Is Distance to Drop Box an Appropriate Proxy for Drop Box Treatment? A Case Study of Washington State

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110221
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood ◽  
Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Primary 52 ◽  
The One ◽  
Vote By Mail

In the United States, drop box mail-in voting has increased, particularly in the all vote by mail (VBM) states of Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. To assess if drop boxes improve voter turnout, research proxies box treatment by voters’ residence distance to nearest drop box. However, no research has tested the assumption that voters use drop boxes nearest their residence more so than they do other drop boxes. Using individual-level voter data from a 2020 Washington State election, we show that voters are more likely to use the nearest drop box to their residence relative to other drop boxes. In Washington’s 2020 August primary, 52% of drop box voters in our data used their nearest drop box. Moreover, those who either (1) vote by mail, or (2) used a different drop box from the one closest to their residence live further away from their closest drop box. Implications are discussed.

Estimating Lightning NOx Production Using NO2 Columns from the TROPOMI Instrument and Flashes from the Geostationary Lightning Mappers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Pickering ◽  
Dale Allen ◽  
Eric Bucsela ◽  
Jos van Geffen ◽  
Henk Eskes ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
Convective Systems ◽  
Convective Clouds ◽  
Deep Convective Clouds ◽  
The One

<p>Nitric oxide (NO) is produced in lightning channels and quickly comes into equilibrium with nitrogen dioxide (NO<sub>2</sub>) in the atmosphere.  The production of NO<sub>x</sub> (NO + NO<sub>2</sub>) leads to subsequent increases in the concentrations of ozone (O<sub>3</sub>) and the hydroxyl radical (OH) and decreases in the concentration of methane (CH<sub>4</sub>), thus impacting the climate system.  Global production of NO<sub>x</sub> from lightning is uncertain by a factor of four.  NO<sub>x</sub> production by lightning will be examined using NO<sub>2</sub> columns from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5 Precursor Satellite with an overpass time of approximately 1330 LT and flash rates from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on board the NOAA GOES-16 (75.2° W) and GOES-17 (137.2° W) satellites.  Where there is overlap in coverage of the two GLM instruments, the greater of the two flash counts is used.  Two approaches have been undertaken for this analysis:  a series of case studies of storm systems over the United States, and a gridded analysis over the entire contiguous United States, Central America, northern South America, and surrounding oceans.  A modified Copernicus Sentinel 5P TROPOMI NO<sub>2</sub> data set is used here for the case-study analysis to improve data coverage over deep convective clouds.  In both approaches, only TROPOMI pixels with cloud fraction > 0.95 and cloud pressure < 500 hPa are used.  The stratospheric column is removed from the total slant column, and the result is divided by air mass factors appropriate for deep convective clouds containing lightning NO<sub>x</sub> (LNO<sub>x</sub>).  Case studies have been selected from deep convective systems over and near the United States during the warm seasons of 2018 and 2019.  For each of these systems, NO<sub>x</sub> production per flash is determined by multiplying a TROPOMI-based estimate of the mean tropospheric column of LNO<sub>x</sub> over each system by the storm area and then dividing by a GLM-based estimate of the flashes that contribute to the column.  In the large temporal and spatial scale analysis, the TROPOMI data are aggregated on a 0.5 x 0.5 degree grid and converted to moles LNO<sub>x</sub>*.  GLM flash counts during the one-hour period before TROPOMI overpass are similarly binned. A tropospheric background of LNO<sub>x</sub>* is estimated from grid cells without lightning and subtracted from LNO<sub>x</sub>* in cells with lightning to yield an estimate of freshly produced lightning NO<sub>x</sub>, designated LNO<sub>x</sub>.  Results of the two approaches are compared and discussed with respect to previous LNO<sub>x</sub> per flash estimates.</p><p> </p>

When Did the Campaign End? An Examination of the Timing of Vote Returns in the 2008 General Election in Washington State

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (04) ◽  
pp. 711-715 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin A. Pirch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington State ◽  
General Election ◽  
The Past ◽  
Using Data

AbstractDuring the past decade the United States has seen an increase in alternative forms to Election Day voting, including voting by mail. Voting by mail has spurred a number of studies concerning the effects it has on voter turnout and other aspects of voting. However, one important facet of voting by mail has not been examined—when people decide to send in their vote. Because ballots are mailed out weeks before the election, voting by mail creates, in effect, a rolling Election Day. This could have profound effects for campaigns as candidates must determine when to use campaign resources and campaign to an electorate who might have already voted. Using data from the 2008 general election in Washington State, this study examines when voters turned in their ballots and determines if age, partisanship, or other factors play a role in the timing of turning in a ballot.

scholarly journals Is it worth door-knocking? Evidence from a United Kingdom-based Get Out The Vote (GOTV) field experiment on the effect of party leaflets and canvass visits on voter turnout

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Get Out The Vote

AbstractWhat impact do party leaflets and canvass visits have on voter turnout? Get Out The Vote (GOTV) experiments consistently find that campaigning needs to be personal in order to be effective. However, the imbalance between United States and European-based studies has led to recent calls for further European GOTV experiments. There are also comparatively few partisan experiments. I report the findings of a United Kingdom-based field experiment conducted with the Liberal Democrats in 2017. Results show that party leaflets boost turnout by 4.3 percentage points, while canvassing has a small additional effect (0.6 percentage points). The study also represents the first individual level experiment to compare GOTV effects between postal voters and in-person voters outside the United States.

Troubling solutions through anthropological fieldwork: Mediation research in Ghana, Australia, and the United States

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 1441-1460
Author(s):  
Alexandra Crampton
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
The United States ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Court Cases ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
Anthropological Fieldwork ◽  
The One

Social workers and anthropologists encounter different representations of mediation as a professional practice: On the one hand, Social Work is grounded in mediation as expert knowledge that helps others to resolve interpersonal disputes. For example, mediation as Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) can enable court cases to resolve without formal trials. On the other hand, Anthropology is grounded in mediation as a research field site and by past intervention experience of anthropologists. As mediation professionalized and became mandated across public institutions, anthropologists became strong ADR critics. Academic debate between mediation proponents and critics ended as critics abandoned research in the 1990s and 2000s. My initial research goal was to pick up from past empirical study. Research was conducted in Australia, Ghana, and the United States in two areas of mediation practice; resolving parenting disputes between adults who are separating or not married, and “elder mediation” cases involving older adults. Initial findings reified past debate through data that supported proponents and critics. Further insight was gained through return to fieldwork using an expanded, ethnographic case study design. This article provides a journey through a seemingly intractable divide that was ultimately resolved through prolonged time in fieldwork focused on understanding client perspectives. I show how social work and anthropology scholars of professional mediation have been positioned on opposite sides of an expert knowledge/fieldwork research boundary. This boundary can be made productive through open exchange about mediation as a practice that evolves through an interplay of expert knowledge, intervention practice, and client engagement.

Turnout and Voting Methods in the United States - How Shiny is the Shining City?

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Crawford
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Information Science ◽  
The United States ◽  
Geographic Information Science ◽  
Socioeconomic Background ◽  
Voting Methods ◽  
Reliable Methods ◽  
East West

This presentation combines and applies principles from both political science and geographic information science in order to gain unique insights into electoral politics and voter turnout in the United States. Missouri is used as a case-study because it has a longstanding history as a political bellwether due to its unique position straddling the historic North/South and the contemporary East/West divide; in addition its socioeconomic background closely mirrors national averages. Since the United States leaves the method of voting a responsibility of the counties, there is a discrepancy in the types of technologies used. This can result in some electorates being more prone to faulty machinery, which in turn leads to errors at the ballot box. In order to effectively answer the question- what was the effect that varying voting methods had on the turnout in Missouri during the 2004 Presidential election? - a multi-disciplinary approach must be taken which applies both a qualitative background to provide context and a strong quantitative element to provide hard empirical results. In order to address the quantitative element, due to the spatial nature of the data being used, regular statistical analysis is not possible without inviting inherent errors. Instead a variety of spatial statistics will be used to help address the hypothesis that counties which have lower voter turnouts will have less reliable methods of voting.

scholarly journals The participatory and partisan impacts of mandatory vote-by-mail

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (35) ◽  
pp. eabc7685
Author(s):  
Michael Barber ◽  
John B. Holbein
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Political Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
County Level ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Past ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Vote By Mail

Recently, mandatory vote-by-mail has received a great deal of attention as a means of administering elections in the United States. However, policy-makers disagree on the merits of this approach. Many of these debates hinge on whether mandatory vote-by-mail advantages one political party over the other. Using a unique pairing of historical county-level data that covers the past three decades and more than 40 million voting records from the two states that have conducted a staggered rollout of mandatory vote-by-mail (Washington and Utah), we use several methods for causal inference to show that mandatory vote-by-mail slightly increases voter turnout but has no effect on election outcomes at various levels of government. Our results find meaning given contemporary debates about the merits of mandatory vote-by-mail. Mandatory vote-by-mail ensures that citizens are given a safe means of casting their ballot while simultaneously not advantaging one political party over the other.

scholarly journals Outsiders and the Amateur Legislature: A Case Study of Legislative Politics

1986 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 22-34
Author(s):  
Arthur English ◽  
John J. Carroll
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legislative Politics ◽  
United States Congress ◽  
Part Time ◽  
The One ◽  
Legislative Institutions

Political scientists have concentrated their analyses on the United States Congress and legislatures in the larger states, while developing a literature rich in insight on legislative institutions. But this literature has often overlooked that most typical, albeit declining, legislative phenomena, the amateur or citizens legislatures which are found in the smaller and more rural states. The defining difference between these two types of legislative institutions, i.e., between the "professionalized” Congress, California legislature, and the amateur Rhode Island or Arkansas General Assemblies, is that in the one legislators "legislate" for a living while in the other members serve part-time and draw their principal paychecks elsewhere.

scholarly journals Is it worth door-knocking? Evidence from a UK-based GOTV field experiment on the effect of leaflets and canvass visits on voter turnout

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Townsley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Field Experiment ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Liberal Democrats ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Get Out The Vote

What impact do party leaflets and canvass visits have on voter turnout? Get Out The Vote (GOTV) experiments consistently find that campaigning needs to be personal in order to be effective. However, the imbalance between United States and European-based studies has led to recent calls for further European GOTV experiments. There are also comparatively few partisan experiments. I report the findings of a United Kingdom-based field experiment conducted with the Liberal Democrats in 2017. Results show that party leaflets boost turnout by 4.3 percentage points, while canvassing has a small additional effect (0.6 percentage points). The study also represents the first individual level experiment to compare GOTV effects between postal voters and in-person voters outside the United States.

Postal delivery disruptions and the fragility of voting by mail: Lessons from Maine

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316802098143
Author(s):  
Michael C. Herron ◽  
Daniel A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Elections ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
United States Postal Service ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
Public Health Crisis ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Vote By Mail

Since the onset in early 2020 of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, mail-in voting rates in states that have held elections have surged, presumably reflecting the fact that voting by mail is a relatively safe mode of ballot casting during a public health crisis. Matters of health notwithstanding, postal delivery disruptions can place mail-in ballots at risk of rejection on the grounds of lateness. With Maine as a case study, we show that, in the past four general elections, over 10% of vote-by-mail ballots arrived at local elections offices either on Election Day itself or one day earlier. Moreover, of the vote-by-mail ballots most vulnerable to postal delivery disruptions, a greater share of them were cast by unaffiliated voters and Democrats than by Republicans. Our results highlight the fragility of voting by mail in light of concerns about the reliability of the United States Postal Service. While existing research shows that the opportunity to vote by mail is neutral with respect to partisanship, our results highlight an aspect of mail-in balloting that nonetheless has a partisan hue—the extent to which vote-by-mail ballots are vulnerable to mail delays.

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