Press Release from the Election Law Journal:
| New Rochelle, NY, September 27, 2021 — Two surveys conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic showed that support for vote by mail (VBM) fell sharply because Republicans became less worried about catching COVID-19. As Republicans became less concerned with catching COVID-19 they became far more opposed to VBM, according to the article published in the peer-reviewed Election Law Journal. Click here to read the article now. |
| The article titled “Trumped by Trump? Public Support for Mail Voting in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic” was coauthored by Joshua Clinton, from Vanderbilt University, and John Lapinski, Sarah Lentz, and Stephen Pettigrew, from the University of Pennsylvania. |
| “We show that the pandemic had a powerful impact on increasing support for mail-in voting – especially early in the pandemic,” state the authors. “Six weeks after our initial April [2020] survey, however, the bipartisan support for expanding mail-in voting that we initially observed had dissipated.” |
| The authors note that, “Over the course of our study, Trump tweeted about VBM 15 times – 11 times during the field period of our second survey.” This intense partisan messaging could have contributed to the change in opinions documented by these two surveys. |
| “This timely article explains how the unique mix of the pandemic and partisan politics shaped how people voted in 2020,” states Election Law Journal Editor-in-Chief David Canon, University of Wisconsin. |