What are the benefits of electronic voting in Brazilian states?

Responsible researcher: Viviane Pires Ribeiro

Paper Title: Voting technology, political responsiveness, and infant health: Evidence from Brazil

Authors: Thomas Fujiwara

Intervention Location: Brazil

Sample Size: 5281 Brazilian municipalities

Major theme: Economic Policy and Governance

Variable of Main Interest: Voting technology

Type of Intervention: Analysis of electronic voting technology in Brazilian elections

Methodology: Discontinuous regression

Exploring a regression discontinuity design on the attribution of voting technology in the 1998 election, Fujiwara (2015) estimates the effects of electronic voting technology on reducing a “simple” but nonetheless important obstacle to political participation: difficulty in operating electoral ballots. The results indicate that electronic voting actually caused a great emancipation of voters with less education, which led to the election of more left-wing state candidates, increased spending on public health, utilization (prenatal visits) and child health (weight at birth). The results are consistent with the predictions of political economy models and demonstrate that electronic voting can promote the political empowerment of the low-income population and raise their living standards.

Assessment Context

Filling out an electoral ballot may be a trivial task for educated citizens in developed countries, but the same is not true in Brazil, where 23% of adults over the age of 25 are “unable to read and write a simple message” and 42% did not complete 4th grade education. Furthermore, paper ballots required Brazilian voters to write down the candidate's name or electoral number and did not provide visual aids. The combination of these two factors resulted in a significant number of blank and error-filled votes in the elections, generating a large number of residual votes (not attributed to a candidate and discarded from the results calculation).

In the mid-1990s, the Brazilian government developed electronic voting technology to replace paper ballots. While its introduction was intended to reduce the time and cost of counting votes, other features of the technology, such as using photos of candidates as a visual aid, using error messages for voters about to cast residual votes, and guiding the voting process step-by-step voting, made voting easier and reduced errors.

State elections are held in Brazil every four years, and all states have the same election date. In the 1990 and 1994 elections, only paper ballots were used. In the 1998 elections, the electoral authority decided that only municipalities with more than 40,500 registered voters (in 1996, when municipal elections took place) would use the new electronic technology, while municipalities below this threshold would use paper ballots. The allocation rule was adopted due to the manufacturer's limited production capacity and economies of scale in distribution in large municipalities. In the following election, electronic voting became the only method of collecting votes.

Intervention Details

Exploring a discontinuous regression design in the attribution of voting technology in the 1998 election, Fujiwara (2015) studies the introduction of electronic voting technology in Brazilian elections, more specifically, the author estimates the effects of electronic voting technology in reducing a “simple” but still important obstacle to political participation: difficulty in operating electoral ballots.

Information on voter registration, participation and electoral results at the municipal level was obtained from the federal electoral authority. The institution also published reports listing the municipalities that used electronic voting, showing almost perfect compliance with the discontinuous allocation rule. All 307 municipalities (out of 5281) above the 40,500 voter cutoff used electronic voting in 1998. Additional data on municipal characteristics are from 1991 Brazilian Census tabulations.

According to the author, the main result of interest is the number of valid (i.e., non-residual) votes. A vote is considered valid if, and only if, it can be attributed to a particular candidate or party and then counted in their vote share. An invalid vote is defined as a residual vote. Therefore, participation is equal to the sum of valid and residual votes. A vote cast on a paper ballot is considered residual if it is left blank or if the name or number written on the ballot does not match a candidate. In electronic voting, a residual vote can be cast by pressing the “blank” button or by typing and confirming a number that does not correspond to any candidate.

Methodology Details

The state-level results explore the fact that discontinuous attribution in the 1998 elections created specific and unusual differences in exposure time across states. The progressive introduction of the new technology was carried out in three consecutive elections held in 1994, 1998 and 2002.

In 1994, only paper ballots were used. In 1998, there was discontinuous allocation with counties above 40,500 registered voters using new electronic technology, while counties below that threshold used paper ballots. In 2002, only electronic voting was used. Such programming implies that the evolution of electronic voting in a state is entirely determined by a time-invariant cross-sectional variable: the proportion of voters living in municipalities above the cutoff point for its use in 1998.

If a state has S% of its voters living above the cutoff threshold, S% of its voters went from using paper to using electronic voting technology between the 1994 and 1998 elections. Furthermore, between the 1998 and 2002 elections, the remaining (1-S)% of voters switched to electronic voting. Consequently, states with higher voter turnout above the 40,500 voter threshold experienced most of the disenfranchisement effects of electronic voting before states with lower turnout. Intuitively, the empirical strategy tests whether the results of interest follow this same pattern.

Results

Estimates that exploit a regression discontinuity design embedded in its phase-in over time indicate that electronic voting reduced residual votes (full of errors and uncounted) and in fact generated the enfranchisement of a large fraction (11%) of the electorate. This greater political participation of voters with less education (low-income population) generated: (1) an increase in the number of state candidates elected who are themselves less educated; and (2) diversion of government spending to public health, a policy that is particularly beneficial to the low-income population; leading to (3) better use of health services (prenatal visits) by mothers with less education and (4) reduction in the occurrence of births with low birth weight newborns in this group. However, no effects were found on the use of health care by mothers with higher education and on the weight of their newborns.

Estimates indicate that the emancipation of approximately one-tenth of Brazilian voters increased the share of state budgets spent on health care by 3.4 percentage points, increasing spending by 34% over a period of eight years. It also increased adequate prenatal visits for mothers with less education by 7 percentage points and reduced the prevalence of low birth weight births by 0.5 percentage points (respectively, a change of 19% and -6.8% over the averages of sample).

Public Policy Lessons

The study carried out by Fujiwara (2015) quantifies the effects of voting technology in Brazilian state elections, demonstrating that, by facilitating the operation of the ballot boxes, it in fact emancipated a significant number of voters (mostly voters with less education). Estimates that explore the unique pattern of the technology's gradual introduction in states over time suggest that, as predicted by political economy models, it has diverted government spending toward health care, which is particularly beneficial for low-income citizens. . Positive effects on both the use of health services (prenatal consultations) and the health of the newborn (low birth weight births) are also found for mothers with less education, but not for those with more education.

Fujiwara (2015) then argues that this emancipation of less educated citizens actually affected politics in a way consistent with political economy theories of redistribution and democratization. Because discontinuous allocation has been observed in state elections, the author focuses on state government spending, particularly in an area that disproportionately affects the least educated: healthcare. That is, low-income Brazilians rely mainly on a public financing system for health services, while middle- and high-income voters are more likely to use private services.

The less educated population therefore has relatively stronger preferences for public health services, and a change in health care spending can be interpreted as redistribution towards the low-income. Consistent with this interpretation, the author also found evidence that electronic voting increased the number of prenatal consultations by health professionals and reduced the prevalence of low weight births (below 2,500 g) by women with less education.

Finally, the author makes a small caveat, that is, the estimated effects may depend on a particular context. The level of literacy required to operate paper ballots is greater in contexts with more candidates than in contexts with fewer candidates, where the candidates' name and photo can be listed. The other results may also depend on characteristics of the Brazilian political and health system. However, the study exemplifies how increasing political participation by disadvantaged groups can change policymaking and affect outcomes and, more importantly, provides evidence supporting general mechanisms in redistributive policy.

References

FUJIWARA, Thomas. Voting technology, political responsiveness, and infant health: Evidence from Brazil. Econometrica , v. 83, no. 2, p. 423-464, 2015.