Postal voting in political elections increases participation by allowing people to cast their ballots at their own convenience, helping them avoid long lines and the physical hurdles of reaching a polling place. However, it also shifts the ballot and the action of voting from the polling booth to one’s household. Can this shift impact the political choices of couples who live together? How is political behaviour affected when voting secrecy is no longer guaranteed? These questions are at the heart of Thomas Taylor’s research.
“At the polls, voting is individual,” comments Thomas. Even if people might tell one another about their vote before or after the elections, the privacy of the polling booth guarantees that only the voter knows which ballot is cast. However, “when you vote from home, the ballot is right there on the kitchen counter. Your partner is next to you, and the question ‘Who did you vote for?’ can turn into ‘I think you should vote for this candidate’.”
Thomas is a fifth-year doctoral researcher at the EUI Department of Economics. In the paper he is working on, titled ‘Early but not Alone? Mail-in Voting and Within-Couple Political Agency,’ he analyses how the introduction of no-excuse postal voting in the United States—also called mail voting, mail-in voting, or absentee voting—has affected the political decisions of American couples over the past 25 years. Thomas clarifies that ‘no-excuse postal voting’ means that every registered voter is allowed to vote through the post, without having to provide a justification for it. He finds that mail voting has reduced the gender gap in partisan voting among US couples.
While the scope of Thomas’ research transcends the US context – some European countries, such as Germany, Switzerland, or the UK, already allow postal voting – the United States provides a compelling case study. Although data availability of both extensive electoral surveys and administrative records is one reason, the way no-excuse postal voting was adopted in the US makes it particularly interesting. Mail-in voting has been around for decades, but its adoption has been uneven. Different US states introduced it at different times, while some still do not offer the option at all.
“Some US states introduced postal voting for everyone as far back as the 70s, but it was only from the 90s onwards that this mechanism became more frequent,” Thomas notes. This gradual implementation provided the perfect set of variation for his economic analysis.
“The US is an interesting setting for my study also due to its strong and consistent ‘partisan gender gap’, with women voting Republican at much lower rates than men. While the US is not the only country that has a partisan gender gap, it represents a case where this divide has remained remarkably consistent over the past 50 years,” he points out.
Thomas’ research reveals that mail voting partially closes the partisan gender gap. “I find a reduction of over 1 percentage point for couples, which is quite significant, while single voters are not affected.”
While mail ballots facilitating the act of voting is part of the story, Thomas shows that this isn't just about higher turnout. Instead, he finds that postal voting significantly increases political interactions between partners with couples reporting discussing politics more frequently when the ballot papers are physically present at home. This can be explained by the fact that citizens who vote from home receive their ballots weeks in advance and therefore, have a long period to send their vote, often up until election day. “This means a couple has the papers at home for multiple weeks. This increases the time window for partners to discuss their votes, which can lead to a convergence in their political choices.”
Importantly, he shows that different segments of the population react very differently. “The observed narrowing of the partisan gap in the US is driven primarily by a notable increase in lower-educated women voting Republican,” he reveals.
On the other hand, an opposite pattern emerges for men. “When their political behaviour changes, it is typically higher-educated men voting Republican less frequently.” This divide, which Thomas investigates deeper throughout the paper, highlights how gender dynamics and potential agency imbalances shape couples’ political decision-making process and their response to postal voting.
While mail-in voting is convenient, Thomas also underlines a significant risk: The loss of the secret ballot can lead to pressure or, in more extreme cases, even to coercion within the couple.
He argues that when voting moves from a public polling place into the home, it can spark debate between partners, and also conflict. “If, within your household, your partner tries to force you to vote a certain way, in a fraction of cases, this could lead to fights which, in turn, might become violent.”
By analysing police records of reported violent events in 28 US states over 10 years, he unveils that during mail voting periods there is a 2.5% increase in reported cases of male-perpetrated intimate partner violence at the county level.
“I find that partners report disagreeing more in the period of mail-in voting. The rise in domestic violence cases matches this increase in arguments within the couple,” he specifies.
“Through this exercise, I’m not trying to quantify exactly how much pressure and coercion influenced electoral results. However, I am showing that postal voting creates a situation where it's possible for partners to be pressured or forced into voting a certain way.”
Thomas’s paper will be released in the coming months, but Thomas has already been sharing its findings both within the EUI Economics Department and at external conferences. The positive feedback he has received from professors and fellow researchers has encouraged him to dig even deeper into his work.
Thomas has also recently been awarded an EUI grant for early-stage researchers. He plans to use this extra funding to access new data and expand his analysis even further.
Ultimately, Thomas hopes his work will encourage policymakers to think about the dynamics couples face when voting from home. “My work shows that understanding the gendered consequences of voting by mail is crucial in order to ensure that states offer election rules which safeguard freedom of choice in the vote of each citizen.”
Thomas Taylor is a doctoral researcher at the EUI Department of Economics. Thomas’s PhD thesis, titled ‘On determinants of gender inequalities in political expression and the role of information media’, revolves around different facets of gender inequalities in politics. The paper ‘Early but not Alone? Mail-in Voting and Within-Couple Political Agency’ will represent a chapter of his PhD thesis and his job market paper. Thomas’ research is supervised by former EUI Professor Thomas Crossley (supervisor) and EUI Professor Alessandro Tarozzi (co-supervisor).