Voter registration and turnout across regimes (FF #117)

Welcome back to Facty Friday from your Evidence and Learning team in the DRG Bureau! This edition of Facty Friday considers ways to increase voter registration and turnout and the consequences of doing so in an electoral authoritarian regime.

To increase voter turnout in remote communities, decrease the costs of registration and voting

Researchers worked with Kenya’s electoral commission to learn how best to increase voter registration in rural communities. They randomly selected 1,674 rural communities to receive either: (1) a door-to-door civic education campaign, (2) SMS messages encouraging registration, or (3) local registration visits by election commission staff. They find no effects of the civic education or messages alone, but the local registration visits increase voter registration, especially in poorer communities and especially when paired with informational messages. However, none of the interventions increased voter turnout on election day. This research suggests that interventions to increase voter turnout should reduce all the costs associated with voting.

Get-out-the-vote campaigns can further tilt the uneven playing field in authoritarian elections

Though the winner of an authoritarian election is rarely in doubt, electoral authoritarians desire high turnout and large margins of victory to increase their legitimacy and justify their chosen policies. A recent paper studied the effects of two get-out-the-vote campaigns in Bangladesh’s 2018 election. They found that both campaigns increased turnout in government strongholds but decreased turnout in opposition strongholds. Opposition turnout declined because the campaigns prompted politically aware opposition supporters to deliberately abstain from voting in order to de-legitimise the regime. This research suggests that development organizations should be careful when conducting information and GOTV campaigns to support democracy in authoritarian regimes; such campaigns can backfire and further benefit the incumbent authoritarian government.

Related Resources

• Literature review about voter turnout and voter education from USAID/Kenya.

Got a study we should share for Facty Friday? Email drg.el@usaid.gov!