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.’”
Visualizing the Position 4 Portland City Council Race
Canyon Foot ’20 and Paul Gronke
The runoff election between Commissioner Chloe Eudaly and her challenger, Mingus Mapps, is likely the hottest Portland area election in in November.
Eudaly, no stranger to the challenge of ousting an incumbent, has found herself on the defensive. In the May primary, the vote was split between three contenders: Eudaly with 31.3% of the vote, Mapps with 28.6%, and former mayor Sam Adams, who garnered received 27.7%. Five other candidates divided the remaining 12.4% of the vote. Because no one received over 50% in the May election, there will be a run-off between the top two candidates in November.
Continue readingProfessor Paul Gronke, director of the Early Voting Information Center (EVIC) at Reed College, quipped in the New York Times:
“Everyone’s focusing on the rate of voting by mail, which is going to easily double what it was in 2016 — somewhere north of 80 million ballots…But people aren’t paying attention to what might happen if there’s a spike in the pandemic or a shortage of poll workers and there’s a last-minute reduction in in-person voting.”
Gronke’s comments on the nationwide conversation on voting amidst the COVID-19 pandemic pivots our thinking towards issues of capacity. Should Local Election Officials become unable to work due to COVID-19, already stressed election districts could experience unprecedented difficulty conducting the election.
Imaginative solutions backed by a flock of volunteers will be necessary to ensure a safe and successful election this November.
Read the full story here.
By Canyon Foot ’20, Paul Manson ’01, Paul Gronke, and Jay Lee ’19
Motivation:
Canyon Foot and Paul Gronke have recently posted two analyses of the Portland City Council races. For these analyses, we hoped to understand the spatial and demographic variation of support for City Council and other contests defined by the geographic and political boundaries in Multnomah County.
What we are doing: Spatial joins between Census Tracts and precincts:
In order to answer these questions, researchers often rely on estimates produced by the US Census using the American Community Survey (ACS). Unlike the Decennial Census, the ACS samples a percentage of households each year to ask about detailed demographics including income, employment, housing, etc. These are then aggregated at various geographies from the block group up to counties, metropolitan areas and states. These smaller units have smaller samples, and thus more error. As such, researchers often must work with a larger area because of its greater sample size (and smaller error).
It’s All About (Precinct) Turnout: Post Election Analysis of the Portland City Council Position 2 Runoff
It’s been an exciting year in Portland city politics. Three City Council seats were being on the ballot in May, and two of the most hotly contested were Seat 2, the replacement election for the late Nick Fish, and Seat 4, with current Commissioner Chloe Eudaly facing off with two high-profile challengers.
We’ll be releasing our analysis of the Seat 4 race later this week. In this posting, we are looking at the August 11th run-off special election between Loretta Smith and Dan Ryan.
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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.
Continue reading →