voteathomedev, Author at National Vote at Home Institute

A Deep Dive into Absentee Ballot Rejection in the 2020 General Election

The November 2020 general election saw a surge of mail-in/absentee voting, mainly in response to safety concerns surrounding voting in-person during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, the overall total of mail ballots cast went from 28.8 million in 2016 to 66.4 million in 2020, a whopping 131 percent increase. With it likely that mail-in voting will continue to be prevalent, it is important to examine the nuances of the data more deeply, in order to improve the process for voters and election administrators alike. Today, we hone in on one particular facet of mail voting during the 2020 general election, absentee ballot rejection.

In this exploration, we see that absentee/mail-ballot rejection rates dropped significantly in 2020 compared to 2016, dropping the most in states that had previously erected high barriers to the use of mail ballots. Pre-processing laws and deadlines for the receipt of mail ballots didn’t seem to have much effect on rejection rates. Policy choices that did seem to matter were requiring multiple forms of identification with a returned ballot, which significantly increased rejection rates, and allowing ballots with administrative deficiencies to be “cured,” which significantly decreased rejection rates.

Rep. Hoyle Introduces Vote at Home Act to Improve Americans’ Access to the Ballot Box

Rep Hoyle — Representative Val Hoyle introduced the Vote at Home Act to provide a new path forward on voting that makes elections more accessible, more secure, and more affordable. Senator Ron Wyden also intends to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.

Conversely, the Vote at Home Act expands vote by mail initiatives which several states, including Oregon, have found successfully increases voter participation. This was also the case nationally in 2020, when despite a global pandemic, the general election had record high turnout as a result of more vote by mail options. Vote by mail also lowers the cost of holding elections. For example, after the state of Oregon adopted vote by mail, the cost of administering an election dropped nearly 30 percent.

The Vote at Home Act is endorsed by the National Vote at Home Institute, Stand Up America, End Citizens United/Let America Vote Action Fund, and the Institute for Responsive Government Action.

White House Wants Mail Ballots to Arrive By Election Day, States Rush to Toe the Line

Bolts — The Kansas legislature in 2017 passed a law to let elections officials count mail ballots that arrived after Election Day, for up to three extra days, so long as the ballots were postmarked before polls closed. Kansas politicos joined other states with such a policy in calling this a “grace period.” Fast forward to this year: politicians nationwide can’t stand grace periods.

Beyond their acute concerns over grace-period bans, voting rights advocates are wary of how these changes fit into broader restrictions on voter access. Barbara Smith-Warner, was one of several voting experts who told Bolts that grace periods are one battle in the war to eliminate vote-by-mail altogether.

“You can cover it in nice language—We want to count the votes sooner, so they should be received sooner—but it’s a good way to kill two birds with one stone,” she said. “You weaken and decrease voting at home with mail ballots, and you lay the groundwork for going back to the fantasy, 1950s idea of everyone only voting on one day with paper ballots.”

How will USPS Changes Impact Vote at Home?

National Vote at Home Institute — The United States Postal Service has been the bedrock service of much of American history. It predates the constitution, and has helped our country to establish itself, grow and thrive for more than 200 years. Since the passage by Congress of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, the USPS has functioned independently of the federal government, and is completely self-funding, receiving no tax revenue. The guarantee of universal postal delivery at a single price is a large part of the faith and trust that the American people put in their postal service, and why it has helped voting by mail to thrive since it first began as absentee voting during the Civil War.

The threat to take over the USPS and bring it under the management of the Commerce Department puts many services that we take for granted at risk, from delivering vital medication to delivering a ballot. We’ve already seen attacks on the USPS, and removing its independence poses serious questions.

The most obvious is the threat of privatizing the USPS, selling off the most profitable routes while putting universal service in peril. Next is the potential politicization of the Postal Service. The current administration demonstrates on a daily basis their enthusiasm for seeking revenge on political opponents. It is not a stretch to envision bans on mailing items they don’t like, or differing postal rates for friends vs. enemies.

Both of those risks combine to threaten the future of Vote at Home, also known as vote by mail or absentee voting. In the 2024 election, a third of all voters used mail ballots to make their voice heard. They Vote at Home because it’s convenient, delivering their ballot directly to them, so they don’t have to worry about child care or work schedules or weather events preventing them from voting. They Vote at Home because it gives them more time to research every race on the ballot and be a more informed voter. And they Vote at Home because their local election administrators trust the USPS to deliver every ballot to every address in their community for the same price; and they trust the USPS to deliver every one of their ballots back to be counted, no matter where they live or who they’re voting for.

All of those elements will be at risk with a Postal Service that loses its independence under the control of this administration, and the greatest risk is loss of trust. Confidence in voting is one of the most important elements of a successful democracy – confidence that your vote makes a difference, that your vote counts, and that every vote will be received, counted and treated equally.

Response to New Executive Order That Would Change Election Systems

National Vote at Home Institute — The National Vote at Home Institute is closely monitoring this week’s election-related executive order and working alongside state advocates to assess its potential impact. We remain steadfast in our commitment to protect every citizen’s right to vote in the way that best suits them, as well as upholding the constitutional authority of states to establish and oversee their own election processes.

Americans have utilized some form of mail-in voting for over 100 years. This order mandates that only ballots received by the close of polls on Election Day (except for military and overseas ballots) can be counted, threatening to disenfranchise thousands of working families, rural residents, disabled voters and seniors. This order would unilaterally overturn laws in 15 states and the District of Columbia which allow ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted when they are received within a designated grace period. One of the strengths of American elections is its decentralized system. This attempt to unilaterally overturn state election laws is not only a violation of states’ rights but is also likely to face significant legal challenges.

Beyond its legal overreach, this order threatens to disrupt well-established election procedures, create unnecessary confusion for voters who rely on mail ballot options, and impose financial and logistical burdens on states already managing complex election operations and budget constraints. Elections are already underway in communities across America. By forcing abrupt changes, it risks undermining election officials’ ability to conduct elections in a manner that best serves their voters.

Despite this and other attempts to undermine Vote at Home and sow confusion and distrust in our elections, the National Vote at Home Institute will continue our work to support state election administrators, champion policies that protect and expand voter access, and ensure that Vote at Home elections stay safe, secure and accessible to all.

Voting at Home Remains Secure as Local Election Officials Respond to Election Interference Attempts in Oregon and Washington State

(October 29, 2024) — Ballot boxes were set on fire in Oregon and Washington state this week in an attempt to discourage Americans from participating in the most vital element of our democracy—voting. Yet Voting at Home maintains its strength and resilience as a secure voting method. The incidents have been met with swift action from local election officials committed to preserving the integrity of the electoral process and who have previously implemented robust security measures to protect mailed-out ballots against any attempts at voter fraud.

“Voting at home continues to be a safe and convenient method of voting that maximizes voter engagement and participation. Its security features, from unique ballots tied to each voter to signature verification, ballot tracking, and ballot curing, have been on display through the response to these attacks,” said Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute.

In response to the acts of vandalism, local officials from Multnomah County, Oregon, and Clark County, Washington, have reaffirmed their dedication to safeguarding the electoral process. Both counties executed security plans to address the threat, demonstrating their readiness to counteract election interference. Since 2018, jurisdictions have received $952 million in election security funding to enhance security and maintain their constituents’ trust.

“Your vote is your voice, and we applaud the work of local election officials who remain resolute against attempts to undermine the electoral process,” added Smith Warner. “The integrity of our democratic process is paramount, and any interference with our elections will face harsh legal consequences.”

About the National Vote at Home Institute

Founded in 2018, the National Vote at Home Institute is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) organization that works to increase voters’ access to, use, and confidence in voting at home, where voters are delivered their ballot, return them by postage-free mail or in-person to a range of accessible, convenient and secure locations, and can track them online to ensure their vote is

Universal Mail Ballot Delivery Boosts Turnout: The Causal Effects of Sending Mail Ballots to All Registered Voters

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, some American states had transitioned to universal voting-by-mail, where all registered voters receive a mail ballot. But due to the pandemic, universal voting-by-mail was suddenly used in a larger number of states in2020. Here we study a unique situation in which registered voters in some legislative districts in Los Angeles County were subjected to universal voting-by-mail in theMarch 2020 primary. Using difference-in-differences and geographic boundary-based designs on individual-level records, we take advantage of this within-jurisdiction situation to estimate the causal effects of universal voting-by-mail on voter turnout and on who votes. Our results indicate that voter turnout increased by 3 to 4 percentage points for voters who do not automatically receive a mail ballot, and the increase is generally larger for registered partisan voters than those without a party affiliation.

Who’s Voting for America’s Mayors? Hardly Anyone

September 2024

Every two years, leading politicians, journalists, interest groups, and citizens turn their collective attention to the upcoming presidential or midterm elections. Presidents, U.S. Senators and Representatives, and most statewide and state legislative officials are chosen in these contests.

In the most recent (2020) presidential general election, we know that about 2 in 3 eligible voters cast ballots. In recent midterm (2022) contests, it’s closer to 1 in 2. And in party primaries, where the eventual winners in the vast majority of partisan races are actually decided, the typical participation rate is about 1 in 4 voters. But not all elections are held in these even numbered years.

In fact, Americans select the vast majority of their elected officials in odd-numbered years, determining the electoral fate in most states of hundreds of thousands of local office-holders: mayors, city and county commissioners, school board and other special district board members, and more. The typical extremely low levels of voter turnout in these contests seldom receives mention, even in local news stories. Rarer still is any meaningful discussion of potential steps to address this problem, which some entrenched incumbents and their supporters don’t see as a real “problem.” However, we respectfully disagree.

The first goal of this white paper is to examine this important topic by focusing on voter turnout for one specific type of local office, city mayors, in a range of U.S. states that held such elections in 2023. For this analysis, we first identified 9 states from across the U.S. where mayoral elections are held in odd-numbered years, and in which voters were typically expected to go to an assigned polling place to cast their ballots.

We then focused on the ten largest cities (by population) in these states. In all 9 of these states, we found at least two of these larger cities had contested mayoral races in 2023. Among these nine states (Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Vermont), a total of 36 contested mayoral elections occurred in 2023 among their 10 most populous cities.

For comparison purposes, we also looked at three other states (Colorado, Montana, and Washington) where 2023 mayoral races were conducted quite differently, using a Vote at Home election system. All active registered voters were automatically mailed their ballots several weeks before the elections, and voters could then mark and return them by mail, or by taking them to a secure drop box or other official site. Among these three states’ most populous cities, 11 contested mayoral contests were conducted in this manner. (While Colorado and Washington hold all their elections this way, Montana state law gives local governments the ability to hold such elections, which all three of these Montana cities did.) The second group of states was chosen to shed light on what we believe is one of the most powerful but too little known or discussed ways to significantly boost voter turnout in these and other kinds of off-cycle elections.

A better-known proposal to address this low turnout problem is to move these odd-year local contests to coincide with even-year presidential and midterm elections. Several large U.S. cities (e.g, Baltimore and Los Angeles) have already adopted this idea. While this approach will almost certainly boost turnout, it inherently carries a major risk. By moving to even-year elections, mayoral and other local candidates and their races will become largely overshadowed, if not submerged entirely, by the far more visible and attention-grabbing “top of the ticket” contests for President, U.S. Congress, Governor, and other offices.

As our analysis reveals, a “Vote at Home” election model avoids this inherent conflict, allowing local races to still take center stage, while boosting turnout in significant ways.

A Tale of Two State’s Turnouts

National Vote at Home Institute — Once upon a time, two states, with nearly identical demographics and similar high turnout political cultures, held the exact same election on the exact same day, with just one identical issue on their ballots.

That day was March 5, 2024, Super Tuesday, when voters in Minnesota and Colorado weighed in on the single question of who should be the Republican and Democratic nominees for U.S. President. In Minnesota, 17% of registered voters cast a ballot. In Colorado, 39% of registered voters did so.

What was the difference? In Minnesota, voters had to go to their assigned polling place, on or before Election Day, or apply in advance (though no excuse was required) for a mailed-out absentee ballot. In Colorado, all active registered voters automatically received their ballots, via the US Postal Service, several weeks before the election. Voters could then return their marked ballots by mail, or in person.

Both states have roughly 3.5 million registered voters, and pride themselves on high voter turnout in presidential and midterm general elections. Colorado ranked #7 in 2020 and #6 in 2022, while Minnesota ranked #1 and #3.

Both states have automatic voter registration, and allow voters to register to vote up through Election Day itself. And politically, both are purple, trending blue. Hilary Clinton won both states in 2016, but with less than 50% of the vote. In 2020, Biden beat Trump by 7% in Minnesota and 11% in Colorado.

Because its voters don’t register by party affiliation, Minnesota allowed 100% of its registered voters to participate in the March 5 presidential contest. Although Colorado is a party registration state, 98% of its voters could still participate, as the state’s 1.6 million non-affiliated voters are mailed both parties’ ballots, though they can only vote one.

If anything, Minnesota’s demographics are even more voter turnout-friendly than Colorado’s. Minnesota is a tad older – its median age in the 2020 census was 38.5, compared to Colorado’s 37.3. Minnesota’s “white alone non-Latino” population was 75.9% according to the most recent (2022) Census estimate, while in far more diverse Colorado, it was 64.8%.

When academic researchers attempt to measure the impact of a particular election policy on voter turnout, they typically need to control for these and other key variables, not to mention the multiple races being voted on during that single election. It’s an enterprise inherently fraught with many assumptions, whose various weightings and regression coefficients are indecipherable to most non-academics.

Such research is thus easy to downplay or even dismiss, especially different studies that seem to reach opposite conclusions. That is why real-world, “natural experiments” like this one– again, identical elections, held on the same day, with the same, singular question for both states’ voters – can bring so much more clarity.

So far, Colorado’s more-than-double turnout trouncing of Minnesota has largely been ignored by journalists, political analysts, and democracy reform advocates. Perhaps the difference is so astonishingly large that people simply don’t believe it.

But it’s worth noting that on March 5, five other Super Tuesday states couldn’t crack even the 20% turnout mark, either (Tennessee, Oklahoma, Virginia, Maine, and Texas), while Washington state, which also automatically mails all active registered voters their ballots, turned out at 35%.

Coincidence? We don’t think so. And it’s long past time for those who lament the abysmal state of America’s “spectator sport” democracy to pay far more attention to the single most powerful way to address it – by automatically sending a ballot to every active registered voter, every time.

What’s Missing in the Primaries? The Voters

National Vote at Home Institute — Now that more than 40 states have held a 2024 primary election, the evidence continues to reveal what is arguably the single most effective way to boost voter turnout and help revitalize America’s anemic democracy. Let’s automatically deliver ballots to all voters, before every important election. Need evidence? Here’s just three of the most compelling proof points from this year’s exercises: the states of Colorado and Montana, and Garden County, Nebraska.

First up, Colorado. This year’s Super Tuesday featured 10 states with the same singular and identical question on their ballots: who should be the Republican and Democratic party nominees for president? Turnout of active registered voters in 9 of the states ranged from 28% in Vermont through 21% in Alabama and Arkansas down to 17% in Tennessee and Minnesota. But only one Super Tuesday state is a Vote at Home state, where all active registered Democrats, Republicans, and non-affiliated voters were automatically mailed out their ballots – Colorado, and there, turnout was nearly 39%.

Most striking is the contrast with Minnesota. Both states pride themselves on high general election turnout, and both have similar “pro-voter” laws like same day voter registration and automatic voter registration. And if anything, Minnesota has the edge with two key demographic factors associated with higher turnout: more older and white voters. Despite all that, Colorado more than doubled Minnesota’s turnout, at 39% to 17%.

Next up is western Nebraska’s Garden County, population 1,874. On May 14, Nebraska held its regular statewide primary, giving voters a chance to weigh in on a wide range of federal, state, and local races. Statewide, registered voter turnout was just 28%. But Nebraska allows counties with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants to skip polling places and Vote at Home instead. Garden County, which has been taking that option for years, had the truly remarkable turnout of 62% of their 1,318 active registered voters, all of whom had been automatically delivered a ballot.

And just in case you think that Garden County’s rural, small town demographics were responsible for their citizens’ remarkable performance, compare them to the five adjacent counties, also largely rural, whose voters instead had to travel to their pre-assigned polling places: Keith (41%); Arthur (32%); Sheridan (31%); Grant (30%) and Deuel (21%).

Now for our third and final stop: Montana. Montana isn’t a true “Vote at Home” jurisdiction like Colorado or Garden county, since not every active registered voter is automatically mailed a ballot as a matter of law. But for several decades, this mostly red state has allowed its voters to sign up once to automatically Vote at Home for every election, and over 87% have taken the opportunity.

For its June 4th primary, Montana counted more than 270,000 returned mail ballots – which constituted nearly 90% of the total votes cast. With 593,000 active registered voters,this puts Montana’s active registered voter turnout at a remarkable 51%.

Might such dramatic demonstrations of the power of mail ballots cause a cooling of the contentious, highly partisan debates still swirling about voting at home, given that politicians of both major parties always claim to support greater voter participation? Well, probably not. But if we want to know the answer to the question of whether there’s a proven, simple way to engage more Americans, of all ages and political persuasions, to participate in their democracy, it’s clear.

Send them a ballot.