Data details

The files below have all of the Cost of Voting Index values, rankings, and policies for each of the 50 states for presidential elections going back to 1996, in an Excel file. 

Please cite the Election Law Journal articles above if you use this data.  

Codebook for Cost of Voting Index file 

statenu: is the state number  state: the two letter abbreviation for the corresponding state  year: year of the presidential election 

InitialCOVI: the Cost of Voting Index value, as calculated in the above publications.

InitialRank: the interval measure of the original index values. This ranking allows for comparison of a state across election years. Lower numbers indicate a lower cost and higher numbers indicate a higher cost  

FinalCOVI: During the peer review process for our 2020 COVI publication, reviewers suggested we go back and modify the calculation of our earlier measures (1996-2016) to include some of the new policy considerations included in the 2020 Index. These revised COVI values are based on considerations not included in the original Election Law Journal publication (2018). The Final COVI values are improved and we would like to recommend scholars and practitioners use the Final COVI Values and Final Ranks in any subsequent analyses. Moreover, during the process of redoing the earlier years some coding errors were uncovered and fixed, including some errors in the 2020 COVI. Original index values correlate with the final index values r =.75 , p < .001.

FinalRank: Ranking of states, in each election cycle, based on the revised COVI values. Original rankings and final rankings correlate at r =.72, p < .001.  

Covid-19 and the 2020 Presidential Election The original measure of the 2020 Cost of Voting Index (COVI) captures only enshrined electioneering practices and does not count temporary changes adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  We do not provide any allowances for temporary policies related to voting in the original measure, because our intention is to develop a measure of electoral climate that is a reflection of more institutionalized practices. However, we have collected data on the adoption of temporary election policies to create a second index for 2020, the Covid-19 Cost of Voting Index (COVID-COVI).  This index is included in the excel file below In columns H and I. Values for the COVID-COVI are "as of" Election Day.