How do Americans want elections to be run during the COVID-19 crisis?

To inform the vital conversation among the nation’s political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inResearch & politics Vol. 8; no. 2
Main Authors Kousser, Thad, Hill, Seth, Lockhart, Mackenzie, Merolla, Jennifer L., Romero, Mindy
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.04.2021
SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
SAGE Publishing
Subjects
Administrators
Ballots
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Crises
Elections
Electoral reform
Political leadership
Respondents
Voters
Voting
COVID-19
absentee ballot
election administration
vote-by-mail
election reform
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Summary:To inform the vital conversation among the nation’s political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.
ISSN:2053-1680
2053-1680
DOI:10.1177/20531680211012228