Unduly Burdensome Public Records Requests and their Effects on Local Election Officials
By Shelley Kimball, PhD, Johns Hopkins University
Election officials in local offices across the country have experienced a surge in public records requests in recent years, and some of them are perceived as vexatious, unduly burdensome, frustrating, voluminous, overwhelming, or harassing. While requests for information are fundamental to government transparency, unduly burdensome requests are straining the limited resources of election officials.
Results from the 2024 Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) Local Election Official (LEO) Survey show that while election officials recognize the increasing burden of excessive requests, their preferred solutions emphasize transparency, openness, and the use of technology rather than punitive measures.
In the following paragraphs, we outline the issue, examine LEOs’ perspectives, and recommend actionable solutions that balance public access to information with the operational needs of local election offices.
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The Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) at Reed College hosted a second webinar on October 27th, 2021 sponsored by the Stewards of Democracy Initiative (SDI). The webinar, titled “Stewards of Democracy Initiative: Adaptation, Adjustment, and Learning from the 2020 Election, was attended by 70 election community stakeholders including academic researchers, state and local election officials, nonprofit representatives, election technology providers, and the media.
SDI is a multi-pronged collaborative research effort of EVIC consisting of webinar conversations, a cross-sector book publication, and a research convening of election science-focused academic researchers, local election official practitioners, and other election community stakeholders.
Continue readingThe Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) at Reed College launched a new research effort, the Stewards of Democracy Initiative (SDI), on July 27th, 2021. An inaugural webinar introducing SDI was attended by 77 election community stakeholders including academic researchers, state and local election officials, nonprofit representatives, election technology providers, and the media.”
SDI is a multi-pronged collaborative research effort of EVIC consisting of webinar conversations, a cross-sector book publication, and a research convening of election science-focused academic researchers, local election official practitioners, and other election community stakeholders.
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The Portland City Council Position 4 Race: Will We See a 2016 Repeat?
The contest for position 4 in Portland City Council is highly competitive, and recent polling shows the challenger, Mingus Mapps with a nine point lead over Commissioner Chloe Eudaly, but with 40% of the electorate reporting that they are undecided, this race will go all the way to the wire.
In our last post, “Visualizing the Position 4 City Council Race,” we conducted a geo-spatial analysis of the May 2020 primary to try to understand the candidate dynamics in a competitive primary. The data we examined showed that Mapps has some advantages in the November run. Precincts that showed comparatively higher levels of support for Sam Adams were more similar to precincts that showed higher level of support for Mapps than those which were centers of strength for Eudaly.
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Nice history and overview of the system, by Jen Kirby:
Oregon already votes by mail. Here’s what it can teach us in 2020.
“It’s possible but unlikely that states such as Arizona, which already have a large percentage of voters on a list to automatically receive a ballot, could expand the practice, said Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College and director of the Early Voting Information Center.”
“Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center at Reed College in Oregon, said the counterfeit ballot theory was from ‘the world of fantasy.’”
By Phil Keisling, who served as Oregon Secretary of State from 1991-99. The opinions and observations are solely his own views, and he takes full personal responsibility for any errors of fact, not to mention any predictions that prove wildly inaccurate!
During much of 2020, I’ve been promoting efforts to expand voter access to mailed out ballots, and to encourage states to adopt the “Vote at Home” model pioneered by Oregon, Colorado, and Washington, where 100% of active registered voters are automatically mailed their ballots.
Largely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, 92 million voters this year received mailed out ballots — compared to just 42 million in 2016.
Some have asked what all this might mean for tonight’s election. How will these votes be counted? Will these votes be counted? How might the vote tallies tonight (and even later this week) change as votes are processed, counted and announced in key states’ widely varying election systems? So I thought I might share a few brief thoughts, which I’ve distilled into three categories: Continue reading →