Policy Brief: How the Voter’s Choice Act Changed Turnout in California

To bring more people to the polls-especially voters from underrepresented groups-and to make voting more flexible, California passed the Voter's Choice Act (2016): VCA counties send a mail ballot to all voters while consolidating in-person options into fewer and larger "vote centers" available to any voter in the county. But so far, the VCA effects on voter turnout have been mixed. The statewide policy to send mail ballots to all voters as of the 2020 election likely muted the effect of the VCA relative to counties that did not adopt the system.

How did switching to the VCA affect different elections and voters?

To understand how the VCA affected turnout, we look at counties before and after they switched to the VCA and compare to control counties-counties with the VCA already in place or with traditional voting systems in both elections. We compare the difference in voter turnout for the 2018 midterm versus the 2022 midterm and the difference in turnout for the 2020 versus the 2024 presidential election.

Between the 2018 and 2022 midterms, turnout fell by about 1.5 percentage points more in VCA-switching counties than in control counties. The opposite was true between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections: turnout was slightly better in VCA-switching counties.

Switching to the VCA appears to have hurt turnout among Latino voters and new young voters (ages 18 or 19) in the 2022 midterm. While turnout improved for VCA counties with the 2024 presidential election among most racial/ethnic groups and new young voters, it changed by far less than one percentage point, except among Black voters-who saw a large drop in turnout in 2024.