IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v708y2023i1p243-256.html

Which States Adopt Election-Subversion Policies?

Author

Listed:
  • Jacob M. Grumbach
  • Charlotte Hill

Abstract

Research highlights a growing divergence among U.S. states in their costs of voting, the partisan balance of their legislative districts, and the responsiveness of state policy to public opinion. Less is known, however, about a new and acute threat to democracy at the state level: policies that increase the states’ vulnerability to election subversion. In this article, we investigate recent trends in state legislation that transfer election administration authority from independent to partisan actors, making it more likely that a losing presidential candidate could take office over the will of the electorate. We find that Republican control of state legislatures and the closeness of the 2020 presidential election are associated with these policies. Interestingly, these policies are mostly uncorrelated with gerrymandering and voter suppression policies that were enacted in the 2010s. We conclude with a discussion of how a recent Electoral Count Act reform in Congress partly mitigates the risk of election subversion.

Suggested Citation

  • Jacob M. Grumbach & Charlotte Hill, 2023. "Which States Adopt Election-Subversion Policies?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 708(1), pages 243-256, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:708:y:2023:i:1:p:243-256
    DOI: 10.1177/00027162241232809
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162241232809
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00027162241232809?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Malzahn, Janet & Hall, Andrew B., 2023. "Election-Denying Republican Candidates Underperformed in the 2022 Midterms," Research Papers 4076, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    2. Biggers, Daniel R. & Smith, Daniel A., 2020. "Does threatening their franchise make registered voters more likely to participate? Evidence from an aborted voter purge," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(3), pages 933-954, July.
    3. Arriola, Leonardo R. & Devaro, Jed & Meng, Anne, 2021. "Democratic Subversion: Elite Cooptation and Opposition Fragmentation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 115(4), pages 1358-1372, November.
    4. M. Keith Chen & Kareem Haggag & Devin G. Pope & Ryne Rohla, 2022. "Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1341-1350, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kyle Raze, 2022. "Voting rights and the resilience of Black turnout," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(3), pages 1127-1141, July.
    2. Klopack, Ben & Luco, Fernando, 2025. "JUE Insight: Measuring local consumption with payment cards and cell phone pings," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    3. Billings, Stephen B. & Braun, Noah & Jones, Daniel & Shi, Ying, 2022. "Disparate Racial Impacts of Shelby County v. Holder on Voter Turnout," IZA Discussion Papers 15829, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. Miguel Cuellar & Hyunseok Jung, 2025. "Mass Shootings, Community Mobility, and the Relocation of Economic Activity," Papers 2502.19640, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    5. Makoto Fukumoto, 2025. "Who Traded Away Democracy? Business-Backed Legislators during the Democratic Backsliding in Japan 1936-1942," Working Papers 2504, Waseda University, Faculty of Political Science and Economics.
    6. Susana Mondschein & Marcelo Olivares & Fernando Ordóñez & Daniel Schwartz & Andres Weintraub & Ignacio Torres-Ulloa & Cristian Aguayo & Gianpiero Canessa, 2022. "Service Design to Balance Waiting Time and Infection Risk: An Application for Elections During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Service Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(2), pages 90-109, June.
    7. Pradhi Aggarwal & Alec Brandon & Ariel Goldszmidt & Justin Holz & John List & Ian Muir & Gregory Sun & Thomas Yu, 2022. "High-frequency location data shows that race affects the likelihood of being stopped and fined for speeding," Natural Field Experiments 00764, The Field Experiments Website.
    8. Bloem, Michael D. & Holbein, John B. & Imlay, Samuel J. & Smith, Jonathan, 2025. "Voting Among Siblings," IZA Discussion Papers 17962, IZA Network @ LISER.
    9. Milena Almagro & Joshua Coven & Arpit Gupta & Angelo Orane-Hutchinson, 2020. "Racial Disparities in Frontline Workers and Housing Crowding during COVID-19: Evidence from Geolocation Data," Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers 37, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    10. Painter, Marcus & Qiu, Tian, 2021. "Political beliefs affect compliance with government mandates," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 185(C), pages 688-701.
    11. Gupta, Arpit & Van Nieuwerburgh, Stijn & Kontokosta, Constantine, 2022. "Take the Q train: Value capture of public infrastructure projects," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    12. Ryan C. Briggs, 2024. "Aid targeting," Chapters, in: Raj M. Desai & Shantayanan Devarajan & Jennifer L. Tobin (ed.), Handbook of Aid and Development, chapter 10, pages 159-173, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    13. Falkenberg, Max & Cinelli, Matteo & Galeazzi, Alessandro & Bail, Christopher A. & Benito, Rosa & Bruns, Axel & Gruzd, Anatoliy & Lazer, David & Lee, Jae K. & McCoy, Jennifer, 2025. "Towards global equity in political polarization research," OSF Preprints 3wzfq_v1, Center for Open Science.
    14. Holt, Stephen B & Vinopal, Katie M., 2021. "It's About Time: Examining Inequality in the Time Cost of Waiting," SocArXiv jbk3x, Center for Open Science.
    15. Hafner-Burton, Emilie M & Schneider, Christina J, 2023. "The International Liberal Foundations of Democratic Backsliding," Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, Working Paper Series qt0965w1jb, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California.
    16. repec:osf:socarx:q3xb8_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Billings, Stephen B. & Braun, Noah & Jones, Daniel B. & Shi, Ying, 2024. "Disparate racial impacts of Shelby County v. Holder on voter turnout," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 230(C).
    18. Susan Athey & Billy A. Ferguson & Matthew Gentzkow & Tobias Schmidt, 2020. "Experienced Segregation," NBER Working Papers 27572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Theresa Kuchler & Johannes Stroebel, 2022. "Social Interactions, Resilience, and Access to Economic Opportunity: A Research Agenda for the Field of Computational Social Science," CESifo Working Paper Series 9606, CESifo.
    20. Almagro, Milena & Coven, Joshua & Gupta, Arpit & Orane-Hutchinson, Angelo, 2023. "Disparities in COVID-19 risk exposure: Evidence from geolocation data," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C).
    21. Craig Palsson, 2022. "The medium‐run effects of a foreign election intervention: Haiti's presidential elections, 2010–2015," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(2), pages 369-390, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:708:y:2023:i:1:p:243-256. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.