Can Ballot Tracking Help Build Confidence in Elections? A Study in Three States

• In Event: Increasing Confidence in Elections

Abstract

Voting by mail (VBM) has grown substantially over the past quarter-century, to a point where VBM ballots made up 42% of ballots cast in 2020 and 32% of all ballots cast in 2022 (Stewart 2023). When voting in person, an eligible citizen goes to a polling location, is certified by an elections worker, and a voting machine provides feedback if errors are made on the ballot. Under VBM, the same steps have to be followed, but with no chance to fix an error if identifying information does not match the information on the voter files or if a ballot is mismarked. In addition, the ballot packet needs to be delivered in a timely manner using the USPS; the ballot must be correctly filled out; and the ballot has to be returned on time. These additional points of failure for VBM have resulted in higher residual vote rates (Stewart 2010), lower confidence in voting, and inequalities in ballot rejection (Shino et al. 2022), even as it increases turnout (Yoder et al. 2021) and is viewed very favorably by election administrators (Gronke et al. 2023).

Ballot tracking is one way to ameliorate these effects. Ballot tracking informs voters of the status of their VBM ballots, including when ballot materials are mailed, received, and accepted. These systems offer individual voters regular updates on the path of their ballot and alert them of any problems, providing opportunities to correct issues such as challenged signatures or invalid identifying information prior to election deadlines. Ballot tracking holds the potential to dramatically reduce vote-by-mail ballot rejection rates and improve voter trust and confidence in the election system. Proponents of ballot tracking also argue that this will help strengthen voter trust and confidence in the integrity of the ballot-counting process and the legitimacy of election outcomes.

These claims about the attitudinal impact of ballot tracking are untested. As far as we know, there are no studies on how much voters know about ballot tracking, what kinds of messages are most likely to encourage citizens to sign up for ballot tracking, or how ballot tracking improves trust and confidence in elections. While ballot tracking is valuable because it reduces ballot rejection rates, it is also important to understand if and how ballot tracking changes the way citizens view the election system more generally.

We conducted surveys in three states that currently offer ballot tracking: California, Colorado, and Georgia. While not representative of all states, these three states have relatively high levels of partisan competition and demographic diversity and have varying rates of use of VBM. Our surveys contained a rich set of informational indicators about ballot tracking and how ballot tracking operates; attitudinal indicators of election trust and confidence; and a survey experiment to test what kinds of messaging frames about ballot tracking have the most impact on voter confidence. Finally and uniquely, we were able to attach to our survey the individual voter’s actual ballot tracking status from the voter file, allowing us to test how well voters know their own ballot tracking status.

We test these hypotheses in the paper:

H1: Accurate knowledge of ballot tracking status is higher in states where the voter has to make a proactive decision to sign up (Colorado and Georgia) than in a state where voters are signed up automatically (Colorado).

H2: Ballot tracking increases trust and confidence in the electoral process.

H2a: Accurate knowledge of ballot tracking status increases the impact of ballot tracking on voter confidence and trust in the electoral process.

H3: Voter-centered frames describing the benefits of ballot tracking have a larger impact on voter confidence than election administration-centered frames.

Preliminary results from our surveys show significant differences in the use of ballot tracking across states and by partisanship, variation in the reasons that voters gave for signing up for ballot tracking, and early indications that there is a positive relationship between the use of ballot tracking and voter confidence. We plan to explore these in more detail in the paper.


Gronke, P. 2012. “Early Voting: The Quiet Revolution in American Elections.” In M. Streb, Law and Election Politics. Routledge.

Gronke, P. et al. 2023. Vote by Mail in the United States. MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

Gronke, P. and C. Stewart. 2008. “Basic Principles of Data Collection.” In Data for Democracy. Pew Center on the States.

Shino, E. et al. 2022. “Determinants of Rejected Mail Ballots in Georgia’s 2018 General Election.” Political Research Quarterly.

Stewart, C.. 2010. “Losing Votes by Mail.” New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.

Stewart, C. 2023. How We Voted in 2022. MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

Yoder, J. et al. 2021. “How Did Absentee Voting Affect the 2020 U.S. Election?” Science Advances.

Authors

• Lisa A. Bryant, California State University, Fresno

• Paul Gronke, Reed College

• Mindy Romero, USC