Election Updates

First off, Roy Saltman's book, "The History and Politics of Voting Technology: In Quest of Integrity and Public Confidence" is now out and available. I've been reading my copy, and it's as good as I had hoped ... more on Saltman's book soon.

Second, there is an interesting interview with Saltman in the Nieman Watchdog on the voter verified paper trial. Saltman here offers some interesting ideas on the need for more recounting of ballots and for a stronger system of testing and certification.

I know it is perhaps gratuitous, but I did want to point out to our readers that the last essay we published (on Ben Highton's work) was our 200th essay posted on Election Updates! As of this moment, since we started Election Updates in August 2005 we have had a total of 8,218 visits and 13,496 page views; averaging 62 visits per day and 93 page views per day. Thanks to our readers for taking the time to visit our blog site, and of course, thanks to those of you who pass along comments and suggestions to us!

There is a paper by Ben Highton (UC-Davis) that is forthcoming in a political science journal (PS), "Long Lines, Voting Machine Availability, and Turnout: The Case of Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 Presidential Election." Highton is a well-known scholar who has produced a series of good studies of a variety of issues associated with voter turnout.

Highton uses precinct-level data from Franklin County, Ohio, and undertakes a series of different statistical analyses to estimate the effect of availability of voting machines in precincts on 2004 voter turnout. There are some minor methodoligical quibbles here, in particular whether it is appropriate to model this as using a linaer model and what other specifications of the turnout model (especially including other control variables) might yield. But I doubt these methodological quibbles would have much of an effect on Highton's major conclusions from his analysis.

Highton's basic conclusion is:

The strong association between the availability of voting machines and turnout in Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 presidential election was largely the result of factors unrelated to the causal effect of the availability of voting machines on turnout. That said, after controlling for other causes of turnout, the relationship does not disappear, suggesting that machine scarcity was a cause of lower turnout. The magnitude of the effect in terms of votes was about 22,000, which would have diminished George W. Bush’s statewide margin by about 6,000 had there been no scarcity of voting machines on Election Day. Thus long lines at polling places in Franklin County do not appear to have cost John Kerry the presidential election, but they do appear to have cost him votes.

Given that the Franklin County Board of Elections, like all Ohio county election boards, has four members, two Democrats and two Republicans, attributing the scarcity of voting machines and its consequent effects to partisan maneuvering is probably not warranted.

...

This is a nice contribution to research on voting machine availability. It would be important to replicate this analysis elsewhere throughout the nation to determine how precinct voting machine availability impacts voter participation --- and other outcome variables like residual votes --- in other jurisdictions.

Thanks to Doug Chapin of Electionline for pointing out that Highton's study is now available in electronic format.

Every once in a while, I run into exciting new research that leaves me wondering --- why the heck didn't I think about doing that myself? It's particularily exciting when excellent new research is being done by the next generation of scholars, especially those who are just now completing their dissertation research.

Research like this is being done by Susan Hyde, who is finishing her dissertation in political science at the University of California, San Diego, and is now a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Starting in the next academic year, Hyde will be a new assistant professor at Yale University.

Hyde's research focuses on international election monitoring, taking a look from a variety of theoretical and emprical perspectives at what is a new (and largely understudied) phenomenon. Here is the summary of Hyde's thesis from her website:

In 1960 there were no observered elections in sovereign states. Today, it is nearly impossible for a developing country to have a legitimate election without the presence of international observers. Upwards of 80 percent of elections held in non-consolidated democracies are now monitored. This trend is particularly puzzling for the group of leaders who invite observers and then orchestrate massive electoral fraud. If we assume that autocrats want to stay in power and exert the least effort possible in order to do so, what explains their willingness to invite international observers to judge their elections?

My thesis is that election observation began as a signal to the international community that a county was democratizing. Inviting observers was in the interest of most incumbent leaders because there was little risk involved and relatively high potential benefits. The rate of observed elections increased because of increases in international benefits for looking and acting like a democracy, and because a sub-group of leaders got better at manipulating the election under the nose of international observers. In the 1990s most leaders of developing countries were inviting observers, and before long, the international community and domestic actors began to expect that observers would be invited. The act of not inviting observers became a clear signal that the incumbent leader was not committed to democratizing.

The growth of international election observation has also carried domestic consequences. The empirical evidence presented in the later part of this dissertation tests how this change in international politics has influenced domestic politics, including how the presence of observers affects opposition party behavior, and natural and field experimental tests of whether observers deter election day fraud. These domestic consequences arise from the same incentives and environment that created the norm of election observation.

One of the really exciting chapters of her thesis that is now available for public distribution is her work on the 2003 presidential elections in Armenia, available in "Can International Election Observers Deter Election Day Fraud? Evidence from a Natural Experiment" (Chapter 7 of her dissertation). In the 2003 presidential elections in Armenia, international election monitors were distributed throughout the nation using a process that Hyde argues is "functionally equilivant to random assignment" (page 15). Hyde can claim the functional equilivance of random assignment here because the polling places that were picked for observation were selected based solely on geographic location, and because the monitors themselves had little discretion on which polling places they went to. Note that this is not exactly a truly randomized experimental design, but under the assumption that the polling places were selected solely for geographic reasons, and not for any other characteristic of the polling place that might be correlated with the incumbent party's success in this election, Hyde's assumption that she has the rough equilivant of random assignment makes sense.

But here is the bottom line: Hyde finds that the presence of the international election monitors reduced election day fraud by around 6% in the precincts under observation in the first round of the Armenian presidential election, but with much smaller effects in the second round (demonstrating that perhaps those who were likely to try to engage in election fraud might have been deterred by the first-round monitoring teams).

This is exciting and important research. From conversations with Hyde, there is even more exciting research forthcoming. Chapter 6 from her thesis deals with a truly randomized experiment involving election monitoring in the 2004 Indonesian presidential elections. While this thesis is not available yet on her website, my understanding is that the results here are like those in the Armenian case, providing further evidence that election monitoring and observing can deter election fraud.

Hyde's thesis work shows that there are clever new ways that social scientists can consider for studying election fraud. As all observers of election reform debates know, election fraud is frequently asserted to occur, but we rarely know the actual incidence of election fraud --- nor do we know much about exactly how to deter it. Hyde's work helps to establish some theoretical and empirical foundations for those who want to better understand both problems, and I suspect that Hyde's research is likely to be widely-cited and very important in the future.

I have an opinion piece in today's Salt Lake Tribune about the importance of funding voter education efforts in the state to support the upcoming switch to electronic voting from punch cards. This is a missing link in reform efforts in many places, which is a shame. Small investments can go a long way!

As the 2006 legislative session progresses, there are many proposals to spend the state's surplus. From education to transportation, interest groups are competing for these resources. Into this mix I would suggest a small but critical expenditure that will benefit all Utahns later this year: providing counties with funds to support the implementation of the state's new electronic voting system.

This year, voters will cast ballots on new touchscreen machines that produce a contemporaneous paper audit trail. This new voting system will likely improve voting in the state. Electronic voting will also allow those with disabilities to vote unassisted for the first time. However, because most elections over the past 30 years have been conducted using punchcards, additional voter education and poll worker training will be needed to ensure that everyone understands how the new voting system works.

Fortunately, Utah can look to the state of Georgia, which had a successful transition to electronic voting in 2002. In Georgia, the legislature appropriated funds for grants to counties for voter education and election worker training. And the state provided every county with $100 per precinct to compensate poll workers for extra poll worker training associated with the transition. These county-level efforts were supplemented by state voter education and training prior to the 2002 election. All of these efforts supplemented a state website and an automated call center to answer questions about the system.

So how much would it cost to copy this successful model? Relatively little, and the expense would end after the 2006 elections. The cost to provide each county with $100 in funding for extra poll worker training at 1,880 precincts totals $188,000. The cost of providing counties with additional funding to promote voter education within each county -- with funding based on county population -- is $186,000.

Currently, these expanded costs will be an unfunded mandate on counties, which will do their best with limited resources educate their voters and poll workers. However, the Utah Legislature can provide counties with the relatively small sum of $374,000 and help to ensure that the new voting system works without a hitch. If the state were to spend slightly more, it can produce additional voter education materials and fund additional outreach that will make the elections run more smoothly.

Utah's election in 2006 is likely to receive substantial media scrutiny. Not only is the state transitioning to a new voting system, but voters will be using electronic voting machines that produce a paper audit tape that the voter needs to review before casting a ballot. This extra step adds a twist to electronic voting that many feel will add a level of accuracy and security to the system. Unfortunately, survey data from Nevada, which used a similar system in 2004, found that 31 percent of voters either did not understand the purpose of the voter-verified paper trail on the voting system, or had not even noticed the paper system at all. Of those who did notice the paper trail, 14 percent did not use the paper trail to verify their ballot.

For this reform to work in Utah, voters and poll workers alike need to be educated on how the system works. The Legislature would be well advised to consider spending this small sum to ensure the success of the system deployment. After all, these same machines will be the ones used in legislators' own elections.