• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. vote by mail>

Voting by mail is mostly a mental exercise. Here's how to get past 3 hangups.

Jess Riegel
June 09, 2020
Woman confused at desk

Unfamiliarity, hassle factors and procrastination can all keep people from voting, writes Motivote's Jess Riegel.

JGI/Tom Grill/Getty Images
Riegel is the co-founder of Motivote, a company that uses behavioral economics to help businesses, advocacy groups and candidates engage younger people and boost election turnout.

Here's a situation many may face this fall: The deadline to ask for an absentee ballot is a week away. You head to your state's website and download the PDF of the form to be mailed in. But your printer is out of ink, and expected delivery is one week out.

You tell yourself you'll come back and figure something out. But all the sudden it's six days later and you're about to miss the deadline, despite your best intentions.

Voting by mail will be a powerful tool for ensuring voters make their voices heard during the coronavirus pandemic. To set it up for success this fall, there is no shortage of steps the government must take — from ensuring local election office capacity to shoring up the Postal Service.

But there is also a human angle: To maximize use of mailed-in ballots, we need to understand and plan for how humans react to unfamiliar and somewhat complicated tasks that lack clear deadlines.

Unfamiliarity, hassle factors and procrastination. Those are labels for three behavioral breakdowns that people will confront. They cause a drop-off between having an intention to do something and actually taking action. Here's how we can help voters overcome these breakdowns for vote-by-mail, using what we know from the field of behavioral science.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Unfamiliarity. For many, absentee voting is a new and unfamiliar process. For younger people, they aren't accustomed to communicating by mail at all. Anything new has a learning curve — and unfamiliarity can be compounded by lack of trust. Will my ballot get here on time? Will it be counted?

Solutions start with tapping the power of what's called the familiarity principle: We're more likely to prefer something when we see and hear it more. So election administrators need to start talking about voting by mail now — and not just from a policy perspective. They need to show examples of people requesting ballots and walking through the process — preferably community members and recognized figures, in order to build trust.

Thanks to the power of social norming, people are more likely to do something when they think others are doing it too.

Hassle factors. These are the seemingly trivial things that get in the way of accomplishing a task. Remote voting is filled with them, from trying to find the right information on state websites to tracking down stamps. For many, the anticipation of dealing with these things is enough to cause them to not even want to start.

Reducing the hassle factors of voting by mail demands policy change, effective process design and technological innovation. For example, while some states let voters request ballots online, most absentee voters must still print, sign, stamp and mail their completed ballots. A digital transition would reduce steps and materials required. States could also limit hassle factors by sending every voter a ballot, not waiting for them to ask.

Recognizing these are huge undertakings, entrepreneurs are responding with creative ways to reduce current hassles. MailMyBallot.org lets voters in some states fill out an online form for requesting a ballot from the proper local election official. Vote From Home 2020 enlists volunteers to mail absentee request forms to voters.

Governmental messaging can help people proactively navigate the system. It should give clear direction, without jargon or assumptions about understanding. For example, differentiate between "postmarked by" vs. "received by" and lay out exactly what they mean. Rather than saying a form is "due 7 days before" an election, provide the date — not because it's particularly hard math, but because it's one more to-do that causes people to drop off.

And voters can get bits of actionable information needed to complete a task — the number to call if your requested absentee ballot never arrives — using tools such as VoteAmerica's election office locator.

Procrastination. This can be worse with voting remotely, since there isn't one big moment we're preparing for and experiencing collectively. Without a single Election Day when voting is a priority, it's easy to put it off. In behavioral economics, the "planning fallacy" tells us we're overly optimistic about our ability to finish tasks on time. We don't leave ourselves enough time for the work, or the hiccups that might get in the way.

The first antidote is a clear time limit. Externally imposed deadlines increase follow-through. Deadlines during several weeks when voting-by-mail is possible, such as the newly launched Vote Early Day, will create a signpost to rally around.

After that, we can reward the early birds. Campaigns and colleges can create teams and use competitions to encourage returning their ballots as quickly as possible. Instead of "I Voted" sticker selfies, schools and politicians can encourage the sharing of photos of sealed ballot envelopes going in the mail — or emulate the Baltimore Votes idea of sending swag for voters to show off.

This sharing also taps into the most powerful nudge in voting: peer influence. We're more likely to vote when we know others are, too.

Requesting and returning your ballot early is good for voters because you can't put off something you've already done. And it's good for everyone else: Avoiding a last-minute surge reduces stress on election offices to process ballots -— like we saw in several states with primaries last week.

Helping voters make a plan is another tried-and-true strategy for getting out the vote, because it forces people to think through details and makes intention more real.

In a tool my company built, voters can track their progress through the voting journey, checking off bite-sized actions and celebrating each one. The "endowed progress effect" tells us we're more likely to achieve a goal if we feel we've already made progress toward achieving it. Helping voters see where they are and what comes next increases follow-through.

Avoiding new things, getting discouraged by hassles and putting off tasks that seem annoying — all are part of being human. And it's easy to overlook the seemingly "little things" that shape each voter experience. But if we want to maximize participation in November, we must be clear about the ways behavioral realities can thwart our best intentions, then design strategies for voters to overcome behavioral breakdowns.

From Your Site Articles
  • Vote-by-mail limits challenged in three Southern states - The Fulcrum ›
  • Conservative anti-Trumpers launch vote-by-mail ad campaign - The ... ›
  • Mail-in voting benefits neither party, is nearly fraud-free - The Fulcrum ›
  • Florida settles lawsuit on expanded voting - The Fulcrum ›
  • Wis., Mich., Pa., have mail ballot extensions — for now - The Fulcrum ›
  • Podcasts: How to vote this November - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • NJ DOS - Division of Elections - Vote By Mail ›
  • Vote-by-Mail - Division of Elections - Florida Department of State ›
  • Absentee and Early Voting | USAGov ›
vote by mail

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

It’s the institutional design, stupid! With a parliamentary system, America could avoid gridlock and instability

Milind Thakar
7h

Poll: Americans’ legislative wish list for new congress shows frustration with political systems

Benjamin Clary
7h

Podcast: Why Democrats fail with rural voters

Our Staff
7h

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Our Staff
03 February

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Rabbi Charles Savenor
03 February

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February
Videos

Video: What does it mean to be Black?

Our Staff

Video: The dignity index

Our Staff

Video: The Supreme Court and originalism

Our Staff

Video: How the baby boom changed American politics

Our Staff

Video: What the speakership election tells us about the 118th Congress webinar

Our Staff

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Why Democrats fail with rural voters

Our Staff
7h

Podcast: Anti-racism: The pro-human approach

Our Staff
03 February

Podcast: 2024 Senate: Democrats have a lot of defending to do

Our Staff
02 February

Podcast: Collage: The promise of Black History Month

Our Staff
01 February
Recommended
Video: What does it mean to be Black?

Video: What does it mean to be Black?

It’s the institutional design, stupid! With a parliamentary system, America could avoid gridlock and instability

It’s the institutional design, stupid! With a parliamentary system, America could avoid gridlock and instability

Government
Poll: Americans’ legislative wish list for new congress shows frustration with political systems

Poll: Americans’ legislative wish list for new congress shows frustration with political systems

Government
Podcast: Why Democrats fail with rural voters

Podcast: Why Democrats fail with rural voters

Podcasts
Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take: Religious beliefs

Your Take
Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Remembering the four chaplains eighty years later

Civic Ed