Electionline yesterday reported on a
new study claiming increased turnout for Vote Centers.
I
wrote earlier that Vote Centers may have benefits, but election administrators should use caution before making the shift.
The electionline article notes that Vote centers have been compared to shopping at Home Depot rather than a local hardware store.
Jane Eisner, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, compared vote centers to shopping at Wal-Mart and Home Depot rather than at clothing and hardware stores a few blocks away.
"While super-sizing may make elections easier to administer, there's no evidence that it will draw more voters, and some reason to believe the impersonal, big-box approach will have the opposite effect," she wrote.
Another study shows that the number one predictor of whether someone will vote is how close the polling place is to their home (see "Location, Location, Location: Precinct Placement and the Costs of Voting," Journal of Politics #67, 2005, Moshe Haspel of Spelman College in Atlanta and H. Gibbs Knotts of Western Carolina University).
We are still learning about vote centers and their `promise' of reduced costs and potentially increased turnout. Lets be careful not to place cost savings above voter participation.
