Bureaucratic Responsiveness and Partisan Bias in an Election : Evidence from a Field Experiment

Though political candidates, observers, and voters often express concern about partisan meddling in supposedly neutral elections, existing research has not directly studied partisan bias among election administrators. We report results from a eld experiment conducted in the U.S. during the 2014 election. Local election clerks were sent an information request from a putative constituent, randomizing the sender’s partisanship. Our ndings are mixed. Overall, partisan email-writers were no more likely to receive responses from local election clerks than email-writers who provided no partisan signal. However, we nd some evidence of increased responsiveness to requests from copartisan constituents, particularly among Republican municipalities. Our ndings provide new evidence about the degree to which nonpartisan institutions insulate public administration from political biases. Potential voters confront a myriad of informational de cits. Not only must they decide for whom to cast their votes, they must also assemble information about how, where, and when to vote. As the “administrators of democracy” (Moynihan and Silva 2008), local election o cials (also known as LEOs) are charged with administering federal, state, and local elections, and are therefore well-positioned to mitigate such informational de cits. Yet whether or not they do so without bias — that is, whether election o cials work on behalf of ordinary voters without taking into account the attributes of those voters — is an open question. Given the centrality of elections for democratic systems, understanding potential biases among election administrators is critical because their decisions “may a ect whether some people are able to cast a vote” (Kimball, Kropf, and Battles 2006, 448). Scholars, policymakers, and international organizations widely agree about the importance of neutral election administration for democratic health. As the European Commission for Democracy through Law (2003, 38) argues, “Only transparency, impartiality, and independence from politically motivated manipulation will ensure proper administration of the election process. ” Similarly, the O ce for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2013, 29) advises member countries that “[n]o election-administration body should act in a partisan manner or exhibit partiality in the performance of its duties. ” The nature of electoral administration has important implications for the success of democratic transitions (Pastor 1999) and perceptions of legitimacy (Anderson et al. 2005; Hartlyn, McCoy, and Mustillo 2008; Kropf and Kimball 2013). A report by the U.S. Commission on Federal Election Reform (2005, 49) therefore concluded that “[t]o build con dence in the electoral process, it is important that elections be administered in a neutral and professional manner. ” While it may be desirable for election o cials to be immune to political biases and interested only in tallying the vote, history suggests that elections around the world may not always be characterized by neutral administration. A rich set of examples, including the post-2000 U.S. presidential election battle in Florida and more recent controversies in Gabon, Kenya and Nicaragua, has lent credence to the notion that partisan meddling in supposedly neutral elections