In The Politics of Ballot Design, Erik J. Engstrom and Jason M. Roberts investigate the causes and consequences of ballot reforms in the United States from 1888 to the present. They illustrate how parties have manipulated ballot designs throughout history to tilt the rules in their favor. Although ballot design has featured prominently in the study of elections and institutions throughout the last 50 years, until now, many of the intended and unintended consequences of ballot reform have gone unexamined. As a result, this book charts a new path for research on ballot design.

In investigating the evolution of ballot architecture across the US, the book highlights one of the biggest challenges for accountability in American democracy: the people who have the power to make and alter election laws are the same people who stand to benefit from those laws. In other words, elected officials in state legislatures and local governments are largely responsible for setting electoral laws—the same laws that are used to elect them and their co-partisans in the US Congress. To elucidate this conflict of interest, the authors craft a fascinating narrative about leaders throughout history manipulating ballot forms to advantage incumbents.

Empirically, the breadth of the book is unparalleled. The authors amass a wealth of historical and contemporary data on ballot reforms, turnout, election results, and even legislative behavior to offer the most comprehensive study of the causes and consequences of ballot features in US politics to date. Although this captivating read makes numerous contributions, the most innovative aspect of the book was to move beyond the well-trodden focus of how ballot designs affect what happens in the voting booth (e.g., split-ticket voting, roll-off, name order effects) to consider how ballot features affect who turns out to vote and how elected officials behave once in office.

On the front end of elections, Engstrom and Roberts show that ballots influence not only how people vote but also who votes. Specifically, they make a compelling case that ballot designs—namely, the elimination of straight-ticket voting (STV)—was used to suppress African American voters across the American South, and that politicians are generally aware of the racial implications of this ballot choice. STV allows voters to vote for every candidate competing under a party name by simply ticking one box. This method is more efficient for voters who prefer to support candidates from the same party. In the absence of an STV option, voting is more costly: it takes individual voters more time to fill out their ballot, and the extra time individuals spend at the ballot box accumulates in longer lines at the polls, dissuading voters from turning out. Consequently, on average, elections without STV options experience lower voter turnout. Importantly, these deleterious effects are not evenly distributed across eligible voters. The elimination of STV resulted in a sharper decline in turnout among African American voters—a stronghold of the Democratic Party—because longer lines were systematically more likely to occur in African American neighborhoods.

Ballot design also affects the election aftermath. Ballots can either be organized by grouping all candidates from the same political party together or by grouping all candidates competing for the same office together—that is, the party column ballot and office block ballot, respectively. Incumbents competing on office block ballots and ballots without provisions for STV benefit more from name recognition than those on the party column ballot and ballots with STV. This encourages incumbents to spend more time developing their individual reputation by sponsoring more legislation, investing more effort in becoming effective legislators, and being more strategic in their decisions to align with the president on key roll-call votes.

In moving the ballot design conversation beyond the voting booth, Engstrom and Roberts stimulate opportunities to think more broadly about the implications of ballot reforms. Not only is the legacy of using ballot features to suppress voter turnout important for understanding ongoing narratives around voter election reforms, but this finding also incites curiosity about how ballot features nudge other pre-ballot-box behavior. Most obviously, scholars could consider what other groups are systematically disadvantaged by longer lines. The effects of ballot design also likely extend beyond voters, informing how parties and candidates campaign for elections.

Furthermore, although Engstrom and Roberts show that the strength of incumbent congressional candidates is more likely to “scare off” challengers in districts with office block ballots and no STV option (p. 71), when challengers do emerge, we may observe more political outsiders or third-party candidates. Because party brand is less important for candidates competing on these ballot types, charismatic political outsiders and third-party candidates may have more opportunities to make a name for themselves. By the same logic, to the extent that individual vote-earning attributes such as gender, race, class, or occupation cue voters, these attributes may be more influential when candidates compete on office block and non-STV ballots.

Finally, the findings from this book introduce a tension surrounding the best ballot features for holding politicians accountable—a keystone of democracy. Future work should consider whether non-STV and office block ballots do more to decrease or increase accountability at the polls. On the one hand, the elimination of STV decreases turnout, which is bad for accountability. Politicians elected by a specific subset of voters may only feel compelled to represent that portion of the population, and they are less likely to be punished for neglecting other constituents. On the other hand, because non-STV and office block ballots force voters to select individual candidates, rather than simply voting the party line, these features may better equip voters to hold elected officials accountable. Indeed, Engstrom and Roberts show that members of Congress elected on these ballots behave as though they are subject to more accountability from voters—sponsoring more legislation, exercising more discretion when siding with the president, and being more effective legislators. These two different findings—that non-STV and office block ballots decrease accountability via low turnout and that they increase accountability—have important, yet divergent, implications for democracy. Future research should disentangle this relationship. Although it is unlikely that ballot architects can reconcile this tension by focusing exclusively on ballot features, simply investing more in election administration could ameliorate long lines and encourage turnout. Of course, from a practical standpoint, finding solutions to these challenges will likely be thwarted by the underlying conflict of interest that governs election laws more broadly.

The Politics of Ballot Design—a must-read for scholars interested in understanding how institutions structure political outcomes—is sure to inspire a wealth of new research. Engstrom and Roberts encourage us to think beyond the ballot box to consider a myriad of ways that ballot design influences who votes, which politicians are elected, and how politicians behave once they are in office. The findings from this book have major normative implications. As we watch another wave of contentious battles over voting rights play out in state legislatures across the nation, this all-too-familiar story of politicians manipulating institutions to secure their party’s electoral fortunes is a tangible reminder of the stakes of election law reform. Consequently, this timely chronicle of the pivotal role that election laws play in shaping the course of American democracy will also be of interest to a wide range of stakeholders beyond the academy.