Partisanship, Bureaucratic Responsiveness, and Election Administration: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Abstract

Though political candidates, observers, and voters often express concern about partisan meddling in supposedly neutral elections, existing research has not directly studied partisan bias among election administrators. We report results from a field experiment conducted in Wisconsin during the 2014 general election. Local election clerks were sent an information request from a putative constituent, randomizing the sender's partisanship. Our findings are mixed. Overall, partisan email-writers were somewhat more likely to receive responses from local election clerks than email-writers who provided no partisan signal, though these effects are driven mostly by greater responsiveness to Republican constituents. We also find some evidence of increased responsiveness to requests from copartisan constituents, particularly among Republican municipalities. However, we find no evidence that local institutional context moderates the effects of the partisan treatments. Our findings provide new evidence about the presence of partisan biases from administrators in ostensibly neutral settings and raise important questions about the capacity for insulating election administration from partisan influences. Potential voters confront a myriad of informational deficits. In addition to deciding which candidate to support, they must also assemble information about how, where, and when to cast their votes. As the "administrators of democracy" (Moynihan and Silva 2008), local election officials (LEOs) are well-positioned to mitigate such informational deficits. Whether they do so without bias-that is, whether election officials work on behalf of ordinary voters without taking into account the attributes of those voters-is central to contemporary debates over election administration and integrity. Understanding potential biases among election administrators is critical because their decisions "may affect whether some people are able to cast a vote" (Kimball, Kropf, and Battles 2006, 448). Scholars, policymakers, and international organizations widely agree about the importance of neutral election administration for democratic health. As the European Commission for Democracy through Law (2008, 38) argues, "Only transparency, impartiality, and independence from politically motivated manipulation will ensure proper administration of the election process ." Similarly, the Office for Security and Cooperation in Europe (2013, 29) advises member countries that "[n]o election-administration body should act in a partisan manner or exhibit partiality in the performance of its duties." The nature of electoral administration has important implications for the success of democratic transitions (Pastor 1999) and perceptions of legitimacy (Anderson et al. 2005; Kropf and Kimball 2013). A report by the US Commission on Federal Election Reform (2005, 49) therefore concluded that "[t]o build White, three anonymous reviews, and the Editor for helpful comments. We gratefully acknowledge Barry Burden for sharing some of the data used in this project and Stephanie Langella and Enrique Rodriguez for providing excellent research assistance.