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The goal of this dissertation is to aid our understanding of how electoral institutions in the United States affect political participation and, in turn, shape policy outcomes. I investigate this relationship by analyzing the all-mail balloting method known as Vote By Mail. Using a data set of 3310 cases representing elections in 7 states, I show that the use of Vote By Mail produces an overall effect of a 10 percentage point increase in turnout across all types of elections. This finding is consistent with past research, which states that the increase in turnout occurs because Vote By Mail, sim-ilar to other "ease of voting " reforms, reduces the cost of voting. As an alternative hypothesis, I propose that the turnout increase from Vote By Mail is a more nuanced effect, moderated by the salience of a given election. I then organize these elections into low salience and high salience categories, and demonstrate that the turnout ef-fect is more nuanced than previously thought. The implementation of Vote By Mail produces turnout effects that increase in magnitude as the salience of the election de-creases, with a range from 3.4 percentage points increase in the high salience categor