UC Irvine

Existing research into the electoral consequences of mail ballots have almost entirely concentrated on their ability to improve voter turnout and attract a distinct user-base. However, the same features that are commonly identified as enabling mail ballots to manipulate voter participation, such as letting voters choose where and when they participate, should allow them to influence how voters directly perceive and evaluate alternatives as well. To fill this gap in the literature, I examine 109 California elections covering a 44-year period to determine if the increasing use of mail ballots over time had appreciably impacted two common electoral phenomena, incumbency advantages and primacy effects, known to be particularly sensitive to a voter’s state of mind at the crucial moment when they make a decision. The results show that while voting by-mail has had zero impact on primacy effects, its rising use has progressively reduced the vote shares of incumbent candidates to where it almost entirely negates their arbitrary advantage over non-incumbents. This ultimately signifies that mail ballots are indeed changing voter behaviors in hereto unexpected ways, and does so enough to meaningfully impact the overall outcomes of elections.