Long Lines, Voting Machine Availability, and Turnout: The Case of
Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 Presidential Election
Benjamin
Highton
a1
a1 University of California, Davis
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Within polling places, does the scarcity of voting machines cause
longer lines and thereby dissuade some people from voting? Are voting
machines scarce in some areas because turnout would be low, irrespective
of the availability of voting machines? In Ohio in the aftermath of the
2004 presidential election, the answers to these questions carried very
real and significant political stakes. Consider the following from
Franklin County, the second most populous county in the state. In
precincts where voting machines were plentiful (i.e., where there were
fewer registrants per available voting machine), turnout was especially
high and John Kerry's share of the presidential vote was low. In
contrast, in areas of machine scarcity (i.e., precincts with many
registrants per available voting machine), turnout was lower and
Kerry's vote share was higher. These relationships are shown in
Figures 1A and 1B. Given the strong association between machine
availability and the Kerry vote, if machine (un)availability was a cause
of (low) turnout, then Kerry may very well have received fewer votes than
he would have had more machines been available or had the distribution of
available machines been less skewed toward precincts that were more
supportive of George W. Bush. a
Footnotesa I appreciate
input from SSRC Commission members Henry Brady, Martha Kropf, Walter R.
Mebane, Jr., and Michael Traugott with whom I collaborated on the
SSRC's “Interim Report on Alleged Irregularities in the United
States Presidential Election of 2 November 2004” (Brady et al. 2004). I also thank Benjamin Bishin for
comments on the paper. The Social Science Research Council and its staff,
including Jason McNichol, Dashiell Flynn, and Sarah Alexander, provided
generous support for this work. The views expressed in this paper are not
necessarily shared by other SSRC Commission members or the Social Science
Research Council.
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