Should I Mail or Should I Go: Voting Behavior After a One-Time All-Postal Election

Abstract

We investigate how reducing information costs through forced experimentation with postal voting affects subsequent voting behavior. Leveraging a natural experiment during Bavaria’s 2020 Mayoral Elections, we employ an event study design. We find a transitory increase in total turnout of 0.4 percentage points in the first election after the treatment, and a persistent substitution from in-person to postal voting even five years after the treatment.