http://newswire.uark.edu/article.aspx?id=16465FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – A new study initiated by undergraduate research at the University of Arkansas Honors College shows that quick signatures on a ballot initiative have a powerful effect on getting out the vote. Janine Parry, a political science professor in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and her honors student Shayne Henry, along with colleague Dan Smith of the University of Florida, have demonstrated for the first time that signing ballot initiatives propels individual voters to the polls.
Their finding was initiated by Shayne Henry’s Honors College thesis, which used a newly available online tool to examine voter response to Arkansas Act 1 of 2008, an initiated act that proposed restricting adoption and foster care in Arkansas to married couples. Henry’s findings were relatively modest, but were later expanded to include statewide and municipal anti-gay ballot initiatives in Florida. A municipal election in Gainesville, Fla., in particular provided compelling evidence that citizens who sign petitions go on to cast a vote on the issue. All of the samples showed that petition signing is especially persuasive among irregular voters. Their findings will be published in the journal Political Behavior next year and are currently available online.....
That study found that even “functionally inactive” voters who hadn’t voted in previous elections were twice as likely to vote in the election if they were one of the roughly 6,000 who had signed a petition against an ordinance that extended civil rights to gay and transgendered people.
“It’s really fascinating to see how people think, and how they turn out, when issues are close to home,” Henry said. “Political parties have invested so much in the idea that you can energize your base around core values, but this has never been pushed or tested. It turns out that this idea is true.”
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