Roll-Off

Roll-off (sometimes called ballot roll-off or ballot fatigue) measures the gap between the number of voters who cast a ballot in the highest-profile race — typically president or governor — and the smaller number who continue voting in less visible contests further down the ballot, such as judicial retention elections, local offices, or ballot measures.

A voter who turns out and marks a presidential choice but leaves the state treasurer or school board line blank has "rolled off." The phenomenon is distinct from abstention (not voting at all) and from undervoting caused by spoiled or unreadable marks, though in practice election officials often report all three together as undervotes.

Political scientists study roll-off as an indicator of:

• Information costs. Voters skip races where they lack knowledge of the candidates, which is especially common in nonpartisan judicial and municipal elections.
• Ballot design. Long ballots, confusing layouts, and races placed after lengthy bond questions tend to produce higher roll-off. Research on the 2000 Florida ballot and on butterfly and straight-ticket ballot reforms highlighted these design effects.
• Race and representation. A line of work beginning with Bullock and Dunn in the 1990s examined whether roll-off is higher in majority-minority districts or in contests featuring minority candidates, with mixed findings.
• Party cues. Roll-off is generally lower in partisan races than in nonpartisan ones because party labels reduce the cost of choosing.

Roll-off is typically expressed as a percentage: (top-race votes − down-ballot votes) ÷ top-race votes. Rates of 5–15% are common for statewide down-ballot offices in U.S. general elections, with substantially higher rates for obscure judicial or special-district seats. Reformers cite roll-off when arguing for shorter ballots, plain-language measure summaries, or moving local elections onto even-year cycles to consolidate attention.