Election-Campaign Law

VRS shows how we?ve changed how we vote

Posted on May 09, 2013
Mike has posted the news that the 2012 Voting and Registration Supplement (VRS) has just been released. This is good news for election geeks all over. One thing the VRS is indispensable for is helping track the evolution of the modes of voting throughout the country...

2012 CPS Election report now available

Posted on May 08, 2013
The CPS has released the 2012 election report, from their 2012 Voting and Registration Supplement. The report can be obtained from this page. The report, “The Diversifying Electorate — Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections)”, looks like an interesting read...

Evaluating Elections ? highlighted in the NCSL?s ?The Canvass?

Posted on May 03, 2013
Our recent book, “Evaluating Elections: A Handbook of Methods and Statistics” (written by Lonna Atkeson, Thad Hall, and myself), was the subject of an article in the current issue of The Canvass: States and Election Reform, from the NCSL. Here’s an excerpts from their interview with Thad: ?We wrote this for a couple of audiences...

Big Data in Political Science

Posted on April 23, 2013
Political Analysis (which I co-edit with fellow VTP-PI Jonathan Katz) just released a ten-article “virtual issue” on Big Data in Political Science. The ten article virtual issue is edited by Burt Monroe, and contains a number of important papers that will be of interest to Election Updates readers...

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Herrnson, Claassen, Niemi and Patterson on voter satisfaction in JOP

Posted on April 16, 2013
Paul Herrnson, Ryan Claasen, Richard Niemi and Kelly Patterson have a new paper in the current issue of JOP, “Exceeding Expectations: Determinants of Satisfaction with the Voting Process in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election.” Here’s the paper’s abstract: The 2000 U...

JETS ? A New Journal for Election Technology!

Posted on March 11, 2013
The USENIX Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS) is now accepting papers! Here’s the website for JETS. And here is the journal overview: In a number of countries, votes are counted and transported electronically, but there are numerous practical and policy implications of introducing electronic machines into the voting process...

Nate Silver on the use of statistics in the recent Supreme Court debates about the VRA

Posted on March 08, 2013
Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight column this morning has an interesting discussion of the use of statistics by Chief Justice Roberts in the recent debates about the VRA in the U.S. Supreme Court, “In Supreme Court Debate on Voting Rights Act, a Dubious Use of Statistics...

Much going on in the world of elections

Posted on March 06, 2013
The past few days have been busy ones for students of elections. There were elections yesterday in the Los Angeles area, including one in my area. My own experience yesterday was quite remarkable, as it was the quickest voting experience, and shortest ballot, that I can remember...

Emily Shen, ?Pattern Matching Encryption, Strategic Equivalence of Range Voting and Approval Voting, and Statistical Robustness of Voting Rules?

Posted on February 19, 2013
Emily Shen, a student working with Ron Rivest at MIT, has just published her Ph.D. thesis, “Pattern Matching Encryption, Strategic Equivalence of Range Voting and Approval Voting, and Statistical Robustness of Voting Rules”. It’s a great thesis, reporting on her research in the area of encryption and election technology...

OSCE/ODIHR releases report on US election observation mission for the November 2012 elections

Posted on February 19, 2013
The OSCE/ODIHR recently released their report from their election observation mission in the US for the 2012 federal elections. Here’s the report.

Updates on the new federal election commission

Posted on February 15, 2013
As Charles noted in his recent post on the new federal election commission, there is a lot of debate swirling around the commission and what it should focus on. Some additional details have come out recently, in particular some details in this morning’s New York Times story on the commission: The White House will also [...

PNAS: ?Field Experiment Estimate of Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections?

Posted on February 15, 2013
I just ran across this recently-published paper in PNAS, by Rubin Enikolopov and colleagues, “Field Experiment Estimate of Electoral Fraud in Russian Parliamentary Elections.” Here is the abstract: Electoral fraud is a widespread phenomenon, especially outside the developed world...

Why the president?s commission is good

Posted on February 13, 2013
There has been a lot of commentary about the president’s election commission today, in response to the State of the Union speech.  This is a busy teaching day for me, so I can’t put in my full two cents on this one, so I’ll add my ha’penny...

President Obama Announces Election Reform Commission

Posted on February 13, 2013
In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama announced the formation of a new election reform commission: When any American — no matter where they live or what their party — are denied that right because they can?t wait for five or six or seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are [...

VTP: Three Problems That Need Immediate Attention

Posted on February 12, 2013
The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has released a post-2012 election update, identifying three problems that need immediate attention. Here’s a summary from the update: First, the U.S. EAC and state and local election officials must study the reasons for long lines in November 2012...

NPR: ?Fixing Long Lines At The Polls May Be Harder Than You Think?

Posted on February 12, 2013
NPR’s story is here, don’t miss the analysis from MIT colleague Charles Stewart: Stewart says it’s not at all clear what causes long lines. He thinks better registration systems will help, but he’s not convinced that more early voting will ease the wait on Election Day...

Final call for free access to Political Analysis Virtual Issue on Election Fraud and Electoral Integrity

Posted on February 07, 2013
The Virtual Issue on Election Fraud and Electoral Integrity, recently made available by Political Analysis, will only be available for free download for a short time. A new virtual issue is going to be published soon. So grab these papers while you still can get them free access!

USAID releases report on electoral security

Posted on February 06, 2013
Hot off the presses — USAID has released a report on electoral security, “Best Practices in Electoral Security: A Guide for Democracy and Governance Programming.” Looks like an interesting read for those interested the security and integrity of elections.

USPS to eliminate Saturday delivery, what will be the impact on voting by mail?

Posted on February 06, 2013
Reports out this morning indicate that the USPS is planning on eliminating Saturday postal delivery. This has important implications for the increasing tendency of states to expand opportunities for voting by mail. The elimination of Saturday delivery will mean that there will effectively be fewer days for people to receive their ballots pre-election, and for [...

Pew Research Center on waiting in line since 2004

Posted on January 31, 2013
I’ve been mucking around in surveys other than my own that document how long voters wait to vote.  I found that the Pew Research Center on the People and the Press asked this question in 2004, 2008, and 2012.  Unfortunately, the response categories are different from those in the Survey of the Performance of American [...

Great article on ballot design (and its more general applicability)

Posted on January 21, 2013
Anyone in the business of studying election-related issues and talking to the public inevitably gets asked the question, “Why can’t we vote like they do in [insert favorite country here]?”  I have a list of things to talk about (federalism, the “long ballot,” concern for access, etc...

Gronke, MOOCs and Poll worker training

Posted on January 10, 2013
In one of the panel discussions yesterday, my colleague Paul Gronke had an interesting idea: Election officials might look at how colleges and universities are developing “massive open online courses” (MOOCs) for insights and new ideas about how to produce new, educational and productive poll worker training courses and programs...

More on MOOCs

Posted on January 10, 2013
Chiming in on Michael’s post, credit for sparking the idea in my head was a comment by a poll worker. I apologize for not writing down his name, but it was either Clyde David (Prince George’s County MD) or Stephen Graham (District of Columbia)...

EAC Roundtable on 2012 elections

Posted on January 09, 2013
I’m here in the audience of the first panel discussion. This first panel has an interesting set of poll officials, poll workers and observers, relating their experiences on election day. One interesting reminder that many of the panelists have mentioned — in general, while there were problems that arose on election day in many jurisdictions, [...

Democracia en la era digital

Posted on January 09, 2013
My colleague Alfonso Ayala Sanchez from the Instituto Electoral Veracruz just published this book that he edited, Democracia en la Era Digital. There are some interesting essays in this volume, with a focus on the use and evaluation of new voting technologies in Mexico and South America.

Tech@State: ElecTech

Posted on January 08, 2013
Before the holidays, I participated in an interesting panel discussion at the U.S. Department of State’s Tech@State: ElecTech event. The session that I participated in was “From Paper Ballots to Bits and Bytes: Electronic Voting Technologies...

US EAC Roundtable Discussion on 2012 Elections

Posted on January 08, 2013
I’m off to participate tomorrow in a roundable discussion hosted by the US EAC, on the 2012 Elections. Here is more information on the event.

Holiday gift tips for the election geeks on your list

Posted on December 03, 2012
It’s something of a tradition for us here at Election Updates to offer a few suggestions for holiday gift tips for the election geeks on your list. First, something really special I’ve been watching on Ebay: an ES&S 150 central count scanner (it even seems to have the original cover)...

I wonder if Secretary Miller read our report

Posted on November 28, 2012
Word comes from Nevada that the Democratic secretary of state is proposing a voter ID law that is very similar to a proposal the VTP made in its recent report, ?Voting: What Has Changed, What Hasn?t, and What Needs Improvement.?  From what this newspaper account states, the idea is that the picture of every voter [...

NY Times, ?A Broken Election System?

Posted on November 21, 2012
The New York Times has an editorial today, “A Broken Election System.” I couldn’t agree more — there is still a lot of work to be done to improve election administration and voting technologies throughout the United States. For details, see the recent Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project report, “Voting: What Has Changed, What Hasn’t, and [...

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