Title: Do Funding Communications Increase Election Officials’ Willingness to Open More Polling Places? A Field Experiment
Abstract: Can encouragement communications cause election officials to open more polling places? Does increasing spending on elections to open more polling places lead to higher voter turnout? Public officials who administer elections make decisions about the operation of elections, and these decisions are directly influenced by budgets available. However, scholars of elections have rarely examined the role of budgets on elite choices regarding making it easier to vote. I theorize that some election administrators are stewards of voter access while others are not. A field experiment was conducted during the 2020 US general election where local election officials randomly received direct communications encouraging them to apply for funding by a nonpartisan university institute; and a control group of local election officials were not. Results of the field experiment show that the randomized communication led to a 3.9%-point increase in local officials applying for and receiving the funding compared to control group officials. In a 2SLS causal model and in correlational analyses, there is evidence that exogenous increases to election budgets and exogenous increases in polling locations led to higher voter participation. The conclusions are that some public officials can be encouraged to increase voter access via budgetary or financial nudges and communications.
