Election Updates

Following on Paul's recent discovery of lever voting devices for sale on Ebay, a story from Pennsylvania caught my eye today:

A piece of Lackawanna County’s electoral history, however, could cost as little as 6 cents a pound.

That’s how much one company has offered the county to junk its decades-old voting machines, rendered surplus by the switch to touch-screen technology this year.

Weighing in at 800 pounds and up, the metallic monstrosities could render the taxpayers one final service by generating a profit through their demise. With more than 400 of them gathering dust, Lackawanna County could, at that rate, haul in more than $20,000 from their sale, majority Commissioner Robert C. Cordaro said.

“This is, we hope, just the first offer,” Mr. Cordaro said of the salvage bid submitted by DMS Shredding of Wilkes-Barre. There’s no deadline for selling them off.

Some 600 of Luzerne County’s lever machines were junked over the summer, netting about $30,000.

Mike and I have observed elections in numerous states and have always found that schools make bad polling places. Not only do teachers and students take up the parking spaces needed by voters, but schools are typically loud, often congested, and the voting location within the school is not always accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Today, the Louisville, KY Courier Journal has a story that illustrates yet another reason why schools are lousy polling places: they increase the threats to children attending the school. As the paper reports:

A Louisville poll worker who pleaded guilty last month to assaulting a voter on Election Day was in court again Tuesday on sex charges involving two young girls, ages 12 and 14......Steitz has also been charged with possession of child pornography and use of a minor in a sexual performance, after police said they found a roll of film in his home with nude pictures of the 12-year-old.

During the California primary in 2006, we talked with a principal at a school in an upscale section of Orange County and she was very adamant in her view that schools should not be polling places, especially elementary schools. She viewed the security threats as quite grave and she worried constantly about something happening to one of her students.

There is little systematic data (or research) on the costs of election administration, and while questions have arisen since 2000 about how much various voting technologies "cost" (both in terms of acquisition and long-term use), we just don't have much research on these questions to draw upon ...

I want to echo Mike's sentiments here. I have an email sitting in my inbox from a state legislator asking two things: 1) does early voting increase turnout, and 2) what are the cost implications. I'm going to do my best to help the legislator, but my ability to provide accurate answers is limited.

I have a good answer to the first question, but the second remains a mystery. There is a report from the State of Oregon which shows that full vote by mail elections save money compared to "mixed" systems (systems where large numbers of voters opt for absentee ballots), but no study that I have seen compares the costs of various combinations of in-person and by mail early voting, precinct place voting, and different balloting systems.

One of the most common questions I get about voting by mail is whether it will work in (Insert State or County here), where, didn't I know, the rough and tumble of politics is nothing like in Oregon.

I'm never quite sure how to evaluate these claims. Mike and Thad are working on vote fraud, and perhaps have more to write on this, but everything I've seen indicates that outright vote fraud is really quite infrequent (see Tova Wang on this same point; John Fund's book is the most commonly cited source on fraud).

Nonetheless, stories like this one out of Muncie, IN continue to disturb those who worry about absentee balloting and fraud. In this case, an egregious case of ballot fraud was uncovered in 2003 (and charged in 1999), and officials warn that they'll be especially vigilant in 2007.

There is little systematic data (or research) on the costs of election administration, and while questions have arisen since 2000 about how much various voting technologies "cost" (both in terms of acquisition and long-term use), we just don't have much research on these questions to draw upon to provide answers to these questions (see some early cost estimates in the 2001 Caltech/MIT Voting Technology report, "Voting: What Is, What Could Be.") The only systematic research on this topic that I am aware of is being done by VTP graduate student Sarah Hill, who has compiled election administration finance data from California counties; her database is available for research use, and an excellent study of that data by Sarah is currently under peer review and hopefully will be published soon.

This dearth of research was what drew to my attention reports that New Mexico's Secretary of State is requesting an additional $3 million to cover the costs associated with New Mexico's 2006 transition to a optical scan paper ballot system (Associated Press):

Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron has requested an additional $3 million to help pay for last month's elections.

That includes $1.3 million to print ballots, $560,000 for advertising, $88,000 to print the constitutional amendments and bond questions and $225,000 for supplies.

Vigil-Giron said most of the money would help pay for the state's switch over to paper ballots.

Under a law enacted this year, all 33 counties in New Mexico switched from a patchwork of voting methods to a single paper ballot system.

Additional studies of the short- and long-term costs associated with all voting technologies are really needed ... this report from New Mexico underlines the fact that many commonly-held assumptions about voting systems may not always be true.