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VRS shows how we’ve changed how we vote

Mike has posted the news that the 2012 Voting and Registration Supplement (VRS) has just been released. This is good news for election geeks all over.

One thing the VRS is indispensable for is helping track the evolution of the modes of voting throughout the country. Because there is no centralized voter registration database — at least if we don’t count a couple of commercial ventures that are off limits to the general public — there is currently no way to track how many people continue to vote on Election Day, and how many have gravitated to in-person early voting and voting by mail. The best we can do is ask people in surveys, and the CPS is the biggest of the surveys.

Using VRS data going back to 2000, I have created a set of graphs that document the decline of Election Day voting over the past decade. I have posted all the graphs in a PowerPoint deck that can be downloaded at this link. Here I show three.

The first is the most basic, a time series showing the voting modes in each federal election since 2000.  Notice the steady decline in Election Day voting, with a bit of a sawtooth pattern, indicating a slight dip in Election Day voting in presidential years, compared to midterm years.

Voting mode usage, 2000 to 2012The last two graphs show the evolution of voting modes at the state level using a favorite of mine from high school earth science, the ternary, or triangle, plot.   If you don’t remember how to read these, or have never even encountered them, this is the important thing to know.  States that are located at the very top of the triangle have everyone voting on Election Day.  States located at the left-hand corner have everyone voting by mail.  States located at the right-hand corner have everyone voting early.

Here’s 2000:

State voting modes 2000

Here’s 2012:

State voting modes 2000

(Download the PowerPoint deck for the complete set.)  A couple of comments are in order.  First, the most obvious is that the general trend has been downward since 2000, but states have chosen three paths down the triangle.  A half dozen-or-so states (led by Oregon and Washington) have slid down the left side of the triangle, replacing Election Day voting with vote-by-mail.  A similar number of states have slide down the right side of the triangle, choosing early voting as the method to replace voting on Election Day.  Another group (led by Florida) has dropped straight down, developing a full portfolio of voting options for their citizens.  The clump of states at the top of the triangle are mostly northeastern states still stuck in traditional ways of voting.

The final comment is to emphasize the fact that these are estimates, and thus likely to be off by a few percentage points for each state.  Thus, the real insights are gained by noticing the general regions in which states fall, rather than trusting the precise location of each state in the graph.

Like I said, election geeks are happy.

Posted 09 May 2013 † cstewart § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

2012 CPS Election report now available

The CPS has released the 2012 election report, from their 2012 Voting and Registration Supplement. The report can be obtained from this page. The report, “The Diversifying Electorate — Voting Rates by Race and Hispanic Origin in 2012 (and Other Recent Elections)”, looks like an interesting read. It also looks quite different in style and organization from previous CPS election reports, with the focus on the diversity of the American electorate. More after I get a chance to read it!

Posted 08 May 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Evaluating Elections — highlighted in the NCSL’s “The Canvass”

Our recent book, “Evaluating Elections: A Handbook of Methods and Statistics” (written by Lonna Atkeson, Thad Hall, and myself), was the subject of an article in the current issue of The Canvass: States and Election Reform, from the NCSL.

Here’s an excerpts from their interview with Thad:

“We wrote this for a couple of audiences. We had election officials in mind,” says co-author Thad Hall. “We want them to understand that in some ways they’re already sitting on a wealth of information, and they can use this data to think in the future how they can make things work better.”

“We also wanted this to be thought of by legislators,” he continued. “The laws may be fine; lawmakers need to think about building up capacity at the state level to promote better training, or to provide localities with resources so they can evaluate existing data. Imagine if a legislature said, ‘We want our universities to help our jurisdictions evaluate their data.’”

Note that in the article there is also a link where those with an NCSL affiliation can get a 20% discount on the book!

I recently discussed ideas and materials from this book at the NIST/EAC Future of Voting Systems Symposium (February 26-28, 2013), and at the EAC’s Roundtable Discussion — Informing Change: A Review of Events and Issues of the 2012 Elections Cycle (January 9, 2013).

Posted 03 May 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Big Data in Political Science

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

The articles in the virtual issue are now free-access, for a limited time.

Big Data in Political Science

Burt Monroe, Editor

Validation: What Big Data Reveal about Survey Misreporting and the Real Electorate
Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh
Political Analysis (2012) 20(4): 437-459

Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk
Adam J. Berinsky, Gregory A. Huber, and Gabriel S. Lenz
Political Analysis (2012) 20(3): 351-368

Fightin’ Words: Lexical Feature Selection and Evaluation for Identifying the Content of Political Conflict
Burt L. Monroe, Michael P. Colaresi, and Kevin M. Quinn
Political Analysis (2008) 16(4): 372-403

Reaching Migrants in Survey Research: The Use of the Global Positioning System to Reduce Coverage Bias in China
Pierre F. Landry and Mingming Shen
Political Analysis (2005) 13(1): 1-22

An Introduction to Bayesian Inference via Variational Approximations
Justin Grimmer
Political Analysis (2011) 19(1): 32-47

Inferential Network Analysis with Exponential Graph Models
Skyler J. Cranmer and Bruce A. Desmarais
Political Analysis (2011) 19(1): 66-86

Finding Jumps in Otherwise Smooth Curves: Identifying Critical Events in Political Processes
Marc T. Ratkovic and Kevin H. Eng
Political Analysis (2010) 18(1): 55-77

Improving Predictions Using Ensemble Bayesian Model Averaging
Jacob M. Montgomery, Florian M. Hollenbach, and Michael D. Ward
Political Analysis (2012) 20(3): 271-291

Bayesian Metric Multidimensional Scaling
Ryan Bakker and Keith T. Poole
Political Analysis (2013) 21(1): 125-140

The Genealogy of Law
Tom S. Clark and Benjamin E. Lauderdale
Political Analysis (2012) 20(3): 329-350

Posted 23 April 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

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

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

The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in states introducing new voting systems and election administration procedures. The election also raised concerns that poor experiences at the polls would produce lower levels of confidence in the electoral process or lower turnout. Drawing on theories used in organizational psychology and marketing and using an internet-administered panel survey, we assess the impact of voters’ expectations on their satisfaction in the 2008 elections. The findings indicate that voters have different expectations about the voting process and that these expectations condition the ways in which voters assess their experience. Therefore, a complete explanation of voter satisfaction with the voting process must account for both the expectations voters bring to the polling place and the experiences voters have there.

Posted 16 April 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

JETS — A New Journal for Election Technology!

The USENIX Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS) is now accepting papers! Here’s the website for JETS.

And here is the journal overview:

In a number of countries, votes are counted and transported electronically, but there are numerous practical and policy implications of introducing electronic machines into the voting process. Both voting technology and its regulations are very much in flux, with open concerns including accuracy, reliability, robustness, security, transparency, auditability, equality, privacy, usability, accessibility, cost, and regulation.

USENIX is proud to announce the creation of a new Journal of Election Technology and Systems (JETS), which will operate in conjunction with the ongoing USENIX Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE ’13). If you want your paper to appear at EVT/WOTE, you submit it to JETS. JETS brings together researchers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from computer science and human-computer interaction experts through political scientists, statisticians, legal and policy experts, election administrators, and voting equipment vendors. JETS seeks to publish original research on important problems in all aspects of electronic voting.

JETS is an example of a new trend in academic computer science—a hybrid of a conference and a journal. All papers will have a two-round review process (longer than a conference, shorter than a journal). After the first round, authors will get anonymous feedback from the editors. Their manuscripts may be accepted without changes, accepted with minor required changes, rejected with major changes recommended, or simply rejected. Accepted papers will have a brief window to make any necessary changes and will then be subject to an additional round of review. By having quarterly submission deadlines with rapid reviewing, JETS promises to offer authors a rapid and predictable process. By having online open-access dissemination, JETS promises timely, free access to readers worldwide.

JETS authors pay nothing to submit manuscripts and JETS readers pay nothing to read accepted papers. Authors of accepted JETS papers will be invited to present their work at the USENIX EVT/WOTE workshop. EVT/WOTE ’13 will be a two-day event, Monday, August 12, and Tuesday, August 13, 2013, co-located with the 22nd USENIX Security Symposium in Washington, DC. In addition to JETS paper presentations, the workshop may include panel discussions and other events of interest to our attendees. With EVT/WOTE in our nation’s capitol, we will have a great agenda. Attendance at the workshop will be open to the public, although talks and refereed paper presentations will be by invitation only. There will be an award for the best paper.

It’s exciting to see this new journal, it’s been a long time in development!

Posted 11 March 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

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

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

Posted 08 March 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Much going on in the world of elections

The past few days have been busy ones for students of elections.

There were elections yesterday in the Los Angeles area, including one in my area. My own experience yesterday was quite remarkable, as it was the quickest voting experience, and shortest ballot, that I can remember. I went to my local polling place (in a neighborhood church) in the late afternoon, had no trouble parking. There was no line, in fact there was no one in the polling place other than the poll workers. My ballot had one election (local school board race), with two candidates and a write-in. I was done in a few seconds, no problems at all. But of course it was a local school board race with only one candidate race on the ballot.

There were elections in the City of Los Angeles yesterday, and as far as I can tell things went relatively smoothly on the administrative front, though there was this disturbing story in this morning’s LA Times, “Poll worker shot outside polling place at Watts elementary school.” If any readers had experiences voting yesterday to report, please pass them along.

Also, there recently was an election in Kenya, with reports that the election tally has been slowed due to a number of administrative and technological issues, in particular as the BBC reports a large percentage of spoiled ballots.

Finally, with the death of Hugo Chavez, it sounds as if there will be presidential elections in Venezuela, perhaps within the next thirty days, according to the New York Times. Recent presidential elections in Venezuela have sparked a great deal of research, in particular in the use of election forensics tools to study electoral results.

So it continues to be a busy time in the world of elections, with a great many opportunities for researchers to study a wide variety of issues in election administration and technology.

Posted 06 March 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

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

The OSCE/ODIHR recently released their report from their election observation mission in the US for the 2012 federal elections. Here’s the report.

Posted 19 February 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

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

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

Here’s the abstract:

We present new results in the areas of cryptography and voting systems.

Pattern matching encryption: We present new, general definitions for queryable encryption schemes – encryption schemes that allow evaluation of private queries on encrypted data without performing full decryption. We construct an efficient queryable encryption scheme supporting pattern matching queries, based on suffix trees. Storage and communication complexity are comparable to those for (unencrypted) suffix trees. The construction is based only on symmetric-key primitives, so it is practical.
Strategic equivalence of range voting and approval voting: We study strategic voting in the context of range voting in a formal model. We show that under general conditions, as the number of voters becomes large, strategic range voting becomes equivalent to approval voting. We propose beta distributions as a new and interesting way to model voter’s subjective information about other votes.
Statistical robustness of voting rules: We introduce a new notion called “sta- tistical robustness” for voting rules: a voting rule is statistically robust if, for any profile of votes, the most likely winner of a sample of the profile is the winner of the complete profile. We show that plurality is the only interesting voting rule that is statistically robust; approval voting (perhaps surprisingly) and other common voting rules are not statistically robust.

Posted 19 February 2013 † rmalvarez § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °