Selecting the Stewards of Democracy
In our last blog post we explored turnover among local election officials in the US. In this installment we turn to examine how the Stewards of Democracy are selected for their positions and how LEOs themselves think about selection methods. We hope our results can inform ongoing discussions about how we select the local and state officials who administer American elections.
Local election officials that administer elections across the United States may have run for office, been appointed, or been hired into their positions. Elections may have been partisan or non-partisan contests. As with so many features in American election administration, selection methods vary both across and within states.
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America’s “Stewards of Democracy”: Experienced In Their Jobs, But Turnover Is Greater In Smaller Jurisdictions
Some 8,000 local election officials guide elections across the United States. These local officials work to assure the safety, security, and legitimacy of our elections. These Stewards of Democracy are a critical group in our nation – yet they do not receive much attention.
In 2018, the Early Voting Information Center (EVIC) at Reed College, in partnership with the Democracy Fund, initiated an annual survey of local elections officials to learn more, and to share the perspectives of these public servants. This is the first in a series of posts sharing our 2019 results, reflecting on what we have learned in the first two years of our polling.
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There’s a good story at 538.com by Nathaniel Rakich on the turnout effects of automatic voter registration. He does a good job identifying the boundaries of the potential effects, and is sensitive to the difficult problem of identifying the counter-factual.
Gronke quote about behavioral economics and opt-in / opt-out implementation:
And then there’s the behavioral economics of it all. Reed College professor Paul Gronke told FiveThirtyEight that social science research has generally found that an opt-out system (like AVR) is more effective than an opt-in one (like having to actively register yourself).
The research continues!
Early Voting and the Iowa Caucus: Can They Coexist?
A great article in Salon by the always insightful Steven Rosenfeld illustrates the difficulties of implementing national party mandates for a fully inclusive primary system while retaining the unique in-person and face to face features of the Iowa caucus.
The immediate takeaway from the article is that the phone-based system for “virtual voting” that was proposed in Iowa and Nevada has severe security risks, and it’s been abandoned. The bigger question, it seems to me, is whether or not requiring absentee (and presumably early) voting in Iowa will fundamentally alter the dynamics of this contest, with reverberations down the line in our sequential nominating process.
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Reporting Results from the 2018 DF/RC LEO Survey: The “Bin” Question
We are nearing a final release of the 2018 Democracy Fund / Reed College Local Election Official survey. Our current discussion is all about the “bins”. In other words, what is the best way to categorize local election officials, and by implication local election jurisdictions, so as to provide some meaningful categories for comparison but not lump together very disparate locations.
How Geospatial Mapping Can Improve Election Audits
Today’s electionline story describes 25 houses in Hamden, CT that have been incorrectly assigned to election districts since the last redistricting cycle in 2011, and have been the wrong ballots. There are charges that voters have been “disenfranchised” though it’s unclear whether the ballots were counted for the “wrong” race, or only some races were counted.
The process obviously needs to be investigated, and Secretary of State Denise Merrill is calling not just for a detailed investigation of Hamden’s procedures, but a statewide audit when it became clear that there were additional districting errors, including candidates who were elected in districts where they were not residents.
Early Voting over the past 20 years
Early voting has been steadily increasing over the past 20 years.
While different data sources come up with slightly different estimates, the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement shows that the level of early voting has tripled since 1998 in midterm elections, and has gone up two and half times in presidential years.
If the levels this year are 30% or higher, it will be the most in any midterm. It’s unlikely that this year’s early voting rate will hit the 2016 level of 39%, but it’s possible that we might approach it.
The first paper, “The Problems of Minimal Support: Considerations for an Establishment Survey of Local Election Officials,” is co-authored by Jay Lee and Paul Gronke.
Here is the abstract (click https:/evic.reed.edu/spsa_sampling_paper/ to view the full paper).
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