Helping America Vote? Election Administration, Partisanship, and Provisional Voting in the 2004 Election

Abstract

State and local election officials play an important role in implementing election laws and administrative rules. There is some suspicion that election officials may tilt rules and procedures to help a favored party, prompting recent proposals for nonpartisan election administration in the United States. We examine the impact of state and local election officials on provisional voting in the 2004 presidential election, the first national election in which provisional voting was required by federal law. We find suggestive evidence of partisanship in the selection of state rules governing the counting of provisional ballots. We also find conditional partisan effects in the casting and counting of provisional ballots. In 2004, provisional ballots were more likely to be cast and counted in heavily partisan jurisdictions administered by an election authority of the same party. Additionally, other state-level administrative features (prior experience with provisional voting, a statewide registration database, and rules for counting provisional votes cast in the wrong precinct) strongly affected provisional voting in 2004. Election administration in the United States should be subjected to more scruti