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Election Updates 
New research, analysis and commentary on election reform, voting technology, and election administration.
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Utah New ID Check-In
Posted on November 19, 2009Utah is creating a new cool check in process for voters. The State’s voter registration data base will be able to read the bar codes on a voter’s driver’s license. So when a voter goes to check in to vote, a poll worker will be able to scan the bar code on the [...
Analysis of the Connecticut November 2008 post-election audit
Posted on November 17, 2009The University of Connecticut’s Voting Technology Research Center has recently made available the results of their analysis of the State of Connecticut’s post-election audit of the November 2008 election. The report “Statistical Analysis of the Post Election Audit Data 2008 November Elections” is available here...
DiCamillo on ?The Rapid Growth of Permanent Mail Ballot Registration in California and its Impact?
Posted on November 16, 2009Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, published a piece in Survey Impacts on the growth of permanent absentee balloting in California and how it has changed the composition of the California electorate. He shows that nearly one-third of California’s registered voters now opt for permanent by-mail status, and the higher probability of turnout among this [...
New research on the consequences of election fraud
Posted on November 16, 2009My colleague, Peter Ordeshook, passed along to me this reference to a new research paper, “Democracy’s Achilles Heel or How to Win an Election without Really Trying”, by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. Here is a summary of some of their results, from a briefing paper: ?- Using dirty tactics during [...
More on differential turnout by mode and the implications for ballot measures
Posted on November 16, 2009Doug Chapin of the Pew Center on the States sent me this story from Nebraska. Like yesterday’s posting of DiCamillo’s article, the Nebraska pieces notes the dramatically different turnout rates for low level contests (in this case, non candidate ballot measures) when using vote by mail...
Why Data ARE good for Democracy (and for the EAC)
Posted on November 11, 2009There has been a fairly active set of threads on Rick Hasen’s Election Law listserv about the newly released EAC reports on UOCAVA and the Election Day Survey (full disclosure: I worked as a subcontractor on both of those reports). Ned Foley of the Moritz School at the Ohio State University expressed some concern about the [...
Gregoire pushes to make WA election results more timely
Posted on November 09, 2009Governor Christine Gregoire (WA) has publicly announced (as reported in this story) that she is meeting with SoS Sam Reed to figure out ways to speed up the reporting of election results in WA. The current race that is causing controversy is the Seattle mayor’s race, which still has not been announced...
Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators Conference
Posted on November 06, 2009I just came across a reference to the “Democracy Audits and Governmental Indicators” conference that is co-sponsored by the American Political Science Association and the Goldman School at Berkeley. This came across the search results as I was probing around, looking at other implementations (planned or otherwise) of the Democracy Index idea (this search itself [...
EAC Election Day Survey Data Released
Posted on November 05, 2009The full report and the data are here: http://www.eac.gov/program-areas/research-resources-and-reports/completed-research-and-reports/election-day-survey-results
Today is Election Day!
Posted on November 03, 2009While things here in Southern California lack the political intensity of races in Virginia and New Jersey, we do have elections happening in Los Angeles County today. There was only one race on my ballot, and I’m going to drop my absentee ballot off later today at a polling place...
Afghan presidential runoff scrapped
Posted on November 02, 2009In an interesting round of developments, Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of the Afghan runoff election scheduled for this coming weekend. Because of the lack of a challenger in the runoff election, the Afghan Independent Election Commission declared Hamid Karzai the winner of the presidential election...
Scantegrity II voting system to be used in tomorrow?s Takoma Park (Maryland) election
Posted on November 02, 2009VTP colleague Ron Rivest passed this press release along to me this morning. I look forward to hearing more about how things go when they use Scantegrity II in tomorrow’s election in Takoma Park: ??
Guest Blog: Lonna R. Atkeson, ?The Future of Post Election Auditing?
Posted on October 30, 2009Last weekend, I had the pleasure of participating in a policy discussion on election auditing in Alexandria, Virginia with academics across many disciplines, election administrators, activists, and policy makers. We spent over a day and half talking about election auditing and where it needed to head next and what technological advances we?d need to [...
Why Rig Elections? Because it Works.
Posted on October 28, 2009The Economist has an article this week on why people rig elections. The answer is, because it works really well. As the summary report of the key findings notes: Using dirty tactics during elections helps politicians that are already in office. If they use illegal practices to win elections, they can expect to be in office [...
Open source voting systems ? in the news
Posted on October 27, 2009There’s been a recent flurry of news regarding open source voting systems. Last week, there was an event in LA where the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation discussed the release of some of their new open source voting system software. Here’s a story from Wired...
Election Fraud story in NY Times
Posted on October 25, 2009There’s an interesting story in today’s Week in Review section titled “Why Russians Ignore Ballot Fraud.” Michael’s colleague Peter Ordeshook has written about election forensics with a focus on Russia, and may have additional thoughts on the article...
Congress passes MOVE act
Posted on October 23, 2009Congress passed the MOVE Act yesterday, the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act.
Fellowship at FairVote
Posted on October 22, 2009Just got this email from Rob Ritchie. Fair Vote is a great organization. I hope our readers can distribute this among qualified young people. Tell a young person about our Democracy Fellowship program! FairVote always has relied heavily on volunteer interns...
Ballot delivery begins in Afghan runoff
Posted on October 22, 2009Here is an interesting AP story, with photos,regarding the logistical difficulties the Afghans are encountering as they prepare the presidential runoff election.
Virginia Voting Information Project Page is Live
Posted on October 21, 2009The first release of the long awaited Voting Information Project, a partnership between the state and local election officials in Virginia, the Pew Center on the States, the New Organizing Institute, and Google, is up and running. The site can be found here...
More on NAS final report on ?Improving State Voter Registration Databases?
Posted on October 21, 2009Thanks to Paul for the heads-up that the EAC has posted the pre-publication copy of this NAS final report on “Improving State Voter Registration Databases.” This report follows up on the Interim Report that was issued in 2008. This was an enjoyable project to work on...
NAS Report on Voter Registration Released
Posted on October 21, 2009Our own Michael Alvarez is a committee member. The pre-publication report can be found here: http://www.eac.gov/News/national-academy-of-sciences-releases-eac-funded-report-on-statewide-voter-registration-databases/base_view This is the full report, but it appears that a better formatted version will be released soon.
Afghan election investigation released
Posted on October 20, 2009The Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission released their report about their investigation of electoral fraud allegations in the recent Afghan presidential election. Their order is here. The first finding indicates the wide extent of the potential problems in the election: “the EEC has ordered the IEC to invalidate 210 polling stations around the [...
Estonia E-Voting ? Voter Registration
Posted on October 19, 2009We had a great discussion with various people in Estonia about the country’s voter registration system. In Estonia, when you turn 18, you are automatically registered to vote at your address at that time. In addition, the person obtains a national identification card that has both a photo identification component and a digital [...
Election Audits
Posted on October 16, 2009I had an interesting conversation this morning with some private sector auditors here in Estonia. One interesting part of the discussion was a bit of a hypothetical–how would they audit election day voting? The thing that was interesting was that the first thing they were concerned about was not the vote counting but [...
Estonian Internet Voting
Posted on October 14, 2009Here is the note Mike and I received from Kristjan: The final number of e-votes is 104,415. I also received an approximate size of the electorate from the Electoral Commission. It slightly varies on a daily basis and it is larger than the electorate for national and EU elections – namely, in local elections also those [...
Estonia evoting update
Posted on October 14, 2009If I’m reading the Estonian correctly, the number of evoters currently is 98,275 (http://www.valimised.ee/). Thad is off to Tallinn so I’m sure we will hear more soon!
Internet Voting in Estonia
Posted on October 12, 2009As of October 12 (2.45pm Estonian time) 60,150 people have voted over the Internet in local elections and there are still two more days of Internet voting. In 2005, when Estonia first used Internet voting in local elections, 9,317 citizens voted over the Internet...
Guest Blog: Lonna R. Atkeson, ?Observing the Albuquerque Municipal Election?
Posted on October 07, 2009Yesterday my graduate political behavior class observed the election process in precincts for the municipal election in Albuquerque. My students learned a lot about the election process during the day and each one of them went to poll worker training before hand so they had a better understanding of the behind the scenes process [...
Paul?s Conference Agenda with ?best formatting?
Posted on October 02, 2009Conference agenda with better formatting ? Time-Shifting the Vote: The Early Voting Revolution in American Election Administration Location: Reed College, Gray Campus Center Rooms C?D Time: October 9?10 Friday, 9 October 7:45 AM Pickup at Benson Hotel 8:15-8:45 Breakfast 8:45-9:15 Introductions Paul Gronke, John Fortier, Zachary Markovits Participants will introduce themselves, their current positions, interest areas, etc...
New publication: ?E-Voting and Identity?
Posted on October 01, 2009The conference proceedings from VOTE-ID 2009 is now available, “E-Voting and Identity”.
Call for Papers: EDem10 conference
Posted on September 30, 2009Readers might be interested in this conference: EDem10 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 6 and 7 May 2010 Danube University Krems Austria www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem Call for Papers It is only now, during the first decade of the 21st Century, that those scientific eDemocracy visions developed in both in the 60s and the 90s are becoming reality and implemented...
New NASS report on maintenance of state voter lists
Posted on September 29, 2009I just received this release this morning: New Report Aims to Inform Debate Over Voter Registration Modernization in the U.S. Secretaries of State Release Overview of State Voter Registration Database Maintenance Laws & Procedures (Washington, DC) ? The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) today released a report designed to serve as a key resource in deliberations [...
Will early voting change campaigns? (Has it done so already?)
Posted on September 28, 2009A story in today’s NJ Courier-Post speculates about the change that will occur in NJ politics as a result of the new permanent absentee balloting law. They speculate that campaigns will have to get their ads out earlier, run them longer, and can’t hold last minute surprises until the end...
Early voting proposed in Phillippines
Posted on September 25, 2009An interesting story about early voting in the Phillippines came across today’s wire. Reference is made to successful early voting in the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. For reasons the story does not make completely clear, the national election board is particularly concerned about voting fraud in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), [...
The costs of running ?dual? elections
Posted on September 24, 2009One of the most common questions I am asked by officials contemplating early voting regards costs: how much money will we save–or spend–if we provide convenience voting options? There is not a good answer to this question yet, but I think we’ll know a lot more in the next 12 months as some research projects in [...
The Hammer and the Wild Thing
Posted on September 23, 2009I monitor news about early voting and absentee balloting via a google news search filter. It works pretty well, but sometimes it comes up with goofy stories like this one: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/delays-daughters-plea-vote-early-and-often/
LA County Registrar/Recorder Voting System Modernization
Posted on September 22, 2009The LA County Registrar/Recorder put out this press release about the event that the VTP hosted last week on modernizing the voting system in LA County. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the LACRR on this important project! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 21, 2009 [...
Link to the 2008 EAC Survey instrument
Posted on September 22, 2009For anyone interested in commenting on the 2010 survey, here is a link to the 2008 survey instrument: http://www.eac.gov/program-areas/research-resources-and-reports/eac-research-in-progress
Billings officials believe voting by mail increased turnout
Posted on September 18, 2009In the most recent Billings mayoral primary, turnout increased by 87%, from 20% to 38%. Election officials attribute the increase to the new balloting system. Story here.
Residual votes in LA and Palm Beach Counties
Posted on September 18, 2009During my lunch talk at the Technology, Diversity, and Democracy conference Mike has previously reported on, I used the case of Palm Beach County, Florida to discuss how metrics to gauge the quality of the voting process sometimes are right under our noses, and under-utilized...
Indiana Court of Appeals strikes down Indiana voter identification law
Posted on September 18, 2009A three-judge panel threw out Indiana’s voter identification law yesterday. Here is the rationale, from The Indianapolis Star: But the three-judge panel, led by Judge Patricia A. Riley, unanimously ruled that two provisions of the law run afoul of the Indiana Constitution’s “Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause...
EAC seeks public comment on 2010 election administration survey
Posted on September 18, 2009Here’s the link for more information.
Technology, Diversity, Democracy ? the day after
Posted on September 17, 2009The event yesterday at Caltech was great, while I don’t now have final numbers we had a very large crowd of stakeholders, academics, election officials, policymakers, and interested members of the public in attendance. There was a lot of frank, open and productive conversation about the future of voting systems in Los Angeles County; [...
Technology, Diversity, Democracy: The Future of Voting Systems in Los Angeles County
Posted on September 16, 2009We are hosting this event today at Caltech, bringing together researchers, stakeholders, and election officials to discuss the future of voting systems in LA County. The morning so far has involved presentations by LA County Registrar/Recorder Dean Logan, Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau, and US EAC Commissioner Donetta Davidson...
Recounts and audits ordered in Afghan election
Posted on September 09, 2009Here is the order from the Electoral Complaints Commission.
Special provisions for emergency personnel participation in yesterday?s elections
Posted on September 02, 2009Here’s an interesting media advisory from LA County detailing the special procedures implemented to allow emergency personnel fighting the Southern California wildfires to participate in yesterday’s elections.
Panels of Interest at the upcoming APSA
Posted on September 01, 2009The APSA meeting is in Toronto this year. I’ve begun to assemble a list of panels with papers on or about election administration: You can search for the panels at apsanet.org, and individual papers can be downloaded here . (Unfortunately I have not found a good way to search within APSA papers; perhaps [...
Sorry ? we?ve been down
Posted on August 31, 2009As some readers have noticed (and emailed me about), Election Updates has been down for the past week. I am sorry for this, we had a variety of technical issues that kept us offline. If readers experience anything unusual, please let me know.
Signatures ? The Difficult Part
Posted on August 21, 2009In our edited book Election Fraud there is a Chapter by Todd Donovan and Dan Smith about signature fraud and their analysis shows that a small but significant number of signatures in petition drives are fraudulent. Also, and even more problematic though, is that signature checking is not easy but is often treated as a “duh” [...
?The Signature Check?
Posted on August 21, 2009This YouTube link was just posted on the LACRR Facebook page. It will take you to a very interesting video from the Washington Secretary of State’s office on signature checking.
Two new research papers published on the voting experience in PRQ
Posted on August 21, 2009The current issue of Political Research Quarterly has two interesting publications on the voting experience. The first, by Matt A. Barreto, Mara Cohen-Marks, and Nathan D. Woods, is titled “Are All Precincts Created Equal? The Prevalence of Low-Quality Precincts in Low-Income and Minority Communities...
New database on election and election reform research
Posted on August 14, 2009This just came in over the wire: Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to announce that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has launched a web-based, searchable Voting Research Database that includes empirical and analytical research on issues related to the U...
EVT/WOTE ?09
Posted on August 12, 2009Here are the titles and short descriptions of some of the papers presented at the workshop. E-Voting and Forensics: Prying Open the Black Box Authors: Matt Bishop, Sean Peisert, Candice Hoke, Mark Graff and David Jefferson The authors describe the application of a model of forensic logging...
EVT/WOTE ?09 paper: ?Interstate Voter Registration Database Matching: The Oregon-Washington 2008 Pilot Project?
Posted on August 11, 2009Now I’m listening to Rebecca Wright (Rutgers University), who is presenting the paper titled “Interstate Voter Registration Database Matching: The Oregon-Washington 2008 Pilot Project”, a joint work with Mike Alvarez, Jeff Jonas (IBM) and William Winkler (Bureau of the Census).
EVT/WOTE ?09
Posted on August 11, 2009I am attending the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE ‘09) in Montreal, organized by David Jefferson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Joseph Lorenzo Hall (University of California, Berkeley/Princeton University) and Tal Moran (Harvard University)...
CA state auditor issues proposed regulations for implementation of Prop 11 (implementation of Citizens Redistricting Commission)
Posted on August 06, 2009The proposed regulations, and supporting memoranda, are now available on the State Auditor website.
Guest Column: Michael Hamner (University of Maryland) on EDR and Turnout
Posted on July 27, 2009The back and forth last week between me, Curt Gans, and Barry Burden about early voting and turnout on Rick Hasen’s election law listserv prompted this contribution from Michael Hanmer of the University of Maryland. He’s submitted it to election updates as a guest column: === I read with interest the exchange about the turnout effects [...
A few questions for Charles on voter confidence
Posted on July 22, 2009I’m glad to see Charles’s posting about voter confidence among by-mail voters. His posting raises a few questions in my mind. There is a conversation underway among some scholars about the precise meaning of the voter confidence items, which are regularly referred to in public discourse but haven’t really been subjected to much [...
Confidence in mail-in ballots
Posted on July 17, 2009I’ve been looking at the results from our Pew/MIT survey on the election experience from last November. A battery of questions asks about support for a range of election reforms. One of those reforms is to “run all elections by mail.” Nationwide, only 16% of respondents supported all-mail elections...
Three new working papers by Thad Hall
Posted on July 15, 2009Thad’s been busy: “Electronic elections in a politicized polity.” “Voter attitudes toward poll workers in the 2008 election.” “Voting technology and innovation.”
Society for Political Methodology conference ? lots for election geeks!
Posted on July 15, 2009The Society for Political Methodology is holding it’s annual summer meeting next week at Yale University. Here is the complete program. Some highlights for election geeks include: Philip Stark’s paper, “Election auditing: How much is enough?” Kevin Arceneaux, Thad Kousser and Megan Mullin, “Do vote-by-mail elections work? A randomized field experiment estimating the [...
An Election Geek Dies and Goes to Heaven
Posted on July 10, 2009One of the highlights of the IACREOT Conference was the opportunity to tour the Associated Press election data center in Spokane. This is one of a couple of centers nationwide that are responsible for aggregating election returns on election night (and primary night, and caucus night, etc...
Charles Stewart at IACREOT
Posted on July 09, 2009Charles is at IACREOT, here is a link to the slides for his presentation.
IACREOT dreams
Posted on July 08, 2009I’ve been attending the annual conference of IACREOT, in beautiful downtown Spokane. I’ve worked with many local election officials before, but I’ve only gone to a few of the election official conferences over the years, so this has been a treat...
Corzine signs the NJ Permanent Absentee Bill
Posted on July 01, 2009As reported in the South Orange Patch (who picks these names??). The story is odd though, the author writes: a new law allowing voters to send their ballots through the mail instead of appearing in person at a polling place I think NJ already had no-excuse absentee balloting...
New VTP working paper: ?Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation: An Application to the 2006 Mexican Election?
Posted on July 01, 2009Ines Levin and I recently posted a new working paper studying the causal effect of voter confidence on political participation, sing data from the 2006 Mexican Election, “Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation: An Application to the 2006 Mexican Election...
Record number of ballots cast by mail in California?s May 19 special election
Posted on June 27, 2009A record 62.19% of voters in the May 19 special election in California cast their ballots by mail, according to the recently released final results.
GAO interim report on polling place accessibility in 2008
Posted on June 26, 2009The GAO issued this interim report recently, “Voters With Disabilities: More Polling Places Had No Potential Impediments Than in 20008, but Challenges Remain.” Here’s a summary of their results: We found that,comparedto 2000, the proportion of polling places withoutpotential impediments increased and the most significant reduction in potential impediments occurred at building entrances...
Call for Participation: NIST End-To-End Voting Systems Workshop
Posted on June 24, 2009Here is the call, and link to the workshop website: The goal of this workshop is to understand the security and usability properties of end-to-end voting systems, one type of next-generation system of interest. The last few years have witnessed the emergence of end-to-end voting systems, which enable voter-verification of election outcome...
Call for papers: Experimental Methods in Political Science Conference
Posted on June 24, 2009Here’s the call for papers: Dear Colleagues We are pleased to announce the Third Annual NYU-CESS (New York University Center for Experimental Social Sciences) Conference on Experimental Political Science on Friday, February 5th, 2010 and Saturday, February 6th, 2010...
California man charged with election fraud
Posted on June 24, 2009This is from a press release from the CA Secretary of State office: Felony charges were filed and an arrest warrant issued Monday for an Orange County man suspected of committing voter registration and election fraud, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today...
Walter Mebane on the Iranian Presidential Election
Posted on June 23, 2009Walter Mebane has been analyzing data from the recent Iranian Presidential Election, and posting updates of his analysis here.
Appleton PostCrescent editorializes against early voting
Posted on June 23, 2009Wisconsin is considering whether it will allow early in-person voting in Wisconsin, in addition to absentee balloting. The Government Accountability board is holding hearings around the state this month. This editorial argues against the change.
Online voter registration in Oregon
Posted on June 23, 2009From the Oregonian newspaper: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/online_voter_registration_pass.html Oregon joins a number of other states who are moving to an electronic online voter registration system. The hopes are that this modernization of our registration system will reduce data entry errors, speeed changes, and reduce pressures on election officials on election day (in Oregon, most of the lines the last [...
Chatham House study raises questions about Iranian election
Posted on June 22, 2009Chatham House has released a study of the Iranian election, “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election.” Here is the study’s executive summary: Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by [...
Call for papers: ?The Politics of Open Source?
Posted on June 20, 2009Got this in my email: New JITP Annual Conference Web Site: http://www.umass.edu/jitp/ Call for Papers JITP-2010 ?The Politics of Open Source? May 6-7, 2010 - Amherst, Massachusetts A two-day University of Massachusetts Amherst conference jointly hosted by the: Department of Political Science Science, Technology, and Society Initiative (STS) Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) Approach Free/Libre and [...
An initiative under way to VBM in Idaho
Posted on June 19, 2009An initiative has been filed and is currently gathering signatures to move to full vote by mail in Idaho.
Changes in no-excuse absentee coming in NJ?
Posted on June 19, 2009The “Vote by Mail” act in New Jersey is sitting on Gov. John Corzine’s desk awaiting his signature. We will find out in the next few days whether he signs it or not. The two main provisions in the bill are: It would allow permanent no-excuse absentee balloting (prior research shows that this will increase the number [...
Limited recount coming in Iranian election dispute?
Posted on June 16, 2009This is from the BBC, “Iran to hold election recount:” The Guardian Council - Iran’s top legislative body - said votes would be recounted in areas contested by the losing candidates. But a spokesman for the council told state television it would not annul the election - as moderate candidates have demanded...
Brennan Center report on voter registration practices in other nations
Posted on June 16, 2009The Brennan Center has just released a report on voter registration practices in other nations, “Expanding Democracy: Voter Registration Around the World.” Here’s the report’s summary: The United States is one of few democratic nations that place on individuals the entire burden of registering to vote on individual citizens...
Protests continue in Iran over disputed presidential election
Posted on June 16, 2009The protests over the disputed Iranian election continue, and are perhaps growing, according to many stories out in the media this morning. I thought that this photograph, from the LA Times story “Hundreds of thousands in Iran protest vote result” summarizes the situation pretty well.
Detecting election fraud
Posted on June 15, 2009There is a fascinating exchange on the Election Law listserv about detecting election fraud in Iran using statistical methods. At this point, Juan Cole and David Epstein (Columbia), Nate Silver (538), and Walter Mebane (Michigan) are involved. There is a nice citation in Rick Hasen’s posting to Michael’s colleague Peter Ordeshook (Caltech), who has done [...
More on detecting election fraud in Iran
Posted on June 15, 2009I’ve been digging around most of the afternoon, along the lines of Paul’s recent post, to see what the allegations are, what data exists, and how these allegations might be studied using the sorts of statistical tools that have been discussed in recent research on election anomalies...
Ahmadinejad wins in Iran, 85% voter turnout, expatriates vote
Posted on June 13, 2009See the BBC report. The reported outcome has sparked protests in Iran, according to this story in the LA Times. One of the interesting stories of the Iranian election regards voting by expatriates, in particular those in the US. There apparently were 41 polling sites set up around the US, according to this AP story [...
Huge turnout in Iran?s presidential election
Posted on June 12, 2009There have been a flurry of news reports on huge turnout in Iran’s presidential election. The BBC is reporting that polling has been extended for two extra hours, “Huge Turnout in Iran Presidential Poll.” NPR is reporting that there have been some claims of irregularities: There were no immediate reports of unrest, though Mousavi’s campaign lodged [...
Early voting usage in the first and subsequent years
Posted on June 10, 2009I just got back from the Maryland Association of Election Officials (MAEO) meeting in Rocky Gap, MD. My assigned task was to sit on a panel on early voting with Connie Schmidt of the electioncenter (and past county clerk in Johnson County, KS) and Keith Long of the North Carolina Board of Elections...
Election reform bills clear committee
Posted on June 10, 2009Sending along a press release from Rep. Nancy Davis’s office: House Panel Passes Rep. Susan Davis?s Election Reform Bills: No Excuse Absentee, Absentee Tracking and Election Integrity Bills Approved WASHINGTON ? A package of election reform bills sponsored by Rep...
New VTP working paper by Jonathan Katz and Gabriel Katz, ?Correcting for Survey Misreports using Auxiliary Information with an Application to Estimating Turnout?
Posted on June 08, 2009This is an interesting VTP working paper for those who study voter participation, by Jonathan N. Katz and Gabriel Katz: “Correcting for Survey Misreports using Auxiliary Information with an Application to Estimating Turnout.” Here is their abstract: Misreporting is a problem that plagues researchers that use survey data...
New VTP working paper by Stephen Ansolabehere: ?Is There Racial Discrimination at the Polls? Voters? Experience in the 2008 Election
Posted on June 05, 2009Here’s a new VTP working paper by Stephen Ansolabehere, “Is There Racial Discrimination at the Polls? Voters’ Experience in the 2008 Election.” Here is the abstract: In 1965, the United States Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act to end discrimination against black voters at the polls in Southern states and throughout the nation...
In the news: Justice rejects GA voter verification system and skepticism in MN?s Supreme Court over Coleman?s claims
Posted on June 02, 2009Here is a link to an AP story on the Justice Department’s decision to reject Georgia’s voter verification system. The story said: “In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state’s voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a “discriminatory effect” on minority voters...
CCES Working Papers
Posted on June 02, 2009There are a number of working papers now archived on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) page, a number of which might be of interest to those who study election administration and voting technology. There was a great deal of such content on the 2006 and 2008 CCES surveys, and I suspect we will [...
2009 EVT/WOTE program now established and available.
Posted on June 02, 2009The 2008 EVT/WOTE “Workshop on Trustworthy Elections” is set in place and is now available. It looks like a great event!
California proposes to balance budget ? by eliminating voting by mail?
Posted on May 30, 2009Apparently California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday proposed to put voting by mail in future California elections on the budget-cutting block. I’ve not seen the precise details yet, but here are what some of the state newspapers have said...
NAS studies regarding security in cyberspace ?
Posted on May 29, 2009Due to the announcement that the U.S. will likely have a Cyber Czar, the National Academies put up this webpage to highlight some of the NAS work on cybersecurity. Some of these studies I’m written about earlier, but this is a helpful accumulation by the NAS of their work on this issue...
Election decided by one vote
Posted on May 23, 2009Often students challenge me for examples of when a single vote matters. Here is one, in the story , “Tran loses Rosemead election by one vote.” Voters who needed a reminder that every vote counts got one today ? former mayor John Tran lost his city council seat by only one vote in the March 3 [...
High turnout noted in Sierra County, California
Posted on May 22, 2009There was this story in the LA Times, “Sierra County (where everyone votes by mail) is serious about elections.” Here’s the relevant info from the story: The unofficial voter turnout in the conservative, rural enclave was 53.6% — higher than any other county in the Golden State, nearly double the statewide figure and more than [...
Five disqualified ballots could lead to a tie in city council race
Posted on May 22, 2009Here’s an interesting story, “Judge to rule on Rosemead City Council election results:” A judge today is expected to open at least four ballots that could affect the results of the Rosemead City Council election in March. Former mayor John Tran, who lost the election by five votes, asked to have five ballots, which had [...
CA Special Election polling place observations
Posted on May 20, 2009As readers will guess, since it was Election day here in California yesterday, I was out in the field with students and colleagues studying Election day polling place operations. We concentrated our efforts on Los Angeles County, in particular cities that were within Congressional District 32...
Public Opinion and Election Reform: Valence Issues vs. Choice Issues
Posted on May 15, 2009In a classic illustration statement of the dilemma of grasping that elusive entity called “public opinion,” Walter Lippman relates the story of a story of a group of Europeans residing on a remote island while World War One had broken out...
New Book on Election Fraud: Myagkov, Ordeshook and Shakin, ?The Forensics of Election Fraud?
Posted on May 15, 2009My Caltech colleague, Peter Ordeshook, along with his collaborators Mikhail Myagkov (a Caltech Ph.D.) and Dmitry Shakin have recently published their book on election forensics, discussing in detail their approach to election forensics and election fraud...
New VTP working paper by Charles Stewart III: ?Election Technology and the Voting Experience in 2008?
Posted on May 13, 2009This working paper was recently made available, Charles Stewart III, “Election Technology and the Voting Experience in 2008.” Here is the paper’s abstract: The 2000 election brought the issue of voting machine performance to national attention...
Public opinion about primary reform. Does it matter?
Posted on May 09, 2009One of the more interesting exchanges during the first day of the Iowa Election Reform Conference is whether public opinion about presidential primary reform really matters if primary reform is an elite and party driven process. Caroline Tolbert presented some work, I think done in collaboration with Jeff Karp and Todd Donovan, where they asked survey [...
Papers from Election Reform Conference
Posted on May 09, 2009Paul and I are at the same election reform conference. It is a conference where we are discussing various reforms across the electoral landscape, from redistricting to voter registration to election audits. The papers can be found online here. Paul, Mike, and I all have papers on various topics here.
LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk on Twitter!
Posted on May 04, 2009Just got this; check out LACRR’s Twitter site.
BBC India Election Train
Posted on May 01, 2009BBC has a pretty interesting blog, with a reporter on a cross-country train in India covering the elections there, “BBC India Election Train.”
Obama?s next 100 days? What about election reform?
Posted on May 01, 2009I was just reading this CNN story, “Analysis: What’s ahead for Obama in the next 100 days.” Nowhere is the phrase “election reform” mentioned.
David Konisky and Michael A. Powell, ?Public Attitudes on State Election Administration, Goals, and Reforms?
Posted on May 01, 2009I just got a copy of this report that Konisky and Powell recently released, regarding responses to questions about election reforms they included in their 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) module, “Public Attitudes on State Election Administration, Goals, and Reforms...
CA VR database inching along ?
Posted on April 28, 2009They have issued a “Notification of Intent to Award to Catalyst Consulting, Inc”, for those of you following the evolution of CA’s VR database …
Voter Confidence 2: By Mode and By Vote Choice
Posted on April 21, 2009I wrote a few days ago about some data we collected as part of the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), testing assumptions about “voter confidence,” a survey respondent’s perception about whether their vote will be counted accurately or not...
Slideshow of Indian election
Posted on April 19, 2009There is a really amazing slideshow of the Indian election in this WSJ story, “Fatal Attacks Near Polling Places Mar India Voting.”
Looking for survey questions/instruments on election administration and voting technology
Posted on April 17, 2009Thad recently had a great idea: that we should start to collect survey questions and survey instruments that have questions regarding election administration and voting technology. This would be a step toward developing a place where researchers could get survey questions, and perhaps in the future survey marginals and perhaps even data...
More on Voter Confidence
Posted on April 15, 2009The figure below shows differing levels of voter confidence in three groups of survey respondents: Pre-election respondents who said they intended to vote Pre-election respondents who said they were uncertain whether they would vote Post-election respondents who reported voting The most interesting result here, I think, is the substantially lower confidence levels among those who say they are uncertain [...
In Sacramento ? on tax day!
Posted on April 15, 2009So I’m in Sacramento, attending a meeting of the California HAVA State Plan Advisory Committee. While that is interesting in it’s own right, it was really interesting to see a big anti-tax protest while strolling around the state capital grounds on our lunch break...
Measuring turnout effects of vote by mail in California
Posted on April 14, 2009I just got sent this recent article by Mark DiCamillo (Field Poll) published in the California Journal of Politics and Policy. This looks like a good journal with an excellent of editors. I don’t know how the attached article made it by the proofreaders, however...
Potential voter confusion in CA CD 32 special primary election?
Posted on April 14, 2009On May 19 there will be a special election in California’s CD 32 to fill the vacancy of Hilda Solis. Twelve candidates filed, including front-runners Gil Cedillo (a state Senator) and Judy Chu (a member of the state Board of Equalization). If that wasn’t interesting enough, there is a second Chu in the [...
Franken one step closer to winning MN Senate race
Posted on April 14, 2009A three-judge panel yesterday dismissed a variety of motions from Coleman to subtract votes from Franken’s total. Here is quote from the ruling, from today’s LA Times: “The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the November 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately,” the judges wrote...
What do we mean by ?voter confidence??
Posted on April 13, 2009Voter confidence–a citizen’s perception whether their ballot will be counted as intended–came under scrutiny in the recent meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Two papers examined the validity of voter confidence directly, my own paper with James Hicks, which can be downloaded here, and a paper by Lonna Atkeson, Michael Alvarez, and Thad Hall...
Brennan Center Report on Ohio Elections Released
Posted on April 08, 2009An excellent report on the Ohio elections system has been released by the Brennan Center and can be downloaded here: http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/final_report_2008_2009_ohio_elections_summit_and_conference/. I worked with Larry Norden on the early / absentee voting section of this report, although most of the work and all of the credit goes to Larry and his staff at Brennan...
Fraud allegations in Moldova
Posted on April 08, 2009Allegations of election fraud, in particular multiple voting, have arisen in the recent legislative elections in Moldova, including rioting yesterday.
Franken lead increases to 312
Posted on April 08, 2009Yesterday 351 previously rejected absentee ballots were added to the tally in the Minnesota Senate race, with 198 going to Franken, 111 to Coleman, and 42 for other candidates. This increased Franken’s lead to 312 votes in the disputed race. Coleman’s legal team says they will appeal.
Fort Worth: registered sex offender worked elections at elementary schools
Posted on April 07, 2009Got this one in email; it’s an interesting story that raises questions about vetting of pollworkers. Here’s the story from Star-Telegram.com.
California moving closer to a federally mandated statewide voter registry
Posted on April 02, 2009Got this info recently: the results of the public cost opening for the VoteCal RFP (RFP SOS 0890-46) are now available.
Doug Chapin Testimony
Posted on March 27, 2009Doug Chapin, Director of the Elections Initiative at the Pew Center on the States, is testifying in front of the Subcommittee on Elections of the Committee on House Administration. Takeaway quote: ?While the 2008 election was a success in many regards, significant challenges in several areas of election administration remain,? said Chapin...
Election experiences panel
Posted on March 27, 2009I’ve been asked about the Thursday 8 am panel. Here are the papers. 22-8 Election Experiences Date: Thursday, April 2 8:00 am Chair(s): Herbert Weisberg, Ohio State University Paper(s): Paper 1: Voter ID in the 2008 General Election This paper examines variations in the implementation of voter identification laws across the 50 states in the 2008 presidential election...
If you go to just one panel at MPSA it must be this one ? I hear that Markovits and Spencer paper is da bomb ?
Posted on March 26, 200922-3 Turnout - Voting Laws and Election Administration Date: Thursday, April 2 4:45 pm Chair(s): Barry Burden, University of Wisconsin Paper(s): Lines at Polling Stations: Observations from an Election Day Field Study This paper attempts to understand how and why long lines form at a polling place...
Election Administration / Reform Day in Chicago
Posted on March 24, 2009I don’t know if it was purposeful or not, but Thursday April 2nd is shaping up to be election reform / election administration day at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago. The link above will take you to the conference page and you can search by section...
Presidential election results by CD
Posted on March 23, 2009I just came across a posting on the “Swing State Project” that includes the presidential election results by congressional district, freely downloadable. The website is here http://www.swingstateproject.com/ and the full dataset is here http://www...
Election-rigging scheme alleged in Kentucky
Posted on March 20, 2009One of my colleagues at the NAS workshop passed along this account of an alleged election-rigging scheme in Kentucky. Here’s a snip from a different media account that provides some details about how the alleged scheme operated: This is how the alleged scheme worked, the indictment said: Maricle and Adams recruited candidates to run for [...
National Academy of Sciences Workshop on Voter Registration Databases
Posted on March 19, 2009Yep, we are at it again … this time in Cambridge (MA). This is the sixth, and last, workshop that this group is having to examine state voter registration databases. We have a morning full of conversations with election officials about their databases and how they perform, and this afternoon we will be [...
Pending Federal Legislation
Posted on March 16, 2009Also from the recent NCSL newsletter, Federal legislation that they believe may garner significant interest in 2009-10: Joint Resolution Pertaining To U.S. Senate Vacancies S.J. RES 7 - Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) Senate Joint Resolution 7 proposes a Constitutional amendment providing that no person shall be a Senator from a state unless such person has been elected by [...
2009 Election legislation update
Posted on March 16, 2009The NCSL has just distributed their most recent newsletter, and the update on pending legislation is pretty interesting. According to their legislative database, there are 71 early voting bills pending in 23 states, 11 states considering either no-excuse absentee or fully vote by mail elections, and 12 states considering going permanent no-excuse absentee balloting...
New research: The effects of multiple international election monitoring organizations
Posted on March 11, 2009There’s a paper out in the current issue of Perspectives on Politics, “The More the Merrier? The Effects of Having Multiple International Election Monitoring Organizations”, by Judith Kelley. Her paper has some really useful data on the number of elections, over time, with multiple international election monitoring organizations present...
Senate Rules Hearing on Voter Registration
Posted on March 11, 2009Paul recently wrote about “voter registration modernization.” I thought I’d give the link to hearings this morning before the U.S. Senate Rules and Administration committee: “Voter Registration: Assessing Current Problems.” Of particular interest is the testimony by Stephen Ansolabehere, where he uses data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to argue [...
Voter registration modernization?who coined this term?
Posted on March 10, 2009I thought that my colleagues at the Make Voting Work initiative were the first to come up with the term “voter registration modernization.” I figured Doug Chapin deserves the credit. I first heard the term outside of the Pew command center at a recent Project Vote / Demos / Barnard conference on voter registration held in [...
Another good news feed: Project Vote ?news clips?
Posted on March 10, 2009Most readers here probably subscribe to Rick Hasen’s Election Law listserv. Another good news feed that I rely on comes from Project Vote. You can sign up for their daily (mainly a few times a week) news feed here: http://www.projectvote.org/ (click on the “subscribe to our newsletter” link on the left hand side)...
Alternative Voting Updates
Posted on February 24, 2009A bill to make early voting easier in New Jersey has passed the Assembly but is currently unscheduled for a vote in the Senate. A St Petersburg Times editorial is complaining about high turnout related to voting by mail. It seems that the Pinellas County recorder “aggressively recruited” voters to sign up for permanent by mail [...
Top two debate on Hasen?s listserv
Posted on February 22, 2009Rick Hasen posted a little news item about the top-two primary, and the avalanche of debate has already begun on the election law listserv. Rick and I talked about this when we were in DC for the ELJ / UCDC / AEI / Brooking post election conference. I was on the opposing side of a [...
CA budget deal and open primary compromise details
Posted on February 19, 2009I received this from a friend up in Sacramento, from the Legislative Counsel’s Digest, regarding the open primary legislation that was passed as part of the budget deal earlier today.
California?s budget deal and primary election reform
Posted on February 19, 2009Rumors have been circulating for the past week that California State Senator Abel Maldonado would be willing to trade his vote for the budget deal, if his fellow lawmakers would agree to place on a future ballot a constitutional amendment that would provide for some sort of future open primary (of course if approved by [...
Overseas voting and the Internet
Posted on February 11, 2009Kudos to Michael for the links to overseas voting systems in other countries. If you read between the lines–or maybe read more directly Alvarez and Hall’s book on electronic elections–Mike’s implication is clear. Fixing overseas citizen and military voting may finally move us toward a secure system of internet voting...
Interesting paper on political science and voter assistance websites
Posted on February 11, 2009Henry Farrell over at MonkeyCage has a very interesting post on a recent paper comparing “voter assistance” websites that have been cropping up in Europe. These sites purport to help citizens choose the “correct” candidate, based on their responses to a series of survey questions...
Some additional news on overseas balloting: South Africa, Switzerland and France
Posted on February 11, 2009Following up on Paul’s recent posting from the OVF event, I noticed three other news items about overseas balloting in other nations. First, from South Africa, “South Africa court rules in favor of overseas balloting.” Second, from Switzerland, “Geneva introduces e-voting...
OVF Report
Posted on February 06, 2009I am in DC for the NASS and NASED meetings, and on Thursday I attended the 2009 OVF Summit on overseas voting. While I’m sure this was not quite the same locale as the meeting held in Munich, there was pretty good turnout, particularly from a number of Senate and House staffs...
Election administration panel at WPSA
Posted on January 29, 2009I am on an upcoming panel at the Western Political Science Association meeting in Vancouver, BC: Panel 22. 02 - The Electoral Process and Election Administration Date: Thursday, March 19, 2009, 1:15 - 3:00 PM Chair(s): none Paper(s): What’s up with Superdelegates? The Democratic Nomination Process in the 2008 Presidential Election Southwell, Priscilla, psouth@uoregon...
Early voting in Iraq
Posted on January 29, 2009Early voting is being allowed for certain groups in Iraq, in advance of Saturday’s provincial elections. Here’s a description from the Washington Post’s story, “Tens of Thousands Vote Early in Iraq:” Regular voting is scheduled for Saturday to choose the equivalent of state legislatures in 14 of the country’s 18 provinces...
The new redistricting process begins in California
Posted on January 29, 2009I received an email today from California Forward, an update on redistricting in California, that noted that the Bureau of State Audits (BSA) this week began a series of hearings throughout California on how to set up the new public commission that will draw the boundaries for state legislative and board of equalization districts...
Request: Examples of ?colored revolutions? outside of the post-communist world
Posted on January 26, 2009Guest blog, Joshua A. Tucker: I?m interested in finding examples of ?colored revolutions? that have taken place outside of the post-communist world ? can anyone help me out here? In other words, I?d like some examples of cases where major electoral fraud took place (or was alleged to have taken place) and was followed by [...
Legislative wrangling over voter ID in Texas
Posted on January 26, 2009Two years ago, despite a 79-71 Republican majority and a conservative speaker, the Texas House barely passed a bill that would have required Texas voters to show government-issued identification before casting a ballot. But the voter ID bill died in the Senate thanks to the so-called two-thirds rule, a parliamentarian procedure that requires two-thirds of the [...
Vote Centers on the March
Posted on January 26, 2009From the Arizona Republic: Phoenix is proposing to consolidate nearly 130 polling places into 20 voting hubs for all city elections beginning next year. The move comes as an overwhelming number of Phoenix voters are choosing to vote early rather than at polls...
Alternative voting news of the week
Posted on January 23, 2009Roll Call has a story by Jessica Laval urging changes in the way military absentee ballots are handled. (Thanks to AEI for the link to Roll Call, which is typically by subscription.) The most interesting suggestion is to make voter registration changes part of the “PCS” (permanent change of status) checklist for uniformed personnel...
Alternative Voting News of the Week
Posted on January 16, 2009Ohio: SoS Jennifer Brunner is being criticized by state legislators because she allowed individual counties to choose whether to send absentee ballot applications to all voters, and whether to include return postage. Brunner argues that the legislature failed to allocate enough funds...
MonkeyCage reviewing the 2008 Election ?Forum?
Posted on January 13, 2009The Monkey Cage blog is reviewing a set of articles published in the Forum, which themselves review the 2008 election. Good reading.
Democracy Corps analysis of early voting in 2008
Posted on January 13, 2009Democracy Corps just posted a study they did of early voting in the 2008 election, “The 2008 Early Vote.” Here is the study’s overview: In the 10 months leading up to the 2008 election, Democracy Corps conducted nearly 18,000 interviews in 16 national surveys with voters around the country...
Alleged voter fraud on Craigslist
Posted on January 13, 2009This story, “Detectives investigating potential voter fraud on Craiglist”, comes from King County. Some details: According to a recent search warrant, on Oct. 19, less than a month before the general election, an ad was posted on the free classified advertising site offering the mail-in ballot for “$50 or best offer...
Pew report on overseas voting
Posted on January 06, 2009Hot off of the presses: “No Time to Vote: Challenges Facing America’s Overseas Military Voters.”
Electing an Election Director?
Posted on January 05, 2009King County, WA is going to conduct its first fully vote by mail election–in order to elect the election director! At first blush, I thought this was unusual, until I checked David Kimball and Martha Kropf’s excellent article in the Review of Policy Research (for those of you who don’t have access, this is Review of [...
Franken to be declared winner after Minnesota recount
Posted on January 04, 2009Word is out that the state election board is going to declare Al Franken the winner in the Minnesota Senate race, after the long recount showed that Franken won by 225 votes. There’s lots of reports on this, here is one from CNN. Odds are also good that Coleman will challenge this in [...
Weather and alternative voting
Posted on January 02, 2009As another “weather event” moves into Oregon, we have flooding and landslides closing some of our major roads. This brings to mind one of the justifications I have heard for alternative voting methods–they are adaptable to weather crises...
NIST study of electronic ballot transmission for UOCAVA
Posted on December 27, 2008A new NIST report is cited here but the link to the report is broken. Maybe Mike and Thad can find it? Another example where UOCAVA problems are forging a path that will likely be followed by all voters in the near future.
Todd Rokita calls for vote centers in IN
Posted on December 27, 2008This story just in from the Chicago Tribune: SoS Todd Rokita is calling for a major expansion in the use of vote centers in Indiana. No mention of Pew’s Make Voting Work project which funded a pilot study of the concept this year in the state.
Calls for early voting in MN
Posted on December 27, 2008I expect to see more of these soon: calls for early voting in MN. Early voting is becoming something of the swiss army knife of election reform this year. Got an election administration problem? Institute early voting and it will go away. Ignore the fact that absentee ballots have been a crux of the controversy in [...
I?m getting scotch for Christmas
Posted on December 25, 2008What an amazing year for early voting. This in from my good friend Michael McDonald. While I “predicted” this six months ago, those in the know (Tova? Michael?) can tell you that the “one third” estimate was out on a limb. Looks like that limb just got a lot thicker...
Last minute holiday gift tips for election geeks on your list
Posted on December 23, 2008Now here is a deal for that election geek on your list. If you click around enough on amazon.com, on these three book titles, “Voting Technology”, “Electronic Elections”, and “Election Fraud”, you’ll eventually get a “Price for All Three” of $76...
A Note on the Jeht Foundation
Posted on December 16, 2008As many of you know, the Jeht Foundation is closing its doors in January. Here is a story in the NY Times that explains everything.
Nice press release on the Maholtra and Meredith paper
Posted on December 16, 2008Found on Marketwatch.
Daily audits called for to resolve absentee ballot issues in NC
Posted on December 16, 2008Interesting story out of New Bern, NC about the need for daily ballot audits when conducting in-person absentee balloting. Election geeks will enjoy the note at the end about an election worker using a “spare personal electronic ballot card” to store 337 votes.
New NDI publications: two guidebooks on election monitoring
Posted on December 16, 2008I received in the mail two new election monitoring guidebooks from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI): “Promoting Legal Frameworks for Democratic Elections: An NDI Guide for Developing Election Laws and Law Commentaries”, and “Monitoring Electronic Technologies in Electoral Processes: An NDI Guide for Political Parties and Civic Organizations...
JEHT Foundation shuts its doors
Posted on December 15, 2008Sad news from the JEHT Foundation. The statement of Bob Crane is available here. JEHT has partnered with the Pew Charitable Trusts in the Make Voting Work initiative, and has also funded important projects on voter participation and campaign finance...
More from The Economist, on the secret ballot
Posted on December 12, 2008Since Thad put links up to those two stories from The Economist, I thought I’d also post this one, to the story “A Really Secret Ballot”. This story discusses work by Peter Ryan, Ben Adida, Ron Rivest and David Chaum.
M-Voting in Estonia
Posted on December 12, 2008According to a recent report: After pioneering online voting, the Baltic state of Estonia aims to be the first in the world to give voters the right to cast ballots using mobile telephones. Parliament adopted a law Thursday allowing “m-voting” from 2011, six years after a landmark election in which Estonians were able to vote via the [...
The Internet Voting World
Posted on December 12, 2008So at this Pew Trusts conference, the words internet voting came up a lot, or a lot more than either Mike or I expected. On this note, I want to post two interesting articles about the Internet from the Economist’s Technology Quarterly. The first article notes that the tubing of the Internet — the bandwidth — [...
Report from Pew conference: ?Election Day Went Smoothly but Trouble Spots Remail, Survey Shows?
Posted on December 11, 2008This story from MarketWatch summarizes the presentation that Charles Stewart made at the Pew event, talking about some of the early results from the election performance survey that Charles ran during this fall’s presidential election. Note that the survey found, quoted from the MarketWatch story: — On Election Day, African [...
More from Pew conference
Posted on December 09, 2008Kurt Browning, Secretary of State in Florida, is now talking about the implementation of early voting. He said one thing that I found quite interesting, when be said that issues of early voting implementation are “where politics and election administration collide”...
Pew conference
Posted on December 09, 2008It’s been a really interesting event so far; Andrew Kohut talked about the election, Charles Stewart talked about the performance of American elections survey, and now Paul is talking about early voting. In introductory comments, Michael Caudell-Feagan from Pew gave some good news: Pew and JEHT plan to continue making considerable investments in their effort [...
NAS, and now Pew ?
Posted on December 08, 2008Well, back on the road … I’m now in DC for a big event that Pew is hosting tomorrow and Wednesday on election reform. As our blogging team is here in full-force (Paul, Thad, Charles, and I are all here) we will no doubt write more about the event as it progresses...
Afternoon update from AEI
Posted on December 04, 2008Glad to see Michael’s posting from NAS. I am watching a voter registration panel right now with Nate Persily, Michael McDonald, Doug Chapin, and Kain Mac Donald. Karin presented some results from a set of surveys and data collection efforts that tracked polling place incidents...
NAS State Voter Registration Database Workshop V
Posted on December 04, 2008Okay, so if Paul is going to do live blogging, I’m going to have to as well from Atlanta. We’ve spend the day so far hearing from election officials throughout the nation about the performance of their voter registration databases in the 2008 election cycle...
Second update from the ELJ Post Election Conference
Posted on December 04, 2008Panel two covered campaign finance reform. Good presentations from Tony Corrado (another liberal arts college prof!), Michael Toner, Michael Malbin, and Rick Hasen. This was an interesting followup to the first panel, since the members of this panel, other than Toner, have all taken public positions in favor of public financing, and I think each of [...
First report from the ELJ Post Election Conference
Posted on December 04, 2008I am attending the ELJ / AEI / Brookings / UCDC post election conference. The first panel included the general counsels for the McCain (Trevor Potter) and Obama (Bob Bauer) campaigns. There was an interesting discussion of the complicated role of the general counsel...
The continuing MN absentee ballot issue
Posted on December 03, 2008Today’s story in the Star Tribune highlights what is going to be an ongoing issue as (not if) we move toward more use of absentee ballots in this country. There are inconsistent rules across states regarding when and how absentee ballots are accepted, and even within states, rules are unequally applied...
National Academies of Science voter registration workshop
Posted on December 03, 2008I’m off to Atlanta — the site of yesterday’s Senate runoff election — for two days of discussion regarding voter registration systems as part of the ongoing National Academy study of Statewide VR systems. So if you happen to be in the area, Thursday’s open sessions look pretty interesting...
Let us be thankful for recount updates on Thanksgiving
Posted on November 27, 2008I’ve posted my daily recount update, reflecting yesterday’s counted ballots in Minnesota, here. Yesterday’s challenged ballots reached an astounding 66.9% of the residual vote rate, which suggests that pretty soon every remaining ballot that wasn’t counted successfully by the machines will be hand-counted by the state canvassing board.
Minnesota recount scorecard for 11/25
Posted on November 25, 2008My latest recount scorecard is here. Watching the recount has lost most of its charm. The challenged ballots today, as a fraction of residual votes, was 40%. Today’s precincts counted were the most Democratic counted thus far, by far (having given Franken 55% of the two-party vote, compared to 49% for the precincts counted before today...
Minnesota Recount Scorecard update
Posted on November 24, 2008I have posted an update of my Minnesota recount scorecard here. As many have remarked, the rate of challenging has certainly picked up. I have been expressing challenged ballots as a percentage of residual votes in the Senate race, since the challenges probably showed up originally as over- or under-votes...
Minnesota challenge variability
Posted on November 21, 2008The real action in the Minnesota recount will be the ballots challenged by the two campaigns on the grounds that the voter intent was not properly ascertained. These challenged ballots are emerging even when the county recounts show no discrepancy with the count of the ballots successfully scanned by the machines...
A contrarian prediction on the Minnesota recount
Posted on November 21, 2008The obsession with the changing vote margin in Minnesota is missing the big story, which is the much larger number of ballots that have been challenged by the two campaigns. Franken’s people have challenged 777 ballots that otherwise would have been awarded to Franken...
Minnesota recount scorecard, Day 3
Posted on November 21, 2008My daily Minnesota recount scorecard is posted here. Much of the comment today is about the rise in challenged ballots, which certainly is true. Still, the main story is how few challenges there are overall. Through the first two days of counting, only 20% of all precincts witnessed a challenge...
Minnesota recount, day 2
Posted on November 20, 2008I’ve created a simple Minnesota recount scorecard Excel spreadsheet, which is available for download here. I’ve updated it with results from Day 2. Both today’s and yesterday’s recounted precincts are more Republican than the remaining precincts, so it’s reasonable to expect that Franken might pull closer to parity at a faster rate tomorrow and Saturday (assuming [...
Alaska, by wave
Posted on November 19, 2008Counting in Alaska is finished for the day, and it looks like Begich now has an insurmountable lead that will withstand anything that comes in the remaining overseas ballots. The following is the count, by wave of ballot counting over the past two weeks: [...
Working paper on voting technology adoption
Posted on November 18, 2008A colleague forwarded to me this following working paper, by Daniel K.N. Johnson and Kristina M. Lybecker, “Does HAVA Help the Have Nots? U.S. Adoption of New Election Equipment, 1980-2008. Here’s the abstract: During the tabulation of votes in the 2000 presidential election, the world was shocked at the technological inadequacy of electoral equipment [...
Paper v. Electronic Voting in Ohio
Posted on November 17, 2008There have been an interesting couple of articles about error rates in paper ballots in Franklin County Ohio. Here is the crux of the discussion: Votes in central Ohio’s Franklin County were 2.5 times more likely to go unrecorded when they were cast on paper ballots instead of touch-screen machines, a newspaper analysis of the Nov...
More on Franklin County, OH residual votes
Posted on November 17, 2008Thad’s posting below points to a newspaper article that illustrates that in some cases we haven’t come very far from Florida 2000. I’m hoping that the following paragraphs misrepresents what Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said in defense of paper ballots, since it seems to be defending a voting method because it allows over- and [...
Expect a Begich surge next week. He should thank the Alaska Independence Party
Posted on November 15, 2008I have written a brief memo about the three waves of votes counted in the Alaska Senate race, available here. While it’s not clear precisely where the uncounted votes are in Alaska, some educated guesses lead me to believe that Begich could garner another 6,000 votes, on net, when all the outstanding votes are counted...
Does early voting dampen turnout?
Posted on November 14, 2008The final reports are nearly in, and Curtis Gans and Michael McDonald agree on at least one thing: turnout in 2008 did not set records. Somewhere between 128 and 130 million votes will be recorded, according to Gans and McDonald. Record registration numbers dd not lead to record turnout, nor did record early voting numbers...
Chipman, Herron, and Lewis paper on MN residual vote
Posted on November 13, 2008Although I kinda like my little memo on the subject, Jonathan Chipman, Michael Herron, and Jeff Lewis have a very interesting and thorough paper on the topic here. One of the bold features of the paper is an effort to use the difference in the residual vote rate between the presidential and senate races as [...
Residual votes in 10 states: 6 increases over 2004
Posted on November 13, 2008A few states have now published unofficial turnout figures along with their unofficial vote totals. Here are the preliminary residual vote rates for AZ, DC, FL, HI, MI, MN, NH, ND, SD, and WY. Unlike 2004, where almost every state experienced a significant drop in the residual vote rate (enough that 1m votes were “recovered”), [...
Voting in the GA Senate Runoff starts Friday
Posted on November 12, 2008Title says it all. Details are still being worked out in some counties, but it looks like election officials are ramping up to start early voting on Monday Friday! And it seems like the election just ended…. WAIT! It did!!
Moving on ?
Posted on November 10, 2008I’ve been finding it interesting that we are less than a week out of the presidential election, and we are hearing less about the past election than about future improvements and reforms. Two pieces in this morning’s LA Times struck me in this regard, the first a national piece, “Voter registration process is under [...
Kudos to Virginia for documenting changes to the election count
Posted on November 10, 2008The Virginia Board of Elections web site has a feature that documents all changes to the reported election returns, as they have evolved over time. You can get to the accounting by going to the election results for the office you’re interested in, and then clicking the “See History of Changes” link...
Minnesota update with residual votes
Posted on November 10, 2008Using estimates of turnout at the precinct level, I have redone my previous memo about Minnesota, this time using residual vote rather than drop-off. The results are substantively unchanged. The new memo is here
Residual vote rate in AZ drops
Posted on November 08, 2008The residual vote rate in AZ has dropped, based on unofficial election returns. The estimated rate for 2008 was 1.1%, compared to 1.3% in 2004 and 1.7% in 2000. Write-ins have yet to be recorded, which will reduce the residual vote rate even further...
Preliminary residual vote rate for Minnesota
Posted on November 07, 2008Based on the preliminary turnout figures on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s web site and the election returns reported, the Minnesota residual vote rate is 1.1%, approximately double its 2004 rate of 0.6%. Past experience suggests that residual vote rates tend to rise in most states at this point, though there may be something different [...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 06, 2008Looking Forward to 2012 Before Election Day had even begun, predictions and suggestions for future elections were already prevalent: When Michael McDonald (George Mason University) was asked was asked how voting procedures would change for 2012, he answered that the long lines may cause more states to adopt early voting, including Maryland...
A quick note on Minnesota
Posted on November 06, 2008I will try to produce a quick memo on this tonight, but here are some things I’m seeing in the pattern of “roll off” (a possible proxy for “residual votes”) in the Franken/Coleman race in Minnesota: Roll-off appears to be greater in precincts that gave Obama a larger vote Roll-off appears to be greater in larger precincts Roll-off [...
That long Oregon ballot?
Posted on November 06, 2008The main reason for the delayed count in Multnomah County, OR turns out to be a long (physically long) ballot, longer than could be accomodated in the ‘hopper’ for the readers. The machines kept jamming and a lot of ballots had to be hand fed.
MN Senate election exhibits greater ?drop-off? in Democratic areas
Posted on November 06, 2008I’ve written a short memo, available here, which examines the “drop-off” rate in the Minnesota senatorial election. The drop-off rate, which is a proxy for the residual vote rate (currently uncalculatable), is a way of measuring how many ballots were not counted toward one of the senatorial candidates, and therefore are the most likely to [...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 05, 2008Counting issues Colorado (Boulder): A problem with “paper dust” (small specks and particles that do not allow ballots to be scanned correctly) in mail-in ballots could slow down the count. The problem implies that poll workers have to go through each ballot...
Summary of Election Day problems (or lack thereof?)
Posted on November 05, 2008Wednesday morning the news is that there is relatively little of it, which likely means a victory for election administration. The New York Times reports on a few scattered problems, but acknowledges that there were no “catastrophic failures...
NORC early voting poll results
Posted on November 05, 2008Dear Colleagues: NORC at the University of Chicago is conducting a public opinion poll in two regions of the country to provide a snapshot of the voter experience during the 2008 presidential election. As part of this study, we have been conducting a telephone sample survey from a list of people in Franklin County Ohio who [...
Slow count in Oregon
Posted on November 05, 2008As I warned here yesterday, the high number of last minute ballots, plus an unexpected counting glitch in Lane County (I’m trying to track down more information) has led to a slow count in Oregon. Only 33% of ballots have been counted in Lane (Eugene) and 45% in Multnomah (Portland)...
Residual vote in Florida, the early view
Posted on November 05, 2008It is way too early to make too much of outliers as the election returns are posted by states. Still, it is becoming possible to take a peek at residual vote statistics, which I’ll be doing today and tomorrow. Florida is a place to start. As of this writing, the state elections department has posted full [...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 04, 2008Coping with high turnout Finally, it’s Election Day! High turnout is expected in states like Alabama, Arizona, California –in particular in Los Angeles, Napa and Solano, Monterrey and Ventura counties, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Lousiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Texas...
What Does Retained Mean?
Posted on November 04, 2008So Morgan and I are out doing election observations in New Mexico and twice we have seen people ask poll workers a very simple question: What does “retained” mean? This is in the context of judicial retention races, where the question is “Shall X be retained as district judge in Y district?” This is not a question [...
Election Day Report from Oregon
Posted on November 04, 2008As most readers here are aware, Oregon is a fully vote by mail state, so election day is somewhat unique. I toured the Multnomah County elections office yesterday, and was driving around today, and here is my report. We don’t exactly have long lines, but there is a wait of about 20 minutes to get into [...
Voting Problems Nationwide
Posted on November 04, 2008Charles Stewart posted a few sites below that offer continuing coverage of voting problems. One of these, Our Vote Live, has a color-coded map that gives the number of reported problems in each state. If you click on each state you can get a break down by county, and you can [...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 03, 2008Use of partisan slogans: Contrasting decisions Public Opinion reports that Franklin County, Ohio, “will require you to remove or cover” partisan slogans “if you wear them to the polls on Tuesday, despite the gauntlet of aggressive supporters and campaign workers you may face a mere 10 feet from the polling place...
Why are we releasing exit poll data now?
Posted on November 03, 2008I have seen the polls of early voters, and I think the argument that these are not exit polls, simply tracking polls that have accumulated enough early voters to make inferences about vote choice is not tenable. I think early voting this year has all but destroyed the media agreement not to release exit poll information [...
Residual vote forecast
Posted on November 03, 2008Following the 2000 presidential election, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project coined the term “residual votes” to describe ballots that did not record a vote for president, for whatever reason — the ballot was outright blank, the vote cast on the ballot wasn’t counted, or the ballot contained an over-vote...
EARLY VOTING ?EXIT POLLS?
Posted on November 03, 2008You can check out the this link for a compilation of poll results based on samples of early voters. These are the National results: National Early Voting Fox News (11/1-11/2) (29% of sample) Obama 48% (+1) McCain 47% NBC/Wall Street Journal (11/1-11/2) (30% of sample) No breakdown of early voters...
Final thoughts on election eve
Posted on November 03, 2008My prediction: tomorrow is going to be an interesting, and long day! From my perspective here in New Mexico, there is great interest and excitement about the election. Thad and I came in on Saturday, and did precinct judge training on Saturday, and then watched the flood of early voters at one [...
Presidential Election: Polls Update
Posted on November 03, 2008Political markets: Who will win and how many will vote… Mike and Thad have both mentioned political markets before. With the election just a day away, they are worth looking at again: As of Monday afternoon, Obama is trading at .92 on Iowa Electronic Markets, ...
Election Day dispatches from Pew Center on the States
Posted on November 03, 2008http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/template_page.aspx?id=45626
CO Count likely to be delayed due to mail in ballots
Posted on November 03, 2008I hate to do an “I told you so” but I have warned reporters that there are three states I would watch for slow counts this year. Each of them only recently adopted no-excuse absentee voting, and I was concerned that they were not prepared for the avalanche of paper they will receive...
Pay no attention to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia (well, maybe, Virginia)
Posted on November 03, 2008The most common sign-off question to ?experts? today is ?which states should we be watching on Election Night?? The answer is usually ?Pennsylvania? or ?Ohio? or ?Indiana.? Wrong. If Obama is going to win, he is going to need to do between 3 and 4 percentage points better than Bush did nationwide in 2004...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 02, 2008Early voting coming to an end Early voting –with long lines and delays, was also intense on Friday in Atlanta, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C.. In Georgia, the long lines affected voters’ mood...
Early Voting Figures
Posted on November 02, 2008According to a nationwide compilation of early voting statistics made by Michael McDonald from George Mason University, the 2008 early vote stood above half of the 2004 total vote in several states. In Colorado, this figure was as high as 70% . Similar numbers were observed in some Nevada counties and in North Carolina...
Guest Bloggers: Peter Foley and Andy Sinclair, ?Early Voting in Los Angeles County: 31 October, 2008?
Posted on November 02, 2008Editorial Note: This is another voter experience guest blog. Andy Sinclair is a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology; Andy wrote the text. Peter Foley is also a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology; Peter provided the photos in the slide show at the bottom...
Elections in the News
Posted on November 01, 2008In today’s news, there were numerous stories about intense early voting taking place in several states - Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois (AP via HOI-19 and AP via Chicago Tribune), New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee ( AP and Chattanooga Times Free Press), Texas, Oklahoma, Washington D...
I Love the Automark ? And Long Lines
Posted on November 01, 2008Mike and I watched early voting in New Mexico and we watched two voters vote on the Automark. It was quite interesting to watch for a couple of reasons. First, it was so easy to use. The woman–who had a motor disability–voted without need for assistance on the equipment...
Who Comes Up With These Numbers?
Posted on November 01, 2008Having Janell and Ines blog for us has been great, since Mike and I are in New Mexico. I wanted to take a moment to debunk the myth that the GA Secretary of State and the media generally (see below) is perpetrating that the average age of poll workers is 72...
Trick or Treat? Voting machine lands in woman?s driveway
Posted on November 01, 2008This was too good to pass up … “Voting machine lands in driveway:” A Russell County woman had a voting machine delivered to her home Thursday. But she didn’t ask for it, couldn’t use it, and had no idea where it came from...
EAC to suspend SysTest Lab?s accreditation
Posted on October 31, 2008I heard about this yesterday, but didn’t get a chance to read the EAC materials on this accredition decision until this evening.
Elections in the News
Posted on October 31, 2008In today’s news, there were numerous stories about intense early voting taking place in several states ? Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma, Washington D.C., and West Virginia . With this heavy amount of early voting, it’s not strange to find stories about [...
Election administration and voting technology news updates
Posted on October 31, 2008There’s a great deal going on in the media now regarding election administration and voting technology in advance of next week’s elections. In order to try to gather, summarize and distribute this amazing flow of information, we’ve asked two fantastic students to help us out...
Delia Bailey, Guest Blogger: ?Voting in St. Louis City?
Posted on October 31, 2008Editorial note: This is the second of our guest blogging, voting experience, essays. Delia is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Empirical Research in the Law at the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. RMA. By Delia Bailey After getting the call from Mike that I will be joining [...
Early voting in LA County ? over five hours?
Posted on October 31, 2008Indeed, I have an eyewitness account, from someone who I hope will soon guest blog about the experience of standing in line for five hours and twenty minutes to early vote this afternoon in LA County.
A Funny Story with 2 Serious Implications
Posted on October 31, 2008Cuyahoga County is a great place because every election, without fail, they give us good fodder for our blog. In 2006, they had a voter assault a voting machine with a bat (and also screwed up their absentee and precinct voting in the same election)...
Vote flipping and the business of voting machines
Posted on October 31, 2008Peeks into the business of voting machine development are rare, which is why this Computerworld article (”Are design issues to blame for vote ‘flipping’ in touch-screen machines?”) is so valuable. Among the more interesting, and disappointing, quotes is this one, about DREs: [Chris] Riggall [spokesman for Premier Election Solutions] said he isn’t familiar with the design [...
Defending My Team
Posted on October 31, 2008So there is a story today in the New York Times noting that the Colorado Secretary of State lost a lawsuit and has to restore voters to the voter registration list. They also have a story with the headline “In a Tight Race, Victor May Be Ohio Lawyers...
Advocates win lawsuit in Colorado
Posted on October 30, 2008This just in: “A win for purged voters.” It seems that the plaintiffs and Secretary of State reached an agreement about what to do with the large number of potentially purged voters in Colorado: The morning after the election, the state will generate a list of voters who were removed from the rolls since [...
LA County update: longer lines for early voting, possible mail ballot problems
Posted on October 30, 2008See the story in this morning’s LA Times, “Mail ballot backlog poses problems for L.A. County voters.” First, the story says that the early voting line is now 90 minutes long in LA County. But second, here’s some about the potential mail ballot problems: Thousands of Los Angeles County voters may not receive their [...
CNN?s interactive early voting map
Posted on October 30, 2008CNN has a pretty handy interactive map showing states doing early voting, and the current early voting stats from those states.
Will early voting enthusiasm translate down ballot?
Posted on October 29, 2008All the excitement over early voting in the presidential contest has not addressed an issue that may be just as important: will this excitement translate into down ballot contests? Does the high Democratic and African American turnout that Charles has blogged about in NC also help Kay Hagan in her run against incumbent Elizabeth Dole? I [...
Early voting ?exit? poll from Pew puts Obama up 19
Posted on October 29, 2008http://people-press.org/report/465/mccain-support-declines Projecting who votes early is becoming REALLY important….
Preparing for election night (I)
Posted on October 29, 2008If 2008 is like 2004, then the moment the polls close in six states at 7pm, speculation will start flying about the results and — most important for people reading this blog — problems emerging with the election returns. So, as I get ready to roll into analysis mode at that point (as I also [...
Be Ready for 130 Million Ballots!!!
Posted on October 29, 2008This from Politico today: The pollster for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) predicted Monday that 130 million people ? the highest percentage of eligible voters in American history ? will turn out in this presidential election. ?Turn-out IS going to go through the roof,? McCain?s pollster, Bill McInturff, says in a strategy memo released to the press...
Long lines for early voting ? in LA County?
Posted on October 29, 2008I was again on the Patt Morrison show yesterday, on KPCC in Southern California. We had a number of interesting calls, and for much of the show Dean Logan was on with me answering lots of voter questions and concerns. Dean, and one of the callers, said that there was a 40-50 minute [...
Working paper: ?What is the probability your vote will make a difference??
Posted on October 28, 2008Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver and Aaron Edlin just posted a working paper, “What is the probability your vote will make a difference?” Here’s the abstract: One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability [...
California poised to break voter registration record
Posted on October 28, 2008There’s a story in the Sacramento Bee, “California to break voter registration mark”. Some of the data in the story is of interest: The deadline for reporting pre-election registration is Friday, but preliminary counts already exceed 17 million - higher than the state’s previous best of 16...
Gronke ?nostalgic? for the polling place?
Posted on October 27, 2008I am surprised that Michael didn’t highlight this quote, which comes directly from elections observation that I undertook along with Michael, Thad, Morgan Llewellyn, and Melissa Slemin: “I do admit some sort of nostalgia for the polling place,” said Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center...
Charles Stewart in the LA Times: ?Election fraud fears: the cure, states need better machinery and better voter registration procedures?
Posted on October 27, 2008Charles has an op-ed in today’s LA Times that helps put some of the current debate about potential voter registration fraud into a bigger, historical context — and which argues that the cure for election fraud fears is getting serious about election reform.
Nearly half of votes this fall in California may be cast by mail
Posted on October 27, 2008The LA Times has a story about the rising popularity of voting by mail in California, “Popularity of mail-in voting surges in California, elsewhere.” Most interesting to me in the story was the amount of variance across California counties in the popularity of voting by mail: Los Angeles County — the nation’s largest single voting [...
Lawsuit filed in Colorado over voter purges
Posted on October 27, 2008Here’s an article about the lawsuit. A bit of data from the filing on the claim: The groups suing Coffman also estimate that as many as 26,931 voters were purged from the rolls between July 31 and Oct. 31 ? within 90 days of the general and primary election...
Contrary trends in NC early voting data
Posted on October 27, 2008Although it looks like Democratic registrants are taking more advantage of in-person early voting than Republicans, what are we to make of the evidence from NC that (at least there) Republican registrants are taking even more advantage of mail-in absentee balloting than in 2004? In 2004, for instance, Republican registrants held a 9...
Insiders V. Outsiders View of Elections
Posted on October 26, 2008There was a really interesting piece on NPR’s On the Media yesterday about “The Bradley Effect.” The interesting thing about the show is that it not only has good data presented about the effect (see link above). The other aspect I found fascinating was that the cammpaigns both knew pretty quickly that the dynamics of [...
The Lawsuits: An Analysis
Posted on October 26, 2008There is a great analysis in Politico about the lawsuits in the election, especially focusing on Ohio.
Shakespeare 2008: Thank All the Lawyers?
Posted on October 26, 2008Delia Lithwick of Slate.com has a great piece about the role that lawyers are playing in the 2008 election wars over the rules. Although I disagree with her premise–after all good public administration are really our best hope on election day (hey, if she can tout her profession, so can I!)–she has a really interesting [...
A Yogi-ism for Election Administration
Posted on October 25, 2008In a Thomasville Times-Enterprise article about early voting in Thomas County, Georgia, Eunice Cook, a local election official, is quoted as saying the following about the growing numbers of people voting early in her county: “Lines are getting longer,? Cook said...
Where do those NC absentee votes come from?
Posted on October 25, 2008A brief additional word about the NC absentee ballots. A lot has been written about the two campaigns (particularly Obama) encouraging students who are away at college in safe red or blue states to vote absentee back home, if they come from battleground states...
More on those NC early voting trends
Posted on October 24, 2008The North Carolina Board of Elections has perhaps the most extensive election data available for download on the web. There is no better example of this than the voter files posted that report who has already voted in that state. James Hicks at the Early Voting Information Center has posted some informative graphs [...
Early voting number point to Democratic advantage in Nevada
Posted on October 24, 2008Just saw this on Fox News: “Massive Democratic Advantage in Early Voting in Nevada.” After six days of early voting in Nevada (5 electoral votes), Democratic turnout exceeds Republican turnout 57 percent to 27 percent. When the early walk-in vote is combined with mail-in absentee vote, the Democratic advantage is 54 percent to 30 percent...
Computer error causes high number of Georgia SSA voter reg checks?
Posted on October 24, 2008There’s been some mention in recent discussions of statewide voter registration systems regarding variance across states in the number of SSA checks that states are conducting. Here’s a story from Georgia, about what appeared to be a high rate (perhaps as much as 2 million) of SSA voter registration verification requests set by Georgia [...
Ballot printing mistake leads to 10,000 flawed absentee ballots in Gwinnett County
Posted on October 24, 2008Here’s the emerging story from Georgia, “10,000 absentee ballots in Gwinnett are flawed.” Details from the story: The original ballots, designed to be filled out by hand, are flawed because of a printing error. The circle beside the candidate?s name is too thick and somewhat misshapen, and consequently an optical scanning machine won?t be able [...
The Odd Vote Suppression Problem
Posted on October 24, 2008It is interesting that both Democrats and Republicans keep talking about vote fraud. In our work that was just published in the Journal of Politics, we know that voters who are less confident that their vote will be counted are less likely to vote. One has to wonder if people on the left who keep [...
What is the effect of cell-phone use on presidential election polling?
Posted on October 24, 2008There’s a really interesting analysis by Brian Schaffner on pollster.com that Thad pointed out to me, “Obama’s Double-Digit Lead? The Cell Phone Only Difference in the National Trend Estimate.” Here’s a quick summary of his analysis: The comparison between the two trends is remarkably consistent with what the Pew Report would lead us to [...
Welcome to Charles Stewart!
Posted on October 24, 2008Thought I’d welcome Charles Stewart to Election Updates; he wrote his first Election Updates post last night, an interesting analysis of “More on those NC early voting trends.”
Voter registration declines in uncompetitive states?
Posted on October 23, 2008We’ve seen a lot of reporting in the media — some of which I’ve blogged about here recently — about surges in voter registrations, especially in the battleground states. A study was recently released, authored by Lawrence Jacobs and Melanie Burns of the University of Minnesota, “The Unregistered: Voter Registration Declines in Many States, that [...
Some thought on early voting trends
Posted on October 23, 2008Early voting has been widely covered in the news recently, and of course we’ve blogged a fair bit about some of the trends. Paul’s the expert on early voting, and he’s been watching things closely. Other than the big trend that we’ve all been following — what looks like record early voting turnout in many [...
Ballot tracking in Oregon
Posted on October 22, 2008This on top of an email from my old friend and Dookie Mike Alvarez, noting that I am still on the rolls in North Carolina (as are Mike and his wife, Sarah): http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/VoterLookup.aspx?Feature=voterinfo Select First Name Middle Name Last Name Address CHESTER PAUL GRONKE 3202 IDLE HOUR DR ELIZABETH ANN GRONKE 911 BURCH AVE MATT DYLAN GRONKE 634 KEY WEST MEWS PAUL W GRONKE 3403 SHAFTSBURY ST I’m related to one of these people...
The Forsyth Co, GA Wait Time Page
Posted on October 22, 2008http://www.forsythco.com/DeptPage.asp?DeptID=123&PageID=1153 Real time updates of wait times in Forsyth County, GA early voting stations. Thanks, Gary!
First Ohio Numbers are In
Posted on October 22, 2008Franklin County, OH: As of Monday, 9000 Democrats, 9000 unaffiliated, and 900 Republicans have cast an early ballot.
?Early voting suggests 2008 may see record turnout ??
Posted on October 21, 2008On CNN … political scientist … “Michael McDonald, an associate professor of politics and government at George Mason University, said at least 2.2 million people already have voted using absentee or other types of ballots that allow them to vote before the polls open on November 4...
New Jersey breaks voter registration record
Posted on October 21, 2008And here’s another state with record voter registration, New Jersey.
West Virginia hits a record of 1.21 million registered voters
Posted on October 21, 2008USA Today has the story, “West Virginia sets state voter registration record.
Ohio SOS Website Hacked
Posted on October 21, 2008Just saw this come in on The CNN Wire, “Ohio secretary of state’s Web site hacked.”
Early voting records being ?shattered? in Texas
Posted on October 21, 2008Here’s a report from Texas, “Turnout high on first day of early voting.” Note some of the details: In Bastrop County, election officials said the one-day early voting total record of 700 voters was shattered by 2 p.m. The 435 ballots cast Monday in Lockhart broke the previous record for the first day of early [...
Drive-Thru Voting in The OC
Posted on October 21, 2008Here’s some interesting video from KTLA, on “Drive-Thru Voting Kicks Off in Orange County.”
Shameless promotion: why we need to study election administration
Posted on October 21, 2008I just watched the CNN video, and read stories last night about five hour lines. This link takes you to a Google news search for “early voting lines florida.” The only point I wanted to add is this: we knew this was likely to happen. Conny McCormack went down to Florida during their primary, measured the [...
Three hours and fifteen minutes to vote early in Broward County, Florida?
Posted on October 21, 2008CNN’s John Zarrella has a report this morning on CNN that it took him three hours and fifteen minutes to vote in Florida’s Broward County. I could be wrong, but that has got to be close to a record wait for early voting. Perhaps Paul knows what the record wait is …
Assisting new citizens with voting
Posted on October 21, 2008There’s an article in this morning’s LA Times on efforts to help new citizens, especially in Southern California, navigate the electoral process this fall.
Betsy Sinclair, Guest Blogger: ?Grace Period Registration and Voting in Chicago?
Posted on October 21, 2008Today I both registered and cast my Presidential General Election ballot — October 21, 2008 — courtesy of the ‘grace period registration and voting’ conducted by the Chicago Board of Elections. Grace period voting differs from early voting, absentee voting, and polling place voting in two ways: first, it is possible to simultaneously register [...
Lines in Florida
Posted on October 20, 2008As predicted on this blog by Conny McCormack, we are already seeing lines of 30 minutes to one hour in Miami-Dade Florida, and likely in other counties. Conny’s full report is at earlyvoting.net
Weekend cleanup on early voting
Posted on October 20, 2008A few cleanup items on Monday morning. Mike writes below about New Mexico. The states that we are tracking are showing the same pattern. Fairfax County (courtesy of Michael McDonald) is running way ahead of 2004. North Carolina turnout is almost double what it was at this same date last year...
LA Times: ?Tsunami? feared on Election day
Posted on October 20, 2008Here’s an article in this morning’s LA Times, “Clerks fear a ‘tsunami’ on election day.” One component to the story is a discussion of the same thread that we’ve been writing about here for a long time — surges in voter registration applications (many at the last minute), and surges in absentee ballot requests [...
More than 350,000 have already voted in North Carolina
Posted on October 20, 2008This is from MSNBC: “Tar Heel early voting going Carolina Blue?” From the story, note the update info at the bottom: As of this morning, over 340,000 North Carolinians have cast general election ballots, with the vast majority taking advantage of the state’s early in-person absentee voting, dubbed “One Stop” by Tar Heels...
Seen at a 7-11 in Texas ?
Posted on October 20, 2008Okay, so this image has little to do with election administration or voting technology … but it is good for a laugh. This was in the window of a 7-11 in the Austin, TX area. Wonder how that election will come out? “7-Election 08″
Reserved parking for voters in The OC
Posted on October 20, 2008I was just reading through some of the information on the Orange County Registrar of Voters’ website on abstentee balloting, and saw this image. Turns out that “The Registrar of Voters office can reserve parking in certain precincts. Look for these signs...
NOT lines in Forsyth County, GA
Posted on October 20, 2008I just got the heads up on a story coming out in tomorrow’s Atlanta Journal and Constitution. It shows just what elections officials can do if they are innovative and forward thinking in how they use their data. If you go to the Forsyth County Elections Website (www...
Strong early voting turnout reported in New Mexico
Posted on October 19, 2008Our colleagues in New Mexico passed this along: strong early voting turnout is being seen in New Mexico. Some of the numbers in this story, “Officials report high early voting turnout”; are pretty interesting, and again point toward strong voter interest in this fall’s election In Bernalillo County, officials opened up 15 satellite voting locations to [...
Vote and get a reduced vacation hotel rate
Posted on October 19, 2008This was in this morning’s LA Times Travel Section. If you vote and bring your “I Voted” sticker along, you can get a reduced rate at the Moonstone Hotel Properties chain: http://www.moonstonehotels.com/ivoted.
Schools and Voting
Posted on October 19, 2008The New York Times has a story today about schools closing on election day because of safety concerns. I want to add three points about this issue. First, Mike and I had a long talk with a Southern California principal of an elementary school on election day and she was very very concerned about her school [...
Tennessee Tribune replicates ?Social pressure and voter turnout?
Posted on October 16, 2008I learned this morning that a Nashville-area newspaper had published a list of voters who registered to vote in the last presidential election, but who have never voted. You can go to the Tennessee Tribune website and download the published list yourself...
Meredith and Maholtra paper
Posted on October 15, 2008I read the Meredith and Maholtra paper cited by MIke, and while it’s a nice methodological effort, I think the authors significantly overreach on the conclusions. In essence, what the authors show is that the candidate totals differ between VBM precincts and non VBM precincts...
Thad on KQED: Talking About Elections
Posted on October 15, 2008Here’s a link to Thad talking on KQED about elections and election administration issues.
New Working Paper: ?Can October Surprise: A Natural Experiment Assessing Late Campaign Effects?
Posted on October 15, 2008This working paper from Marc Meredith and Neil Malhotra was just posted on the political methodology working paper archive. It’s an interesting effort to study the effects of vote-by-mail on election outcomes. I’ve only skimmed it, and also suspect that Paul and Thad might have some thoughts about this research project: Title: [...
The Political Geography of the 2008 Presidential Election
Posted on October 14, 2008Last week Ruy Teixeira and William Frey presented data from their project on the political geography of the 2008 presidential election. Unfortunately, it was on the other coast, and I was not able to attend. But Ruy sent around the url to the presentation that he and Frey gave, “The Political Geography of [...
Report on human factors
Posted on October 14, 2008This came into my email inbox from a number of different sources, including one of the authors: Eric F. Shaver and Curt C. Braun, “Voting is as simple as 1,2,4 … The Human Factors of Voting.” I’ve not had a chance to read it closely given all that is going on so close [...
Another indication of interest in the election ? lots of early voters
Posted on October 14, 2008This story came in from Cook County yesterday, “More than 11,000 ballots cast in first 5 hours of early voting.” Here’s a bit from the story: Chicago Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen said 6,353 ballots were cast as of 1 p.m...
Election day registration to be considered in Oregon
Posted on October 13, 2008According to a story in today’s Oregonian, the Oregon Senate will consider a change to the Oregon constitution that will allow same day registration. If it passes the Senate, it has to be put to the voters. The current 21 day window is a consequence of the infamous “Rajneeshees” in 1984: The 1986 vote came after followers [...
100% of the Florida Early Voters are Democrats! (Wait, there is only one?)
Posted on October 13, 2008Michael McDonald deserves credit for this. He tracked down the first early in person voter in Florida! It’s a person in Palm Beach County. Mike thought it must be an absentee voter, but those files are not available to the general public. I’m speculating that it is a handicapped or disabled voter, who are able [...
ACORN RAID IN NV: Why I hate the Media
Posted on October 11, 2008So I griped about the ACORN raid last week, and now I want to gripe about the media. It turns out ACORN turned in the people involved and it was their quality control system that identified the people. Why the media didn’t pick up on this or why ACORN wasn’t able to get their message [...
LA County breaks registration record
Posted on October 10, 2008According to a report on KPCC, LA County has broken it’s own registration record, and now has more registered voters than any other county in the country. And we still have ten more days for people to register to vote! Here’s the KPCC report: LA County breaks record for registered voters It?s official...
Call for papers: IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security
Posted on October 10, 2008I got this call for papers today: Call for Papers IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security: Special Issue on Electronic Voting Following the discovery of a wide variety of flaws in electronic voting technology used in the US and other parts of the world, there has recently been a spurt of research activity related to electronic voting...
Will surging registrations have a partisan effect this fall?
Posted on October 08, 2008Perhaps. Here’s a story from the LA Times, “Voter registration trends appear to favor Democrats”. The story argues: A look at the voter registration numbers in some battleground states suggests trends that appear to favor Obama. Virginia, for example, has logged more than 300,000 new voters since the year began...
Washington State breaks voter registration record
Posted on October 08, 2008The most recent number reported by the Washington Secretary of State’s Office is 3,515,393 — breaking their old record. This just adds more evidence to the argument that this fall’s presidential election is drawing a lot of attention, and that we could see a very high turnout throughout the nation.
NPR Coverage of Voter Registration Issues
Posted on October 08, 2008I am listening to my old friend and colleague, Charles Franklin of the University of Wisconsin and pollster.com, on an NPR story right now about a voter registration lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Wisconsin. The program is Day to Day. A tag line announced that Tova Wang, Vice President for Research at Common Cause, [...
ACORN RAIDED
Posted on October 08, 2008CBS News, and most other news organizations, have this story. The Las Vegas headquarters of the nation?s largest grassroots community organization for low-income people was raided today by Nevada state authorities as part of a voter-fraud probe. The raid was initiated by Nevada?s Secretary of State, Ross Miller, after a series of accusations that the Association of [...
Long lines at early voting sites in Florida? A possible unintended consequence of voting equipment switch
Posted on October 08, 2008The move from touch screen voting technology to printing paper ballots on demand could potentially lead to long lines of voters at early voting sites in Florida, according to a recent report researched and written by Conny McCormack, an elections consultant to the Pew Charitable Trusts and JEHT Foundation’s Make Voting Work initiative...
McCain v. Obama: October 20, Georgetown Law
Posted on October 06, 2008I just received an invitation to this interesting event, McCain v. Obama. Recently when we were at workshop sponsored by the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project; Ned Foley led a very interesting discussion of such a hypothetical case … and this looks like a very interesting event.
Groups Aim To Ease Overseas Voting For Americans
Posted on October 05, 2008Pam Fessler did a story on NPR about overseas voting. She notes that most people listening to her report have 48 more days before they vote in this year’s elections. But for an estimated 6 million Americans living overseas or serving in the military, deadlines to receive and cast a ballot are rapidly approaching, and [...
Thoughts on voter confidence
Posted on October 03, 2008I just finished reading the Hall, Monson, and Patterson piece cited below by Mike. It’s a nice, multi-state, multi-time point treatment of poll worker performance and how it affects voter confidence, but the paucity of the results at the end raises a concern for me...
California Governor signs into law online voter registration for California
Posted on October 01, 2008Yesterday California Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB 381, which will lead eventually to online voter registration for Californians. At this point, the system sounds a lot like those now being used for online registration in Arizona and California. For more about SB 381, see the Secretary of State’s press release, or read the version [...
Traffic study claims that driving to vote could be hazardous
Posted on October 01, 2008Here’s a link to a story about this study, to be published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, that claims that traffic deaths are higher than expected otherwise on Election Day. Here’s a quick summary of the study: The researchers looked at traffic-related deaths during polling hours on presidential Election Days and [...
New election administration and voting technology research in Political Research Quarterly
Posted on October 01, 2008I was just trolling the “early access” (preprint) articles that are forthcoming at Political Research Quarterly and noticed that there are a number of articles of interest to readers of Election Updates. First, there is a paper by Thad, Quin Monson and Kelly Patterson, “The Human Dimension of Elections: How Poll Workers Shape Public Confidence [...
All you ever wanted to know about election forecasting
Posted on October 01, 2008There’s a symposium in the just-released issue of the political science journal, PS: Political Science & Politics. Pretty much everyone who has written recently on the question of presidential election forecasting is represented in this symposium.
Early voting and registration begins in Ohio
Posted on September 30, 2008There’s been a fair bit in the media about disputes over early voting in Ohio; see, for example, stories from the AP, or the BBC. The interesting aspect of what they are doing this week in Ohio is allowing people to register and cast an absentee ballot during this early registration and voting period [...
?Do you want fries with your vote??
Posted on September 29, 2008Okay, and I thought that getting a flu shot when you went to vote was as interesting as it got. Check out what they are doing in Orange County!
When We Used to Bet on Elections
Posted on September 29, 2008Check out this article from Slate.com about how we used to bet on elections…with bookies.
Reports coming in of lines in Iowa
Posted on September 25, 2008I just got off the phone with a reporter–there are reports of voting lines already in Iowa. If someone on the ground can send me a confirmation at paul AT earlyvoting.net, and a picture, that would be great.
Early voting now underway in half the nation
Posted on September 25, 2008State with no-excuse absentee or early in person: FL, GA, ID, IL, IA, ME, NV, NC, ND, SD, WY. The big ones on that list are FL, IA, NV, and NC, all battlegrounds. States with excuse required absentee voting who have mailed: DE, DC, IN, KY, MA, MI, MS, MO, PA, SC, TX, VA, WV...
NASS Survey on State Preparations for the 2008 Presidential Election
Posted on September 24, 2008NASS recently surveyed states and compiled extensive data on their preparations for the 2008 presidential election. The complete report and data are available at the NASS website. Here’s the summary of findings from the report’s media release: Highlights of the NASS report include: State Voter Hotlines: Thirty-six states provide toll-free hotlines to collect and respond to [...
Absentee Balloting Underway in more than 20 states
Posted on September 24, 2008Quite a few states open up absentee balloting at a 45 day window, and Iowa opens at the 40 day window. From James Hicks, research director at Early Voting Information Center: “The following states are mailing ballots to absentee voters: Kentucky, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, [...
Recount in Boston!
Posted on September 23, 2008While we are on the subject of post-election audits and recounts, it turns out that there is a hand recount that has been requested in five Boston wards. I was talking on the phone earlier this morning with MIT colleagues Ron Rivest and Charles Stewart, and they mentioned that this recount had been requested...
NM Election Audit report available
Posted on September 23, 2008The report from our 2006 study of election audits in New Mexico is now available, “The New Mexico 2006 Post Election Audit Report.” There is also a slideshow that provides some visual context for the project: New Mexico Election Audit slideshow...
New Mexico Audit: ?2006 Election Audit Results Complete - Offers Lessons for 2008?
Posted on September 22, 2008Here’s the media advisory from Bernalillo County, New Mexico. Tomorrow morning there is a news conference during which Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera, University of New Mexico Professor Lonna Atkeson, and Pew “Make Voting Work” Project Director David Becker, will discuss the results of the New [...
Election auditing in New Mexico
Posted on September 22, 2008The New Mexico Independent ran a story last week, “N.M.’s ‘08 election results to be audited.” Towards the bottom of the story were a few sentences of interest: The audit will be a first for the state, but Bernalillo County will go into the audit with a bit of experience...
Washington Post: ?High Turnout, New Procedures May Mean an Election Day Mess?
Posted on September 19, 2008Here’s the link to the Washington Post story. But what exactly is “new” here — we’ve been pointing out for years now that technological and procedural changes in how people vote produce problems on Election Day, especially in places where highly competitive elections bring lots of people (and lots of new voters) to polling [...
California Bureau of State Audits report on county registrar?s pollworker training
Posted on September 19, 2008The California Bureau of State Audits released a report on county registrar pollworker training programs in California. Here are the report highlights: - In 2006 the Office of the Secretary of State (office) adopted poll worker training guidelines (training guidelines), as required by law...
A new Election Updates!
Posted on July 25, 2008We will be making a transition over the next few days from this existing blogsite to a new Election Updates. The new blogsite will have a better look, be more user-friendly, and should be easier to access. The new url is http://caladan.caltech.edu/ElectionUpdatesBlog/Or you can just click here...
Overview of California Redistricting Reform Proposals
Posted on July 23, 2008The Center for Governmental Studies has a released a helpful comparison of a variety of redistricting reform proposals in California, "A Comparative Overview of California Redistricting Reform Proposals in 2008." These comparative tables are handy for anyone who wants a better understanding of Proposition 11 ( text available here), and how it compares to other redistricting reform proposals.
More new research on voter mobilization
Posted on July 22, 2008Here's a new working paper from Meredith, Kessler, and Gerber, "The Persuasive Effects of Direct Mail: A Regression Discontinuity Approach". Here's the abstract:During the contest for Kansas attorney general in 2006, an organization sent out 6 pieces of mail criticizing the incumbent's conduct in office...
"Better Ballots", Brennan Center report
Posted on July 21, 2008A report on ballot design, "Better Ballots", was recently released by the Brennan Center. Fellow political scientist David Kimball was one of the authors of the report, and the report was backed by a pretty solid task force. I've been offline most of the day today, and only now started to read the report...
Paul and his live blogging
Posted on July 18, 2008Paul is sitting here, blogging on two blogs simultaneously. Talk about multitasking!The Pew workshop we are participating in is quite productive!
Absentee Help Sites
Posted on July 17, 2008I keep being mailed these and will try to post them up as they arrive.Here are three sites that attempt to aggregate absentee registration forms:http://www.longdistancevoter.org/http://beabsentee.org/There is a third one from a journalism class in University of Washington that I'll post up when I get the link.
Mike in Faux Cal
Posted on July 17, 2008Leaving the car keys in the car while running ... that was memorable! Luckily, Mike (and a good humored AAA mechanic) came to my rescue.
Paul in SoCal
Posted on July 16, 2008Two notes for interested readers. First, the last TWO times Paul was in Southern California he had car trouble; I think he is forgetting the time down in Brea recently when had a bit of trouble with his rental car (something about locking the keys in it while it was still running)? Second, for the record, we down here use "Caltech", instead of "CalTech" (take a look at just about anything at http://www...
"Estonians could vote by mobile phones for the next Europarliament elections and local government elections in 2009 ..."
Posted on July 16, 2008Here's the story, "Estonia could become the first country to allow mobile voting." I've heard this rumor from a variety of other sources as well. According to the report above, the legislation from Estonia's Reform Party that would allow for mobile phone voting might also lengthen the pre-election window for remote electronic voting from the current three days to ten days.
Off to CalTech
Posted on July 16, 2008I am off to CalTech today to a small gathering on voter registration research hosted by my colleague Michael Alvarez and Pew/JEHT's Make Voting Work's initiative. The last time I was in SoCal, my car had broken down in beautiful Bakersfield. I hope for a better outcome this time!
New book on election reform
Posted on July 16, 2008Just saw this release but haven't gotten the book yet:The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform by Frederic Charles SchafferCornell University Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Hidden Costs of Clean Election Reform by Frederic Charles Schaffer, which reveals how tinkering with the electoral process can easily damage democratic ideals and suggests new ways to help prevent future breaches of democracy in the name of "cleaning up" elections...
TheHill.com - FedEx, voter group hope to ease ballot shipping woes
Posted on July 15, 2008Here is a story about a neat initiative from Fedex and the Overseas Vote Foundation:Seeking to alleviate a top concern for overseas absentee voters, FedEx will team up with a voter participation group and ship ballots for free or at heavy discounts this fall, the company announced this week...
Polmeth - election fraud in the Gilded Age
Posted on July 11, 2008I'll write more later about some of the research reported the past few days at the Political Methodology conference.I'm now at one of the conference poster sessions, looking at a poster by Gail Buttorff, a grad student at the University of Iowa. Gail's poster is titled "Electoral Fraud in the Gilded Age", and it presents an application of the Benford's Law test developed by Walter Mebane, and discussed in our recent book, "Election Fraud...
"Americans face hurdles voting abroad in upcoming election"
Posted on July 11, 2008USA Today has a story today on the problems that are likely to face Americans abroad as they attempt to vote in the upcoming presidential election. This is something that Thad and I have been researching for a long time; if you want the details see our recent publication, "Military Voting and the Law...
Officials Investigate 3 Alabama Counties in Voter Fraud Accusations
Posted on July 10, 2008There are allegations that voters in some Alabama counties were paid for their votes and that voters may have voted absentee to facilitate fraud. Here is one interesting part of the story: ?The Republican Party has an unscripted mandate to target Democratic counties, and African-Americans particularly,? said Albert Turner Jr...
Census report on voting and registration in 2006 election
Posted on July 10, 2008The U.S. Census Bureau recently released their report on voting and registration in the 2006 election, "Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2006. There's a lot of interesting data and analysis in the report, including:48% of voting-age citizens voted in the 2006 midterm election, the highest turnout estimated by the CPS since 1994...
Ohio SoS rethinking ban on voting machine "sleepovers"
Posted on July 10, 2008I ran across this story this morning, "Brunner looking at plan to end voting machine "sleepovers".
Off to the political methodology conference ...
Posted on July 09, 2008The 25th Political Methodology conference starts today, at the University of Michigan. There are a lot of interesting papers, and some of which are of interest to readers of Election Updates. I'll try to post links to those papers over the next few days.
Chiming in on Dean Logan
Posted on July 09, 2008Let me second Mike's congratulations to Dean Logan. While I have not worked with Dean as extensively as Mike have, I've met Dean at conferences a number of times, and he was a valued participant in Data for Democracy. I can think of a lot of adjectives to describe Dean: professional, courteous, informed, open, self-critical...
New Research Funding available to study non precinct place voting
Posted on July 09, 2008Just announced by Pew/JEHT Make Voting Work:Washington, D.C. - 07/09/2008 - Make Voting Work (MVW), a project of the Pew Center on the States in partnership with the JEHT Foundation, has announced up to $400,000 in new funding available for research examining alternatives to precinct-based election day voting, including early in-person and absentee voting and vote by mail systems...
Dean Logan gets the job in LA County
Posted on July 09, 2008Dean Logan will be able to take "Interim" out of his title, according to newspaper reports this morning. Dean's been "Interim Registrar/Recorder" in LA County since Conny McCormack retired, and during that time Dean weathered the "double-bubble" controversy which I wrote about in early February...
Video of election fraud and rigging from Zimbabwe and Russia
Posted on July 08, 2008Folks have forwarded to me the following links:From Zimbabwe.From Russia.
Is polling becoming more difficult?
Posted on July 08, 2008I know this subject is slightly off-topic for many readers of our blog, but I thought it might be of interest to some, especially those interested in polling and the reliability of polling. A colleague sent along a link to this article in the Arizona Republic, "Election Pollsters Face New Challenges...
New VTP working paper, "Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring The Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts"
Posted on July 08, 2008Along with Betsy Sinclair (University of Chicago, Political Science) and Asa Hopkins (Caltech, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy), we just finished a working paper version detailing a field experiment project we have been working on for some time, "Mobilizing Pasadena Democrats: Measuring the Effects of Partisan Campaign Contacts"...
Clarin: "En un bar porteño festejan la independencia norteamericana y registran votantes para las próximas elecciones"
Posted on July 08, 2008One of my graduate students sent this link along, from Clarin.com. If you don't understand the Spanish headline, just go to the link and watch the video. You'll get the idea, and see how one organization is mobilizing voters abroad ...
Using GIS to Locate Early Voting Sites
Posted on July 06, 2008Gary Smith of Forsyth County, GA has posted about this on the Data for Democracy blog. The graphs are pretty neat!
New push for no-excuse absentee balloting in MI
Posted on July 02, 2008As reported in the Chicago Tribune. Unlike past (failed) efforts, it looks like this push has a chance. Opponents are raising the spectre of fraud, while proponents claim it will increase turnout and broaden the electorate.
On Thad and Checklists
Posted on July 01, 2008Thad's revealed passion for checklists in fact has a long history. Back in the day, when he was a young and aggressive assistant professor, he'd produce long lists of research projects and progress on those projects. But if you take a look at his research productivity, you'll see that checklists can be a good thing in the right hands ...
Follow Up about Check Lists and Elections
Posted on June 30, 2008I received an email from John Tanner, formerly of the Justice Department, about my recent posts about checklists. Tanner noted that checklists are quite valuable and are are required in most of the Department ofJustice's minority language consent agreements...
Intimidation in Zimbabwe presidential election
Posted on June 30, 2008There's been a lot of coverage of the Zimbabwe presidential election, more than I could easily summarize here.In light of our recent book, Election Fraud, the events in Zimbabwe provide an interesting addendum to work in our book on electoral manipulation, providing vivid examples of what one chapter (written by Rod Kiewiet, Thad Hall, Jonathan Katz and I) called "low-tech election fraud...
CGS report on online signature gathering for ballot measures
Posted on June 30, 2008Walter S. Baer and Roy Ulrich recently authored a report for the Center for Governmental Studies, "Online Signature Gathering for California Initiatives. Here's the summary:he Center for Governmental Studies commissioned "Online Signature Gathering for California Initiatives" as part of its recently-released Democracy By Initiative (2nd Edition)...
The Benefits of Check Lists
Posted on June 27, 2008The World Health Organization is trying to get hospitals around the world to adopt check lists that are followed during surgeries. It turns out that following check lists keeps people from making dumb mistakes, like cutting out the wrong lung, but also counting all of the clamps and sponges keeps doctors from sewing up one inside of a patient inadvertently...
Maybe You Can't Always Recount the Paper
Posted on June 25, 2008One of the main arguments made by advocates of paper ballots is that you can always recount paper ballot; they have a certain infalibility in some people's eyes. Well this story from New Mexico may shatter your belief system. Reader discretion is advised!Ballots from the primary election are missing from two Cibola County voting places, which could create difficulties for an automatic recount expected in a razor-thin state Senate race...
Utah primary
Posted on June 24, 2008We are still out in the field, at this point taking a coffee/Internet break. Hopefully folks are following our progress at twitter.com. Lonna Atkeson (University of New Mexico) has joined Thad and I this afternoon, as we headed to Box Elder and Davis Counties...
Utah primary - follow our progress
Posted on June 24, 2008We are trying something new: follow our poll watching today at twitter.com
Primary election today in Utah
Posted on June 24, 2008Today is primary election day in Utah, and this morning Thad and I have been visiting polling places in Davis County. More about our observations later ...
Ohio SoS report on March primary elections
Posted on June 18, 2008Here's a link to the report.Here's the report's executive summary:The administration of elections in 2008 showed vast improvement from the 2004 presidential primary election. The first directive issued by this administration in February 2007, Directive 2007-01, established minimum qualifications for all directors and deputies (See Appendix III, page 263)...
New studies show that young voters engaged in primaries and caucuses
Posted on June 17, 2008Two new studies, by CIRCLE and Pew, have found that young voters have been highly engaged in the primaries and cuacuses this election cycle. The studies are summarized in a great blog post at the Washington Post's "The Trail" blog:Some 6.5 million voters under 30 voted in this year's primaries and caucuses, according to data compiled by CIRCLE...
AP issues correction to story about EAC
Posted on June 17, 2008The AP issued one correction to the story I blogged about yesterday. Here is what I blogged. Here is the correction:n a June 15 story about the Election Assistance Commission, The Associated Press erroneously reported the agency's current operating budget...
Louisiana's Voter Registration Issues
Posted on June 17, 2008The NY Times had an article about the problems with voter registration drives there. Registrars were complaining about the forms submitted being incomplete, invalid or duplicates, all of which are problematic. As I read this I thought about the simple question: why do we make voter registration work the way we do? Election day voter registration, government-facilitated voter registration, or some other system would surely be better!
"Voting commission faces problems, lacking funds"
Posted on June 16, 2008You can read all about the woes of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in this AP story.
Brunner comments on OH 2008 Election
Posted on June 15, 2008Sigh. You just can't make headway on some issues.Sec'y of State Jennifer Brunner (OH) gave a wide ranging interview recently about the upcoming presidential contest. There's not a lot of new things in here, other than she's expecting 80% turnout in Ohio, which would be shockingly high...
It's Official: M. Mouse is not running for AG in Oregon Republican
Posted on June 13, 2008I love the periphera of elections.It turns out that Multnomah County posts the official write-in results for elections where there is no party nominee.The Republicans didn't nominate anyone for Attorney General this May (a sad commentary on the statewide GOP in Oregon)...
Zimbabwe Election Photos
Posted on June 13, 2008The Washington Post has a great photo gallery about the Zimbabwe election. There is a great story here that discusses the recent arrests of the opposition leaders too.
V.A. Ban on Voter Drives Is Criticized
Posted on June 13, 2008It seems that the VA is banning voter registration drives.Voting rights groups are criticizing the Department of Veterans Affairs for its decision to ban registration drives among the veterans living at federally run nursing homes, shelters for the homeless and rehabilitation centers across the country...
Special issue of American Politics Research on voting technology and election administration research
Posted on June 13, 2008American Politics Research is now publishing a special issue on election administration and voting technology research, co-edited by Richard Niemi and I. Here's a link to the electronic version of the special issue. The papers in the special issue include:David C...
97 Year Old Who Cannot Vote
Posted on June 13, 2008Here is a woman who claims she cannot vote because of the voter ID law. Turns out that birth certificates were optional in 1910 in Kentucky.
CRS report, "The Constitutionality of Requiring Photo Identification for Voting."
Posted on June 12, 2008Recently the CRS released a report, "The Constitutionality of Requiring Photo Identification for Voting: An Analysis of Crawford v. Marion County Election Board." The report concludes by asserting the following implications of the Crawford decision:In the wake of the Supreme Court?s ruling in Crawford, some commentators have speculated that more states are likely to enact laws requiring photo identification for voting...
eDemocracy Conference: "New Opportunities for Citizen Participation in an Information Society"
Posted on June 11, 2008This conference was held last week in Estonia. Our colleagues Alexander Trechsel and Guido Schwerdt participated in the event, and their presentations can be obtained from the conference agenda page.
On election information data security ...
Posted on June 11, 2008There's a very interesting study that was recently released by the Verizon Business Risk Team, "2008 Data Breach Investigations Report." The report presents data from hundreds of cases that were investigated in the past four years, and discusses a variety of mitigation strategies to prevent data security breaches...
"Building Secure and Transparent Elections Through Standard Operating Procedures"
Posted on June 11, 2008We recently posted this working paper to the VTP working paper archive, "Building Secure and Transparent Elections through Standard Operating Procedures." It's a paper that Thad and I have been working on for some time, and here is the abstract:Election reform has evolved since the 2000 election...
CGS Report: "Democracy by Initiative"
Posted on June 09, 2008I got a hard copy of the nearly 400 page report from the Center for Governmental Studies, "Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California's Fourth Branch of Government." It's the second edition of this report, and will make excellent beach reading for election geeks ...
Data for Democracy Website and Blog
Posted on June 04, 2008Welcome to the post-event website for Data for Democracy, a conference sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts' and the JEHT Foundation?s Make Voting Work project, and held May 12-13 in Washington D.C. Data for Democracy is a part of Make Voting Work's initiative to address the need for empirical data to improve election administration in the United States...
Ballot misprint in Torrance County, CA
Posted on June 02, 2008A local City Council race in Torrance may be called into question when erroneous ballot instructions were included with the ballot. Some unknown number of ballots were mailed that incorrectly stated that voters can cast only one vote (the correct number is four).
Turks abroad cannot cast an absentee vote by mail
Posted on June 02, 2008The Turkish Supreme Court rules that Turkish votes cannot be cast by mail. The practical impact is to place a high hurdle in place of Turks who wish to vote from abroad and cannot easily get to an embassy or consulate.
Same day registration in Oregon?
Posted on May 28, 2008Caitlin Baggott, Reed '99 and co-founder of the Bus Project, argues in today's Oregonian that instituting voting by mail without accounting for the high mobility rates among young people reduces participation.She editorializes in favor of same day registration as a solution...
FEC Reports overwhelm Excel. Maybe it's time to learn a real program ...
Posted on May 27, 2008Dan Toffey sent me a link to today's Politico report that the Obama and Clinton campaign have reshaped campaign finance in an unexpected way: the reports are so large that they overwhelm the capacities of Excel to process the data.Excel is limited to 65,536 rows and 256 columns, but the most recent reports are larger than that...
To Politico: Maybe updating your copy would help
Posted on May 27, 2008From a helpful correspondent: They could also get a more recent copy of MS Excel... any version past 2003 can handle one million rows per sheet:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120596:-)
The self-fulfilling prophecy of election-stealing. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine
Posted on May 24, 2008Dahlia Lithwick has a new article on "election stealing." It is too bad she didn't come to our event at Brookings Wednesday(!) but it is an interesting piece.
New book: "E-Voting: The Last Electoral Revolution."
Posted on May 23, 2008I just got a copy of a new book, edited by Josep M. Reniu, "E-Voting: The Last Electoral Revolution." It was published by the Institut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials in Barcelona, and it containes eight essays. One, "The Development of remote electronic vote in Europe", was written by our colleague Robert Krimmer, so I'll leave it to him to say more about his contribution...
Voting Information project launched
Posted on May 22, 2008From Doug Chapin at electionline.org:Fellow Election Geeks! I?m writing to share the news about the Voting Information Project, an exciting new joint endeavor of Google, the JEHT Foundation, and Pew?s Make Voting Work. The Voting Information Project was born of the recognition that increasingly American voters are clamoring for easy access to answers to three basic questions: ?where do I vote??, ?what?s on the ballot?? and ?how and where do I find out if I?m registered to vote?? This information has always been kept in election offices at the state and local level ? but it isn?t always easily available in the places where voters are accustomed to looking...
Netherlands refrains from using EVMs for good
Posted on May 20, 2008The Dutch council of ministers decided yesterday to refrain from using electronic voting machines for good.This dates mainly back to the activities from the "We don't trust voting computers group" by Rop Gongrijp who demonstrated on Dutch TV live how one change the EPROM of the Nedap voting machine and make it play chess...
Election Fraud book event tomorrow!
Posted on May 20, 2008If you happen to be in DC tomorrow, and you are free in the afternoon, you might want to stop by the Brookings Institution. They are hosting an event for our new Election Fraud book, and my co-editors Thad and Susan will be on hand to discuss the book...
AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project Conference
Posted on May 20, 2008Paul, Thad and I are now at a conference that the AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project is hosting today. They have assembled a great group, and so far we have heard interesting talks from Bob Stein (Rice University) on early voting centers and Caroline Tolbert (University of Iowa) on election reform...
Some absentee voters in LA County get incorrect ballot
Posted on May 19, 2008This story was in the Pasadena Star News this weekend, "A new ballot slip-up surfaces; cross-over voters get wrong ballot".Here's a summary of the issue from the story:Non-partisan voters who requested absentee ballots for the Republican or Democratic primaries have instead received non-partisan ballots that do not list any partisan candidates...
Memo to Clinton: It's Very Easy to Track OR Voters
Posted on May 14, 2008Given how well Hillary Clinton performed in West Virginia yesterday, I think we'd have to give round one of the Clinton/Gronke smackdown to the Big Dog.No surprise there; William Jefferson Clinton has just a bit more political experience than yours truly...
And We Wonder Why Young People Dont Vote
Posted on May 12, 2008Here is a story that will make you think, "what were they thinking"? There is nothing like an administrative bureaucracy taking the excitement out of becoming a voter. Seventeen-year-old Bethesda resident Sarah Boltuck cast a provisional ballot in February?s primary election ? and legally, her vote counted...
AEI/Brookings release: "A review of proposed Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines"
Posted on May 08, 2008The AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project released their "A review of proposed Voluntary Voting System Guidelines" today. I was on their VVSG Task Force which helped to put together this review.Bottom line, as quoted in the executive summary, "... we find the VVSG to be in need of extensive revision...
On that new Election Fraud book ...
Posted on May 08, 2008Paul, in case you were missing the url for that book that Thad referenced, "Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation", here's a link to Brookings Institution Press, to amazon.com, and to Barnes & Noble. Might even soon be in your neighborhood bookstore soon ...
Lake County, Indiana -- in the election spotlight
Posted on May 08, 2008There are a variety of stories out today about why the ballot count in Lake County, Indiana was so slow on Tuesday evening, including details of past election problems in Lake County:AP: "History of Corruption Clouds Primary in Northern Indiana."Chicago Tribune from LA Times: "Indiana Election Results Held Up By Outdated Procedures...
Indiana too close to call?
Posted on May 07, 2008Indeed, as I wrote earlier this evening, the Democratic primary in Indiana has become quite interesting. It's nearly 10pm Pacific, the Democratic primary results are close, and CNN is focusing on why the count is so slow in Lake County, Indiana ... Given the heavy turnout in Indiana, and in particular the large number of early and absentee ballots cast in Indiana, it's no surprise that we are still waiting for final results...
Fraud and Paul
Posted on May 07, 2008To finish Paul's thought, he leaned over and said, David Becker, read the new book that Thad, Mike and Susan Hyde have out on election fraud. You will love it.
Live blogging from NAS Voter Reg Conference #2
Posted on May 07, 2008The group has warmed up after lunch; I wonder if they spiked the soda.We're in the midst of a long drawn out conversation about interstate interoperability standards and voter fraud. But I have to admit that the conversation is a bit frustrating to me...
Nuns and students have trouble with Indiana voter identification law
Posted on May 07, 2008I wrote yesterday about the report of the Indiana nuns who had trouble voting yesterday in Indiana's primary. That story received a lot of play yesterday, but some of the stories also noted that college students in Indiana were having trouble with the voter identification law...
NAS Live Blogging #1
Posted on May 07, 2008Session Two: Midrange solutions.We started by reviewing the California Vote Reg system. Comments were made by Bruce McPherson, past SoS of California, Lee Kercher, Chief of IT for the California SoS, and Dean Logan, Acting County Clerk of LA County, CA...
Two Important Upcoming Conferences
Posted on May 07, 2008In Portland today and tomorrow, the National Academy of Sciences is holding some public sessions about their voter registration reforms. Some details later today, and I'll try to blog a bit today.Next Monday and Tuesday, I'm organizing a conference sponsored by the Make Voting Work initiative called "Data for Democracy"...
Indiana Reflections: Paper Takes Time
Posted on May 07, 2008I'm sure more reports will come out of Indiana, specifically Lake County, this week, but I can't help but making one quick comment: paper takes time.Lake County had a record number of absentee ballots, and they should have expected this if they'd been reading electionupdates! Paper takes time...
The Irony of the 2008 Democratic Primaries
Posted on May 06, 2008One short thought: In 2006 and 2007, numerous states moved primaries up to Super Tuesday and earlier so that they could be more "relevant". Isn't it ironic that it is the states that did not move -- North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon -- who are basking in unprecedented attention by the candidates? Those states that did move often received little more than a wave from the candidates; if they had not moved, they could be being romanced right now.
That Perfect Present for Mother's Day -- Election Books!
Posted on May 06, 2008Just in time for Mother's Day, you can buy two amazingly good books on elections. OK, this is a shameless plug for both of our new books.First, you can buy Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promise of Digital Democracy (only $21.56 from Amazon!) Here is what Tom Mann said about the book: Recent debates about voting technology and election reform have generated more heat than light, often leading to myopic views of security and premature policy fixes...
All eyes on Indiana ...
Posted on May 06, 2008At this point (4:45pm Pacific), CNN has called NC for Obama. With 25% of the precincts reporting in Indiana, Clinton has a 57-43 lead. Going to be an interesting evening!
More early exit poll results: "Clinton leads on economy among Indiana voters ..."
Posted on May 06, 2008This is from Bloomberg:Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton leads among Indiana Democrats who say they are being affected by a U.S. economic slowdown, according to exit polls for television networks and the Associated Press.Barack Obama leads in North Carolina among those voters most concerned about the economy, the exits polls show...
Charlotte Observer: long lines in some parts of North Carolina
Posted on May 06, 2008Here's the story from the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina:Mecklenburg County elections officials report a steady turnout of voters throughout the day. There were long lines at some precincts this morning, but voters who arrived in the mid-afternoon hours sometimes were able to vote in less than 10 minutes...
Early exit poll results from Indiana and North Carolina
Posted on May 06, 2008This was recently posted by the AP:WORRIED ABOUT THE ECONOMYThe economy was on voters' minds in Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina. Two-thirds of Democratic primary voters in Indiana and nearly as many in North Carolina said the economy is the most important issue facing the nation...
Some confusion in North Carolina regarding party ballots
Posted on May 06, 2008The Raleigh News and Observer is reporting that in Wake County, North Carolina, there was some confusion among registered Republican voters about whether they could vote the Democratic party ballot:Elections officials in Wake were dealing with confusion on the part of some Republican voters who asked for Democratic ballots, county Elections Director Cherie Poucher said...
"Indiana nuns lacking ID denied at poll by fellow sister"
Posted on May 06, 2008Here's the story from the AP:About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote...
AP video: long lines and energized voters in North Carolina
Posted on May 06, 2008Here's the AP video:
Record number of absentee ballots in Indiana
Posted on May 06, 2008From FOX News:According to the Secretary of State?s office by midnight last night a record-breaking 173, 525 absentee ballots have been received statewide?that number includes all early voting that ended yesterday at noon.
Scattered problems in Indiana primary
Posted on May 06, 2008This is from Indianapolis (WTHR.com):As of 8:30 am, the county clerk's office reported the following problems:2-1 (IPS School 102, 1501 E. 10th St.) - Inspector did not show. Election Board deployed a back-up Inspector with materials as soon as possible...
Record early voting turnout in some North Carolina counties
Posted on May 06, 2008This is from WSOCTV.com:Eyewitness News learned there was a record turnout in early voting in Mecklenburg County. Typically less than 1 percent of voters cast ballots in early voting, but in this primary it was 8 percent. The statistics show 85 percent of those people voted Democrat, even thought only 44 percent of voters in the county are registered Democrats...
AP survey finds 3.5 million new voters
Posted on May 06, 2008The Associated Press surveyed voter registration figures throughout the U.S. and found that more than 3.5 million new registrants have been recorded. Here's a bit more:Voter excitement, always up before a presidential election, is pushing registration through the roof so far this year ? with more than 3...
Indiana primary: heavy turnout, lots of Republican crossover voters, some problems reported
Posted on May 06, 2008The Indianapolis Star reports on turnout and crossover in today's Indiana primary:Amid heavy turnout, Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties, where fewer Republican voters might impact down-ticket primary races...
EAC Commissioner to the FEC
Posted on May 06, 2008This in from the AP:President Bush nominated two new Republicans and one new Democrat to the Federal Election Commission Tuesday in an attempt to break a Senate confirmation deadlock that had paralyzed the regulatory agency.Bush resisted efforts to withdraw the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official whom he nominated in 2007 but who had not been able to win votes in the Senate to get confirmed...
New research paper: the effect of voting technologies on voter choices in a multiparty setting
Posted on May 05, 2008There's a working paper that was recently posted to the VTP working paper archive by Gabriel Katz, Ernesto Calvo, Marcelo Escolar, Julia Pomares, and myself: "Assessing the impact of voting technologies on multi-party electoral outcomes: the case of Buenos Aires' 2005 Congressional Election...
Opinion Piece on Absentee Voting
Posted on May 05, 2008There is an interesting opinion piece (link above) on closing polling places and creating absentee precincts in Santa Clara County. It delves nicely into the pro's and con's of this move. Amusingly, one of the interesting aspects of in-person voting is that people really like the "I Voted" stickers...
Record Crowds in NC Early Voting
Posted on May 04, 2008From the Charlotte Observer, early voting stations held extended hours to handle the crush of voters.
Ballot Snafu is causing controversy in Oregon
Posted on May 03, 2008A ballot snafu in Oregon has some newly registered voters receiving two ballots, on non-partisan and one partisan. If they accidentally vote on the first, non-partisan ballot, then their partisan ballot won't count.The Oregonian and Willamette Week both cover the story and suggest that this will hurt Obama in the state, since many Independents have (in other states) gone more for Obama...
Next NC Update
Posted on May 02, 2008Our next update for NC Early Voting is on the web.A question for our dear readers: why does early voting climb during the week? the over the week early voting patterns obtain across all of the states we have looked at? With some small discrepancies, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and North Carolina all show a slow climb in the return rate of early ballots from Monday through Friday...
Early Voting Turnout in NC: No presidential contest in '04 = no voters
Posted on April 30, 2008Comparative early vote returns (absentee only, but NC has a provision for "one stop" absentee voting) are now up for view at earlyvoting.net/states/nc.php.Thanks to James Hicks (with a thesis deadline just 48 hours away!) and Peter Miller (soon at be at UC Irvine) for getting these to work, and to the NC DoE for letting us know how to find the file...
The Unrecognized Process of Ballot Remarking
Posted on April 29, 2008I just wanted to echo Mike's posting about ballot remarking. When I've described this process to state legislators and elections officials not from the West Coast, they're generally confused, shocked, and sometimes appalled. I don't know how many states have a "voter intent" law that allows for ballot remarking, but I find the practice fascinating as well, and look forward to any research or insight on the process.
Estimates of new voters in California: "Integration Potential of California's Immigrants and Their Children"
Posted on April 29, 2008A report was recently issued by the Grantmakers Concerned With Immigrants and Refugees, "Integration Potential of California's Immigrants and Their Children: New Estimates of Potential New Voters at the State, County, and Legislative District Levels...
Oh Baby....Baby.....Vote for Me.....Please....
Posted on April 29, 2008OK, so sometimes you just can't make this stuff up. Not only is Bill Clinton going to kick Gronke's ass in Oregon, but when Gronke is recovering, he can call up and find out about voting in Oregon....from really really hot babes!It turns out that being off one digit on an 800 number really makes a difference -- you go from Oregon election information to, well, phone sex...
Remember that problem with "decline-to-state" ballots in LA County?
Posted on April 28, 2008Some of you may remember the controversy earlier this year over problems associated with the "decline-to-state" ballots in Los Angeles County, during the February Super Tuesday primary (see, for example, some of my earlier postings about this[January 29, 2008;February 1, 2008;February 12, 2008;February 13, 2008;February 29, 2008...
NC Early Voting Charts: Data Available?
Posted on April 28, 2008We've gotten a few inquiries about whether we are going to replicate the charts that we made for Texas and Tennessee but up to now, we can't find data to download from the NC website. If anyone knows of a source of turnout data for NC absentee ballots, by party, we'd appreciate it if you'd drop us a line...
At a bookstore near you ...
Posted on April 28, 2008Here is Electronic Elections on the shelf at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble ...
Supreme Court to Voters: Get an ID
Posted on April 28, 2008The Supreme Court ruled in the Crawford Case that voters can be told to bring an ID to the polls. You can read the actual decision here and read the information about the background of the case on the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project page.
The Understudied Process of Ballot Remaking
Posted on April 28, 2008As I wrote immediately after the Super Tuesday primary here in California, I had a chance to observe the ballot remaking process in Los Angeles County. It's an interesting part of the post-election process, one that is poorly understood and not well studied...
Farewell to Melissa!
Posted on April 28, 2008Melissa Slemin, who for about the past three years has been the project manager for the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, who designed and maintained the VTP website, who was a frequent contributor to our Election Updates blog, and who generally kept the trains running on time, has moved on to take a job working for Transamerica in Los Angeles, designing, developing, and managing their websites...
Clinton to Gronke: I am Going to Kick Your Ass
Posted on April 27, 2008I think my fellow blogger Gronke was laying low this weekend, hoping that Bill Clinton's Secret Service detail didn't find him so that the ex-President could kick his....butt. Actally, he is going to have rural Oregonians drive to Portland and do it for him...
"When Voters Settle Nothing"
Posted on April 24, 2008The Economist recently had an interesting article, "When voters settle nothing: why more and more ballots are inconclusive." The argument in the story is that an increasing number of democratic elections in the world are subject to post-election disputes...
New Book on Election Fraud: "Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation"
Posted on April 24, 2008I received the following email from amazon.com this afternoon:Dear Amazon.com Customer,As someone who has purchased or rated books by R. Michael Alvarez, you might like to know that Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation (Brookings Series on Election Administration and Reform) will be released on May 1, 2008...
Party switching up in North Carolina in advance of their primary
Posted on April 23, 2008Party registration switches are up in some North Carolina counties, according to a story in the Dunn Daily Record, "Party Switching Up In 2008 Primary". Here's some interesting data from the story:In light of North Carolina's significance to this year's primary election process, the concept of voters switching parties warrants closer observation...
Pennsylvania Dreamin'
Posted on April 22, 2008A link to a posting I made on another website, "Blue Oregon" about Pennsylvania.My in laws from my current family are from the Keystone State (northeastern PA), as well as my in laws from my ex-wife's family (northwestern PA).I believe Michael has PA roots as well...
More early exit poll data from PA: New Democratic voters for Obama, late deciders for Clinton
Posted on April 22, 2008From CNN, "Exit polls: New Dems break for Obama, late deciders for Clinton":One out of every seven Democratic party voters was not registered as a Democrat at the beginning of the year, and 60 percent of them cast their ballot for Obama, according to the exit polls...
Problems reported in PA primary
Posted on April 22, 2008The Philadelphia Inquirer has a story, "Machine, registration problems in Pa. primary elections." According to this story, most of the reports of registration problems seem to stem from voters who changed their party registration, and who were not on the rolls...
More Political "Pranks": Obama Website Hacked
Posted on April 22, 2008Got this from ChannelWeb, "Obama Website Hacked: Users Redirected to Clinton Campaign." Here's some details:The attack, which took advantage of a cross site scripting vulnerability on Obama's Website, was launched on the eve of Pennsylvania's Democratic National Primary, which closes this evening...
"Early Pennsylvania Exit Poll Results"
Posted on April 22, 2008From the AP, "Early Pennsylvania Exit Poll Results":Highlights of preliminary exit poll data in the Pennsylvania Democratic presidential primary Tuesday:PARTY-SWITCHERSOne in 10 voters changed their party registration since the start of the year so they could vote in the hotly contested primary, which was open only to registered Democrats...
Ballot confusion in Palmer Township, Pennsylvania
Posted on April 22, 2008"Palmer Twp. voter reports ballot confusion." Especially see jpg file of the sample ballot. The issue here is that the delegates listed in each column do not necessarily match the candidate at the top of the column.
Long lines in Northampton County (PA)?
Posted on April 22, 2008"Voters might need to wait in ling longer":Retired Rabbi Jonathan Gerard, 60, of Easton, was concerned -- as were many voters -- that there was just one electronic voting machine in the polling place, where for years there had been two mechanical machines...
Video of voting in Lehigh County
Posted on April 22, 2008Here's an archive of interesting videos from Pennsylvania.
"Political Hijinks" in Philadelphia?
Posted on April 22, 2008Rod Kiewiet passed along this link, "South Philly Political Hijinks Already Under Way." The allegation is that misleading flyers were distributed directing voters to incorrect polling locations.
PA voters describe voting ...
Posted on April 22, 2008From the AP: "Raw Video: Pa. Residents Describe Voting."
Record turnout expected in Pennsylvania today!
Posted on April 22, 2008Here's a story from Fox: "Clinton, Obama Brace As Record Turnout Project in PA."And one from USA Today: "Pennsylvania Voters Go To The Polls."
Election Protection Press Release on Pennsylvania
Posted on April 22, 2008The Election Protection Coalition reported receiving 1000 calls about election problems. They note that the calls were all over the board. Here is a key section of the report:Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections ofthe Lawyers' Committee's Voting Rights Project, said, "In this historicprimary season, voters across the country have turned out in droves toexercise their fundamental right to vote...
More on Russian election fraud
Posted on April 21, 2008Peter Ordeshook passed along this link, with additional details regarding the Shpilkin analysis of election fraud in the recent Russian Elections: "Dmitri Medvedev votes were rigged, says computer boffin", from TimesOnline. The working paper by Ordeshook and Myagkov, "Russian Elections: An Oxymoron of Democracy" were apparently also discussed at the same seminar where Shpilkin presented his work.
North Carolina's "one-stop voting"
Posted on April 21, 2008Here's a few snips from a WRAL story, in North Carolina, "Hundreds in Wake Cast Early Primary Ballots":Primary elections in presidential election years traditionally attract 16 to 31 percent of registered voters, but Bartlett predicted a turnout of more than 40 percent this year because of heightened interest in the tight Democratic race between presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton...
Russian Election Fraud
Posted on April 18, 2008This is an interesting analysis of the Russian elections and the possibility of fraud in the recent presidential election.
Boston Globe: "New Voters Flood Primaries"
Posted on April 12, 2008According to this story in the Boston Globe, a half million people have either registered to vote or have changed their registrations to participate in the upcoming Democratic presidential primaries.
Committee on House Administration: "2008 Presidential Primaries and Caucuses: What We've Learned So Far"
Posted on April 11, 2008On April 9, the Committee on House Administration held an interesting hearing, and the webcast and most of the witness statements are are now available. Interesting testimony came from Cecilia Martinez, Executive Director of The Reform Institute. In her testimony, she discussed data collected by the 866-MyVote1 Consortium...
Q+A with Pew's Michael Caudell-Feagan and electionline.org's Doug Chapin
Posted on April 10, 2008Pew has a Q+A, "Experts Weight In on Election Reform", featuring Michael Caudell-Feagan and Doug Chapin. Interesting reading!
House Committee on Administration to hold hearings next week on UOCAVA voting issues
Posted on April 10, 2008The U.S. House Committee on Administration is holding hearings next Tuesday, "Military and Overseas Voting: Problems and Progress in Ensuring the Vote." For background reading on UOCAVA voting issues, read "Military Voting and the Law: Procedural and Technological Solutions to the Ballot Transit Problem", a paper in the Fordham Urban Law Journal, April 2007, co-authored with Thad Hall and Brian F...
National Academies Report on Voter Registration: Recommendations
Posted on April 08, 2008Here's the key recommendations from the NAS report on voter registration, "State Voter Registration Databases: Immediate Actions and Future Improvements, Interim Report:SHORT-TERM ACTIONS?PUBLIC EDUCATION AND DISSEMINATION OF INFORMATION ? Raise public awareness about the legibility and the completeness of voter registration card information...
"Steps Could Improve Voter Registration Databases for November", Report from the National Academy of Sciences
Posted on April 08, 2008This morning the National Academy of Sciences released an interim report, "State Voter Registration Databases: Immediate Action and Future Improvements, Interim Report." This report represents the work to-date of the NAS panel on state voter registration databases, of which I am a member...
21 days and 10 million dollars
Posted on April 07, 2008Three weeks to go until the April 28th deadline for the EAC Data Collection Grant program.
Voting at Malls Coming to Ohio
Posted on April 07, 2008To avoid the long lines that formed at the Summit County Board of Elections in the days before the March primary, the board might allow people to vote absentee at local malls in November.Is this early in person or absentee voting? Dedicated coders want to know...
Off to the Midwest Political Science Association!
Posted on April 03, 2008Paul, Thad and I will be at the Midwest Political Science Association conference for the next few days. I have not yet had a chance to go through the program and link specific panels and papers from our blog, no doubt Paul, Thad and I will over the coming days!
Kudos to John Kauffman upon Retirement
Posted on April 02, 2008John Kauffman, longtime elections director in Multnomah County, OR, retired this past Friday.John is well known and well respected in the elections field. He served on a number of regional and national advisory panels. John also deserves accolades from the academic community...
Wht Timely Results Are Important
Posted on March 31, 2008One question people often ask each of us is this: why do we need to have election results reported quickly?The current Zimbabwe elections illustrate the reason; when results are held back, it may seem--either correctly or incorrectly--that the results are being "massaged" in the back room...
AP: "Ballot shortages a continuing problem"
Posted on March 31, 2008The Associated Press distributed this story, "Ballot shortages a continuing problem", yesterday. This is an issue that is not receiving enough attention --- the odds are good that the energy and enthusiasm that is driving record voter registration and turnout in the primaries so far will continue on through the rest of this election cycle...
The Zimbabwean Vote
Posted on March 30, 2008Now here is an interesting question, posed by the President of Zimbabwe: ?We do not rig elections,? he said dismissively, dressed, as is his custom, in a finely tailored suit and well-buffed shoes. ?We have that sense of honesty. I cannot sleep with my conscience if I have cheated in elections...
10 million dollar grant program from EAC
Posted on March 30, 2008The EAC data collection pilot program has been officially announced.The RFP is in the federal register here: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2008/pdf/E8-6263.pdfThe grant materials and submission process is here: http://www.submitgrant.net/ProgramInfo.aspx?CFDA=90...
Record Democratic Voter Registration in Pennsylvania
Posted on March 27, 2008There have been reports recently that Pennsylvania election officials have been experiencing record levels of voter registrations, in advance of the upcoming Democratic presidential primary in the state.Of interest are reports that many formerly Republican registered voters in Pennsylvania are apparently re-registering as Democrats, so they can participate in the Democratic presidential primary...
LA Times on Dean Logan: "L.A. County election pilot is taking flak again."
Posted on March 27, 2008The story is here.
Double Trouble in Harris County, TX
Posted on March 26, 2008Harris County Clerk Bev Kaufman has identified 1147 voters who may have illegally voted twice in the recent presidential primary, including 378 who voted early in-person than again on election day.Report is here (MS Word document).
Accusations of Absentee Fraud in St. Francis County, AR
Posted on March 26, 2008This story from today's Morning News, NW Arkansas. If true, looks like the most common kind of absentee voting fraud--small local race, and someone signed absentee ballots illegally (and got caught).
Colorado rejects paper
Posted on March 21, 2008In a surprising reversal, the Colorado legislature killed a bill that would have mandated a move to an all paper ballot election.Instead, the legislature argued that they had passed new rules that would allow for an expedited certification procedure for the electronic machines...
Belgian study on electronic voting systems
Posted on March 21, 2008A study was recently released by a consortium of Belgian universities, "BeVoting: Study of Electronic Voting Systems." The study is in two parts (English version): Part 1 and Part 2.This is a very comprehensive study, and well worth reading. The English version, Part 1 (page 18) has an excellent summary of the study:There will be two parts...
2008 Election Day Survey: Public Comment Period is open
Posted on March 21, 2008The EAC announced the contents of the 2008 Election Day Survey (full disclosure: I worked as a subcontractor on the 2006 study and helped in the early design phase of the 2008 study).The 60 day public comment period started on March 20 and ends on May 19...
Guest Column: Heather Gerken on Foley's "Shadow Court" Proposal
Posted on March 18, 2008Paul,I think Ned Foley?s proposal to create ?shadow? courts for resolving election disputes to be a good deal more promising than you do. First, Ned is exactly right that scholars and policymakers ought to be thinking harder about what he has described as ?reform without legislation...
More on Foley's Amicus Court Proposal
Posted on March 16, 2008I need to give Ned Foley's "Election Appeals Court" a fairer treatment, my somewhat tongue in cheek earlier posting aside. What Ned is working toward here is some sort of non-partisan appeals body that can help settle electoral disputes and in doing so, help re-establish citizen trust and legitimacy in our elections system...
Guest Blog: "Russia's Alice in Wonderland Democracy" by Peter Ordeshook and Misha Myagkov
Posted on March 14, 2008Guest BlogRussia?s Alice in Wonderland DemocracyMikhail Myagkov and Peter C. OrdeshookThere is an Alice in Wonderland quality to Russian elections. The Kremlin lies about their democratic legitimacy, we know they are lying, they know we know they are lying ? and so on...
How we vote 2: Private "Amicus" Election Dispute Tribunal?
Posted on March 14, 2008Ned Foley sure loves Lloyd Cutler. He keeps referring Cutler as just the sort of non-partisan observer who could head up a private sector amicus court that can be set up as a way to settle election disputes.Ned is encountering some tough sledding, however...
Live blogging from "How We Vote"
Posted on March 14, 2008I'm attending the "How We Vote" conference organized by the William and Mary School of Law.They've brought together a nice set of speakers, something of a list of the usual suspects, but a good mix of law, computer science, and political science speakers...
More on the FL Do-Over
Posted on March 13, 2008This from Rick Hasen's blog:Florida's Mail-In Primary Plan Opens RiftsThe Florida Democratic Party "is pushing forward with a plan for recontesting its primary, largely with mail-in ballots, despite vigorous opposition from Democrats in the state's congressional delegation as well as concerns from the campaign of Sen...
Research on election fraud in Ukrainian and Russian elections
Posted on March 13, 2008Peter Ordeshook (Caltech) and Mikhail Myagkov (University of Oregon) have recently distributed two interesting working papers, one on fraud in Ukraine's 2007 parliamentary election, and the other studying Russian elections. The paper on Ukrainian elections is "Ukraine's 2007 Parliamentary Elections: Free and Fair or Fraud Once Again and the Argument for Election Observers...
Justice Talking on Elections
Posted on March 12, 2008The NPR show Justice Talking has a show this week on election reform. It features Doug Chapin giving an overview, a discussion about voter identification at the polls, a discussion of voting technology (featuring me) and a discussion of polling in elections.
My take on the FL and MI do-overs and vote by mail
Posted on March 11, 2008The option of using a vote by mail option for a "do-over" primary election in Florida and Michigan is gaining traction. Florida Senator Bill Nelson has been urging the option on the state, and DNC Chair Howard Dean recently praised it as a way out of the current morass...
Ballot sheets from Uruguay
Posted on March 11, 2008One of my graduate students sent along this link; it takes you to a page where they have electronic copies of ballot sheets used in their elections.
U.S. Senate hearing on voter fraud
Posted on March 11, 2008The U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is holding a hearing tomorrow on voter fraud: "In-person voter fraud: myth and trigger for disenfranchisment?" Here's the witness list.
New EAC Data Collection Grant Program
Posted on March 10, 2008This just released on the EAC website:Public Law 110-161 authorizes the EAC to award $10,000,000 in grants to States to implement a data collection program for the Federal elections scheduled to be held in November 2008. Of that sum, $2 million will be provided to each of five eligible applicants...
A Vote Stealing Scam in Houston
Posted on March 10, 2008Here is a very interesting story from Houston:Voters reported being turned away from the polls, prompting a criminal investigation into vote stealing, Local 2 Investigates reported Tuesday. The Harris County District Attorney's Office confirmed it is contacting the victims, all centered around Precinct 219 in southeast Houston...
Online voting discussed for Florida
Posted on March 08, 2008Here is an article with a novel idea: do the Democratic primary do-over in Florida using the Internet. The funny thing here, reading the critics of the idea, is that they don't seem to realize that there already was an Internet Democratic primary -- for Democrats Abroad -- that went just fine!
Radio Interview about Voting
Posted on March 07, 2008I did a radio interview on Thursday on a show called Culture Shocks -- which is a much tamer show than the name implies. The blurb for the show sounds so exciting (hopefully my droning voice isn't).Rock the E-Vote with professor and co-author, Thad Hall and later Keli Goff introduces America's newest swing voter in Party Crashing: How the Hip Hop Generation Declared Political Independence...
Shift Back to Paper Ballots Sparks Disagreement
Posted on March 07, 2008Pam Fessler has another interesting story about the switch back to paper ballots.
EAC Will Award Grants to Recruit the Next Generation of Poll Workers
Posted on March 07, 2008The EAC is doing another round of grants through the Help America Vote College Program.The EAC is seeking applications under the Help America Vote College Program (College Program) for programs that will encourage college students to serve as poll workers...
Paper, Plastic, or Electronic?
Posted on March 05, 2008Thad is going to love this quote, from the electionline.org Ohio primary "blog" report:Ron Dziak, a voter in Parma Heights, said he liked both the current paper ballots and the old touch-screen technology. ?I preferred touch-screen for ease of voting, but with paper there seems less room for error,? he said...
Obama wins....Sweden+
Posted on March 05, 2008This is an interesting story about how the Internet and paper voting worked for the overseas US Democratic primary in Sweden.
Problems in Ohio
Posted on March 04, 2008So there is an AP story where this is the lead:Save for bad weather and scattered precincts that ran out of ballots, voting appeared to run smoothly Tuesday in four state primaries that drew record voter turnout.Since when is running out of ballots something that you lump in with bad weather? Isn't running out of ballots in an election criminal? Especially if everyone already has done that on Super Tuesday?So I know you are wondering, how many people were affected? One? Two? Oh not even close...
Record turnout predicted in Texas primary
Posted on March 03, 2008This is from the AP:An estimated 60 percent, or 2 million of the 3.3 million total voters, cast their ballots early, Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson said Monday. The estimate is based on the slightly more than 1.2 million who voted in the 15 most populous counties during a 10-day period that ended Feb...
Will voter turnout swamp election officials in November?
Posted on March 03, 2008There was an interesting story last week in USA Today, "High voter turnout prompts resource concerns for November." In the story, Kim Brace (Election Data Services) warned "This could be a tsunami coming" (great quote, Kim!). Indeed, if the primaries are indicative of things to come this fall, we could see a surge in turnout in many states and that could lead to a variety of problems before, during and after Election Day.
One thing to watch in Ohio and Texas: the performance of their voter registration systems
Posted on March 03, 2008There's an AP story this morning on voter registration issues, pointing out that one thing to watch regarding Ohio and Texas will be the performance of their new voter registration systems:But Ohio and Texas have had problems getting their registration databases up and running, creating fears that it may take days to tally votes from these important contests — and Ohio knows a great deal about delays...
Election Updates down ... but we are now back up!
Posted on March 03, 2008Election Updates was down yesterday for most of the afternoon. Sorry for the system crash, and sorry that we were unable to blog yesterday. Hopefully we will catch up today, as there are a number of interesting things going on in the election world, ranging from the Russian election to the primaries tomorrow in Ohio and Texas.
Felon and Prisoner Voting in Alabama
Posted on March 02, 2008There is a great story in the NY Times today about felon voters in Alabama. Check out this line:Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a ?felony involving moral turpitude.? Those who have committed other felonies ? like marijuana possession or drunken driving ? can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general...
E-Vote: Election Markup Language 5.0 Approved as OASIS Standard
Posted on March 01, 2008Mike and I have been noting for some time the benefits of having interoperability in voting technologies. OASIS, one of the international standards boards, has approved Election Markup Language as such a standard. As govtech.com noted:OASIS, the international open standards consortium, this week announced that its members have approved the Election Markup Language (EML) version 5...
NPR: Ohio's New Voting System Revs Up for Primary
Posted on February 29, 2008Pam Fessler, who is a great reporter on the voting technology beat, has a great story today about the transition in Ohio to paper systems. Parts of the story are pretty amazing and the logistics of it seem daunting, especially the idea that some counties are going to do mid-day ballot pick ups so that the counts will work...
Turnout Smackdown in the WSJ
Posted on February 29, 2008Carl Bialik's column in todays Wall Street Journal has a nice smackdown between Curtis Gans and Michael Mcdonald on turnout over the past quarter century. Besides featuring some of the best people in our profession on this topic, the article does a nice job illustrating the kinds of data issues that often bore the non-academic community, but which are so important to settle if we're going to have solid empirical evidence on elections related topics.
High voter turnout prompts resource concerns for Nov
Posted on February 29, 2008USA Today has a warning: Voters may turn out in November. Ok, seriously, they have a story noting thatRecord turnout in this year's presidential primaries has election officials worried about possible shortages of machines, ballots and poll workers in November...
Most of LA County problem ballots to be counted
Posted on February 29, 2008While I was in New Mexico earlier this week, Dean Logan, LA County's acting registrar-recorder, announced that it looks like they will be able to count most of the problem ballots from the February primary. Here's some quotes from a story that ran in the Pasadena Star-News earlier this week:On the Scantron-like ballot, bubbles 8-10 were assigned to candidates from both parties...
Live from Texas: one person's early voting experience!
Posted on February 29, 2008This came in this evening from a friend of Election Updates who wanted to share their early voting experience:I am typing to you live from a totally gigantic line to vote on the last day of Early Voting in the Texas primary in Austin, Texas - 10 minutes before polls close...
Stolen ballots can't be used
Posted on February 28, 2008Here is an interesting reversal of the debate over electronic ballots. Here, the electronic system had the better backup.Paper ballots taken during a theft outside a Thermal polling precinct on the night of the Feb. 5 primary election were unused or spoiled and contained no votes that could be counted in Riverside County's final tally, it was announced today...
Paper Ballot Measure introduced in CO
Posted on February 28, 2008The link to the legislation can be found here.
Democratize the United Nations
Posted on February 28, 2008I'm currently in London, attending the Local E-Democracy Symposium (http://www.empowerment-symposium.com) . There I came across an interesting project which tries to do a world-wide e-vote on the opinion of the world's population on United Nations resolutions...
Handwritten primary votes won't be counted
Posted on February 28, 2008Here is a great story that addresses the question: when is a ballot not a ballot?The 299 Chesterfield County votes handwritten on blank paper for the Virginia presidential primary do not count. The State Board of Elections yesterday certified the statewide results of the primary without the 299 Democratic votes, which Chesterfield election officials allowed to be written on blank pieces of paper after nine precincts ran out of printed ballots...
Early Voting may be a double edged sword for Clinton
Posted on February 27, 2008The general sense up to now is that early voting advantages certain candidates in a dynamic primary race, usually the presumptive front runner who may be losing support to an insurgent. That's how I think it may have functioned for Guiliani in Florida (before he dropped out of course)...
New Mexico Election Audit: Day One
Posted on February 26, 2008For those who have been watching the webcast of the NewMexico Election audit project, you've no doubt seen that wespent the morning training the audit team members, mainlyon the procedures associated with the machine recount ofprecinct ballots. This afternoon we will continue with themachine counting, but we will also be training audit teamsregarding the manual counting process...
New Mexico Election Audit
Posted on February 25, 2008Well, thanks to Melissa for posting the link to the webcast of the New Mexico Election Audit (turned out that the firewall in the election warehouse in Bernalillo County would not let me access blogger.com!). All is now quiet in the warehouse, as we are done for the day...
University of New Mexico Collaboration
Posted on February 25, 2008Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall are in New Mexico with Lonna Atkeson at the University of New Mexico where they are collaborating on a research project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts "Make Voting Work" initiative, titled "Lessons for All in Determining Voter Intent and Election Integrity: A 2006 Post Election Audit Study of New Mexico's Optical Scan Ballots in Bernalillo County, New Mexico...
What a difference a competitive election makes: Early Voting Turnout in TX
Posted on February 25, 2008I regularly get requests from state legislators, election administrators, and journalists to comment on the impact of early and other convenience voting systems on turnout. My position on this is well-known--these reforms have small but significant impacts on turnout...
Paper Ballots and Chains of Custody
Posted on February 24, 2008Mike and I have long contended that chains of custody are critical for all ballots (and we have an article about this issue under review currently.) To appreciate the problems with chains of custody, read this from Mississippi.Chancery Judge Jim Persons has notified the attorneys involved in the long-running Wilkinson County Democratic primary election contest that he intends to call a new election...
I just got a copy of Electronic
Posted on February 22, 2008I just got a copy of Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy in my mailbox. Nice job!The best thing about the book is the last blurb on the slipcover. Man, that guy is smart!
Joe Hall on Ohio
Posted on February 21, 2008Joseph Lorenzo Hall has more to say about Ohio and the possibly unintended consequences of the administrative changes instituted by SoS Brunner.
Texas Primary Rules: A More Detailed Explanation
Posted on February 21, 2008This morning, I was emailed a link to this much more detailed analysis of the Texas Democratic Party rules for allocating delegates. It is a great read and very helpful (and written by a fellow University of Georgia PHD). It also provides an analysis of the Latino vote debate that is raging as well (and whether Obama can capture those votes).
Early Voting Underway in Texas
Posted on February 20, 2008Early voting is underway in Texas, and 65,293 Democrats (.84% of registered voters ) and 25,673 Republicans (.33% of registered voters) have cast ballots.Stories about early voting in Texas:Dallas Morning News story on heavy Democratic turnout in the first day, also Travis County and Collin CountyAP Story (Dallas Morning news) on GOP and Democratic "get out the early vote" rallies...
Foley's essay on Ohio
Posted on February 20, 2008Ned Foley raises some excellent issues to watch in the lead up to Ohio's presidential primary on March 4th.I'd like to highlight two issues, both of which occurred in California, and are likely to reoccur in Ohio, in part due to the unintended consequences of decertification of electronic machines, the move to paper ballots, and the use of a central count...
The Weird Texas Rules
Posted on February 20, 2008I finally read in the Chicago Tribune how the Texas primary delegates are allocated:126 of the delegates will be awarded based on the March 4 popular vote,35 are unpledged super delegates, and67 delegates will be distributed according to the results of a series of precinct caucuses...
Washington State Primary -- After the Caucus and Delegates....
Posted on February 18, 2008Now here is a great story that illustrates everything weird about the presidential selection process. Washington State is having a meaningless primary after they already handed out delegates in their caucuses. As the NY Times reports:As many as 1.5 million votes are projected to be cast in Washington State?s presidential primary on Tuesday...
More Photos of Voting in Pakistan
Posted on February 18, 2008You can see more photos of the Pakistani elections here.
Polls Close, Counting Begins in Pakistan Elections
Posted on February 18, 2008The Post has a great article about the trials and tribulations in the Pakistani elections, as well as a cool photo gallery, which you can access here.The article discusses several problems that Americans can relate with, such as long lines and delays in figuring out who actually won...
Rules Matter
Posted on February 18, 2008For people who study politics, there is a basic saying "Rules Matter." The Electoral College is an example, as are the rules for open versus closed primaries. In this article in the Washington Post, we see that rules matter for the allocation of delegates and they suggest that Texas has rules for allocating Democratic Party delegates that can decouple statewide support and delegate allocations.
California Election Woes
Posted on February 17, 2008The Times reports on the ongoing election woes in California. There are several things of interest here. First, consider this paragraph:Election officials say a combination of high turnout, technology flaws and millions of mailed-in and dropped-off ballots have led to painstakingly slow returns in some counties, with nearly 800,000 ballots remaining to be processed...
Pakistani Elections
Posted on February 17, 2008There is an interesting story about the Pakistani elections today that discusses the concerns about vote fraud there. This paragraph is especially interesting.Ms. Fruman, of the National Democratic Institute, described a litany of complaints, mostly from opposition parties, of bribery and the use of state resources for campaigns...
DC Nightmare
Posted on February 14, 2008Thanks Dan S. for this report on DC snafus (the Feb 14 edition is not online yet but will be soon). My comments about California seem mild in comparison!
Forthcoming: "America Votes!"
Posted on February 13, 2008America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting RightsReleased by the ABA Section on State and Local Government. Being released February 29.
The problem with paper
Posted on February 13, 2008Tennessee is only the most recent state mandating a move to paper balloting in an effort to insure the integrity of the ballot.Here's the problem: when combined with an increasing use of by-mail voting (primarily via no-excuse absentee balloting) and when some jurisdictions are moving to a central count, then this will almost certainly result in a dramatic increase in residual vote (under and over votes)...
LA County Bubble-versity continues
Posted on February 13, 2008The LA Times ran an editorial this morning regarding the "cross-over" or "decline-to-state" ballots in LA County that have not yet been tallied. One interesting thing was pointed out in the editorial:Election officials are calling this a glitch, but the outcome was entirely foreseeable...
Heavy turnout in the Potomac Primary
Posted on February 12, 2008I'm sitting in an office in DC listening to everyone talk about their voting experience. What I'm hearing is that lines are long (not so long as to be frustrating, just long), heavy turnout, and a sense that no one is opting for the GOP ballot in VA...
Potomac primary reports
Posted on February 12, 2008Heavy turnout in Virginia, Democratic ballots outnumber Republican ballots 3 or 4 to 1, main complaints are lack of parking (Wash Post)Some late openings in Maryland and long lines in the morning as voters rushed to the polling place before work; some polling stations without power due to weather conditions (CNN)Maryland voters excited to be relevant, may increase turnout (Philadelphia Examiner)Forecasts for snow and ice later in the day may cause problems (Wash Post)Results will give Obama an "undisputed edge in delegates", so projects Xinhua news agency
LA County review of "non-partisan" ballots
Posted on February 12, 2008Yesterday Dean Logan, the Acting Registrar-Recorder in LA County, released a report detailing a review they conducted of "non-partisan" (or "decline-to-state") ballots in the 1% manual tally. To quote from the report:In total, 1,820,758 ballots were reflected in the semi-official election results released Wednesday morning, February 6, 2008; 189,438 (10...
Guest blogger: Morgan Llewellyn, "Iowa Caucus: Projecting viability"
Posted on February 12, 2008Editor's note: Morgan is a Ph.D student at Caltech, and he had the opportunity to study the Iowa caucuses first hand earlier this year. He has written a number of papers on election administration, and is writing a dissertation on presidential primary elections...
Maryland extends voting hours due to bad weather
Posted on February 12, 2008Polls were open until 9:30pm, according to this story from the Washington Post.The State of Maryland has extended voting hours until 9:30 p.m., citing bad weather, as freezing rain and sleet caused traffic accidents and other problems on a day when officials throughout the Washington region reported potentially record-breaking voter turnout in the first-ever Potomac Primary.
Early exit poll data from Maryland and Virginia shows lots of first-time voters
Posted on February 12, 2008The AP is reporting some early exit poll data from the Maryland and Virginia primaries:FIRST TIME VOTERSOver a third of voters in the Virginia Democratic primary said they had not voted in a primary before, as did almost one in five voters in the Maryland Democratic primary...
LA Times: "Criticism of L.A. County's Voting System Grows"
Posted on February 11, 2008In this morning's L.A. Times.
Unprocessed ballots in CA: Report available from Secy Bowen's Office
Posted on February 11, 2008Tova Wang sent along this PDF of a report of the number of unprocessed ballots from California, with the note "a nice example of transparency in elections."Steve Weir, Contra Costa County recorder and (I believe) head of the state association of recorders, was producing a running tally of the early in person and absentee ballotsstatewide...
More on Washington Caucus
Posted on February 10, 2008Above is a link to a press statement by the Huckabee campaign about the Washington state caucus. The problem is stated at the outset of the release:The Huckabee Presidential Campaign will be exploring all available legal options regarding the dubious final results for the state of Washington State Republican precinct caucuses, it was announced today...
Blog: TheElectoralMap
Posted on February 10, 2008I came across this blog while surfing the web: http://theelectoralmap.com/According to its mission statement:The Electoral Map will report on anything that has to do with the mapping of elections. We believe that maps tell the story behind the votes...
GAO Report on Florida 13
Posted on February 10, 2008The GAO released their report on the voting machines used in the 13th congressional district election in 2006. The executive summary states:GAO conducted three tests on the iVotronic Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting systems in Sarasota County and these tests did not identify any problems...
What Is Going on in Washington
Posted on February 10, 2008Talkingpointsmemo, a well respected political blog, has a couple of interesting stories about the Republican caucus in Washington. Josh Marshall Reports:As you know, John McCain lost two of the three contests yesterday. He was losing narrowly in Washington state and then pulled ahead by a narrow margin (less than two points) toward the end...
LA County bubble trouble continues
Posted on February 07, 2008There was a story in this morning's LA Times, "L.A. County registrar to examine independents' ballots; mix-up leaves many presidential votes uncounted." According to the story and a quote from LA County Registrar Dean Logan, at this point there at least 94,000 ballots cast by "decline-to-state" voters that might need to be closely examined...
More Fun with Ballot Boxes -- Now in New Mexico
Posted on February 07, 2008So there were stolen ballot boxes in California on Tuesday and now there are reports that full ballot boxes had "sleepovers" on election night when they were full of ballots. Here is the story from New Mexico (note the italicized paragraph)."That's going to get a full canvass," Democratic Party chairman Brian Colón said...
OVF Summit 2008
Posted on February 07, 2008From 3rd to 4th of April the Overseas Voter Foundation will host its second annual summit to discuss The power of the Internet to democratize voting information and access to all US citizens around the globe;Military and Overseas Voters Speak Out: What are the challenges and how can we tackle them?Internet Voting: The potential of online, Internet-based Voting for UOCAVA voters and reservations surrounding its implementationThe Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act: A critical discussion on the current UOCAVA legislation and the issues for states, election officials and voters surrounding the Act...
New Mexico Democratic ballot count could continue through the weekend ...
Posted on February 07, 2008Word from New Mexico is that they have begun to count provisional ballots in the close and contested Democratic presidential primary there. Our colleague Lonna Atkeson, who has been studying the ballot counting process there, is quoted in an AP story:Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor at the University of New Mexico who planned to observe the provisional ballot verification process, predicted a drawn out wait...
The biggest snafu of all ..
Posted on February 07, 2008Was when I locked my keys in my rental car ... and left the engine running ... as we ate lunch in Fullerton, CA. I notice Melissa was kind enough not to post a picture on the slideshow.
Mail ballots incorrectly returned in Santa Barbara CA
Posted on February 07, 2008This came in across the email wire and was forwarded to me. If anyone else has reports of ballots that were incorrectly directed by post offices in CA, please email me at paul.gronke at gmail.comI've run into a problem with the mail-in ballot situation in Santa Barbara County, CA...
New Mexico: "Caucus Outcome Still Up In Air"
Posted on February 07, 2008Lonna Atkeson (a colleague at the University of New Mexico) passed along this link to a story today in the Santa Fe New Mexican. They are still counting provisional ballots in New Mexico today ...
There are many levels of comfort
Posted on February 06, 2008My colleague Thad Hall asksAre we supposed to be comforted by the idea that photocopied ballots are being used in elections when they run out of paper ballots? What is the chain of custody rules for such ballots? How are they inventoried? How are they numbered and made distinct?From my perch, I'd answer "yes," if the alternative is to disenfranchise voters.
Ballot Duplication, Here We Come
Posted on February 06, 2008So in addition to all of the other problems in California with paper ballots, it sounds like, in several places including Riverside, if you cast a paper ballot and marked too dark, YOUR ballot won't get counted but the ballot that is being cast for you by the duplicating board will...
Machines delay Riverside County election results
Posted on February 06, 2008Things are moving slow in Riverside, where there was another theft but fortunately not of the ballots as in Thermal California.At times, one or two of the six ballot-counting machines in the Moreno Valley office broke down. At most times, one could not operate, delaying the final results...
Ballot Box Stolen Outside Thermal CA Polling Place
Posted on February 06, 2008So here is a great story about election security and the ephemeral nature of all ballots, but especially paper ones. Deputies are looking for the men responsible for stealing a ballot box from an election worker who was about to drive the box to the Indio Courthouse Tuesday night...
Chicago polls go well -- despite punches, broken machines, wrong ballots and 'invisible ink'
Posted on February 06, 2008Why don't we ever monitor elections in Chicago? They have all of the fun!Chicago elections wouldn't be Chicago elections without a few hiccups, even though voting throughout the region went smoothly overall Tuesday. Still, some voting machines broke down...
High demand for Democratic ballots catches election officials by surprise
Posted on February 06, 2008Are we supposed to be comforted by the idea that photocopied ballots are being used in elections when they run out of paper ballots? What is the chain of custody rules for such ballots? How are they inventoried? How are they numbered and made distinct?(California) County officials across the state were caught by surprise Tuesday by the number of "decline to state" voters who wanted to vote Democratic in the presidential primary...
Photos from Election Day Adventures in L.A. and O.C.
Posted on February 06, 2008More pics to come, but for now here are some of the photos I took while out with the guys yesterday, visiting various polling locations in Orange and Los Angeles counties.View photo slideshow.
Will there be a lot of drop-off ballots today in California's Super Tuesday
Posted on February 05, 2008Hard to know, but here's one indication: I went to a Pasadena-area polling place this morning at 7:45am, and saw at least four absentee ballots being dropped off in the two minutes I was at the polling place ...
Early voter remorse ...
Posted on February 05, 2008There's a story in this morning's Los Angeles Times with some interesting interviews with voters who have already cast their absentee ballots --- for candidates who have dropped out of the race.
Polling machine problems at Corzine's voting station
Posted on February 05, 2008The only election problem noted online this morning is this story:HOBOKEN -- Gov. Corzine cast his vote in the state's presidential primary after neither of the voting machines worked at his Hoboken polling place. Eyewitness News is told Corzine was originally scheduled to cast his ballot at 6:15 a...
Political advertising in Peru
Posted on February 05, 2008Former Caltech student Erin Hartman (now a graduate student at UC Berkeley) was recently in Peru, and she sent along this link of some great photos she took of political advertising in Peru. Some of this material looks very similar to political communications I photographed recently in Argentina, especially in the Salta area...
Super Tuesday in California --- Quick Updates From LA and the OC
Posted on February 05, 2008In the coming days, we'll have much more to say about what we learned in our field work today. A number of us spent much of the day in the field in Southern California (Paul Gronke, Morgan Llewellyn, Melissa Slemin and myself). We went to polling places in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, speaking mainly with pollworkers and a few voters...
Update from the field, pt. 2
Posted on February 05, 2008It looks like it's going to be a looong night for ballot counters in L.A. County. Mike is reporting 'brisk turnout'--the voters are getting out there! And, again, he is witnessing more provisional voting than in past years. This will make provisional ballot counting/verification a daunting and time-consuming task for election officials this evening.
Pollworker training still needed
Posted on February 05, 2008A voter in Silverlake (in L.A. county) was asked to produce identification by a pollworker before he was allowed to cast a vote today. He is a naturalized citizen and informed the pollworker that he wasn't required to do so, but the pollworker disagreed, so he complied.
Update from the field
Posted on February 05, 2008Mike, Morgan, Paul and I witnessed slow to moderate voter turnout at the pollsites we observed this morning, but it looks as though things are picking up. Mike and Morgan are at a site on Vermont Street and are reporting that it is very busy, with voters waiting in line for about 10 minutes in line due to the volume of voters...
Georgia May Break Record
Posted on February 05, 2008Georgia election officials are expecting record voter turnout in their state today.
Georgia Voters Face Long Lines, Some Glitches on Super Tuesday
Posted on February 05, 2008This Fox News story discusses the voter registration system problems that have occurred in Georgia, as well as one Georgia county having a "I forgot to include the correct keys for the voting machines" problem.
Democrats Abroad Jump into the Primary
Posted on February 05, 2008NPR has a really neat story about voting by Democrats abroad, who are voting in both overseas polling places and using the Internet.
Confused Voters in Virginia & Texas
Posted on February 05, 2008The Boards of Elections in Virginia and Texas have received record amounts of calls from voters today asking why their pollsites weren't open. They were informed that Election Day for their respective state is not in fact today. These are some eager voters!!
Why California Exit Polls are Meaningless
Posted on February 05, 2008Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin have a piece today in Slate Magazine explaining why exit polls in California are meaningless. The short version:Poll junkies beware: California exit polls are not to be trusted.California has issued 5.5 million absentee ballots for today's primary, reaching more than one-third of the 15...
Follow the Procedures or I will Kick Your.....
Posted on February 05, 2008What is it about elections that bring out the best in voters and election judges? This is perhaps the best story I have seen about elections since the voting machine took a beating in Cuyahoga County in 2006. Clearly, one judge was pretty adamant about the rules of the election!An election judge was charged with battery Tuesday morning after punching another judge at a 42nd Ward West Loop polling place, according to Chicago police...
Wait, It was the Poll Worker Not the Machine
Posted on February 05, 2008So the malfunctioning voting machines in Governor Corzine's polling place were actually malfunctioning poll workers. Why am I not shocked? Here is the updated AP story.New Jersey officials said Tuesday that they were getting more complaints than usual about problems at polling places , including some early-morning confusion at Gov...
Super Tuesday in the news
Posted on February 05, 2008After spending the better part of the day pollwatching, I'm back in the office checking the news for status reports of how Super Tuesday is going. Here are some stories.Georgia reports long lines, but mostly due to high turnout, not problems.New Jersey Governor's voting delayed by polling problems...
Pierce County to pull 230 names off voter list
Posted on February 04, 2008This is an interesting story from Washington State.Pierce County is slated to strike 230 names from its voter rolls this week as it wraps up an investigation of voter-registration fraud. The investigation centered on registrations submitted by employees of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, a national advocacy group for low-income people...
Matching Problems in Indiana?
Posted on February 04, 2008The Indianapolis Star reports today thatThe Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles could revoke driver's licenses for as many as 56,000 people later this month after a database check showed discrepancies in some of their information. The state also will send notices warning of a similar revocation to about 35,000 people with identification cards...
"Super Tuesday": The Song, by Hearts of Palm UK
Posted on February 03, 2008Weekend America broadcast this great song, Super Tuesday --- by Hearts of Palm UK, this weekend. Go to the Weekend America page for the song.Or just read the lyrics:Elections for party nominationsTo represent our nationWho you gonna vote for?You know it's Super Tuesday!Super Tuesday!Coming soon to a state near youIn Alabama and IdahoGeorgia and DelawareUtah and TennesseeNew York, New Mexico tooAnd Oklahoma, North DakotaWest Virginia, MinnesotaObama has got a certain "je ne sais quoi"But I've seen him on a few too many TV talk showsIs Bill running vicariously through Hillary?And I just found out about Mike GravelElections for party nominationsTo represent our nationWho you gonna vote for?You know it's Super Tuesday!Super Tuesday!Coming soon to a state near youIn Arizona and Illinois,Kansas, Montana, CaliforniaConnecticut, Alaska and Arkansas tooand Colorado, New jersey, Missouri and MassachusettsGiuliani couldn't stand the heat and so he dropped outMike Huckabee has got that righteous Christian act down patMitt Romney seems to change positions like the windJohn McCain is really old so this is his last chanceGlobalization is changing the worldAnd no one knows quite what to do about itThe dollar's not what it once wasAnd so everything costs moreThere's a seething war in IraqIs it time to bring our troops home?Privatize social security,Or equal taxes for all?Elections for party nominationsTo represent our nationWho you gonna vote for?You know it's Super Tuesday!Super duper Tuesday!Coming soon to a state near youSuper Tuesday!Super duper Tuesday!Coming soon to a state near you.
Super Tuesday Update: "Independent Voters May Be Vexed At Polls"
Posted on February 02, 2008This is from a story on stateline.org, "Independent Voters May Be Vexed At Polls":In delegate-rich California, it was state political parties ? not state lawmakers ? that set the rules for how ?decline-to-state,? or independent, voters can participate...
Another Potential Procedural Snag in the California Primary for Decline-To-State Voters
Posted on February 01, 2008A former student of mine read my recent post on the potential issues facing "decline-to-state" voters in California's primary next week. He pointed out another potential problem these voters might face:I noticed your post about decline-to-state voters needing to request Democratic ballots, and thought you might be interested in some LA-specific issues...
Why I am not a gambler...early voting in TN nearly tripled!
Posted on February 01, 2008So my Tennessee prediction was off by more than 50,000 votes. Amazing climb in early voting over the past three days. It went straight up! If only this was the stock market...My best guess would have to be excitement after Florida. I wonder again at the party breakdowns...
PA allows "regret" voting
Posted on February 01, 2008From Molly Reynolds at Brookings, from her home county in PA:I voted by absentee ballot (or received a ballot but did not use it). May I vote in person? Yes. In fact, the Election Code provides that unless you are 65 years of age or older, you must vote in person if possible...
"Do Over" Voting
Posted on February 01, 2008Rick Hasen alerted readers to a court ruling in New Jersey allowing absentee voters to re-vote if their candidate has dropped out of the race.I haven't seen the decision, but have a few comments:The wording of the story is odd. A voter can re-vote "if their candidate has dropped out...
TN Early vote up 100%, two days to go
Posted on January 31, 2008Two more days to go and Tennessee's early voting numbers continue their climb. I think my estimate of 250,000 looks to be a good call. If only I could call the Super Bowl so well.
Michigan Law Review Online Electoral College Reform Symposium
Posted on January 31, 2008The University of Michigan recently published an online symposium on proposals for electoral college reform. The link above takes you to Dan Tokaji''s paper and all of the other papers can be linked to from that page.
A Potential Problem in California's February 5th Primary: What Will "Decline-To-State" Voters Do?
Posted on January 30, 2008There's a lot of talk about how Obama's campaign in California is seeking out support from those who are registered as "decline-to-state" voters. These are voters who have not registered with any political party, instead have registered as not affiliated with a political party...
Part II of LA Times story, "Electronic voting is facing a recall"
Posted on January 29, 2008Here's Part II of the article that the LA Times ran on election administration in California. This sound familar? "The primary results will probably take until 6 a.m. on the day after the election to tabulate, and counting absentee ballots could take additional days, according to interviews with registrars across the state...
TN Early Voting: Turnout up 50% already
Posted on January 29, 2008Early voting turnout in the presidential primary Tennessee is blowing the old numbers away. Already the state reports 169,367 early votes, as of Monday. If the voting continues just at the current pace, we are looking at 250,000 early votes, almost two and half times higher than the previous high water mark in 2000 (110,000)...
"A Paper Jam Roils California Vote"
Posted on January 28, 2008There's a story in today's Los Angeles Times, "A Paper Jam Roils California Vote", that echos a number of concerns that Paul and I wrote about last week regarding the upcoming primary vote in California. No doubt, there will be some snafus on February 5th in California, but hopefully voters will take the time to check their ballots carefully, and the media will give election officials the time to do their work well.
I lied: Some Tennessee numbers
Posted on January 28, 2008Sunday night, kids are in bed, so what's one more state? Tennessee does not have data files but they provide a fairly nice report on early voting. (No data on party breakdowns.)In 2004, 485,850 Tennesseans cast primary ballots, for a total turnout of 14...
Final update on Florida early voting
Posted on January 27, 2008I suspect our last update on Florida's in-person early voting has been posted here. Thanks to James Hicks for keeping these up to date.Not a lot changed on Saturday, but there is one interesting pattern: Tuesday and Friday are popular voting days. I'm not sure why, but the pattern held for both weeks...
South Carolina Primary Update: Big Turnout, Big Obama Win, No Voting Machine Problems!
Posted on January 26, 2008I've been closely following reports from South Carolina today. Turnout was high, Obama seems to have pulled out a big win, and following up on my posting yesterday, there seem to have been no major problems with voting machines (unlike last week's Republican primary in South Carolina)...
Florida early in person: end of week two
Posted on January 26, 2008Only a few days left in in-person early voting in Florida. Our most recent update is at earlyvoting.net, and Adam Nagourney's story will appear in tomorrow's NY Times.GOP turnout continues to grow; on Friday, almost 40,000 voters cast a ballot. Democratic turnout is lagging but grew slightly on Friday to 28,000...
South Carolina Democratic Primary --- Will The Voting Machines Work This Time?
Posted on January 25, 2008In last week's Republican primary in South Carolina, two counties (Florence and Horry) experienced problems with their voting machines, and the problems were relatively severe in Horry, where it took a few days for election officials to figure out the results of the election...
Herron, Mebane and Wand: "Voting Technology and the 2008 New Hampshire Primary"
Posted on January 25, 2008Earlier this week Michael Herron sent along a copy of the working paper that he has written with Walter Mebane and Jonathan Wand, in which they dig into some of the allegations of irregularities in the recent New Hampshire primary (here's a link to the most recent version...
Florida Update: Jan 24th 2008
Posted on January 25, 2008Updates to the current early in-person voting are posted at earlyvoting.net.Three quick points:Republican turnout is beginning to outpace Democratic turnout (as we'd expect).Second week turnout rate is leveling off at 20,000 per day for Democrats and 26,000 (and climbing) for GOP...
More thoughts on CA
Posted on January 25, 2008Nice posting, Mike! I am heading down the California Feb 2-5th, and a number of county elections officials have been courteous to be willing to meet with me and show me how they are processing the tide of absentee ballots.I'll try to put up a few postings and possibly pictures here during my trip...
Will We Know The Winners on February 5th?
Posted on January 25, 2008Maybe not.Yesterday, Dean Logan, the acting Registrar-Recorder in Los Angeles County, held a press conference that generated a decent bit of buzz in the local news media yesterday and this morning. I did an interview for KTLA news, with Jim Nash .....
More Florida Early Voting Info
Posted on January 24, 2008I was crunching Florida's early in-person voting files last night, and penned this article for electionline.org's weekly newsletter (not online yet, but will be soon).A few highlights:If we figure turnout at 50%, and given the reports coming out about absentee ballots, about 20% of Florida's presidential primary ballots have been cast...
UK Electoral Commission Study, "Compulsory Voting Around The World"
Posted on January 23, 2008While reading that new Argentina Elections website I wrote about last night, I came across a link to a report from the UK Electoral Commission, "Compulsory Voting Around The World." Every once in a while I field questions about compulsory voting, and whether or not it might be a good mechanism for increasing voter participation in the U...
"Frontiers of Electronic Voting", Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings 07311 available
Posted on January 23, 2008The Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings (07311) for the "Frontiers of Electronic Voting" seminar are now available. This was an event that both Robert Krimmer and I attended, and which Robert has written about earlier. It was a very interesting and productive event, organized by David Chaum, Miroslaw Kutylowski, Ron Rivest and Peter Ryan...
New website on elections and election reform in Argentina
Posted on January 22, 2008As readers know, we've recently been studying elections, election reform, and voting technologies in South American (including the e-voting pilot project in Argentina, and other election reforms in neighboring nations). I received an interesting link today for a new website on elections and election reform in Argentina, Elections Argentina...
What about Fred's early votes in FL?
Posted on January 22, 2008TW pointed this out to me in an email: anyone who voted early for Fred Thompson have just been disenfranchised. Well, sort of; I suspect that Thompson is still going to be on the Jan 29th ballot. But it does mean those voters do not have a chance to vote their second preference...
CO next to go full by mail?
Posted on January 18, 2008From the electionline.org mailbag comes this story from Denver's Rocky Mountain News: Sec'y of State Coffman has "bowed to pressure" from county clerks and is getting behind a move to fully by-mail balloting for the 2008 presidential contest.As readers here probably know, Coffman decertified electronic machines currently in use in Colorado a few months ago, throwing election planning into chaos...
Early returns in TN trending Democratic
Posted on January 17, 2008I heard from a reporter in Nashville that early votes are heavily Democratic--more than 5 to 1. About 7500 votes are in from this county, and Nashville is more Democratic than the state at large, but this is still quite a large margin.We speculated that the heavy Democratic turnout may be caused by the high degree of excitement on that side (and, conversely, disappointment among Thompson faithful), but it was also interesting to learn that Sen...
SPSA Meeting Papers
Posted on January 16, 2008Papers that may be of interest to our readers, from the Southern Political Science Association meeting in New Orleans, Jan 10-12, 2008. Papers titles, authors, and abstracts are accessible by following the conference link at spsa.net."The Straight Ticket Option and Race: Implications for Roll-Off", Douglas Feig (MissState)...
Herrnson, Niemi, Hanmer, Bederson, Conrad and Traugott: "Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot"
Posted on January 14, 2008The long-awaited book by Paul S. Herrnson, Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson, Frederick C. Conrad, and Michael W. Traugott, "Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting A Ballot" has just been released by Brookings Institution Press...
AALDEF Report: "Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections"
Posted on January 14, 2008Recently the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) released a study of Asian Americans and their ability to participate in the 2006 elections, "Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections." The report is based on an exit poll of over 4,700 Asian American voters in 82 polling places throughout the nation, as well as monitoring efforts in 123 polling places...
Spell Checker on Aisle 5
Posted on January 14, 2008Obama's name misspelled on 2,000 Fla. ballots From WKMG Local 6 OrlandoORLANDO - As Florida's primary approaches, there are already reported problems concerning ballots in Central Florida. Some 2,000 absentee ballots in Volusia County have been mailed with Barack Obama's first name misspelled...
Expensive absentee ballots in FL
Posted on January 14, 2008Just saw this story on electionline.org: some voters using absentee ballots in Florida may have to fork up 97 cents for mailling. The ballots are outsized. Postal officials say that they'll deliver the ballots regardless, and charge the elections offices...
The Last 3 Democratic Primaries....Stolen Since 2000? Not Actually.
Posted on January 13, 2008The Washington Post has a great analysis showing that, if the Diebold-optical-scan-tabulators-stole-the-election-for-Hillary theory is correct, optical scanners were also stealing elections for Al Gore and John Kerry too. How vast conspiracies are (especially if you don't care about statistics).
John Zogby on the Daily Show
Posted on January 10, 2008John Zogby on the Daily Show is really interesting explaining New Hampshire polling.
FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!
Posted on January 10, 2008OK, that was a rhetorical headline. But it seems as though some people are shocked that polling in a primary can be wrong. The Dallas Morning News article says:Curious about the "wildly inaccurate" polls that put Mr. Obama in a double-digit lead going into Tuesday's primary, blogger Brad Friedman, a Los Angeles-based election-fraud watchdog, questioned the results as soon as they arrived, and all day Wednesday...
The Court and Voter ID?s
Posted on January 10, 2008For various reasons, I generally do not quote the New York Times opinion page. However, on days when they have the decency to cite research I have worked on, I make an exception. (Actually, kudos to our collaborator, Lonna Atkeson, a very distinguished political scientist at the University of New Mexico, who identified this issue and worked with Mike and I on a paper that is currently under review, where we discuss these findings in depth)...
Supreme Court and Voter ID Case
Posted on January 09, 2008Here are a set of links about the Crawford case.NPR Story this morning by Nina Totenberg.NPR Day to Day Coverage of the actual argument.A Panel Discussion from the Diane Rehm Show.A transcript of the case should be available here or here on Thursday or Friday.
E-Voting PhD position in Spain
Posted on January 09, 2008And a final post for today. Jordi Barrat gave me note about a job offering for a PhD position on E-Voting. He is constitutional law professor at the University of Alicante. You don't need to be proficient in Spanish although it would definitely help a lot ;-)Read more here:Framework: The position is funded by the Spanish government within thefollowing research project: SEJ2007-64886 (Citizens, new technologies and decision process: the e-voting challenges)...
NDI publishes >Monitoring Electronic Technologies in Electoral Processes: An NDI Guide for Political Parties and Civic Organizations<
Posted on January 09, 2008I had the chance to review an earlier version of the manuscript - it gives a good introduction on the tough job on how to observe and monitor implementations of technology in the electoral process. This overview can serve as a good starting point for looking into the interdisciplinary issues involved and gives an overview on the international legal instruments that can help doing so...
Springer Proceedings LNCS 4896 E-Voting and Identity
Posted on January 09, 2008Following the successful VOTE-ID conference in Bochum last year, the conference chairs, Ammar Alkassar and Melanie Volkamer managed to accomplish very interesting post proceedings to appear the in the prestigious LNCS series from Springer publications...
Update on DB.E-Voting.CC
Posted on January 09, 2008In the past months we enhanced our e-voting database both visually and functionality wise.First of all we updated it to our CI and second also added the functionality to make accounts.If you wish changes and addendums to the database can now be attributed to your account soeverybody can who that smart-ass is to have added all the information on - maybe the US e-elections (especially any elections on the Internet)?We really need your support to add here more information so if you can spare some time and help us make this database more complete, do so! check it out at db...
The Primaries in the Semantic Web - US Election Monitor 2008
Posted on January 09, 2008Now as the primaries heat up, I would like to point you to a project by my colleague Arno Scharl from the Modul University here in Vienna, Austria. It's the a follow up to the Election Monitor he did for the 2004 presidential elections.He uses semantic web technology to analyze both the attention and sentiments given to candidates in online media (news, blogs, etc...
Paper + Primaries + Snow = Chaos?
Posted on January 08, 2008Matt Drudge is reporting that some areas of New Hampshire are running out of Democratic ballots.
Jeffrey Toobin on the Indiana Case
Posted on January 07, 2008Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting analysis of the Indiana case in the Talk of the Town Section of the New Yorker.
Chapin and Martinez on Crawford
Posted on January 07, 2008Doug Chapin of electionline.org and Ray Martinez, previously a commissioner at the EAC and now head of governmental affairs at Rice, weigh in on the Crawford case in Sunday's Washington Times.Doug and Ray point out that, for all the heated rhetoric over voter ID, there remains painfully sparse empirical evidence regarding the impact of voter ID on hindering the right to vote or on assuring the integrity of the electoral process...
Georgian Elections and What is Fraud
Posted on January 05, 2008Here is a great story about what is considered fraud in other countries that we do not consider here. Georgia goes to the polling booths Saturday to elect the President amidst fears from the opposition that the authorities have planned to rig the vote...
Internet Voting for Overseas Dems in the Primaries
Posted on January 05, 2008This from the International Herald Tribune. Internet voting....what a great idea. Thanks to the Internet, Americans who belong to the Democratic Party are getting a voice of their own in the presidential nomination, as the party has agreed to allow expatriates to choose 22 delegates to the national convention as part of the so-called Super Tuesday voting next month...
On Thad Hall on Jeff Greenfield and Christopher Hitchens
Posted on January 02, 2008Thad blogs favorably on recent pieces by Jeff Greenfield and Chris Hitchens (see below).There are many kinds of "democratic" processes out there, and it isn't correct to presume that a secret ballot cast in private is the only set of voting institutions that merit the label "democratic...
More on statistical numeracy
Posted on January 02, 2008Andrew Gelman's blog is a nice place to keep up to date on good ways to present and discuss statistical data. Some of the discussion can be complex, but Gelman has made it one of his missions to publicize simple and clear presentations of statistical material (and, watch out academics!, criticize bad presentations)...
A Plea for Statistical Numeracy
Posted on January 02, 2008It's the end of the holidays and the beginning of the primary season. And this is the first, but sadly not the last, posting I'll make about examples of innumeracy among journalists. In yesterday's coverage, Judy was asked by Rey Suarez about the most recent Des Moines Register "Iowa Poll", which showed Barack Obama 7 points ahead of Hillary Clinton...
It is the Dems in Iowa, Not the Repubs Who Have a Democracy Problem?
Posted on January 02, 2008Jeffrey Greenfield also has a piece in Slate and he notes that it is the Democrats who have the democratic election problem in Iowa, not the Republicans. The original purpose of the [Iowa] caucuses?to conduct party business and to talk over local concerns?became completely overwhelmed by the presidential frenzy for which they're so ill-suited...
Christopher Hitchen's on the Iowa Caucus Election Process
Posted on January 02, 2008The fun of reading Christopher Hitchens is that he is so mild, so demur, so lacking in scathing prose (just as I sometimes lack sarcasm). Here is what he wrote today in Slate.com about the Iowa Caucuses (the whole story is linked above).It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption?and the flagrantly anti-democratic character?of the Iowa caucuses...
Kenyan Election Fiasco
Posted on January 02, 2008The Kenyan elections have turned out to be quite a fiasco and a tragic one at that. The problems started when it looked as though the opposition leader would win, then that win dissipated.As the Telegraph initially reported: At noon yesterday, the electoral commission gave the challenger, Raila Odinga, a four per cent lead over the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, after results from three-quarters of the 210 constituencies...
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