Quoted this Week: How Early Voting Impacts Voter Turnout

Vermonters will go to the polls for the mid-term election today, but early voting in Vermont has already been underway for a month. How will this impact voter turnout? Middlebury’s Bert Johnson explained findings of a study conducted by the University of Wisconsin on Vermont Public Radio.

If the goal of early voting is to increase voter participation, it may be falling short. Johnson, who is associate professor of political science at Middlebury, says that, while early voting is more convenient for people, it does not increase the overall number of people voting.

“The problem with why it decreases turnout appears to be that the people who vote early are the ones who would be most likely to vote anyway, so you’re not actually increasing turnout by making that easier for those folks,” Johnson said. 

Read and listen to the full interview on Vermont Public Radio, published Tuesday, November 4, 2014.