By Malen Cuturic ‘23 (exp.), EVIC Data Science Research Assistant and Paul Gronke, EVIC Director
Among the historic and unprecedented features of the November 2020 election was an enormous shift in the rate of voting by mail, from 21% in 2016 to 46% in 2020. As Nate Persily and Charles Stewart note, part of the “miracle” of 2020 was that local election administrators managed to adapt so rapidly to the demand for alternatives to in-person voting in the face of a global pandemic.
At the time, there were widespread concerns that the rapid increase in voting by mail at home could end up disenfranchising an inordinate number of voters because of inexperience — among elections officials, their staffs, and voters themselves. The experiences of states in the Spring primaries were a wake-up call to officials. More than 550,000 mail ballots were rejected by 30 states during the spring primaries, an NPR study showed, 75% more than the total rejected by all states in the 2016 general election.
The reasons for rejections in the primaries were many: ballots were transmitted too late (as in the case of New York City, which rejected a shocking 21% of all mail ballots). Other common reasons, according to the NPR analysis, were non-matching or missing signatures. High levels of rejections raise equity issues as well — election scientists have shown that newer voters, younger voters, and voters of color are more likely to have their ballots rejected for signature problems.
We now know that the educational efforts of elections officials and their civil society partners helped avoid these potential issues. The mail ballot rejection rates in 2020 were no different than in 2016, reported in the 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (Footnote 19 on page 13 states: “The comparisons were statistically insignificant at p > 0.05.”).
Nonetheless, no voter should have their ballot rejected for an easily avoidable or easily “cured” reason such as a non-matching signature. The release of the EAVS sparked a recent Twitter exchange on precisely this issue, from Marc Elias, an election lawyer who has been advocating for improvements in vote by mail (VBM) processes and Pam Fessler, a widely respected (and sadly recently retired) NPR journalist with decades of experience covering election administration.
The exchange set our election science antennae quivering! As MIT Election Lab’s Jack Williams points out in a recent Medium Post, the EAVS has to be used carefully.
In the exchange above, state and national totals are lumped together in ways that Willams warns against.
Along with the absentee ballot rejection rates, we also want to know the absentee ballot usage rates. While no voter should be wrongly disenfranchised, it is important to know how many voters overall are impacted.
The post encourages readers to assume that the failed signature rate nationwide (32.8%) is the same as the failed signature rate in each state. They are almost certainly not the same.
A deeper dive into the EAVS data, shown in the table below, reveals a much more complicated story.
It turns out that the top five states in terms of absentee ballot rejections vary enormously on the portion of their all ballots cast by mail, from a high of 34.9% in New Mexico to a low of 7% in Arkansas. And there is a lot of variation as well in the reported reasons for these rejections. We have two observations.
Observation 1: What’s going on, New Mexico? New Mexico has by far the highest VBM rate among the five states with the highest absentee ballot rejection rates and the highest absentee ballot usage rate. 1.8% of all ballots in New Mexico were rejected, and we know nothing about why they were rejected (New Mexico’s responses to EAVS questions C4b-C4r are all “NA”).
Observation 2: This is about more than just signature verification and cure processes. The reasons for ballot rejections in the other four states are not primarily signature mis-matches. There were a variety of issues in these states: late ballots, duplicate ballots, and lack of ballot applications.
This stuff is complicated!
When addressing the ballot rejection rates in Illinois, New York, Mississippi, and Arkansas, we have to to look beyond the signature system to things like absentee ballot designs and educational efforts about U.S. Postal Service delivery times.
The experts in election administration — state and local election officials — know this and are working hard to improve their processes and procedures. The rest of us need to keep a close eye on these changes, and tools like the EAVS are invaluable ways to monitor change and improvement. Let’s just make sure we do so clearly and accurately.
By Malen Cuturic ‘23 (exp.), EVIC Data Science Research Assistant and Paul Gronke, EVIC Director
Among the historic and unprecedented features of the November 2020 election was an enormous shift in the rate of voting by mail, from 21% in 2016 to 46% in 2020. As Nate Persily and Charles Stewart note, part of the “miracle” of 2020 was that local election administrators managed to adapt so rapidly to the demand for alternatives to in-person voting in the face of a global pandemic.
At the time, there were widespread concerns that the rapid increase in voting by mail at home could end up disenfranchising an inordinate number of voters because of inexperience — among elections officials, their staffs, and voters themselves. The experiences of states in the Spring primaries were a wake-up call to officials. More than 550,000 mail ballots were rejected by 30 states during the spring primaries, an NPR study showed, 75% more than the total rejected by all states in the 2016 general election.
The reasons for rejections in the primaries were many: ballots were transmitted too late (as in the case of New York City, which rejected a shocking 21% of all mail ballots). Other common reasons, according to the NPR analysis, were non-matching or missing signatures. High levels of rejections raise equity issues as well — election scientists have shown that newer voters, younger voters, and voters of color are more likely to have their ballots rejected for signature problems.
We now know that the educational efforts of elections officials and their civil society partners helped avoid these potential issues. The mail ballot rejection rates in 2020 were no different than in 2016, reported in the 2020 Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (Footnote 19 on page 13 states: “The comparisons were statistically insignificant at p > 0.05.”).
Nonetheless, no voter should have their ballot rejected for an easily avoidable or easily “cured” reason such as a non-matching signature. The release of the EAVS sparked a recent Twitter exchange on precisely this issue, from Marc Elias, an election lawyer who has been advocating for improvements in vote by mail (VBM) processes and Pam Fessler, a widely respected (and sadly recently retired) NPR journalist with decades of experience covering election administration.
The exchange set our election science antennae quivering! As MIT Election Lab’s Jack Williams points out in a recent Medium Post, the EAVS has to be used carefully.
In the exchange above, state and national totals are lumped together in ways that Willams warns against.
A deeper dive into the EAVS data, shown in the table below, reveals a much more complicated story.
It turns out that the top five states in terms of absentee ballot rejections vary enormously on the portion of their all ballots cast by mail, from a high of 34.9% in New Mexico to a low of 7% in Arkansas. And there is a lot of variation as well in the reported reasons for these rejections. We have two observations.
Observation 1: What’s going on, New Mexico? New Mexico has by far the highest VBM rate among the five states with the highest absentee ballot rejection rates and the highest absentee ballot usage rate. 1.8% of all ballots in New Mexico were rejected, and we know nothing about why they were rejected (New Mexico’s responses to EAVS questions C4b-C4r are all “NA”).
Observation 2: This is about more than just signature verification and cure processes. The reasons for ballot rejections in the other four states are not primarily signature mis-matches. There were a variety of issues in these states: late ballots, duplicate ballots, and lack of ballot applications.
This stuff is complicated!
When addressing the ballot rejection rates in Illinois, New York, Mississippi, and Arkansas, we have to to look beyond the signature system to things like absentee ballot designs and educational efforts about U.S. Postal Service delivery times.
The experts in election administration — state and local election officials — know this and are working hard to improve their processes and procedures. The rest of us need to keep a close eye on these changes, and tools like the EAVS are invaluable ways to monitor change and improvement. Let’s just make sure we do so clearly and accurately.