Jake Grumbach and co-authors Adam Bonica, Charlotte Hill, and Hakeem Jefferson recently published their article “All-mail voting in Colorado increases turnout and reduces turnout inequality” in Electoral Studies. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 election, all-mail voting has been brought to the center of American attention and has garnered an extraordinary amount of debate. In order to better understand the effects of this contested electoral strategy, the article utilizes data from Colorado’s 2014 election, in which the state first implemented an all-mail voting system. They find “a positive overall turnout effect of approximately 8 percentage points—translating into an additional 900,000 ballots being cast between 2014 and 2018.” They also find that all-mail voting not only increases turnout among all voters, but that these effects “are significantly larger among lower-propensity voting groups, such as young people, blue-collar workers, voters with less educational attainment, and voters of color.” These findings point not only to the utility of all-mail voting during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, but its potential to increase voter turnout in all elections going forward. Although the broad implementation of all-mail voting faces deep political challenges, they conclude that “All-mail voting is not only safer than in-person voting during a global pandemic but also better for democratic representation, with all age, income, race, occupational, and education groups benefiting from its introduction. We believe Colorado should serve as a model for states adopting or expanding mail voting.”
Read the full journal article here.
