Election Updates

The Reform Institute released some interesting and helpful survey data today; they conducted a survey of Ohio voters in early January, asking them a number of questions about redistricting reform. This survey, and the earlier survey data that I wrote about from the JEHT Foundation, provide some insight into public support for redistricting reform in Ohio, and public perceptions of the need for more competitive elections.

Below is a long quotation from the press release from the Reform Institute. I've also put a pdf file containing more information from the poll here.

Ohio Voters Want Competitive Elections

Redistricting Reform Critical to Restoring Competition

ALEXANDRIA, VA - In response to oral arguments heard today by the Supreme Court in the Texas redistricting lawsuit that challenges partisan gerrymandering by incumbents, the Reform Institute released the following poll.

The Tarrance Group poll, conducted for the Reform Institute, shows that that 70 percent of Ohio voters support either the idea of "balance" or "competition" in congressional and legislative races. The poll also showed over 50 percent of voters from different political parties (Republican, Democrat, non-affiliated), as well as different self-identified ideological positions (conservative, moderate, liberal) support more competition in elections instead of keeping things the way they are.

While the overwhelming majority of Ohio voters support competitive elections - the leading principle behind redistricting reform - the poll shows 49 percent plurality of voters are opposed to redistricting before the next census. The Court's ruling could fundamentally change the way district lines are drawn by making partisan gerrymandering and mid-decade redistricting unconstitutional.

"Partisan gerrymandering, a common redistricting practice, has led to the decline in competitive elections," said Cecilia Martinez, Reform Institute Executive Director. "Ensuring transparency and accountability in the way district lines are drawn will help to restore public confidence in what has been a consistently partisan process. "

Martinez added, "As the poll shows, mid-decade redistricting increases suspicion that these proposals are designed for the short-term advantage of one party as much as for the long-term health of the system. Reformers must learn the lessons that came out of Ohio before the next push to pass meaningful redistricting reform can be successful."

In November 2005 an Ohio initiative creating an independent redistricting commission was defeated by a staggering 70 percent to 30 percent.

The poll was commissioned by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Reform Institute, which serves as a unique, independent voice working to strengthen the foundations of our democracy. In addition to the Ohio poll, the Institute filed a "friend of the court brief" in the Texas redistricting lawsuit. The brief urges the U.S. Supreme Court to end partisan gerrymandering, which weakens congressional responsiveness and accountability and has reshaped the House of Representatives into a body that is largely unrepresentative of the people - both demographically and politically.

The poll, conducted by the Tarrance Group, surveyed 807 likely Ohio voters between January 4-5 and 8, 2006. The survey's margin of error is +/- 3.5 percentage points.

There is much here for those interested in redistricting reform to ponder, especially in California where Senator Lowenthal's SCA3 bill has been recently amended and is still moving through the legislative process. This bill is now scheduled for a hearing before the California Senate Election Committee on March 15, 9:30am, in Sacramento at the State Capitol (Room 3191).

Following up on my previous (and first) posting regarding Election events, (http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/02/upcoming-events-of-election.html), the American University Center for Democracy and Election Management and the Carter-Baker Commission on Election Reform are hosting a HAVA Conference on March 29. Questions to be answered are "Are US Elections Getting Better or Worse?" and "Is HAVA working?" The conference will be held in Washington, DC at the Mary Graydon Center at American University.

The third installment in my opinion columns on political reform was published this morning: "Reform: Like shooting fish in a pork barrel." In the column, I call for a series of lobbying reforms:

To end wasteful pork, Congress has to stop allowing its members to insert last-minute spending projects into pending legislation, with no scrutiny or accountability.

To curb these excesses, Congress has to give its members at least two full days to consider all appropriations bills. All appropriations must be linked directly to the congress member requesting the funding and this member must state the necessary government interest in the appropriation. Recipients of federal largess must provide a public reporting of how the money is spent, who in their organization gets a direct financial benefit from the federal expenditure, and how much they spend on political contributions and registered lobbyists.

Congress also has to reform its internal ethics process and how members interact with lobbyists.

One important step is for Congress to create an independent and bipartisan ethics commission, with real powers to investigate and enforce all ethical violations by members and their staffs. Members of Congress, and their staff, must be banned from receiving anything from registered lobbyists, including political contributions, gifts and meals. We have to stop members of Congress and staff from accepting free travel from any private source. All meetings between members of Congress and their staff must be disclosed and records of their meetings must be made available to the public.

Last, no member of Congress, nor their staff, should be allowed to register as a Washington lobbyist for at least a decade after they leave Congress. No one should be able to use their recent past in Congress to make millions lobbying their former colleagues.

In the column, I reference some material from Senator John McCain's website. I also reference a Congressional Research Service report on pork and earmarking; that data is summarized in a Febuary 3, 2006 Washington Post story.

There's an interesting opinion piece by Bill Mundell, talking about the problems with the Mexican expatriate vote process. He concludes with an interesting proposal:

Unfortunately, the Mexican government cut off registration to the July elections at Jan. 15, almost seven months before the vote. The result is that the Mexican vote abroad will be inconsequential. If the Mexican government really intended to provide a voice for its sizeable contingent living abroad, it should extend the deadline until at least June.

That's a good proposal, though not one that the Mexican government is likely to heed.

This comes in the wake of a very useful survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center on this subject; they surveyed 987 Mexican-born adults living in the United States, about their knowledge of and participation in the current absentee voting process. A brief summary of this survey states:

Strict requirements, insufficient information about registration procedures and lack of public interest hobbled Mexico's first effort to conduct absentee voting among its more than ten million adult citizens living in the United States, according to a Pew Hispanic Center survey. About one-half of one percent of Mexicans in the U.S. sought absentee ballots for the presidential election in July during a registration period which ended last month.

The survey found that more than half (55%) of Mexicans in the U.S. were not aware that a presidential election is taking place this year and that few were familiar with the regulations and procedures adopted by the Mexican government last June when it authorized absentee voting for Mexicans abroad. About a third knew that the deadline for seeking an absentee ballot had just passed at the time of the survey. Only one of every ten eligible voters could correctly answer a set of factual questions about the procedures for getting a ballot.

The survey findings are based on telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 987 Mexican-born adults living in the United States.

The website that the Pew Hispanic Center has for this survey also has a few other very useful links to both official information sources about the Mexican expatriate voting program as well as some external research.

The Pew survey reached some very important conclusions about the Mexican expatriate voting program.

First, they used a series of factual quiz-style questions to probe whether their survey respondents were informed about the voting program. The conclusion --- very few of the respondents were sufficiently informed to be able to follow the rules established to apply for an absentee ballot. Only about a fifth of their all Mexicans living in the U.S. or eligible voters could even tell survey interviewers the correct deadline for filing an absentee ballot application; even worse, only about half of eligible voters even knew that there was an upcoming presidential election and when it was being held.

Second, the survey indicated that the rigorous procedures that the Mexican government required for participation by expatriates in the absentee voting process may have served as significant barriers to participation. The interviewers asked survey respondents who did not register to vote in the election five different reasons for not registering: whether they felt they were not suffficiently informed, never received enough information, that Mexican elections are not important to their life in the United States, the application process was difficult and complicated, or that they simply did not have the necessary credentials.

Fifty-six percent of the otherwise eligible voters who did not register agreed that the registration process itself was too difficult and complicated, and this explanation emerged as the most agreed-upon factor in this set of survey questions. Fifth-four percent of the same group said they were not sufficiently informed about Mexican politics to vote, 52% did not have enough information to register, 51% did not have the necessary documentation, and 29% agreed that their life in the United States has rendered Mexican elections unimportant to them.

Note here that 56% of eligible voters who did not register saw the process as too difficult and complicated, 52% didn't get enough information to register, and 51% did not have the necessary documents. Clearly the procedures were barriers to participation by otherwise eligible voters.

One question that frequently arises about voter registration processes is the error rate in the information provided to election officials, in particular, when those voter registration forms come from third-party registration efforts. As far as I know there has been no large-scale effort to determine the error rate in third-party voter registration efforts, but if readers do know of such studies I'd appreciate the citations which I will post if provided.

But there is some data in a short story coming out of San Bernardino County in Southern California, as reported in this morning's Los Angeles Times. This story involves allegations that a company hired by a political party to register voters may have submitted "thousands of flawed voter registration forms."

According to this story, "County voting officials said they found problems with many of the nearly 3,000 registration forms submitted by the company, including 1,800 that lacked voters' driver's license numbers or other official forms of identification, which were required by a state law this year." Specifics include:

"More than half of the forms lacked an identification number, such as a driver's license number, they said.

They also discovered a few people had been registered multiple times, and received one complaint from someone who was not a U.S. citizen and couldn't understand how he could be eligible to vote."

The signature gathering firm apparently was paid in the past about $3 for each voter registration form it provided, but the rate has allegedly doubled in recent years in this part of Southern California to $6 per voter registration form.

The more general question of signature gathering efforts, either for voter registration or for ballot petitions, has received surprisingly little analysis in the political science literature. Recently Fred Boehmke and I have started to study this issue in some detail, and there are now two working papers that we have in circulation on the issue of petition signature gathering efforts in California: "Where the Good Signatures Are: The Number and Validity Rates of Initiative Petition Signatures Gathered in California Counties", and "The Influence of Initiative Signature Gathering Campaigns on Political Participation".

Update, March 8, 2006: There is a follow-up story in the Los Angeles Times, "GOP Halts Paid Voter-Drive Program".