More on Lagging Ballots (chapter summary)

Distributional analysis of ballot turnaround times shows that Republican returns were not merely a few days slower than those of Democrats, but disproportionately clustered in longer-delay categories, with a heavier tail extending one to two weeks beyond county-specific means. Exploiting cross-county variation in ballot distribution timing, the analysis finds that counties with earlier Democratic ballot send-outs reached peak cumulative return gaps sooner than slower counties, a pattern more consistent with supply-side distribution dynamics than with synchronized “holdout” behavior among Republican voters. These temporal relationships, replicated across multiple county groupings, reinforce the inference that supply-side vulnerabilities—rather than delayed voter intent alone—likely contributed to the systematic lag in Republican ballot returns.