A Voter's Eye View of Elections, 2008-2016

Abstract

This paper explores responses from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) from 2008 to 2016, a large nationwide survey of voters following each presidential election, with the aim to summarize the experience of voters at the polls during that period. A background of the SPAE project is given. Substantive topics include (1) reasons for not voting, (2) the quality of the voting experience, (3) voter identification, (4) waiting to vote, and (5) attitudes about reform. In the second on reform, attention is given to beliefs about the prevalence of election fraud, attitudes toward election reform, attitudes toward requiring photo IDs, all-mail voting, and automatic voter registration. The paper is primarily descriptive, but also provides overviews of how the attitudes and experiences described in the SPAE correlated with political and demographic measures that are contained in, or can be merged with, the SPAE data files.

Keywords: voting, voters, election administration, nonvoting, voter identification, election fraud election reform automatic voter registration, survey of the performance of american elections