Grant Recipients

In 2019, we are proud to be funding 11 new projects as part of our New Initiatives in Election Science Program, giving a total amount of just under $100,000 for this round of New Initiatives Grants. Recipients this year came from 15 institutions around the U.S.; in all, 20 scholars have received funding as individuals or research teams.

The New Initiatives program was made possible through a generous grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

2018 Grants

We funded 8 proposals in 2018 under our New Initiatives Program; the total amount granted was just under $100,000. Grantees totaled 15 scholars from 9 institutions, many of whom are junior faculty members or Ph.D. students.

2017 Grants

In 2017, we funded 14 proposals as part of our New Initiatives Grants in Election Science Program. The total amount granted was just over $160,000. Grantees totaled 30 scholars from 21 institutions. Of the 14 proposals funded, 12 went to teams that were led by junior faculty members or Ph.D. students.

Scroll through the projects and explore the research funded by the 2017 round of grants. Below, you'll find information including project summaries, links to published articles from the research, and information for accessing the data as it becomes available.

2017

Brian Amos and Michael McDonald Fabricating Precinct Boundaries	$17,000
Joseph Anthony and David Kimball A Study of Photo ID Implementation in Missouri Jurisdictions	$3,280
Kyle Endres and Costas Panagopoulos Field Experiment in the 2017 Virginia Election Our study was designed to assess the effects of providing informational reminders to registered voters in the November 2017 general election in Virginia on turnout and views of the election. Summary Report Who is mobilized to vote by information about voter ID laws? Published in Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2021. Photo identification laws and perceptions of electoral fraud. Published in Research & Politics, July 2021.	$12,000
Brian J. Gaines Primary Election Laws, State by State My goal was to create a data set describing the election rules governing primary elections in the American states, with an emphasis on enfranchisement (who is permitted to take part in the election), and not the election results. Briefly, we wished to compile a definitive coding of which states employ “open”, “closed”, etc. primaries, and when these occurred. Summary Report Dataset	$5,000
Nadine Gibson Maintaining the Machinery of Democracy: Assessing the Quality of Voting Equipment in the 21st Century	$15,000
Brian Hamel, Jan Leighley, and Robert Stein Who Votes When—and Why?	$10,000
William McGuire, Benjamin Gonzalez O'Brien, Katherine Baird, Benjamin Corbett, and Loren Collingwood Evaluating the Impact of Drop Boxes and Get-Out-The-Vote Advertising on Voter Turnout in Pierce County, WA Voter turnout in the United States lags behind most other developed democracies. This project examines the impact the installation of new ballot drop boxes had on voter turnout in Pierce County, the second largest county in Washington State. To identify the causal effects of these boxes on the decision to vote, we exploit the randomized placement of five new ballot drop boxes in Pierce prior to the 2017 general election. Summary Report Dataset	$16,365
Thessalia Merivaki and Joseph "Dallas" Breen Investigating Voter List Maintenance Practices at the Local Level: The Case of Mississippi	$5,000
Michael Miller and Bernard Fraga Who Does Voter ID Legislation Keep From Voting? Evidence from Texas Our plan called for the collection and digitization of all Reasonable Impediment Declarations (RIDs) filed by Texas voters in the 2016 general election. We then planned to identify the voters who filed these RIDs in the voter file, and merge their information with certain attributes in the Catalist database. The end goal of our work was to produce a dataset that could be shared with other election scholars studying this topic. Summary Report	$10,235
Zachary Mohr, Martha Kropf, Mary Jo McGowan Shepherd, JoEllen Pope, and Madison Esterle How Much Are We Spending on Election Administration? As elections administration and public budget researchers, we were curious if we could find data on the cost of elections and wanted to know if the costs had changed since 2000. We wanted to get an updated answer to the question: how much does it cost to conduct elections in the United States? Summary Report Dataset	$19,895
Brandon Rottinghaus and Jeronimo Cortina The Impact of Vote Centers on Turnover: The Case of Texas	$9,000
Mara Suttmann-Lea The Deserving Voter: Poll Worker Decision Making at the American Ballot Box	$10,000
Adriano Udani and David Kimball What Fraud Looks Like: A Conjoint Analysis to Examine Perceptions of Voter Fraud	$17,500
Abby Wood, Christopher Elmendorf & Douglas Spencer Vouchers, Information and Ideology	$14,000

Michael Byrne and Philip Kortum	Voter detection of anomalies on bmd ballots	$3,500
Jesse T. Clark	The Maine Event? The gap between expectations and reality in election reform	$8,500
Laurel Eckhouse, Allison Harris, Hannah Walker, and Ariel White	Finding families affected by felon disfranchisement	$9,992
Christian R. Grose and Nathan K. Micatka	Do post-election audits increase confidence in elections?	$9,850
Martha Kropf, Jason Windett, and Samira Shaikh	Using data science to create election science	$20,000
Todd Makse	Early voting and the implications of non-simultaneity for political discussion	$5,200
Christopher Mann and Kathleen Searles	Media myths and public perception of polling place wait times	$6,396
Ellen Seljan and Paul Gronke	Happy birthday: you get to vote!	$3,300
Bernard Tamas	Does malapportionment and voter suppression cause disproportionality and inflate electoral bias? A district-level analysis of US house elections (1870-2018)	$7,961
Chris Warshaw	A new database of local legislative and executive elections	$14,000
Logan Woods	How do voters react to problems when casting their ballot?	$5,400

Lisa Bryant	Vote Center Implementation in California: Analysis of a Beta Test in the 2018 Primary and General Elections	$8,874
Bridgett King	Administrative Decision Making & Barriers to Political Participation	$11,000
Shiro Kuriwaki	Ballot Image Logs: Data Collection and Standardization	$10,000
Thessalia Merivaki, Dallas Breen, and Ioannis Ziogas	Voter List Maintenance Within a Hybrid Structure of Data Management: The Case of Mississippi	$18,000
Zachary Mohr, Martha Kropf, Mary Jo Shepherd, and JoEllen Pope	Estimating Election Administration Spending in the 50 States	$20,000
Lauren Prather and Sarah Bush	Does Foreign Influence Undermine Political Trust?	$10,530
James Szewczyk	Does Vote-By-Mail Cause Voters to Gather More Information About Politics?	$15,000
Adriano Udani and David Kimball	Correcting Perceptions of Voter Fraud in U.S. Elections	$5,000

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2018 Grants

We funded 8 proposals in 2018 under our New Initiatives Program; the total amount granted was just under $100,000. Grantees totaled 15 scholars from 9 institutions, many of whom are junior faculty members or Ph.D. students.

2017 Grants