Partisanship and Voting Rule Trade-offs

To what extent are partisan differences about voting rules rooted in sincere disagreements about the relative importance of maximizing turnout versus preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots? We document partisan differences in preferences regarding this trade-off over time, demonstrating that these differences are particularly pronounced among the most politically interested respondents. We then report findings from two pre-registered survey experiments that shed light on whether these gaps are a product of partisan sorting or responses to elite cues. The experiments asked participants to make trade-offs between a pair of voting systems. One system would entirely prevent ineligible votes, randomly varying turnout rates among eligible voters; the other would yield universal turnout among eligible voters, but result in some randomly varied number of ineligible voters casting ballots. Some participants were also provided with cues signaling which party endorsed which system. Our results suggest that the effects of divergent partisan cues, rather than differing priorities regarding maximizing eligible turnout and minimizing ineligible turnout, are the more likely explanation for the partisan gaps we find in our observational data. Taken together, the findings suggest that strategic elites can stoke partisan disagreements about how the democratic process should work.