How to Measure and Assess the Turnout Effects of Election Reforms Available to Purchase

Many states allow some form of non-traditional precinct voting, from voting early in-person to various forms of mail-assisted balloting. Research on how these voting reforms impact voter participation has produced a wide range of mixed findings. We review this literature and describe how the research designs and measures used by past studies may have biased their results. We then offer a new theoretical approach for testing the relationship between convenience voting reforms and voter turnout that addresses some of the pitfalls in previous measurements of reforms. We also identify best practices for how to implement our new measures using a difference-in-difference research strategy that is robust to many confounding factors and describe a potential sustainable database for undertaking this research over time.