Voting access reforms and policy feedback effects on political efficacy and trust

Abstract In 2020, states pursued divergent voting access reforms in an effort to facilitate a safe and secure election in the midst of a global pandemic. For some voters, options like mail‐in or no‐excuse absentee voting were familiar; for others, they were novel. While scholars have explored how election reforms affect turnout, we know less about how state‐level electoral policies influence people's political efficacy and trust, and how political context and voter partisanship condition those effects. Employing a policy feedback framework, our analysis combines original data on state changes to election procedures with ANES survey data from 1988 to 2020 to understand the context‐specific effects of voting access reforms on people's political efficacy and trust. Using time‐event difference‐in‐difference analysis, we find little evidence that electoral reforms affect political efficacy and trust overall; however, partisanship and state political context appear necessary to understand the true relationship between electoral reform and political behavior.