Cheap, But Still Not Effective: An Experiment Showing that Indiana’s Online Registration System Fails to Make Email an Effective Way to Register New Voters

Abstract

We conducted a randomized voter registration field experiment including 7,366 trackable students at a public Indiana university. Consistent with prior research, we found no effect from emails linking students to traditional downloadable forms. Contrary to our hypothesis, Indiana’s new online voter registration system did not boost the effectiveness of email outreach in generating new registrations.