Author Archives: gronke

35% rise in early voting for Canadian parliamentary election

Early voting has begun in the Canadian general election, the BBC reports.  Early turnout jumped 35% from 2008 (2 million compared to 1.5 in 2008).

As we have found in the past, the heaviest early voting days were Friday and Monday, not Saturday.  Finding other information on voter turnout is a bit frustrating; I’ve been searching for the past 15 minutes to find out how many ballots are cast by mail and for historical data on voter turnout without success.

I finally found some comparative figures at the BC Elections Unit, including this very interesting spreadsheet comparing the costs of administering elections on a per-ballot basis.  Not much else to speak of.  Looks like voter lists are only available to registered candidates and parties.

Cue the mea culpas… surveys are not a good way to measure turnout. Who woulda thunk it?

Turns out that the much advertised CIRCLE report that 35% of Oregon’s 18-30 turnout rate overestimated by 50%. The original story was, of course, followed by credit claiming, most commonly various GOTV organizations and VBM. Folks are oddly silent about todays story …

I have to give Scott Moore props for an attempted save, see below:

But Moore contends that even if young voters wildly overstated how many of them actually filled out and mailed their ballots, the zeal they display in wanting others to think they voted shows the positive connotation that voting holds in this state, compared to other states such as Nebraska, where only about 14 percent of young voters told researchers they voted.

“The information Tufts gathered shows what people said they did, not what they actually did,” Moore says. “But the numbers show that there’s a social value in voting here, and that’s a testament to the hard work that people do engaging young voters.”

Higher turnout in Morgantown, WV first VBM election

So reports the Columbus, IN Republic.

There is a nice report on how the municipality handled the transition here: http://www.wvpubcast.org/newsarticle.aspx?id=19760.  The change was clearly motivated by a desire to increase turnout in municipal contests.  It’s not clear how they do signature verification (the implication of this story is visual, checking against printed / signed voter registration cards).

Turkish election preview

The OSCE/ODIHR’s Needs Assessment Mission (NAM) has issued a report in anticipation of the upcoming parliamentary elections, to be held on June 12, 2011.  The full text of the report is available at http://www.osce.org/odihr/76837, but I thought a few features might spark the interest of our readers.

Most importantly, Turkish law has been changed so that, for the first time, parties and candidates can purchase advertisements (I think this refers to radio and television, but the report does not make this clear, see pg. 9).  Candidates are also awarded free air time during the last seven days of the campaign:

Parties are entitled to two 10-minute slots on radio and television each. Additional airtime is granted to parties with a parliamentary group (10 minutes), the party in power or senior partner in a coalition government (20 minutes), minor partners in the coalition (15 minutes) and the main opposition party  (10 minutes). Independent candidates do not qualify for free airtime.

Surely, however, the start of paid media advertising should make this a fascinating campaign.

Advertising has to be understood within the context of continuing tension over restrictions on speech, viz:

Law No. 6112 ‘On the Establishment of Radio and Television Enterprises and Broadcasting’ (hereafter, Law on Broadcasting)  and the Law on Political Parties continue to prohibit, in a disproportionate manner, activities that might be perceived as insulting ‘Turkishness’, the republic or state bodies and institutions, national and moral values of the community and reforms and principles of Atatürk, inciting enmity or hatred among the population and promoting terrorist organizations.

The requirement previously to use only Turkish in all advertisements has been relaxed, however.

In terms of election administration, the Supreme Board of Elections (SBE) will, for the first time, not require fingers to be inked after voting; they have decided that their national voter registration system provides sufficient protection against fraud and double voting.  They are using transparent ballot boxes, again for the first time.  Most of the other changes since the last election, in 2007, create a more transparent and faster process for counting and reporting results.

Electronic delivery of election information: Is there an app for that?

Rick Hasen blogged on a recent study out of the Pew Center on the States which examined cost savings related to and voter attitudes about electronic delivery of election information.  (Click here for the Ventura County Star story.)

My first reaction was “great” but my second reaction was “wait, is there an app for that?”  I am a big fan of email delivery of long paper documents which have short term utility, like mutual fund reports, shareholder statements, even some journal articles!  But I am increasingly accessing these materials through an iPad or other mobile device.  I wonder if any local jurisdictions or states are thinking ahead of the curve, and contemplating not just electronic delivery via email, but electronic notification of new content that can be accessed via an RSS feed or dedicated “Elections App.”  For an increasing number of users, that’s a much more flexible way to get to information, rather than using an email interface.

Georgia improves early in person voting system

A colleague sent along this story out of Georgia with the commentary “It appears they (gasp) took your advice”.

I’d like to take credit for influencing this legislation, and I may have done so indirectly through my past work with Georgia election officials and scholars at University of Georgia, but I think the credit lies with Secretary Kemp and other administrators in the Peach State.

I do applaud the changes they’ve implemented.  The early voting period has been shortened to 21 days (I generally recommend 10-14); Secretary Kemp notes that 80% of early voters cast their ballots during that period.   It standardizes the early voting period, an important change in my opinion because it reduces any possibility of inequities in access to the ballot based on a county’s wealth, geographic size, or population.  Finally, it allows for weekend early voting, a potential inconvenience for officials to be sure, but one which citizens will find very helpful.

Full story is here: http://www.theweekly.com/news/2011/April/11/voting_reform.html.  Crossposted at earlyvoting.net

MPSA Update 2: Field Experiments to try to get young people registered

The second set of papers that I think our readership will be interested in can be accessed here:

http://conference.mpsanet.org/Online/Search.aspx?section=25&session=3

Facebook friends have already seen (and responded to) my comments on the paper by Mann and by Bennion and Nickerson (Nickerson is not listed in the program but is definitely a co-author).   In both cases, the research teams were interested in seeing whether lowering the costs of voter registration would result in a higher take up rate.  Both examined young people (in one case, women turning 18, in the other, college students). Continue reading →

MPSA Updates 1: Voters in the Obama Era

What is the state of American elections and party competition in what we are now calling “the Obama era”?  That was the topic of discussion at a panel I chaired as acted as discussant for on Sunday at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago.

The title of the panel was a bit misleading, however: I’d would have titled it “Voters in a new partisan era.”  This may be a product of my own views of recent political history in the U.S., but reflecting on these papers, and debates over party polarization and conflict that have animated both academic and popular discourse over the last 20 years, I think it’s undeniable at this point that our country is in the midst of a new political era. Obama’s election, in some respects, may ultimately be viewed more as a detour on this road than something completely new and different.  On that, time will tell.

There were two papers presented that I think should be read by anyone interested in American politics, and for the time being, both are available ungated at the web address shown above. Continue reading →