Mike has posted the news that the 2012 Voting and Registration Supplement (VRS) has just been released. This is good news for election geeks all over. One thing the VRS is indispensable for is helping track the evolution of the modes of voting throughout the country. Because there is no centralized voter registration database — [...]
Election Updates
You are currently viewing the author archives of cstewart
Author Archives
Why the president’s commission is good
There has been a lot of commentary about the president’s election commission today, in response to the State of the Union speech. This is a busy teaching day for me, so I can’t put in my full two cents on this one, so I’ll add my ha’penny. The fact that election administration has attracted a [...]
Pew Research Center on waiting in line since 2004
I’ve been mucking around in surveys other than my own that document how long voters wait to vote. I found that the Pew Research Center on the People and the Press asked this question in 2004, 2008, and 2012. Unfortunately, the response categories are different from those in the Survey of the Performance of American [...]
Great article on ballot design (and its more general applicability)
Anyone in the business of studying election-related issues and talking to the public inevitably gets asked the question, “Why can’t we vote like they do in [insert favorite country here]?” I have a list of things to talk about (federalism, the “long ballot,” concern for access, etc.), which leaves the questioner more informed, but not [...]
I wonder if Secretary Miller read our report
Word comes from Nevada that the Democratic secretary of state is proposing a voter ID law that is very similar to a proposal the VTP made in its recent report, “Voting: What Has Changed, What Hasn’t, and What Needs Improvement.” From what this newspaper account states, the idea is that the picture of every voter [...]
Pew survey on the voting process
The Pew Research Center has developed a nice time series of questions about the election process in their biennial post election polls. The most recent report was posted last Friday, and may be reviewed here. I’m most interested in Section 3, which zeroes in on the voting process, including confidence in the vote count. Among [...]
A back-of-the-envelope calculation of Florida’s capacity to handle Election Day turnout without lines
Did Florida have enough capacity to deal with the crush of voters who showed up on Election Day? In the following posting, I take on this question by performing a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the ratio of turnout on Election Day to the number of voting booths reportedly deployed in the various counties. The short answer [...]
Some survey-based evidence about waiting in line to vote
There is renewed interest in lines at polling places, in the wake of the 2012 presidential election. Here are some thoughts about the causes and incidence rates of long polling line, based on responses to the 2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections, which I helped to design and administer in 2008. We will [...]
Why Romney may not concede
Although the networks are calling the election for Obama, it’s not out of the question that Romney would concede tonight. With a quarter million provisional ballots in Ohio, why should Romney give up on that state? Especially, if Florida and Virginia (should he lose there) be close enough for a recount? As a student just [...]
Links to state web sites
I have created a spreadsheet that has links to all the state election web sites. You can download it here. I will be updating the spreadsheet between now and election night. Feel free to download it. Please let me know about better sites that you might find. I will be updating the spreadsheet as time [...]