Voting Technology, Political Competition, and Clientelism

I study a natural experiment in an election where voters were quasi-randomly assigned to either electronic voting machines (EVMs) or paper ballots. The setting is the 2006 municipal elections in Paraguay, a developing democracy where the strongest parties are right-wing and clientelistic. Similarly to previous studies in the literature, I find that the EVMs “de-facto enfranchised” voters by reducing the number of invalid votes. Yet in contrast to studies in this same literature, I find that clientelistic right-wing incumbents benefit most from EVMs instead of left-wing parties. My results are stronger for the municipal council races, particularly in municipalities with higher rates of illiteracy and poverty. My findings suggest that EVMs are more likely to enfranchise illiterate voters, and that poorer and illiterate voters are most likely to be captured by clientelistic parties. Hence, voters enfranchised by EVMs may be captured by clientelistic parties depending on the political context, showing how the political party system mediates the electoral effect of EVMs.

Draft available by request