Election Updates

I just returned from a visit to the Yucatan, where I had a chance to talk with some voters about their pending presidential and federal elections. I also had a chance to see some of the campaigning, and to hear local coverage of the elections, and to then compare that to how the election was being covered in some of the publications back in the States.

First, one of the more interesting things I observed over the past week in the Yucatan was how the federal election campaigns were utilizing roadside advertising, something that I'm not sure I've seen much of in the United States (for example, I'm not sure that I can remember seeing a Bush or Kerry billboard alongside a freeway in 2004!). Here's one photo of an enormous billboard, advertising the PRI presidential candidate alongside the local federal candidates. And here is a picture (admittedly not the greatest in the world!) of a road intersection, showing all of the poles plastered with candidates for federal offices. Along the major roadways in the Yucatan, especially near towns and settlements, the political advertisements line the roads and paper many posts and walls.

A second observation concerned how the election campaign is being portrayed here in the United States, relative to how it is portrayed and seen back in Mexico, at least in my admittedly non-scientific sampling of voters and newspapers in the Yucatan. Much of the coverage in the United States has portrayed the presidential race as close, polarizing, divisive, and nasty; for example, a recent story in the New York Times asserted that much of the presidential campaign revolved around "fearmongering." Indeed, the election looks close; but in a close and hotly contested election, is it really surprising that the rhetoric and debate gets heated? Is this really so surprising, given that Mexico has not had a history of contested presidential elections?

A third observation was my impression that the American media's focus on the tone of the campaign was missing a more important problem: voter coercion and election fraud. In the American media, the Washington Post did recently cover some of these concerns, based on two recent studies of vote buying in the current election, but it seems to me that this has not attracted the same level of coverage in the U.S. as it has in Mexico. It's hard to evaluate these concerns, but it will be productive to follow the coverage of this weekend's election to see what data comes out concerning election irregularities in the Mexican presidential election.

The Baltimore Sun reports that petitioners have challenged the State Board of Elections, which recently disqualified one of two petitions that challenge Maryland's early voting law.

The Baltimore Sun reports that petitioners have challenged the State Board of Elections, which recently disqualified one of two petitions that challenge Maryland's early voting law.

So tonight Erin and I went back to a precinct we visited earlier in the day and watched the election closeout when the polls close. The poll workers at this precinct were great, as evidenced by the infinite patience they showed a woman who came at 7:58 and voted provisionally. The closeout process itself was rather easy, with the workers following the step by step instructions that the county had developed (with photos of each step). The workers literally followed the steps, did their assigned task, and the entire poll shutdown took 30 minutes. They secured everything, locked and sealed everything, and followed the equipment return procedures.

It was clear that the Salt Lake County had spent quite a bit of time and energy into thinking through everything that could go wrong and then developed training and procedures to ensure that it would not. Granted, this was a very low turnout primary but still it was an excellent rollout of a new voting technology.

USA Today (today) has a story about the Brennan Center report on vulnerabilities with electronic voting. I have not read the entire report--it is 162 pages--but it does address key issues with the security of voting technologies.

Given the work I am doing that is complimentary to this, examining the election laws and procedures that address all voting technologies and the counting of ballots, I can say that the key to addressing many of the problems discussed here is having detailed procedures in place to address the security vulnerabilities that are in the report. In many cases, the security problems can be rectified through effective training and procedural requirements for handling ballots and machines.

Likewise, Common Cause has a report on electronic voting vulnerabilities as well. I think that the key take away from this study is this--if you have VVPATs, audit them! It is silly to have the VVPATs and then not use them for auditing purposes.

Today is Election Day in Utah, but it is pretty boring in much of the state. Utah has an interesting combination of party caucuses and primaries. If one candidate does not get a super-majority of delegates at the party convention, there is a primary election. In my precinct, the only election is a Republican primary for Sheriff. I live in the 4-square blocks of liberalism in Utah (ok, it is bigger, but not much) and when I walked into the precinct near my home at 8:00 am, I got to watch the first voter of the day cast a ballot, one hour after the election started.

The poll workers were very happy about the training they had received from Salt Lake County and thought that the in-precinct polling place materials were very helpful in ensuring that the polls were set up correctly. The workers said that the key was just to follow the directions and do things slowly and it worked out perfect. At the second precinct I visited, at the Catholic Church we attend, the election was again boring but the workers were having no problems. One machine was down, but the county technical rover was on his was to fix it.

I will be blogging throughout the day with Erin Peterson, who is my research assistant. Here was her experience in Davis County this morning. Davis County, like many Utah counties, is one which does not contain even a consolidated 4-square acres of liberalism. Not that this mattered particularly to the ten or so people who turned out to vote as polls opened this morning as the biggest issue on the ballot was a bond vote. After parking in a mud puddle, I was able to squeeze sideways through a doorway marked wheelchair accessible, and snap a couple of pictures in a polling local set up in the only local coffee shop before being quarantined by concerned poll workers until they could contact a supervisor who granted me permission to stay. I spoke with the technician responsible for sixteen polling sites in Davis County. He told me that while some sites had trouble getting all their machines up before polls opened at 7:00 only one machine had actually malfunctioned. It had difficulties with its printer, but was quickly fixed. Another group of poll workers, this time a group which decided to allow me to chat and snap pictures, perhaps just for company in the empty basketball gym, told me that they had some trouble finding their mismarked polling location, and wondered if low turnout was due to the fact that the precinct’s voters were also trying to get into the elementary school kitty-corner to the gym where the machines were actually set up.

We have visited a set of precincts in Salt Lake County and it has been quite boring as well. The polls were set up without a hitch, poll workers thought they received excellent training, and the machines are all working in the precincts we visited (1 machine down out of more than 40 machines seen). It will be interesting to see how well the polls close down tonight.

A poll conducted for KSL television and radio found that 85 percent of voters in Utah are not concerned about the new electronic voting machines. Tuesday is election day and I will be blogging the election throughout the day. A complete article with commentary about the poll can be found here.


It is also interesting because we have a very highly contested primary election with incumbent House member Chris Cannon in an extremely close race (the big issue, not surprisingly, is immigration.

There is a interesting Associated Press story today about the expatriate vote in the upcoming Mexican election. Mexico has more citizens living abroad than most nations in the world and giving them a right to vote has long been contentious. The story--obviously--has an American focus and one issue of interest is in how media coverage of Mexico varies from California, where coverage is quite good, to the South, where coverage is rather scant. It will be interesting to see whether these votes affect the outcome of the election.

There was a nice story on NPR Saturday on the history of election fraud in Mexico. It is interesting how such cultural features become embedded in politics and that those who are the victims are the poor, who sell their votes but get little in return.