Election systems and voter turnout: Experiments in the United States

Theory suggests that majoritarian/plurality elections depress voter partici pation and that proportional election systems encourage greater voter mobil ization and turnout. We examine the effect that cumulative voting (CV) has on turnout in local elections in the U.S. Variation in social/cultural cont ext is largely held constant by our design while election system varies, al lowing us to identify the unique effect CV has on turnout. We test if turno ut is higher when CV is used in the same context as plurality rules. Consis tent with expectations about institutional effects, turnout is about 5 perc entage points higher under CV than in similar plurality elections.