Postal votes that are uncomplicated have a positive effect on voter turnout. Researchers from the University of Bayreuth analyzed the runoff election in the Bavarian municipalities in March 2020, which was organized purely as a postal vote due to the pandemic, in which voter turnout had risen unusually sharply – by more than ten percentage points compared to the first election round. According to the study, this was solely due to the uncomplicated postal voting option.
Because of the lockdown, those eligible to vote were automatically sent the postal voting documents and envelopes for mailing. It was not possible to cast a vote at the polling station because of the corona pandemic. “Such a high increase in voter turnout in run-off elections has never been seen before in German local politics,” said Marco Frank, first author of the study and associate at the chair of political economist David Stadelmann at Bayreuth University. “We can assume that this increase in 2020 is almost exclusively due to the fact that participation in the runoff elections was easy for all eligible voters and possible without additional effort because of the postal vote.”
On the other hand, local peculiarities, such as close competition for the mayoral office or different popularity ratings of the candidates, played no role.
At the same time, the research team looked into the question of whether incumbents or challengers benefited from this constellation: “An increase in voter turnout by ten percentage points, which has nothing to do with the local political characteristics, leads on average to a statistically robust increase in the share of votes for incumbent mayors by an average of 3.4 percentage points,” said Stadelmann. “If the local political competition is rather weak, their share of the vote even increases by more than five percentage points.”
The Bertelsmann Foundation’s electoral law expert, Robert Vehrkamp, answered the question of whether the automatic sending of postal ballot papers increases voter turnout with a resounding yes. However, the postal voting discourse in Germany is always a risky discourse. “You don’t discuss it as an opportunity.” However, the risks cannot be proven empirically. There are no examples that more postal voting leads to problems. “The opportunities are overlooked.”
In Germany, however, there is more of a discussion about the fact that the postal voting rate is too high. However, he would put up a warning sign if the application for postal voting was again handled more restrictively: “Postal voters do not become ballot box voters, they become non-voters.” Alleged security concerns can be eliminated by making postal voting instruments even more secure.