Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104;
Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jan 26;118(4). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2021022118.
The ability to cast a mail ballot can safeguard the franchise. However, because there are often additional procedural protections to ensure that a ballot cast in person counts, voting by mail can also jeopardize people's ability to cast a recorded vote. An experiment carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates both forces. Philadelphia officials randomly sent 46,960 Philadelphia registrants postcards encouraging them to apply to vote by mail in the lead-up to the June 2020 primary election. While the intervention increased the likelihood a registrant cast a mail ballot by 0.4 percentage points ( = 0.017)-or 3%-many of these additional mail ballots counted only because a last-minute policy intervention allowed most mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to count.
邮寄选票的能力可以保障投票权。然而，由于通常有额外的程序保护措施来确保亲自投票的选票有效，邮寄投票也可能危及人们记录投票的能力。在 COVID-19 大流行期间进行的一项实验说明了这两种力量。费城官员在 2020 年 6 月初选之前随机向 46960 名费城登记选民发送明信片，鼓励他们申请邮寄投票。虽然干预措施使登记选民邮寄投票的可能性增加了 0.4 个百分点（=0.017）-或 3%-但许多这些额外的邮寄选票仅因为最后一刻的政策干预而被计入，该政策允许大多数在选举日邮戳的邮寄选票有效。
