be validated by election administrators and may be rejected. In this project we analyze the demographics of voters whose mail ballots are rejected for non-matching signatures in Washington and Colorado. We find that new voters, younger voters, and voters of color are more likely to have their ballots rejected for a non-matching signature, but that more than half of these rejections are ultimately cured by the voter. We then show that the experience of having a ballot rejected in one election, even if cured, reduces the voter’s likelihood of voting in a subsequent election.

About the Speaker

Maxwell Palmer is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston University and a Faculty Fellow at the Initiative on Cities. He studies American political institutions, including Congress, electoral institutions, and local political institutions, with a focus on how institutional arrangements and rules impact representation and policy outcomes. His work has been published in journals including the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, and Political Analysis. He is the co-author of Neighborhood Defenders: Participatory Politics and America’s Housing Crisis (with Katherine Levine Einstein and David Glick).

Event Details