African Americans who are exposed to heightened levels of hate crimes in their local communities are more likely to vote by mail rather than in-person, according to a new study from political science scholars at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
For their study, the authors examined FBI county-level data on hate crimes between 2013 and 2016 and results from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, which asked a large sample of American adults how they voted in the 2016 election (voting early in person, voting in person on Election Day, or voting via a mail-in absentee ballot). After controlling for other variables, the authors found that in counties with the lowest levels of hate crimes, some 10 percent of Back voters did so by mail. In counties with a higher prevalence of hate crimes, the share of Black voters who submitted absentee ballots rose to 26 percent.
Similar results were found when analyzing data from the 2020 election, even after accounting for local infection rates from the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the authors’ models found no statistical link between counties’ levels of hate crimes and the voting method of White residents.
As some states have implemented stricter rules regarding absentee voting, the authors suggest that future research is needed to investigate how changes to mail-in voting legislation will impact different populations throughout the country.
