The Resilient Voter

Shauna Reilly; Stacy G. Ulbig

doi:10.5771/9781498533539

Summary

The Resilient Voter: Stressful Polling Places and Voting Behavior provides a new perspective on the role voting barriers play, demonstrating that they not only discourage participation but also affect the quality of votes cast. Offering an interesting and unique approach to the study of voting barriers, Shauna Reilly and Stacy G. Ulbig investigate the possibility that complicated ballot language, provisional voting, and long polling place lines cause some voters to cast ballots in a manner contradictory to their preferences.

Building on arguments that stressful polling place conditions subject citizens to stress that can prevent them from casting complete ballots or even choosing to vote at all, the authors ask whether those who endure polling place frustrations and persevere to cast a ballot might become so stressed by their experience that they are unable to mark their ballots in a manner consistent with their standing policy preferences. Using a creative experimental design, the authors examine the ways in which complex ballot language, registration difficulties, and long polling place lines affect voters’ stress levels, and how such anxieties translate into the willingness to cast a complete ballot and the ability to vote in a manner conforming to previously expressed preferences.

The authors demonstrate that even though most voters prove remarkably resilient in the face of some potentially stressful polling place barriers, they are not immune to all polling place conditions. Further, they illustrate that some segments of the electorate tend to be more vulnerable to polling place stressors than others and illustrate the ways in which the compound effects of multiple barriers can exert an even wider impact.

Keywords

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2018
ISBN-Print: 978-1-4985-3352-2
ISBN-Online: 978-1-4985-3353-9
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 180
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figures No access
3. List of Tables No access
4. Acknowledgments No access
1. A Price Too High? Stressful Barriers to Voting No access
2. Voting “Correctly” No access
3. Our Study No access
4. Plan of the Book No access
5. Note No access
1. The Stresses of Decision-Making No access
2. Stress in the Electorate No access
3. Hypotheses No access
4. Notes No access
1. Choosing an Experimental Approach No access
2. Experimental Design No access
3. Analytical Techniques No access
4. Notes No access
1. Ballot Complexity No access
2. Theoretical Expectations No access
3. Measuring Ballot Complexity No access
4. Discussion No access
5. Notes No access
1. Helping America Vote with Provisional Ballots No access
2. Discussion No access
3. Notes No access
1. Waiting and Voter Turnout No access
2. Evidence of the Wait Time–Turnout Connection No access
3. Theoretical Expectations No access
4. Discussion No access
5. Notes No access
1. The Importance of Election Administrator Characteristics No access
2. The Importance of Voter Commitment No access
3. Discussion No access
4. Notes No access
1. Keeping Things in Perspective No access
2. Future Investigations No access
3. What’s Next for the States? Policy Implications No access
4. Note No access
Appendix A No access Pages 137 - 140
Appendix B No access Pages 141 - 146
Appendix C No access Pages 147 - 150
Appendix D No access Pages 151 - 156
Bibliography No access Pages 157 - 174
Index No access Pages 175 - 178
About the Authors No access Pages 179 - 180