Election Updates

Confirming rumors I've been hearing, the Miami Herald is reporting today that a U.S. Treasury Department entity, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, is spearheading an investigation of the ownership structure of Sequoia Voting Systems, in particular, links to Venezuelans close to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The CFIUS focuses on situations where foreign investment in U.S. corporations might impact U.S. national security.

As the story reported:

Federal officials are investigating whether Smartmatic, owner of Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is secretly controlled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, according to two people familiar with the probe.

In July, a Treasury Department spokeswoman disclosed that a Treasury-led panel had contacted Smartmatic, and a company representative said his firm was ''in discussions'' with the panel. At the time, those discussions were informal. The government has now upgraded to a formal investigation, the two sources said.

...

The probe stems from a May 4 letter to the Treasury Department by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., raising concerns about Smartmatic's purchase of Sequoia last year. Maloney said she was disturbed by a 2004 article in The Miami Herald revealing that the Venezuelan government owned 28 percent of Bizta -- a company operated by two of the same people who own Smartmatic. Bizta bought back those shares after the article appeared, and Smartmatic now characterizes the deal as a loan.

Bizta and Smartmatic had partnered with Venezuelan telephone giant CANTV to win a $91 million contract to supply electronic voting machines for Venezuelan elections, including the controversial 2004 referendum Chávez won.

Smartmatic categorically denies any link to the Chávez regime. ''Smartmatic is a privately held corporation, and no foreign government or entity -- including Venezuela -- has ever held an ownership stake in the company,'' Mitch Stoller, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail to The Miami Herald.

There is a paper by Valentina Bali and Brian Silver (both from Michigan State University), that was recently published in the journal State Politics and Policy Quarterly (Vol. 6, No. 1, Spring 2006, pages 21-48). This paper, "Politics, Race, and American State Electoral Reforms after Election 2000", looks at the political and fiscal factors that are associated with state election reform efforts after the 2000 presidential election.

Bali and Silver look at state election reform efforts in 2001 and 2002 (that is, after the 2000 presidential election, but before HAVA passage and implementation). They use two different methodological approaches, and a multivariate statistical model that includes a variety of political, fiscal, and other possible correlates of state efforts to implement election reform, pre-HAVA. In summary, Bali and Silver find:

Taken together, the models in Tables 1 and 2 suggest the following about the influences on state electoral reform after the troubled 2000 election. Having a close partisan electoral balance hindered a state’s chances of passing any electoral reforms (Hypothesis 5), while having a divided government enhanced its chances of adopting more restrictive electoral policy. Partisan control of state government had only a main effect on voting barrier reforms, while Republican-controlled states were more likely to restrict voter access (Hypothesis 3). We also found evidence of a strategic link between Republican control and Hispanic representation across several reforms, with Republican controlled states with a larger Hispanic population adopting less restrictive electoral reforms (Hypothesis 2). The main effect of racial composition was mixed, although the models using the summary index suggest a tendency to adopt more restrictive electoral laws when the proportion of blacks in a state was high (Hypothesis 3). Legislative institutions and fiscal constraints had little impact on electoral reform (Hypotheses 6 and 8), although previous electoral laws efforts, as measured by the base objective needs variables, did influence the adoption of several of the reforms (Hypothesis 1). Term limits did not have an impact in any of the election reform adoption models (Hypothesis 7) and so we excluded it from the analyses.

They then look at state-by-state efforts in 2003 to implement HAVA-compliant legislation, using a multivariate statisical model much like the one they used for the 2001-2002 analysis of pre-HAVA reform efforts. Oddly, they only find that one factor --- legislative professionalism --- has a statistical association with passage of HAVA-compliant legislation in 2003, and it had a negative effect on HAVA-compliance (that is, more professional legislatures were less likely to pass HAVA-compliant legislation, which Bali and Silver argue is due to greater independence of more professionalized legislatures and some weak evidence that more professionalized legislatures were more likely to pass election reform before 2003). Generally, they argue that the inability of their model to explain the degree to which states passed HAVA-compliant legislation in 2003 may arise because a number of states passed significant reforms before HAVA.

All in all, an interesting analysis for those who are interested in studying state efforts to implement election reform. Of course, it would be a productive research exercise to extend this analysis through 2006, as election reform is still a work-in-progress in many states (and is likely to be so for the near future).

From Polk County, NC local officials estimate as many early voters this year (a midterm contest) as in the 2004 election.

From Denver, CO the county director estimates that more than half the ballots will come in early (in person and absentee).

From Racine, WI the number of absentee ballots already exceeds the total received in the 2002 gubernatorial race.

The area surrounding Chattanooga, TN, in contrast, reports heavy but not record breaking early turnout. County officials speculate that voters are "getting used to" early voting.

Yesterday the Orange County (CA) district attorney charged eleven individuals regarding a voter registration fraud scheme, in which the partisan registration status of voters was changed. Currently, there are 37 instances of this happening as a result of this scheme in the OC, according to the Los Angeles Times:

The voter registration charges cover at least 37 instances in which Democratic and Green Party voters and even one noncitizen were registered as Republicans. Each defendant was charged with felony counts of fraudulent completion of registration affidavits. The defendants are all low-level workers who circulated registration cards.

Here are some additional details about the scheme:

The Orange County district attorney's office has charged 11 people with fraudulent voter registration stemming from a Republican registration drive this year that resulted in dozens of Democrats unwittingly being signed up as Republicans.

Those charged had been paid as much as $10 for each voter they registered as part of a Republican Party effort to recruit more voters in central Orange County. The area includes the district represented by Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a regular target of Republicans, and a competitive state Senate race.

There is a famous Estonian blogger here -- The Tehnokratt -- who has posted many of the powerpoints on his website. Although the website is in Estonian, the powerpoints and two audit files are listed under the heading Friday October 26, 2006, "e-Hääletamine ja valimised infoühiskonnas." I would especially recommend Alexander Trechsel's and Michael Remmert's presentations.

Jonathan Stonestreet.works with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights. He discussed election observation. The OSCE views the key of a democratic society is that there are periodic, genuine, free, and fair elections, with universal and equal suffrage, conducted by secret ballot. The OSCE argues that observers enhance integrity. The OSCE observation methodology has been used internationally and allows for comparability of elections in different contexts.

In general, the OSCE thinks that any voting process must all adhere to OSCE commitments and new election technologies should not infringe upon these commitments. Observers have to look at an array of issues, from machine procurement and certification to election worker training and the provisions for audits. The importance of technology is that technologies can impact the resolution of election disputes, perceptions of the vote, the secrecy of the vote, and the transparency of the process.

Election observation is important to ensuring free and fair elections, as is evidence that shows that all election processes work accuracy. The voting machines should produce evidence that votes are cast and counted accurately but do so in a way that maintains secrecy. There are several issues that Jonathan pointed to directly that observers need to be able to observe:

• Voting system certification and testing
• Secrecy of the vote
• Machine security
• Accessibility
• Education and training.
• Manual audit capacity.
• Accountability.
• Legal framework.
• Observer access.

He noted that such standards hold true for all voting systems. Interestingly, he specifically noted a problem in state laws, which is that the legal framework for voter-verified paper audit trails have to be exceedingly clear about which form of the ballot—the electronic or paper—is supreme. I would note that we do not generally meet other OSCE standards for election observation, such as allowing observers into polling places and the like (such activities are placed in the hands of parties, not independent organizations.)

The OSCE report on election observation can be found here.

The second panel examines the legal and constitutional issues associated with e-voting. Dr. Jordi Esteve, a professor of law at the Universidad de Leon, talked about the audit problem in elections. He noted that there are an array of legal questions—freedom, equality, secrecy, and the like—but auditability is perhaps the most important aspect of the process because it is auditability that gives confidence to the voting process. He does think, however, that there are ways to balance the problem of auditability with other measures.

Consider the traditional voting system. You have opaque ballot boxes and public tally which equals easy citizen control. A private, parallel tally can be conducted and compared to the official results. (Note here he is NOT talking about the American system, where ballots are counted electronically and often centrally tallied.) Now, consider the electronic vote. Here you have a black box, where the technician plays a critical role and it is difficult for the citizen to verify the results.

What do the audit measures for electronic voting look like? One is very familiar to the American audience—the paper trail. Jordi noted the Venezuelan experience with the VVPAT on the Smartmatic system where they conducted a post-election audit of a random sample of paper trails. With e-voting, here specifically Internet voting, he noted the Scytl model of providing an alphanumeric receipt that allows for the vote that the ballot as received by the electoral board. However, this still maintains a high technician role in the election.

This high level of involvement of technicians raises the question of whether independent audits are possible with e-voting. Jordi notes that there is not a common answer to this question among computer scientists—although many are skeptical it can be done—and that even if it can be done, it will be done by technicians, not citizens.

The problem of transparency is problematic also for other voting methods and we tolerate these problems. There are lax rules for postal voting, for example, in Spain and Switzerland. Spaniards also do not cast secret ballots on paper, which raises issues as well. These cases illustrate how certain nations have political or electoral cultures that prefer not to adopt and follow common rules for elections. This social approach to understanding elections suggests that, in some countries, the lost of control over the electoral process among citizens can be accepted if there are clear benefits, such as enfranchising new voters or increasing turnout.

Michael Remmert, who is the project manager for the Council of Europe’s “Good Governance in the Information Society” initiative, discussed the e-democracy initiatives at the Council. There are legal and declarative issues related to e-government that have been made by the Council. The council has already developed an “Internet Literacy Handbook” that is a model for member states on how to educate citizens about the Internet and its benefits and risks. The Council’s recommendations on e-voting include:

• providing and ensuring interoperability for e-voting systems;
• developing minimum standards for e-voting;
• providing a checklist for all states of the e-voting electoral process; and
• applying the principles of democratic elections to e-voting.

E-voting must be as reliable and secure as democratic elections and referendums which do not involve the use of electronic means. E-voting should be an additional and optional voting channel. Certifying voting systems is also a key component of this work.

Consider the breadth of work on e-voting in Europe. There have been binding pilots in Switzerland, Estonia, the UK, and France. A binding pilot will be done in the Netherlands in November. There have been nonbinding pilots in Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. There have been reports on e-voting in Ireland, Norway, and Lithuania. There is work on e-voting protection profiles in Germany. He noted specifically the use of e-voting for expatriates, something that Mike and I have touted as important for the United States.

The pilots on e-voting have proven that:

1. e-voting is feasible.

2. it is responsive to modern lifestyles and liked by users.

3. popular demand for it is not tremendously strong at present.

4. there is a democratic debate about the appropriateness of e-voting.

In order to have broad acceptance of e-voting, there needs to be a broad and open dialogue with all stakeholders—including voters, politicians, political parties, and public authorities.

E-voting requires a legal basis. States should consider creating laws that facilitate pilot testing of e-voting reforms and election reforms generally. Pilot tests also require pilots that start small and grow over time. It also requires research and systematic studies of the pilots.

Alexander Trechsel presented the results of his study on Estonian local elections in 2005. The goal of the study was determining who votes over the Internet, explain the choice of the vote channel, what is the impact on participation, and does it have political effects, enfranchising one side or another in a biased manner? He did a survey with three samples of voters: e-voters, traditional voters, and non-voters.

The older voters are much less likely to e-vote and the young are more likely to e-vote. However, e-voting did make a slight, but not statistically significant, difference in moving voters who only voted from time to time to vote in the municipal elections. Most voters who cast ballots online would have voted anyway but 15 percent or so would not have voted without the Internet. E-voting was chosen by 75 percent of voters because of its convenience, speed, and simplicity. Another 20 percent voted online because of the novelty. Non-e-voters did not vote online because they viewed it as complex—many had no access—but very few failed to e-vote because of security concerns.

They then estimated three models to determine the factors that shaped e-voting use and impact in Estonia.

• In a socio-demographic model—examining e-voting use using demographic variables—they found that e-voting use can be explained by age, education, income, and language (Russians voted less).

• When you examine a political model—which focuses on ideology and trust in government—the more you have trust in government the more you are prone to vote and trust in the state you are more likely to vote online.

• In a ICT model (Internet Communication and Technology), the computer literacy of the voter increased Internet voting, as did trust in internet transactions and trust in procedures in voting.

• In a full model, with all three models included, language made a very large difference, with Russian speaking Estonians, computing knowledge and trust in e-voting very important variables. All political variables and most socio-demographic variables lose significance. Age interesting variable; young people used the Internet more, but there is an important body of older, computer literate people who really want to vote using the Internet. Knowledgeable older voters choose to vote online at relative large rates, all things being equal.

Alexander notes three key aspects of his results:

• First, it is computer knowledge, not internet access, that boosts the use of Internet voting.
  
  
• Second, trust in e-voting is central to the use of e-voting.
  

• Third, the non-results are also important: the demographic factors are relevant but not significant in the analysis of the 2005 experience with e-voting.

Alexander closed by making a set of recommendations:

1. Internet communications and technology are important for e-voting. As you develop other aspects of the information society, it will improve electronic voting.
2. The Estonian model can serve as a best practice in many regards for nations around the world.
3. Language inclusiveness is important for making e-voting work well and be fair for all citizens.
4. There is also a need to extend the voting period for e-voting so that the process of e-voting is more effective. This would make e-voting in Estonia more closely resemble e-voting in Switzerland.

The chair of the EAC, Paul DeGregorio, published an opinion piece today in the Tallahassee Democrat stating that the "hype" over hacking voting systems should not shatter confidence in voting. The bottom line for his analysis is this:

This election year is one of change, challenge and progress in how our citizens will vote. At least one-third of Americans will vote on new equipment, many contests may be close, and voters (hopefully) will turn out in great numbers at polling places throughout the nation. For the first time, thanks to the Help America Vote Act and modern voting equipment, many people with disabilities will have the ability to vote independently. Provisional voting is now available in every state. We have come a long way since 2000, but challenges related to the transition to new equipment remain. But changes along the way are a good thing, because it builds trust in election systems that can be verified to further empower confidence among voters.

Americans should be confident that their vote will be counted, whether they touch a screen or fill in an oval. The integrity of the system is not in hands of hackers, professors, interest groups or politicians in Washington - it is managed by local election officials, as it always has been. No one should be intimidated by the hype over hacking. Vote on Nov. 7. You can count on it.

Today, I am attending the “E-Voting: Lessons Learnt and Future Challenges” conference in Tallinn Estonia. The conference is sponsored by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Council of Europe, and the e-Governance Academy. I am hearing the conference in both Estonian and translated English, which is an interesting experience to say the least! I will be blogging each of the four panels from the conference. At the outset, let me note that e-voting is Internet voting for the Estonians.

The Estonian Parliamentary leader is giving a keynote address and he noted that someone has to go first in the process of improving elections and trying new things. He said that there is a saying in Estonia when the young attempt to be smarter than the old that the egg is trying to be smarter than the chicken. Today he noted that in Estonia, there is the situation where the egg is smarter than the chicken because the e-voting is the young thing and offers much more to the population compared to the traditional voting methods. Estonian is a world leader with e-voting. The voters will elect the parliament in 2007 with e-voting being one of the channels for voting.

Voting has to be at the one hand confidential and on the other hand it has to be an auditable and controlled process. He notes that the information society has expanded across Estonia with internet connectivity throughout the state, as shown by the 58 percent of Estonians who have computers and internet access. In addition, Estonians have digital signatures as part of the national identification system. They have developed the habit of using e-services, with the young and old alike using the internet in everyday life. Using it for voting is an obvious next step.

This is the first of many stories we'll see this election. Early voting appears to be way up in a number of states. This story reports on the first numbers coming out of Tennessee.

Let's see... I see a girl ... she's a cute little brunette ... WAIT! Her name is Sofia! Is that it? Is one of those attentive children named Sofia? Congrats, Mike. ;-)

Election Updates: Teaching election administration ... in kindergarten!

On Tuesday Oct 24, the topic of NPR's Talk of the Nation was security of voting technology. Kimball Brace (Election Data Services), Paul DeGregorio (EAC) and Douglas James (Univ of Iowa) were the guest experts. As some of you know, Kim and Paul were both speakers at VTP's recent conference on Voter ID and Voter Registration at MIT. The general sentiment from the callers was of distrust of electronic voting machines. Go to the webpage to listen.

On the same webpage, there is a link to a Voter's Guide: From Absentee Ballots to Photos IDs. They must be following our lead! VTP's Seven Steps to Making Your Vote Count.

I received this email from the Advancement Project this morning:

Advancement Project and our community-based partners have developed a resource - Poll Worker Palm Cards - to prevent disenfranchisement by giving election workers easy access to information they need at their fingertips.

Our voter protection program has found in many locales that inadequate poll worker training and support results in voter disenfranchisement in election after election. In many places, training does not ensure that poll workers can readily recall the most important information and rules. Dense training materials often do not include a detailed index, helpful summaries or frequently asked questions.

To help prevent errors that cause disenfranchisement and to assist poll workers in Detroit, Philadelphia, Florida and Ohio, we have developed palm cards with the top Ten Things Every Poll Worker Should Know. These cards contain city- and state-specific information in a compact and user-friendly format. They are each different -- based on research and community input about the key problems and needs in those communities.

In partnership with state and local civic engagement efforts in Philadelphia, Detroit and several counties in Ohio and Florida, we have asked election officials to give these cards, or a similar resource, to their poll workers. At our suggestion, the City of Philadelphia has agreed to put much of the information contained in our Palm Card on a poster that will be taped to the check-in table in every Philadelphia polling site. Other cities and counties are considering the idea of distributing these palm cards to their poll workers.

Time is short! Please help Advancement Project prevent errors at the polls by putting critical information at the fingertips of election workers. You can make a difference by:

Calling or writing election officials in Philadelphia, Detroit and counties in Florida and Ohio, asking that they distribute the Palm Card to their poll workers.
Giving a palm card to any poll worker that you know.

Asking political parties or other organizations that typically recruit poll workers to distribute these card.

Creating Poll Worker Palm Cards for use in other cities, counties and states.

Additional details are available at the Advancement Project's website, including links there to the palm cards they have developed for Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Over the years, I've been asked to give many public addresses, research presentations, and other public appearances. But few have been to as demanding, and difficult, an audience as I faced this morning --- a classroom of 25 kindergarteners!

So here is what we did, which I'd highly recommend as a method of teaching the basics of elections and election administration to kids of this age (it worked really well!).

I brought into the classroom a real voting booth. I painted a small box red, and brought some prepared paper ballots with me to class.

We started off by passing around some ballots I reproduced from Melanie Goodrich's study of historic paper ballots from the Huntington Library, including two from Lincoln's 1864 election.

We then read "Duck for President", which the kids loved!

After that, we got into the process of voting.

I announced the rules of the election. Every kid would have a chance to cast one ballot --- for either shiny butterfly stickers or for sports stickers. Here is a photo of the ballots. Once we were done casting ballots, we would count them up, and which ever received the most votes would be the sticker type that all of the students in the class would receive.

I then had two volunteers help me put the ballot booth together, and then two other volunteers helped me tape the red ballot box shut with bright blue tape. I then had a third set of two volunteers help me select small groups from the class to go to the ballot booth and grab a ballot, and then put it in the ballot box.

Finally, two volunteers helped me unseal the box, and then one by one they pulled out the ballots and announced what each ballot was to the class (showing the ballot to the class, of course). One of the teachers helped tabulate the ballots on the board.

Here's the interesting thing about the result. Despite the fact that there are more boys than girls in the class, the shiny butterflies won --- 14 to 11!

The kids had a great time, I had fun, and I think they all learned a little about how democracy works and how elections are run.

By Anthony Leonard

My wife, Gretchen, and I were poll workers for the first time for the June 6 primary. Luckily we were assigned to our own precinct at the Pasadena Aquatic Center near the Rose Bowl.

The Saturday before we went to a briefing put on by the County Clerk's office at the Westminster church in Pasadena for pollworkers. It was overcrowded but the County person did a fine job of covering the issues. It was announced that they still needed another hundred pollworkers in Pasadena alone.

On June 6 we arrived at the polling place at 6:30 am. The inspector and another clerk had set up the booths the day before.

According to our inspector approximately 900 registered voters are in our precinct and 200 to 300 of those had requested absentee ballots. In the end 144 regular ballots were cast along with six provisional ballots. A number of people also appeared to cast their absentee ballots. Two ballots were destroyed in the process of voting.

Of those casting provisional ballots, three were listed as being absentee voters who claimed that they did not receive their absentee ballots and the other three were not registered but claimed they should have been.

Every voter seemed to have no problem in getting the correct ballot and using the correct polling booth including the nonpartisan voters. A few (maybe five) had problems with the InkaVote system, either not inserting the ballot properly or trying to use the pen in the wrong spot.

Post election checks: (1) We counted 146 signatures. This should have equaled the number of regular ballots (144). The speculation was that two people who cast provisional ballots had signed in but weren't supposed to. This could have been checked but wasn't. (2) The number of regular ballots plus the number of provisional ballots plus the number of destroyed ballots plus the number of unused ballots should have equalled the number ballots originally supplied by the county. But we were missing one.

Our inspector was very experienced and efficient. We were done at 8:30pm.

Anthony Leonard is Professor (emeritus) at Caltech. Anthony wrote this essay and emailed it to me shortly after the June 6 primary, and in all honesty it got lost in my email ... but he has promised to provide a similar essay after the November general election, as he is again going to to be working at a polling place in our area this fall. Thanks, Tony!

I began my 2006 election observations at an early voting location in LA County --- the East LA County Regional Library, a location where I had observed early voting before in LA County. Some quick observations:

• This particular early voting location (seen here from the street) is still very difficult to access. The parking lot associated with the library was full as of 10AM (an hour before early voting was going to start), and given the heavy construction in the area it is hard to park on the nearby streets. One of the early voters (I was there for about an hour of voting) complained about the lack of parking, and it was a problem that the election judge in this location also commented on. This is an obvious concern for those who worry about polling place accessibility, and also is a potential problem for denial-of-service threats to polling places (it would be very easy in this location to fill up all of the nearby parking locations).
  
• Unfortunately, I was not allowed to observe the setting up of the polling place, in particular, the generation of the zero tapes nor the sealing of the voting machines used in the polling place. I arrived at 10:10am (again, it took me some time to find a parking place!), and the doors were closed to the polling place (a marked difference relative to the last time I was at this location, when the doors were open and I was given free access to observe the polling place set-up operation). At about 10:35 the judge noticed I was there, and opened the door; when I asked to come inside to observe I was told (nicely) that "we're still setting up". At about the same time an official from the county library (nicely) asked me what my business was, and he said that it was okay for me to stand in a public building, as long as the election workers knew what I was doing. In all honesty, I don't know exactly whether the public is allowed to witness the setting up of an early voting location, but in my opinion, we should be able to witness it!
  
• When they opened up the polling place (11:05am) it was apparent that two of the eight voting machines were not quite ready for action. By the time I left an hour later, one of the voting machines was still not functioning, and three of the pollworkers were working hard to get it operational.
  
• In the first hour of operation, the site had six voters (about one every ten minutes), and as we have a long ballot, they were averaging about 9 minutes and thirty seconds to cast their ballots. One voter took a relatively long time (almost 11 minutes, but he was someone who was admittedly unfamiliar with the technology).
  
• I learned some good news, though, once the first few voters had cast their ballots and I had a chance to talk with the pleasant and helpful election judge in this early voting site. She showed me the voting machines, and I noticed that the plastic flap that was on the Diebold VVPAT device the last time I observed early voting in LA County had been removed from all of the voting machines used in this early voting location (including the one set up for disabled voters). Here are some pictures of the Diebold Accuvote TSx I took at IACREOT, showing the VVPAT flap closed, open, and partially open. This was something I wrote about earlier, and which I brought to the attention of the vendor and the LA County election officials ... glad to see that they seem to have fixed this particular problem.
  
• Last, the judge in this early voting location had developed one innovation. Typically all of the paperwork for the voting machines (especially the logs of activity regarding the devices) in the past have been in huge binders, and I've noticed in the past that poll workers have had to spend considerable time finding the logs for specific machines. Here the judge had separated all of the logs for each machine into an independent folder, making it much easier for the election workers to locate and deal with the paperwork for specific machines. She was quite proud of this innovation!
  

More from other early voting sites in the coming days!

Another excellent podcast on the 2006 Elections from the team at NOW (PBS). This week's story examines whether "clean" elections in Arizona have changed campaigns in that state, and whether such limits place unreasonable restrictions on free speech.

Click Votes for Sale? Clean Elections to hear the story or download the podcast.

Our friends at Electionline have just released their 2006 election preview. As usual, a fantastic resource for anyone who wants to find out what is going on with changes in voting technology and election administration as we head into the final two weeks of this contested election cycle.

Of particular utility in this report is the discussion of "states to watch": Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington.

The Los Angeles Times has a good story this morning on how changes in election rules, procedures, and voting systems might create headaches and problems in this fall's elections. This is especially true in parts of the country that will have competitive elections, according to Caltech professor Michael Alvarez:

But Caltech political science professor Michael Alvarez said election systems in most states remain works in progress, and goals for preventing another debacle like Florida's ballot counting in the 2000 presidential election have yet to be reached.

"States have made some progress, and you continue to see some improvement. But it doesn't appear that we have fully fixed a lot of the problems with voting," said Alvarez, who is co-director of the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project.

"The bottom line here is that we are in a period of closely contested elections in the American body politic," Alvarez added. "Nobody would care about this if elections weren't so close."

ABC News reported--actually, a group confessed to ABC--to hacking into the Chicago Election Board's voter registration system. This story is pretty interesting because of the claims made by the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project about what they could have done to the database if they had wanted to be evil. Here is the lead from the story.

As if there weren't enough concerns about the integrity of the vote, a non-partisan civic organization today claimed it had hacked into the voter database for the 1.35 million voters in the city of Chicago.

Bob Wilson, an official with the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project — which bills itself as a not-for-profit civic organization dedicated to the correction of election system deficiencies — tells ABC News that last week his organization hacked the database, which contains detailed information about hundreds of thousands of Chicago voters, including their Social Security numbers, and dates of birth.

In reading the story, several questions come to mind. First, did this guy commit a crime hacking into the database? Second, what will it take before Congress empowers the EAC to create real standards for voter registration systems? (Or even gives them money to create some voluntary standards?) Third, what if someone actually did hack an delate a state VR system? What would happen? Could it happen?

There was a nice story today on All Things Considered about the toll that election reforms and election complexity are taking on the ranks of poll workers. The blurb for the story says:

States around the country are trying to find and train enough poll-workers to staff the Nov. 7 midterm elections. The increasing complexity of voting procedures and equipment makes it harder to recruit. Maryland and Ohio are providing refresher courses after problems in their primaries were attributed in part to poll-workers.

There is interesting data on poll workers in the ESI report on Cuyahoga County and we are currently doing research on poll workers around the country in the 2006 elections. One thing that is clear: training is key to making sure poll workers are confident that they are doing their job effectively.

There is a story in the Oregonian about Senator Ron Wyden's attempt to get the Federal government to fund states which choose to move to voting by mail.

I wrote a letter to the editor, shown below. We'll see if it gets published.

===
October 23, 2006

To the Editor:

It is important to separate the facts from the hype regarding voting by mail. Few of the arguments for voting by mail are unique to this system of voting, and could easily be incorporated into traditional election day voting.

Secretary of State Bradbury points to signature verification as protection against fraud--but
signature checks could easily be included in any method of voting. Others like the paper trail provided by voting by mail, yet paper trails can readily be provided by many election systems.

Even Senator Ron Wyden joins in the hype. He rightly points out that voters can wait until election day to vote, but how could voters possibly know about last minute events that might change the election?

The facts are that voting by mail was adopted for convenience and for cost. By the early 1990s, large numbers of Oregonians were already voting absentee. It is more expensive to run a dual-system than it is to go fully voting by mail--which is why Washington State is likely to go fully vote by mail. Furthermore, the long and complicated ballot--this year's election guide runs into two compelling volumes!--makes Voting by mail attractive to Oregonians.

Oregon is rightly proud of its reformist spirit. But voting by mail is one reform that, while it works well here, in a state with a well-informed and highly participative citizenry, may work far less well in other states and localities. We should not push a one-size-fits-all solution on the rest of the nation without fully understanding both the costs and the benefits.

Paul Gronke
Director, Early Voting Information Center
Reed College

This story came across my computer today. Everyone is thinking about Internet voting.....

THE Commission on Elections is “seriously considering” Internet voting for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Italy, it was learned Monday.

In a phone interview, commissioner Florentino Tuason said Filipinos in these three areas, which also have among the largest number of registered overseas voters, have access to the Internet.

“We are seriously considering Internet voting for overseas Filipinos (in these areas),” he said.

Tuason, commissioner in charge of the overseas absentee voting (OAV), said he has already met with the Spanish supplier of the software for Internet voting twice and had been impressed by the security features of the program.

“It's a software that ensures secure voting,” he said, adding that the software costs much less -- P25 million per 500,000 voters -- compared to snail or surface mail, which costs P57 million per 250,000 voters.

I didn't notice this quote: "Experts estimate that more than 20 percent of voters nationwide will cast their ballots before Election Day by mail or at early-voting locations, a proportion of the electorate that is rising with each election. Some states and counties open the ballots before Election Day and keep the results secret; others count them with regular ballots."

I'm one of the experts quoted in the article (and I supplied information for the graphic). My 2006 estimate is higher, though. A conservative guess would be 25%, but I wouldn't be surprised to see 30% of ballot cast early this election.

Early voting rates are proportionately higher in lower profile contests. There are two reasons why this is the case. First, in lower profile contests, a larger proportion of turnout consists of habitual voters, and habitual voters, who are also more likely to vote early. So if we take the trendline (14% in 2000 and 20% in 2004), and further adjust for the midterm, that's how I get to 30%.

But there is a second reason that there are a higher number of voters during low profile contests--though due to the lack of good survey evidence, here we are more in the realm of informed speculation. [Note: some of these ideas rely on Mike Alvarez's excellent "Information and Elections", U of Michigan press, 2000].

In a lower profile contest, there is less political information available to the electorate. The result is that many citizens opt not to vote at all. But among those highly informed citizens, the low profile contest makes less of a difference. The highly informed seek out political information on their own and are less influenced by media coverage. And these highly informed voters are more likely to vote.

Are the highly informed voters the same as the habitual voters? The groups overlap, but not as much as you might expect. Some vote habitually even though they are not well informed, relying on such information shortcuts as partisanship, incumbency, or evaluations of the "state of the times." And some vote habitually because they care a lot about, and are informed a lot about, politics. But the two groups are not identical.

This is what makes 2006 difficult to predict. I have noticed some tendency among voters to hold their ballots during especially hard fought contests, presumably because they are contending with two-sided information flows from competing candidates, and are waiting until the last moment to make their decision. I have no idea what proportion of "late" voters are "informed but conflicted" late voters, and what proportion are simply disinterested or not paying attention. I hope to look at this question in the future.

Regardless, 2006 is, compared to the last few midterm contests, a hard fought, nationalized election. So it may look a lot more like a presidential contest than a typical midterm. While the trendline on early voting is rising, the impact of a hard fought campaign in 2006 may reduce early voting slightly.

We'll find out a lot more in the next two weeks. My call?

30% early voting in 2006. If I overestimate, I'll buy Hall and Alvarez a Goose Island in Chicago. They'll hold me to that for sure!

We hear about turnout all of the time leading out to the election, as reporters fixate on the fact that the side that turns out the most voters win the election. But today I came across a story in BBC-Bulgaria that illustrates a case where turnout really does matter.

Incumbent Georgi Parvanov won a first round of Bulgarian presidential polls on Sunday, but low turnout forced a runoff against a nationalist who has fought against the country's drive to join the European Union. A Gallup exit poll for private television station BTV showed Parvanov, the former head of Bulgaria's ruling Socialist party, won 63.69 percent of ballots cast.

Under Bulgarian law, at least 50 percent of voters must cast ballots for a candidate to win in the first round, so Parvanov and Siderov must face off in an October 29 showdown.

Here is an example where you really do have to turnout voters to win; if you don't have a high enough turnout, the margin of victory does not matter!

...Well, for absentee and early voters, it is. The New York Times has a nice story detailing early voting in America.

The article notes that:

Experts estimate that more than 20 percent of voters nationwide will cast their ballots before Election Day by mail or at early-voting locations, a proportion of the electorate that is rising with each election. Some states and counties open the ballots before Election Day and keep the results secret; others count them with regular ballots.

Analysts and party officials who study early voting trends say that a decade ago those who took advantage of absentee ballots tended to be relatively well off and highly educated, with Republicans outnumbering Democrats by almost two to one. But as the ease of early voting has spread, the ratio is slipping and some analysts say that nearly as many Democrats as Republicans now vote early.

Those who favor the practice say it is convenient for voters and increases turnout. Most elections officials welcome the trend because it reduces the strain on polling places and poll workers on Election Day.

But some experts say there is no proof that early voting increases turnout and may well have the opposite effect because some voters request absentee ballots and then neglect to send them in. They are also concerned that absentee ballots are more open to fraud than votes cast at established polling places.

The article also has interactive links to graphics about early voting nationally.