Vall-Prat, PauRodon i Casarramona, Antoni2025-05-072025-05-072025Vall-Prat P, Rodon T. Working for democracy: poll officers and the turnout gender gap. Br J Polit Sci. 2025;55:e40. DOI: 10.1017/S00071234240002800007-1234http://hdl.handle.net/10230/70316Supplementary materials files: online appendix; replication data.What factors contribute to closing the turnout gender gap after female enfranchisement? In the wake of franchise expansion, we test whether being a poll officer-and hence being exposed to election management-boosted the politicisation and mobilisation of women. In the context of the Spanish Second Republic (1931-1939), we exploit a lottery that assigned recently enfranchised women to be poll officers in the first election women were allowed to vote (1933). We use an original individual-level panel database and show that women randomly selected as polling officers were as likely to participate in subsequent elections than men, while the gender turnout gap persisted among the rest. Further analyses suggest that being poll officers made women more receptive to political organisations mobilisation strategies, and their presence had positive externalities by encouraging other women to participate. Our findings highlight the potential benefits of exposure to election engineering among groups previously excluded or less engaged with democracy.application/pdfeng© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that no alterations are made and the original article is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained prior to any commercial use and/or adaptation of the article.info:eu-repo/semantics/article2025-05-07http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000280Turnout gender gapPoll officersEnfranchisementFemale suffrageHistorical natural experimentinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess