Election Updates

There's a lot of action in Louisiana regarding how to insure that displaced New Orleans residents are not disenfranchised in upcoming elections. The following Washington Post story has details about some of the efforts, and about a lawsuit that has been filed over the state's current plan to rely primarily on vote-by-mail efforts.

Here's a link to the complaint that was filed regarding the current plan for facilitating voting by displaced New Orleans voters.

Walter Mebane (Cornell University) has updated his research paper on the Franklin County (Ohio) voting machine allocation debate. His updated paper is available from his website.

Walter's updated analysis includes some newly received data from Franklin County. Here is a snip of the email that Walter sent to the electionlaw listserv regarding his updated database and his new analysis of that data:

Late in the afternoon on February 8, 2006, Matt Damschroder, Director of the Board of Elections in Franklin County, Ohio, responded via email to several questions I had asked Franklin County officials about data they had sent me pertaining to their voting machine allocation decisions for the 2004 general electon (to be precise, he responded to a message sent by my research assistant). We had asked the Franklin County Board of Elections to supply the count of voters in each precinct that they used to make the machine allocations. In response they had sent us several files on January 23, 2006. We then asked, among other questions, which of several alternative formulas matched the measure used to make the allocation decisions. Damschroder's message was in response to those questions.

In light of Damschroder's detailed responses, I now believe that the data provided by Franklin County do not allow us to recover the information or the decision rules Franklin County officials used to allocate voting machines to precincts for the 2004 general election.

I have accordingly updated my paper posted at

http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/franklin2.pdf

The description I included in my previous message on this subject (sent at 8 Feb 2006 02:22:11), regarding the relationship between the racial composition of precincts and the number of voters per machine, is not meaningful. Damschroder's responses make it clear that the variables I used to try to measure the number of active voters in June
cannot be used to do that. See the paper for more details.

Thanks to Walter for continuing his research on this question and for providing this updated study for public distribution.

A research report released earlier this week from the Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) at UC-Berkeley argued that it is possible to re-draw California's legislative districts, following reasonable criteria, and thereby create a number of competitive districts.

Here is a brief quote of the main conclusion of the study:

After drawing dozens of potential redistricting plans, researchers concluded that attempting to create more competitive seats while also balancing other criteria would probably produce 12 to 14 competitive Congressional districts and 12 to 17 competitive Assembly seats. Currently the state has no Congressional districts and five Assembly districts that fall within the study's definition of a competitive range. Increased competitiveness has been one of the outcomes sought by those aiming to take the process of redrawing legislative districts out of the hands of the Legislature.

The study cautions, however, that while such districts would be closely divided along partisan lines, they would not necessarily produce frequent partisan turnover. Factors such as incumbency, monetary advantages, national political trends, and candidate quality make it unlikely that closely divided districts would ensure a sharp increase in the frequency with which seats change hands, researchers found.

This is a very comprehensive report, coming from redistricting veteran Bruce Cain and the IGS's Karin Mac Donald. The results and analysis of this report should be taken seriously by those now working diligently to reform the redistricting process in California, and in other states.

One of the really neat aspects of this research project is that they have made available their maps and plans.

I've pulled together some of my notes from the two panels at the AEI-Brookings workshop yesterday, and here are some of the highlights that I found of interest.

1. My slides. I focused on three different issues regarding HAVA implementation. First, a short term issue for election administrators will be change management; how they deal with all of the change going on in their business will be a major issue for election administrators. Second, I argued that a near term issue will be additional work on threat identification and prevention. Third, I then talked about another near term issue, developing better methods of voting system testing and certification. Last, the long term issue will continue to be the fact that elections are a "people process."
   
2. One of the topics of discussion on the first panel focused on interoperability of voter registration databases. Both Paul DeGregorio (EAC Chair) and Deborah Markowitz (Vermont Secretary of State) talked about this issue. They both talked about the current development of regional approaches and cooperative agreements between states to develop methods to share voter registration databases, and that this might constitute a first step towards development of voter registration databases that can be interoperable across state lines. Given the recent study that Thad and I wrote on the need for standards for election administration data exchange, this discussion was something that I found quite interesting.
   
3. Also on the first panel, Doug Chapin (electionline.org Director) discussed their latest report on HAVA implementation. One memorable quote from Doug was his line, "loose cannon on a rolling deck", used to describe what he sees as the current situation regarding election controversies. The loose cannon is the continuation of highly competitive elections; the rolling deck stands for the continual change in election administration. Not a pretty picture.
   
4. On the second panel, Robert Pastor (American University) focused on what I saw as a series of arguments for a strengthened federal role in election administration, in reaction to what he described as "state-based creative chaos." He also talked about the interoperability of voter registration databases, asserting that the EAC needs to develop a "unified template" for interoperability.
   
5. Also on the second panel, Paul Vinovich (House Administration Committee) helped to keep the academic's feet on the ground, despite moderator Tom Mann's suggestion that we engage in "blue sky" thinking. He focused mainly on whether HAVA might be the subject of any congressional action in the near future, which he was quite pessimistic about. He noted that the current desire in Congress was likely to see how HAVA will work, as 2006 is really the first federal election cycle under full HAVA implementation.
   

These were just the highlights from my notes. The AEI-Brookings election reform project website promises a complete transcript and video soon, which I'll link to when it is available.

Subsequent to my earlier essay about Benjamin Highton's paper in PS on the impact of voting machine allocations on voter turnout in Franklin County, Ohio, in the 2004 presidential election, there was some email discussion on the electionlaw listserv about Highton's paper and this general line of research.

Walter Mebane (Cornell University) reminded readers of the electionlaw listserv that he had done a similar analysis of data from Franklin County, but using different methodologies. Here is a snip of his email, with a link to his paper:

My analysis of precinct-level data from the 2004 election in Franklin County, Ohio, uses different statistical methods than Ben Highton used in his PS paper, but as far as the relationship between voting machines and voter turnout is concerned we reach qualitatively similar conclusions. My analysis also looks at a measure of the long lines in the county and includes measures of precinct racial composition. If one uses the November 2004 electorate as the standard, the allocation of voting machines clearly and disproportionately reduced turnout among African American voters. For the paper, see

http://macht.arts.cornell.edu/wrm1/franklin2.pdf

That's an update of the paper I originally wrote in July, 2005, in response to one of the infamous DOJ letters. I've updated it to take into account new data I just received from Franklin County regarding the information they used to allocate voting machines to precincts. Apparently they used a measure of the active voter electorate computed as of mid-June, 2004. While the allocation of machines discriminates heavily against African American voters if it is compared to the November electorate, if it is compared to the electorate measured as of June then precincts that have a high proportion of African Americans and precincts that have a low proportion of African Americans have on average virtually equal numbers of voters per machine.

Average Number of Voters per Voting Machine

Proportion
African American November June
Low 213 178
Medium 226 172
High 242 176

Details are in the paper.

Thanks to Walter for pointing us all to his paper, as it contributes another perspective on this research question.

Yesterday, I participated in the kickoff event for the new AEI/Brookings project on election reform. Rick Hasen has written already about his take on Senator Obama's keynote address, focusing on the comments of the Senator on the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

My take was that Senator Obama had three important things to say in his address and during questioning. First was his stress on the fact that federal election reform is far from complete. While he was agnostic about whether HAVA would be revisited by Congress, or whether the VRA renewal would be an opportunity for the federal government to address some of the many remaining issues of election reform, it was clear that he saw that there was a lot of unfinished business. Second, as for the areas where Senator Obama saw need for reform, he talked a lot about fixing voter registration problems, voter intimidation and suppression of the vote. At many points in his talk, he said something to the effect that many problems with voter registration can and should be fixed with new statewide voter registration databases, at a number of points saying something to the effect that "the technology exists to fix these problems." Third, he correctly acknowledged that for there to be further progress on election reform at the federal level that we "have to take the politics out of election reform."

During the question session, Tom Mann (Brookings) asked Senator Obama exactly how we can take the politics out of election reform. The Senator had two interesting reactions to the question. The first was to note that a lot of the reform action is going on now at the state and local level; he indicated that he thought this was a good thing, and that those reform efforts should be allowed to proceed, and that they eventually may lead to federal efforts. The second was a long discussion about a need for the parties to break out of their current emphasis on a static and divisive politics.

But in the end, Senator Obama was pessimistic about further election reform at the federal level, after questioning from Norm Ornstein (AEI) about whether fixing HAVA, Senator Obama said that he thought there were "no prospects of change at the federal level anytime soon."

After Senator Obama's talk, a number of us were struck by how quick he was to claim that we had easy technological solutions to voter registration problems, and his implicit assumption that the technical problems associated with the development and implemention of statewide voter registration databases was somehow an easy problem. Given the recent release of electionline.org's report, "Election Reform: What's Changed, What Hasn't and Why (2000-2006)", a report that discusses the problems that many states are having implementing their HAVA-mandated statewide voter registration databases, I do think that he is too quickly dismissing the problems that states are facing, and how complicated the task of developing HAVA-compliant statewide voter registration files really is proving to be.

We received this interesting report from Bill Huennekens that outlines a proposal to shift the King County (Washington) election process to an all-mail balloting system. This is a comprehensive proposal, with an aggressive action plan to develop a countywide mail voting system within the next year or so. As in recent elections strong majorities of ballots cast in King County are coming through their existing mail ballot system (see page 8 of the report for additional data), it clearly makes sense for King County to consider seriously moving exclusively to all-mail balloting, instead of retaining the dual system of precinct and by-mail voting.

One worthy aspect of the report's recommendations comes on page 27, where the report discusses steps needed to insure that the transition is evaluated by the academic community (page 27). Working in partnership with election officials is a goal that we have long been working to achieve, and here is an excellent opportunity for scholars and election administrators to work together to improve the election process and to learn more about the impact of vote-by-mail systems on the election process.

I received an email notice this morning regarding an upcoming summer institute on democracy and elections, to be held at American University. At the Brookings/AEI event yesterday in Washington (more on that in a later essay) Robert Pastor of American University briefly mentioned this event.

The brief blurb notes:

About The Summer Institute

The Institute will help participants learn about the best practices, the latest technology, and the most effective and impartial management systems for elections.

Take part in high-level discussions led by eminent election experts—scholars, election professionals, election observers, and journalists who have worked on elections in the United States and throughout the world.

More on the summer institute can be found by following this link.

The Washington Post has a lot of thorough coverage of the unfolding turmoil surrounding the current elections in Haiti. There were a number of close calls earlier on election day, as reported in the Post's main story:

Before dawn, voters swarmed out of Cite Soleil, Bel Air and other urban slums to discover that voting stations had failed to open, election officials had no ballots, registration lists were incorrect and lines stretched for blocks. In some neighborhoods, voters trampled by surging crowds rose bloodied and bruised.

At least three people died, including a police officer in the northern town of Gros Morne who was killed by a mob after he fatally shot a man.

The turbulence subsided by late afternoon as voters who had waited for hours were herded into lines and filed into polling places. The turnabout, which may have been aided by an afternoon decision to keep polling places open until everyone had voted, relieved election officials and international observers who feared the situation could be edging toward anarchy.

If you scroll down the page, and click on the link under Photos, "Finally, Haitians Vote", there is a collection of excellent photos depecting the election turmoil.

It's also worth noting that the story states that in remote parts of Haiti ballots were delivered via donkey.

There is a story in the Houston Chronicle today about Diebold evaluating whether to divest itself of its electronic voting division, which is its smallest unit.

electionline.org has released their new report Election Reform: What’s Changes, What Hasn’t and Why. The report is a gem of interesting information about election reform activities in the states. The report has six major areas of focus:

Requirements for voter-verified paper audit trails;

• Requirements for voter ID requirements;
• Statewide voter registration databases;
• Absentee voting;
• Early in-person voting; and
• Provisional balloting.

As is typically the case with electionline.org reports, it is comprehensive and provides a great deal of information about key aspects of the election reform efforts that are ongoing.


One of the interesting things I did in reading the report was to compare the state where I live now—Utah—the state where I used to live—Georgia—with New York, the supposed bastion of east coast liberalism. What you see when you do the comparison is actually quite interesting. Utah and Georgia are both much more progressive toward election reform than is New York. In fact, the folks at electionline.org make clear that New York is probably the most conservative state in the nation in regards to election reform.


Consider: New York has made no effort to enfranchise its disabled voters by acquiring accessible technology. They have made no effort to crate a statewide voter registration database. They have very conservative rules for counting provisional ballots (New York has the same rules as those in Ohio that came under such scrutiny in 2004). New York also makes it very difficult for voters to vote: absentee voting can only be done with a valid excuse and there are no provisions in law for any form of early voting.

By contrast, Georgia and Utah both have all of the things New York does not, with the exception of the provisional voting rules, which are restrictive in these states as well.


One other interesting aspect of the report is the discussion of voter-verified paper audit trails. 2006 will be the first year in which most states that have VVPAT rules that require the paper ballot to be counted in case of a recount will have to actually count the paper receipts in case of a recount. Given that approximately 75 percent of states this year will have long ballots of state races—in addition to federal and local races plus amendments—it is likely that one of these states will have a recount. It will be interesting if any state has a statewide recount like the one in Washington state in 2004; these states will need to have effective processes and procedures in place in order to recount by hand a million or so ballots (hand recounts are generally done in teams of two or four). This experience will likely inform other states about the best way of implementing such recounts in the future.

It is clear that 2006 will be a very large experiment in many states testing the effectiveness of election reform. It will be interesting to see how effective these experiments are in improving public confidence in elections and in generating better voting experiences for everyone.

Some detailed new research was discussed recently, in a presentation by Celinda Lake and David Mermin, of Lake Research Partners. The reseach, sponsored by the JEHT Foundation, looked at voters in Ohio and California in the recent special elections in both states, to determine why it was that redistricting reform measures failed in both states.

While this research is focused on what happened in Ohio and California in the 2005 fall special elections, I believe that the material contained here is of critical importance for redistricting reform efforts that continue to unfold in both states. In particular, there continue to be efforts in California to attempt redistricting reform this year, especially the proposal by Senator Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), SCA3. Here is more about the Lowenthal proposal, and about the efforts of a coalition of groups to work with Lowenthal to improve his proposal. I wrote about redistricting reform in California in my recent opinion column "Governor Should Hold To Promise of Reform", and will be soon revisiting this issue.

The research is detailed in a package of slides, available here as a pdf file. The research is based on surveys of 600 registered voters from Ohio, and 800 registered voters in California. Some key findings from the research report and the briefing:

1. In both states the redistricting reform efforts were viewed as highly partisan, but in different ways in both Ohio and California. Look in particular at slides 24 (Ohio) and 29 (California). In both states, there are huge partisan divisions in the vote --- and there is a lack of support for redistricting measures from independents.
   
2. The partisanship data from Ohio (slide 24) in particular show that one of the conventional wisdoms about the Ohio measure was that if only more Democrats had turned out to vote, redistricting reform would have passed. Note that only 51% of Democrats supported the measure!
   
3. Some of the messages and themes about redistricting were striking:
   
   
   
   • Three important themes (slide 53) arose in both states: the argument that it is a conflict of interest for legislators to draw their own lines; that voters should choose their representatives, not representatives choosing their voters; and that we need to keep communities together.
     
   • Two themes did not work (slides 55 and 56): corruption is not connected to redistricting, and voters do not see competition as a compelling case, apparently because they see competition as producing more advertising and negative campaigns.
     
   
   

As to general lessons, during the briefing, Celinda Lake argued that the following five lessons arose from their detailed research:

1. There exist strong shared values around redistricting reform.
   
2. There is a desire for change and reform, generally.
   
3. The strongest values exist around giving voters a voice, accountability, and keeping communities together.
   
4. The weak arguments, that need to be worked on for future redistricting reform efforts, regard the connections between redistricting, corruption and competition.
   
5. Future efforts need to position the redistricting arguments in simple terms, and to insure that they are framed as independent and not partisan efforts.
   

There is a lot here (sixty slides) and a lot for reformers to digest before moving ahead in any state with further redistricting reform efforts. This is wonderful research, and thanks to the JEHT Foundation for funding this research and making the product of their research efforts available to those interested in election reform. We need much more research like this in the future, so that we can best understand how to focus and frame election reform efforts, especially those that use the initiative process.

Today Election Data Services (EDS) released a new report on their projections for the usage of voting technologies in the upcoming 2006 election cycle. There are some interesting findings in the report, and some alarming facts.

First, on the interesting side, the EDS data indicate rough parity between the two most popular forms of existing voting technologies, electronic or DRE machines and optical scanning ballots, at least when computed relative to the estimated number of registered voters who will be using either technology: 41% of registered voters are projected to use optical scan ballots, and 39% to use electronic voting systems. But, when the usage statistics are computed by county, 48% of counties will use optical scan ballots and 34% will use electronic voting systems.

Second, also on the interesting side, are the continued declines in usage of other voting technologies, especially punchcard ballots. They are projected to be used by only about 3% of registered voters, and in perhaps 4% of counties.

Third, and on an alarming note, is the projection that perhaps 31 million voters will be using new voting technologies when they go to vote in this year's federal election cycle. What is alarming about this is that election officials will be essentially experimenting with new voting systems in what is shaping up to be another contested and partisan election cycle, at a time when in many states interest in politics and voter participation might be high. How will election officials insure adequate resources to train pollworkers about how to use the new voting systems. How will they train voters? Will the vendors have sufficient resources themselves to help counties using new voting systems for the first time in the 2006 election cycle? Will we see states and counties using new voting systems have serious problems, a phenomenon we have seen in previous years?

We received information about the 2nd International Workshop on Electronic Voting, to be held August 2 through 4, 2006, in Austria.

Material from the first workshop they held, "Electronic Voting in Europe", is available from this website. While neither Thad nor I attended this 2004 workshop, some of the material presented there looks of interest to those who are studying the development of electronic voting technologies, especially outside the United States.

There was a story today in the Birmingham News about a 75 year old couple and their dedication to volunteering to their community. The interesting sentence from the story is that the husband, "Roy Jowers, recently entered his 50th year as a volunteer poll worker." As I read this I realized that, here is a man who dedicated himself in his mid-twenties to participating in an important civic activity and did so throughout the various travails we all experience in live.

Moreover, think about how voting has changed in his 50 years as a poll worker. Not only has the technology changed--from paper ballots that were hand counted to electronic tabulation--but in Alabama, African Americans were enfranchised, poll taxes were eliminated, the Republican party became competitive, voter registration became much easier, 18 to 21 year olds were given the franchise, and voters gained new rights to information and assistance they had never had before. In 2006, he will work in a polling place that allows individuals with disabilities to vote unassisted, probably for the first time ever.

It is an amazing thing to think about how our American democracy has become so robust during just the 50 years Roy has worked as a poll worker.