None of my co-bloggers have written yet about Friday’s story in the New York Times on ballot problems and the 2008 election. It’s a nice piece by two of the three NY Times reporters who seem to be on the “election” beat (the third is John Broder).

The gist of the story is that legislation expected in the next session of Congress will outlaw machines without a paper record–thus pushing the e-voting frontier farther away, perhaps vanishingly so. After the past two election cycles, it’s not clear that citizens, election officials, or reformers have any stomach for electronic voting machines. Doug Chapin of electionline.org is quoted: “I think we’ll see the kinds of sweeping changes that people expected to see right after the 2000 election.”

But who is going to shoulder the cost of these changes? Many states have already spent tens of millions of dollars on electronic voting machines, only to be forced to replace these. (One piece of legislation proposes $150 million in federal aid–an amount that election officials say is far too small.) (The technical guidelines document that is referenced by the Times ought to be available at the EAC, but all I can find is the sunshine notice for the meeting where the guidelines were released.)

And forcing these changes now would put tremendous pressure on these same jurisdictions–the same kind of time pressure that creates a ripe environment for another round of electoral snafus.

Everyone here knows I monitor absentee and by-mail voting solutions particularly closely, and this story sounds awfully familiar to me. Many election officials are going to decide that buying a whole new round of machines is a waste of money. Instead, they’ll opt for a time-tested solution: widespread, no-excuse absentee balloting.

After we did the post on the fraud report, we received an email from Tova Wang, one of the co-investigators, who asked us to post the following:

My co-consultant and I provided the EAC with a tremendous amount of research and analysis for this project. The EAC released what is their report yesterday. [my italics]

Two points of disclosure on my part. First, I used to work with Tova at TCF. Second, given that, I want to note that neither Mike or I know nothing more about the fraud report or its machinations than what I am posting here.

If you have been at any election conference in the last six months that involved discussions of election fraud, there has been a buzz about the EAC report on eleciton fraud. The buzz centered largely on the fact that the EAC had not issued the report yet.

Well, it finally came out. I am reading it now and you can too at this link.

We will be including some of these data in our upcoming book on election fraud that will come out later in 2007.

My response to Ruth Goldway’s oped: The Election Is in the Mail – New York Times.

Ironically, perhaps, I am somewhat agnostic on voting by mail. I’ve seen the benefits and experienced some of the costs. It just surprises me how the advocates constantly misdescribe the system (particularly the turnout effects). And might I say, no surprise here that a commissioner of the Postal Rate Commission would argue for voting by mail–it would be a huge boon to the Postal Service, since someone has to pay for all of that mail on election day.

===

To the Editor:

“The Election Is in the Mail” by Ruth Goldway continues a pattern evident among advocates of voting by mail: overstate the advantages, ignore the problems, and fail to consider the alternatives.

A few facts: voting by mail has not increased turnout in Oregon; by-mail ballots require counting machines, just like any optical scanning system; and volunteer election workers still process the ballots. In terms of security, it is a federal crime to tamper with any ballot, not just a mailed ballot.

Vote by mail does save money compared to “mixed” systems with large numbers of absentee and in-person ballots. Voting by mail is particularly well suited to states like Oregon which have a complex ballot. And voters enjoy the convenience of alternative voting systems.

But there are also costs. While the overall level of election fraud is very low, absentee ballots are the most common target of fraud. When one-third of the voters have cast their ballots a week before election day, they miss a week of news and information.

And, at least for some of us, election day remains a special part of the fabric of our political community, a day when Americans participate in the fundamental act of democracy.

Under voting by mail, election day becomes election weeks, and voting becomes a wholly individualized act. Until we consider such alternatives as a national election day holiday, we should resist using cost, convenience, and popularity as the way we choose our democratic procedures.

Paul Gronke
Early Voting Information Center
Reed College
Portland, OR 97202

Joshua Tucker has an interesting paper now under review, “Enough! Electoral Fraud, Collective Action Problems, and the “2nd Wave” of Post-Communist Democratic Revolutions.” Tucker is a professor in NYU’s politics department, studying politics and elections primarily in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Here’s the abstract of Tucker’s paper from his website:

Abstract: In many ways, the “2nd wave” of post-communist electoral revolutions came as a surprise to much of the political science community. In particular, theories stressing cultural or historical prerequisites for democratization may have a difficult time accounting for the spread of successful pro-democracy movements to countries such as Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. As scholars, journalists, and policy makers have struggled to make sense of these events, a variety of interpretations have been proposed, including geo-strategic politics, CIA organized plots, and elite-based modular learning. In this paper, I suggest that political science theory can offer another interpretation of these events: electoral fraud as a powerful tool to solve the collective action problem faced by societies struggling with corruption. If we accept this framework, then it leads to a number of important conclusions about how we might want to interpret the 2nd wave of post-communist electoral revolutions, as well as the long term viability of the so-called “delegative democracies” or “unconsolidated authoritarian regimes” It also suggests an interesting set of future research questions. The essay concludes with some brief observations about the importance of elections in our thinking about both democracy and democratization.

One thing that I found to be very helpful in this paper is Tucker’s definition of election fraud (page 5 of his paper):

Second, the term electoral fraud is intended to refer to situations in which electoral results were knowingly tampered with in an effort to advantage one candidate (or set of candidates) over another. One can conceive of two different types of fraud: minor electoral fraud, where results were tampered with but in which the tampering is perceived to have had little effect on the overall outcome of the election, or major electoral fraud, cases in which electoral fraud is suspected to have influenced the overall outcome of an election. In the context of the colored revolutions, this would imply a belief that either a different candidate would have been elected president or a different party would have controlled the parliament if the fraud had not occurred; and indeed, all four colored revolutions featured instances of what I have labeled major electoral fraud. The ideas contained in the remainder of this essay focus on circumstances following this kind of major electoral fraud. Put another way, the arguments that follow assume that if the fraud is corrected, there is a strong chance that a different group of political forces would come to power.

This is an interesting essay, focused on how electoral fraud can be used as a tool to stimulate collective action. Well worth a read, for those interested in electoral fraud, collective action, social protest and political participation.

Thanks to Susan Hyde for sending along the link to this paper!

Tova Wang, democracy fellow at The Century Foundation, has written a piece on voter fraud titled Voter Fraud: A Deafening Silence, in which she discusses the importance of addressing the perceived threat by voters of voting fraud as it pertains to confidence in the electoral system.
Tova was an invited speaker to two recent VTP conferences on election fraud and voter identification/registration.

I’ll try to avoid the jokes but it’s hard. This story from the Hampton Roads, VA Daily Press reports on a Wise, VA official who was convicted of vote rigging and corruption.

Among the inducements he offered for votes were “beer, cigarettes, and even pork rinds.” Was this to buy votes for him or his opponent? 😉

On a more serious vein, part of the scam involved intercepting absentee ballots in the mail and forging signatures.

Former Appalachia mayor pleads guilty to rigging election

In order to “streamline the process” and increase voter trust in the outcome, Kentucky Secretary of State Tray Grayson called for early voting programs and voting machines with a verified paper trail.

See the story on Lexington’s Channel 18 (NBC)

Ohio officials report that absentee ballot rates were at a record high in 2006. It helped that voting rights organizations were encouraging people to vote early, given problems at the polling place in 2004.

However, many counties also report problems with counting the ballots, as well as with cost. As one official noted “It’s an expensive venture. We did not budget for a jump like that.”

See the story in the Toledo Blade

Here is an image of a sample ballot from the Venezeuelan presidential election.

Other material from the upcoming election can be found at the eluniversal.com website. The English version of the website is at the following link, though it does not have as much content as the main site.