Voting Machines and Voter Participation in Four Michigan Constitutional Revision Referenda

• Date: 01 September 1968
• Author: Norman C. Thomas
• Published date: 01 September 1968
• DOI: 10.1177/106591296802100305
• Subject Matter: Articles

VOTING MACHINES AND VOTER PARTICIPATION
IN FOUR
MICHIGAN CONSTITUTIONAL
REVISION REFERENDA
NORMAN C. THOMAS
University of Michigan
HE
ANALYSIS of voting and elections has undoubtedly become one of the
~ principal areas of investigation for political scientists, especially among those
.M primarily concerned with American politics. Quite understandably, much
of the research on the subject has tended to focus on individual voting behavior
and its relationship to psychological and sociological variables.’ This research has
provided important insights into one of the most fundamental phenomena of demo-
cratic politics and undoubtedly further contributions to our understanding of voter
choice are forthcoming. There is, however, at least one aspect of American elec-
toral behavior which has not been as thoroughly investigated. The effect of the
mechanics of the ballot may not be as intellectually fascinating a topic as, say, the
psychological determinants of voting choice, but it nevertheless can have an impact
on election results.
Studies of the mechanical aspects of the electoral system have dealt primarily
with two phenomena: ballot form, i.e., the arrangement of candidates’ names on
the ballot by either party column or office blocks; and the use of either voting
machines or paper ballots as the vehicle for the expression of voter choice. We
know, as a result of the Survey Research Center studies of the 1952 and 1956
presidential elections, that ballot form has less impact on straight-ticket voting
among strong party identifiers than among weak party identifiers.2
2
In addition,
Jack L. Walker has shown in a recent study that ballot form has a significant effect
on voter participation in partisan contests for lower offices.3
3
Walker found that
states using the party column ballot exhibited consistently less &dquo;roll-off&dquo; than states
NOTE: Research for this paper was aided by a grant from the Horace H. Rackham School
of Graduate Studies of the University of Michigan to the Department of Political Sci-
ence for a study of the politics of constitutional revision referenda in Michigan between
1958 and 1963. I am especially indebted to J. Merrill Shanks of the Survey Research
Center who guided me in analyzing the data. Responsibility for what is said here is,
however, mine alone.
1
Some of the better-known works include: Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel
Gaudet, The People’s Choice (New York: Columbia U. Press, 1948); Bernard Berel-
son, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William McPhee, Voting (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press,
1954); Angus Campbell, Gerald Guerin, and Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides
(Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1954); Angus Campbell, Phillip E. Converse, Warren E.
Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960) ; and
by the same authors, Elections and the Political Order (New York : Wiley, 1966).
2
See Angus Campbell and Warren E. Miller, "The Motivational Basis of Straight and Split
Ticket Voting," American Political Science Review, 51 (1957), 293-312. They found
that straight ticket voting did not vary with ballot form among voters manifesting a
high level of party identification. On the other hand, voters having a low level of party
identification tended to vote straight tickets more frequently under single-choice or
party column ballots than under multiple-choice or office block ballots; see p. 307. See
also, The American Voter, pp. 275-76 and 285-86.
3
See J. L. Walker, "Ballot Forms and Voter Fatigue: An analysis of the Office Block and
Party Column Ballots," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 10 (1966), 448-63.
409

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410
employing the offices block ballot. That is, party column states manifested a smaller
drop in participation from contests for the highest office to contests for lower offices.
For some time, students of referendum elections have observed the roll-off
effect.4
4
These earlier studies noted that referendum elections almost invariably
attracted fewer voters than contests for public office held at the same time. Two
more recent studies have concluded that the use of voting machines rather than
paper ballots also contributes to roll-off in referendum elections.5 In his analysis of
a 1958 Michigan referendum on the question of calling a state constitutional con-
vention, White examined the vote cast by county and reached the conclusion that
voting machines were &dquo;an important factor in producing the low rate of partici-
pation in the referendum.&dquo;’, Because the referendum had to obtain a majority of
the votes cast in the election, a figure determined by the total vote for governor,
the roll-off was an especially critical factor in the defeat of the proposal to call a
convention. White also reasoned that since the use of voting machines tended to be
concentrated in urban areas, the voice of those areas was weakened by their use of
voting machines while rural areas continued largely to use paper ballots.
In an Iowa study, Mather employed a somewhat different approach. Using
the county as the unit of analysis, he examined the effect of machine and paper
ballot voting on participation levels in sixteen referendum elections between 1920
and 1960. Defining participation level as the ratio of the total votes cast in the
referendum to &dquo;the total votes cast for all candidates for the offices for which the
most votes were cast,&dquo; 7 Mather found that the use of voting machines rather than
paper ballots resulted in substantially lower participation. Although he noted a
rather weak tendency for a higher participation level to be associated with a nega-
tive vote on the referendum, Mather concluded it offered no basis for prediction.
In a 1960 constitutional convention referendum, an issue on which the Iowa elec-
torate divided on a sharp urban-rural cleavage, Mather found a high correlation
between urbanism and support for constitutional revision. The all-machine ballot
counties, which were more urbanized, favored the convention while the all-paper
ballot counties, which were heavily rural, opposed it. Participation in the paper
ballot counties, however, was at a much higher level. This led Mather to con-
clude, as White had in his Michigan study, that a uniform ballot, either all machine
or all paper, would have considerably narrowed the margin of defeat for the con-
vention proposal.8
Both White and Mather, then, have found that the use of voting machines
rather than paper ballots results in lower participation levels in referendum elec-
4
See John A. Fairlie, "The Referendum and Initiative in Michigan," The Annals, 43 (1912),
146-58; James K. Pollock, The Initiative and Referendum in Michigan (Ann Arbor:
U. of Michigan Press, 1940), pp. 56 ff; V. O. Key and W. W. Crouch, The Initiative
and Referendum in California (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1939), pp. 537-38;
and Joseph G. LaPalombara, The Initiative and Referendum in Oregon: 1938-1948
(Corvallis: Oregon State U. Press, 1950), p. 97.
5
John P. White, Voting Machines and the 1958 Defeat of Constitutional Revision in Michi-
gan (Ann Arbor: Institute of Public Administration, U. of Michigan, 1960) ; and,
George B. Mather, Effects of the Use of Voting Machines on Total Votes Cast: Iowa
—1920-7960 (Iowa City: Institute of Public Affairs, U. of Iowa, 1964).
6
White, ibid., p. 37.
7
Mather, ibid., p. 40.
8

Ibid., pp. 53-55.

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411
tions. They attribute this phenomenon to the placement of referendum questions
on a machine ballot in a less prominent position relative to partisan contests for
ofhce and not to any inherent...