Ballot Order, Ballot Roll-Off, and Election Outcomes: Evidence from Local Referenda in Ohio.

According to Ohio law, the ballot order of local referenda rotates annually, based on the level of administrative division (municipalities, townships, school districts, and counties) in which a particular referendum is contested. This provides a source of variation in ballot ordering of referenda that is potentially exogenous to unobservable characteristics of referenda and the administrative divisions in which they take place. We construct a dataset of tax and bond referenda contested between 2000 and 2012 that includes counts of yes and no votes, as well as counts of the number of voters who cast ballots as residents of the administrative division in which any referendum was contested. Using this data, we estimate the effect of a referendum's ballot position on the likelihood that voters at the ballot box will abstain from casting a yes or no vote on that referendum. We also consider the effect of ballot position on the likelihood that a particular referendum passes on votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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