I can’t add much to this excellent report by Doug Chapin at the Program for Excellence in Election Administration.

I will out myself as Geek #1, but I suspect my friends in the community know this already. The demographics on the military were as of 2008, and were obtained from a slide presentation from the Defense Manpower Data Center.

The comments about income and region were drawn from a project I worked on with the Triangle Institute for Security Studies that compared demographic and attitudinal profiles of the rank and file, officers, and civilians, the results of which appeared in a number of publications including Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. The surveys were administered from 1998-9, but I have not heard anything to indicate that the recruitment and volunteer patterns have changed substantially since.

Finally, the comment about the relationship between serving in a hierarchical organization which stresses the importance of voting (as well as providing voting assistance officers) and the possibility that members of the military might participate at higher rates than their demographic and income profiles would predict is admittedly speculative. I based my comments on extensive research on military sociologists, such as the late Charles Moskos, as well as a preliminary but intriguing pattern I found in vote validation studies conducted by the National Election Studies. While the total number of military respondents in the survey is small, there is a statistically significantly greater propensity to over report being registered (10% difference) and to over report turnout (17% difference).

What this means is, to take one example, in the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, 89% of the general public who said they voted were validated as having voted, compared to 73% of the military. These findings are preliminary because there were only 51 military respondents in the CCES, and I suspect (but do not know) that all were stationed in the US. (The CCES survey is publicly available here.)

In the ongoing battle over absentee ballots in Colorado, we’ve heard the claims about disenfranchised military voters and we’ve heard the charges about partisanship.

Unfortunately, what we haven’t heard is some hard factual information that compares ballot return rates among active and inactive voters. Andrew Cole, spokesperson for Secretary of State Scott Gessler is quoted as saying “there were thousands of ballots mailed out to inactive voters in 2010 that were unaccounted for.”

I’ve tried to answer this question at the Denver County elections office. Total registration, active and inactive, was 297,558 according to the spreadsheet available here:

Of that total, 22,696 are “Inactive – Fail to vote”, or 7.63% of the total.

The number of mail ballots issued was 160,363, of which 121, 538 were returned and verified. 128,997 mail ballots were returned in total, leaving 31,366 total outstanding unreturned mail ballots, or 19.55% of the total.

What is unknown is whether this number is high or low, and whether the proportion is higher or lower among active vs. inactive voters. If we assume the proportions apply across the groups, then there would have been approximately 2400 mail ballots “unaccounted for” that were sent to inactive voters, with the remainder (nearly 29,000) sent to active voters.

While speculative—it is likely that the proportion of unreturned ballots is higher among inactive voters—these figures speak directly to the claim being made by Andrew Cole. And the problem of unaccounted for ballots, if viewed this way, is obviously much greater among active voters

I like the story but I don’t like the metaphor used in this week’s Electionline.

Mindy Moretti writes:

Like alcohol during prohibition, it turns out that many Ohio voters actually liked many of the elections procedures recently banned by the state legislature.

The point is well-taken; the Ohio Legislature eliminated times and places for voting that we taken advantage of by 234,000 citizens in Franklin County alone.  Like the changes being made in a number of other states, including Florida, Texas, and Georgia, legislators argue that these changes will save money. The fiscal impact note accompanying the bill, however, provides only slim evidence:

This provision shortens the amount of time for in-person absentee voting, which could reduce some costs for county boards of elections for operating these absent voter locations.

The bill also banned clerks from mailing absentee ballot applications to all registered voters and paying for return postage, which will obviously save money on mailing:

The bill prohibits a board of elections from mailing any unsolicited applications for absent voters’ ballots, and instead specifies that a board only mail an absent voter’s ballot application to a voter who has requested  one.  Additionally,  the bill prohibits  a board of elections that mails an absent voter’s ballot application from prepaying the return postage for that application or for the absent voter’s ballot.   Instead, under the bill the voter is responsible for paying the postage costs.  This change will result in some reduction in mailing expenses, although not all counties pay for the postage for absent voter’s ballots or applications. Franklin County does pay these costs, and typically sends unsolicited absent voters’ applications to individuals that have historically opted to vote by absent voter’s ballot. During the 2010 general election, the county spent approximately $115,000 for mailing approximately 160,000 absent voter’s ballots for the 2010 general election.

But wait – will this save money for the state or just for the citizens of Franklin County?  And if it’s the citizens of Franklin County, why is the state legislature poking their nose into the county’s fiscal affairs?  And it’s not even clear if this will really save money on conducting elections (not just on mailing ballots).  After all, many of those vote-by-mail ballots are going to be cast in person at an early voting location or at the polling place on Election Day.

I was interviewed for the Ohio story and had a mixed response to the changes.  I don’t regret shortening the period for early voting; I am convinced that most early voters will adapt, and those voters who cast ballots four weeks out will happily cast ballots two weeks out.  I am much more concerned, however, about banning satellite early voting, which Bob Stein and others have shown increases turnout and hold no security risks.

But back to Mindy: while I agree with the tenor of the story, is this really like “alcohol during prohibition”?  After all, it’s not like we expect to see election speak easies pop up in Franklin County where Al Capone gladly takes your early ballot, for a small fee of course!

Whatever our metaphor, the lesson is clear: if you give voters more options, some will choose those options.  And they’ll choose them because they like them.  If you then take those options away, some voters will be unhappy.  It’s a choice that clerks face every election.  It’s one thing, however, for a writer to take creative license; its another thing to pass legislation.

What’s often lacking legislative debates over elections is careful, systematic analysis of the costs and benefits of the changes. Instead, legislators rely on anecdotes and ill-chosen metaphors, and clerks end up trying to manage the unintended consequences.

Under newly proposed national standards, cursive writing will no longer being taught. Few under the age of 18 write in cursive any more, and it’s likely that we’ll have a growing proportion of the population that either types or uses block printing.

What does this mean for the signature, the main method of verifying vote by mail ballots, and which rely on unique patterns in handwriting?  Do these patterns hold up if individuals use block printing? I don’t know, but I’d love to hear from any election officials who have thought about this problem.

Stories on the end of cursive in the NY Times and Washington Post.