How Polling Places Can Impact the Vote

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/08/21/how_polling_places_can_impact_the_vote.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+PoliticalWire+%28Political+Wire%29
August 21, 2010

The physical location of a poling place not only affects how many people vote -- it may also influence last-minute decisions regarding which box to mark or lever to pull.

Miller-McCune: "Polling places are, in theory, scrupulously neutral places, devoid of visual cues like campaign signs. But according to two recent studies, the building in which a polling place is located can exert subtle but perhaps decisive influence on how votes are cast."


http://www.miller-mccune.com/politics/how-polling-places-can-affect-your-vote-20318/

August 19, 2010

Location, location, location: The house-buyer’s maxim also applies to polling places. That’s the conclusion of a 2005 study published in the Journal of Politics, which found that “small differences in distance from the polls can have a significant impact on voter turnout.” Moshe Haspel of Spelman College and H. Gibbs Knotts of Western Carolina University analyzed the 2001 mayoral election in Atlanta. They “geocoded” (now there’s a wonky word) each voter’s address and calculated the shortest distance between home and their assigned polling place.

Their first finding was hardly a shocker: While distance to the polling place did influence the likelihood of voting, the impact was much greater for households in which no one owned a car. But the researchers were surprised by a seemingly counterintuitive statistic: Moving the location of a polling place actually increased voter turnout. The researchers noted that, since the previous election, the number of precincts in the city had increased from 160 to 168, shortening some distances between voters’ homes and the polls. This factor apparently outweighed “any confusion over the location of the polling place,” they concluded.

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Polling places are, in theory, scrupulously neutral places, devoid of visual cues like campaign signs. But according to two recent studies, the building in which a polling place is located can exert subtle but perhaps decisive influence on how votes are cast.

In a 2008 paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, three researchers from the Stanford Graduate School of Business analyzed the 2000 general election in Arizona, which included an initiative to raise the state sales tax to support education. In the state’s slightly more than 2,000 precincts, the researchers found that 40 percent of votes were cast in churches, 26 percent in schools, 10 percent in community centers and 4 percent each in apartment complexes and government centers.

The researchers suspected voters who had to walk by classroom doors or rows of lockers to cast their ballot would be more likely to vote for the school-funding measure. The numbers showed their hunch was right: “People who voted at schools were more likely to support raising taxes to fund education (55.0 percent) than people who voted at other polling locations (53.09 percent).”

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