Abstract
We explore whether voters' willingness to approve government spending in bond elections is affected by how costs are presented. Using an original survey experiment, we examine willingness to approve bonds, randomizing both the total cost of the bond and the framing of the cost as either a personal cost or an aggregate amount. We find that respondents are less supportive of bonds when the bond is framed as a personal expense and that respondents are more cost-responsive when they see personal costs. There is also substantial heterogeneity based on the respondent's partisanship and the policy domain of the bond.
Key Takeaways
- States and local governments are often constitutionally required to ask voters in elections for permission to issue debt in the form of government bonds. These bond questions appear on the ballot and must be presented to voters for approval. Some jurisdictions have laws about how bond amounts must appear on the ballot. For example, some require individual cost translations, others require individual cost translations to be part of a voter information packet, and in others, no cost translation is required nor is it standard practice. Many jurisdictions simply have a choice about how they present bond amounts and their impact to voters in terms of presenting an aggregate bond amount or an individual cost expectation. Election planners also make choices about how to ask voters to approve bond amounts; they can ask voters to approve a smaller bond amount and go back to the voters each time more funds for the same issue are needed or ask the voters for a large amount that will fund that area of investment for many years. We investigate the impact of these choices—size of the bond and if it is presented as an aggregate or personal cost amount—on voter support.
- As the size of a bond increases, voter support decreases. However, the decrease in support for ballots using aggregate amounts is minimal.
- Voters who are given individual cost projections on a ballot are more cost-responsive than voters who see aggregate bond amounts. This is particularly true for bond projects that are less popular.
- These findings indicate that requirements that jurisdictions share individual cost projections on the ballot, or decisions by election officials to do so, will have a greater impact on bond referenda for large amounts than for those with smaller amounts, and on projects that have lower baseline support. Taken holistically, the results support concerns about the ability of citizens to reasonably evaluate the spending they are required to approve through bond elections.