The Virginia recount in the Attorney General’s race ended Wednesday with the same winner winning again. What is interesting is that the challenger had to show an example of a problem with the optical scan counters in a given precinct for that precinct’s votes to be recounted. And how did problems occur? According to the Washington Post,

Democratic observers…pinpointed discrepancies of just five votes in three precincts, apparently all the result of paper jams when ballots were fed into optical scanners.

The mistakes apparently occurred when poll workers took jammed ballots out of the optical scanner and either ran them through the machine again — in effect, counting them twice — or lifted the optical scanner and dropped them in by hand, meaning they were never counted at all.

This story illustrates again the importance of poll worker training and also the importance of understanding how–and whether–votes are actually counted in elections.

We promised the Iraqi’s American democracy and the current election seems to have delivered. According to the Financial Times,

The main Sunni Arab coalition and the list headed by secular Shia former prime minister Iyad Allawi were among 35 groups that yesterday called the December 15 Iraqi elections illegitimate and threatened to boycott parliament. The groups, in a statement, demanded that their complaints about voter intimidation and fraud be addressed, and accused the country’s Independent Elections Commission (IEC) of abetting the violations.

It would seem that the problem is that the United Iraqi Allliance (UIA), which consists of mostly Shia, seems to have performed better than expected in the election, especially since millions of new Sunni voters participated in this election, after sitting out the January constitutional eleciton. The Shia seemed to have turned out more voters, but not surprisingly, the other factions see things differently. As the Financial Times reports:

The UIA’s opponents, however, believe it cheated. They have filed hundreds of complaints against the coalition, accusing it of storming into polling stations, particularly in heavily Shia neighbourhoods, and voting multiple times. Poll monitors allegedly turned away voters who said they would vote for lists other than UIA.

Sunni Arabs also are upset that they appear not to have won as much as they expected. They are usually estimated to number 20 per cent of the population but often claim they are a majority in the country and in Baghdad, in particular. In the capital, however, the UIA took 58 per cent of the vote, against 19 per cent that went to the main Sunni coalition and the 14 per cent received by Mr Allawi.

For this reason alone, many Sunni will doubt the results. Prior to the election, one outspoken Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlek, said he would suspect fraud if the UIA received more than a third of the vote.

The complaints of fraud are similar to those that have been raised in recent U.S. elections: voting sites failing to open, shortages in election materials, and vote fraud. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported,

Although the balloting was hailed as an overall success, the cries of fraud and ballot-rigging have surged since the results emerged….Electoral commission members cautioned that the results must be checked and cross-checked, and numerous allegations of election violations must be settled before the results are declared final. …among the 1,000 complaints received so far, about 20 were serious enough to affect the vote. The complaints included “some forgeries, fraud, and use of force and efforts to intimidate.”

The problem of course is figuring out a solution when fraud has occurred. The coalition that is questioning the results has raised the idea of having new elections, but several observers have noted that new elections just raise new opportunities for claims of fraud. This problem is exacerbated by the lack of outside observers monitoring the election (most organizations found that doing this would be too dangerous). Also, getting either the same result or a different results can result in fraud claims. In the first case, the same losers claim that the same winners engaged in fraud to obtain the same result and in the second case, the former winners claim the former losers cheated to improve their position.

Yesterday the EAC released their report of California’s HAVA expenditures. Here is the report’s basic statement of their auditing of California’s use of HAVA funds:

Of the $4,977,829 in reviewed expenditures, we classified $3,269,791 as questioned costs, consisting of $509,325 in cost exceptions and $2,760,466 in unsupported costs; and of the $3,755,723 in reviewed obligations, we classified $590,570 as questioned costs, consisting of $268,177 in cost exceptions and $322,393 in unsupported costs. In total, we questioned $3,860,361 in HAVA expenditures, consisting of $777,502 in cost exceptions and $3,082,859 in unsupported costs.

In broad terms, we took exception to those expenditures related to the purchase of capitalized general purpose equipment, promotional items and memorabilia, costs not related to HAVA, contract costs paid that were outside the terms of a contract, and costs that did not conform to federal cost principles. In addition, we classified as unsupported those expenditures lacking adequate support documentation, including expenditures related to personal service costs, procurement awards, indirect costs, and other costs.

Procurement award expenditures were generally classified as unsupported because competitive bidding requirements were not met …

In the definition used by the auditors, a questioned cost was one that:

1. “resulted from a violation or possible violation of a provision of a law, regulation, contract, grant, cooperative agreement or document governing the use of federal funds;
2. at the time of the audit, was not supported by adequate documentation; or
3. appeared unreasonable and did not reflect the actions a prudent person would take in similar circumstances”

But the devil is in the details, and reading the detailed sections of the audit report are quite interesting. If you look at Table 2 in the report, it breaks out the questioned expenditures of HAVA funds into a number of categories, including $1.6 million in unsupported costs for consultant services, $937,269 in unsupported costs for personal services, and $7,289 in unsupported costs for offfice equipment. Most of the questioned costs for consultant services regard 34 contracts that were awarded after the Secretary of State’s office did not follow California state competitive bidding requirements. The unsupported office equipment regarded purchases of laptops outside the state bidding process, and phone charges without proper documentation. Also, apparently the auditors took exception to the purchase of a $15 frame, “because the expense was non-HAVA related.”

Of the cost exceptions, one of the more distressing claims regarded $308,388 in questionable printing, postage and shipping costs. These questionable costs regarded:

• “$83,756 for promotional items and memorabilia (T-shirts, buttons, balloons and other souvenirs), which are not allowed …”
• “$224,632 for postage to mail absentee ballot applications.

As for the $83,756 — that is a lot of illegal t-shirts and balloons! But what were they doing using HAVA funds to buy balloons?

The absentee ballot questions regarded the mailing of absentee ballot applications to permanent absentee voters, without consulting county election officials who are in charge of mailing absentee ballot applications. The report noted: “After county registrars expressed concerns about applications sent to voters already registered as permanent absentee voters, the Office canceled mailing any remaining applications and received a credit of $502,868 from the U.S. Postmaster, leaving a cost of $224,632 for postage already expended. We found the $224,632 cost unreasonable and therefore not allowable …” Question — why were they mailing absentee ballot applications to permanent absentee voters?

On one hand, this audit report from the EAC, along with the audit report produced earlier by the California State Auditor, helps shine light into the way that California has expended HAVA funds under former Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. Given the large amounts of money that have been handed out to the states under such a short period of time, it is excellent to see auditing of how those funds have been used (or in this case, misused). But on the other hand, it is disturbing to see so much misallocation and misuse of these funds; one wonders whether California would be in a much better position today regarding improving our electoral process had these funds been better spent. I also wonder, to the extent that voters and citizens are paying attention to the reports of the misallocation of HAVA funds in California, whether this will have any effect on their trust in governmental officials or their confidence in those who administer elections.

Two new developments in California to note. The first was discussed in a Sacramento Bee story this morning, in which two state assembly representatives have announced their intention to introduce legislation next year to create an assembly of California citizens to address election reform issues. According to the story, this citizen’s assembly would have two members from each of the eighty state assembly districts, “selected by a task force of academic experts from a pool of volunteers representing the state’s adult population according to age, gender, race and geography.” Details are sketchy, especially regarding what powers this citizen assembly would have — and why anyone might listen to their recommendations or conclusions. But it is an innovative idea, and it will be interesting to see what the legislation looks like when it is introduced, and whether the state legislature will act on the idea.

The second development is a rumor that I heard this week, that there might be a new redistricting ballot measure brought forward soon, very much like the recently defeated Proposition 77. According to the story recounted to me, the measure may differ from Proposition 77 in two ways. One difference is that it won’t force a new redistricting upon us before the next decade. The second difference is that instead of having a panel of retired judges develop the redistricting plan, the idea will be to have a panel of selected citizens develop the plan. How the citizens would be selected is unclear (it was described to me as something like a lottery, from a pool of citizens interested in participating in the project), but it is another innovative idea to bring fresh thinking to election reform debates. If and when I hear more about this potential new redistricting ballot measure, I’ll pass information along …

It is getting late in the holiday season, but if you still have some shopping to do for those election geeks on your list, here are a few suggestions, in no particular order of preference!

• An old voting machine. There are a number for sale on ebay, for example, here is one (sale ends December 27!). Just search ebay for “voting machine”.
• A new iPod. All geeks have to have one. And they will want to use it to subscribe to our podcast.
• A cool new book. Some recently published bookes we are now reading:

  • Eric C. Bjornlund, “Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
  • Tracy Campbell, “Deliver the Vote: A History of Election Fraud, An American Political Tradition (1742-2004)” (Carroll and Graf, 2005).
  • Ronald Hayduk, “Gatekeepers to the Franchise: Shaping Election Administration in New York” (Northern llinois, 2005).
• Electoral college sportswear, likely to be a hot commodity in 2008 (special holiday thanks to Doug Chapin, Jr. for this tip!).
• A share or two of Diebold stock, through their convenient “DRIP” (“Direct Purchase, Sale and Divident Reinvestment Plan”). Might not be a bad investment, if the rumors we hear from knowledgeable folks are true and if management is thinking of shedding their voting system business.
• And don’t forget “Point, Click and Vote” as a stocking stuffer; still selling like hotcakes on amazon.com.

If you have other hot holiday shopping tips for election geeks, please email them along. We’ll add clever ones to the list!

There is a wonderful new research paper, recently electronically published in the journal Political Analysis, by Gary King (Harvard University) and Langche Zeng (University of California, San Diego). This paper, “The Dangers of Extreme Counterfactuals”, focuses attention on an important, but little-discussed, issue in social science that has significant implications for research on election reform.

Here is why election reform researchers should pay attention to the King-Zeng paper. By nature, election “reforms” require changes to some existing practice or procedure (for example, some feature of ballot design); and researchers are often called upon to speculate on the ultimate effect that these changes will have on an outcome variable, or a set of outcome variables (say, balloting mistakes by voters). In some cases, researchers are lucky, and can locate data from some other jurisdiction that currently uses the procedure or process that is the subject of reform — and they can then use that data to try to estimate the possible effect of the reform in the jurisdiction in question.

But in many cases we are not so lucky. There may simply be no jurisdictions that currently undertake the process or procedure in question, or those jurisdictions might be quite different from the jurisdiction in question (for example, they might be in different nations). Or, there may be only a very small number of jurisdictions that undertake the process or procedure, so there is very little data upon which to base our estimate of the possible effect of the reform in the jurisdiction in question.

As King and Zeng argue in their paper, the problem that then arises is that the prediction that is made about the possible effect of the reform might be based on little or no information in the data being used to make that prediction. King and Zeng offer a proof that shows that the further from the actual data some prediction is made, the more dependent the inferences will be upon the statistical model and the assumptions of that model. King and Zeng also provide some software that researchers can use to test for such model dependence.

This is a paper that is likely to open up some new lines of methodological research, as there are many other issues associated with counterfactual analyses that have yet to be explored. The methods here, and those that will be developed in subsequent research, ought to be used when appropriate by those trying to determine the potential effects of policy change, including election reform.

Here is the abstract of the paper, if you are interested in more details before making the commitment to downloading and reading the paper:

We address the problem that occurs when inferences about counterfactuals—predictions, ‘‘what-if’’ questions, and causal effects—are attempted far from the available data. The danger of these extreme counterfactuals is that substantive conclusions drawn from statistical models that fit the data well turn out to be based largely on speculation hidden in convenient modeling assumptions that few would be willing to defend. Yet existing statistical strategies provide few reliable means of identifying extreme counterfactuals. We offer a proof that inferences farther from the data allow more model dependence and then develop easy-to-apply methods to evaluate how model dependent our answers would be to specified
counterfactuals. These methods require neither sensitivity testing over specified classes of models nor evaluating any specific modeling assumptions. If an analysis fails the simple tests we offer, then we know that substantive results are sensitive to at least some modeling choices that are not based on empirical evidence. Free software that accompanies this article implements all the methods developed.

Here is our sixth podcast, primarily discussing improvements in election administration. If you want to subscribe to our podcasts, instructions are here.

The Center for the Digital Future (CDF), at the USC Annenberg School, has recently released their fifth survey of Internet use. According to the information available on the survey results on the CDF website, a number of new and interesting trends continue to show the impact of the Internet and other new technologies on American politics and civic engagement.

“The Internet and political knowledge — In 2005, belief that the Internet can be a tool for learning about the political process continues to increase, with 60.4 percent of users and 34.6 percent of non-users agreeing that by using the Internet, people can better understand politics.

In year five of the study, 41.1 percent of Internet users went online to gather information about the presidential campaign.

“Notably, the largest percentage of these users sought campaign information on traditional media Web sites,” said Cole. “A much smaller group used information placed online by the candidates.” (39.5 percent to traditional media sites; 27.1 percent to candidates’ sites)

Of users who went online to seek campaign information, 91.1 percent sought information about issues or candidates they supported; 77.4 percent also sought information about issues and candidates about which they were undecided.

— Of users who gathered campaign information online, 87.2 percent were satisfied with the information about the presidential election they found online.

“The Internet is providing a direct conduit through which office seekers can reach voters, without media gatekeepers sifting and interpreting politicians’ messages,” Cole said. “This issue raises many questions. While the Internet creates an open forum for delivery of information, it can be used just as easily for responsible campaigning or as a platform for political mischief and miscommunication. How will the growing role of the Internet shape the political campaigns of elections to come?”

And as to the cumulative results from their five-year study, on the effect of the Internet and new technologies on American political life:

“Political Power And Influence

• The Internet’s Importance In Political Campaigns

  • * In 2005, large numbers of respondents (61.7 percent) agree that the Internet has become important to political campaigns. (Page 103)
  • * More than half of non-users (52 percent) also agree that the Internet is important for political campaigns. (Page 103)

• The Internet and Political Knowledge

  • * In 2005, belief that the Internet can be a tool for learning about the political process continues to increase, with 60.4 percent of users and 34.6 percent of non-users agreeing that by using the Internet, people can better understand politics. (Page 104)

• Is The Internet A Tool To Help Gain Political Power?

  • * For the first time in the Digital Future Project, the number of Internet users who say that the Internet can be used as a tool to gain political power has begun to rise. (Page 105)

• Online Information And The Presidential Elections

  • * Large percentages of Internet users went online for information about the candidates in the 2004 presidential election — for information about issues or candidates they supported, as well as for information about issues and candidates about which they were undecided. (Page 106)

• Where Online Do Users Find Campaign Information?

  • * Internet users use candidates’ Web sites for information, but not as their primary source for campaign information. (Page 107)
  • * The largest percentage of adult users who went online for campaign information relied on traditional media Web sites; a smaller group of users used candidates’ Web sites. (Page 107)”

Unfortunately, the report does not provide much detail about the survey methodology, making it a bit difficult to know the precision or reliability of the survey data. I’ll check with colleagues at USC about learning more about these surveys, and about their results. This is an intriguing project, providing additional data on how the Internet is reshaping political and civic life in the United States.

The Washington Post reported that Hans von Spakovsky, who has been involved with election law in the Justice Department and has been an important part of the institutional memory in the Department related to HAVA, has been nominated to serve on the Federal Election Commission. It will be interesting to see how his moving there will affect the Justice Department’s institutional memory and decision making in 2006, as HAVA litigation moves forward against the states who have failed to meet the law’s requirements.

Today’s USA Today notes that 1 in 20 Americans have such poor English skills that they cannot read simple documents, and an additional 30 million Americans have very low literacy skills. This report–the National Assessment of Adult Literacy–contains an array of interesting data, including the fact that many individuals who are elderly and also individuals with disabilities have low literacy.

In elections, there have been laws over the years to inhibit people with low literacy from voting. In New York, for instance, the state had literacy requirements until the passing of the Voting Rights Act. Given that you cannot discriminate against voters on the basis of literacy, this study raises interesting questions, such as:

• should ballots contain party symbols in addition to party labels?
• should we use candidate photos on ballots?
• will the move to electronic voting in many jurisdictions increase turnout among low literacy voters, given that these machines can facilitate voting among those who cannot read the ballot?
• should ballots be shorter and more simple?