ELECTIONS

Issues Related to 

Registering Voters 

and Administering 

Elections

Report to Congressional Requesters

June 2016

GAO-16-630

United States Government Accountability Office
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-16-630, a report to 

congressional requesters

June 2016

ELECTIONS

Issues Related to Registering Voters and 

Administering Elections

What GAO Found

According to GAO’s literature review and election officials interviewed, the 

benefits of collecting and sharing voter registration information electronically 

include improved accuracy and cost savings; while challenges include upfront 

investments and ongoing maintenance, among other things. For example, 

establishing infrastructure for online registration requires time and money, but 

can generate savings and enhance accuracy by, for instance, reducing the need 

for local election officials to manually process paper registration forms. The

upfront costs of online registration are generally modest and quickly surpassed 

by savings generated after implementation.

GAO reviewed research to identify 11 election administration policies that had 

each been studied multiple times in connection with voter turnout and found 

varying effects. For example:

• The majority of studies on same day registration and all vote-by-mail 

found that these policies increased turnout.

• Vote centers (polling places where registrants can vote regardless of 

assigned precinct) and the sending of text messages to provide 

information about registration and elections have not been studied as 

much as some of the other policies, but almost all of the studies

reviewed on these policies reported increases in turnout.

• Some studies of mailings to provide information and no-excuse absentee 

voting also found that these policies increased turnout, while other

studies reported mixed evidence or no evidence of an effect.

• Most studies of e-mail and robocalls to provide information reported no 

evidence of an effect on turnout.

• Most studies of early in-person voting reported no evidence of an effect 

on turnout or found decreases in turnout, while the remaining studies 

reported mixed evidence.

Distinguishing the unique effects of a policy from the effects of other factors that 

affect turnout can be challenging, and even sufficiently sound studies cannot 

account for all unobserved factors that potentially impact the results. Additionally, 

research findings on turnout are only one of many considerations for election 

officials as they decide whether or not to implement selected policies.

States and local election jurisdictions incur a variety of costs associated with 

administering elections, and the types and magnitude of costs can vary by state 

and jurisdiction. Further, quantifying the total costs for all election activities is 

difficult for several reasons, including that multiple parties incur costs associated 

with elections and may track costs differently. Although some parties’ costs can 

be easily identified in cost-tracking documents, other costs may be difficult to 

attribute to election activities. Additionally, voters’ costs can also be difficult to 

quantify because each voter’s costs vary based on factors such as method of 

voting, or time required to travel to polling places, among other things.

The Election Assistance Commission did not have any comments on this report, 

and GAO incorporated technical comments provided by state and local election 

officials and DMV officials as appropriate.

View GAO-16-630. For more information, 

contact Rebecca Gambler at (202) 512-8777 

or gamblerr@gao.gov.

Why GAO Did This Study

Since the enactment of the Help 

America Vote Act of 2002, there have 

been notable changes in how states 

and local election jurisdictions conduct 

key election activities, such as 

registration and voting. States regulate 

some aspects of elections, but the 

combinations of election administration 

policies can vary widely across the 

country’s approximately 10,500 local 

election jurisdictions.

GAO was asked to examine the 

benefits, challenges, and other 

considerations of various election 

administration policies. This report 

addresses the following questions: (1) 

What are the reported benefits and 

challenges of efforts to collect and 

share voter registration information 

electronically? (2) What is known about 

the effect of selected policies on voter 

turnout? (3) What is known about the 

costs of elections?

To address these three questions, 

GAO reviewed and analyzed relevant 

literature from 2002 through 2015. 

GAO identified 118 studies that 

examined the effect of selected 

policies that have been or could be 

implemented by state or local 

governments on voter turnout. GAO 

reviewed the studies’ analyses, and 

determined that the studies were 

sufficiently sound to support their 

results and conclusions. In addition, 

GAO conducted visits and interviewed 

state and local election officials from 

five states that had implemented 

efforts and policies relevant to GAO’s 

research questions to varying degrees, 

and provided geographic diversity. The

results from these five states are not 

generalizable, but provide insight into 

state and local perspectives.
Page i GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Letter 1

Background 6

Electronically Collecting and Sharing Voter Registration 

Information Involves Investments but Can Provide Efficiencies 12

Our Review of Relevant Research Finds that Effects of Selected 

Policies and Practices on Voter Turnout Vary 31

Election Activities Result in Various Costs, and These Costs Can 

Be Difficult to Quantify 36

Agency and Third Party Comments 48

Appendix I States’ Use of Provisional Ballots, 2008 – 2014 51

Appendix II Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 54

Appendix III Voter Turnout for Selected Demographic Characteristics 65

Appendix IV Review of Research on Effects of Eleven Selected Election 

Administration Policies on Voter Turnout 69

Appendix V Bibliography 110

Appendix VI GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 121

Tables

Table 1: Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Data-Sharing 

Efforts in States GAO Visited 19

Table 2: Use of Provisional Ballots in the States and District of 

Columbia, 2008 – 2014 General Elections 52

Contents
Page ii GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figures

Figure 1: Timeline Showing the Years States and the District of 

Columbia Implemented Online Voter Registration 9

Figure 2: National Voter Turnout Rates for General Elections, 

1972-2014 12

Figure 3: Findings of Studies Examining Effects of Eleven 

Selected Policies on Voter Turnout 35

Figure 4: Voter Turnout 1972 – 2014, by Age 66

Figure 5: Voter Turnout 2004 – 2014, by Race and Ethnicity 67

Figure 6: Voter Turnout 1972 – 2014, by Educational Attainment 68

Figure 7: Symbols Used to Represent Studies’ Findings Related to 

Voter Turnout 70

Figure 8: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Email on Voter Turnout 71

Figure 9: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Mailings on Voter Turnout 74

Figure 10: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Robocalls on Voter Turnout 79

Figure 11: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Text Messages on Voter Turnout 82

Figure 12: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Changes to Registration Closing Dates on Voter Turnout 86

Figure 13: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Same Day Registration on Voter Turnout 88

Figure 14: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of All 

Vote-by-Mail on Voter Turnout 93

Figure 15: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Early In-Person Voting on Voter Turnout 97

Figure 16: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Hours Available for Voting on Voter Turnout 100

Figure 17: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

No-excuse Absentee Voting on Voter Turnout 103

Figure 18: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of 

Vote Centers on Voter Turnout 111
Page iii GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Abbreviations

CPS Current Population Survey

DMV Department of Motor Vehicles

EAC Election Assistance Commission

EAVS Election Administration and Voting Survey

ERIC Electronic Registration Information Center

HAVA Help America Vote Act

NCOA National Change of Address

NVRA National Voter Registration Act

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

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Page 1 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

June 30, 2016

Congressional Requesters

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 includes a number of 

provisions related to voter registration, voting equipment, and other 

election administration activities.1 The act authorized the appropriation of 

funds to be used toward implementing the law’s requirements.2 Among 

other things, HAVA required states to create statewide computerized 

voter registration lists to serve as official rosters of legally registered 

voters for elections for federal office. It also provided funding to improve 

election administration, including funding to replace punch card and lever 

voting equipment. Since the enactment of HAVA, states and local 

elections jurisdictions have made other changes to registration and 

voting. For example, by 2008, Arizona and Washington had begun 

offering voters the option to complete an online application to register to 

vote, and since that time 29 additional states and Washington, D.C., have 

implemented similar online registration options. Additionally, since 

HAVA’s enactment, Washington and Colorado have joined Oregon in 

implementing statewide vote-by-mail systems.3 Decisions regarding these 

 1

Pub. L. No. 107-252, 116 Stat. 1666 (2002) (codified as amended at 52 U.S.C. §§ 20901-

21145). Congress passed HAVA in response to reports of problems encountered in the 

2000 presidential election with respect to voter registration lists, absentee ballots, ballot 

counting, and antiquated voting systems. In the years following HAVA’s enactment, states 

implemented major election reforms, amending their election codes or making other 

changes to their election procedures in order to comply with HAVA’s provisions. For 

example, HAVA required states to collect certain identifying information from first-time 

voters who register by mail, and states have amended their processes to reflect these 

requirements. 52 U.S.C. § 21083. Numerous states have enacted additional laws since 

that time that address how an individual may register to vote or cast a ballot. In particular, 

many states have made substantive changes to their election codes or procedures in the 

areas of voter identification; alternative methods of voting, such as in-person early voting 

prior to Election Day; and requirements for voter registration drives conducted by 

nongovernmental organizations (i.e., third parties).

2

See 52 U.S.C. §§ 20901-20904, 21001-21008.

3

Oregon provided for all elections to be conducted by mail prior to HAVA’s enactment. In 

Washington, county auditors were provided discretion in 2005 to conduct all elections 

entirely by mail ballot and, in 2011, Washington shifted to become a vote-by-mail state. In 

2013, Colorado enacted a law that required all elections on or after July 1, 2013, to be 

conducted by mail. Colorado also provides an in person voting option at voter service and 

polling centers.

Letter
Page 2 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

and other election administration policies—including policies for providing 

information to voters, registering voters, and providing voting 

opportunities—involve consideration of various benefits and challenges, 

including costs to states and local jurisdictions, as well as costs to voters.

States regulate various aspects of elections, including, for example, 

registration procedures, absentee voting requirements, and establishment 

of polling places. States are required under the National Voter 

Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 to provide certain registration 

opportunities, such as when individuals obtain a driver’s license.4

However, states can determine whether to provide additional 

opportunities, such as registering online. States also establish policies for 

how voters can cast their ballots—including opportunities to vote in 

person on Election Day, in person in advance of Election Day (early 

voting), by mail under certain circumstances (absentee voting), by mail 

under any circumstances (no-excuse absentee or all vote-by-mail)—and 

states can choose to implement a combination of such policies. Although 

some election policy decisions are made at the state level, election 

administration within each state is largely a local responsibility. Thus local 

factors can also affect election administration—such as the designation of 

specific polling places. The combinations of election administration 

policies can vary widely across the country’s approximately 10,500 local 

election jurisdictions. When considering whether to implement changes to 

election policies, state and local election officials may consider 

implementation costs, the availability of funds or other resources at the 

state or local level, administrative efficiencies, additional voter 

convenience, and anticipated effects on voter turnout, among other 

factors.

You asked us to examine the benefits, challenges, and other 

considerations of various election administration policies. This report 

addresses the following questions:

 4

Pub. L. No. 103-31, 107 Stat. 77 (1993) (codified at 52 U.S.C. §§ 20501-20511). Certain 

states are exempt from NVRA, including North Dakota—which has no voter registration 

requirement—and Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—which 

have Election Day registration. NVRA does not apply to states where either (1) under law 

that has been in effect continuously on and after August 1, 1994, there is no voter 

registration requirement for any voter in the state for a federal election or (2) under law 

that has been in effect continuously on and after, or enacted prior to, August 1, 1994, all 

voters in the state may register to vote at the polling place at the time of voting in a 

general election for federal office.
Page 3 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

1. What are the reported benefits and challenges of efforts to collect and 

share voter registration information electronically?

2. What is known about the effect of selected policies and practices on 

voter turnout?

3. What is known about the costs of elections?

In addition, we reviewed information related to the use of provisional 

ballots.5 This information can be found in appendix I.

To address these questions, we reviewed and analyzed relevant literature 

from scholarly and peer reviewed publications; government reports; 

dissertations; conference papers; books; association, think tank, and 

other nonprofit organizations’ publications; working papers; and general 

news articles published from 2002 through 2015 to identify publications 

that were potentially relevant to the topics in question.6 The literature 

search produced over 1,000 publications related to the topics in our three 

questions. For publications relevant to efforts to collect and share voter 

registration information electronically, we cataloged information regarding 

benefits or challenges associated with these efforts. Among the over 400 

publications from our search related to voter turnout, we limited our scope 

to those publications that examined policies or practices that have been 

or could be implemented by a state or local government.7 Within this 

framework, we further limited the scope to publications that (1) contained 

quantitative analysis of the effect of a given policy or practice on turnout 

 5

Section 302 of HAVA established provisional voting requirements. Specifically, potential 

voters who declare that they are registered and eligible to vote in the jurisdiction in which 

they desire to vote to cast provisional ballots must be permitted to cast a provisional ballot 

in the event their names do not appear on the registration list or the voters’ eligibility is 

challenged by an election official. 52 U.S.C. § 21082(a).

6

We selected 2002 because the enactment of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 had 

implications for voter registration efforts and other policies that may affect voter turnout. 

However, we limited our searches for information on election-related costs to a 10-year 

period (from 2005 through 2015) to ensure the search results we obtained were 

manageable.

7

Factors that influence voter turnout have been widely studied. Therefore, in order to 

provide a reasonable and useful synthesis of the literature, we further limited our scope by 

excluding publications that examined partisan practices—such as using partisan language 

in mailings to potential voters—and policies or practices that would be resource-intensive, 

such as door-to-door canvassing. Appendix II provides more information about our scope 

and methodology, including a more detailed listing of the types of policies that were 

outside the scope of our review.
Page 4 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

and (2) used sufficiently sound methodologies for conducting such 

analyses. Specifically, two GAO social scientists, and a GAO statistician 

when necessary, reviewed the studies within the publications produced 

from our searches to determine those for which the design, 

implementation, and analyses of the studies were sufficiently sound to 

support their results and conclusions and were based on generally 

accepted social science principles. Our report presents the findings for 

any policy we found to have been studied at least twice within this 

resulting set of publications. As a result of this process, we included in our 

review the results of 118 studies found within 53 publications. For 

publications relevant to election-related costs, we identified examples of 

the types of costs and corresponding amounts, where available.

Additionally, to address all three questions, we visited and conducted 

interviews with state and local jurisdiction election officials from five 

selected states (Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island) 

to obtain the perspectives of state and local election administrators 

regarding the policies, practices, and efforts in use in their respective 

states and jurisdictions that corresponded with the scope of our review. 

We selected these states primarily based on the statewide 

implementation of the registration and turnout policies in the scope of our 

review, prioritizing states that had more policies in place than others. 

Specifically, we considered states that had implemented online voter 

registration, data-sharing efforts between the state election office and the 

state motor vehicle agency or through interstate data-sharing efforts, 

Election Day or same day registration, vote-by-mail as their selected 

voting method, and requirements for informational mailings to voters. 

Finally, we considered geographic diversity, when possible, in making 

state selection decisions in order to capture possible regional differences 

in election administration practices.

Within each of the five states identified above, we selected two local 

election jurisdictions to visit in order to obtain different perspectives at the 

local level within a state. We selected jurisdictions based on 

recommendations from state election officials and varying degrees of 

population size and density. While the perspectives of officials from our 

selected states and local jurisdictions cannot be generalized to other 

states and local election jurisdictions, officials in these locations provided 

a range of perspectives on the topics within the scope of our review. 

During each visit we met with the state election director (or equivalent) 
Page 5 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

and election officials from two local jurisdictions.8 We also met with 

officials from state motor vehicle agencies to get their perspectives on 

voter registration data-sharing programs with the state election office. We 

corroborated the information we gathered through these interviews by 

reviewing relevant state statutes and documentation that these 

jurisdictions provided to us, such as cost data. For examples of election 

costs provided in this report based on literature we reviewed or 

documents provided to us by state and local election officials, a GAO 

economist reviewed the source material to assess data reliability. To the 

extent that the source documentation included information about how cost 

estimates were derived, the economist reviewed the methodology to 

ensure reliability, but we did not independently assess the internal 

controls associated with state or local financial systems or other means 

for calculating such costs. We determined that these data were 

sufficiently reliable for providing illustrative examples of the costs for 

election activities.

For the question regarding voter registration efforts, we also analyzed 

data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) 

Voting and Registration Supplement for general elections occurring from 

2008 through 2014 to determine the extent to which policies to collect and 

share voter information electronically may improve the quality of voter 

registration lists. We reviewed documentation describing steps taken by 

the CPS data managers to ensure data reliability and tested the data for 

anomalies that could indicate reliability concerns. We determined that the 

CPS data were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this analysis. More 

information on our objectives, scope, and methodology can be found in 

appendix II.

We conducted this performance audit from April 2015 to June 2016 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 

 8

In Delaware, the state’s Department of Elections oversees and conducts elections 

throughout the state. The Department of Elections has offices in each of Delaware’s three 

counties, and the state Election Commissioner noted that we could meet with officials 

based in each of the three county offices when these officials were present at the main 

state election office for a meeting that coincided with the date of our visit. Therefore, we 

spoke with election officials from all three counties. 
Page 6 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.

In the United States, authority to regulate elections is shared by federal, 

state, and local officials. Congressional authority to regulate elections 

derives from various constitutional sources, depending upon the type of 

election, and Congress has passed legislation in major functional areas of 

the voting process, such as voter registration, as well as prohibitions 

against discriminatory voting practices. However, the responsibility for the 

administration of state and federal elections resides at the state level, and 

states regulate various aspects of elections including, for example, 

registration procedures, absentee and early voting requirements, and 

Election Day procedures. Within each state, responsibility for managing, 

planning, and conducting elections is largely a local process, residing with 

about 10,500 local election jurisdictions nationwide. Some states have 

mandated statewide election administration guidelines and procedures 

that foster uniformity in the way their local jurisdictions conduct elections, 

whereas other states have guidelines that generally permit local election 

jurisdictions considerable autonomy and discretion in the way they run 

elections. Along with the various ways that states and local election 

jurisdictions may share election policy responsibilities, there are a variety 

of cost-sharing arrangements between state and local election offices. 

The result is that elections can be administered differently across states 

and local jurisdictions.

The offices that administer elections in states and local jurisdictions can 

be organized in different ways, and in some cases offices with primary 

responsibility for elections (referred throughout this report as election 

offices) may have responsibility for other areas of government as well. 

For example, in Rhode Island, the Secretary of State’s office oversees the 

Elections Division as well as other divisions and offices responsible for 

public records, business services, the state library, and the state archives. 

In contrast, in Delaware, the State Election Commissioner has a more 

singular focus of overseeing the Department of Elections. Similarly, local 

election offices may include a Board of Elections or Board of Canvassers 

that are specifically responsible for elections, or a county clerk’s office 

that may also have responsibility for public records, licenses, or other 

activities.

Background

Election Administration 

Roles and Responsibilities
Page 7 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

As election officials manage voter registration processes and voter lists, 

they must balance two important goals. First, officials seek to minimize 

the burden on eligible people registering to vote. Additionally, they seek to 

ensure that the voter lists are accurate, a task that involves including the 

name of each eligible voter on the voter list, removing names of ineligible 

voters, and having safeguards in place so that names of voters are not 

removed in error from the list.

States have established a variety of mechanisms for registering voters 

and confirming the identity and registration of those who seek to vote, 

whether at the polls on Election Day or by absentee ballot.9 Two key 

pieces of federal legislation require states to take certain measures 

addressing voter registration—NVRA and HAVA. In addition to any other 

method of voter registration provided for under state law, NVRA 

prescribes three methods of registering voters for federal elections: (1) 

when they obtain a driver’s license, (2) by mail using the federal voter 

registration form prescribed by the Election Assistance Commission 

(EAC), or (3) in person at offices that provide public assistance and 

services to persons with disabilities and other state agencies and 

offices.10

Certain states are exempt from NVRA—specifically those states that 

allowed Election Day registration at polling places at the time that NVRA 

was enacted and North Dakota, which does not require registration to 

vote.11 This means that in those exempted states voters can register to 

vote and vote on Election Day pursuant to state requirements and the 

states are not required to provide the NVRA registration methods noted 

above. Lastly, NVRA also establishes requirements to ensure that state 

programs that identify and remove from voter registration rolls the names 

of individuals who are no longer eligible to vote are uniform, 

 9

For more information about state laws regarding registration, see GAO, Elections: State 

Laws Addressing Voter Registration and Voting on or before Election Day, GAO-13-90R

(Oct. 4, 2012).

1052 U.S.C. §§ 20503-20506.

1152 U.S.C. § 20503(b).

Voter Registration
Page 8 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

nondiscriminatory, and do not exclude a voter from the rolls solely 

because of his or her failure to vote.12

HAVA required states to each establish a single, uniform, statewide, 

computerized voter registration list for conducting elections for federal 

office.13 To assist with those and other elections efforts addressed in 

HAVA, Congress authorized more than $3 billion in funding to be 

distributed to the states to fund compliance with HAVA requirements, and 

to generally improve the administration of elections for federal office.14

According to researchers, HAVA, and the funding Congress provided to 

implement HAVA, played a major role in removing barriers associated 

with paperless registration.15

Increasingly, voters in many states can register or update their 

registration information online, in addition to other available registration 

options required by NVRA or established by the states.16 As shown in 

figure 1, Arizona was the first state in the nation to implement online voter 

registration, in 2002, the same year as the passage of HAVA. As of May 

2016, 31 states and Washington, D.C., offer online voter registration. In 

some of these states, the online registration option is only available to 

citizens who have a driver’s license or state-issued identification (ID)

card. In these states, individuals who do not have either of these forms of 

ID may fill out the registration form online, print, sign, and mail it to the 

election office.

 12See 52 U.S.C. § 20507(a)(3), (4), and (c). The NVRA states that the name of a 

registrant may not be removed from the official list of eligible voters except at the request 

of the registrant, as provided by state law, by reason of criminal conviction or mental 

incapacity, or under a general program to remove ineligible voters by reason of the death 

of the registrant, or a change in the residence of the registrant.

1352 U.S.C. § 21083.

14See Pub. L. No. 107-252, 116 Stat. 1666 (2002) (codified at 52 U.S.C. §§ 20901-

21145).

15Naifeh, Stuart, Driving the Vote: Are States Complying with the Motor Vote 

Requirements of the National Voter Registration Act? (New York, NY: Demos, 2015) and 

Ponoroff, Christopher, Voter Registration in a Digital Age, ed. Wendy Weiser (New York, 

NY: The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, 2010). 

16The steps to authorize online registration vary for each state. Of the states that have 

online registration, while the majority of them have authorized it through legislation 

enabling online registration, some states have made online voter registration available 

without enabling legislation.
Page 9 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 1: Timeline Showing the Years States and the District of Columbia 

Implemented Online Voter Registration

Furthermore, with increased access to information online, states have 

also developed elections websites that provide electronic customer 

service for voters. Among other things, voters can view their polling 

locations, apply for an absentee ballot, or access other information that 

can assist voters in casting their ballots, including registering online.

States have also begun implementing data-sharing efforts within their 

states to support the work of maintaining accurate voter registration lists. 

For example, election offices in some states are collaborating with their 

state’s motor vehicles agencies—such as a Department of Motor Vehicles 

(DMV), and hereafter we refer to motor vehicles agencies as DMVs—to 

share data, such as addresses and identifying information, electronically 

between the agencies. These systems establish a connection between 

the DMV and the state’s voter registration database, enabling the 

electronic transmission of information to election offices when individuals 

register to vote or update their registration when visiting the DMV. 

Election officials then process the data received—for example, they may 

add a new registration record for an eligible individual who applied while 

obtaining a driver’s license or update an existing registrant’s address if 

the individual moved to a new residence and provided the DMV with an 

updated address.

States also use multiple sources—including collaboration with other 

states to share voter registration information across multiple states—to 
Page 10 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

maintain accurate registration lists given that individuals may move 

across state lines without cancelling their registrations at their previous 

addresses. For example, the Electronic Registration Information Center 

(ERIC), founded in 2012 as a project between the states and The Pew 

Charitable Trusts, was organized to address the challenge of incomplete 

and inaccurate voter registration lists. Since shortly after ERIC’s founding, 

state election officials have overseen and managed the program to 

organize the collection, analysis, and distribution of data among member 

states. The organization uses automated data-matching software to 

produce reports for member states, with the goal of helping state and 

local officials maintain accurate registration lists.

Researchers calculate turnout using different methods, based on 

available data and the purpose of their research. Specifically, turnout is 

expressed as a percentage, but the numerator and denominator used 

may differ. For instance, the numerator may represent the number of 

votes for the highest office on the ballot or total ballots cast (regardless of 

whether or not individuals voted for the highest office). Similarly, the 

denominator may represent the voting-age population (everyone 18 years 

of age and older), the voting-eligible population (the voting-age population 

adjusted for segments of the population that are not eligible to vote, such 

as non-citizens), or registered voters. Additionally, data may come from 

official voter records or from surveys—which rely on self-reported 

information—and political scientists have found that surveys produce 

higher estimates of turnout than official records maintained by election 

administrators. Possible explanations for this discrepancy between survey 

responses and actual records include memory limitations and 

respondents indicating they had voted when they had not, because of 

positive social attitudes toward voting among some groups of 

respondents.17 However, weaknesses in how voter records are 

maintained can also cause error and can lead to an underestimation of 

 17Ansolabehere, Stephen, and Eitan Hersh, “Validation: What Big Data Reveal about 

Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate,” Political Analysis 20 (2012).

Voter Turnout
Page 11 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

turnout when calculated as a proportion of registered eligible voters.18

Measurements of voter turnout can vary based on the calculation and 

data used.

According to CPS data for the voting-age population, national turnout 

rates in presidential and midterm elections have declined slightly over the 

past three-and-a-half decades (see fig. 2). Although states and local 

election jurisdictions have implemented policies that seek to make voting 

more convenient, and thus less costly to voters, broad academic research 

on voter turnout has concluded that individual differences among 

citizens—such as age and political interest—and the competitiveness of 

elections are more strongly and consistently associated with the decision 

to vote than interventions that seek to increase convenience.19

Demographic differences may be strongly and consistently associated 

with differences in turnout rates, and to illustrate this, we have included 

figures in appendix III that show differences in turnout over time related to 

age, race and ethnicity, and educational attainment.

 18In particular, official lists of registered voters do not necessarily identify those who are 

on the list of registered voters but ineligible to vote in any one election. A person may 

have been eligible to vote several years ago, and therefore was placed on the registration 

rolls, but subsequently moved out of the jurisdiction or state, died, or committed a crime 

that makes him or her ineligible to vote. Registration and voter history records may not 

reflect this change in eligibility, depending on the extent to which records are updated. 

See also Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh, “The Quality of State Voter Registration 

Records: A State-by-State Analysis.” Working paper, Cal-Tech/MIT Voting Technology 

Project and the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, July 14, 2010.

19Our review of the research literature—as presented later in this report—focuses on 

factors (policies and practices) that state and local governments have control over—such 

as policies associated with when, where, and how voters may cast their ballots (e.g., early 

or on Election Day, by mail or in-person, etc.), among others. 
Page 12 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 2: National Voter Turnout Rates for General Elections, 1972-2014

Note: This figure represents turnout among the voting-age population. We use voting-age population 

because this calculation is consistently available for national voter turnout as well as turnout among 

various demographic groups depicted in figures in appendix III.

States have implemented efforts to collect and share voter registration 

information electronically—specifically through (1) online registration, (2) 

sharing voter registration information between DMVs and election offices, 

and (3) sharing registration data among multiple states. According to 

literature on these efforts and election officials we spoke with, these 

efforts involve initial investments and implementation challenges, but they 

can provide efficiencies, such as improved accuracy of voter registration 

records, cost savings, and improved voter experience.

Electronically 

Collecting and 

Sharing Voter 

Registration 

Information Involves 

Investments but Can 

Provide Efficiencies
Page 13 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

States that adopt online registration create a web-based system or portal 

that takes applicants through the registration process enabling them to 

register and make updates to their registration online.20 For individuals 

who are not already registered, the system collects the required 

information that individuals would have otherwise provided on a paper 

registration form. Those who have already registered in the state may 

make changes online to their registration, for example by updating their 

address or changing their party affiliation. As of May 2016, 31 states and 

Washington, D.C., offer online registration, including four of the five states 

we visited—Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, and Oregon.21 In three of these 

four states, online registration is an option for individuals who have a 

driver’s license or state-issued ID card.22 Other registrants in these states 

can access a form online to print, sign, and mail to the election office or 

register through other methods available in their state.

Investments of time and money are involved in implementing online 

registration, and the process can include technological challenges, 

according to election officials we spoke with and our literature review. 

Generally, state election offices are responsible for designing and 

implementing online registration systems that voters in any local 

jurisdiction within the state can use, and thus state offices incur the costs 

of these investments. However, the upfront costs of online registration are 

generally modest and quickly surpassed by the savings generated after 

implementation. A 2015 review by The Pew Charitable Trusts found that 

while the creation of an online registration system involved some initial 

expenditure, the reported average cost to design, build, and implement a 

system was $249,005, based on survey results from 14 states that 

 20Some states may post registration forms online that allow individuals to type their 

registration information into the form, print the completed form, and mail it to election 

officials. However, for the purposes of this report, online registration refers to systems that 

allow voters to both complete and submit their registration electronically.

21Rhode Island enacted legislation authorizing online registration in March 2016. The 

state election director anticipates the online registration option will be available in July 

2016.

22In Delaware, individuals do not need to have a driver’s license or other form of state ID 

in order to utilize the online registration system. 

Online Registration

Investments and Challenges
Page 14 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

implemented online registration as of November 2014.23 Additionally, 

among the states we visited that have online registration systems—

Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, and Oregon—most state officials we spoke 

with did not mention costs when asked what, if any, challenges they faced 

when implementing online registration. Officials from one state, Illinois, 

cited the lack of additional funding for designing their online registration 

system as a challenge of implementing the effort. The costs states incur 

result from activities such as building the online registration infrastructure 

and performing ongoing maintenance. State personnel or outside 

specialists under contract from the state may complete these activities. 

For example, in Illinois, state officials reported that the State Board of 

Elections Information Technology Department designed the online 

registration system. The state’s total costs for fiscal years 2013 and 2014, 

including the salaries of the individuals who designed the system, were 

reported to be approximately $600,000. Similarly, state officials we spoke 

with in Oregon noted that the state developed its online registration 

system in house, and thus there was no additional expense resulting from 

the upfront costs for implementation, beyond staff time for the Information 

Services Division of the Office of the Secretary of State and the DMV. 

However, Oregon officials reported that there are monthly and annual 

costs associated with vendors who provide continual maintenance of the 

system.

Election officials from three states we visited also said they needed to 

overcome multiple technical challenges when implementing online 

registration in their respective states. In particular, developing an online 

registration system includes the creation of a secure application for 

collecting registration information and transferring the information to local 

election offices, and this technical capability can be challenging to design. 

Illinois election officials said that in designing their state’s online 

registration system, they faced technical challenges because the system 

needed to interface with various systems that local jurisdictions use for 

 23The Pew Charitable Trusts, Understanding Online Voter Registration: Trends in 

Development and Implementation, May 2015. Twenty states were surveyed, and 14 

reported costs. One state did not answer the cost question, and two other states had not 

determined total costs at the time of the survey. Three states reported using staff time and 

did not report the monetary value of staff time associated with implementation.
Page 15 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

processing and maintaining registration records.24 Thus, state officials 

designing the online registration system had to work with multiple vendors 

for the local jurisdictions’ systems to ensure the state’s online form could 

transmit data to the local jurisdictions.

Election officials in the states we visited also noted that designing the 

online registration system to capture a signature from registrants was a 

challenge.25 According to The National Research Council, state DMV 

databases generally provide the signature used for online registration.26

In Colorado, to verify the identity and obtain a digitized signature for first 

time registrants, the online system needs to connect to the DMV 

database in real time; the state had to overcome initial technical 

challenges with this connection when first implementing the system in 

2010. In Delaware, state officials told us that a 2003 change in state law 

made online registration possible by permitting the election office to 

accept electronic signatures—a registrant can either access the system 

on a tablet and provide a signature using a stylus pen or upload a scan of 

his or her signature—if the registrant does not already have a signature 

on file in the elections or DMV databases.27

 24In Illinois, the state’s voter registration database compiles data maintained by local 

jurisdictions in their own databases. Thus, prior to the design of online registration, the 

state had a mechanism to receive information from local jurisdictions, but not to provide 

information to them.

25In general, states with online registration require the collection of a signature, which can 

then be compared to the signature of the voter taken at the time of voting (for example, by 

signing a mail ballot or poll book) to verify the voter’s identity. Additionally, some state 

statutes treat online voter registrations as a registration by mail, for which a signature is 

required. See, e.g., Wash. Rev. Code Ann. § 29A.08.123(4). NVRA requires that a voter 

registration application (both by mail and at the DMV) include a statement that “(i) states 

each eligibility requirement (including citizenship); (ii) contains an attestation that the 

applicant meets each such requirement; and (iii) requires the signature of the applicant, 

under penalty of perjury.” 52 U.S.C. §§ 20504(c)(2)(C), 20506(a)(6)(A)(i), 20508(b)(2). 

States we spoke with, as well as the literature, cite capturing a signature as a challenge to 

online registration.

26The National Research Council Committee on State Voter Registration Databases, 

Improving State Voter Registration Databases: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: National 

Academies Press, 2010).

2774 Del. Laws 168, § 1 (2003) (codified at Del. Code. Ann. tit. 15, § 1302(e)) (allowing the 

applicant’s signature on his or her voter registration application to be a digitized signature 

obtained by a state agency as part of the process that includes registering a person to 

vote or updating the applicant’s voter registration information). 
Page 16 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

According to literature we reviewed and state and local election officials 

we spoke with, the benefits of implementing an online registration system 

include administrative efficiencies that can result in improved registration 

accuracy and cost savings, including cost savings to voters in the form of 

greater convenience. Online registration results in administrative 

efficiencies, in part, by reducing the amount of manual data entry required 

to input information from registrants into a computerized voter registration 

database. Although state officials are generally responsible for the initial 

investments to set up the online registration system, local election officials 

may reap more of the benefits of online registration because they are 

responsible for processing and certifying individual registration records, 

and thus the local election officials benefit from being able to process 

registrations more quickly. For example, in Illinois, officials said that 

having the information electronically transferred has reduced processing 

times to a few minutes, replacing a more time-consuming process that 

required staff to open the envelope(s), date stamp each application, and 

manually enter the data into their computer systems.

Officials from all four states we visited with online registration noted 

improved accuracy of their registration rolls as a benefit of the system, 

and local officials in Delaware cited this as the greatest benefit of the new 

system. Local election officials in Colorado and Oregon noted that online 

registration reduces the need to decipher illegible handwriting, which can 

lead to errors when processing handwritten, paper registration forms. 

Additionally, in Illinois, election officials said that the registration 

information they receive is more complete because the online system 

identifies when individuals have left a required field blank and does not 

allow them to submit the application without completing all the required 

fields. In contrast, if individuals submit paper forms with incomplete or 

missing information, local officials processing the registrations would 

Efficiencies and Other Benefits
Page 17 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

need to contact the individuals to obtain the information required to 

complete the registration process.28

After implementing online registration, the administrative efficiencies 

associated with processing registration forms can translate into cost 

savings for election offices. Twelve out of 13 states with online 

registration surveyed by Pew in 2013 reported that cost savings is one of 

the key benefits of these systems.29 Officials in Maricopa County in 

Arizona—the first state to have online registration—also reported that the 

cost of registration dropped significantly since the implementation of 

online registration, from $0.83 for a paper registration to $0.03 for an 

online registration—a total savings of approximately $1.4 million between 

2008 and 2012.30

All local officials we spoke with in states with online registration noted that 

the administrative efficiencies from online registration reduced the costs, 

as well as time costs, associated with managing their registration lists. In 

Delaware, election officials stated that staff now more efficiently process 

registration applications, whereas officials previously had to work 10- to 

12-hour shifts to process all incoming registration forms by the official 

deadline. This has resulted in less use of overtime pay in the weeks 

leading up to the state’s registration deadline, according to officials. 

Delaware state election officials also noted that their staff spends less 

time responding to phone calls from voters with registration questions 

since the implementation of the state’s online registration system, which 

has allowed election officials more time to do other elections related 

 28We also conducted a quantitative analysis to determine if states that adopted online 

registration saw an increase in the accuracy of their voter registration lists. We analyzed 

data from the 2008 through 2014 Voting and Registration Supplements of the U.S. 

Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) to determine the extent to which 

implementation of online registration affected the number of registered voters reporting 

problems voting due to registration issues, which could be an indicator of the accuracy of 

a state’s registration list. Our analysis did not find a statistically significant reduction in 

reported registration problems in states that had implemented online voter registration 

versus states that had not. We provide more details on this analysis as well as its 

limitations in appendix II.

29The Pew Charitable Trusts, Understanding Online Voter Registration, January 2014.

30Maricopa County Elections Department, Cost of Elections: Online Voter Registration & 

Provisional Ballots, accessed March 18, 2016, 

https://recorder.maricopa.gov/voteroutreach/pdf/english/Cost%20of%20Elections%20Onli

ne%20VR%20and%20Provisionals.pdf.
Page 18 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

tasks. Additionally, officials in one local jurisdiction reported they have 

reduced their overall costs because they have fewer requests to mail 

registration applications, which saves time, postage, and supplies.

In addition to these benefits for election offices, the election officials we 

spoke with and the literature we reviewed noted that voters benefit from 

the added convenience online registration provides, and added 

convenience can translate to a decrease in the time cost to voters for 

participating in the voting process. Specifically, officials from all four 

states we visited with online registration noted that the system provides 

added convenience to voters, and other benefits, such as the ability to 

access other information related to an upcoming election. For example, 

officials from one local jurisdiction said that online registration along with 

their locally developed mobile application enables individuals to easily 

register, change their party affiliation, and access other information to 

participate in elections. Additionally, in the first year after implementation, 

a study of Washington residents reported that nearly 70 percent of people 

who had used the system reported that it was “very easy” to do so and 95 

percent of those most informed about online registration agreed with the 

statement, “if I had a son or daughter turning 18, I would encourage them 

to register to vote online.”31

State and local election officials use a variety of tools to maintain voter 

registration lists. We reviewed two methods for sharing voter registration 

data electronically: (1) data sharing between state DMVs and election 

offices and (2) data sharing among multiple states. Since the passage of 

NVRA, DMVs have played a critical role in the voter registration process. 

Therefore, they are sometimes able to provide more current and accurate 

data about registered or potentially eligible voters. Moreover, in an effort 

to improve the quality of voter registration lists, states may take additional 

steps to share registration information with other states, thus helping to 

identify duplicate and deceased registrants and update each state’s 

registration rolls. Officials implementing DMV and interstate data-sharing 

efforts, as well as the literature we reviewed, have noted that there are 

 31Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (University of Washington, 

Seattle) and the Election Administration Research Center (University of California, 

Berkeley), Online Voter Registration Systems in Arizona and Washington: Evaluating 

Usage, Public Confidence, and Implementation Processes, April 2010. 

Data-Sharing Efforts
Page 19 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

investments and challenges to implementation, but generally these efforts 

result in efficiencies and costs savings for voter registration activities.

NVRA requires that the DMV in every state give individuals applying for a 

driver’s license or state ID card the opportunity to register to vote or 

update their voter registration information.32 Some states have developed 

systems that electronically collect and share information between the 

DMV and election officials. As shown in table 1, all five states we visited 

had, or were in the process of implementing, data-sharing efforts between 

the DMV and election offices.

Table 1: Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) Data-Sharing Efforts in States GAO Visited

State Description of DMV Data-Sharing efforts as reported by officials

Colorado The DMV customer service representative invites the customer to register or update his or her registration, and 

asks a series of questions to complete the electronic form. Upgrades made in March 2016 enable the customer to 

review and electronically sign the application using a screen and keypad device to confirm information for his or 

her driver’s license or state identification (ID) and confirm the voter registration information. The DMV’s system 

transmits the electronic registration files nightly to the registration database, Local county clerks, who are 

responsible for verifying registrants’ addresses and eligibility, can then use the state voter registration database to 

review registrations in their jurisdictions.

Delaware DMV customer service representatives ask customers if they are interested in registering to vote or updating their 

voter registration information. The customer service representative uses a standardized script to ask questions, 

and the customer sees and responds to these questions on a screen and keypad device at the DMV counter. The 

system populates the customer’s data from the DMV transaction on the screen of the keypad device, allowing the 

customer to verify the information and provide a signature for registration. The technology used at the DMV 

enables the DMV to transmit electronically information the customer confirms in real time to the state’s voter 

registration database.

Illinois As of April 2016, customers complete a separate paper registration form at the DMV, then DMV officials mail the 

forms to the State Board of Elections, which distributes those forms by mail to the appropriate local election 

jurisdictions. In response to legislation enacted in 2015,

a the state is planning to make online voter registration 

available to customers at the DMV, and other state agencies. Representatives at the DMV will ask customers if 

they would like to register to vote, and if so, connect to the online registration portal with some of the items prepopulated based on information gained during the DMV transaction. According to officials from the State Board of 

Elections, customers visiting the DMV will be able to utilize this data-sharing mechanism by July 2016.b

Oregon In response to legislation enacted in 2015, as of January 1, 2016,

c the Elections Division obtains data for DMV 

customers from specific transactions—a new, renewed, or replacement driver’s license or state ID card for citizens 

17 years old or older. The Elections Division matches the DMV data against the current voter registration 

database, and sends a mailing to any qualified individuals who are not already registered to provide them the 

opportunity to identify a political party affiliation or opt-out of voter registration. Individuals who do not sign and 

return the form requesting to opt-out are automatically registered to vote.

 3252 U.S.C. § 20504.

DMV Data Sharing
Page 20 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

State Description of DMV Data-Sharing efforts as reported by officials

Rhode Island DMV customers fill out a paper application for a driver’s license or state ID that includes questions regarding 

whether the customer would like to register to vote. The DMV customer service representative enters the data from 

the paper form into the DMV computer system and provides a printout to customers to confirm the information. The 

system uploads the registration data collected at the DMV to a server, and a vendor imports all files to the 

statewide voter registration database each evening. Local officials are able to access registration information from 

this database for final registration processing. 

Source: GAO summary of interviews with and documentation from state DMV and election officials. | GAO-16-630

a

10 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 5/1A-16.6.

b

In June 2016, the Illinois General Assembly passed a bill to further automate the voter registration 

process when individuals conduct business with the DMV and other designated agencies. As of June 

21, 2016, the bill is pending final action by the governor.

c

See Or. Rev. Stat. §§ 247.012, 247.014, 247.017, 247.171.

Investments and Challenges

According to officials we spoke with, as well as literature we reviewed, 

establishing a data-sharing program between the DMV and the election 

office involves up-front investment costs associated with technology, as 

well as continuous costs associated with staff time. Furthermore, the 

implementation process can present technological challenges. The upfront costs for setting up a data-sharing program can include costs for 

upgrading technology and for staff time implementing technological and 

procedural changes. State election officials and DMV officials may have 

to coordinate to upgrade their databases, software, and hardware, to 

facilitate data sharing. Software changes may require additional 

programming, which involves staff time from information technology staff 

or contractors, according to officials. Furthermore, following 

implementation of the program, officials who interact with applicants and 

process registrations—specifically DMV customer service representatives 

and local election officials—may need training on any new or changed 

procedures.

According to a fiscal impact statement prepared by the Oregon State 

Elections Division, the projected costs for implementing the state’s new 

DMV data sharing program will be $796,000 for July 1, 2015 through 

June 30, 2019, which includes initial implementation costs for software 

and hardware upgrades to Oregon’s voter registration database as well 

as hiring a project manager. According to this fiscal impact statement, the 

Oregon Secretary of State anticipates using the state’s HAVA funds for 

these costs. This statement also notes anticipated costs to the state 

Department of Transportation of $33,200 for data system upgrades; 

however, it states that savings from the data-sharing process in the 2015-

2017 biennial budget will offset the Department of Transportation’s costs. 
Page 21 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Implementation of Delaware’s data-sharing program did not require hiring 

additional staff; rather, existing staff from both the state election office and 

DMV made the necessary programming and procedural changes.33

According to state election officials, Delaware also used federal funds 

provided through HAVA for some of the implementation costs, specifically 

to make programming adjustments to automated kiosks at the DMV that 

customers used prior to data sharing to update information on their 

drivers’ licenses or state IDs.34 The state election office’s costs were 

primarily to pay a vendor to make programming adjustments to the 

proprietary software for the kiosks, to incorporate the voter registration 

features.

In addition to the costs for technology and staff time, setting up 

connections to share DMV data can be technologically challenging, 

according to the literature and election officials we interviewed. For 

example, a Pew Charitable Trusts report noted that compatibility between 

data systems at election offices and DMVs is a technological challenge to 

implementing data-sharing programs.35 Similarly, Colorado officials 

reported challenges getting DMV and state elections systems to work 

together, and officials plan additional changes through 2017 to improve 

the compatibility of data shared between the agencies. In Delaware, DMV 

officials told us that creating a web server link between the screen and 

keypad devices that voters use to input their information and the DMV 

computer system was the most difficult technical challenge. Lastly, 

Oregon DMV officials reported having to create an entirely new 

application in their system to share information with the election office.

Following implementation of a data-sharing process, there may also be 

ongoing costs associated with processing an increased volume of 

registrations. Officials we spoke with, as well as studies analyzing the 

implementation of intrastate data-sharing efforts, note that the volume of 

voter registration applications can increase from implementing efforts 

 33Officials we spoke with explained they did not break out the costs associated with 

implementing these upgrades for their DMV data-sharing efforts because the changes 

were done by in-house staff and completed during normal business hours.

34In addition to the screen and keypad devices at the counters where customers interact 

with a DMV representative, the Delaware DMVs have automated kiosks that customers 

can use to make changes to their address on their DMV-issued IDs.

35The Pew Charitable Trusts, Measuring Motor Voter, May 2014. 
Page 22 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

such as DMV data sharing. Local election officials can face increased 

workload as they maintain responsibility for processing and certifying 

these registrations. For example, local officials in one state we visited told 

us more individuals were registering after implementation of DMV data 

sharing, and state officials in Delaware also reported increased 

registration rates, though neither reported that processing increased 

registrations presented a challenge. However, Oregon election officials 

and DMV officials we spoke with anticipate that the state’s data-sharing 

program—that registers DMV customers as of January 1, 2016, unless 

they specifically opt out—will increase registration rates and result in 

increased costs. Processing registrations includes the production and 

mailing of confirmation notices to eligible individuals informing them that 

election officials have certified their registration.36 Because of the 

expected workload increase for county officials, Oregon state election 

officials said the state plans to reimburse counties $0.15 per registered 

voter over a 6- to 8-year phase-in period for the program.

The quality of registrants’ signatures collected at the DMV, and various 

constraints on sharing signatures across agencies, can pose a challenge 

for election officials when trying to verify a voter’s identity when 

comparing a signature captured during the registration process with a 

signature when the voter casts a ballot. While some state DMVs continue 

to collect a signature on a paper form as part of their registration process, 

others have installed new hardware to collect digital signatures, but an 

election official in Oregon cited challenges with the quality of these 

signatures, which can vary depending on the technology used. In Oregon, 

the signature provided to the DMV is crucial because it will become the 

official signature on file in the state’s voter registration system. As a voteby-mail state, Oregon requires that the signature on file match the 

signature provided on the voter’s mail ballot. Oregon officials are 

considering installing signature pads at the DMV that will produce high 

quality signatures, but as of May 2016 the DMV staff are scanning a 

paper copy of the customer’s signature and transferring it to the state 

elections office. In Delaware, officials implemented the data-sharing 

program to collect two signatures, one for DMV transactions and one for 

elections office transactions. Delaware officials explained that this was 

necessary because, according to state law, DMV customers, in 

 36In Oregon, the process includes mailing notices to qualified individuals who have done 

business with the DMV to inform them of options to select a party affiliation or opt-out of 

registration. 
Page 23 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

conducting DMV transactions, did not consent to share their signature 

with the Department of Elections.37

Efficiencies and Other Benefits

According to literature we reviewed and DMV officials we spoke with, 

DMV data-sharing programs can lead to cost savings and other 

efficiencies for officials while also providing added convenience to voters. 

Electronic data transmission can result in cost savings to DMV and 

election officials because of administrative efficiencies—such as 

eliminating physical transport—and improved data quality. For example, 

in Delaware, officials reported that prior to implementation of the datasharing program, election officials drove to their local DMVs every day to 

pick up voter registration forms; and electronic transmission eliminated 

these daily trips. In other states where the DMV previously mailed 

registration forms to election offices, the electronic data transfer saves 

mailing costs.38 According to one report, Washington’s DMV data-sharing 

program saved $121,000 in mailing costs from January 2008 to July 

2009.39 Furthermore, because electronic receipt of registration data 

replaces manual data entry from paper registration forms, DMV data 

sharing can reduce the amount of time elections officials spend 

processing registrations. In Delaware, the state election office returned 

full-time positions to the state because electronic application transmission

increased efficiency, according to state election officials.

Additionally, officials we spoke with stated that DMV data-sharing 

programs likely increase accuracy, as election officials are no longer 

deciphering illegible handwriting on paper forms. The literature also cites 

accuracy and cost savings as the predominant benefits of DMV data 

sharing. Among recommendations to improve states’ electoral systems 

and implementation of HAVA, a report by The Century Foundation 

Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform encourages 

 37See Del. Code Ann. tit. 15, § 2050(a)(4). 

38Burd-Sharps, Sarah and Patrick Guyer Nolan, The Costs of Modernizing Voter 

Registration Systems: A Case Study of California and Arizona, Social Science Research 

Council, February 2015.

39Weiser, Wendy, Adam Skaggs, Christopher Ponoroff, and Lawrence Norden, 

Modernizing Ohio's System for Registering Voters: Automatic & Online Registration, (New 

York, New York: The Brennan Center for Justice, 2009).
Page 24 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

data sharing from DMV data systems and other state databases.40 The 

report cites examples from Kentucky and Michigan where data-sharing 

efforts ensured that states’ voter registration lists automatically reflected 

relevant updates, such as a change in address. Additionally, a Brennan 

Center report notes that the Washington Secretary of State’s office saved 

$126,000 in 2008 due to both online voter registration and DMV data 

sharing.41 In Delaware, officials reported reducing DMV transaction time 

by 1 minute per customer after the DMV customer service process 

incorporated registration questions, because customers no longer have to 

wait for representatives to print forms with their information in triplicate for 

customers to sign.

DMV data sharing may also result in a more efficient experience for 

voters, because they are not required to update their voter registration 

records separately, as the DMV automatically forwards the information to 

the election office. The literature also indicates that shifting the burden of 

voter registration from the registrant to government agencies such as the 

DMV and the election office is especially helpful for mobile, low-income, 

and minority populations, who benefit from the added convenience, as 

well as young voters,42 who may be able to preregister when they apply to 

obtain a driver’s license.43 Rhode Island officials we spoke with also noted 

cost savings for voters because registration at the DMV eliminates the 

need for registrants to pay postage to mail a voter registration form to the 

elections office.

Various interstate data-sharing efforts help state and local election offices 

maintain accurate voter registration lists, according to election officials 

 40Balancing Access and Integrity: A Report of the Century Foundation Working Group on 

State Implementation of Election Reform (New York, New York: The Century Foundation 

Press, 2005). 

41Christopher Ponoroff, Voter Registration in a Digital Age.

42Novakowski, Scott, Democracy in a Mobile America (New York, New York: Demos, 

2009); Alvarez, Michael R., Bernard Grofman, Election Administration in the United 

States: The State of Reform after Bush v. Gore; Cha, J.M, Liz Kennedy, Millions to the 

Polls: Permanent & Portable Voter Registration (New York, New York: Demos, 2014).

43In some states, individuals can pre-register when they are 16 or 17 years old, and these 

pre-registrations become active registrations when the individuals become eligible to vote. 

In many cases, they are eligible to vote once they turn 18, but in some states, 17-yearolds can vote in a primary election if they will be 18 years old by the date of the 

corresponding general election. 

Interstate Data Sharing
Page 25 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

and literature. These efforts include, among others, state participation in 

interstate exchanges—such as ERIC and the Interstate Voter Registration 

Crosscheck Program—in which states compare information from their 

voter registration lists, as well as individual states’ use of national 

databases—such as the U.S. Postal Service’s National Change of 

Address (NCOA) database44 or death records from the Social Security 

Administration—to identify registrants who have moved to another 

jurisdiction or state, or who have died.45 Researchers found that, in 2008 

and 2010, approximately half of the states used checks against one or 

more external databases that contained information across multiple states 

to maintain the accuracy of their voter registration records.46 In a 2009 

report, the National Research Council Committee on State Voter 

Registration Databases made multiple recommendations aimed at 

upgrading procedures to conduct data matching to enable election 

officials to identify potential duplicate registrations across states’

registration databases.47 Similarly, the Presidential Commission on 

Election Administration recommended that states should participate in 

interstate exchanges of voter registration information, such as ERIC and 

the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, adding that such 

efforts could result in more accurate registration lists, among other 

 44The National Change of Address database is a product of the United States Postal 

Service. Entities use the database to obtain the most current and accurately formatted 

mailing address information to help reduce undeliverable mail.

45Three of the states we visited—Colorado, Illinois, and Oregon—are either current or 

former participants in the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program. According to 

election officials we spoke with in these states, participating states agree to provide 

information such as full name and date of birth for those registered as well as turnout data, 

to Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck program administrators in January following a 

general election. Using the information provided by member states, the Interstate Voter 

Registration Crosscheck program then provides states with data on potential duplicate 

registrations and potential double voters. Chief election officials in these three states also 

contract for data matching against the NCOA database, which assists officials either in 

having up-to-date mailing address information for registrants who have moved, to a 

different jurisdiction within the state, or out of state. Lastly, the Colorado election director 

also told us that the state election office utilizes Social Security death records to help 

maintain the accuracy of the state’s registration list. 

46Barry C. Burden and Charles Stewart III, The Measure of American Elections, first 

edition (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

47The National Research Council Committee on State Voter Registration Databases, 

Improving State Voter Registration Databases: Final Report (Washington, D.C.: National 

Academies Press, 2009).
Page 26 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

benefits.48 Among such interstate data sharing efforts, we reviewed ERIC 

in more detail, because it provides an illustrative example of such 

interstate data-sharing efforts used by state and local election offices in 

maintaining voter registration lists.

ERIC is a multistate partnership that uses data-matching technology to 

compare member states’ voter registration lists, DMV records, and 

nationally available lists from the U.S. Postal Service and the Social 

Security Administration. ERIC administrators stated that the goal of the 

partnership is to improve the accuracy and quality of voter registration 

rolls, adding that this can increase voter turnout and decrease costs 

associated with administering elections by enabling states to have more 

up-to-date registration lists. ERIC was organized in 2012 with seven 

states as founding members and has grown to include 19 member states 

and Washington, D.C., as of June 19, 2016, including all five states we 

visited.49

Participation in the ERIC partnership places a number of requirements on 

states to provide information to ERIC for data-matching purposes, and in 

response, ERIC administrators provide regular reports to the states that 

election officials may use to update their registration lists.

• At least bi-monthly, member states are required to provide ERIC with 

data from their voter registration lists and DMV records for individuals 

with licenses or state IDs. These data include identifiers/data 

elements such as name, address, date of birth, last four digits of a 

Social Security Number, driver’s license or state ID number, and 

citizenship, among others, when these data elements are available.

• At least once per year—or more frequently if the member state 

submits a request—ERIC administrators provide member states with 

lists of cross state matches, in-state updates (where the DMV may 

have a more up-to-date address than the election office), duplicate 

 48Presidential Commission on Election Administration, The American Voting Experience: 

Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, 

January 2014.

49The following are ERIC members as of June 19, 2016: Alaska, Alabama, Colorado, 

Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, 

Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., 

and Wisconsin.
Page 27 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

registrations, and deceased voters. Within 90 days, states are 

required to initiate contact with 95 percent of the voters whose 

registration data ERIC’s data-matching process deemed to be 

inaccurate or out-of-date, to begin registration list maintenance 

activities.

• At least every other year—or more frequently if the member state 

submits a request—ERIC administrators provide states with a list of 

possibly eligible, unregistered individuals—specifically, individuals 

who have a driver’s license or state ID but have not registered to vote. 

Using this information, states are required to establish a plan to 

outreach to these individuals, such as by sending a mailing that 

provides information on how these individuals can register if they are 

eligible citizens, though the individual approaches and mailings may 

vary by state.

Investments and Challenges

Member states incur financial and staff time investments for joining ERIC, 

as well as experience other challenges in leveraging the matched data 

based on the quality of their own state’s data. Participation in ERIC 

requires multiple fees, which can present a challenge according to state 

election officials and our literature review. Upon joining ERIC, states pay 

an initial $25,000 membership fee. States must also pay annual fees 

based on the number of registered voters in the state and the number of 

member states participating. State officials we spoke to report a range of 

participation fees between $26,000 and $75,000 annually. Officials from 

Delaware noted that they have used some of their remaining HAVA funds 

to cover the cost of their annual fees.

Once states receive matched data from ERIC, election officials invest 

time and other resources to review and process the results in a timely 

manner. However, when asked about the challenges they faced from 

joining ERIC, local officials from Delaware, Rhode Island, and Oregon, 

who are responsible for processing the results, did not indicate that the 

requirement to contact registered voters identified as having inaccurate or 

out-of-date records within 90-days specifically posed an issue.50

 50Officials in Colorado stated in October 2015 that they were unable to meet this deadline 

due to limitations in their state DMV database, but are implementing upgrades, which they 

expect will resolve this problem. 
Page 28 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

States can incur costs associated with mailings that are required by the 

ERIC bylaws, in particular, the bi-annual mailings to all identified possibly 

eligible, unregistered individuals. According to the state election director

in Oregon, ERIC identified about 795,678 possibly eligible, unregistered 

individuals in 2014. State officials reported that the total associated 

mailing cost was $123,767. However, new member states, or those 

interested in joining ERIC, can apply to The Pew Charitable Trusts for 

grants to help offset the costs associated with the required mailings.51 For 

example, grant funds from The Pew Charitable Trusts covered 

approximately three-quarters of Oregon’s $123,767 mailing to possibly 

eligible, unregistered individuals. Although the first batch of possibly 

eligible, unregistered individuals identified after a state joins ERIC can 

require a large mailing, states only need to attempt contact with those 

identified individuals once, according to the membership agreement. 

Because subsequent state mailings can focus on only those newly 

identified possibly eligible, unregistered individuals since the prior data 

provided by ERIC, these mailings are therefore likely not to be as large or 

costly.

States may also face challenges using information provided by ERIC 

based on the reliability of underlying data provided, and the number and 

geographic proximity of member states. For example, Colorado election 

officials said that they are not confident in the quality of the state’s DMV 

address data and thus the in-state updates list that state election officials 

receive from ERIC are not always accurate. Colorado DMV officials 

stated that, by 2017, they plan to complete upgrades to make their 

system more compatible with the state’s voter registration database, 

which election officials expect will make the DMV address data more 

reliable and the ERIC matching process more useful.

Additionally, election officials in some of the states that we visited 

reported that the absence of ERIC participation among neighboring states 

limited ERIC’s ability to provide complete data to update registration lists. 

Officials in Delaware and Rhode Island noted that participation by states 

to which retirees commonly move (such as Florida) might result in 

particularly useful information for updating registration lists.

 51According to officials, ERIC was founded in 2012 as a project between the states and 

The Pew Charitable Trusts, but is now an independent organization managed by 

representatives from member states. In 2014, The Pew Charitable Trusts awarded grants 

to four states to conduct their initial ERIC mailings.
Page 29 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Efficiencies and Other Benefits

According to election officials we spoke with, as well as officials’ views 

cited in literature we reviewed, a state’s participation in ERIC leads to 

more accurate voter registration lists and cost savings for state and local 

election offices. State officials noted that ERIC data improve the accuracy 

of voter registration lists by identifying registrants who elections 

administrators should remove for various reasons, such as having moved 

to another state or died. For example, local officials in Oregon noted that 

ERIC lists identified over 900 registrants who died in another state, 

enabling election officials to remove the majority of these registrants from 

Oregon’s registration list. From our literature review, studies that 

evaluated ERIC also identified increased accuracy as a benefit of the 

program. For example, an RTI International report52 noted that all officials 

interviewed for the study from states that had participated in ERIC were 

confident in ERIC’s matching process to increase the accuracy of their 

voter registration lists.53

State officials in all states we visited, as well as multiple sources in the 

literature we reviewed, reported that improved accuracy of registration 

lists translates into cost savings from decreased mailing costs as well as 

decreased staff time to maintain the voter registration lists. Vote-by-mail 

states, such as Colorado and Oregon, have a heightened interest in 

maintaining clean voter registration lists because of the costs associated 

with mailing a ballot to an incorrect address. Election officials in both 

states noted that the data provided by ERIC are among multiple tools 

 52Bland, Gary and Barry C. Burden, Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) 

Stage 1 Evaluation: Report to the Pew Charitable Trusts, RTI International, December 

2013. 

53In addition to the officials cited, the RTI International study referenced above used a 

difference-in-difference modeling approach to estimate the effect of ERIC adoption on 

changes in the number of registered voters reporting problems voting due to registration 

issues, as reported on the Voting and Registration Supplements of the U.S. Census 

Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) for the 2008 to 2014 elections. We replicated 

the methods used in RTI International’s analysis to estimate the effect of ERIC adoption 

on changes in reported problems voting due to registration, a proxy measure of 

registration list accuracy, for midterm elections in 2010 through 2014 as well as the 2008 

and 2012 presidential elections. We did not find statistically significant differences 

between states that adopted ERIC and those that did not. The specifics of this analysis 

and a discussion of its limitations can be found in Appendix II.
Page 30 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

they use to maintain accurate registration rolls.54 Additionally, according 

to a study by The Pew Charitable Trusts, King County, Washington, 

which conducts elections entirely by mail, saw a drop in undeliverable 

ballots from 17,911 in the 2013 primary to 11,174 in the 2014 primary, 

which county election officials attributed to Washington’s participation in 

ERIC.55

States without all vote-by-mail elections cited similar benefits. For 

example, according to election officials in Delaware, having more 

accurate voter registration lists from participation in ERIC has resulted in 

mailings that are more effective, because updates based on the 

information provided by ERIC increase the likelihood that voters will 

receive mailings while reducing the amount of undeliverable mail. Since 

making ERIC updates, officials reported receiving about three bins of 

returned postcards instead of eight bins from the state’s bi-annual mailing 

to verify voters’ addresses, resulting in less money wasted on printing and 

postage for mailings that do not reach the intended recipient. Elections 

officials in Delaware and Rhode Island also reported that their staff spend 

less time updating the voter registration lists in the months leading up to 

an election, with the work of cleaning the registration list more evenly 

distributed across the year. One local election official in Rhode Island, 

which joined ERIC in July 2015, indicated that ERIC participation should 

help to reduce the rate of duplicate registrations, resulting in reduced 

printing costs at the local level for poll books. According to a Pew 

Charitable Trusts report, the director of elections in Minnesota cited 

approximately $116,250 in savings to counties since the state joined 

ERIC in August 2014.56

 54Officials in Oregon specifically cited the identification of deceased registrants from ERIC 

as particularly helpful. Officials in Colorado added that, in addition to ERIC they rely on the 

NCOA database to make most of their updates to their registration lists. As previously 

stated, ERIC plans to provide an additional report to member states that compares states’ 

lists against the NCOA database. 

55The Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC Reduces Undeliverable Ballots in King County, 

Washington, October 16, 2014.

56The Pew Charitable Trusts, ERIC Promotes Long-Term Cost Savings in Minnesota, 

March 24, 2015.
Page 31 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

State and local governing bodies and election officials are responsible for 

selecting and implementing various policies and practices (hereafter 

“policies”) to facilitate election administration. We systematically reviewed 

literature to identify which of these policies researchers have studied for 

potential effects on turnout and the findings from these studies. Through 

our review we identified 11 policies that were each studied in multiple 

publications. The research indicated these policies had varying effects on 

turnout. For instance, the majority of studies we reviewed that assessed 

the effect of same day registration and all vote-by-mail on voter turnout 

found that these policies increased turnout. Additionally, some studies on 

informational mailings and no-excuse absentee voting policies also found 

that these policies increased turnout, but other studies associated with 

these policies reported mixed evidence or no evidence of an effect. In 

appendix IV, we summarize the detailed results of our literature review 

and present contextual information related to each of the 11 policies.

Broad academic research on voter turnout has generally shown that 

individual and demographic differences among populations—such as 

political interest and age—and the competitiveness of elections are more 

strongly and consistently associated with the decision to vote than 

interventions that seek to make voting more convenient, and thus less 

costly, to voters. Additionally, according to CPS data for the voting-age 

population, national turnout rates in presidential and midterm elections 

have declined slightly over the past three-and-a-half decades; at the 

same time, state and local governments have implemented various 

policies which, in many cases, have helped to expand options related to 

when, where, and how individuals may register and vote.

Our review focused on policies that fall into three broad categories:

• Providing information: State and local strategies for providing 

information about registration and elections can vary in terms of the 

methods used (e.g., websites, mail, etc.) and content, format, and 

frequency of communications. Some informational policies are 

determined by state law, regulation, or policy, and others are 

determined by local jurisdictions.

Our Review of 

Relevant Research 

Finds that Effects of 

Selected Policies and 

Practices on Voter 

Turnout Vary

Policies We Reviewed
Page 32 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

• Registering individuals: States vary with regard to where, when, 

and how citizens may register to vote.57 For instance, some states 

have registration closing dates in advance of Election Day while other 

states allow citizens to register and vote on Election Day. Within state 

requirements, local jurisdictions may have some discretion, such as in 

selecting which locations may be available for citizens to register in 

person.

• Providing opportunities to vote: States also vary with regard to 

where, when, and how registered individuals may cast a ballot. For 

instance, states differ in the extent to which they allow voting prior to 

Election Day (either in-person or by mail). Within state requirements, 

local jurisdictions may have some discretion, such as in determining 

which specific days they will allow early in-person voting, or in setting 

polling hours.

We identified and reviewed literature that assessed the effects of a variety 

of policies on voter turnout. Specifically, our literature search identified 

over 400 journal articles, reports, or books published from 2002 through 

2015 relevant to the topic of voter turnout. We used a systematic process 

to conduct the review, which appendix II describes in more detail. We 

ultimately identified and reviewed 118 studies within 53 publications that 

(1) assessed policies that have been or could be implemented by a state 

or local government, (2) contained quantitative analyses of the effect of a 

given policy on turnout, and (3) used sufficiently sound methodologies for 

conducting such analyses.58 As used in this report, a “study” is an 

analysis or experiment with a unique sample of data.59

Our synthesis of the research literature provides a high-level summary of 

each policy’s general effect on turnout, as reported in recent research. 

 57North Dakota does not require voters to register prior to casting a ballot.

58Research on voter turnout has examined a wide range of policies. Therefore, in order to 

provide a reasonable and useful synthesis of the literature, we further limited our scope 

using other criteria, such as by excluding policies that were not examined in at least two 

publications. See appendix II for more information about our scoping decisions. See 

appendix V for a bibliography of these publications.

59For example, in some cases, authors presented their findings broken down by type of 

election (e.g., presidential vs. mid-term) or election year (e.g., 2002 and 2004). In these 

instances, we considered the findings related to the separate types of elections or time 

periods as resulting from separate samples (thus, separate “studies,” as we use the term 

in this report).
Page 33 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Although we found the studies we reference in our report to have used 

sufficiently sound methods, the studies we reference were subject to 

limitations. For instance, many of the policies we reviewed cannot easily 

be evaluated using randomized controlled trials that often provide the 

most persuasive evidence of program effects, and thus many of the 

studies in our review used quasi-experimental approaches or statistical 

analysis of observational data to examine the impacts of such policies.60

With such designs, any observed differences in turnout across 

jurisdictions, time periods, or groups could be caused or influenced by the 

policy itself; by factors related to the jurisdiction’s decision to adopt the 

policy; by differing demographic factors across voters; by the 

contemporaneous implementation of other election policies; or by 

unobserved or unmeasured factors—such as mobilization campaigns, 

news media coverage, or social and psychological differences across 

voters. As a result, distinguishing the unique effects of a policy from the 

effects of other factors that affect turnout can be challenging. These 

vulnerabilities can be mitigated, in part, with attention to research design, 

including appropriate statistical analysis and interpretation. Nevertheless, 

any policy evaluation in a non-experimental setting cannot account for all 

unobserved factors that could bias or confound impact estimates with 

certainty.

Our synthesis of the research literature also discusses additional 

contextual information that may be related to a specific policy’s effect on 

turnout. We recognize that variations in policy implementation exist—such 

as differences between the number and type (weekday versus weekend) 

of days early in-person voting may be available—and may have different 

effects on turnout. We provide examples of studies that assessed some 

of these variations in implementation, and their associated impacts on 

turnout, in the individual policy summaries in appendix IV. Moreover, the 

development and implementation of various election administration 

policies are informed by a variety of factors at the state and local level, 

and thus research findings on turnout may not be the only considerations 

for election officials in deciding whether to implement changes to election 

administration policies. We include a discussion of selected factors that 

administrators may consider in the individual policy summaries in 

appendix IV.

 60Jurisdictions likely would not randomly assign some citizens to one method of election 

administration and other citizens to another method without first examining whether such 

random assignment has the potential of violating equal-protection principles. 
Page 34 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

We reviewed the research conducted on 11 policies that met the criteria 

for inclusion in our literature review. Each of these 11 policies falls within 

one of the three broad types of activities conducted by election 

administrators: providing information, registering individuals, or providing 

opportunities to vote. Figure 3 presents the total number of studies that 

examined each policy’s impact on turnout, and summarizes the findings 

of the studies. Some studies examined more than one policy and thus 

appear more than once in figure 3. Additionally, some studies reported 

more than one finding related to the effect of a given policy.61 For a given 

policy, we categorize the findings for each study as follows:

• Increased turnout: A study reported only statistically significant 

positive effects (one or more).

• Mixed evidence: A study reported one or more statistically significant 

effects (positive or negative) and one or more findings that were not 

statistically significant. Alternatively, a study reported one or more 

statistically significant positive effects and one or more statistically 

significant negative effects, with or without additional findings that 

were not statistically significant.

• No evidence of effect: A study reported no statistically significant 

effects.

• Decreased turnout: A study reported only statistically significant 

negative effects (one or more).

 61For instance, some studies analyzed turnout data using multiple statistical models, 

resulting in multiple findings (one from each model). Additionally, other studies reported 

more than one finding because they broke down their results by subsamples, such as by 

race or by treatment groups associated with variations in policy implementation. 

Observations from our 

Literature Review
Page 35 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 3: Findings of Studies Examining Effects of Eleven Selected Policies on Voter Turnout

a

“Robocalls” refers to automated telephone calls that deliver prerecorded messages to inform 

potential voters about dates or other aspects of upcoming elections and encourage them to register 

or vote.

b

“No-excuse absentee voting” refers to the allowance for any registered individual to request an 

absentee ballot and to vote by mail, without requiring that the individual state a reason for doing so.

c

“Vote centers” refers to polling places that are strategically located throughout a political subdivision 

where any registered individual may vote, regardless of the precinct in which the individual resides.

As shown in figure 3, some policies have been studied more than others, 

and the research on some policies resulted in more consistent findings 

than on others. Taking both of these factors into consideration, we 

observe that:

• The majority of studies we reviewed on same day registration (21 of 

33 studies) and all vote-by-mail (11 of 21 studies) found that these 

policies increased turnout.

• Vote centers (polling places where registrants can vote regardless of 

assigned precinct) and the sending of text messages to provide 

information about registration and elections have not been studied as 
Page 36 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

much as some of the other policies, but almost all of the studies we 

reviewed on these policies (with the exception of one study on vote 

centers) reported increased turnout.

• Some studies of mailings to provide information and no-excuse 

absentee voting policies also found that these policies increased 

turnout, while other studies associated with these policies reported 

mixed evidence or no evidence of an effect. In some cases, variations 

in how these policies were implemented and unique contextual factors 

associated with their implementation may, in part, account for this 

varied evidence.

• Most studies that examined e-mail and robocalls used to provide 

information reported no evidence of an effect on turnout.

• Most studies (15 of 20) associated with early in-person voting found 

that the policy either had no effect on turnout (7 studies) or decreased 

turnout (8 studies), and 5 studies reported mixed evidence.

In appendix IV we present additional information specific to each of the 11 

policies. For each policy, we present (1) a summary of findings from the 

literature related to the policy’s effects on voter turnout; (2) examples of 

specific studies; (3) descriptions of variations in how the policy may be 

implemented; and (4) information about the administrative costs of policy 

implementation, effects on voter convenience (costs to voters), and other 

considerations that election officials may wish to consider when deciding 

whether and how to implement the policy (e.g., technological or legal 

considerations).

States and local election jurisdictions incur a variety of costs associated 

with administering elections, and the types and magnitude of costs can 

vary by state and jurisdiction. Further, quantifying the costs for all election 

activities is difficult for several reasons, including that multiple parties 

incur costs associated with elections and these parties may track costs 

differently. Although some parties’ costs can be easily identified in state 

and local budgets or other cost-tracking documents, other costs may be 

difficult to break out or attribute to election activities. Additionally, voters’

costs are difficult to quantify and monetize because individual voters’

circumstances differ.

Election Activities 

Result in Various 

Costs, and These 

Costs Can Be Difficult 

to Quantify
Page 37 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Election officials are responsible for providing information, registering 

individuals, and providing the opportunity to vote, but states and local 

jurisdictions differ in how they administer the activities within these areas 

of responsibility. The differences in election administration across 

jurisdictions result in variations in the types and magnitudes of costs that 

states and local jurisdictions incur for these activities. The following are 

some examples of variations in cost for different aspects of election 

administration.

State and local jurisdictions have different ways of informing residents 

about registration requirements and the voting process, and the costs for 

these efforts can vary. For example, communication efforts could include 

speaking to civic groups, churches, unions, high schools, and other 

interested groups; providing registration and voting information at 

naturalization ceremonies; publishing information in newspapers, on 

websites, or on social media; or mailing each household a voter guide. 

The type and magnitude of costs for these outreach efforts can vary 

because of the different methods states and local election jurisdictions 

may use to provide information to residents. For example, speaking to 

interested groups involves a time cost for the officials who speak at such 

events, and this time cost may be considered part of an election official’s 

regular salary and work schedule, whereas mailing voter guides involves 

printing and postage costs. A state election official in Rhode Island noted 

that he visits high schools to inform students about registration, and the 

costs are staff time that fall within his regular salary, in addition to 

transportation (mileage reimbursement).

According to the chief election official in one local jurisdiction we visited, 

the election office spent about $7,000 to advertise elections information 

(e.g., polling locations, deadlines related to the election) in newspapers 

for the 2014 primary and general elections, in addition to about $12,000 

for printing and mailing informational materials about state referenda on 

the ballot to registered voters. Officials in another local election 

jurisdiction said they send some voter information by e-mail, such as 

reminders to update registration information or information about election 

updates; although providing information by e-mail does not involve 

printing or postage costs, it requires that the election office have access 

to e-mail addresses. In some cases, election officials may be able to use 

e-mail addresses provided through other local government activities—for 

example, in one local jurisdiction we visited, the clerk includes election 

information in a general community e-mail newsletter to individuals who 

request the newsletter through the local government’s website. States 

and local jurisdictions may consider these costs, as well as other factors, 

States and Local 

Jurisdictions Incur a 

Variety of Costs 

Associated with 

Administering Elections

Costs for Providing Information
Page 38 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

such as the intended target audience or legal requirements, in selecting a 

combination of outreach efforts to inform residents about registration and 

voting processes.

In particular, information about registration requirements and processes 

may need to be distributed in such a way to reach individuals who are not 

registered or may need to update their registration. States and local 

election officials may choose outreach methods that address the general 

public to provide such information. In some cases, media may convey the 

information as part of a local news segment without charging an 

advertising fee. For example, Delaware election officials said that they 

provide information to the local TV news network to promote National 

Voter Registration Day, and officials in another local jurisdiction said they 

shared information with media outlets when the state introduced online 

registration. Officials may also use free-of-charge social media accounts 

to provide information. Additionally, as noted earlier in this report, states 

that participate in ERIC are required by the program to mail information to 

potentially eligible, unregistered individuals to provide information about 

opportunities to register. The costs of these mailings can be affected by 

the format the state chooses for its mailing (e.g., postcard or letter) as 

well as the number of potentially eligible, unregistered individuals ERIC 

identifies in the state.

Other outreach efforts may be targeted at registered voters to inform 

them about the particular details regarding an upcoming election. In some 

cases, states or local jurisdictions are required by state law to provide 

certain types of information to registered voters. For example, in 

Colorado, both the state and local jurisdictions are required to mail 

information to voters when there are ballot issues that affect debt or 

taxes.

62 In Rhode Island, the Secretary of State must mail a voter 

information handbook that lists all state questions and explanations of the 

subjects of these questions to each residence, while local jurisdictions, 

prior to each local election at which public questions are on the ballot, 

may mail similar voter information handbooks listing public questions and 

explanations of the subjects of the questions to each residence in lieu of 

posting the information in public locations and publishing it in a local 

 62Colo. Const. art. X, § 20, cl. 2-4.
Page 39 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

newspaper.

63 One jurisdiction we visited spent about $75,000 for printing 

and mailing a state-required notice for an election in 2013.

State election officials may also need to ensure that potential voters are 

informed about, and have access to, forms of ID required to vote in that 

state. In general, many states that require a government-issued photo ID 

for voting offer some form of ID free of charge.64 However, voters may 

incur costs—either monetary or time costs—for obtaining ID, as 

discussed later in this report. States may make IDs available free of 

charge for residents for voting purposes in a variety of ways—including 

providing them through the DMV or through the state election office. For 

example, in Rhode Island, the Secretary of State’s office purchased 

equipment to produce voting ID cards, and individuals can obtain these 

cards free of charge by visiting the Secretary of State’s office. The 

equipment is portable, and staff from the Secretary of State’s office also 

bring the equipment to various events to provide additional opportunities 

to obtain a voting ID card. Therefore, in addition to the costs for the ID 

equipment, the state incurs staff time cost for attending local events. The 

National Conference of State Legislatures reported that Indiana’s 

estimated production costs—including staff time, transaction time, and 

manufacturing—for providing 168,264 IDs to voters in 2010 exceeded 

$1.3 million.65 The Brennan Center reported that this estimate did not 

include costs such as training and voter education and outreach.66 Some 

states have prepared fiscal notes to accompany pending legislation that 

demonstrate how much providing voters with free IDs could cost. 

Although a proposed voter ID law did not pass in Minnesota, the state 

estimated that providing voter ID at 90 locations across the state would 

cost the state at least $250,000 in the first year of implementation, with 

recurring costs in future years. The state noted that individuals who lack 

 63R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 17-5-1.1, 17-5-1, 17-8-10.

64For more information about voter ID requirements, see GAO-13-90R and GAO, 

Elections: Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws, GAO-14-634 (Washington, 

D.C.: Sept. 19, 2014).

65National Conference of State Legislatures, “Elections and the Economy: The Cost of 

Voter ID Requirements,” The Canvass: States and Election Reform (Denver, Colorado: 

February 2011).

66Agraharkar, Vishal; Wendy Weiser, and Adam Skaggs, The Cost of Voter ID Laws: 

What the Courts Say (New York, New York: The Brennan Center at New York University 

School of Law, 2011).
Page 40 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

ID tend to change residences more often than the average person, which 

may affect supply costs. Minnesota’s estimate also noted that county 

auditors would incur substantial expenses related to providing the IDs, 

including designating and housing locations where voter ID could be 

obtained, processing the applications for voter ID cards, issuing and 

producing the cards, as well as receiving returned cards when residents 

change their residence. Additionally, the state’s cost estimate noted that 

municipal governments would need to hire additional poll workers to 

accommodate the additional time needed for asking for an ID from each 

voter as well as handling provisional ballots for individuals who did not 

bring ID with them to the polls. The state estimated that the local 

government costs for additional poll workers could range from $375,830 

to $536,900 for each statewide election.67

The different registration methods offered within states can influence 

costs—the use of paper forms involves paper and printing costs, among 

others, whereas an online registration option involves information 

technology development and maintenance costs. The U.S. Public Interest 

Research Group, a coalition of state public interest research groups, 

released a study in 2009 of 100 counties of various sizes in 36 states that 

estimated that these counties’ cost to conduct registration and run errorcorrection programs on the voter registration information was 

$33,467,910 for the 2008 election.68 According to the report, in counties in 

the survey with populations under 50,000, total expenditures were 

estimated at $86,977 per county; in counties with population between 

50,000 and 200,000 persons, the total expenditures were $248,091 per 

county; and, in counties with total populations greater than 200,000 the 

total expenditures per county were estimated to average $1,079,610. The 

report also noted that in a survey of a subset of the 100 counties (9 

counties from each of the three population ranges), most counties 

reported that full-time registrar staff spent at least half their time on 

 67Minnesota Secretary of State, Fiscal Note – 2009-10 Session, Bill No. H0057-0 (Feb. 3, 

2009). In Minnesota, municipal governments (e.g., cities and townships) are responsible 

for appointing poll workers.

68Lisa Gilbert, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, Saving Dollars, Saving Democracy: 

Cost Savings for Local Election Officials through Voter Registration Modernization, 2009. 

These amounts generally reflect the costs for paper-based registration. At the time of the 

2008 election, Arizona and Washington were the only states to offer online registration. 

Among the counties surveyed, six were in Arizona and Washington, with each of the three 

population categories (under 50,000, between 50,000 and 200,000, and between 200,000 

and 1,000,000) being represented by one county in each state.

Costs for Registering 

Individuals
Page 41 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

registration issues.69 However, since the 2008 election, a total of 31 

states and Washington, D.C., have implemented online voter registration 

which, as discussed earlier in this report, may involve initial investments, 

but may later result in time and cost savings to local election officials who 

spend less time processing electronic registrations than paper 

registrations. As reported earlier, improved efficiencies in processing 

registration can reduce the number of staff needed to process registration 

or may free up staff to attend to other responsibilities.

States and local jurisdictions can also incur costs for voter registration list 

maintenance activities, and these activities vary across states and local 

jurisdictions. For example, some states or local jurisdictions may send 

mailings to all registered voters and use any returned undeliverable mail 

as an indication that a voter is not currently residing at the address on the 

voter’s registration record. States may also participate in the data-sharing 

efforts mentioned earlier in this report or checks against other data 

sources. For example, state and local election officials can compare their 

voter registration lists against databases such as the U.S. Postal Service 

NCOA database to determine whether an individual has moved to a new 

address or Social Security Administration records to determine if an 

individual is deceased.

States provide opportunities to vote, such as voting in-person on or 

before Election Day or voting by mail (absentee options in all states and 

vote-by-mail in three states). These different voting methods also result in 

different types of costs—for example:

• Polling Places. Election officials in jurisdictions that offer in-person 

voting options locate and prepare polling places and organize and 

deliver voting equipment and supplies to polling places. The costs for 

establishing in-person polling locations can vary by state and local 

jurisdiction. According to officials in one local jurisdiction we visited, 

their office pays a $125 daily rental fee for polling places that are in 

privately owned buildings and, for public buildings, the jurisdiction 

pays only the marginal costs of keeping the buildings open before or 

 69The counties surveyed on this issue include counties from Arizona and Washington, 

which had implemented online registration prior to the 2008 election. Among the 27 

counties surveyed regarding the percentage of staff time allocated to registration activities, 

1 county was in Arizona (population between 50,000 and 200,000) and 1 county was in 

Washington (population less than 50,000). Both these counties reported spending 75 

percent or more of their full-time registrar staff’s time on registration activities.

Costs for Providing Voting 

Opportunities
Page 42 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

after regular hours for voting purposes. In contrast, in Delaware, the 

fiscal year 2016 state appropriations act requires election jurisdictions 

to pay owners of polling locations a $300 daily rental fee, regardless 

of whether the building is publicly or privately owned. The total costs 

for polling places can vary because of any fees to use the facility, the 

number of days the facility is used for voting (e.g., early voting in 

addition to Election Day), and the number of polling places in a given 

jurisdiction. Among the jurisdictions we visited that primarily offer inperson voting opportunities, according to election officials in those 

jurisdictions, the number of polling places ranged from 3 to about 

1,800.

• Election Workers. Costs for recruiting, training, and paying poll 

workers at polling places can also vary—for example, election officials 

in jurisdictions in the three states we visited that offer primarily inperson voting—Delaware, Illinois, and Rhode Island—cited poll 

worker compensation ranging from $100 to $235 per day, with 

variations across and within states and by level of responsibility.70

Regardless of whether states offer voting in person or by mail, 

election offices may need to hire temporary staff to assist with the 

additional workload in the weeks leading up to or following an 

election. For example, Colorado voters have the option of voting by 

mail or in person at voter service and polling centers, which can be 

partially staffed with permanent staff from election offices, but local 

jurisdictions also hire additional workers to assist at these polling 

locations or with other election activities. Similarly, Oregon does not 

have in-person polling locations, yet local election officials we spoke 

with said that they hire temporary staff to assist with a range of 

elections responsibilities, including registration and ballot processing, 

during the peak workload period surrounding an election.71

 70States and local jurisdictions can assign different responsibilities to different 

classifications of poll workers, and compensation can vary based on the responsibilities 

assigned. For example, in Rhode Island, (1) moderators and wardens are the lead poll 

workers responsible for a given polling place; (2) clerks are responsible for handling 

ballots and ballot accounting; and (3) supervisors are responsible for processing voters as 

they approach the supervisors’ tables, matching the voter’s name on the precinct poll 

book, and assisting the warden or moderator as needed.

71Registrants in Oregon receive their ballots by mail and have the option of returning them 

by mail or in-person to designated drop boxes or the county election office. Under specific 

circumstances, such as if a registrant has a lost or damaged ballot, a registrant may 

obtain a ballot in person at the election office and return the ballot in person during the 

same visit after marking his or her selections on the ballot.
Page 43 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

• Vote-by-Mail and Absentee Ballots. Preparing ballots to be mailed 

to voters in vote-by-mail states, or to absentee voters in states that 

continue to offer in-person voting, involves printing costs for ballots 

and envelopes and postage costs for delivering the ballots to voters. 

For example, in one large, urban local jurisdiction we visited in a voteby-mail state, the ballot printing costs for a 2013 statewide election 

were over $280,000, and according to officials, postage costs to mail 

these ballots were about $32,000. In Rhode Island, which conducts 

primarily in-person voting, the state assumes the costs for all 

absentee ballots, including printing the ballots, mailing them to voters, 

and processing the ballots.72 Rhode Island election officials said that 

the use of absentee voting has increased since the state broadened 

the allowed excuses for requesting an absentee ballot, and thus the 

costs for absentee ballots have increased. However, to ensure that no 

in-person polling place experiences a ballot shortage, the state has 

continued to print enough ballots for in-person voting for all registered 

voters in every precinct. The costs for mailed ballots may also include 

return postage—for example, Rhode Island state election officials said 

that the state pays return postage for absentee ballots for homebound 

voters.73

The magnitude of costs for any particular expense category can vary 

based on the voting opportunities offered. For example, the total costs for 

poll workers—who may be paid for each day of work—can increase if 

early voting is offered and poll workers are needed to staff polling places 

on days in addition to Election Day. Similarly, the total costs for polling 

places can depend on the number and types of polling places within an 

election jurisdiction. A state or local jurisdiction’s costs can also depend 

on how many elections there are over a given period of time—although 

some states have standardized election calendars that consolidate 

federal, state, and local elections at the same times, other states may 

 72The Secretary of State’s office is responsible for printing all ballots, mailing absentee 

ballots, and delivering ballots for in-person voting to the State Board of Elections, which 

then distributes the ballots along with other supplies to polling places. All absentee ballots 

are addressed to be returned to the State Board of Elections, which is responsible for 

processing the results and adding them to the in-person voting results reported by local 

jurisdictions.

73These voters certify on their application for an absentee ballot that they are 

incapacitated to the extent that it would be an undue hardship to vote at the polls because 

of illness, or mental or physical disability, blindness, or serious impairment of mobility. See

R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 17-20-9, 17-20-10.
Page 44 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

have multiple elections at different times for different levels of 

government. Special elections can also affect the total costs for 

conducting elections by increasing the number of elections.

Quantifying the costs for all election activities is difficult for several 

reasons, including that multiple parties incur costs associated with 

elections and these parties may track costs differently. Although some 

parties’ costs can be easily identified in state and local budgets or other 

cost-tracking documents, other costs may be difficult to break out or 

attribute to election activities. Therefore, adding up the budgets for all 

election jurisdictions within a state together with the budget for the state 

election office is not a comprehensive or accurate means for determining 

the cost of elections within a given state. Such budget or cost-tracking 

documents also do not include the cost to voters, and voters’ costs are 

additionally difficult to quantify and monetize because individual voters’

circumstances differ.

States and local election jurisdictions have developed their own methods 

of tracking election activities and associated costs through documents 

such as budgets, accounting systems, or spreadsheets. The budgets for 

state and local election offices are one way of identifying and tracking 

costs associated with elections. However, there is no standard budget 

scheme across all states or local election jurisdictions for categorizing the 

various elections activities and their associated costs. For example, state 

and local jurisdictions use different time frames for their budgeting 

process. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, 

30 states prepare annual budgets, while 20 states prepare biennial 

budgets, though the association reports that in practice, a number of 

states use a combination of annual and biennial budgeting.74 The months 

covered by budgets can also vary, which provides important context for 

elections budgets because of how many elections fall within the period 

 74National Association of State Budget Officers, Budget Processes in the States, 

(Washington, D.C.: Spring 2015). 

Election Costs are Difficult 

to Quantify
Page 45 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

covered by a budget.75 This can affect how costs for elections are 

distributed across different fiscal years’ budgets. For example, two local 

jurisdictions we visited in the same state have fiscal years that span 

different periods such that their fiscal years cover a different number of 

elections—for one jurisdiction, the presidential primary, general election 

primary, and general election will occur in fiscal year 2016, and for the 

other the presidential primary will occur in fiscal year 2016 and the 

general election primary and general election will occur in fiscal year 

2017.

Election offices may also maintain accounting records, spreadsheets, or 

other documents that provide varying levels of detail on elections costs. 

Within these cost-tracking documents, state or local jurisdictions can use 

different categories to organize their elections expenses. For example, 

across three local jurisdictions we visited in different states, all three local 

jurisdictions track costs in a postage category but use varying categories 

to capture the costs for supplies. Specifically, one jurisdiction has a single 

category for “signage, forms, and all other supplies,” whereas the other 

two jurisdictions have additional categories—one jurisdiction has 

categories for office supplies and toner cartridge and ribbons, and the 

other jurisdiction has categories for computer supplies, map supplies, 

office supplies, and supplies and equipment. As such, cost information 

may not be standardized across or within states, and thus it may not be 

possible to calculate the costs for a particular election activity or expense 

across jurisdictions because the information is captured or reported in 

different ways.

Some states have implemented efforts to standardize cost tracking for 

elections across local election jurisdictions in their states. For example, 

the Oregon and Colorado state election offices collect election cost data 

from local jurisdictions within their states. Oregon state officials said that 

 75Four of the five states we visited prepare budgets that cover a 1-year period from July 1 

through June 30, and the fifth state prepares budgets that cover a 2-year period from July 

1 of an odd-numbered year through June 30 of the next odd-numbered year. The date 

ranges for fiscal years also varied among the 11 local election jurisdictions we visited—six 

of the jurisdictions’ fiscal years covered July 1 through June 30, two jurisdictions’ fiscal 

years covered January 1 through December 31, one jurisdiction’s fiscal year covered April 

1 through March 31, one jurisdiction’s fiscal year covered December 1 through November 

30, and one jurisdiction was funded by a city and county with different fiscal year date 

ranges (January 1 through December 31 for one budget and December 1 through 

November 30 for the other budget).
Page 46 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

the data they collect are used to summarize information about the costs 

of an election—state officials compile the total costs for each county and 

calculate, per county and statewide, the average cost per eligible voter 

and the average cost per ballot cast for each statewide election and track 

these costs over time. Colorado state officials explained that the state 

developed a standardized cost tracking form to determine the costs of 

elections for local jurisdictions, particularly given that the state is 

statutorily required to reimburse local jurisdictions when there is a state 

measure on a ballot.76 Although both states have developed methods of 

collecting cost information from local jurisdictions in a standardized way, 

the categories these two states use in their cost-tracking forms are 

different. Other states collect information on certain expenses, but do not 

standardize broad cost information across jurisdictions to calculate the 

overall costs of an election—for example, state election officials in Illinois 

said that local jurisdictions incur the majority of election-related costs, but 

the state reimburses a portion of the poll worker cost and thus collects 

limited cost information on poll workers from local jurisdictions for 

reimbursement purposes.

Identifying elections costs can also be difficult when the office that is 

tasked with administering elections responsibilities also has responsibility 

for activities other than elections. Specifically, the cost information tracked 

by such offices may include costs that are not related to elections, and 

thus it may be difficult to separate elections costs from costs incurred for 

other activities and responsibilities. For example, in some locations a 

county, city, or town clerk is responsible for overseeing elections as well 

as other functions. In one local jurisdiction we visited, the clerk’s office 

was responsible for administering elections as well as issuing licenses 

(marriage, dogs, yard sales, hunting, and fishing) and maintaining public 

records (birth certificates, death certificates, and probate records). The 

clerk for canvassing in this location is primarily responsible for 

administering elections, but all staff within the clerk’s office assist with 

elections activities such as answering phone calls from residents with 

registration and voting questions.

Additionally, some elections-related activities may rely on support from 

other state or local offices that do not have primary responsibility for 

administering elections. For example, election offices may receive 

 76See Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-5-505.5.
Page 47 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

support from offices that provide legal or information technology support. 

In some cases, for these other offices, it may be possible to identify the 

costs associated with elections-related activities, but in other cases, it 

may be difficult to separate elections-related costs from regular operating 

costs. For example, in one local jurisdiction we visited, all county offices 

use the same accounting system, which enables offices other than the 

Elections Division to charge expenses to the Elections Division 

accounting code so those offices can be reimbursed for elections-related 

expenses. In contrast, the state elections director in Rhode Island said 

that during busy periods around Election Day, employees from divisions 

of the Secretary of State’s office other than the Elections Division assist 

state election officials, but the budgets for these other divisions do not 

separate staff time by activity to identify what proportion of time is spent 

on their primary activities in those other divisions and what proportion is 

spent on election-related activities.

In addition to costs to state and local jurisdictions, voters also incur costs 

associated with elections. Some costs to voters are monetary, though not 

all voters will incur these costs to the same extent. Voters may incur 

postage costs for submitting forms or returning a mail ballot. The cost for 

a first-class stamp is $0.47, although additional postage may be required 

if a ballot has numerous pages that exceed 1 ounce in weight. However, 

not all voters rely on mail to submit their registration applications or cast a 

ballot, and in some cases even those that do may not incur the cost 

associated with postage. For example, in Rhode Island, absentee voters 

who certify that they fit particular criteria receive an absentee ballot that 

does not require return postage; rather, the state incurs the return 

postage cost for those ballots.77 Additionally, voters can incur costs for 

transportation to the designated registration and voting locations. This 

can include public transportation fares as well as the cost of fuel/mileage 

for the use of a private vehicle, and the amounts for these costs will vary 

by voter. Further, some states require voters to show specific forms of ID 

to be able to vote. Some voters may have the required ID for everyday 

purposes—such as drivers’ licenses—whereas others may need to obtain 

 77These voters certify in their absentee ballot application that they are incapacitated to the 

extent that it would be an undue hardship to vote at the polls because of illness, or mental 

or physical disability, blindness, or serious impairment of mobility.
Page 48 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

such ID specifically for the purposes of voting.78 For individuals who need 

to obtain ID for voting purposes, the costs and requirements to obtain 

certain forms of ID, including a driver’s license, nondriver state ID, or free 

state ID, vary by state. For example, a voter may be required to present 

documentation to obtain such IDs—including the free state IDs offered for 

voting purposes—and the underlying documents, such as a birth 

certificate, can result in costs to voters as well.

However, voters also incur costs associated with time, for which it may be 

difficult to assign a dollar amount. For example, voters may spend time 

registering to vote, researching candidates and issues, obtaining required 

ID, traveling to a polling place, and casting a ballot. The time required for 

these activities can vary based on the options available to the voter—for 

example, voters who vote by mail (either as absentee voters or because 

they are in a vote-by-mail state) receive their ballots by mail and do not 

wait in line as voters who vote in person may have to do.79 The costs of 

spending time on these voting processes rather than some other activity 

result in an opportunity cost to voters, and these opportunity costs may 

vary by voter based on numerous factors, including each voter’s 

individual competing priorities as well as the range of options available for 

how to register or vote. For example, options that increase voter 

convenience reduce the amount of time a voter spends registering or 

voting instead of engaging in some other activity, thus reducing the 

opportunity cost of voting. Ultimately, an individual’s decision about 

whether to participate in the voting process—first, deciding whether to 

register to vote, then deciding whether to cast a ballot—can be seen as a 

consideration of the costs and benefits of voting for that individual, and 

not all individuals experience the same costs for participating.

We provided a draft of this report to the EAC and the state and local 

election officials and DMV officials we met with in our five selected states. 

The EAC had no comments on the draft report, as noted in an e-mail 

received on June 23, 2016, from the commission’s Executive Director. 

 78We have previously reported on literature that estimated the rates of ownership of 

driver’s licenses or state-issued IDs in selected states or nationwide. The 10 studies we 

reviewed estimated, depending on the study, that ownership rates among registered 

voters ranged from 84 to 95 percent. For more information about voter ID requirements, 

including costs to voters for obtaining ID, see GAO-14-634.

79For more information about voter wait times, see GAO-14-850.

Agency and Third 

Party Comments
Page 49 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

We incorporated technical comments received from other parties in the 

report as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to the EAC, appropriate 

congressional committees and members, and other interested parties. In 

addition, the report is available at no charge on the GAO website at 

http://www.gao.gov. If you or your staff have any questions about this 

report, please contact me at (202) 512-8777 or gamblerr@gao.gov. 

Contact points for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public 

Affairs may be found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made 

key contributions to this report are listed in appendix VI.

Rebecca Gambler

Director, Homeland Security and Justice
Page 50 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

List of Requesters

The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings

Ranking Member

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

House of Representatives

The Honorable Joaquin Castro

House of Representatives

The Honorable Danny K. Davis

House of Representatives

The Honorable Tammy Duckworth

House of Representatives

The Honorable Marcia L. Fudge

House of Representatives

The Honorable Eddie Bernice Johnson

House of Representatives

The Honorable Hank Johnson

House of Representatives

The Honorable Robin L. Kelly

House of Representatives

The Honorable John Lewis

House of Representatives
Appendix I: States’ Use of Provisional Ballots, 

2008 – 2014

Page 51 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Section 302 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) established provisional 

voting requirements.1 Specifically, potential voters who declare that they 

are registered to vote in the jurisdiction in which they desire to vote must 

be permitted to cast provisional ballots in the event their names do not 

appear on the registration list or the voters’ eligibility is challenged by an 

election official. In general, the issuance of a provisional ballot can be 

described as a safety net or fail safe for the voter, in that (1) it maintains 

the person’s intent to vote and voting selections until election officials 

determine that the person does or does not have the right to cast a ballot 

in the election, and (2) it allows the determination of the voter’s eligibility 

to be made at a time when more complete information is available either 

from the voter or from the election jurisdiction. Election officials make the 

decision on whether to count provisional ballots based on voter eligibility 

standards established in state and federal law, including age, citizenship, 

and residence requirements. The policies and procedures for 

administering provisional voting vary across states. For example, in some 

states, a person can cast a provisional ballot in any precinct in the state 

regardless of where the person is registered. In other states, a person 

must cast a provisional ballot in the precinct in which the person is eligible 

to vote.

Data on the overall number of provisional ballots cast are available 

through the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Election 

Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS), which the EAC administers to 

states and U.S. territories after each general election. States report the 

data at the level of individual election jurisdictions. Table 2 below 

presents the percent of provisional ballots cast as a percentage of the 

total number of participating voters. In some cases, states do not provide 

data on the number of provisional ballots cast in some jurisdictions. To 

ensure the reliability of the data we present, table 2 omits data from any 

state where, in a given year, 20 percent or more of the local jurisdictions 

within the state did not provide data on provisional ballot use. To further 

assess the reliability of the 2008 through 2014 EAVS data, we 

interviewed EAC officials regarding their data collection and quality 

control processes. We found the data to be sufficiently reliable for the 

purposes of our review.

 1

52 U.S.C. § 21082(a).

Appendix I: States’ Use of Provisional 

Ballots, 2008 – 2014
Appendix I: States’ Use of Provisional Ballots, 

2008 – 2014

Page 52 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Table 2: Use of Provisional Ballots in the States and District of Columbia, 2008 – 2014 General Elections

Percent of Total Participating Voters that Cast Provisional Ballots

State 2008 2010 2012 2014

Alabama 0.46 — — —

Alaska 6.21 4.98 6.04 5.67

Arizona 6.54 4.67 7.89 4.29

Arkansas 0.20 0.17 0.24 0.19

California 5.79 5.19 8.13 5.06

Colorado — 2.15 2.42 0.05

Connecticut 0.04 0.08 0.06 0.00

Delaware 0.09 0.01 0.11 0.03

Florida 0.42 0.24 0.50 0.21

Georgia 0.44 0.32 — 0.47

Hawaii 0.11 0.05 0.16 0.05

Idaho — — — —

Illinois 0.45 0.54 0.82 —

Indiana — — — —

Iowa 0.28 0.18 0.31 0.30

Kansas 3.18 2.11 3.48 2.57

Kentucky 0.05 0.01 0.02 0.01

Louisiana 0.41 0.02 0.34 0.10

Maine 0.03 0.04 0.01

Maryland 1.92 2.00 2.92 2.01

Massachusetts 0.38 0.12 0.41 0.12

Michigan 0.08 0.03 0.06 0.04

Minnesota — 0.00 — —

Mississippi — — — —

Missouri 0.23 0.19 0.23 0.06

Montana 0.76 0.75 1.13 1.22

Nebraska 1.91 1.11 1.86 1.14

Nevada 0.68 0.42 0.82 0.08

New Hampshire — 0.00 0.00 0.00

New Jersey 1.83 0.80 2.65 0.84

New Mexico — 0.96 — 0.46

North Carolina 1.24 0.97 1.13 0.64

North Dakota 0.00 0.00 — —

New York 3.62 0.95 6.89 1.39
Appendix I: States’ Use of Provisional Ballots, 

2008 – 2014

Page 53 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Percent of Total Participating Voters that Cast Provisional Ballots

State 2008 2010 2012 2014

Ohio 3.61 2.67 3.69 1.56

Oklahoma 0.19 0.07 0.40 0.19

Oregon 0.17 0.09 0.10 —

Pennsylvania 0.54 0.24 0.85 0.24

Rhode Island — 0.27 0.52 0.63

South Carolina 0.49 — — 0.38

South Dakota 0.08 0.02 0.12 0.17

Tennessee 0.17 0.04 0.29 0.10

Texas 0.51 0.28 0.64 0.45

Utah — 2.98 5.23 —

Virginia 0.25 0.11 0.33 0.02

Vermont 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01

Washington 1.76 0.24 0.21 0.06

Washington, D.C. 6.49 3.96 13.13 11.34

West Virginia — — — 0.69

Wisconsin 0.01 0.00 0.00 0.00

Wyoming — — — —

Legend: — = Data were not sufficiently reliable to report.

Source: GAO analysis of data from the Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Surveys, 2008 – 2014. | GAO-16-630

Note: To ensure the reliability of data presented, data are omitted for states where 20 percent or more 

of the local jurisdictions within the state did not provide data on provisional ballot use (either the total 

number of voters who submitted provisional ballots or the total number of participating voters, which 

together are used to calculate the percentage of ballots cast that were provisional ballots).
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 54 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

This report addresses the following questions:

1. What are the reported benefits and challenges of efforts to collect and 

share voter registration information electronically?

2. What is known about the effect of selected policies and practices on 

voter turnout?

3. What is known about the costs of elections?

For all three questions, we (1) reviewed and analyzed relevant literature 

and (2) conducted interviews with state and local jurisdiction election 

officials from five selected states, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Oregon, 

and Rhode Island. For the question regarding voter registration efforts, 

we also analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population 

Survey (CPS) Voting and Registration Supplement for general elections 

occurring from 2008 through 2014 to determine the extent to which 

policies to collect and share voter information electronically may improve 

the accuracy of voter registration lists.

We identified selected efforts and policies within the scope of each 

question to examine in detail in this review. Specifically, in examining 

efforts to collect and share voter registration information electronically, we 

limited the scope of our review to online voter registration, data-sharing 

efforts between the state election office and the state motor vehicle 

agency, and interstate exchanges of voter registration information, 

including states’ participation in the Electronic Registration Information 

Center (ERIC). We selected ERIC as an illustrative example of such 

interstate voter registration data-sharing efforts. We interviewed 

representatives of ERIC and reviewed documentation regarding 

requirements for participation. Regarding the effect of policies and 

practices on voter turnout, we limited our review to policies and practices 

that have been rigorously studied in academic and professional literature 

and that election officials have implemented or could potentially 

implement in their states or local jurisdictions. Additional information on 

how we identified these policies through a literature review is discussed 

below. In examining the costs of elections, we reviewed information about 

the costs to states and local election jurisdictions, as well as the cost to 

voters. We did not examine campaign or other third party costs.

We conducted a literature review of research related to our three 

objectives. A GAO research librarian conducted searches of scholarly and 

peer reviewed publications; government reports; dissertations; 

Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Literature Review
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 55 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

conference papers; books; association, think tank, and other nonprofit 

organizations’ publications; working papers; and general news articles 

published from 2002 through 2015 to identify publications that were 

potentially relevant to each objective.1 We also reviewed literature 

recommended by experts and researchers affiliated with organizations 

such as the Congressional Research Service, the National Conference of 

State Legislatures, the National Association of Counties, and the 

Bipartisan Policy Center. The literature search produced over 1,000 

publications related to the topics in our three objective questions. GAO 

analysts worked in pairs to complete the following steps:

1. We reviewed each publication’s abstract and determined whether the 

publication was potentially relevant to one or more of our objectives.

2. For those publications we determined to be relevant, we reviewed the 

full text, to determine whether the publication provided evidence that 

could be used to directly address one of our objectives. Each analyst 

reviewed the publication independently, then reached consensus 

within the pair.

For each objective, we analyzed the evidence presented in the relevant 

publications using a data collection instrument specific to each objective.

Regarding efforts to collect and share voter registration information 

electronically, we used a data collection instrument to catalog the benefits 

and challenges of the efforts within the scope of our review. For every 

publication determined to be relevant to this objective, one analyst 

reviewed the full text version, highlighted the benefits and challenges that 

the article identified, and entered that information into the data collection 

instrument. A second analyst compared the information entered in the 

data collection instrument against the original publication and noted any 

discrepancies. The pair of analysts discussed any discrepancies noted 

until they reached a consensus on the benefits and challenges identified 

within that publication.

 1

We selected 2002 because the enactment of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 had 

implications for voter registration efforts and other policies that may affect voter turnout. 

However, we limited our searches for information on election-related costs to a 10-year 

period (from 2005 through 2015) to ensure the search results we obtained were 

manageable.

Literature on Voter Registration 

Efforts
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 56 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Research on voter turnout has examined a wide range of policies and 

practices (hereafter “policies”), and in reviewing the over 400 publications 

our search identified as related to voter turnout, we focused our review on 

policies that have been or could potentially be implemented by a state or 

local government. Thus, we excluded research on policies that could not 

reasonably or feasibly be implemented by a state or local government, 

including partisan policies—such as using partisan language in mailings 

to potential voters—and policies that would be resource-intensive, such 

as door-to-door canvassing. In order to provide a reasonable and useful 

synthesis of the literature, we further limited our scope by excluding 

research on policies that did not have a federal nexus to voting (such as 

how turnout in local elections is affected by consolidating local elections 

with state or federal elections), or examined alternative voting systems 

(e.g., ranked-choice or compulsory voting), or voter identification laws.2

The publications we reviewed often conducted multiple analyses or 

experiments. As used in this report, a “study” is an analysis or experiment 

with a unique sample. In some cases, authors presented their findings 

broken down by type of election (e.g., presidential vs. midterm) or election 

year (e.g., 2002 and 2004). In these instances, we considered the 

findings related to the separate types of elections or time periods as 

resulting from separate samples (thus, separate “studies,” as we use the 

term in this report).3 In reviewing the results from our literature review, as 

discussed in greater detail below, we excluded studies that assessed the 

combined effect of two or more policies (because such studies would not 

enable us to determine the effect of each policy independent of the other 

or others), analyzed policies using data for elections outside of the United 

States, or assessed a policy’s effect on over or under votes.

 2

We excluded research that examined voter identification laws because we examined this 

topic specifically in GAO, Elections: Issues Related to State Voter Identification Laws, 

GAO-14-634 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 19, 2014).

3

For instance, in one publication, the authors used the same analytical approach to 

examine the effect of a policy on voter turnout from 1972 through 2002, and reported their 

findings separately for presidential and midterm elections. Thus, we considered these 

findings as resulting from analysis related to two unique samples (studies). Another 

publication used the same analytical approach to examine the effect of a policy in 

presidential elections from 2000 through 2008, and authors reported their findings 

separately for the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections. Thus, we considered these findings as 

resulting from analysis related to three unique samples (studies). 

Literature on Voter Turnout
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 57 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

1. Cataloguing publications based on policies within our scope: A 

GAO analyst reviewed each publication, and recorded (a) what policy 

or policies the publication addressed that were within our scope, (b) 

whether the publication used one or more systematic quantitative 

methodologies, and (c) whether or not the publication used original 

data analysis in at least one or more analyses. A second GAO analyst 

verified these determinations and worked with the first analyst to 

ensure both analysts were in agreement. Based on these reviews, we 

identified publications that analyzed one or more policies within our 

scope, used one or more systematic quantitative methodologies, and 

contained original analysis.

2. Identifying specific studies that used sufficiently rigorous 

methods: A GAO social scientist reviewed the publications identified 

in the first step to identify studies within these publications for which 

the design, implementation, and analyses were sufficiently sound to 

support the results and conclusions, based on generally accepted 

social science principles. Specifically, the social scientist examined 

such factors as whether data were analyzed before and after policy 

changes were made; how the effects of policy changes were isolated 

(i.e., the use of groups or states not receiving the change, or statistical 

controls); the appropriateness of sampling, if used; outcome 

measures; and the statistical analyses used. A second GAO social 

scientist verified these determinations and worked with the first social 

scientist to ensure both were in agreement. A statistician reviewed 

studies when additional expertise was necessary to interpret findings 

from studies that used advanced statistical techniques or to ensure 

that researchers who analyzed complex survey data employed 

appropriate sample weights when reporting findings.

To ensure that there was a sufficient body of research on each policy we 

selected, we excluded policies that were not examined in at least two 

publications.

As a result of this process, from more than 400 publications we initially 

identified related to voter turnout, we found 53 that studied policies within 

the scope of our review and used sufficiently sound methodologies. 

Within these publications, 118 studies examined a total of 11 policies.4

 4

For purposes of our review, we classified relevant chapters in edited books as separate 

publications. We did this because it was in keeping with how we categorized other 

publications (usually journal articles written by distinct authors). 
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 58 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

The studies we reviewed used various quantitative approaches and data, 

and covered different types of elections and time periods. Some studies 

used randomized experiments or quasi-experimental research designs, 

and some studies used non-experimental designs, such as statistical 

analysis of observational data. Studies used both longitudinal and crosssectional comparisons. Similarly, some studies used data obtained 

directly from official state or local voter records (or from vendors or others 

that compiled official voter records), and some used survey responses, 

such as from the CPS Voting and Registration Supplement. The studies 

we reviewed also covered different types of elections (e.g., presidential, 

midterm, primary, statewide, local, or various combinations of these) and 

time periods (with studies ranging from addressing one election to 

multiple elections and ranging from 1920 to 2014).

Further, some studies examined the separate effects of more than one 

policy on voter turnout,5 and some studies reported more than one finding 

related to the effect of a given policy on turnout. For instance, some 

studies analyzed turnout data using multiple statistical models, resulting 

in multiple findings (one from each model). Additionally, other studies 

reported more than one finding because they broke down their results by 

subsamples, such as by race or by treatment groups associated with 

variations in policy implementation.6 Where studies reported one or more 

effects on turnout for a given policy, we reported a range of effects.7

 5

For example, one study assessed the effects of several election policies (same day 

registration, no-excuse absentee voting, and early in-person voting) on turnout, and the 

construction of the model used in the analysis allowed the authors to determine the 

separate effects of each policy (i.e., how same day registration affected turnout, how noexcuse absentee voting affected turnout, and how early in-person voting affected turnout). 

This is in contrast to studies that examined the combined effects of two or more policies 

on turnout. As noted previously, we excluded studies that assessed the combined effect of 

two or more policies on turnout because such studies would not enable us to determine 

the effect of each policy independent of the other or others.

6

For example, one study examined early in-person voting and presented separate findings 

for the policy’s effect on turnout based on whether or not states included in the analysis 

permitted local election administrators to offer early in-person voting on at least one 

weekend prior to Election Day.

7

For instance, one study may have reported a 1 percentage point increase in turnout for 

one subsample and a 3 percentage point increase in turnout for another subsample, 

resulting in a range of 1 to 3 percentage point increases in our summary of this study’s 

findings. 
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 59 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Moreover, not all studies reported findings that were statistically 

significant (at least at the 0.10 level). Many studies did not detect a 

statistically significant effect, or reported a finding that was not statistically 

significant along with a statistically significant effect.8 When a study 

reported one or more findings that were not statistically significant, this 

did not mean that the policy examined did not have an effect on turnout, 

only that the study could not affirmatively reject the possibility that the 

policy had no effect on turnout.

For each of the 118 studies, a GAO social scientist reviewed each of the 

study’s findings related to voter turnout and recorded key information on 

each finding. If a study examined more than one policy, these findings 

were recorded separately for each policy included in the study. For each 

policy examined within a particular study, the social scientist categorized 

the findings related to that policy as follows:

• Increased turnout: Only statistically significant positive effects (one 

or more).

• Mixed evidence: One or more statistically significant effects (positive 

or negative) and one or more findings that were not statistically 

significant; or, one or more statistically significant positive effects and 

one or more statistically significant negative effects, with or without 

additional findings that were not statistically significant.

• No evidence of effect: No statistically significant effects.

• Decreased turnout: Only statistically significant negative effects (one 

or more).

For each significant effect, the social scientist also recorded the 

associated percentage point increase or decrease in voter turnout, when 

possible. However, study authors oftentimes did not report one or more of 

their effects in terms of a percentage point increase or decrease in 

turnout; for instance, in some cases, authors reported effects in statistical 

terms such as coefficients from a statistical model.

A second GAO social scientist verified these determinations and worked 

with the first social scientist to ensure both were in agreement.

 8

In statistical language, an “effect” implies statistical significance.
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 60 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Regarding election costs, we used a data collection instrument to catalog 

information in each of the relevant publications regarding (1) the types of 

costs associated with elections activities and (2) examples of amounts 

corresponding to these activities, where available. Of the over 150 

publications from our search that identified costs associated with one or 

more election activities, none of the publications we reviewed 

comprehensively addressed all areas of election-related costs, and 

oftentimes the publications identified by our search only identified costs 

associated with one particular aspect of elections.

To obtain the perspectives of state and local election officials regarding 

the policies, practices, and efforts in use in their respective states and 

jurisdictions that corresponded with our objectives, we selected five states 

to visit—Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island.9 We 

selected these states primarily based on the statewide implementation of 

the registration and turnout policies in the scope of our review, prioritizing 

states that had more polices in place than others. Specifically we 

considered states that had implemented online voter registration, datasharing efforts between the election office and the state motor vehicle 

agency or through interstate data-sharing efforts, Election Day or same 

day registration, vote-by-mail as their selected voting method, and 

requirements for informational mailings to voters. Because all states and 

local jurisdictions incur election-related costs and could provide 

perspectives on the topic, considerations regarding elections-related 

costs did not significantly affect our site selection decisions. Finally, we 

considered geographic diversity (by selecting states from various regions 

of the country), when possible, when making state selection decisions in 

order to capture possible regional differences in election administration 

practices.

Within the five states identified above, we selected two local election 

jurisdictions to visit in order to obtain different perspectives at the local 

level within a state. We selected jurisdictions based on (1) 

recommendations from introductory teleconference meetings with state 

election officials and (2) demographic factors, specifically population size 

 9

In addition to the five states identified, we also selected a sixth state, but state election 

officials declined to meet with GAO on this engagement.

Literature on Election Costs

Interviews with State and 

Local Jurisdiction Election 

Officials
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 61 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

and density. The following is a list of the election jurisdictions we visited in 

our five selected states:

• Colorado: Denver City and County, Grand County

• Delaware: Kent County, New Castle County, and Sussex County10

• Illinois: City of Chicago, Sangamon County

• Oregon: Multnomah County, Yamhill County

• Rhode Island: City of Pawtucket, Town of Scituate

While our selected states and local jurisdictions are not representative of 

all states and jurisdictions nationwide and their responses cannot be 

generalized to other states and local election jurisdictions, officials in 

these locations provided a range of perspectives on efforts to collect and 

share voter registration information electronically, the effect of selected 

policies and practices on voter turnout, and elections-related costs. 

During our visits, we met with state and local election officials, including 

the state election director (or equivalent) and the chief election official in 

each local jurisdiction.11 We also met with officials from state motor 

vehicle agencies in Colorado, Delaware, Oregon, and Rhode Island to get 

their perspectives on voter registration data-sharing programs with the 

state election office.12 We corroborated the information we gathered 

through these interviews by reviewing relevant state statutes and 

documentation that these states and local election jurisdictions provided 

to us, such as cost data. We conducted these interviews between 

October and December 2015. For examples of election costs provided in 

this report based on literature we reviewed or documents provided to us 

by state and local election officials, a GAO economist reviewed the 

 10In Delaware, the state’s Department of Elections oversees and conducts elections 

throughout the state. The Department of Elections has offices in each of Delaware’s three 

counties, and the state Election Commissioner noted that we could meet with officials 

based in each of the three county offices when these officials were present at the main 

state election office for a meeting that coincided with the date of our visit. Therefore, we 

spoke with election officials from all three counties.

11In the event that a key election official (state election director or local chief election 

official) was not available to meet with us, we met with that official’s designated 

representative.

12We did not meet with officials from the Illinois Driver Services Department because data 

sharing between the Driver Services Department and the state elections office was in the 

early stages of design. In April 2016, state election officials informed us that the State 

Board of Elections has completed its portion of the design. Illinois State Board of Elections 

officials expect DMV data sharing to be implemented by July 1, 2016.
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 62 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

source material to assess data reliability. To the extent that the source 

documentation included information about how cost estimates were 

derived, the economist reviewed the methodology to ensure reliability, but 

we did not independently assess the internal controls associated with 

state or local financial systems or other means for calculating such costs. 

We determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for providing 

illustrative examples of the costs for election activities.

For the objective regarding voter registration, we analyzed data to 

determine whether policies to collect and share voter information 

electronically—specifically online voter registration and ERIC—improved 

the quality of voter registration lists. We focused our data analysis on 

these two efforts to collect and share voter information electronically 

because, among the efforts within the scope of our objective on 

registration, these efforts are fairly standardized in their implementation. 

Specifically, it was possible for us to identify which states have 

implemented online voter registration and ERIC and when they did so. In 

contrast, states may have varying levels of data sharing between their 

election offices and motor vehicles agencies. Therefore we could not 

group states into definitive groups of those that had similarly implemented 

DMV data sharing and those that had not.

We analyzed data to determine whether these two policies—online voter 

registration and ERIC—affected the proportion of individuals surveyed 

who did not vote because there was a problem with their registration, as 

reported in the biennial CPS Voting and Registration Supplement from 

2008 through 2014. Specifically, the CPS Voting and Registration 

Supplement asks respondents who indicated that they were registered 

but did not vote the main reason why they did not vote. These 

respondents are presented with 11 possible choices, one of which is 

“Registration problems (i.e. didn’t receive absentee ballot, not registered 

in current location).” We considered this measure—the proportion of 

registered non-voting individuals who responded to this question by 

selecting the choice for registration problems—to be a proxy-indicator of 

registration list quality because problems with registration can indicate 

that registration data are inaccurate. We reviewed documentation 

describing steps taken by the CPS data managers to ensure data 

reliability and tested the data for anomalies that could indicate reliability 

concerns. We determined that the CPS data were sufficiently reliable for 

the purposes of this analysis.

Evaluation of Selected 

Policies on the Accuracy 

of State Voter Registration 

Lists
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 63 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

For our analysis, we used the difference-in-difference modeling approach 

to attempt to identify what effect, if any, states’ adoption of online voter 

registration or ERIC had on our proxy measure of the quality of state 

voter registration lists. The difference-in-difference estimation strategy 

compares the difference in the average outcome between two time 

periods among a “treatment” group (in this case, states that adopted a 

given policy in-between the two time periods) and a “control” group 

(states whose policies did not change between the two time periods). The 

approach is designed to account for both pre-existing differences 

between treatment and control groups, as well as changes over time that 

affect states in both groups. In order to make appropriate comparisons, 

we modeled presidential (2008 and 2012) and midterm (2010 and 2014) 

years separately. The policy “treatments” of interest are states’ adoption 

of online voter registration and ERIC.

As noted in our report, our analysis did not find statistically significant 

reductions in reported registration problems in states that had 

implemented online voter registration between the two presidential 

elections or the two midterm elections, compared to those states that had 

not. Similarly, our analysis did not find statistically significant reductions in 

reported registration problems in states that joined ERIC compared to 

states that had not. Thus, we cannot conclude based on the evidence 

from this analysis that states that adopted online voter registration or 

ERIC saw changes in our proxy measure of registration list quality.

However, despite the advantages of our estimation approach, a number 

of limitations are associated with the data and methods we employed for 

this analysis. First, our outcome variable was not a direct measure of 

registration list accuracy, and there could have been other factors 

responsible for respondents reporting registration problems besides the 

quality of a state’s registration list. Second, our analysis did not control for 

any variables that may have been associated with the adoption of online 

registration or ERIC, and this could have affected our results. Finally, 

given the type of analysis we conducted, the number of states that had 

online registration during this time period as well as the relatively small 

size of our analysis sample may have affected our ability to detect a 

statistically significant relationship.

We conducted this performance audit from April 2015 to June 2016 in 

accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 
Appendix II: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 64 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Appendix III: Voter Turnout for Selected 

Demographic Characteristics

Page 65 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Broad academic research on voter turnout has generally found that 

individual differences among citizens may be strongly and consistently 

associated with differences in turnout rates. To illustrate, we have 

included figures 4 through 6 that show differences in turnout over time 

related to age, race and ethnicity, and educational attainment. 

Presidential and midterm elections are presented separately, since as 

noted earlier in this report, nationwide turnout has been consistently 

higher in presidential elections than midterm elections since 1972. The 

figures below report voter turnout estimates based on the percentage of 

individuals in a given demographic that voted among the total voting-age 

U.S. population in that demographic group, as reported by the U.S. 

Census Bureau, from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Voting and 

Registration Supplement.

Appendix III: Voter Turnout for Selected 

Demographic Characteristics
Appendix III: Voter Turnout for Selected 

Demographic Characteristics

Page 66 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 4: Voter Turnout 1972 – 2014, by Age
Appendix III: Voter Turnout for Selected 

Demographic Characteristics

Page 67 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 5: Voter Turnout 2004 – 2014, by Race and Ethnicity

Note: We are presenting data from 2004 through 2014 because categories for race in the Current 

Population Survey (CPS) changed beginning in 2003, and thus data from earlier years are not directly 

comparable with the data presented here. The CPS now gives respondents the option of reporting 

more than one race. This figure shows data as reported in historical tables from the U.S. Census 

Bureau for people who reported they were of a single race (White, Black, or Asian). Use of the singlerace populations does not imply that it is the preferred method of presenting or analyzing data. The 

CPS also includes an ethnicity question, separate from the question about race, regarding whether 

the respondent identifies as being of Hispanic origin or not. The responses of people who reported 

they were of Hispanic origin, regardless of race, are presented in the “Hispanic (of any race)”

category. Thus, the categories in the figure are overlapping; that is, some people who reported single 

race White, single race Black, or single race Asian, may have also reported they were of Hispanic 

origin.
Appendix III: Voter Turnout for Selected 

Demographic Characteristics

Page 68 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 6: Voter Turnout 1972 – 2014, by Educational Attainment
Appendix IV: Review of Research on Effects of 

Eleven Selected Election Administration 

Policies on Voter Turnout

Page 69 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

From more than 400 publications we initially identified related to voter 

turnout, we identified and reviewed 118 studies within 53 publications that 

(1) assessed policies that have been or could be implemented by a state 

or local government (11 such policies in total across the 118 studies), (2) 

contained quantitative analyses of the effect of a given policy on turnout, 

and (3) used sufficiently sound methodologies for conducting such 

analyses. This appendix presents additional information specific to each 

of these 11 policies. Each policy summary contains the following sections:

• Literature review results. This section includes a summary of 

findings from the literature related to a policy’s effects on turnout. It 

also includes a figure showing the specific findings reported by each 

study that examined the policy. As previously discussed, each study 

may contain more than one finding related to a given policy’s effect on 

voter turnout, such as when findings were broken down by race or 

treatment groups associated with variations in policy implementation.1

Where studies reported more than one statistically significant effect on 

turnout for a given policy, we reported the range of effects.2 Where 

studies reported effects in terms of percentage point differences—

which allow for comparisons of effects on the same scale—we report 

those differences. However, not all studies reported statistically 

significant effects—and studies that reported such effects did not 

always do so in units of percentage point differences.3 We use 

symbols in each figure to communicate these various types of 

findings, as shown in figure 7.

 1

For example, one study examined early in-person voting and presented separate findings 

for the policy’s effect on turnout based on whether or not states included in the analysis 

permitted local election administrators to offer early in-person voting on at least one 

weekend prior to Election Day. 

2

For instance, one study may have reported a 1 percentage point increase in turnout for 

one subsample and a 3 percentage point increase in turnout for another subsample, 

resulting in a range of a 1 to 3 percentage point turnout increase in our summary of this 

study’s findings. 

3

Many studies did not detect a statistically significant effect, or reported a finding that was 

not statistically significant along with a statistically significant effect. When a study 

reported one or more findings that were not statistically significant, this did not mean that 

the policy examined did not have an effect on turnout, only that the study could not 

affirmatively reject the possibility that the policy had no effect on turnout. Additionally, 

many studies did not report their findings in terms of a percentage point increase or 

decrease in turnout. For instance, many studies reported their findings as coefficients from 

a statistical model. 

Appendix IV: Review of Research on Effects 

of Eleven Selected Election Administration 

Policies on Voter Turnout
Appendix IV: Review of Research on Effects of 

Eleven Selected Election Administration 

Policies on Voter Turnout

Page 70 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Figure 7: Symbols Used to Represent Studies’ Findings Related to Voter Turnout

• Examples of specific studies. This section includes a description of 

selected individual studies, including the specific findings, data 

analyzed, the population studied, any variations in policy 

implementation that were examined, and other contextual 

information—such as what specific election or elections were studied, 

among other things.

• Variations in implementation. This section includes descriptions of 

variations in how a policy may be implemented. For instance, 

jurisdictions may implement same-day registration at all polling places 

or at a limited number of them, or jurisdictions may send mailings in 

different formats, including as postcards or voter guides, among 

others.

• Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other 

considerations. This section includes information about the 

administrative costs of policy implementation, effects on voter 

convenience (costs to voters), and other considerations that election 

officials may wish to consider when deciding whether and how to 

implement these policies (e.g., technological or legal considerations). 

Some of these observations come from election officials we met with 

during our state and local visits.
E-mail 

Third party groups and local governments sometimes send e-mail 

messages to inform potential voters about dates or other aspects of 

upcoming elections and encourage them to register or vote.

 Page 71 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

The nature of e-mail would allow for 

variations in: 

 Content. E-mails may vary in the 

type of information provided, the 

tone of the message, and may or 

may not include website links to 

access other content. Additionally, 

e-mail messages may include a 

variety of presentation styles (e.g., 

font, color, pictures, and 

organization). They may also 

communicate information in one or 

more languages. Lastly, they may 

contain appeals for individuals to 

take action, such as to register or to 

vote. 

 Frequency. E-mails may be sent 

once or repeatedly, at different 

times of day, and at different 

intervals prior to an election. 

 Target population. The target 

population may be all adult citizens 

in a jurisdiction, registered 

individuals, or subgroups, such as 

those whose polling place has 

changed. However, obtaining 

e-mail addresses for individuals in 

these groups may be challenging, 

as discussed below. 

 Source. In the studies we 

reviewed, e-mails were sent both 

by local election jurisdictions and 

non-governmental organizations. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed 18 studies in 4 publications, and 13 studies were from the 

same publication and had the same author. In total, 15 of the 18 studies 

found no evidence of an effect on turnout and 3 studies reported mixed 

evidence—all 3 reported no evidence of an effect for one treatment group 

and statistically significant positive effects for another treatment group. 

Figure 8: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of E-mail on Voter 

Turnout 

Note: These 18 studies came from 4 publications, and 13 of the 18 studies were from the 

same publication and had the same author. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Studies 1, 2, and 3 (from one publication and with the same authors) 

attempted to assess whether varying the source of unsolicited e-mail 

messages (official governmental source versus fictional voter 

mobilization organization) had differing effects on turnout. All three 

studies were conducted in cooperation with the San Mateo County, 

California, Registrar, in connection with a 2009 local election, the 

June 2010 statewide primary election, and the November 2010 

general election, respectively. All three studies found statistically 
E-mail 

 Page 72 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

significant, albeit small, effects on turnout (0.7, 0.5, 0.5 percentage 

point increases) for e-mail messages sent from the Registrar's office, 

as compared to the control groups (which did not receive e-mail 

messages). Using separate treatment groups, all three studies also 

assessed the effect of identical e-mail messages sent from a fictional 

voter mobilization organization, and each study found no statistically 

significant effect on turnout resulting from these messages—even 

though the content and the timing of the messages were the same as 

those sent from the Registrar's office. The authors noted that 

participants in their studies only included individuals who had 

provided an e-mail address at the time of registration (about 20 

percent of all registered individuals). These individuals tended to be 

younger and less likely to have voted in previous elections than other 

registrants in the county. 

 Studies 4 through 16 (from one publication and with the same author) 

found no evidence of an effect on turnout for e-mail messages, 

despite using different strategies to recruit study participants. The 

author partnered with three nonpartisan organizations to design, 

implement, and analyze the results of 13 studies examining the effect 

of e-mail communication on turnout. 

o One organization conducted five studies (studies 4 through 8) at 

five different universities (across four states) during the 2002 

congressional election. Student names and e-mail addresses 

were purchased from or provided by the five universities. For each 

university, students with valid e-mail addresses were randomly 

divided into a treatment group (which received e-mail messages) 

and a control group (which did not receive e-mail messages). 

Students in each treatment group received a series of unsolicited 

e-mails encouraging registration and voter turnout. The author 

noted that the percentage of e-mails that were actually opened 

averaged only 20 percent across the five universities. 

o Another organization conducted a study (study 9) among 

registered individuals under the age of 26 in the city of Houston, 

Texas, during a 2003 mayoral race. This study targeted those 

registrants who had indicated that they were willing to receive 

e-mail messages from third parties and did not opt-out after 

receiving an e-mail invitation to participate in the study. The study 

included a treatment group of 6,386 that received a brief welcome 

e-mail and three additional e-mail messages leading up to the 

election, and a control group of the same size that only received 

the welcome e-mail. E-mails (other than the welcome e-mail) 

typically began with a short quiz and an invitation to explore a 
E-mail 

 Page 73 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

website, and concluded with a brief blandishment to vote. The 

percentage of e-mails that were opened was not available. 

o A third organization conducted the remaining seven studies 

(studies 10 through 16) in connection with the 2004 presidential 

election. These studies differed from the other six studies 

because e-mail messages were only sent to individuals who came 

to the organization's website and specifically requested to join the 

e-mailing list reminding individuals to register and vote. Individuals 

who signed up were assigned to either a treatment or a control 

group in each of the seven study locations (California; Colorado; 

Michigan; Minnesota; Missouri; North Carolina; and Clark County, 

Nevada). Study participants in the treatment groups were sent a 

series of e-mail messages encouraging registration and turnout. 

E-mail message open rates were not recorded for these studies.

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 One publication we reviewed noted that e-mail communication has 

low transactions costs and large economies of scale, compared to 

direct mail.a

 However, there may be costs associated with obtaining 

e-mail addresses for the target population. 

 The voter registration forms of the five states we visited all asked for, 

but did not require, e-mail addresses. As a result, in these states 

e-mail contact information for registered individuals is dependent on 

whether a registrant chooses to provide this information. 

 States or localities may have privacy laws or regulations associated 

with the storage and use of voter information, including e-mail 

addresses. Officials in one local jurisdiction said that, upon receiving 

a voter registration application that includes an e-mail address, they 

retain the e-mail address for potential outreach purposes, but they do 

not import the e-mail address into their state’s voter registration 

database along with the other required registration information (such 

as name and address). Officials said they do this to protect the 

privacy of these individuals—because once an e-mail address is 

imported into the state’s official voter registration database, it 

becomes part of the public record, and campaigns and other parties 

can use it to contact registered individuals. 

 

a

David W. Nickerson, “Does Email Boost Turnout?” Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 

vol. 2, no. 4 (2008). 
Mailings 

State or local governments sometimes send mailings to inform potential 

voters about upcoming elections or encourage them to register or vote.

 Page 74 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Potential variations in mailings fall into 

five broad categories: 

 Format. Mailings may be sent as 

postcards, brochures, pamphlets, 

booklets, or in other formats. 

Additionally, they may include a 

variety of presentation styles (e.g., 

font, color, pictures, and 

organization), and they may 

communicate information in one or 

more languages. 

 Content. Mailings may 

communicate basic procedural 

information (such as when an 

election is taking place and how a 

person may register or vote), or 

more detailed information about 

races and measures on the ballot. 

They may also contain 

photographs or artwork intended to 

communicate a particular feeling 

(e.g., civic pride or urgency). Lastly, 

they may contain appeals for 

individuals to take action, such as 

to register or to vote. 

 Frequency. Mailings may be sent 

once or repeatedly and at different 

intervals prior to elections. 

 Target population. Mailings may 

be sent to all mailing addresses in 

a jurisdiction, to all registered 

individuals in a jurisdiction, or to 

relevant sub-groups, such as those 

whose polling place has changed. 

 Source. In the studies we 

reviewed, mailings were sent by 

state and non-governmental 

sources. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed 36 studies in 16 publications. We found that the results of 

the studies were mixed, with most studies reporting no evidence of an 

effect (13 studies), an increase in turnout (9 studies), or a combination of 

the two (12 studies), as shown in figure 9 below. 

Figure 9: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Mailings on Voter 

Turnout 

Note: These 36 studies came from 16 publications. 
Mailings 

 Page 75 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 found mixed results for mailings among the groups studied, 

and reported that mailings may have differing effects on turnout 

among registered individuals, based on their propensity to vote. The 

study reported the results of a field experiment conducted in 

Brownsville, Texas, prior to the 2004 presidential election. 

Specifically, study authors obtained a list of all registered individuals 

from the Cameron County Elections Department, and randomly 

assigned participants to a mailing group and a control group. 

Postcards were sent to 3,794 registered individuals 8 days prior to the 

election encouraging them to vote. After the election, the Cameron 

County Elections Department provided validated voter turnout 

information for those in the mailing and control groups. The authors 

reported an increase in turnout of 5.5 percentage points among 

“regular” and “occasional” voters and 5.6 percentage points among 

“rare” voters, compared to similarly classified individuals in the control 

group, who did not receive postcards. The authors also reported no 

statistically significant effects for mailings among other subgroups 

(habitual voters and registered nonvoters).a

 The authors suggested 

that the unusually high effects on turnout they found in their study 

might have been because of the lack of other mobilization efforts, 

thus their mailer appeared more visible. 

 Study 5 tested the effects on voter turnout of five different variations 

of postcard mailings, and found mixed results among the groups 

studied. The postcards contained information about either (1) an 

individual’s past voting record, (2) past turnout rates in their local 

community, or (3) some combination of the two. Postcards were sent 

to 5,000 registered individuals in Hawthorne, California, 

approximately 5 days prior to a local election in November 2011. After 

the election, the authors obtained validated voter turnout data from 

the official Hawthorne, California voter file, and compared it across 

the five treatment groups and the control group (which did not receive 

a postcard). The authors found that only messages that included 

information about the subjects’ own voting histories (whether or not 

they voted in the 2006 and 2008 general elections) effectively 

mobilized them to vote. Specifically, three of the five variations in 

postcard content contained individuals’ personal voting history, and 

for these variations, the authors reported turnout effects ranging from 

1.4 to 3.1 percentage point increases, compared to the control group; 

whereas the other two variations in postcards, which did not include 

personal voter histories, resulted in no statistically significant effects 
Mailings 

 Page 76 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

on turnout. 

 Studies 6 and 17 (from one publication and with the same authors) 

found that sending postcards to eligible but unregistered individuals 

encouraging them to register resulted in increases in turnout for all 

groups studied. Study authors conducted their studies in partnership 

with Delaware state election officials in connection with the 2012 

general election (study 6), and in partnership with Oregon state 

election officials in connection with the 2014 general election (study 

17). Upon receiving contact information for eligible but unregistered 

individuals in each state from the ERIC program, authors assigned 

these individuals to treatment groups (who received different 

variations of postcards) and a control group (who did not receive 

postcards) in each state. Both states used a similar set of variations 

in their communication—stressing either urgency, civic identity or 

obligation, or plan making (prompting individuals to think about the 

process of registering).b

 After the elections, the authors matched the 

list of eligible by unregistered individuals to voter registration rolls in 

their respective states to verify who registered and voted. For the 

study in Delaware, the authors reported positive effects on turnout 

ranging from 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points, depending on the variation 

of postcard sent. For the study in Oregon, authors reported positive 

effects on turnout ranging from 0.5 to 0.6 percentage points, 

depending on the variation of postcard sent.c

 

 Study 36 assessed the effect of mailing Easy Voter Guides to 27,108 

registered Asian-Americans in Orange County, California, prior to the 

November 2006 general election. According to the authors of the 

study, Easy Voter Guides included user-friendly information about 

ballot items, including for and against arguments for ballot 

propositions, and information about the candidates for office. These 

guides were sent only to registered individuals with a “low-propensity” 

for voting.d

 Study authors reported statistically significant effects in 

two of six groups studied, compared to the control group (which did 

not receive a mailing). An organization serving Asian-Americans 

mailed the guides prior to the November 2006 general election in 

English to registered individuals who were U.S. born or were foreign 

born and 35 years old or younger, and in Chinese, Korean, or 

Vietnamese to registered individuals who were foreign born and older 

than 35 years. The study found that mailing Easy Voter Guides in 

English to Chinese-American and Vietnamese-American registered 

individuals decreased turnout by 4.1 and 3.1 percentage points, 

respectively. However, the guides had no statistically significant effect 

on turnout among other language/ethnicity combinations (Chinese-
Mailings 

 Page 77 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Americans who were sent a guide in Chinese, Korean-Americans 

who were sent a guide in Korean or English, and VietnameseAmericans who were sent a guide in Vietnamese).

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 To save on costs, state and local election officials may send eligible 

mailings using U.S. Postal Service bulk mail, and in some instances 

may use discounted nonprofit rates.e

 

 In some instances, local jurisdictions consolidate their mailings with 

state mailings to save on costs. For example, the Colorado 

Constitution allows local jurisdictions to combine the mailing of 

required notices related to debt or tax ballot measures with the 

mailing of the required ballot information booklet from the state in 

order to save mailing costs.f

 

 Competing requirements can limit resource availability for 

informational mailing efforts. For example, election officials in one 

local jurisdiction we visited said they are already required to send 

mailings for multiple purposes—such as to correct misinformation or 

obtain additional information as part of the registration process. 

These officials said they would like to send more mailings to inform 

people of their options regarding how they may register and vote, but 

said they are unable to do so because of the cost of the mailings they 

are already required to send. 

 State laws may require that jurisdictions send mailings for various 

reasons. For instance, Colorado’s Constitution requires that (1) the 

state distribute an information booklet to registered voters prior to 

each election in which a statewide issue will appear on the ballot, and 

(2) local jurisdictions mail notices to inform registered voters about 

upcoming ballot measures related to debt or taxes.g

 Similarly, Rhode 

Island state law requires that prior to each general election the state 

mail each residence basic information pertaining to all ballot 

questions, and specific information pertaining to questions involving 

bonds, indebtedness, or any other long term financial obligations.h

 

a

The authors identified five separate voting patterns, based on how long individuals had 

been registered and how often they had voted in general elections and party primaries. 

They characterized these voting patterns as: habitual voters, regular voters, occasional 

voters, rare voters, and registered nonvoters (listed in order from most to least frequency 

of voting). 
Mailings 

 Page 78 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

 b

Specifically, all variations of postcards—for both Delaware and Oregon –included the 

same basic information on the back of the postcards encouraging registration. However, 

the pictures and wording on the front of the postcards varied. Delaware postcards 

included four variations, which the authors referred to as “visualization/plan making,” 

“urgency,” “national identity,” and “state identity;” Oregon postcards also included four 

variations, which the authors referred to as “visualization/plan making,” “civic duty,” “state 

identity”, and “placebo.” The “placebo” postcard variation in Oregon included a picture of 

the same sticky note that is on the front of all other Oregon postcard variations and reads 

“IMPORTANT! Don’t forget to register to vote before the deadline.” The placebo postcard, 

however, had no other pictures on the front of the postcard (as the other variations did). 

c

The lack of difference between the placebo variation and the other variations in Oregon 

indicated that none of the postcard variations led to increases in turnout beyond the 

common elements shared across all of the mailings. 

d

The authors defined “low-propensity” registered individuals as those who had voted in 

two or fewer of the last four statewide elections, were under the age of 25, or were newly 

registered (those who had registered after the last statewide election). 

e

The NVRA required the Postal Service to make available to a State or local voting 

registration official the nonprofit mail rate “for the purpose of making a mailing that the 

official certifies is required or authorized by the [NVRA].” Pub. L. No. 103-31, § 8(h), 107 

Stat. 77, 86 (1993) (codified at 39 U.S.C. § 3629). 

f

Colo. Const. art. X, § 20. 

g

Colo. Const. art. V, § 1; art. X, § 20. 

h

R.I. Gen. Laws § 17-5-3. 
Robocalls 

Third party groups sometimes make “robocalls”—automated telephone 

calls that deliver prerecorded messages—to inform potential voters about 

dates or other aspects of upcoming elections and encourage them to 

register or vote. State and local governments could also consider this 

method.

 Page 79 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

The nature of robocalls would allow for 

variations in: 

 Content. Robocalls may vary in the 

type of information provided, the 

tone of the message, the language 

used (e.g., English, Spanish, etc.), 

and may or may not include 

information specific to the recipient 

of the call—such as a recipient’s 

polling place location. They may 

also contain appeals for individuals 

to take action, such as to register or 

to vote. 

 Frequency. Robocalls may be 

placed once or repeatedly, at 

different times of day, and at 

different intervals prior to an 

election. 

 Target population: The target 

population may be all adult citizens 

in a jurisdiction, registered 

individuals, or sub-groups, such as 

non-English speakers. However, 

obtaining valid phone numbers for 

individuals in these target 

populations may be challenging, as 

discussed below. 

 Source. Robocalls may include 

prerecorded messages from 

different people, such as state or 

local election officials or other 

recognizable individuals. In the 

studies we reviewed, robocalls 

were placed by organizations other 

than election jurisdictions. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed six studies in two publications, and five of the six studies 

came from one publication and had the same author. All six studies 

reported no statistically significant effects of robocalls on turnout, 

although one study also found a statistically significant effect on turnout 

ranging from 2.2 to 3.4 percentage points (as shown in figure 10). 

Figure 10: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Robocalls on Voter 

Turnout

Note: These six studies came from two publications, and five of the six studies came from 

one publication and had the same author. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 assessed the extent to which robocalls invoking “social 

pressure” made prior to the August 2008 Michigan primary election 

had turnout effects in that election and had persisting effects in the 

subsequent November 2008 presidential election. Specifically, 

registered individuals in the treatment group who had not voted in the 

2006 primary election, received robocalls saying: “We are calling to 

remind you to vote in tomorrow’s election. Primary elections are 

important, but many people forget to vote in them. According to public 

records, you did vote in both November 2004 and 2006, but you 

missed the 2006 August primary. Please remember to vote tomorrow, 

August 5th.” A control group of registered individuals with the same 

voting history received a robocall encouraging them to recycle. Using 

public records collected by registrars of voters to compare groups, 

study authors reported that the treatment group turned out to vote by 

2.2 percentage points more than the comparison group among onevoter households and 3.4 percentage points more than the 

comparison group among two-voter households. Again using public 
Robocalls 

 Page 80 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

records, the authors followed-up to see if these turnout effects 

persisted in the next election—the 2008 presidential election in 

November. They reported that the differences between the treatment 

and control groups found in the 2008 primary election did not persist 

in the 2008 presidential election in November. 

 Studies 2 through 6 (from one publication and with the same author) 

each found no effect on turnout from the use of robocalls. The studies 

were all conducted in connection with the November 2002 midterm 

election, and each study targeted registered individuals who resided 

in precincts where Latinos made up at least 70 percent of those 

registered to vote, and where turnout among registered individuals 

was less than half the national average in the 2000 presidential 

election. Each of the studies were conducted in precincts in one of 

five locations nationwide: Los Angeles County, California; Orange 

County, California; Harris County, Texas; the Denver, Colorado 

metropolitan area; and the state of New Mexico. In each location, 

registered individuals were randomly assigned to either a locationspecific treatment group (which received robocalls) or a locationspecific control group (which did not receive robocalls). In the two 

California locations, the Texas location, and the New Mexico location, 

those in the treatment groups received two calls in Spanish, read by a 

prominent Spanish-language newscaster, encouraging them to vote 

and saying “Your vote strengthens our communities and families with 

better schools, better jobs and safer communities.” In the Denver 

metropolitan area, a Denver city council member read a similar script 

in English to those in the treatment group. The author reported no 

statistically significant effects resulting from the robocalls in each 

location (comparing turnout among those in the treatment group in 

each location to turnout among those in the control group in each 

location). The author highlighted challenges with robocalling, 

including the inability to know with certainty the primary language of 

the household, and difficulty obtaining current phone numbers. The 

author suggested that future studies might find stronger effects of 

robocalls on turnout by trying new or different messages, such as 

messages that include each respondent’s polling location. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 There may be costs associated with (1) obtaining phone numbers for 

the target population, (2) determining which phone numbers are 

current and which numbers connect to landlines versus mobile 

phones, and (3) placing robocalls. In one publication we reviewed, the 

author reported that the total cost of a robocall campaign that 
Robocalls 

 Page 81 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

targeted 240,951 people was $23,725, making the cost per 

participant about 10 cents.a

 

 Federal law does not prohibit non-commercial, informational robocalls 

to landlines without prior consent.b

 However, by regulation, prior 

consent must be obtained, either orally or in writing, for similar calls to 

wireless phones.c

 States or localities may have privacy laws or 

regulations associated with the storage and use of voter information, 

including phone numbers. 

 The voter registration forms of the five states we visited all asked for, 

but did not require, a phone number. As a result, in these states 

phone contact information for registered individuals is dependent on 

whether a registrant chooses to provide this information. 

 

a

Ricardo Ramirez, “Giving Voice to Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on the Effectiveness 

of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort,” The Annals of the American Academy of 

Political and Social Science, vol. 601 (2005). 

b

See Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, Pub. L. No. 102-243, § 3, 105 Stat. 

2394, 2395 (1991) (codified at 47 U.S.C. § 227); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(3)(ii). 

c

47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(1)(iii). In 2012, the FCC issued a ruling that clarified that an entity 

must obtain prior express consent to make robocalls to wireless numbers, but allows 

consent to be obtained orally or in writing for non-telemarketing calls. Rules and 

Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, CG Docket 

02-278, Report and Order, 27 FCC Rcd. 1830, 1837-1841, para. 28 (2012). 
Text Messages 

Third party groups sometimes send text messages to inform potential 

voters about dates of upcoming elections and encourage them to vote. State 

and local governments could also consider this method.

 Page 82 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

The nature of text messaging would 

allow for variations in: 

 Content. Text messages may vary 

in the type of information provided, 

the tone of the message, the 

language used (e.g., English, 

Spanish, etc.), and may or may not 

include website links to access 

other content. They may also 

contain appeals for individuals to 

take action, such as to register or to 

vote. 

 Frequency. Text messages may 

be sent once or repeatedly, at 

different times of day, and at 

different intervals prior to an 

election. 

 Target population. The target 

population may be all adult citizens 

in a jurisdiction, registered 

individuals, or sub-groups, such as 

those whose polling place has 

changed. However, obtaining 

mobile phone numbers for 

individuals in these groups may be 

challenging, as discussed below. 

 Source. In the studies we 

reviewed, text messages were sent 

by organizations other than election 

jurisdictions. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed three studies in two publications. All three studies we 

reviewed reported statistically significant increases in turnout associated 

with sending text messages, ranging from a 0.8 percentage point 

increase to a 3 percentage point increase, as shown in figure 11. 

Figure 11: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Text Messages on 

Voter Turnout 

Note: These three studies came from two publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 reported an increase in turnout of 3 percentage points among 

those who received text messages sent a day prior to the 2006 

midterm election, compared to those who received no text messages. 

The authors reported the results of a nationwide field experiment 

wherein study participants were randomly divided into 4 treatment 

groups of about 1,000 registered individuals each, and a control 

group of about 4,000 registered individuals (control group participants 

did not receive a text message). Individuals in all four treatment 

groups received text messages that said: “A friendly reminder that 

TOMORROW is Election Day.” Following this sentence in the text 

message, treatment groups received different combinations of 

information. Specifically, treatment groups one and two received a 

“civic duty” message (“Democracy depends on citizens like you—so 

please vote!), with treatment group two also receiving the phone 

number for a national voter assistance hotline; and treatment groups 

three and four received a “close election” message (“Elections often 

come down to a few votes—so please vote!”), with treatment group 

four also receiving the phone number for the hotline. The text 

messages closed with the name of the organization that initially 

registered the individual, as well as the name of the organization 

responsible for sending the text message.a

 The authors reported that 
Text Messages 

 Page 83 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

the results indicated no significant difference between the turnout 

effects attributed to the two message appeals (civic duty vs. close 

elections). They also concluded that adding a polling place hotline 

number did not have an additional effect on turnout (beyond the 

effects found for text messages generally). 

 Studies 2 and 3 (from one publication and with the same authors) had 

different authors than study 1 but used a similar text message as 

study 1. Study 2 reported an increase of 0.9 percentage points in 

turnout among the study participants who received text messages a 

day prior to the June 2010 statewide elections in California, compared 

to those who did not. Specifically, individuals were divided randomly 

into a treatment group and a control group. In the treatment group, 

text messages were sent to 14,844 registered individuals in San 

Mateo County who had provided valid cell phone numbers at the time 

of registration; the control group included 14,829 registered 

individuals who did not receive a text message, but who also provided 

valid cell phone numbers at the time of registration. The text 

messages were sent by a third party firm and included the same text 

as the civic duty message in study 1 noted above: “A friendly 

reminder that TOMORROW is Election Day. Democracy depends on 

citizens like you—so please vote!” The authors noted that in study 1 

(discussed above), people received texts from organizations that 

registered them and in some cases gave permission to be contacted 

via text message in the future. The authors distinguished their study 

from the previous study by noting that their experiment sent “cold” 

text messages—that is, the recipients did not receive text messages 

from an organization that registered them in person and were not 

asked for permission to receive text messages prior to Election Day. 

In study 3 the same text messages were sent to a similar population 

in San Mateo County, California, with a control group identified in the 

same way as in study 2—but this study was conducted in connection 

with a November 2009 local election. The authors reported a 0.8 

percentage point increase in turnout associated with sending text 

messages in connection with this election. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 There may be costs associated with (1) obtaining phone numbers for 

the target population, (2) determining which phone numbers are 

current, and which are landline versus mobile numbers, and (3) 

sending bulk text messages. The three studies we reviewed used 

phone numbers provided during voter registration. Two of these 

studies used an outside firm to determine which numbers were 
Text Messages 

 Page 84 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

connected to mobile phones, and one study noted that this task was 

performed, but did not say who performed it. All three studies used 

third party groups to send the text messages. 

 Federal law prohibits text messages sent to mobile phones using an 

automatic telephone dialing system unless the recipient previously 

provided consent.b

 For non-commercial, informational text messages, 

prior consent may be given orally or in writing.c

 Additionally, the 

message must include a convenient way to “opt-out” of future 

messages. Additionally, states or localities may have privacy laws or 

regulations associated with the storage and use voter information, 

including phone numbers. 

 The voter registration forms of the five states we visited all asked for, 

but did not require, a phone number. As a result, in these states 

phone contact information for registered individuals is dependent on 

whether a registrant chooses to provide this information. 

 

a

All participants in this experiment were registered through a third party voter registration 

organization. 

b

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), as amended, prohibits any person 

from making a call to any telephone number assigned to a cellular telephone service, with 

certain narrow exceptions, without the prior express consent of the called party using any 

automatic telephone dialing system. Pub. L. No. 102-243, § 3, 105 Stat. 2394, 2395 

(1991) (codified at 47 U.S.C. § 227); 47 C.F.R. § 64.1200(a)(1)(iii). In 2003, the FCC 

issued an order interpreting the TCPA to include a text message within the meaning of a 

“call,” thereby requiring a person or entity sending text messages to a recipient using an 

automatic telephone dialing system to obtain prior express consent. In re Rules and 

Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, CG Docket 

No. 02-278, Report and Order, 18 FCC Rcd. 14014, 14115 (2003); Satterfield v. Simon & 

Schuster, Inc., 569 F.3d 946 (9th Cir. 2009) (finding that the FCC’s interpretation of the 

TCPA was reasonable). 

c

Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 

CG Docket No. 02-278, Declaratory Ruling and Order, 30 FCC Rcd. 7961, 7992, 8016-22 

(2015). 
Registration Closing Date Prior to 

Elections 

Some states’ laws require that individuals wishing to vote submit their voter 

registration applications by a particular deadline before an upcoming 

election.

 Page 85 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Federal law requires that states 

cannot set registration deadlines in 

excess of 30 days prior to elections for 

federal office.a Within this 

requirement, states differ in the 

amount of time they allow between 

their registration deadline and the day 

of the election. Additionally, some 

states combine their registration 

deadlines with same day or Election 

Day registration. For instance: 

 In Arizona, the final day to register 

to vote is the 29th day before 

Election Day. 

 In Colorado, deadlines are based 

on the registration method. 

Individuals may register through a 

voter registration drive until 22 days 

before an election, they may 

register online or by mail up to 8 

days prior to the election, or they 

may register at a voter service and 

polling center (vote center) up to 

and including Election Day. 

 In Illinois, the traditional voter 

registration period closes 28 days 

prior to the election. However 

“grace period registration” extends 

this deadline from the 27th day prior 

to an election through Election Day. 

Grace period registration is only 

available in person at sites 

designated by each local election 

jurisdiction. 

States differ in the extent to which 

they allow exceptions to their 

deadlines. For example: 

 In Rhode Island, individuals must 

register at least 30 days before a 

primary or general election. 

However, there is an exception for 

presidential elections, such that if 

individuals miss the deadline, they 

may still register and vote at their 

Board of Canvassers on the day of 

the election, but they may only cast 

Literature review results 

We reviewed six studies from four publications. Four of the six studies 

assessed the effect on turnout of moving the registration closing date 

closer to Election Day, and two of the six studies assessed the extent to 

which a requirement to register at least 28 days prior to an election 

affected turnout. The results are shown in figure 12 below. 

Figure 12: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Changes to 

Registration Closing Dates on Voter Turnout 

Note: These six studies came from four publications. Studies 1, 3 and 4 assessed the 

effect of moving the registration closing date farther away from Election Day; however, for 

purposes of consistency, we have converted their findings to the equivalent effects of 

moving the registration deadline closer to Election Day. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 2 estimated the effect of the length of the registration closing 

period (i.e., later deadline) on turnout in presidential elections from 

1972 through 2008. The study had a multivariate statistical model that 

used turnout data from all 50 states for the 10 presidential elections in 

the study period. The model included various state election 

administration and demographic characteristics, and measures of 

electoral context, such as closeness of the presidential race in a state 

and whether or not there was a gubernatorial or senate race in the 

state, in an attempt to isolate the effect of the length of the 

registration period on turnout from other factors. Study authors said 

their statistical analysis incorporated both the immediate and longterm impact of such a change. Overall, the authors estimated that a 

10-day decrease in the length of the registration closing period (i.e., 

later deadline) led to a long-term 1.0 percentage point increase in 
Registration Closing Date Prior to 

Elections 

 Page 86 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

a vote for President/Vice President. 

 In California, individuals must 

register at least 15 days before 

Election Day. However, California 

residents who move to a new 

county after this deadline can vote 

at the polling place of their old 

address (if they were already 

registered).

turnout in states without Election Day registration. 

 Study 3 analyzed state-level turnout data during presidential election 

years from 1920 through 2000. This study found that for all states 

combined as the period of time between registration closing and 

Election Day decreased, turnout increased.b

 However, when 

examining states on the basis of geography, the effect of registration 

closing dates on turnout depended on the group of states included in 

the comparison. Study authors reported statistically significant effects 

for all states combined and also for southern states, but not for nonsouthern states. For all states combined, the turnout increase was 

estimated to be 0.021 percentage points for each one-day decrease 

in the time between the registration deadline and Election Day, and 

for southern states the turnout increase was 0.045 percentage points 

per one-day decrease. So, for all states combined, a 10-day decrease 

in the time between the registration deadline and Election Day 

resulted in a 0.2 percentage point increase in turnout; and for 

southern states, a 10-day decrease resulted in a 0.45 percentage 

point increase in turnout. 

 Studies 5 and 6 (from one publication) assessed the effect of state 

registration deadlines that required individuals to register at least 28 

days before an election (compared to the effect of state registration 

deadlines that were less than 28 days). Using U.S. Census Bureau’s 

Current Population Survey (CPS) data, study 5 found no statistically 

significant effect on turnout from having a deadline at least 28-days 

before the 2008 presidential election, across four different models 

(the models differed in the extent to which they controlled for different 

early voting laws and other state-level reforms). Also using CPS data, 

study 6 conducted a similar analysis in relation to the 2012 midterm 

election and found a statistically significant decrease in turnout in one 

model (not reported as a percentage point estimate) and no 

statistically significant effects in the other three models. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 All five of the states we visited have registration deadlines prior to 

Election Day; however, three of them (Colorado, Illinois, and Rhode 

Island) also have some form of same day registration. State election 

officials in four of these states generally said that having a deadline 

provides time for local election officials to complete various electionrelated tasks, such as processing remaining registration applications 

and updating registration rolls, preparing and printing poll books, 

preparing ballots, and mailing ballots. 
Registration Closing Date Prior to 

Elections 

 Page 87 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

 One publication we reviewed argued that voters’ interest in an 

election builds progressively until Election Day, and so registration 

closing dates can limit whether some interested citizens, who would 

otherwise be eligible, register to vote in time and are then able to 

vote.c

 Similarly, a local election official we spoke with noted that 

despite the jurisdiction’s efforts to announce and publicize upcoming 

elections, many voters do not become interested in the elections until 

a few weeks before Election Day, which is too late to register in that 

jurisdiction’s state. 

 States may have different deadlines and rules related to third party 

registration drives. For instance, in addition to having a separate 

deadline for individuals who register through voter registration drives, 

Colorado law requires that third party groups deliver completed 

applications to the appropriate local jurisdiction no later than 15 

business days after the application was signed (or postmarked by that 

date, if mailed).d

 Researchers at one organization we spoke with said 

that third party registration groups often turn in many paper 

registration forms at the same time close to the registration deadline, 

increasing the burden on election officials who need to input the 

information from the forms into their state’s voter registration 

database.

 Federal law requires that individuals who move to a new state within 

30 days of a presidential election must be allowed to vote for 

President and Vice President in their former state, either in-person or 

by absentee ballot.e

 Additionally, individuals who move within the 

same local jurisdiction must be given the opportunity to update their 

registration and vote even if they never notified the registrar of their 

move.

 

a

See 52 U.S.C. § 20507(a)(1). 

b

Study 3 assessed the effect of moving the registration closing date farther away from 

Election Day; however, for purposes of consistency in this policy summary, we have 

converted its findings to the equivalent effect of moving the registration deadline closer to 

Election Day. 

c

Melanie J. Springer, “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout in Presidential 

Elections, 1920-2000,” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3 (2012). 

d

Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-2-702. 

e

52 U.S.C. § 10502(e). 
Same Day Registration 

Some state laws allow eligible individuals to register (or update their 

registration) and vote on the same day.

 Page 88 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Depending on the state, same day 

registration may be offered on Election 

Day, during an early voting period, or 

both. Some states refer to this policy 

as Election Day registration, and the 

two terms (same day registration and 

Election Day registration) are 

sometimes used interchangeably. 

When referring to findings in 

publications and studies, we use the 

terms used by the authors. 

States may also have deadlines for 

registration in advance of the election 

while also allowing for same day 

registration; when and how the 

individual registers can affect the 

process that individual goes through to 

cast a ballot. For example, in 

Colorado, registration deadlines are 

dependent upon the method of 

registration.a For example, registration 

applications submitted through a voter 

registration drive must be submitted 

no later than 22 days before an 

election. However, voters can 

continue to register online or by mail 

after this deadline, though the timing 

may affect whether an individual 

receives a ballot by mail, given that 

Colorado is an all vote-by-mail state. 

Individuals registering at least 8 days 

in advance will automatically receive a 

mail ballot, but those registering after 

this time must visit a polling location to 

receive a ballot. Individuals can also 

register in person at polling places 

during early voting or on Election Day. 

States or local jurisdictions may allow 

for same day registration at all or 

select polling locations. For example, 

in Illinois, the requirements for offering 

same day registration (known as 

“grace period registration and voting”) 

differ by county.b In Illinois, counties 

with more than 100,000 people and 

those of any size that use electronic 

poll books are required to provide for 

same day registration at the main 

Literature review results 

We reviewed 33 studies in 17 publications, and 21 of these studies found 

increases in turnout, 3 studies found mixed effects (positive increases 

combined with non-significant findings), while 9 studies found no 

statistically significant effects. 

Figure 13: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Same Day 

Registration on Voter Turnout 

Note: These 33 studies came from 17 publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Studies 1 and 19 (from the same publication) examined how the 
Same Day Registration 

 Page 89 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

county election office and all 

permanent early voting and Election 

Day polling places, while smaller 

counties that use printed poll books 

are only required to offer it at the main 

election office and in any polling place 

that serves 20 percent or more of the 

county’s residents and is located in a 

different municipality than the main 

election office. 

Some states limit the type of ballot 

available to individuals who register 

and vote on the same day. For 

example, in Rhode Island, an 

individual who has not registered to 

vote can cast a ballot for President 

and Vice President on Election Day at 

his or her city or town hall or an 

alternate location designated by the 

local board of canvassers, and the 

casting of the ballot begins the 

process of voter registration.c

proximity of registration deadlines to Election Day affects voter 

turnout, with Election Day registration being a registration deadline of 

0 days before Election Day. Study 1 analyzed CPS data at the county 

level for all presidential and midterm elections from 1992 through 

2004 in which there was at least one statewide-office on the ballot. 

The author analyzed the effect of the length of registration deadlines 

(how far in advance an individual must register before an election) on 

turnout and estimated that a change from a registration deadline 30 

days in advance of the election to 0 days (the equivalent of Election 

Day registration) would increase turnout by 8.7 percentage points. 

Study 19 used individual-level CPS data from presidential and 

midterm elections from 1994 through 2006 and estimated that 

changing a registration deadline from 30 days before Election Day to 

0 days (Election Day registration) would increase an individual’s 

probability of voting by an estimated 7.3 percent.d

 Two studies (Studies 7 and 13) in another publication assessed the 

effect of Election Day registration in presidential and midterm 

elections, respectively, from 1980 through 2006. Using one model, 

Study 7 found that the policy increased turnout by 4.5 percentage 

points, on average, in presidential election years, and Study 13 found 

that the policy increased turnout by 2 percentage points, on average, 

in midterm election years. The authors also presented alternative 

models in each study that controlled for the interaction between 

Election Day registration and the competitiveness of key races 

(presidential races in the presidential election years and state 

gubernatorial races in midterm election years) and found no 

statistically significant effects of Election Day registration alone in 

these models. However, study 13 found that states with Election Day 

registration that had competitive gubernatorial elections had 

significantly higher midterm turnout than did states with only Election 

Day registration or just competitive gubernatorial races. The authors 

concluded that with less information generally available for midterm 

elections, electoral competition along with Election Day registration 

may combine to increase turnout. 

 Study 9 examined Wisconsin’s initial implementation of Election Day 

registration as a natural experiment because the policy was 

implemented in different municipalities throughout the state at 

different times. Specifically, municipalities that previously required 

voters to register before voting were required to implement the policy, 

whereas municipalities that did not have a registration requirement 

did not change their procedures.e

 As a result, a county could have 

some municipalities that implemented Election Day registration and 
Same Day Registration 

 Page 90 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

some that continued without a registration requirement. Using countylevel data from the Wisconsin Election Board for the number of votes 

cast in presidential elections from 1972 through 1980 and the 

proportion of a county’s population affected by the adoption of 

Election Day registration, the authors estimated that if a county were 

to move from no population covered by Election Day registration to 

having all of its population covered by Election Day registration, 

turnout would increase by about 3.0 percentage points. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 Implementing same day registration can have cost implications. To 

avoid the potential for longer lines at polling places resulting from the 

additional step to register and possible confusion over the process, 

some jurisdictions may hire additional poll workers to assist those 

who need to register as well as vote. For example, the Office of Policy 

Analysis within the Maryland Department of Legislative Services 

reported that the main additional cost of implementing Election Day 

registration, as it was being considered in proposed legislation, would 

be hiring additional staff to process registrations at polling places.f

Additionally, officials from one large urban jurisdiction told us they had 

purchased electronic poll books in anticipation of offering same day 

registration, which was a cost to the jurisdiction. However, electronic 

poll books may reduce costs in other areas, specifically eliminating 

the need to print paper poll books for each polling place. 

 Literature that we reviewed indicated that same day registration can 

provide convenience for voters, including those who missed a 

registration deadline as well as particular subsets of voters, such as 

young voters or those who move frequently.

 The Pew Center on the States reported that allowing for registration 

on Election Day can provide a failsafe option for eligible individuals 

whose registration information is inaccurately listed despite their own 

best efforts.g

 Similarly, the Government Accountability Board of 

Wisconsin—a state that has had Election Day registration since 

1976—noted that Election Day registration offers an eligible individual 

the opportunity to correct administrative mistakes made by the 

individual or election officials.h

 The National Conference of State Legislatures reported that same 

day registration can result in administrative burdens for election 

officials, given that eligibility must be verified at the same time that the 

registrant provides his or her information.i

 In general, states with 

same day registration require applicants to provide some form of 
Same Day Registration 

 Page 91 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

identification and proof of residency. One case study across multiple 

states noted that the Election Day registration process and 

requirements can result in confusion for poll workers and long lines.j

 Literature we reviewed cited concerns about potential fraud 

associated with registering individuals and immediately allowing them 

to cast a ballot, because there may be challenges to verifying an 

individual’s eligibility at the polling place. For example, polling places 

that use printed precinct-specific poll books may not have resources 

available for poll workers to be able to confirm that the individual is 

not already registered in another location. However, the literature and 

officials we spoke with noted that there are methods for limiting the 

potential for fraud. In Colorado, all jurisdictions in the state use 

electronic poll books that are connected in real-time via the internet to 

the state’s voter registration system, and the Colorado election 

director said that this technology helps officials or poll workers at the 

polling place determine if a person is already registered elsewhere in 

the state, which can mitigate fraud concerns. In Illinois, which recently 

began to implement same day registration, state officials said that 

local jurisdictions will be responsible for determining how to verify 

eligibility and prevent fraud—they noted that some may use tools 

connected to the internet to verify potential registrants against the 

state’s registration system, while others may require voters to sign an 

affidavit that they will not vote again at another location.

 

a

See Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-2-201. 

b

In Illinois, during the 28 days preceding an election (the “grace period”), in counties with 

populations greater than 100,000 or that use electronic poll books, an unregistered 

individual may register to vote, and a registered voter may submit a change of address 

form, in person in the office of the election authority, at a permanent early voting site 

(which local jurisdictions establish according to specifications in state law), at any other 

early voting site beginning 15 days prior to the election, at a polling place on Election Day, 

or at a voter registration location specifically designated for this purpose by the election 

authority. See 10 Ill. Comp. Stat. Ann. 5/4-50, 5-50, 6-100. 

c

R.I. Gen. Laws § 17-1-3. 

d

This study estimated the increase in an individual’s probability of voting, rather than a 

percentage point increase in turnout among a group or population. Thus, it is not 

represented as a percentage point estimate in figure 13. 

e

In Wisconsin, municipalities are responsible for administering elections. Until January 1, 

2006, Wisconsin municipalities with populations greater than 5,000 were required to 

register voters, whereas municipalities under this threshold could choose whether or not to 

establish registration requirements. 
Same Day Registration 

 Page 92 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

f

Maryland Department of Legislative Services, Office of Policy Analysis, Election Day 

Registration (Annapolis, Maryland: Dec. 12, 2008). 

g

The Pew Center on the States, Upgrading Democracy: Improving America’s Elections by 

Modernizing States’ Voter Registration Systems (Washington, D.C.: November 2010). 

h

State of Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, Final Report on the Impacts and 

Costs of Eliminating Election Day Registration in Wisconsin (Feb. 18, 2013). 

i

Owens Hubler, Katy, “Improving Voter Turnout,” Legisbrief Briefing Papers on the 

Important Issues of the Day, vol. 22, no. 40 (Denver, Colorado: National Conference of 

State Legislatures, October 2014). 

j

electiononline.org, Election-Day Registration: A Case Study (Washington, D.C.: Election 

Reform Information Project, February 2007). The Election Reform Information Project is a 

project at the University of Richmond supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
All Vote-by-Mail 

Some states and local jurisdictions conduct elections by mail, such that all 

registered individuals receive ballots in the mail prior to Election Day and 

may return the ballots by mailing them or dropping them off at one or more 

designated locations.

 Page 93 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

All vote-by-mail is different from 

absentee vote-by-mail options 

because all registered individuals 

receive a mail ballot regardless of 

whether or not they request one. 

Three states hold all vote-by-mail 

elections for all federal, state, and 

local elections (Colorado, Oregon, and 

Washington). Colorado combines its 

all vote-by-mail approach with early 

and Election Day in-person voting at 

vote centers. Many other states have 

provisions allowing all vote-by-mail 

under differing circumstances. a For 

instance: 

 In Hawaii, any federal, state, or 

county election that is not held on 

the date of a regularly scheduled 

primary or general election may be 

conducted using all vote-by-mail. 

 In Nevada, local jurisdictions may 

administer all vote-by-mail elections 

in precincts where there were not 

more than 20 individuals registered 

in that precinct for the preceding 

general election. 

 In North Dakota and Utah, local 

jurisdictions may choose to conduct 

any election using an all vote-bymail approach. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed 21 studies in 12 publications. We found that 11 studies 

reported an increase in turnout, 3 studies reported no evidence of an 

effect on turnout, 4 studies reported a combination of these (increases 

and non-significant findings), 1 study reported a combination of a 

decrease in turnout and no evidence of an effect on turnout, and 2 

studies reported decreases in turnout. 

Figure 14: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of All Vote-by-Mail on 

Voter Turnout 

Note: These 21 studies come from 12 publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 examined turnout patterns in all statewide elections in 

Oregon from 1960 through 2010 to test the extent to which elections 

conducted using all vote-by-mail procedures affected turnout 

compared to elections that used polling places and absentee vote-bymail. This was possible because Oregon adopted all vote-by-mail as 

a method of voting in all elections in 1998.b

 Using Oregon’s official 
All Vote-by-Mail 

 Page 94 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

turnout data, the authors examined the extent to which all vote-bymail had turnout effects on different types of elections and assessed 

how long any effects persisted over time. They reported no 

statistically significant effects on turnout associated with conducting 

all vote-by-mail elections beyond the first three elections in which it 

was used and beyond certain types of low-interest special elections. 

However, they reported effects ranging from an increase of 8.4 

percentage points to an increase of 15.5 percentage points 

associated with the first three elections conducted using all vote-bymail. Specifically, the 8.4 percentage point increase was associated 

with all types of elections. It was calculated using the voting-eligible 

population as the denominator for turnout. The 15.5 percentage point 

increase was associated only with the special and primary elections 

that were among the first three elections using all vote-by-mail. It 

used registered individuals as the denominator for turnout. 

Additionally, the authors reported that using all vote-by-mail resulted 

in an 11 percentage point increase in turnout in low-profile, low 

interest elections—which they defined as special elections that 

included only ballot initiatives and referenda, and did not include 

candidate races. The authors concluded that the introduction of all 

vote-by-mail in Oregon led to a novelty effect that dissipated after 

three subsequent elections. Additionally, they concluded that any 

lasting turnout effects of all vote-by-mail are most likely limited to 

subfederal contests, precisely where voter interest is lowest and the 

relative impact of lowering of the costs of voting would be greatest. 

 Study 7 assessed the extent to which Colorado’s adoption of all voteby-mail in 2013 affected turnout in the 2014 midterm election. The 

authors noted that when Colorado adopted all vote-by-mail, it retained 

all previously available voting options (i.e., voting in-person prior to or 

on Election Day). Thus, the authors asserted, their results reflect the 

effect of adding vote-by-mail as an option, rather than switching to 

vote by mail as the only option. Using county-level data from the 

Election Assistance Commission for all presidential and midterm 

elections from 2004 through 2014 and multivariate linear regression 

models, the authors estimated the effect of an all vote-by-mail 

election on turnout among registered individuals. Because same day 

registration was adopted at the same time as the all vote-by-mail 

policy, the authors excluded all individuals who voted using same day 

registration from their analysis. They reported that the all vote-by-mail 

system implemented in the 2014 election was associated with 

increases in turnout across all four models they used, ranging from 

2.5 percentage points to 5.1 percentage points. 
All Vote-by-Mail 

 Page 95 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

 Studies 20 and 21 (from one publication) found that turnout was lower 

in California precincts that conducted elections exclusively by mail 

compared to California precincts that used polling places in 

combination with the opportunity to cast absentee ballots. The 

authors took advantage of a “natural experiment” created by a state 

law in California that allows county registrars to designate any 

precinct with fewer than 250 registrants as an all vote-by-mail 

precinct. The authors noted that since this natural experiment did not 

perfectly mimic random assignment, they used matching methods to 

pair each all vote-by-mail precinct with precincts where elections were 

conducted using polling places and absentee ballots, and contained 

populations with similar demographic and political attributes (e.g., 

similar partisanship balances among the electorate and similar 

margins of victory between the top two contestants). Study 20 

assessed turnout differences between the two groups across 9 

counties in the 2002 midterm election. Study 21 assessed differences 

between the two groups across 18 counties in connection with the 

2000 presidential election. Using precinct-level data, the authors 

reported that turnout among voters in all vote-by-mail precincts was 

1.5 and 2.7 percentage points lower than turnout among voters in 

polling place precincts for the 2002 midterm election and 2000 

presidential election, respectively. The authors concluded that shifting 

elections from the polling place to the mailbox risks producing a 

decline in turnout for regularly scheduled general elections. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 State and local election officials we met with in Colorado and Oregon 

generally agreed that all vote-by-mail elections save on costs and are 

easier to administer than elections where votes are cast at polling 

places. For instance, according to the Colorado Director of Elections, 

many Colorado counties reported that the change to all vote-by-mail 

(which Colorado did in 2013) saved their jurisdictions money in the 

administration of elections. Further, this official said that counties 

reported that the primary area of cost savings was personnel costs, 

due to not having to staff as many locations. Additionally, officials in 

one local jurisdiction said that they believed that the all vote-by-mail 

system they use saves money because they do not have to maintain 

as much voting equipment, hire as many poll workers, or rent polling 

places. 

 Chief election officials from three local jurisdictions stated that voting 

by mail allows voters whatever time they need to research the 

relevant issues and cast a ballot. On the other hand, the chief local 
All Vote-by-Mail 

 Page 96 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

election official from one local jurisdiction noted that filling out a ballot 

in one’s own home may compromise privacy or allow for coercion in 

the voting process (for example, from other family members). 

 The Presidential Commission on Election Administration reported 

several challenges associated with conducting elections by mail.c

 For 

instance, the Commission reported that voting by mail requires 

successful delivery and receipt of the ballot at many stages in the 

voting pipeline. Thus, ballots can be lost in the mail or can be mailed 

out or received too late for timely voting. They also reported that 

voters occasionally make mistakes in complying with various 

signature and other requirements in order for their mail ballots to be 

counted. Nevertheless, the Commission reported that appropriate 

safeguards could mitigate these risks—such as establishing 

communication with the local Postmaster and implementing ballot 

tracking mechanisms. 

 The state election directors in both Colorado and Oregon—which 

conduct all vote-by-mail elections—reported having little concern with 

the security and integrity of administering all vote-by-mail elections. 

These officials noted that their states require one or more local 

election officials to compare signatures on the ballots with signatures 

in their states’ respective voter registration databases and validate 

each signature individually. Additionally, one local jurisdiction we 

visited implemented a ballot tracking system that uses postal 

barcodes to track mail ballot envelopes from the time they are printed 

through every stage of the postal process, up to the time when they 

have been delivered to the local jurisdiction. This system provides 

reports to local election officials about the status of all mail ballots and 

can be used by individual voters to obtain status updates, including 

notifications that their ballots have been accepted for counting (or 

rejected due a signature discrepancy). 

 

a

See Haw. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 11-91.5; Nev. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 293.213; N.D. Cent. Code § 

16.1-11.1-01; Utah Code Ann. § 20A-3-302. 

b

According to the study, all vote-by-mail was available as a local option since 1987 and 

was first used on a statewide basis to administer a 1993 special election. 

c

Presidential Commission on Election Administration, The American Voting Experience. 
Early In-Person Voting 

Some states or jurisdictions allow voters to cast their vote in-person without 

an excuse before election day.

 Page 97 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

States use different terms for this 

policy, such as early voting or inperson absentee voting, among 

others. 

Among states that allow for early 

voting, the specific circumstances for 

in-person early voting—such as the 

dates, times, and locations—are 

based on state and local 

requirements. Implementation and 

characteristics of early voting vary 

among states and, in some cases, 

among the jurisdictions within a state. 

States vary in terms of the days and 

locations provided for early in-person 

voting, including the extent to which 

voting is available on one or more 

weekends prior to Election Day. 

Additionally, states differ in terms of 

the hours that polling locations are 

open for early in-person voting. For 

example, some states specify a 

particular location or minimum number 

of early voting locations, such as the 

election office, and allow local election 

officials discretion to expand the 

locations or number of early voting 

sites. Some states’ laws dictate the 

number of early voting locations based 

on the population of the relevant 

jurisdiction. 

The Presidential Commission on 

Election Administration reported that 

jurisdictions that conduct early inperson voting generally use a vote 

center model—in which any voter in 

the jurisdiction can vote at any polling 

place available for early in-person 

voting in the jurisdiction. Specifically, 

the Commission noted that voting 

almost always takes place at 

centralized locations rather than in the 

multitude of polling places available 

for Election Day voting.a

Literature review results 

We reviewed 20 studies from 12 publications, and these studies had 

varied findings. Seven studies found no statistically significant effect, 

another 8 studies found that the policy decreased turnout, and 5 studies 

reported mixed evidence. Reported effects from these studies ranged 

from a 3.8 percentage point decrease in turnout to a 3.1 percentage point 

increase. 

Figure 15: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Early In-Person 

Voting on Voter Turnout 

Note: These 20 studies came from 12 publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 used CPS and state turnout data from presidential elections 

from 1972 through 2008 to assess the effect of the length of the early 

voting period on turnout. The study estimated that early in-person 

voting had no statistically significant effect on turnout if the early 

voting period was less than 27 days, and that a voting period of at 

least 27 days would be necessary to see any positive effect of early 
Early In-Person Voting 

 Page 98 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

in-person voting on turnout. Further, the authors estimated that a 45-

day early voting period would lead to a 3.1 percentage-point increase 

in turnout. However, the authors note that 45 days is a longer voting 

period than most states allow. 

 Study 2 found that early in-person voting had mixed effects on 

turnout, depending on how long the policy had been in place. Using 

aggregate turnout data from 500 randomly selected counties 

nationwide, the authors analyzed turnout in these counties for 

presidential elections from 1972 through 2004 and examined the 

change in turnout in each county before and after the county 

implemented early in-person voting. The study found that the first 

time early in-person voting was offered in a presidential election, it 

increased county-level turnout by 1.5 percentage points compared to 

the previous presidential election, but the second time early in-person 

voting was offered in a presidential election, it decreased county-level 

turnout by 2.4 percentage points (also compared to the previous 

presidential election); the study found no statistically significant effect 

of this policy in the third presidential election after it was introduced 

(again, compared to the previous presidential election). 

 Study 10 used CPS data covering presidential and midterm elections 

from 1980 through 2010 and found no statistically significant effects 

of early in-person voting on turnout among Whites and Blacks, but 

found evidence that early in-person voting decreased turnout among 

Latinos in states that offered this policy compared to states that did 

not, though the effect was not stated in terms of a percentage point 

difference. 

 Studies 19 and 20, which are from one publication, analyzed the 

effect of early in-person voting on county-level turnout across multiple 

states (collected from several sources) in the 2012 and 2008 

presidential elections, respectively. The studies found that the 

statewide availability of this policy decreased turnout by 3.8 

percentage points in the 2008 election and by 3.5 percentage points 

in the 2012 election in counties that offered it in each election 

compared to counties where it was not offered. The author suggested 

that early in-person voting depresses turnout by decreasing the civic 

energy traditionally associated with Election Day as well as get-outthe-vote (GOTV) efforts and media attention in the weeks before 

Election Day. However, the author also included in his analysis a 

variable that accounted for the number of early voting locations (per 

1,000 voting-age residents) and found that a greater number of early 

voting locations was associated with higher turnout. The author 
Early In-Person Voting 

 Page 99 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

concluded that while adopting early in-person voting at the state level 

fails to increase turnout, adopting early voting and also providing an 

ample number of locations could lower voters’ costs enough to 

increase turnout. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 Although there can be costs associated with opening polling places 

for additional days, the Presidential Commission on Election 

Administration reported that these costs could be offset because 

fewer polling places could be needed on Election Day, although the 

Commission noted that adequate facilities should remain available on 

Election Day to ensure reasonable wait times.b

 Officials in one local 

jurisdiction we visited said they were able to reduce Election Day 

polling places by 20 percent because of early voting opportunities, 

including early in-person voting and no-excuse absentee voting. 

 Officials from one local jurisdiction we visited said that early in-person 

voting increases convenience for voters and reduces wait times on 

Election Day. These officials noted that early in-person voting can 

also reduce the effect of any problems that arise on Election Day—for 

example, if there is inclement weather, individuals who vote early are 

unlikely to be affected. 

 In a nationwide survey we conducted following the November 2012 

election, officials in 23 states reported that the availability of 

alternative voting options, including early in-person voting, can affect 

wait times on Election Day. In some cases, officials reported that they 

believed that no or limited opportunities for voting outside of Election 

Day were a contributing factor to long wait times on Election Day.c

 

a

Presidential Commission on Election Administration, The American Voting Experience. 

b

Presidential Commission on Election Administration, The American Voting Experience. 

c

GAO, Elections: Observations on Wait Times for Voters on Election Day 2012, 

GAO-14-850 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 30, 2014). For this report, we conducted a webbased survey of election officials from a nationally representative stratified random sample 

of 423 local election jurisdictions, excluding jurisdictions with populations of 10,000 or 

fewer and jurisdictions in Oregon and Washington, which were vote-by-mail states for the 

November 2012 election. On the basis of our survey results, of the jurisdictions nationwide 

that had wait times officials considered too long at a few or more polling places on election 

day, we estimate that in 24 percent (from 15 to 37 percent), officials believe no or limited 

opportunities for voting outside of election day was a contributing factor.
Hours Available for Voting 

States and local jurisdictions determine the hours available for voting on 

Election Day or any available early voting days, and the number of hours 

available for voting can be longer in some locations than others.

 Page 100 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Current federal law does not dictate 

the hours that polling places are 

required to be open on Election Day. 

Some states establish statewide 

requirements for the times that voting 

will be available, while other states 

may allow for local discretion 

regarding the opening and closing 

times for the polls. For example, 

Delaware state law requires polling 

places to open at 7:00 a.m. and close 

at 8:00 p.m.a Kansas state law 

establishes poll hours from 7:00 a.m. 

to 7:00 p.m., unless different hours are 

set and publicly announced by the 

county election officer, and if different 

hours are set state law requires the 

polls to be open at least 12 continuous 

hours (opening no earlier than 6:00 

a.m., closing no earlier than 7:00 p.m. 

and no later than 8:00 p.m.).b In 

Vermont, each town sets polling place 

hours, though state law requires that 

the polls open no earlier than 5:00 

a.m. and no later than 10:00 a.m. and 

that polls close at 7:00 p.m.c

The literature we reviewed addressed 

the hours for voting on Election Day, 

but states and local jurisdictions may 

also vary the hours available for voting 

during early in-person voting. For 

example, polling places can be open 

different hours on weekdays 

compared to weekends during the 

early voting period. 

Literature review results 

Two studies from two different publications examined the effects of 

extending poll hours. Both studies found evidence that extended poll 

hours could increase turnout, although one of the two studies also found 

no statistically significant effect in one portion of the study’s analysis. 

Figure 16: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Hours Available for 

Voting on Voter Turnout 

Note: These two studies came from two publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Using CPS data from the 2000 presidential election, Study 1 

examined the effects of states having polling places open before 7:00 

a.m. (compared to states that did not have polling places open before 

that time) and the effects of having polling places open after 7:00 p.m. 

(compared to states that did not have polling places open after that 

time). The study reported an estimated 1.7 percentage point increase 

in turnout from opening polling places before 7:00 a.m. and a 1.0 

percentage point increase in turnout from keeping polling places open 

after 7:00 p.m. 

 The authors of study 2 compiled an original data set of state turnout 

rates for presidential elections from 1920 through 2000 using vote 

totals provided by the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and 

population data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstracts 

of the United States. The study uses three multivariate regression 

models—one for all 50 states, one for 11 southern states, and one for 

39 non-southern states to look at the effect of the varying number of 

hours the polls are open, by state, on turnout. The study found that 

the number of hours that polls were open did not have a statistically 

significant effect in the models for all 50 states or southern states, but 

the model for non-southern states indicated a statistically significant 

relationship between the total number of hours that the polls are open 
Hours Available for Voting 

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on Election Day and voter turnout particularly between non-Southern 

states that had shorter polling days (4 to 5 hours) and those that had 

longer polling days (9 to 10 hours).d

 The authors noted a possible 

decrease in turnout from having the polls open for more than 11 

hours, and suggested that there is a point (around 10 hours) at which 

state turnout rates are maximized. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 Keeping polling locations open for additional hours may have cost 

implications. For example, election officials in one local jurisdiction we 

visited said the election office must pay for the marginal cost of 

having the facility open for the additional voting hours, which can 

include costs such as utilities or building security. Similarly, states or 

local jurisdictions that pay poll workers by an hourly rate would incur 

additional costs from having polling places open additional hours.

 Additional poll hours may provide additional convenience to some 

voters. According to CPS data for general elections from 2000 

through 2014, the most commonly reported reason among registered 

voters for not voting was being too busy or having a conflicting 

schedule. Extending voting hours may provide additional options for 

some voters whose schedules conflict with existing available hours 

for voting.

 Election offices can face challenges in recruiting poll workers, partly 

because of the hours workers are required to be at polling locations, 

and election offices may face increased challenges in recruiting poll 

workers for longer voting days. The EAC has reported that many 

people find the long hours required of poll workers to be a deterrent to 

serving as a poll worker.e

 According to the EAC, to address the issue 

that some individuals may not want to work long hours on Election 

Day, some jurisdictions allow poll workers to work split shifts. 

However the EAC notes that such split shifts are sometimes 

controversial because they can create administrative difficulties; for 

example, poll workers for later shifts may not show up to replace 

those who are scheduled to leave.f

 

a

Del. Code Ann. tit. 15, § 3104. 

b

The hours noted are those for Kansas counties located in the central time zone. The 

provisions for Kansas counties located in the mountain time zone are set an hour earlier, 

local time, to be similar to the hours for Kansas counties in the central time zone. Polls for 

counties in the mountain time zone are to be open from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., unless 
Hours Available for Voting 

 Page 102 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

different hours are set and publicly announced by the county election officer, and if 

different hours are set state law requires the polls to be open at least 12 continuous hours 

(opening no earlier than 5:00 a.m., closing no earlier than 6:00 p.m. and no later than 7:00 

p.m.). Kan. Stat. Ann. § 25-106. 

c

Vt. Stat. Ann. tit. 17, § 2561. 

d

The article does not provide detailed data for the polling hours used for each state and 

election in the scope of the study (1920 through 2000). From the information in the article, 

it is unclear which state(s) had polling days of 4 to 5 hours and for which elections the 

state(s) had those hours. 

e

EAC, Guidebook on Successful Practices for Poll Worker Recruitment, Training, and 

Retention (July 2007). 

f

EAC, Guidebook on Successful Practices for Poll Worker Recruitment, Training, and 

Retention.
No-Excuse Absentee Voting 

Some states allow any registered individual to request an absentee ballot 

and to vote by mail, without requiring that the individual state a reason for 

doing so.

 Page 103 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Some states with no-excuse absentee 

voting require voters to submit an 

application for an absentee ballot with 

each election, whereas other states 

permit any registered voter to join a 

permanent absentee voting list. Once 

voters opt into this list, they will, in 

general, automatically receive an 

absentee ballot for all future elections. 

In some states that allow permanent 

no-excuse absentee voting, 

individuals who fail to vote in a certain 

number of elections will be removed 

from the permanent absentee voting 

list. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed 18 studies from 12 publications that had varied findings. 

Reported effects from these studies ranged from a 3.2 percentage point 

increase to a 4.0 percentage point decrease, with many studies (10 of 18) 

reporting mixed evidence or no statistically significant effects. 

Figure 17: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of No-excuse 

Absentee Voting on Voter Turnout 

Note: These 18 studies came from 12 publications. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 2 assessed the effect of expanding no-excuse absentee voting 

in Colorado to include the option for joining a permanent absentee list 

(Colorado adopted this policy in 2008). Using county-level data on 

voting methods and turnout in Colorado for all presidential and 

midterm elections from 2004 through 2014, the authors estimated an 

associated increase in turnout of 1.8 to 2.3 percentage points among 

registered individuals across four models (comparing turnout after the 

adoption of the policy to turnout prior to the adoption of the policy). 

 Studies 4, 5, and 6 (from one publication) used CPS data to assess 
No-Excuse Absentee Voting 

 Page 104 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

the effects of both permanent no-excuse absentee voting and 

nonpermanent no-excuse absentee voting on turnout in the 2000, 

2004, and 2008 presidential elections, respectively. Each study found 

that both forms of no-excuse absentee voting were associated with a 

higher probability of voting among individuals in states that allowed 

these voting options than in states that did not allow these options. 

However, the authors did not report their findings in terms of 

percentage point effects on turnout. 

 Studies 15 and 16 (from one publication) assessed the effect of noexcuse absentee voting in midterm and presidential elections, 

respectively. These studies utilized state-level turnout data from all 50 

states for elections held from 1980 through 2006. Study 15, related to 

midterm elections, found no statistically significant effect on turnout 

associated with no-excuse absentee voting (comparing turnout in 

states that had no-excuse absentee voting to states that did not). 

Study 16, related to presidential elections, estimated a decrease in 

turnout of 1.1 percentage points in states that allowed no-excuse 

absentee voting, compared to states that did not. 

 Study 17 attempted to determine the extent to which no-excuse 

absentee voting affected turnout and the extent to which the effect 

persisted in subsequent elections after its introduction. Using turnout 

data from 500 randomly selected counties nationwide, and examining 

turnout in presidential elections from 1972 through 2004, the authors 

of this study reported that the policy had no statistically significant 

effects on turnout in the first two presidential elections after it was 

introduced. However, they estimated a 2.8 percentage point decrease 

in turnout associated with the third presidential election after the 

policy became available. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 The author of one publication reported cost savings associated with 

administering permanent no-excuse absentee ballots versus 

administering nonpermanent no-excuse absentee ballots.a

Specifically, the author reported that in the 2008 presidential election, 

Contra Costa County in California spent $1.37 per ballot to administer 

about 215,000 permanent no-excuse absentee ballots versus $10.64 

per ballot to administer about 40,000 nonpermanent no-excuse 

absentee ballots. Some of the cost savings, the author explained, 

come from not having to process individual requests for each ballot. 

The author notes, however, that while the lower cost for administering 

permanent absentee ballots is encouraging, it is important to 

remember that mail ballots still represent additional costs in the 
No-Excuse Absentee Voting 

 Page 105 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

conduct of elections as long as a jurisdiction is also staffing polling 

places. 

 Some jurisdictions may choose to pay for return postage on absentee 

ballots, which transfers this cost from the voter to the jurisdiction. In 

2010, the EAC reported that approximately 30 percent of survey 

respondents in a nationwide EAC study believed that free postage 

would make them more likely to vote in an election. However, only 9 

percent of respondents indicated that without a free postage program 

there was a significant chance they would not vote in an election.b

 

 Officials in one local jurisdiction we visited said that enabling more 

people to vote by mail through no-excuse absentee voting can reduce 

the number of people voting in person on Election Day. These 

officials said they plan to send an absentee application to all 

registered individuals with an active registration prior to the 2016 

presidential election to encourage the use of absentee voting. They 

said the amount of cost savings from this effort will depend on how 

many people use this option. They anticipate an increase in the use 

of absentee voting and expect some overall cost savings from this 

effort, but noted that absentee mail voting also has labor costs—such 

as costs associated with processing the requests, mailing the ballots, 

and performing signature verifications, among other things. 

 

a

Robert S. Montjoy, “The Changing Nature . . . and Costs . . . of Election Administration,” 

Public Administration Review, vol. 70, no. 6 (2010). 

b

EAC, Absentee Postage – EAC Summary and Recommendations, (Washington, D.C.: 

Sept. 7 2010). 
Vote Centers 

Some states and local jurisdictions allow for the use of vote centers, which 

are polling places strategically located throughout a political subdivision 

where any registered individual may vote, regardless of the precinct in 

which the individual resides.

 Page 106 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

Variations in implementation 

Vote centers may be open during an 

early voting period, on Election Day, 

or both. They may be located at 

shopping malls, grocery stores, 

community centers, or a variety of 

other locations, and may vary in the 

number of registered individuals they 

serve. 

Literature review results 

We reviewed six studies in four publications. Five of the six studies had 

the same two co-authors, although one of the five studies included 

additional co-authors. Most studies (five of six) reported that the use of 

vote centers increased turnout. 

Figure 18: Studies’ Reported Findings Regarding the Effects of Vote Centers on 

Voter Turnout 

Note: These six studies came from four publications. Five of the six studies had the same 

two co-authors, although one of the five studies included additional co-authors. 

Examples of specific studies 

 Study 1 compared turnout among voters in Larimer County, Colorado 

(which used vote centers in 2003 and 2004) to turnout among voters 

in adjacent Weld County, Colorado (which did not use vote centers in 

2003 and 2004). The elections examined included a November 2003 

local election, an August 2004 state and federal primary election, and 

the November 2004 presidential election.a

 The authors noted that 

Larimer and Weld counties are geographically proximate to each 

other, shared elected representatives, and shared some demographic 

characteristics among their populations.b

 To make this comparison, 

the authors matched 1,930 registered individuals in Larimer County 

(who used vote centers) to 1,930 similarly-situated registered 

individuals in Weld County (who did not use vote centers).c

 The 

authors found that turnout was 2.6 percentage points higher in the 

treatment group than in the control group across the three elections, 

and concluded that this difference suggested that vote centers had a 

positive effect on turnout. 

 Study 2 compared turnout in Travis County, Texas—in elections that 
Vote Centers 

 Page 107 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

occurred before and after the county adopted vote centers—and 

found that the use of vote centers increased turnout by 1.4 

percentage points. Specifically, the authors compared turnout in a 

2009 statewide constitutional amendment election (before Travis 

County adopted vote centers) to turnout in a 2011 statewide 

constitutional amendment election (after the county adopted vote 

centers).d

 The authors noted that the elections were similar to one 

another and there were no significant campaigns related to any of the 

amendments in either election (11 amendments in 2009 and 10 

amendments in 2011). To make the comparison, the authors obtained 

the Travis County voter file and filtered it to exclude any individual 

who was not eligible to vote in both elections. The authors explained 

that in Travis County, most of the precinct polling sites used in the 

2009 election continued to operate in the 2011 election but were 

converted to vote centers, and the county also added six new vote 

center locations for the 2011 election (for a total of 187 vote center 

locations). As such, Travis County adopted the openness of vote 

centers—so that anyone in the county could vote at any location—

without centralizing the polling places. This, the authors asserted, 

allowed them to isolate the effects of openness on turnout apart from 

effects that might result from consolidating the total number of polling 

places; however, the Travis County model likely differs from most 

other vote center models where consolidation is a key aspect. 

 Study 6 assessed the effect of vote centers on turnout in the 2006 

midterm election for 61 of Colorado’s 64 counties.e

 Using county-level 

turnout data, the authors compared turnout among counties that used 

vote centers and counties that did not.f

 The authors used three 

different models to assess the effect of vote centers on turnout and 

the extent to which turnout also may have been influenced by 

electoral competition. The authors reported decreases in turnout of 2 

and 1.8 percentage points in counties using vote centers for two of 

the models and no statistically significant effect in the third model. 

The authors noted that these findings match some basic statistics 

regarding which counties chose to make the switch to vote centers, 

with counties that chose to make the switch having lower overall 

turnout in both the 1998 and 2002 midterm elections also. Thus, the 

authors concluded, the causal direction of the relationship between 

vote centers and turnout remains unclear. 

Observations on cost, voter convenience, and other considerations 

 A study sponsored by the Indiana Secretary of State and published in 

2010 concluded that Election Day vote centers would likely produce 
Vote Centers 

 Page 108 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

significant cost savings for all counties that might implement them 

due to efficiencies gained from having fewer overall polling places 

and poll workers on Election Day, and reducing the number of voting 

machines necessary.g

 Informed by a previous study relating 

specifically to the implementation of Election Day vote centers at 

three pilot sites, authors of this study developed a model that 

estimated possible cost savings associated with implementing 

Election Day vote centers in each county. Compared to a precinctbased process, the authors estimated that Election Day vote centers 

would result in cost-per-vote savings ranging from 20 percent to 56 

percent across Illinois counties.h

 The chief election official in one local jurisdiction we visited said that 

vote centers are easier to manage and result in cost savings for the 

jurisdiction, compared to managing traditional precinct locations. 

Specifically, this official said that having a smaller number of locations 

and not having to hire as many poll workers results in cost savings. 

Additionally, the official said, vote centers provide a better experience 

for voters because, in this jurisdiction, permanent elections office 

staff, rather than temporary poll workers, are always present to 

answer any questions or address any concerns. 

 According to one publication we reviewed, although vote centers are 

typically fewer in number across jurisdictions and may be greater 

distances from individuals’ residences than are precinct-based polling 

places, they increase the number of sites available to potential voters, 

and may be more complementary with people’s daily routines than 

exclusive precinct locations. The authors note that having vote 

centers available might be particularly important for those individuals 

who commute longer distances to work, as precinct-based polling 

locations might only be accessible to them in the mornings or 

evenings, while other polling locations might be nearer to their 

workplaces and more accessible throughout the day.i

 The EAC guidelines state that vote centers require the use of 

electronic poll books and a secure real-time connection to a central 

election office voter registration database to ensure that no voters can 

vote twice in an election.j

 Additionally, the National Conference of 

State Legislatures reported that vote centers must be able to produce 

the appropriate ballot for each voter.k

 This requires either 

touchscreen machines that can be reset for each voter, "print-ondemand" equipment, or sufficient quantities of paper ballots for every 

ballot style. Thus, there may be initial investments required for some 

jurisdictions wishing to convert to a vote center model. 
Vote Centers 

 Page 109 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections 

 

a

According to a co-author of this study, in Larimer County, a limited number of Election 

Day vote centers were also used as early voting vote centers in the 2003 and 2004 

elections. 

b

The authors explained that having shared representatives meant that voters in both 

Larimer and Weld voted for and participated in many of the same contests for public 

office. Moreover, voters in both counties experienced the same campaigns and 

candidates’ messages that influenced voter turnout. According to the authors, the two 

counties were statistically similar on indices of age, homeownership and income; however, 

Weld had a larger Hispanic population than Larimer (28 percent compared to 10 percent), 

and Larimer had a higher percent of adults with a college education (40 percent compared 

to 22 percent). 

c

For example, this procedure would attempt to match a 38-year-old female who was 

registered with a major party and had voted in five previous elections as of November 

2003 in Larimer County with a corresponding 38-year-old female who was registered with 

a major party and had voted in five previous elections as of November 2003 in Weld 

County. 

d

According to two co-authors of this study, early voting was available at a limited number 

of locations in both the 2009 and 2011 elections. These co-authors further noted that in 

2009, prior to the transition to Election Day vote centers, early voting polling locations 

were open to all registered individuals in the county. Thus, Travis County was operating a 

vote center type model for early voting in the 2009 election. 

e

In the 2006 midterm election, Colorado counties had the option for voting in-person 

during an early voting period as well as on Election Day. According to the study, one or 

more counties in Colorado used a vote center model for early in-person voting in the 2006 

midterm election. 

f

The authors note that 29 percent of the counties in the sample used vote centers. 

g

Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute, Vote Centers and Election Costs: A Study on the Fiscal 

Impact of Vote Centers in Indiana, (Indianapolis, Indiana: January 2010). 

h

These estimates assume the same number of registered individuals for each county as in 

2008. The estimates further assume a vote center for each 3,000 registered individuals 

and 8 poll workers per vote center. 

i

Robert M. Stein, Greg Vonnahme, “Engaging the Unengaged Voter: Vote Centers and 

Voter Turnout,” The Journal of Politics, vol. 70, no. 2 (2008). 

j

EAC, Election Management Guidelines: Chapter 9: Polling Place and Vote Center 

Management (no publication location or date provided in document), available for 

download at 

http://www.eac.gov/election_management_resources/election_management_guidelines.a

spx. 

k

National Conference of State Legislatures, Vote Centers website, accessed April 27, 

2016, http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/vote-centers.aspx. 
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 110 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

This bibliography contains citations for the studies in the 53 publications 

we reviewed regarding policies and practices that may affect voter 

turnout.1 The publications listed below include one or more studies for 

which the design, implementation, and analyses were sufficiently sound 

to support the results and conclusions, based on generally accepted 

social science principles.2 (See appendix II for more information about 

how we made these determinations.) Publications may be listed multiple 

times—once under each policy or practice within our scope that the 

publication’s authors analyzed—and following the citation we include the 

study numbers that correspond to content in the individual policy 

summaries earlier in this report. For example, in the e-mail policy 

summary, figure 8 in appendix IV depicts findings from 18 studies (each 

numbered in the figure), and the numbers 1 through 18 in the figure 

correspond to the numbers listed following citations for publications that 

analyzed the effect of e-mail on voter turnout.

Haenschen, Katherine. “@ The Vote: Four Experiments Using Facebook 

& Email To Increase Voter Turnout.” Prepared for the American Political 

Science Association Conference, September 2015. (Study 17)

Malhotra, Neil; Melissa R. Michelson; and Ali Adam Valenzuela. “Emails 

from Official Sources Can Increase Turnout.” Quarterly Journal of Political 

Science, vol. 7, no. 3, (2012): 321-332. (Studies 1–3)

Nickerson, David W. “Does Email Boost Turnout?” Quarterly Journal of 

Political Science, vol. 2, no. 4, (2007): 369-379. (Studies 4–16)

Ulbig, Stacy G. and Tamara Waggener. “Getting Registered and Getting 

to the Polls: The Impact of Voter Registration Strategy and Information 

 1

For purposes of our review, we classified relevant chapters in edited books as separate 

publications. We did this because it was in keeping with how we categorized other 

publications (usually journal articles written by distinct authors). 

2

As used in this report, a “study” is an analysis or experiment with a unique sample. In 

some cases, authors presented their findings broken down by type of election (e.g., 

presidential vs. midterm) or election year (e.g., 2002 and 2004). In these instances, we 

considered the findings related to the separate types of elections or time periods as 

resulting from separate samples (thus, separate “studies,” as we use the term in this 

report).

Appendix V: Bibliography

E-mail
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 111 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Provision on Turnout of College Students.” PS: Political Science and 

Politics, vol. 44, no. 3, (2011): 544-551. (Study 18)

Abrajano, Marisa and Costas Panagopoulos. “Does Language Matter? 

The Impact of Spanish Versus English-Language GOTV Efforts on Latino 

Turnout.” American Politics Research, vol. 39, no. 4, (2011): 643-663. 

(Study 7)

Bedolla, Lisa Garcia and Melissa R. Michelson. “What Do Voters Need to 

Know? Testing the Role of Cognitive Information in Asian American Voter 

Mobilization.” American Politics Research, vol. 37, no. 2, (2009): 254-274. 

(Studies 2, 34, and 36)

Davenport, Tiffany C.; Alan S. Gerber; Donald P. Green; Christopher W. 

Larimer; Christopher B. Mann; and Costas Panagopoulos. “The Enduring 

Effects of Social Pressure: Tracking Campaign Experiments over a Series 

of Elections.” Political Behavior, vol. 32, no. 3, (2010): 423-430. (Studies 

3, 8, 10, 13, 27, and 28)

Gerber, Alan S.; Gregory A. Huber; Daniel R. Biggers; and David J. 

Hendry. “Ballot Secrecy Concerns and Voter Mobilization: New 

Experimental Evidence about Message Source, Context, and the 

Duration of Mobilization Effects.” American Politics Research, vol. 42, no. 

5, (2014): 896-923. (Studies 4 and 14)

Mann, Christopher B. and Lindsay Pryor, 2013 ERIC Voter Registration 

Outreach in Washington State. Accessed July 23, 2015, 

http://www.sos.wa.gov/assets/elections/2013-ERIC-Voter-Registration-inWashington-State-FINAL-3-20-2014.pdf. (Study 16)

Mann, Christopher B. and Lisa A. Bryant. “If You Ask, They Will Come (to 

Register and Vote): Field Experiments with State Election Agencies on 

Encouraging Voter Registration.” Prepared for the MIT Conference on 

Election Administration, June 8, 2015. (Studies 6 and 17)

Matland, Richard E. and Gregg R. Murray. “An Experimental Test of 

Mobilization Effects in a Latino Community.” Political Research Quarterly, 

vol. 65, no. 1, (2012): 192-205. (Study 1)

Matland, Richard E. and Gregg R. Murray. “I Only Have Eyes for You: 

Does Implicit Social Pressure Increase Voter Turnout?” Political 

Psychology (2015). (Studies 11, 22–24, and 35)

Mailings
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 112 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Murray, Gregg R. and Richard E. Matland. “Mobilization Effects Using 

Mail: Social Pressure, Descriptive Norms, and Timing.” Political Research 

Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 2, (2014): 304-319. (Studies 20 and 21)

Panagopoulos, Costas. “I’ve Got My Eyes on You: Implicit SocialPressure Cues and Prosocial Behavior.” Political Psychology, vol. 35, no. 

1, (2014): 23-33. (Study 15)

Panagopoulos, Costas. “Raising Hope: Hope Inducement and Voter 

Turnout.” Basic and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 36, no. 6, (2014): 

494-501. (Studies 25 and 26)

Panagopoulos, Costas; Christopher W. Larimer; and Meghan Condon. 

“Social Pressure, Descriptive Norms, and Voter Mobilization.” Political 

Behavior, vol. 36, no. 2, (2014): 451-469. (Study 5)

Ramírez, Ricardo. “Giving Voice to Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on 

the Effectiveness of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort.” The 

ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 

601, no. 1, (2005): 66-84. (Studies 18, 19, and 30–33)

Trivedi, Neema. “The Effect of Identity-Based GOTV Direct Mail Appeals 

on the Turnout of Indian Americans.” The ANNALS of the American 

Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 601, no. 1, (2005): 115-122. 

(Study 29)

Wolfinger, Raymond E; Benjamin Highton; and Megan Mullin. “How 

Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Citizens Registered to Vote.”

State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1, (2005): 1-23. (Study 12)

Wong, Janelle S. “Mobilizing Asian American Voters: A Field Experiment.”

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 

vol. 601, no. 1, (2005): 102-114. (Study 9)

Davenport, Tiffany C.; Alan S. Gerber; Donald P. Green; Christopher W. 

Larimer; Christopher B. Mann; and Costas Panagopoulos. “The Enduring 

Effects of Social Pressure: Tracking Campaign Experiments over a Series 

of Elections.” Political Behavior, vol. 32, no. 3, (2010): 423-430. (Study 1)

Robocalls
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 113 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Ramírez, Ricardo. “Giving Voice to Latino Voters: A Field Experiment on 

the Effectiveness of a National Nonpartisan Mobilization Effort.” The 

ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 

601, no. 1, (2005): 66-84. (Studies 2–6)

Dale, Allison and Aaron Strauss. “Don’t Forget to Vote: Text Message 

Reminders as a Mobilization Tool.” American Journal of Political Science, 

vol. 53, no. 4, (2009): 787-804. (Study 1)

Malhotra, Neil; Melissa R. Michelson; Todd Rogers; and Ali Adam 

Valenzuela. “Text Messages as Mobilization Tools: The Conditional Effect 

of Habitual Voting and Election Salience.” American Politics Research, 

vol. 39, no. 4, (2011): 664-681. (Studies 2 and 3)

Leighley, Jan E. and Jonathan Nagler. Who Votes Now? Demographics, 

Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton, New 

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. (Study 2)

McDonald, Michael P.; Enrijeta Shino; and Daniel A. Smith. “Convenience 

Voting and Turnout: Reassessing the Effects of Election Reforms.”

Prepared for the New Research on Election Administration and Reform 

Conference at MIT, June 8, 2015. (Studies 5 and 6)

Springer, Melanie J. “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout In 

Presidential Elections, 1920-2000.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

12, no. 3, (2012): 252-283. (Study 3)

Vonnahme, Greg. “Registration Deadlines and Turnout in Context.”

Political Behavior, vol. 34, no. 4 (2012): 765-779. (Studies 1 and 4)

Alvarez, R. Michael; Stephen Ansolabehere; and Catherine H. Wilson. 

“Election Day Voter Registration in the United States: How One-Step 

Voting Can Change the Composition of the American Electorate.”

Working paper, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, June 2002. 

(Study 20)

Burden, Barry C. “Registration and Voting: A View from the Top” in The 

Measure of American Elections, ed. Barry C. Burden and Charles Stewart 

III. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. (Studies 2 

and 4)

Text Messages

Registration Closing Date 

prior to Elections

Same Day Registration
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 114 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Burden, Barry C.; David T. Canon; Kenneth R. Mayer; and Donald P. 

Moynihan. “Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated 

Consequences of Election Reform.” American Journal of Political 

Science, vol. 58, no. 1, (2014): 95-109. (Studies 12, 16, and 25–27)

Fitzgerald, Mary. “Greater Convenience but Not Greater Turnout: The 

Impact of Alternative Voting Methods on Electoral Participation in the 

United States.” American Politics Research, vol. 33, no. 6, (2005): 842-

867. (Studies 8 and 15)

Fullmer, Elliott B. “Early Voting: Do More Sites Lead to Higher Turnout.”

Election Law Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, (2015): 81-96. (Studies 10 and 14)

Hanmer, Michael J. Discount Voting: Voter Registration Reforms and 

Their Effects. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 

(Studies 6, 24, 28 and 29)

Keele, Luke and William Minozzi. “How Much Is Minnesota Like 

Wisconsin? Assumptions and Counterfactuals in Causal Inference with 

Observational Data.” Political Analysis, vol. 21, no. 2, (2013): 193-216. 

(Studies 30 and 31)

Larocca, Roger and John S. Klemanski. “U.S. State Election Reform and 

Turnout in Presidential Elections.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

11, no. 1, (2011): 76-101. (Studies 21–23)

Leighley, Jan E. and Jonathan Nagler. Who Votes Now? Demographics, 

Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton, New 

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. (Study 3)

McDonald, Michael P.; Enrijeta Shino; and Daniel A. Smith. “Convenience 

Voting and Turnout: Reassessing the Effects of Election Reforms.”

Prepared for the New Research on Election Administration and Reform 

Conference at MIT, June 8, 2015. (Studies 17 and 18)

Neiheisel, Jacob R. and Barry C. Burden. “The Impact of Election Day 

Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes.” American Politics 

Research, vol. 40, no. 4, (2012): 636-664. (Study 9)

Pellissier, Allyson. “In Line or Online? American Voter Registration in the 

Digital Era.” Working paper, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, 

February 18, 2014. (Study 33)
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 115 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Rocha, Rene R. and Tetsuya Matsubayashi. “The Politics of Race and 

Voter ID Laws in the States: The Return of Jim Crow?” Political Research 

Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, (2014): 666-679. (Study 32)

Springer, Melanie J. “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout In 

Presidential Elections, 1920-2000.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

12, no. 3, (2012): 252-283. (Study 5)

Street, Alex; Thomas A. Murray; John Blitzer; and Rajan S. Patel. 

“Estimating Voter Registration Deadline Effects with Web Search Data.”

Political Analysis, vol. 23, no. 2 (2015): 225-241. (Study 11)

Tolbert, Caroline; Todd Donovan; Bridgett King; and Shaun Bowler. 

“Election Day Registration, Competition, and Voter Turnout” in 

Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. 

Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: 

Brookings Institution Press, 2008. (Studies 7 and 13)

Vonnahme, Greg. “Registration Deadlines and Turnout in Context.”

Political Behavior, vol. 34, no. 4, (2012): 765-779. (Studies 1 and 19)

Burden, Barry C. “Registration and Voting: A View from the Top” in The

Measure of American Elections, ed. Barry C. Burden and Charles Stewart 

III. New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. (Studies 3 

and 16)

Gerber, Alan S.; Gregory A. Huber; and Seth J. Hill. “Identifying the Effect 

of All-Mail Elections on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen 

State.” Political Science Research and Methods, vol. 1, no. 1, (2013): 91-

116. (Studies 4, 8, 9 and 10)

Gronke, Paul and Peter Miller. “Voting by Mail and Turnout in Oregon: 

Revisiting Southwell and Burchett.” American Politics Research, vol. 40, 

no. 6, (2012): 976-997. (Study 1)

Gronke, Paul; Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum; and Peter A. Miller. “Early 

Voting and Voter Turnout” in Democracy in the States: Experiments in 

Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. 

Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. (Studies 6 

and 18)

All Vote-by-Mail
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 116 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Kousser, Thad and Megan Mullin. “Does Voting by Mail Increase 

Participation? Using Matching to Analyze a Natural Experiment.” Political 

Analysis, vol. 15, no. 4, (2007): 428-445. (Studies 20 and 21)

Larocca, Roger and John S. Klemanski. “U.S. State Election Reform and 

Turnout in Presidential Elections.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

11, no. 1, (2011): 76-101. (Studies 12, 13, and 17)

Menger, Andrew; Robert M. Stein; and Greg Vonnahme. “Turnout Effects 

from Vote by Mail Elections.” Prepared for the 2015 Annual Meetings of 

the American Political Science Association, September 3-6, 2015. 

(Study 7)

Pellissier, Allyson. “In Line or Online? American Voter Registration in the 

Digital Era.” Working paper, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, 

February 18, 2014 (Study 14)

Richey, Sean. “Voting by Mail: Turnout and Institutional Reform in 

Oregon.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 4, (2008): 902-915. 

(Studies 2 and 5)

Rocha, Rene R. and Tetsuya Matsubayashi. “The Politics of Race and 

Voter ID Laws in the States: The Return of Jim Crow?” Political Research 

Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, (2014): 666-679. (Study 19)

Southwell, Priscilla L. “Analysis of the Turnout Effects of Vote by Mail 

Elections, 1980-2007.” The Social Science Journal, vol. 46, no. 1 (2009): 

211-217. (Study 15)

Southwell, Priscilla L. “Voting Behavior in Vote-by-Mail Elections.”

Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, vol. 10, no. 1, (2010): 

106-115. (Study 11)

Fitzgerald, Mary. “Greater Convenience but Not Greater Turnout: The 

Impact of Alternative Voting Methods on Electoral Participation in the 

United States.” American Politics Research, vol. 33, no. 6, (2005): 842-

867. (Studies 3 and 4)

Fullmer, Elliott B. “Early Voting: Do More Sites Lead to Higher Turnout.”

Election Law Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, (2015): 81-96. (Studies 19 and 20)

Early In-Person Voting
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 117 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Giammo, Joseph D. and Brian J. Brox. “Reducing the Costs of 

Participation: Are States Getting a Return on Early Voting.” Political 

Research Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 2, (2010): 295-303. (Study 2)

Gronke, Paul; Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum; and Peter A. Miller. “Early 

Voting and Voter Turnout” in Democracy in the States: Experiments in 

Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. 

Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. 

(Study 6 and 7)

Larocca, Roger and John S. Klemanski. “U.S. State Election Reform and 

Turnout in Presidential Elections.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

11, no. 1, (2011): 76-101. (Studies 12–14)

Leighley, Jan E. and Jonathan Nagler. Who Votes Now? Demographics, 

Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton, New 

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. (Study 1)

McDonald, Michael P.; Enrijeta Shino; and Daniel A. Smith. “Convenience 

Voting and Turnout: Reassessing the Effects of Election Reforms.”

Prepared for the New Research on Election Administration and Reform 

Conference at MIT, June 8, 2015. (Studies 5 and 11)

Pellissier, Allyson. “In Line or Online? American Voter Registration in the 

Digital Era.” Working paper, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, 

February 18, 2014 (Study 15)

Richey, Sean. “Voting by Mail: Turnout and Institutional Reform in 

Oregon.” Social Science Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 4, (2008): 902-915. 

(Studies 17 and 18)

Rocha, Rene R. and Tetsuya Matsubayashi. “The Politics of Race and 

Voter ID Laws in the States: The Return of Jim Crow?” Political Research 

Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, (2014): 666-679. (Study 10)

Springer, Melanie J. “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout In 

Presidential Elections, 1920-2000.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

12, no. 3, (2012): 252-283. (Study 9)
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 118 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Tolbert, Caroline; Todd Donovan; Bridgett King; and Shaun Bowler. 

“Election Day Registration, Competition, and Voter Turnout” in 

Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. 

Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: 

Brookings Institution Press, 2008. (Studies 8 and 16)

Springer, Melanie J. “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout In 

Presidential Elections, 1920-2000.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

12, no. 3, (2012): 252-283. (Study 2)

Wolfinger, Raymond E; Benjamin Highton; and Megan Mullin. “How 

Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Citizens Registered to Vote.”

State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1, (2005): 1-23. (Study 1)

Fitzgerald, Mary. “Greater Convenience but Not Greater Turnout: The 

Impact of Alternative Voting Methods on Electoral Participation in the 

United States.” American Politics Research, vol. 33, no. 6, (2005): 

842-867. (Studies 10 and 11)

Giammo, Joseph D. and Brian J. Brox. “Reducing the Costs of 

Participation: Are States Getting a Return on Early Voting.” Political 

Research Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 2, (2010): 295-303. (Study 17)

Gronke, Paul; Eva Galanes-Rosenbaum; and Peter A. Miller. “Early 

Voting and Voter Turnout” in Democracy in the States: Experiments in 

Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. 

Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. 

(Studies 13 and 18)

Larocca, Roger and John S. Klemanski. “U.S. State Election Reform and 

Turnout in Presidential Elections.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

11, no. 1, (2011): 76-101. (Studies 4–6)

Leighley, Jan E. and Jonathan Nagler. Who Votes Now? Demographics, 

Issues, Inequality, and Turnout in the United States. Princeton, New 

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013. (Study 1)

Martinez, Michael D. and Daniel A. Smith. “Your Ballot’s in the Mail: The 

Effects of Unsolicited Absentee Ballots.” Prepared for the 2015 Annual 

Meetings of the American Political Science Association, September 3-6, 

2015. (Study 3)

Hours Available for Voting

No-Excuse Absentee 

Voting
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 119 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

McDonald, Michael P.; Enrijeta Shino; and Daniel A. Smith. “Convenience 

Voting and Turnout: Reassessing the Effects of Election Reforms.”

Prepared for the New Research on Election Administration and Reform 

Conference at MIT, June 8, 2015. (Studies 8 and 12)

Menger, Andrew; Robert M. Stein; and Greg Vonnahme. “Turnout Effects 

from Vote by Mail Elections.” Prepared for the 2015 Annual Meetings of 

the American Political Science Association, September 3-6, 2015. (Study 

2)

Pellissier, Allyson. “In Line or Online? American Voter Registration in the 

Digital Era.” Working paper, Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, 

February 18, 2014 (Study 7)

Rocha, Rene R. and Tetsuya Matsubayashi. “The Politics of Race and 

Voter ID Laws in the States: The Return of Jim Crow?” Political Research 

Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 3, (2014): 666-679. (Study 9)

Springer, Melanie J. “State Electoral Institutions and Voter Turnout In 

Presidential Elections, 1920-2000.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly, vol. 

12, no. 3, (2012): 252-283. (Study 14)

Tolbert, Caroline; Todd Donovan; Bridgett King; and Shaun Bowler. 

“Election Day Registration, Competition, and Voter Turnout” in 

Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election Reform, ed. Bruce E. 

Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert. Washington, D.C.: 

Brookings Institution Press, 2008. (Studies 15 and 16)

Juenke, Eric Gonzalez and Julie Marie Shepherd. “Vote Centers and 

Voter Turnout” in Democracy in the States: Experiments in Election 

Reform, ed. Bruce E. Cain, Todd Donovan, and Caroline J. Tolbert. 

Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2008. (Study 6)

Stein, Robert M. and Greg Vonnahme, “Effect of Election Day Vote 

Centers on Voter Participation.” Election Law Journal, vol. 11, no. 3, 

(2012): 291-301. (Studies 3–5)

Stein, Robert M. and Greg Vonnahme. “Engaging the Unengaged Voter: 

Vote Centers and Voter Turnout.” The Journal of Politics, vol. 70, no. 2, 

(2008): 487-497. (Study 1)

Vote Centers
Appendix V: Bibliography

Page 120 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Vonnahme, Greg; Lonna Atkeson; Lisa Bryant; Christopher Mann; and 

Robert Stein. “Election Day Vote Centers, Voter Participation, and the 

Spatial Distribution of Voting.” Prepared for the 12th Annual Meeting of 

the State Politics and Policy Conference, February 16-18, 2012. 

(Study 2)
Appendix VI: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

Page 121 GAO-16-630 Registering Voters and Administering Elections

Rebecca Gambler, (202) 512-8777 or gamblerr@gao.gov

In addition to the contact named above, Tom Jessor (Assistant Director), 

David Alexander, Carl Barden, Chuck Bausell, Colleen Candrl, Katherine 

Davis, William Egar, Michele Fejfar, Alana Finley, Daniel Friess, Eric 

Hauswirth, Jeff Jensen, Jan Montgomery, Heidi Nielson, Anna Maria 

Ortiz, Amanda Parker, Kelsey Sagawa, Natalie Swabb, Janet TemkoBlinder, and Jeff Tessin made significant contributions to this report.

Appendix VI: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff 

Acknowledgments

(441285)
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