Election Updates

Recently I wrote about papers being presented at the political methodology conference this week at UC Davis. The paper that was previously unavailable, by Henry E. Brady and Iris Hui, is now available in electronic from the conference website. Here's the paper abstract:

Two seemingly unrelated approaches to quantitative analysis have recently become more popular in social science applications. The first approach is the explicit consideration of counterfactuals in causal inference and the development of various matching techniques to choose control cases comparable to treated cases in terms ofsome predefined characteristics. To be useful, these methods require the identification of important characteristics that are likely to ensure that a statistical condition called “conditional independence” is met. The second trend is the increased attention given to geography and the use of spatial statistics. Although these two approaches have found their ways into the social science research separately, we think that they can be fruitfully combined. Geography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can improve matching and causal inference. Geography can be conceptualized in terms of “distance” and “place” which can provide guidance about potentially important characteristics that can be used to improve matching. After developing a conceptual framework that shows how this can be done, we present two empirical examples which combine counterfactual thinking with geographical ideas. The first example looks at the cost of voting and demonstrates the utility of matching using zip codes and distance to polling place. The second example looks at the performance of the InkaVote voting system in Los Angeles by matching precincts in LA with geographically adjacent precincts in surrounding counties. This example demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of geographic proximity as a matching variable. In pursuing these examples, we also show how recent progress in GIS techniques provides tools that can deepen researchers’
understanding of their idea.

This is really a paper that is meant for a methodologically-sophisticated audience, as they really are dealing with the development of methodologies for studying many different types of social and political behavior. But for those who do work through the paper, there are two substantive applications that would be of interest to readers of Election Updates. The first is one that Brady has written about before, and that is precinct consolidation in LA County. The second is a newer line of research, looking at the relative effects of voting technologies on voter behavior.

It is this second line of new work that might be of most interest to students of voting technologies. Here they examine precincts in Southern California counties that can be "matched" with other similar precincts, and then study the differences in residual vote rates across the "matched" precincts. One way to do the matching is by using the matching methods currently in vogue in statistics (and increasingly in political science, as I've written about before). Another way, which Brady and Hui write about extensively in their paper, is to use geographic methods, essentially concentrating on precincts that are right on the border of say LA and Ventura county, to do the "matching". A third approach, which is what in the end Brady and Hui are trying to advocate in their paper, is to combine the typical statistical matching algorithm with geographic matching. Their substantive conclusion, based on a variety of the matching procedures, is that the Inkavote system used in LA County seems to underperform in terms of residual vote relative to the voting systems used in other Southern California counties. This result, of course, is one that Brady discussed at a conference last fall of the effect of voting technologies on residual vote rates across California counties, and thus that this result seems confirmed by these more sophisticated methodologies may not be terribly surprising.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden promoted voting by mail on the Senate floor yeterday, during debate over the renewal of the Voting Rights Act (as reported in the Oregonian.

Wyden argued for voting by mail as:

• A way to increase turnout (empirical evidence says Wyden is wrong)
  
• A way to increase transparency and accountability (not sure what this means)
  
• A way to create a paper trail (true)
  
• A way to save costs (probably true, but not sure this is a good reason to
  dramatically change our method of balloting
  

The Baltimore Sun reports on the latest legal and political wrangling over early voting in Maryland.

Opponents to early voting have filed suit, claiming that the Legislature violated the Maryland constitution. The plaintiffs argue that early voting changes the date of the election, and thus requires a constitutional amendment, not simply legislation.

Supporters of early voting argue that the state constitution does not explicitly ban voting early, and only requires that all ballots be counted on election day; therefore it is constitutional to allow early voting via an act of the legislature.

While I've still not had a chance to go through all of this material yet, I thought I would update my earlier post regarding the House hearings that were held earlier today in Washington. The statements, testimony, and webcast are available at this website.

The Commonwealth Club's Voice of Reform project has just issued a new letter and press release calling upon the Governor and the legislature to move now to put redistricting reform on the November ballot. As was the case earlier this year, I'm one of the many people who signed the letter to the Governor.

Here is the new statement in support of redistricting reform, taken directly from the letter to the Governor:

We believe that the inherent conflict of interest that results from legislators directly determining the shape of the districts for which they or other members of their party will compete in future elections contributes to the erosion of public confidence in government, undermines genuine political representation and has the potential to negatively affect the quality of public policy.

Therefore, we support steps to eliminate both this conflict of interest and related incentives to create non-competitive, safe seats, while strengthening the overall integrity of the legislative redistricting process.

Achieving these goals should include, at a minimum, the following actions:

1) Establish a process that is representative of the state’s diversity for appointing an Independent Redistricting Commission balanced in partisan representation.
The following steps would ensure such a process is resistant to undue political influence:

a) The California Chief Justice and six California Courts of Appeal chief administrative judges should identify 10 fully retired judges of the Court of Appeal to serve as a Redistricting Commission nominating panel;

b) The nominating panel should oversee a process for nominating a pool of 50 Redistricting Commission applicants;

c) The four Legislative leaders from the Assembly and Senate majority and minority respectively should each have the option of striking a specified number of (and a minimum of two) applicants from the pool of 50; and

d) A final Commission of 11 should then be selected at random by the nominating panel from the remaining applicants to achieve a balance of four Democrats, four Republicans, and three members not registered with either of the two major political parties (the random selection would be made by party registration to assure Commission balance).

2) Require that both Commissioners and Commission staff be subject to clear conflict of interest restrictions. (For example, restrictions should include prohibitions of Commissioners and their staff from having recently been a candidate for or having served in an elected or appointed office; from running for an office the boundaries of which they drew; or from being a legislative staffer or family member of, or having other specified close connections with elected officers whose districts are determined through the redistricting process of which they are a part.)

3) Prohibit Commissioners from serving in any other public office in California during their term on the Redistricting Commission, or from running for any office under the jurisdiction of the redistricting plan for the life of the redistricting plan produced by their Commission.

4) Ensure the Commission complies fully with the Voting Rights Act and equal population requirements.

5) Nest Assembly, Senate and Board of Equalization (BOE) districts. (Nesting districts refers to defining their boundaries so that two or more districts of one type fit exactly within each district of a larger type. In California, this currently means there would be 2 Assembly districts in each Senate district, and 10 Senate districts in each BOE district.)

6) Ensure clear redistricting guidelines are established directing the Commission to respect traditional redistricting criteria including (but not limited to) respect for communities of similar social, cultural, ethnic, geographic, or economic interest, respect for city and county boundaries, and formation of contiguous districts. Additionally, the Commission may not draw districts for the purpose of favoring incumbents.

7) Require that redistricting criteria apply to all maps drawn and approved by the Commission.

8) Require the Commission issue with its final plan Findings of Fact regarding map compliance with criteria that explains the basis on which the Commission made its decisions, particularly in cases where it deviated from compliance with the list or priority order of the redistricting criteria, or where compliance with one criterion resulted in less than full compliance with another. Additionally, require the Commission to include definitions of the terms and standards used in drawing the maps.

9) Establish a transparent and inclusive process for the Commission to integrate public comment into the redistricting process. This should include public meetings throughout the state and timely public access to any substantive material under consideration by the Commission.

10) Preserve the people's power to use the referendum as articulated in the state constitution, in relation to a new redistricting plan.

11) Require a date certain deadline for completion and approval of a new plan. If the Commission does not approve a new plan by such deadline, responsibility for the redistricting process will transfer immediately to the courts.

This is great advice, and I certainly hope that the Governor and our state legislators are listening!

Indeed an interesting question. I was forwarded a link to the following paper, "Can Where People Vote Influence How They Vote? The Influence of Polling Location Type on Voting Behavior", by Jonah Berger, Marc Meridith and S. Christian Wheeler of Stanford University. The abstract of their paper summarizes their work:

Can the type of polling place in which people vote (e.g. church, school, or firehouse) influence how they cast their ballot? Results of two studies suggest it can. A field study using Arizona’s 2000 general election found that voters were more likely to support raising the state sales tax to support education if they voted in schools, as opposed to other types of polling locations. This effect persisted even when controlling for voters’ political views, demographics, and unobservable characteristics of those individuals living near schools. A voting experiment extended these findings to other initiatives (i.e. stem cells) and a case in which people were randomly assigned to different environmental primes (i.e. church-related, school-related or generic building images). The present studies reveal that even in noisy, real-world environments, subtle environmental cues can influence decisions on issues of real consequence.

The authors develop an interesting theoretical argument, that voters may be affected by subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) cues in their behavioral environment. In the behavioral literature, this is typically called "priming", and there is much experimental research that shows how "priming" (environmental cues) can alter behavior. They test this theory, as relating to polling place type, by looking at data from a recent election in Arizona as well as a real laboratory experiment. Both of these studies point to the conclusion that (in the Arizona case) those who voted in schools were more likely to support raising their taxes to pay for education.

I've got little doubt that these sort of subtle or not so subtle cues often do influence voting behavior. An example that I wrote about in 2005 was in Riverside County. Here's a snip from the essay I wrote then about this type of phenomenon, here in a Catholic Church:

... in a vast parking lot behind the polling place located in a parish hall at the Corpus Christi Catholic Church (3750 Magnolia, Riverside County), one small "Yes on 73" sign was located in the parking lot, as was one large "Yes on 73" sign nearby. For those of you not closely following the California special election, Proposition 73 was the "Waiting period and parental notification before termination of minor's pregnancy" measure (this wording is from the official voter guide). There were no other political signs located in the vast church parking lot, and there is no indication that church officials or anyone actually associated with the church put the signs in the lot. However, the relationship of such signs in a catholic church parking lot, on election day, may raise some concerns. When organizations take positions on certain issues, and those issues are prominent features of an election like the special election, that may mean that election officials might exercise caution about using the facilities of such organizations for polling places.

As to the Berger et al. research, it is intriguing and hopefully will get others thinking about this same question. It would be interesting to see if the Berger et al. result from the Arizona case holds up with stronger statistical methodologies (for example, applying some of the more modern ecological inference tools like King's "EI" or causal inference models [see Jas Sekhon's tools here]). It would also be fascinating to see if this result holds in other settings, though the difficulty will be getting good data on what type of location a particular precinct used in any election.

The U.S. House Committee on Science is now listing on their website hearings for tomorrow afternoon in Washington on "Voting Machines: Will New Standards and Guidelines Help Prevent Future Problems?"

As I currently understand the witness list, it includes:

Ms. Donetta Davidson - Commissioner, Election Assistance Commission (EAC).

Dr. William Jeffrey - Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Ms. Mary Kiffmeyer - Secretary of State for Minnesota.

Ms. Linda Lamone - Administrator of Elections, Maryland State Board of Elections.

Mr. John Groh - Chairman, Election Technology Council, Information Technology Association of America (ITAA).

Dr. David Wagner - Professor of Computer Science, University of California at Berkeley.

Later this week there is a conference at the University of California, Davis: the Society for Political Methodology Conference. The conference program lists two papers that might be of interest to readers of Election Updates.

The first, by Henry Brady and Iris Hui (UC-Berkeley) is titled "Is it worth going the extra mile to improve causal inference?" At this point in time, the Brady-Hui paper is not available electronically, nor can I find the paper's abstract online (I'll post them here when I do find them). As I understand the Brady-Hui paper, they are going to use the spatial approach, with LA County data, to study some of the new causal inference methods that are currently in vogue in statistics and political methodology.

The other is a paper by Walter Mebane, "Election Forensics: Vote Counts and Benford's Law." Here is Mebane's abstract:

How can we be sure that the declared election winner actually got the most votes? Was the election stolen? This paper considers a statistical method based on the pattern of digits in vote counts (the second-digit Benford's Law, or 2BL) that may be useful for detecting fraud or other anomalies. The method seems to be useful for vote counts at the precinct level but not for counts at the level of individual voting machines, at least not when the way voters are assigned to machines induces a pattern I call roughly equal division with leftovers (REDWL). I demonstrate two mechanisms that can cause precinct vote counts in general to satisfy 2BL. I use simulations to illustrate that the 2BL test can be very sensitive when vote counts are subjected to various kinds of manipulation. I use data from the 2004 election in Florida and the 2006 election in Mexico to illustrate use of the 2BL tests.

Mebane's paper is available from the Political Methodology paper archive. This project by Mebane is also going to be presented at the election fraud conference in late September at the University of Utah.

That's the subtitle of a working paper that Thad Hall, Morgan Llewellyn and I recently posted to the VTP website: "How hard can it be: do citizens think it is difficult to register to vote?" This is the first in a number of papers that we hope to finish soon, detailing some of the interesting and intriguing results we are getting out of the public opinion data we have collected in recent years regarding opinions about voting technology and election reform.

In this paper, we developed and implemented a survey question asking respondents whether they thought it was easy or difficult in their state to register and vote. We found that 10% of respondents in our samples stated that it was difficult to register to vote in their state. We also found that those who said they thought was difficult to register to vote in their state were concentrated in certain segments of the population: younger voters, political independents, and those not currently registered to vote.