Calling for the Vote: A Descriptive Analysis of Calls to the Election Protection Hotline During 2020
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In my thesis, I explore the present-day actualization of voting rights. After the dismantling of the preclearance requirement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) with the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), what are the contemporary challenges to accessing the franchise, and do those challenges impact communities unevenly? Do historically marginalized communities experience increased burdens in exercising their rights? Is it more challenging for individuals to vote in counties that were previously subject to preclearance but no longer need approval to alter voting procedures? Utilizing a novel data source, Election Protection Hotline data, I analyze the nearly 200,000 reports of voting challenges and questions that the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil rights received during the calendar year of 2020. With a three-pronged research design, first, I offer a state-level descriptive investigation of calls to the Hotline in ten states that met a threshold based on Google Trends results. Second, I focus specifically on four states to compare county-level census demographic information from the American Communities Survey (ACS) and Hotline call volume by county relative to the population. Specifically, I use regression analysis to see how race, median household income, and unemployment rate affect call volume. Finally, I exploit the pre-Shelby County county-to- county variation in preclearance coverage in North Carolina to compare the frequency of calls in localities that were previously covered by preclearance with places that were not covered, investigating the consequences of the Shelby County majority opinion for voters. My results indicate that counties with a larger Black or African American population reported more voting challenges to the Election Protection Hotline. My research also shows that individuals reported more challenges voting in counties that are no longer constrained by the VRA, suggesting that preclearance remains a vital tool to protect minority voting rights and prevent democratic backsliding.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | July 11, 2022; June 2, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Schroeder, Eleanor |
|---|---|
| Department | Political Science |
| Degree granting institution | Stanford University |
| Thesis advisor | Bonica, Adam |
Subjects
| Subject | Voting Rights Act of 1965 (United States) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Election law |
| Subject | Elections |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Schroeder, E., Political Science, and Stanford University (2022). Calling for the Vote: A Descriptive Analysis of Calls to the Election Protection Hotline During 2020. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/cq284vh8219
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Stanford University, Department of Political Science, Undergraduate Thesis Collection
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