Determinants of Rejected Mail Ballots in Georgia’s 2018 General Election

• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Date: 01 March 2022
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912921993537
• Subject Matter: Articles

2022, Vol. 75(1) 231 –243

Article

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912921993537

Political Research Quarterly

© 2021 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912921993537

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Well before the general public first heard of COVID-19,

an increasing number of voters across the American

states were casting ballots by mail (Mann 2014; Shino

and Smith 2020; U.S. Election Assistance Commission

2017). Mail-in voting differs from in-person voting in

several respects. In contrast to casting a ballot in person,

where individuals verify their voter eligibility in real

time with election officials prior to casting their ballot,

mail-in voters have their eligibility evaluated remotely

by election administrators after they cast their ballot. As

such, many voters casting a vote-by-mail (VBM) ballot

have little recourse if there is a problem with their ballot

return envelope (BRE) or if their ballot is received late

by election officials. Given the recent shift across

American states to mail-in voting in response to the

coronavirus pandemic, we are interested in whether

inequities exist among voters who have their mail bal-

lots rejected, either due to lateness or mistakes/omissions

on the BRE.

Challenges associated with mail-in voting, particu-

larly questions concerning administrative rules governing

the evaluation of BREs, were on full display during

Georgia’s November 2018 election. The state received

national attention for the rejection of what Georgia refers

to as Absentee by Mail ballots after high numbers of bal-

lots were rejected in Gwinnett County, an Atlanta-metro

county with a growing population of racial and ethnic

minority voters. Then, in the midst of the coronavirus

pandemic, Georgia’s Secretary of State opted to mail

every active registered voter a mail ballot application in

the state’s June 2020 primary.1 Because there is a strong

likelihood that mail-in ballots will continue to increase as

an alternative to in-person voting due to health concerns

from COVID-19, it is critical to understand the extent to

which there might be systematic discrepancies in whose

ballots are more or less likely to be counted.

With this backdrop in mind, we assess the challenges

associated with the counting of VBM ballots. The main

question we address in this study is whether voters of

different age and race/ethnicity, as well as recently reg-

istered voters, who choose to vote absentee, have their

BREs rejected at different rates than other voters. We

begin by developing a set of theoretical expectations

for whether certain groups of voters are more likely to

cast a ballot that is subsequently rejected, and then test

these expectations using statewide voter file data and

993537PRQXXX10.1177/1065912921993537Political Research QuarterlyShino et al.

research-article2021

1University of North Florida, Jacksonville, USA

2Connecticut College, New London, USA

3University of Florida, Gainesville, USA

Corresponding Author:

Enrijeta Shino, University of North Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville,

FL 32224, USA.

Email: e.shino@unf.edu

Determinants of Rejected Mail Ballots in

Georgia’s 2018 General Election

Enrijeta Shino1, Mara Suttmann-Lea2,

and Daniel A. Smith3

Abstract

Because of the COVID-19 threat to in-person voting in the November 2020 election, state and local election

officials have pivoted to mail-in voting as a potential solution. This method of voting—while safe from a public health

standpoint—comes with its own set of problems, as increased use of mail voting risks amplifying existing discrepancies

in rejected mail ballots. While some mail ballot rejections are to be expected, a lack of uniformity in whose ballots

get rejected among subgroups of voters—whether for mistakes on a ballot return envelope (BRE) or lateness—raise

concerns about equal representation. We draw on official statewide voter file and mail-in ballot data from the 2018

midterm election in Georgia, a state that until the pandemic did not have widespread use of mail voting, to test

whether some voters are more likely to cast a mail ballot that does not count. Most importantly, we distinguish

between ballots rejected for lateness and those rejected for a mistake on the return envelope. We find that newly

registered, young, and minority voters have higher rejection rates compared with their counterparts.

Keywords

vote-by-mail, ballot rejection, elections, voting, election administration