The Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement is the gold standard to understand voter turnout in the United States. The study is the largest ongoing survey of voting participation in the United States, and is used not only by political scientists, election lawyers and civil rights advocates, but is also cited by Supreme Court Justices.
Michael McDonald of the United States Election project has been warning for years that CPS turnout estimates were beginning to deviate in worrisome ways from data collected from exit polls, validated surveys, and official election returns.
New research in the Public Opinion Quarterly by Aram Hur and Christopher Achen validates McDonald’s claims.
From the abstract:
The Voting and Registration Supplement to the Current Population Survey (CPS) employs a large sample size and has a very high response rate, and thus is often regarded as the gold standard among turnout surveys. In 2008, however, the CPS inaccurately estimated that presidential turnout had undergone a small decrease from 2004. We show that growing nonresponse plus a long-standing but idiosyncratic Census coding decision was responsible. We suggest that to cope with nonresponse and overreporting, users of the Voting Supplement sample should weight it to reflect actual state vote counts.
Important reading for anyone who uses the CPS.
I just received an interesting set of proposals for improving election administration in California, courtesy of California Forward (I have no affiliation with this organization, but the leadership appears to be non-partisan).
Among the ideas they support:
- California Forward Action Fund (CFAF) supported Assemblymember Mullin’s AB 1135 which expands tools that are used to verify signatures on vote-by-mail ballots.
- Senator Padilla’s SB 360 will enable California to move forward with the development of new voting systems that reflect today’s electorate.
- The group is called Future of California Elections (FOCE). California Forward is a member of this group because we believe that modernizing out elections system is a cornerstone critical to restoring a vibrant and responsive democracy in California.
- California was the first in the country to designate the state’s Health Benefit Exchange as a voter registration agency under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).
- The League of Women Voters of California is leading a study to develop a Best Practices Manual for Official Voter Information Guides (http://ca.lwv.org/announcement/2013/dec/open-call-voter-information-guides).
A full list of their ideas and proposals is here: http://www.cafwd.org/reporting/entry/year-in-review-voting-and-elections
Another job at TurboVote / DemocracyWorks came across the transom: Data lead on the Voting Information Project. This looks like an exciting opportunity for the right person who wants to take the jump into big data and election administration.
http://blog.turbovote.org/2013/12/12/job-data-lead-vip/
Phil Keisling, Oregon’s Secretary of State from 1991-1999 and currently director of the Center for Public Service at the Hatfield School of Portland State University, wants mayors to be elected in non-partisan elections, held at the same time as general elections. He is worried about low turnout in partisan primaries held in odd year elections (in the recent NYC mayoral primary, turnout was 22% overall, only 13% among registered Republicans). He worries that partisan election systems “relegate minority-party and non-affiliated voters to “observers-on-the-sidelines” status while forcing candidates through the same partisan paces that are driving our national politics into the ditch.” “(E)fficiently delivering core municipal services or revitalizing downtowns” has little to do with the issues that currently animate party divisions in Washington. Swich to non-partisan elections, Phil argues, to increase turnout, attract young people to the polls, and revitalize trust in government. (The full argument is here: http://www.governing.com/columns/smart-mgmt/col-wrong-ways-elect-mayors-partisan-odd-numbered-years-instant-runoff-voting.html)
Phil Keisling has a well-deserved reputation as an election innovator for pushing through vote by mail in Oregon. He advocated for the top-two primary in Oregon. And he continues to work to improve civic policies and engage young people in government.
But on this point–as on the top-two primary proposed in Oregon in 2008–Phil and I will have to politely disagree. Let’s not toss out the party baby along with the dirty bathwater, especially if the bathwater is being generated in Washington, D.C., not in our local municipalities.
Phil’s unhappiness with the direction of the national Republican Party may be blinding him to the positive role that political parties can play in structuring politics not just in the United States, but in every democratic political system yet devised by man.
John Aldrich, a political scientist at Duke, famously asks “Why Parties?“, and his answer is that
parties serve to combat three fundamental problems of democracy: how to regulate the number of people seeking public office; how to mobilize voters; and how to achieve and maintain the majorities needed to accomplish goals once in office.
Parties are a “name brand”, according to another political scientist,”providing credible information about how politicians are likely to act in office.” Parties serve as training grounds for new political actors, recruit candidates for office, and provide avenues for upward political mobility. Partisanship among individual voters remains the most important predictor of the vote, and helps voters make order out of a bewildering variety of political claims and issues.
Political parties are obviously not a panacea, and political divisions are deeply problematic in America today.
But let’s not cure the disease by killing the patient. The problem as I see it is that Phil lumps together different institutional forms–most notably closed partisan primaries with general elections–and concludes that all party labels must be a bad thing for turnout and for voting.
There is a good argument to be made for opening up partisan primaries to unaffiliated voters, as many states do, or perhaps having a “top two” or some other “open” system. It’s not clear that this will result in substantially increased turnout in primary elections, as Phil claims, but it would allow those voters who don’t want to officially affiliate when registering to vote to participate in the primary.
But to leap from there to non-partisan general elections is a leap too far. Voting in a non-partisan general election, according to Brian Schaffner and Matt Streb, is like watching a football game where the teams aren’t wearing uniforms. No one knows who is ahead, who is behind, or who to root for.
Non-partisan elections do not increase turnout–they depress it. Non-partisan election do not result in more-informed voting, but instead they force voters to replace one cue (party) with others (interest groups), and most problematic, they end up empowering incumbents.
Nor is there any guarantee that a party label assures a victory. Phil makes the unfortunate error of claiming that winning a partisan primary in New York City is tantamount to victory in the general election. Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Guiliani would beg to differ.
Once we get beyond non-partisanship, Keisling advocates for a number of positive reforms. Align local and state elections with the federal general elections? Absolutely. Experiment with innovations like instant runoff voting, which avoid the need for partisan primaries? Great idea.
But abandon political parties? Unless you want to strengthen incumbents and interest groups and weaken voter control, it’s not a good idea.
Jeff Mapes reports in the Oregonian: http://www.oregonlive.com/mapes/index.ssf/2013/10/secretary_of_state_kate_brown_1.html
Still left untold is the story behind Steve Trout’s departure.
Wilson, D. C., & Brewer, P. R. (2013). The Foundations of Public Opinion on Voter ID Laws: Political Predispositions, Racial Resentment, and Information Effects. Public Opinion Quarterly.
Abstract: Voter ID laws require individuals to show government-endorsed identification when casting their ballots on Election Day. Whereas some see these laws as necessary to prevent voting fraud, others argue that fraud is extremely rare and that voter ID laws can suppress voting. The relative newness of the laws, along with variance in their substance, suggests that the public may possess low information about voter ID laws; thus, opinions on the issue may be influenced by political information, group predispositions, and the media. Using data from a national poll (n = 906), this study investigates what underlies opinion on voter ID laws. The results indicate that political predispositions, including ideology, party identification, and racial attitudes, influence support for such laws. The results also yield evidence of several types of information effects. A question-wording experiment shows that exposure to an anti–voter ID law argument framing voter ID laws as preventing eligible people from voting reduced support, whereas other framing treatments (pro and con) had no discernible impact on opinion. A “polarization effect” emerges, with issue familiarity magnifying the gap in opinion between liberals and conservatives. Fox News viewers are particularly likely to support voter ID laws, though no other forms of media use are significantly related to support. Finally, perceptions of voting fraud as “common” are associated with support for voter ID laws.
It’s good when friends help friends! I have been swamped this academic year, as my slow pace of blogging shows.
But this post by Doug Chapin, courtesy of Brian Newby, says in one post what I’ve been trying to tell folks for years. Placing early voting locations is not as easy as creating a pop up Halloween store. The combination of a short term lease and high end electrical, Internet, and accessibility needs make them as rare in some counties as Oregon sunshine in November.
Keep that in mind, Daily Kos and others, when criticizing officials. Scrutinize them, for sure, but make sure you also understand what constraints they may be operating under.
Just kidding.
Doug Chapin at the Election Academy highlights a report out of Ohio showing that, of the 210 cases described, 40 (all from Franklin County” were “referred for more investigation” and only 2 resulted in any prosecution, one for a man who voted for President in another state but for local initiatives in Ohio, and a second for a petition gatherer who falsified names on a petition.
The latter case, of course, does not constitute voting fraud.
The results is 1/210, or .004 of the cases, constituted actual voter fraud. Zero cases of voter impersonation at the polls. Zero cases of illegal immigrants voting. Zero cases or organized voter fraud at all. As one Republican county prosecutor put it: “There’s a couple of isolated incidents of people making bone-headed decisions.”
I don’t expect to see many news stories helping to educate skeptical Americans that vote fraud is not, in fact, rampant in Ohio or in other states.