If you put just five more items on a ballot, 1% of people will just stay home instead of voting.
March 20, 2026
Original Paper
Long Ballots Reduce Voter Turnout
SocArXiv · j5gx3_v1
The Takeaway
The cognitive burden of evaluating too many candidates and issues acts as a literal barrier to democracy. In California, longer ballots caused thousands of people to stay home entirely rather than just skipping the lower-level contests, with the effect being most pronounced among younger and less-educated voters.
From the abstract
The costs of voting are not only administrative and logistical – they are also embedded in the choices that voters are asked to make. I argue that when elections ask voters to evaluate more choices, some individuals will abstain from the voting process entirely. Using individual-level turnout and ballot length data from eight California counties across three election cycles in difference-in-differences design, I find that five to six additional contests reduce voter turnout by 1% (pp), on averag