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What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials

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  • WHITE, ARIEL R.
  • NATHAN, NOAH L.
  • FALLER, JULIE K.

Abstract

Do street-level bureaucrats discriminate in the services they provide to constituents? We use a field experiment to measure differential information provision about voting by local election administrators in the United States. We contact over 7,000 election officials in 48 states who are responsible for providing information to voters and implementing voter ID laws. We find that officials provide different information to potential voters of different putative ethnicities. Emails sent from Latino aliases are significantly less likely to receive any response from local election officials than non-Latino white aliases and receive responses of lower quality. This raises concerns about the effect of voter ID laws on access to the franchise and about bias in the provision of services by local bureaucrats more generally.

Suggested Citation

  • White, Ariel R. & Nathan, Noah L. & Faller, Julie K., 2015. "What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 109(1), pages 129-142, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:109:y:2015:i:01:p:129-142_00
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    Cited by:

    1. Kenneth Lowande & Andrew Proctor, 2020. "Bureaucratic Responsiveness to LGBT Americans," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 664-681, July.
    2. Gérard P. Cachon & Dawson Kaaua, 2022. "Serving Democracy: Evidence of Voting Resource Disparity in Florida," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6687-6696, September.
    3. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    4. Mazumder, Soumyajit, 2019. "Becoming White: How Military Service Turned Immigrants into Americans," SocArXiv agjsm, Center for Open Science.
    5. Mattie Mackenzie-Liu & David J. Schwegman & Leonard M. Lopoo, 2020. "Do Foster Care Agencies Discriminate Against Gay Couples? Evidence from a Correspondence Study," Center for Policy Research Working Papers 224, Center for Policy Research, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
    6. Mattie Mackenzie‐Liu & David J. Schwegman & Leonard M. Lopoo, 2021. "Do Foster Care Agencies Discriminate Against Gay Couples? Evidence from a Correspondence Study," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 1140-1170, September.
    7. Dara Kay Cohen & Connor Huff & Robert Schub, 2021. "At War and at Home: The Consequences of US Women Combat Casualties," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 65(4), pages 647-671, April.
    8. Mikula, Stepan & Montag, Josef, 2023. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment on Ethnic and Socioeconomic Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 16218, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Druckman, James N. & Levy, Jeremy & Sands, Natalie, 2021. "Bias in education disability accommodations," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    10. Corrado Giulietti & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 5537, CESifo.
    11. Benjamin E. Bagozzi & Daniel Berliner & Zack W. Almquist, 2021. "When does open government shut? Predicting government responses to citizen information requests," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(2), pages 280-297, April.
    12. Chen, Ted Hsuan Yun & McLachlan, Paul & Fariss, Christopher J, 2021. "Exposure to Discretionary Arrests Increases Support for Anti-Police Protests," SocArXiv r78ys, Center for Open Science.
    13. Wibbenmeyer, Matthew & Anderson, Sarah & Plantinga, Andrew J., 2020. "Inequality in Agency Responsiveness: Evidence from Salient Wildfire Events," RFF Working Paper Series 20-22, Resources for the Future.
    14. Michael Rochlitz & Evgeniya Mitrokhina & Irina Nizovkina, 2020. "Bureaucratic Discrimination in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes: Experimental Evidence from Russia," Bremen Papers on Economics & Innovation 2010, University of Bremen, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics.
    15. Kevin Morris, 2021. "Welcome Home—Now Vote! Voting Rights Restoration and Postsupervision Participation," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(1), pages 140-153, January.
    16. Fang, Albert H. & Guess, Andrew M. & Humphreys, Macartan, 2019. "Can the Government Deter Discrimination? Evidence from a Randomized Intervention in New York City," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 81(1), pages 127-141.
    17. Christian R. Grose & Abby K. Wood, 2020. "Randomized experiments by government institutions and American political development," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 401-413, December.
    18. Köhler, Ekkehard & Matsusaka, John G. & Wu, Yanhui, 2023. "Street-level responsiveness of city governments in China, Germany, and the United States," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 640-652.
    19. Rueß, Stefanie & Schneider, Gerald & Vogler, Jan, 2024. "Priming and prejudice: Experimental evidence on negative news frames and discrimination in German welfare offices," Working Papers 34, University of Konstanz, Cluster of Excellence "The Politics of Inequality. Perceptions, Participation and Policies".
    20. Pfaff, Steven & Crabtree, Charles & Kern, Holger L. & Holbein, John B., 2018. "Does religious bias shape access to public services? A large-scale audit experiment among street-level bureaucrats," SocArXiv 9khds, Center for Open Science.
    21. Wittels, Annabelle Sophie, 2020. "The effect of politician-constituent conflict on bureaucratic responsiveness under varying information frames," SocArXiv 4x8q2, Center for Open Science.
    22. Štěpán Mikula & Josef Montag, 2022. "Roma and Bureaucrats: A Field Experiment in the Czech Republic," MUNI ECON Working Papers 2022-01, Masaryk University, revised Feb 2023.
    23. Markie McBrayer & R. Lucas Williams & Andrea Eckelman, 2020. "Local Officials as Partisan Operatives: The Effect of County Officials on Early Voting Administration," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1475-1488, July.
    24. Adman, Per & Larsson Taghizadeh, Jonas, 2020. "Public officials’ treatment of minority clients," Working Paper Series 2020:12, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.

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