We’re delighted to announce that EVIC Director Paul Gronke is taking over from Dan Lowenstein and Rick Hasen as co-editor at the Election Law Journal. He will sharing these duties with Daniel Tokaji, Professor of Law at The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.
The full announcement, also found in the next issue of the Journal, is attached.
Nate Silver has a post over at 538 about Washington state, and the difficulties with forecasting election results there. I don’t know how pollsters adjust their likely voter models in states with significant early voting (though this seems like an increasingly important question), but I do want to note his comments about the impact of vote-by-mail. Silver contends:
Also — probably because of mail balloting — turnout in Washington and Oregon has generally been very high, so targets that might work well in other states could fail there.
This seems wrongheaded on two fronts. First, as we’ve shown several times, vote-by-mail has caused a very small turnout increase in Oregon and Washington – on the order of a few percent in federal elections. (Although admittedly, we do see a more substantial effect in lower-tier races.) In fact, political participation is part of the culture in these two states, and they have long had high rates of voter turnout.
Second, as turnout increases in a state, the impact of likely voter models presumably becomes less important. Washington and Oregon have levels of turnout way above the national average, most other states, and the pollsters’ baselines for likely voter models.
Update: Gronke posted this reply on the Time blog:
I have to chime in here. Oren is correct about Washington. The big push for vote by mail in Washington State occurred after the Rossi/Gregoire contest (2004). Fewer than 10 counties were using VBM in 2004, so any “house effects” prior to 2006 cannot be attributed to VBM.
Second, many scholars have studied the turnout effects of VBM in federal contests, and the impact is minimal, between 2-4%. Put simply, Oregon (and Washington) were high turnout states prior to the adoption of VBM and continue to be high turnout states. I’m disappointed to see Nate propagate the myth that VBM is a magic bullet for turnout. It’s a common misconception, but one that most election officials now realize is not true.
Finally, while I understand how high turnout and VBM can make the likely voter filter problematic, I don’t understand how it would be predicted to create highly variable results. A just doesn’t link to B in this blog post.
If turnout were high, then isn’t the likely voter filter irrelevant? And if high turnout plus heavy use of non precinct place voting leads to variable polling results, then Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado should also be displaying these patterns.
This Sunday’s NYT ramped up the newspaper’s midterm election coverage, including a story highlighting a wave of negative advertising being put out by Democrats in tight races.
As we’ve argued in the past, the longer “Election Day” created by early voting is likely to change campaigns in a number of ways, including bringing forward the blitz of negative advertising that was traditionally reserved for later in the cycle:
Opposition research and attack advertising are used in almost every election, but these biting ads are coming far earlier than ever before, according to party strategists. The campaign has intensified in the last two weeks as early voting begins in several states and as vulnerable incumbents try to fight off an onslaught of influences by outside groups.
Update: new, improved, and available in PDF form. We’ve also provided a link to our Excel dataset. Check it out
We’ve just posted our early and absentee voting calendar for the 2010 general election. As Paul has noted, the election has already arrived in many states, with absentee ballots being delivered now in nearly half of America’s states.
The calendar itself is a work-in-progress: if you notice any glitches or errors – or just have comments – we’d love to hear from you.
It’s not readily printable yet – short of taking a screen capture – but we’ll be producing a true hard copy version as soon as possible, and that will be available at the same address.
Voting in the Swedish general election (taking place on Sunday), is in full swing, with early turnout already at record levels. Swedish news source The Local (quoting a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg) provides more evidence of how administrative changes can drive usage:
“Oscarsson belives one reason that more Swedes are voting early is the increased number of locations where people to vote without a voting card, which is automatically mailed to eligible voters several weeks prior to election day.
“If voters forget their cards, which are presented to election officials at polling stations, can instead have a new one printed out on the spot.”
Hat-tip: my brother!
A neat use of technology in absentee balloting is going live in Maryland. Beginning with the upcoming gubernatorial primary in September, voters will be able to print the appropriate absentee ballot directly from their own computers.
From the article:
Those who created the program argue that these voters cannot vote in person, may not know what address they will be at on election day, and until now have had to wait for the postal system to deliver their absentee ballot, which can pose problems for overseas voters. By getting their ballot from the Internet, voters no longer have to worry where their ballot should be mailed to or how long it will take to arrive.
Apologies for being a little late on this one, but it is worth linking. As New York begins to move from older voting technology (lever machines) to modern optical-scan machines, NYU’s Brennan Center is drawing attention to a potential programming problem:
Under the new system voters will fill out a paper ballot and then “scan” them into an electronic machine. The State and City Boards have set up the new machines so that they do not give voters adequate warning of “overvotes”– ballots that cannot be read in full because the machine reads the ballot as having too many votes for a particular contest. Instead of returning the ballot, as is done in many other jurisdictions, in New York the ballot will be retained, and a computer screen with present the voter with a confusing message that includes a green “cast” button. Voters are not told that if they press the green button, their vote will not count.
What’s striking about this problem is that it is easily avoidable. Election jurisdictions are able to control whether the machine “warns” voters, or not. It’s an question of programming, not a technological limitation. Indeed, the Center notes:
The only other time these voting machines have been used in the same way in a major election (13 counties in Florida in 2008), they produced overvote rates almost 14 times higher than expected, with thousands of votes for the presidential contest rejected – in comparison to almost no votes rejected in the 36 counties that automatically returned the ballots.
Comparisons between rates of early voting in different election cycles are fraught with peril – in general, it’s important to compare this year to past midterm elections. That said, looking at the 2010 and 2008 numbers in Florida reveals a pretty impressive showing for Republicans.
Democratic voters are far below their 2008 turnout rate, which is precisely what we’d expect for a midterm election. The Republican rate, however, is not far off that of the 2008 presidential election!
These are just early in-person data*, but this makes the strong Republican turnout even more remarkable: Typically, Democrats take advantage of early in-person voting at much higher rates.
*Absentee-by-mail returns, which account for around 50% of Florida’s early voting, are restricted to political parties.