Opponents of Rhode Island Straight-Ticket Device Publicize New Study, Showing How Device Probably Changes Outcomes

Bills are pending in the Rhode Island legislature to abolish the straight-ticket device. On April 10, supporters of those bills released a study, showing that in November 2012, the Speaker of the House would probably have been defeated by an independent candidate if the straight-ticket device did not exist.

Only two candidates were on the ballot in November 2012 in the State House race for the 4th district: Gordon Fox, the Democratic nominee and the House speaker; and independent candidate Mark Binder. The vote was: Fox 3,590; Binder 2,595. In that district, 1,469 voters used the straight-ticket device for the Democratic Party. This shows that the voters who did not use the straight-ticket device preferred Binder. The data suggests, but cannot prove, that the straight-ticket device changes election outcomes. Independent candidates do not have their own straight-ticket device, and it is probable that most of the voters in 2012 who used the straight-ticket device didn’t even notice who the candidates for State House were.


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Opponents of Rhode Island Straight-Ticket Device Publicize New Study, Showing How Device Probably Changes Outcomes — No Comments

  1. As someone who had a similar experience when running for office, I agree that straight ticket devices are tools for two classes of people: Lazy voters who don’t want to learn about the candidates and conspiring politicians looking to keep themselves in office. Neither of those groups breed healthy politics.

  2. What is the percentage falloff for regimes without the straight party ticket stuff ???

    i.e. the robot party hacks get elected with how many less votes ???

  3. Based on the use of the straight ticket device in Texas, the study may be making some totally invalid assumptions.

    In Rhode Island, like in Texas, a voter may override a straight ticket vote on individual races. So a voter may have voted straight ticket Democratic and still voted for Binder.

    Long-term observers of elections in Texas can not imagine leaving the rest of a ballot blank, because it would be an easy ballot to modify.

    The Rhode Island ballot in 2012 had 5 races, President, US senator, and US representative, RI senator and representative and a slew of ballot issues. Most voters made it through the candidate races, but dropout in the ballot issues was up to around 25-30%.

    There were only four polling places for the district. Obama defeated Romney 82%:16%:2% in the district. So the district is full of Democrats, some who marked the straight-ticket device, some who didn’t.

    That is, it is unlikely that you had a bunch of independent-minded voters, who spent considerable time mulling Obama or Romney, who then overwhelmingly voted for Obama, and then thought, “I didn’t know that Obama was a Democrat”, and a bunch of ignorant Democratic partisans who voted for the “Democrats” and were unaware that they had cast a vote for Obama.

    Because there were only four polling places, it should have been practicable to have volunteers at each to encourage voters to vote for Binder. This appears to have worked. Binder only got 33% support among mail voters, 43% among poll voters.

    To the extent that voters deliberately voted for Binder, they might have chosen to not use the straight-ticket device, either because its use was confusing if they also intended to vote for Binder, or they voted for Binder because they considered themselves to be “independent”. So for some voters there would be a reverse causality, they voted for Binder and therefore did not vote straight ticket.

    A useful study would be to compare straight ticket voting across Providence, with partisan support for the top of the ticket. That is, does the presence of independent candidates induce less straight-ticket support.

    There was considerable variation among the 4 polling places. Romney received 30%, 15%, 15%, and 8%. The Republican US senatorial candidate did about the same, and the Republican US representative candidate did a few percentage points better.

    Binder, the independent, won the polling place where Romney received 30% of the vote. It is quite likely that all Romney voters would vote for the only non-Democrat in the race.

    If you assume consistent dropout between the presidential and state house race, and that all Romney and 3rd-party voters voted for Binder, then in three of the precincts, between 31% and 38% of Obama voters voted for Binder. In these 3 precincts, Binder was quite competitive, receiving 48% of the vote. If the election were confined to these 3 precincts, it is quite reasonable to assume that the straight-ticket device was decisive.

    But the 4th precinct was much different. Obama defeated Romney 89%-8%-3% other. And Fox defeated Binder 75%-25%. Using the model used in the other precincts of all the Romney and other presidential voters voting for Binder, then Binder was only able to pick up 19% of the Obama vote. Dropoff was slightly lower, which suggests a higher incidence of straight-ticket voting (since it automatically casts a vote).

    The area is distinctly more Black (the polling location is Martin Luther King School), and also a high percentage of “Other Race” which in Rhode Island would likely be Azorean or Cape Verdean. Fox’s mother is Cape Verdean.

    Even without a straight-ticket device, voters are going to go right down the ballot putting an X next to any Democrats votes.

    This does not mean that removing the straight-ticket box would be non-useful. Its presence likely reinforces straight ticket voting. “It’s OK to vote straight ticket if you want to, just mark the box”.

    It there was an alternative box that said “I prefer to choose among the candidates in each race without regard to their party [ ]” it could conceivably encourage more thoughtful voting.

    Better yet would be to switch to Top 2 which encourages a breakdown of the us vs. them partisan voting. In an 83% Obama district, it is likely that an independent-minded Democrat could have a more successful challenge than a pure independent.

  4. #2 A lot less than you might think. There were only 5-races on the ballot, and the dropoff between President and state house was around 5 to 7%. There were 18 ballot propositions, which had around 25% dropoff toward the end.

    In 2012, in Harris County, true straight-ticket voting was 67%, voting for every candidates of a party, without using the straight-ticket device 25%, dropouts 6%, and 2% swing voters for judicial races, which there were dozens of.

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