There is a paper by Ben Highton (UC-Davis) that is forthcoming in a political science journal (PS), “Long Lines, Voting Machine Availability, and Turnout: The Case of Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 Presidential Election.” Highton is a well-known scholar who has produced a series of good studies of a variety of issues associated with voter turnout.

Highton uses precinct-level data from Franklin County, Ohio, and undertakes a series of different statistical analyses to estimate the effect of availability of voting machines in precincts on 2004 voter turnout. There are some minor methodoligical quibbles here, in particular whether it is appropriate to model this as using a linaer model and what other specifications of the turnout model (especially including other control variables) might yield. But I doubt these methodological quibbles would have much of an effect on Highton’s major conclusions from his analysis.

Highton’s basic conclusion is:

The strong association between the availability of voting machines and turnout in Franklin County, Ohio in the 2004 presidential election was largely the result of factors unrelated to the causal effect of the availability of voting machines on turnout. That said, after controlling for other causes of turnout, the relationship does not disappear, suggesting that machine scarcity was a cause of lower turnout. The magnitude of the effect in terms of votes was about 22,000, which would have diminished George W. Bush’s statewide margin by about 6,000 had there been no scarcity of voting machines on Election Day. Thus long lines at polling places in Franklin County do not appear to have cost John Kerry the presidential election, but they do appear to have cost him votes.

Given that the Franklin County Board of Elections, like all Ohio county election boards, has four members, two Democrats and two Republicans, attributing the scarcity of voting machines and its consequent effects to partisan maneuvering is probably not warranted.

…

This is a nice contribution to research on voting machine availability. It would be important to replicate this analysis elsewhere throughout the nation to determine how precinct voting machine availability impacts voter participation — and other outcome variables like residual votes — in other jurisdictions.

Thanks to Doug Chapin of Electionline for pointing out that Highton’s study is now available in electronic format.

Every once in a while, I run into exciting new research that leaves me wondering — why the heck didn’t I think about doing that myself? It’s particularily exciting when excellent new research is being done by the next generation of scholars, especially those who are just now completing their dissertation research.

Research like this is being done by Susan Hyde, who is finishing her dissertation in political science at the University of California, San Diego, and is now a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Starting in the next academic year, Hyde will be a new assistant professor at Yale University.

Hyde’s research focuses on international election monitoring, taking a look from a variety of theoretical and emprical perspectives at what is a new (and largely understudied) phenomenon. Here is the summary of Hyde’s thesis from her website:

In 1960 there were no observered elections in sovereign states. Today, it is nearly impossible for a developing country to have a legitimate election without the presence of international observers. Upwards of 80 percent of elections held in non-consolidated democracies are now monitored. This trend is particularly puzzling for the group of leaders who invite observers and then orchestrate massive electoral fraud. If we assume that autocrats want to stay in power and exert the least effort possible in order to do so, what explains their willingness to invite international observers to judge their elections?

My thesis is that election observation began as a signal to the international community that a county was democratizing. Inviting observers was in the interest of most incumbent leaders because there was little risk involved and relatively high potential benefits. The rate of observed elections increased because of increases in international benefits for looking and acting like a democracy, and because a sub-group of leaders got better at manipulating the election under the nose of international observers. In the 1990s most leaders of developing countries were inviting observers, and before long, the international community and domestic actors began to expect that observers would be invited. The act of not inviting observers became a clear signal that the incumbent leader was not committed to democratizing.

The growth of international election observation has also carried domestic consequences. The empirical evidence presented in the later part of this dissertation tests how this change in international politics has influenced domestic politics, including how the presence of observers affects opposition party behavior, and natural and field experimental tests of whether observers deter election day fraud. These domestic consequences arise from the same incentives and environment that created the norm of election observation.

One of the really exciting chapters of her thesis that is now available for public distribution is her work on the 2003 presidential elections in Armenia, available in “Can International Election Observers Deter Election Day Fraud? Evidence from a Natural Experiment” (Chapter 7 of her dissertation). In the 2003 presidential elections in Armenia, international election monitors were distributed throughout the nation using a process that Hyde argues is “functionally equilivant to random assignment” (page 15). Hyde can claim the functional equilivance of random assignment here because the polling places that were picked for observation were selected based solely on geographic location, and because the monitors themselves had little discretion on which polling places they went to. Note that this is not exactly a truly randomized experimental design, but under the assumption that the polling places were selected solely for geographic reasons, and not for any other characteristic of the polling place that might be correlated with the incumbent party’s success in this election, Hyde’s assumption that she has the rough equilivant of random assignment makes sense.

But here is the bottom line: Hyde finds that the presence of the international election monitors reduced election day fraud by around 6% in the precincts under observation in the first round of the Armenian presidential election, but with much smaller effects in the second round (demonstrating that perhaps those who were likely to try to engage in election fraud might have been deterred by the first-round monitoring teams).

This is exciting and important research. From conversations with Hyde, there is even more exciting research forthcoming. Chapter 6 from her thesis deals with a truly randomized experiment involving election monitoring in the 2004 Indonesian presidential elections. While this thesis is not available yet on her website, my understanding is that the results here are like those in the Armenian case, providing further evidence that election monitoring and observing can deter election fraud.

Hyde’s thesis work shows that there are clever new ways that social scientists can consider for studying election fraud. As all observers of election reform debates know, election fraud is frequently asserted to occur, but we rarely know the actual incidence of election fraud — nor do we know much about exactly how to deter it. Hyde’s work helps to establish some theoretical and empirical foundations for those who want to better understand both problems, and I suspect that Hyde’s research is likely to be widely-cited and very important in the future.

I have an opinion piece in today’s Salt Lake Tribune about the importance of funding voter education efforts in the state to support the upcoming switch to electronic voting from punch cards. This is a missing link in reform efforts in many places, which is a shame. Small investments can go a long way!

As the 2006 legislative session progresses, there are many proposals to spend the state’s surplus. From education to transportation, interest groups are competing for these resources. Into this mix I would suggest a small but critical expenditure that will benefit all Utahns later this year: providing counties with funds to support the implementation of the state’s new electronic voting system.

This year, voters will cast ballots on new touchscreen machines that produce a contemporaneous paper audit trail. This new voting system will likely improve voting in the state. Electronic voting will also allow those with disabilities to vote unassisted for the first time. However, because most elections over the past 30 years have been conducted using punchcards, additional voter education and poll worker training will be needed to ensure that everyone understands how the new voting system works.

Fortunately, Utah can look to the state of Georgia, which had a successful transition to electronic voting in 2002. In Georgia, the legislature appropriated funds for grants to counties for voter education and election worker training. And the state provided every county with $100 per precinct to compensate poll workers for extra poll worker training associated with the transition. These county-level efforts were supplemented by state voter education and training prior to the 2002 election. All of these efforts supplemented a state website and an automated call center to answer questions about the system.

So how much would it cost to copy this successful model? Relatively little, and the expense would end after the 2006 elections. The cost to provide each county with $100 in funding for extra poll worker training at 1,880 precincts totals $188,000. The cost of providing counties with additional funding to promote voter education within each county — with funding based on county population — is $186,000.

Currently, these expanded costs will be an unfunded mandate on counties, which will do their best with limited resources educate their voters and poll workers. However, the Utah Legislature can provide counties with the relatively small sum of $374,000 and help to ensure that the new voting system works without a hitch. If the state were to spend slightly more, it can produce additional voter education materials and fund additional outreach that will make the elections run more smoothly.

Utah’s election in 2006 is likely to receive substantial media scrutiny. Not only is the state transitioning to a new voting system, but voters will be using electronic voting machines that produce a paper audit tape that the voter needs to review before casting a ballot. This extra step adds a twist to electronic voting that many feel will add a level of accuracy and security to the system. Unfortunately, survey data from Nevada, which used a similar system in 2004, found that 31 percent of voters either did not understand the purpose of the voter-verified paper trail on the voting system, or had not even noticed the paper system at all. Of those who did notice the paper trail, 14 percent did not use the paper trail to verify their ballot.

For this reform to work in Utah, voters and poll workers alike need to be educated on how the system works. The Legislature would be well advised to consider spending this small sum to ensure the success of the system deployment. After all, these same machines will be the ones used in legislators’ own elections.

The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are starting an effort to monitor implementation of HAVA. As a kickoff of their project, they are having an event on Febuary 8, from 9am through 12:30pm, in Washington. Below is the press announcement. I’ll be at the event, one of the discussion panelists.

News Advisory:

WHEN: February 8, 2006, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

WHERE: The Brookings Institution (Falk Auditorium), 1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Washington, DC

The Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) are launching a joint effort to monitor the implementation of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and encourage constructive changes to the law. The Brookings-AEI Election Reform Project will synthesize election- related research and strengthen the link between the research and policy communities by improving the basic understanding of the law and informing additional policy-making. To emphasize the importance of this partnership and its impact on HAVA, Sen. Barack Obama will open the discussion with a keynote address.

Introduced in the wake of the contested 2000 presidential election, HAVA was passed by Congress in 2002. The law provides funds to the states to enable them to replace punch-card voting systems. It has also created an Election Assistance Commission to help administer federal election laws, and has set standards for the administration of federal elections by states and local governments.

The Election Reform Project will track action on amendments to the legislation considered by Congress, and make election-related research widely available to policy-makers at the local, state and federal level. The project’s website, http://www.electionreformproject.org, will include information on voter registration, technology, access, early and absentee voting, provisional balloting, election administration and voting integrity issues.

The launch will include two panels: one on HAVA and its progress since implementation and the other on election reform and what barriers, and successes, lay ahead. Panelists will take questions from the audience at the close of each panel.

Keynote Address: The Honorable BARACK OBAMA, United States Senator, Illinois

—

Panel One: HAVA — How Is It Working?

Moderator: NORM ORNSTEIN, Resident Scholar, AEI

Panelists: PAUL DEGREGORIO, Chair, Election Assistance Committee; DOUG CHAPIN, Director, electiononline.org; The Honorable DEBORAH MARKOWITZ, Vermont Secretary of State

—

Panel Two: Election Reform — Looking Ahead

Moderator: THOMAS MANN, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution

Panelists: MICHAEL ALVAREZ, Professor and Director, Cal Tech-MIT Voting Technology Project; RICK HASEN, the William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles; ROBERT PASTOR, Executive Director, Carter-Baker Commission; PAUL VINOVICH, Staff Director, Committee on House Administration of the U.S. House of Representatives

RSVP: Please call the Brookings Office of Communications, 202- 797-6105, or visit http://www.brookings.edu/eventregistration.

According to the most recent reports about the number of initiatives in circulation that have qualified for the ballot and those that the state legislature is putting on the June primary ballot, currently it appears that California voters may see one of the shortest ballots in recent history. There are only two measures that are now slated for the June ballot: one sponsored by Rob Reiner that will advocate universal preschool and the other one from the legislature pushing a $600 million library bond.

There still could be at least two additional measures coming from the state legislature, one dealing with the Governor’s proposed infrastructure measures and the other possibly focused on redistricting reform. Here is what the article linked above said about the deadlines that these additional measures would need to meet to make it on the June ballot:

“While the legal deadline for initiatives is Jan. 26, we’ve sent a letter to the governor and the Legislature that indicated we’ve determined that measures approved by Feb. 16 could make the principal ballot,” said Jennifer Kerns, a spokesman for Secretary of State Bruce McPherson. “Legislative measures approved by March 10 could be on a supplemental ballot.”

I’ll have more to say soon about the redistricting measure. Here is a recent article that details the negotiations that are now going on regarding the current proposals. I was on a long conference call this morning with a number of the folks who are working on this measure, and from the information I obtained in that call, it is clear that a compromise is highly possible, though the some of the details (especially the details regarding the composition and selection of the independent redistricting commission members) are still potential sticking points.

The victory of Hamas in yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Palestine raises some interesting questions. Before I get to those, I want to point out that the election was monitored by the National Democratic Institute, with Jimmy Carter in the lead, and according to their analysis, the election was fair. If you want to learn more about the election procedures, NPR did an interesting story about this yesterday.

The interesting question is, in a democratic society, what happens when the people want to be represented by a party that do not have international approval. The U.S. spent almost $1.9 million attempting to influence this election. As the New York Times reported on January 23rd, “The United States spent about $1.9 million of its yearly $400 million in aid to the Palestinians on dozens of quick projects before elections this week to bolster the governing Fatah faction’s image with voters and strengthen its hand in competing with the militant faction Hamas.”

In an editorial in the Jerusalem Post, the paper notes that the election in Palestine is truly historic for its democratic meaning.

There are many measures of democracy: whether free elections are reliably held, whether the rule of law protects the people from their government, and whether there is, in practice, full freedom of assembly and expression. Palestinian democracy has a way to go according to all these measures, but on Wednesday it leapt over what is perhaps the greatest democratic hurdle of all: whether the people have the power to remove their government from office.

The key question is how well this new democracy represents the Palestinians and whether the new government can effectively work in the international arena.

I ran across an interesting spreadsheet this morning on the California Secretary of State’s website, that might be of use to folks who are trying to follow the evolving status of voting system certification in California.

This spreadsheet lists the vendor, their voting system, whether the federal testing is complete, and whether the state has received an application for state certification. Based on this speadsheet (last updated on January 19, 2006), the ESS “Automark” system has cleared state certification, but the following systems have not:

• Diebold, apparently awaiting federal testing because of a referral “back to ITA for AccuBasic code review.”
• ESS “Unisysn EMS/InkaVote PBC”, under state review.
• Hart, “System 6”, undergoing state testing.
• Sequoia, under state review.
• Populex, “Digital Paper Ballot Voting System”, whose application for state certification was apparently incomplete.

One of the oddities in this list is the ESS “Unity/M100/M650/iVotronic w/VVPAT”; this spreadsheet lists this system as “currently in federal testing”, but that ESS has yet to submit an application for California certification.

The clock is ticking … the June 6 primary is not far off!

Mike and I received an email today announcing an event for a new voter registration system for UOCAVA voters.

Media Advisory Notice

25 January 2006

Press Launch of First Internet-based Overseas and Uniformed Services Voter Registration System

Date: Friday, February 3, 2006

Time: 9:30 – 10:30 a.m.

Location: National Press Club

529 14th Street N.W., 13th Floor

Washington, D.C. 20045

202-662-7500

Room: Murrow Room

Contact: Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat

press@overseasvotefoundation.org

Tel: 202 470 2480; or +49 172 951 0865

Starting Friday, February 3, 2006, up to seven million US citizens and military personnel will be able to generate their federal voter registration applications online, thanks to Overseas Vote Foundation, www.overseasvotefoundation.org.

The technologically advanced project, the first of its kind, provides a complete voter registration solution for overseas voters whose voting program falls under the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA).

Journalists are invited to attend this launch event, view a demonstration of the system and receive a full briefing. The agenda from 9.30 a.m. is as follows:

Introduction and Welcome: James Brenner, OVF Chair

Situation: overseas voters and UOCAVA implementation challenges; Online Demonstration: OVF Registration and Absentee Voter Application:

Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, OVF Executive Director

Military and UOCAVA: Samuel F. Wright, Military Voting Rights Project, National Defense Committee, and OVF Advisor

Benefits to Election Officials: Cameron Quinn, OVF Vice Chair, U.S. Elections Advisor for the International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), and former chief election official for Virginia

To confirm attendance or receive further information please contact press@overseasvotefoundation.org, or call +1 202 470 2480; or +49 172 951 0865

Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) was founded in 2005 to assist eligible Americans living across the world to vote in federal elections. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public charity organization dedicated solely to serving the voter registration needs of UOCAVA voters.

In a bit of shameless self-promotion, I wanted to put a link from Election Updates to an opinion piece I wrote that appeared in this morning’s Pasadena Star News, “Governor should hold to promise of reform.” My basic argument is that Governor Schwarzenegger needs to return to his talk about real political reform in California, including redistricting reform, reforming the initiative process, and real campaign finance reform.

The plan is for me to write opinion pieces like this every two weeks in the Star News.

Riverside County (California) is a gigantic county, stretching from what is essentially suburban areas of Los Angeles and San Diego through the desert to Nevada. Not only does Riverside County cover an enormous geographic area, it also contains a lot of territory that is thinly populated. In past essays, especially right before the November 2005 Special Election in California, we talked about some innovative efforts being used in Riverside to facilitate early voting using their “ROVER” mobile voting program.

Now comes news that Riverside County is rethinking how they transmit early and unofficial vote tallies from remote locations. According to recent media reports, they are seeking to transmit unofficial election-night tallies across a dedicated and secure cable, from a remote location in Riverside County to election headquarters. The linked story above stated:

“Riverside County officials today are asking county supervisors to approve spending $15,000 on the CORNET protected network and on enhanced security at the transmission site in Indio.”
…
The new computer system uses a secure cable that’s only activated on election nights, Dunmore said.

The Los Angeles Times this morning had a much briefer description of this story, stating that the county supervisors approved this plan last night unanimously:
The new technology, which uses a dedicated cable that connects to the registrar’s computer, is designed to speed ballot-counting and make results available faster.

CORNET appears to be a Riverside County computer network. The general description of CORNET states that it:

The County of Riverside Internetwork (CORNET) was designed to provide inter-agency communications and to foster the exchange of information between local government agencies. CORNET utilizes high performance, multi-protocal internetwork routing technologies to electronically send and receive electronic mail, and government information between state agencies, county agencies, cities, colleges, school districts, and libraries located throughout the county. Agencies connected to CORNET may also receive unrestricted access to the information resources available on the national INTERNET through the County’s user friendly “Gopher Server”. Internet access subscribers must first sign the CORNET Standard Internet Access Subscription Agreement.

Additional details about CORNET are available from this webpage.

I’ll scout around for additional details of this initiative, and at some point hope to see it in action.