Early Voting and Electoral Integrity

The option of early voting is increasingly used by citizens in many countries. Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, the possibilities of voting by mail or absentee ballot are increasingly becoming the focus of social debates. The regional elections in France, the presidential election in Poland and, of course, the debate on the US presidential elections illustrate two politically relevant issues: First, the connection between postal voting and electoral integrity, and second, the party-political character. The first topic deals, among other things, with questions of the balance of different electoral principles (such as free and secret ballot on the one hand and universal or general suffrage on the other), which would have to be rebalanced due to the increased use of postal voting (especially now in times of a pandemic). Moreover, with regard to the integrity of the electoral process, not only the freedom and secrecy of the ballot are affected – in the case of postal voting, there is no guarantee that voters themselves will cast their votes without interference or pressure from others. In addition, when comparing voting on election day and voting by mail, the technical and administrative procedures of the election are even more important for the latter. How can disruptions and manipulations during the transport and counting of the postal ballot documents be guaranteed? How do the procedures differ in different countries? In addition to these questions of the organization, i.e. the objective dimensions, this workshop will also address the subjective dimension of the topic: the perception and evaluation of the possibilities of early voting by citizens. How much trust do citizens have in the postal vote? How do they assess the integrity of the postal vote compared to voting on election day? Here the second topic plays a prominent role: The supporters of which parties or, more generally speaking, which social groups have a greater inclination to vote by mail and which ones are more likely to reject it? What are the different motives of citizens to (not) use postal voting and for what different reasons do they reject or approve of it? The workshop aims to cover this broad range of topics both from an in-depth as well as comparative perspective (across countries and over time).