Counties that have adopted the Voter’s Choice Act (VCA), a reform designed to ease voting and boost turnout in California, have seen mixed results. PPIC policy director Eric McGhee recently discussed new findings on the effects of the VCA on turnout and shared insights on improving voting reforms and participation.

The Voter’s Choice Act is one of the most important reforms California passed in recent years that applies strictly to the process of voting rather than registration, McGhee explained. Because most large counties have adopted the VCA, about three-quarters of California voters are now covered by the system.

“Counties decide whether they want to adopt the system … it’s voluntary. But if they make the switch, all of the changes have to be adopted together,” McGhee said. The main changes include sending all voters a mail-in ballot; switching from traditional, neighborhood polling places staffed by volunteers to fewer professionally staffed vote centers available to all county residents; and providing a certain number of drop boxes available 28 days before the election. Since the pandemic, every Californian already receives a mail-in ballot by default; thus, the VCA now largely changes the in-person voting experience.

To identify the effects of the VCA, McGhee examined the 2018 and 2022 midterms and the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, comparing counties that switched to the VCA to those that used the same system in both elections.

In the midterms, turnout declined between 2018 and 2022; and while turnout fell across the state, it fell less so in counties that had not recently switched to the VCA. Meanwhile, the opposite was true for presidential elections: turnout fell less in VCA counties that recently made the switch. McGhee noted that the dynamics of turnout in these elections are different, as are the voters. “Presidential elections draw in a lot of people” and the voting history of those participants can vary.

McGhee considered whether a change in distance to the nearest voting location explained the drop in turnout. “What we would expect if there was an effect [on turnout because of] distance … turnout should decline as you move farther away,” McGhee said. VCA counties offer fewer locations, placing the nearest site farther away for the median voter.

But distance had little effect on turnout for most voters. In fact, participation has been slightly higher for voters farthest from their nearest voting location, a phenomenon that may be explained by access to mail-in voting. However, those who experienced greater disruption to voting—people who have a history of less consistent turnout or of voting in-person—had a bigger drop in turnout, especially among Latino voters in the midterm and Black voters in the presidential election.

To improve future voting reforms and participation, McGhee recommended better outreach to those who tend to vote in person, especially during the midterms—with a caveat that adding more locations does not appear to boost participation in California. In particular, the drop in turnout among Latino and Black voters was a result that McGhee felt warranted more detailed research to gain a stronger understanding of the voter experience.