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.
A delay in counting the “deluge” of mail in ballots in last Tuesday’s California primary has sparked calls for County Clerk Barbara Dunmore’s resignation. Delays in counting ballots in California has been recognized for a long time. One of the main causes is that California allows citizens to drop off their absentee ballots “in person” on election day at any local precinct. Administratively, this means that, at the end of the day, all of these ballots need to be transported to the central counting location, validated, opened, and processed.
CA is also a voter-intent state, which only further slows the processing of vote by mail ballots, where citizens are more prone to make stray marks and errors that are not flagged by optical scanning readers.
I can’t imagine how this could be done in any large county by the next morning, as some state legislators apparently want. There is a clear tension between a speedy final count and a very generous, vote anywhere and in any way system like currently exists in many California counties.
Full story here.
This story out of Passaic County is not another story about absentee ballots and vote fraud. But it is a cautionary tale about how important ballot handling procedures can be when new voting systems are implemented.
The basic summary is this: a county clerk found 49 uncounted mail in ballots while “handling” the ballots after the election. Even though the envelopes had been time-stamped indicating that they had arrived on time, the clerk chose not to count them because the election results had already been announced. A judge overturned this decision, and once counted, a different winner was declared.
What I found most curious, and disturbing, about the story is this quote:
Ken Hirrman, an office administrator with the Passaic County Board of Elections, said he discovered the 49 ballots Tuesday while handling the mail-in ballots.
Hirmann said he noticed the uncounted ballots because they were enclosed in thicker envelopes, indicating that they had not been opened and counted.
I have witnessed a lot of vote by mail and absentee balloting systems and have interviewed dozens of election officials about their administrative procedures. I can’t imagine putting in place a system whereby the situation above could possibly occur. This means that the ballot, still inside the secrecy sleeve, and then still inside the stamped envelope, somehow made it through the slicing process, the signature verification process, the separation of the outside envelope from the inner ballot process, and finally the tallying process, and no one noticed that there were still intact envelopes in the batch?
New Jersey has only recently gone to no-excuse absentee and permanent absentee. I hope they have also paid attention to some of the long established ballot handling procedures put in place in CA, OR, WA, IA, and many other states.
There have been accusations of absentee vote fraud in Lincoln County, WV, when 75% of absentee ballots that were requested were returned, and 90% of those favored one group of candidates.
The response of county officials is not encouraging:
“Our office encouraged every voter to participate in the democratic process, whether it be early voting at the courthouse, at local voting precincts or absentee voting,” Scraggs read from the statement. “An increase in any of the options is an encouraging sign that the democratic process is alive and well.
“Therefore, who would think that having more people vote is a bad thing?” Scraggs read.
This is a wonderful example of how election forensics can detect likely election fraud. While the technology is complicated (see Walter Mebane’s papers and Alvarez, Hall, and Hyde’s book), the intuition behind the statistics is simple.
In short, 75% absentee ballot return is not “high” or “low” unless you compare it to some standard. The problem is that it’s impossible to discover absentee ballot return rates from the state’s website. Since overall turnout was juist 42.99% in 2008, however, that 75% return rate does seem high (keep in mind that absentee voters have actively requested a ballot, already indicating their preference for voting).
As to the totals for one faction vs. the other, the county elections website shows no vote totals at all for 2008! This makes judging the 2010 results a bit sketchy.
Data = transparency!
Oregon has been entirely vote-by-mail for nearly 10 years (even longer for non-federal elections). Voters can return their ballots in the mail, or they can drop them at elections offices and special ballot drop boxes located around the state. Over at Election Updates, EVIC’s Paul Gronke postulated that the particularly high number of late ballot returns in this election—36% in the last two days—could have been the cause of delayed counting in Oregon (particularly Multnomah County).
Ballot return trends over the past decade, however, don’t appear to support this theory. We know from past experience that many voters hold on to their ballots until election day; they have done so since the inception of vote-by-mail. The graph on the left shows the raw numbers of ballots returned in the last two days (this includes election day). The right graph shows the same as a percentage of total ballot returns. Clearly, the sheer volume of returns is not unprecedented—every general election, bar 2004, has had a high rate of late returns. I’ll see if I can track down some Multnomah-specific data to see if the county differed from the statewide pattern.
The media have widely reported the changes to the traditional early voting demographics. As many outlets have correctly pointed out, the surge in African-American and Democratic voters has been quite pronounced. However, I’ve noticed that some in the media are also talking about high rates of early voting among young people. I saw a news report a few nights ago in which the reporter proudly announced a surge of young voters in Florida. Hmm. I’m not sure the data support this assertion.
Take a look at the following early in-person graphs. The ‘ballots cast’ graph (left) shows fairly familiar patterns: a normal (“bell-shaped”) distribution, peaking in the mid-fifties. This is in line with our expectations. (Though African-American early voters appear to be a little younger: the mean (average) age of white voters was 55, while the mean for blacks was 10 years lower, at 45.)
But this isn’t the whole story. There are many more 50-year-old registered voters than 18-year-old. It’s worth asking how young voters are turning out in proportion to their group size. The proportional graph (right) shows the percentage of ballots cast by registered voters in each age-race category. For example, look at the 18-year-old columns. These tell you that approximately 34% of registered, African-American 18-year-olds, and 14% of registered, white 18-year-olds, cast their ballots early in-person.
The two proportional curves indicate similar age distributions of each group’s early voters. African-Americans trend a little younger (in both peak and shape), but the broad patterns are the same. And, certainly, neither indicates a groundswell of young turnout.By the way, this similarity also explains the apparent discrepancy in the average ages of black and white early voters. It is largely a discrepancy in the ages of black and white registered voters. In Florida—the retirement state—registered African-American voters are younger, on average, than registered white voters.
Excepting the small spikes at the youngest end—and these age groups are numerically quite small—there appears to be little reason to conclude that young voters are turning out in high numbers. Unlike some other demographic groups, young people do not appear to be confounding conventional wisdom. Indeed, the most interesting thing about these graphs is that they, again, highlight the high African-American turnout overall.
I’ve included the proportional partisan graphs too, and the story is much the same.
A few points to note; remember my Florida caveats. First, the registration data are slightly outdated (we obtained our files in the Summer). Since then, registration has climbed precipitously, with reports of many new young voters joining the rolls. So, we are likely to have overstated—but not understated—proportional turnout for some categories (and especially at the young end).
Second, these are only early in-person breakdowns. (In Florida, only registered political parties have access to absentee-by-mail data during the election period.) Absentee-by-mail voters, especially in this state, are more likely to be older (and whiter, and more Republican, etc), so this too is unlikely to affect the conclusion that young voters aren’t turning out in noteworthy numbers.
Where’s the promised youth excitement? It will be interesting to compare these trends to those on Election Day.
I have been receiving literally dozens of emails every day. I am sorry that I cannot answer all of these questions individually, but the most common and most important one is this:
YES. Your early votes ARE counted.
It is not true that early votes are only counted if an election is close. The final, certified results include all ballots.
I spent the end of last week in Bellingham, WA (a wonderful city by the way–but keep it a secret!) and experienced the impact of a “slow count” firsthand. At least in Washington, the vote totals are updated daily, and for the press, this seems to provide an ongoing source of breathless coverage, as pundits (my friend Todd Donovan, a professor at Western Washington among them) speculate about the remaining ballots.
But much of our conversation as the week went on centered on the Australian election.
Nearly a week after polling day, as many as two million “special” ballots remain uncounted in the Australian federal election, and the balance of party control remains in question. While the parties continue to maneuver over potential governing coalitions, 14% of ballots cast have yet to be counted.
How did Australia get into this situation?
Observers of elections in the United States have lots of experience with slow counts.
In Alaska’s Senate primary battle between Joe Miller and incumbent Lisa Murkowski, Miller currently holds a 1,900 vote lead with 10,000 absentee votes left to be counted. According to the Alaska Secretary of State’s website, “early” and “in-person absentee” ballots are counted “from election night through up to 15 days after the election.” Unlike many other American jurisdictions, Alaska is a “postmark state”: so long as absentee ballots are mailed on or before Election Day, they will be counted up to the 10th day after the election. The slow count in Alaska is exacerbated by another provision in state law that early in person votes cannot start to be processed until 8 pm on Election Night.
So too in Washington State, voters only need postmark their ballot by Election Day. Election outcomes can play out over a period of several weeks while ballots trickle in to local offices and are processed and counted. The Gregoire/Rossi vote count in Washington’s very close Governor’s race in 2004 was a good example, but ongoing coverage of close races in the state continue to provide examples.
California regularly has slow counts for a different reason. The state allows absentee ballots to be returned to any precinct in the county on Election Day. (121,274 ballots were returned in LA County’s 2008 general election in this way.) Obviously, these ballots cannot be processed — signatures verified, envelopes opened, voter intent determined, and votes counted — until well after the polls close.
So where is Australia? It turns out that, in some ways, Australia has adopted the worst of all rules — at least in terms of determining an election outcome on a timely basis. Like many things in Australia, according to Todd, the country’s election law is a fusion of America and Britain, with a bit of Australasian flair.
The various categories of non-precinct-place voting in Australia are wide-ranging:
In Australia, these non-precinct-place ballots are known as “declaration votes”. Unlike regular polling-place votes, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is expressly forbidden from even opening the envelopes of declaration votes until after Election Day.
So, like Alaska, California, and other jurisdictions before it, Australia now finds that the outcome of its election hinges on a slow and methodical count of absentee ballots. The diverse voting methods and lenient policies are doubtless a boon for many voters, but as with any aspect of electoral administration, there’s a cost to be borne. In this case, the price is a slow count.
This is not a problem, per se. Indeed, ensuring the widest possible franchise in a country with mandatory voting is a laudable goal. But it is something for election administrators and policymakers to pay heed to. Still, in Australia’s case, the Electoral Commission might look to the example of Oregon (a state with a great deal of practical experience in this area), and allow officials to open, verify, and process — though not actually count — ballots before Election Day.
Crossposted at Election Updates.