Looks like the EAC data have been out since July.  I just hadn’t seen a notification!  Hat tip to Charles Stewart.

Watch your denominator and watch your unit of analysis!

There are two ongoing points of confusion with the EAC data. First, the unit of analysis is the reporting jurisdiction (most commonly, county). This means that many statistics are based on a mean of the means, which does not weight information by the size of the county. The result is that the proportion of forms processed in LA County, 110005/1468772 = .0748 is given the same weight in the statewide mean as is their sister county of Madera (313/8157 = .0384).

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As I noted yesterday, the 2009-2010 National Voter Registration Report is available at the EAC’s website.

The highlights of the report include:

• 85.9% registration, or 186.9 million registered voters, 14 million more registered voters than in 2006 (although a drop from 2008)
• A more than doubling (8 to 17) in the number of states that accepted voter registration forms over the Internet, with Arizona, Oregon, and Washington leading the pack
• The EAC has discovered the virtue of ranking states (!), freeing the reader from the (relatively simple) task of doing it themselves. See Table 1C for a ranking of states on registration rates as a percent of voting age population.

Unfortunately, there are lowlights.

• The lack of a quorum on the Commission meant that there are no recommendations (pg. 9), only a promise in the future. I wouldn’t hold your breath
• Anyone who is already familiar with past NVRA reports won’t be surprised; much of the text is a dry recitation of the statutory mandate and the process the agency went through in order to administer the surveys.
• In line with previous reports, little is done in the way of summary statistics beyond reporting totals, even though data are now collected mainly at the county level. 16 million forms were received at motor vehicle offices from 2009-2010, for instance, but does it help to know that the percent of forms received county by county, and across states, varies dramatically? It might if you are a state trying to identify the laggards and reward the leaders.

Using the county level data can be problematic.  Why, for example, did Hinds County, MS report 914 forms processed by the DMV (QA6D) but only 166 TOTAL registration forms (QA5_Total)? Lauderdale County, MS reports 316 DMV forms and 198 total forms, while Albany County, NY (the location of the state capital no less) reports 43,999 total forms and 72028 DMV forms.

The figure below displays the county variation across states (states are not labeled but are sorted alphabetically), but I have removed all values exceeding 1.0.  It’s only a figure that an MIT professor could love.

In the better late than never category, the EAC’s NVRA report and associated data has been released on the EAC website. No indication yet that the UOCAVA and Election Day reports are pending.

The codebook link is here: http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Documents/2010%20NVRA%20Data%20File%20Codebook.pdf

The SPSS datafile won’t download. http://www.eac.gov/assets/1/misc/EAVS2010_Section_A_Final.sav

The Excel and DBF files seem to be working.

We will post up Stata versions of these data when converted at earlyvoting.net.

Looks like Cuyahoga County is thumbing their budgetary nose at the new Sec’y of State and mailing absentee ballot applications to all registered voters. The state refuses to pay, and now they say they are going to try to outlaw the practice altogether.

Crossposted at earlyvoting.net

Local elections were being held in some areas of Virginia.

But has other administrative benefits …

So blogs Doug Chapin at Excellence in Election Administration.

Non APSA members may be able to view abstracts and download papers by following this link.

29-5 Electoral Reform and Voter Turnout in the American States

What Happens at the Polling Place
Barry C. Burden
University of Wisconsin, Madison, bcburden@wisc.edu
David T. Canon
University of Wisconsin, Madison, dcanon@polisci.wisc.edu
Donald P. Moynihan
University of Wisconsin, Madison, dmoynihan@lafollette.wisc.edu
Kenneth R. Mayer
University of Wisconsin, Madison, kmayer@polisci.wisc.edu
Jacob R. Neiheisel
University of Wisconsin, Madison, neiheisel@wisc.edu

Who Makes Voting Easier?: Understanding the Adoption of Election Reform in the American States
Daniel Biggers
University of Maryland, dbiggers@gvpt.umd.edu
Michael J. Hanmer
University of Maryland, mhanmer@umd.edu

Early Voting and Turnout: A County-Level Analysis
Elliott B. Fullmer
Georgetown University, elliott.fullmer@gmail.com

When No One Can Knock on Your Door: Getting Out The Vote to Overseas Americans
Michael J. Hanmer
University of Maryland, mhanmer@umd.edu
Claire M. Smith
Overseas Vote Foundation, claire@overseasvotefoundation.org
Paul S. Herrnson
University of Maryland, herrnson@umd.edu

State and Party Rules and Voter Turnout in Presidential Nomination Contests [Download Paper]
Caitlin Elizabeth Dwyer
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, dwyer077@umn.edu

29-6 Theme Panel: Majoritarian Institutions and Minority Rights: Direct Democracy in the American States

State Constitutions And Entrenched Fundamental Rights: Proposition 8, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Basic Structure Doctrine [Download Paper]
Manoj Mate
Whittier Law School, manojmate@gmail.com

Citizens, Legislators and the Bully Ballot Box: Is the Citizen-Initiative Any Worse for Minority Rights than the Legislative-Referral? [Download Paper]
Tom Lubbock
University of Oxford, tom.lubbock@politics.ox.ac.uk

Changing Policy Designs for “Deviants”: Felon Enfranchisement in Rhode Island [Download Paper]
Michael Leo Owens
Emory University, michael.leo.owens@emory.edu
Marion Orr
Brown University, marion_orr@brown.edu

Facilitator or Barrier? State Policies on Bilingual Ballots and Their Impact on Participation [Download Paper]
Shauna Reilly
Northern Kentucky University, reillys3@nku.edu

Children and Dead People Are NOT Voting in Utah.

A nice discussion of the challenges of voter registration, changing technology, and conspiracies by political scientist Quin Monson of BYU.

Just saw this story in the most recent Electionline Weekly:

Many county and state election officials often lament of low voter turnout, but Surry County, Va. is anticipating 100 percent voter turnout for an upcoming Republican Primary — or a zero percent turnout. A quirk in redistricting means that the county will have to open a polling place for one voter for the upcoming primary. It will cost the county approximately $2,000 to open the polling place for the day and even if the lone voter shows up in the early moments of election day, the county must keep the location open till polls officially close across the state. Registrar Lucille Epps said she contacted the Virginia Board of Elections to ask if the lone voter could be sent to the next closest precinct but was told that was not possible.

This is a fun and silly story that Mindy Moretti dug up, but there is a very good reason beyond cost that the voter should be sent to another precinct–privacy!  Obviously, Registrar Epps can not report returns for this precinct, but notice that the Registrar can’t report precinct level returns for the other precincts either, because a simple calculation will reveal the single voter’s choices.

Nice decision State Board!  Care to revisit this?