A very interesting panel coming up at the APSA meetings in Chicago is shown below. My only worry is that Rick Hasen has already posted his paper on SSRN. Doesn’t Rick realize that APSA papers are not supposed to be written prior to a week before the conference?
Looks like a great panel, and I’ll definitely be there.
| Law and Political Process Study Group Panel 1 The Future of the Voting Rights Act After the Shelby County Case |
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| Date: | Thursday, Aug 29, 2013, 2:00 PM-3:45 PM | |||||||||||||||
| Location: | Room assignments are pending. Check back soon for room assignments. Only those registered for the meeting can view room assignments. Subject to change. Check the Final Program at the conference. | |||||||||||||||
| Chair(s): | Bruce E. Cain Stanford University, be.cain48@gmail.com |
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| Author(s): |
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| Discussant(s): | Luis Ricardo Fraga University of Washington, lrfraga@uw.edu Guy-Uriel Charles Duke University School of Law, charles@law.duke.edu |
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The bill text is contained here: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2013/HB0521.html
Hat tip to the Sunlight Foundation’s “Scout” system that I have signed up for and alerted me to this bill.
On May 21st, Gov. Rick Scott of Florida signed into law CS/HB 7103. The bill includes changes to absentee voting laws, to requirements for the quality of voting technology, to the word limits of constitutional amendments, and to many other areas of election administration that are both visible and invisible to the voting public.
At EVIC, we are following the changes made to early voting. Some view HB 7103 as a victory for early voting advocates and a defeat for Republicans (try this article, or this one, or this one), because HB 7103 is considered a redaction of HB 1355, a controversial piece of legislation that some argue caused over 200,000 to not vote in 2012 and created 6-9 hour lines for those who stuck around. Michael C. Herron and Daniel A. Smith claim that Democratic, African American, Hispanic, young, and first-time voters were disproportionally impacted by the HB 1355. Other survey results don’t speak directly to the impact on minority groups, but do show that lines in Florida were longer than anywhere else in the country.
Will HB 7103 make things better? Why did 13 Democrats in the Florida State Senate oppose the bill? The devil is in the details, and these details may derail the hopes of early voting advocates (here is a PDF of the HB 7103).
Let’s start with section 13 (pg. 24-26 of the PDF)–where we find the most significant changes to early voting:
“The supervisor [of elections] may also designate any city hall, permanent public library facility, fairground, civic center, courthouse, county commission building, stadium, convention center, government-owned senior center, or government-owned community center as early voting sites” (lines 681-686)
“a supervisor may designate one early voting site per election in an area of the county that does not have any of the eligible early voting locations” (689-691)
“Each county shall, at a minimum, operate the same total number of early voting sites for a general election which the county operated for the 2012 general election” (694-697)
“Early voting shall begin on the 10th day before an election that contains state or federal races and end on the 3rd day before the election, and shall be provided for no less than 8 hours and no more than 12 hours per day at each site during the applicable period” (700-704)
“In addition, early voting may be offered at the discretion of the supervisor of elections on the 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 11th, or 2nd day before an election that contains state or federal races for at least 8 hours per day, but not more than 12 hours per day” (704-708)
The first provision means that there will may be greater use of satellite early voting locations, and as Bob Stein has shown, this would increase the use of early voting and voter turnout overall. An increase in the minimum number of early voting hours per day could make it easier to vote early for some citizens. Discretionary authority to offer early voting on additional days returns the state to the situation prior to HB1355.
However, discretionary authority is not mandated requirements. Only time will tell if county supervisors will take advantage of the ability to offer early voting for more days and at more places. The bill contains no additional funding for local officials, so how likely is it that counties will pay for early voting out of their own budgets? It’s possible that early voting could be very accessible in wealthy counties and relatively inaccessible in poorer counties, creating the same kind of racial and ethnic disparities Herron and Smith point to in 2012.
Is this the only change to early voting in Florida? There is one more provision that caught our eye. From section 19 of 7103:
“The supervisor of elections shall upload into the county’s election management system by 7 p.m. on the day before the election the results of all early voting and absentee ballots that have been canvassed and tabulated by the end of the early voting period. Pursuant to ss. 101.5614(9), 101.657, and 101.68(2), the tabulation of votes cast or the results of such uploads may not be made public before the close of the polls on election day” (1100-1107)
If we are reading this correctly, this is a major change in Florida election law, and early in-person and absentee ballot returns are not going to be made available for public scrutiny until after the election. If this is an accurate reading, vote mobilization efforts in Florida will be substantially harmed, since campaigns will no longer be able to track who has already returned their ballots. It may be that we are misreading the intent of the term “tabulation” which refers to actual candidate totals and not information on voter turnout. We look forward to hearing that we have misinterpreted this provision.
CORRECTION: We are very pleased to learn that Section 19 of 7103 does not impact election reporting. A state election official from Florida has let us know that the provision instead requires supervisors of elections to internally upload early voting decisions prior to Election Day. Glad to hear about the correction!
The text of a bill being shopped for co-sponsorship by Rep. Jeff Stone is available here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mLjnrnzcwYTxmG5gREKaFLD0sazb58DwZ4UgJjypIAk/edit
It’s not clear to me what the impact will be of the proposed changes to early voting. It appears that Madison and Milwaukee kept their early voting locations open longer hours and on holidays, while other counties did not. I’m generally not a fan of shortening early voting hours without a good rationale, but there is a reasonable argument to be made for standardized days statewide. The typical response, which also has some credence, is that different counties have different populations and different situations. I’d mostly prefer a floor on availability (a mandated level of equity if you will) while allowing counties the option to provide more times and places.
The proposal disallows early voting on the Saturday and Sunday before an election, a mistake in my judgment. A GAO report, among other sources, shows the positive impact on turnout and convenience of weekend voting, and eleven states seem to manage just fine with early voting ending on Monday while five more end it the last Saturday before Election Day.
A recently released GAO report titled “Voters with Disabilities: Challenges to Voter Accessibility” should be of interest to the election community and to the new Presidential commission.
While challenges remain, there is no way to read this report in my opinion other than as good news. HAVA and state and local responses to polling place problems identified in the debate over HAVA have clearly improved accessibility at the polls. From the summary:
Compared to 2000, the proportion of polling places in 2008 without potential impediments increased and almost all polling places had an accessible voting system as states and localities made various efforts to help facilitate accessible voting. In 2008, based upon GAO’s survey of polling places, GAO estimated that 27 percent of polling places had no potential impediments in the path from the parking to the voting area—up from16 percent in 2000; 45 percent had potential impediments but offered curbside voting; and the remaining 27 percent had potential impediments and did not offer curbside voting. All but one polling place GAO visited had an accessible voting system—typically, an electronic machine in a voting station—to facilitate private and independent voting for people with disabilities. However, 46 percent of polling places had an accessible voting system that could pose a challenge to certain voters with disabilities, such as voting stations that were not arranged to accommodate voters using wheelchairs. In GAO’s 2008 state survey, 43 states reported that they set accessibility standards for polling places, up from 23 states in 2000.
Much of the data in the report is contained in two previous studies conducted during the 2008 election. It’s unfortunate that Congressional funding of elections-related research seems to be drying up. How useful would it have been to replicate the GAO’s random selection and observation of 730 polling places in 2008? That’s a election-science dream.
Following Doug Chapin’s lead, re-disseminating Gary Bartlett’s wonderful parting comments in electionline weekly after his replacement after 20 years as Director of the North Carolina Board of Elections.
Gary has accomplished many things in two decades, but for scholars, NC has long been known as among the best states in terms of data availability and dissemination. I hope the new Board continues along this track.
Paul Gronke and Charles Stewart presented their paper on early voting in Florida at the Midwest Political Science Association conference the other week in Chicago. The paper highlights the effects restrictions to early voting had on voters in Florida in 2012.
In 2011, the State of Florida proposed a series of changes in how it conducts elections. In particular, the early voting period was reduced from 14 days to 8 days, eliminating the final Sunday of early in-person voting. In this paper, they analyze the impact of these changes on the Florida early electorate using statewide voter registration, voter history, and county early voting files, tracking the voting behavior of Floridians from 2006 to 2012, with a particular focus on African-Americans.
They demonstrate that while shortening the time of early voting does not appear to have hindered the earliest of early voters, it does appear to have dissuaded turnout among the latest early voters, especially those who previously voted on the final Sunday before Election Day. Voters who vote during “souls to the polls” on this particular Sunday, as well as others who voted on this day, were affected. The following graph shows a comparison of “souls to the polls” efforts in 2008 and 2012.
They further show that there is a racial element to these changes. Voters who faced more congestion and longer lines at the polls as a result of a reduction in early voting days were disproportionately African American. What’s more, African-American voters showed a substantially higher preference for voting on that final Sunday, but this preference is far less evident in 2012 after the changes to the law.
A copy of their paper can be found here.
Michael McDonald has a new column reporting early voting rates in 2012, compared to previous years, using the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement. The trends in early voting have been picked up by Rick Hasen and Doug Chapin, but Doug rightly highlights this caveat from Mike’s column:
Doug (and Mike) speculate that the differences may be due in part to no-excuse absentee voters who turn in their ballots on Election Day and tell the CPS that they voted “on Election Day”.
This is possible, but the postings highlight the ongoing challenge of collecting consistent and reliable information on the American elections system, especially information on things like early voting that are were not part of elections reporting systems just a decade ago.
Tracking the early vote has been a part of EVIC’s mission since our founding in 2004. A decade ago, few states or jurisdictions tracked no-excuse or early in-person ballots, and most polling organizations didn’t pay much attention either. Early voting crept up quietly on survey organizations; in 2000, our best estimate is that 16.26% of citizens cast a ballot prior to Election Day. This figure jumped nearly 50% in 2004, when 22.7% of citizens cast a ballot prior to Election Day. Anyone interested in American elections had to pay attention to the early vote.
There are three separate sources of information on the early vote. The good news is that the sources correlate highly, both across states and over time. The bad news is there is a persistent gap on the low-end, using the Current Population Survey’s Voting and Registration Supplement (VRS) and on the high end using data drawn from the Associated Press’s Election Services Unit.
In the table below, we report early voting totals from these three different sources for 2008 and 2010 (the CPS is used by McDonald in his column). Next we report data from the Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and Voting Survey. The third column reports information graciously provided by the Associated Press’s Elections Tabulation and Research Unit.
The CPS is a survey, one of the largest and best available, and the only way we have to track voter participation using different modes of balloting prior to 2004, when almost no other survey organizations were asking about alternative modes of balloting.
Prior to 2004, the CPS asked the question in a different way. PES4 (2002 and prior) asked the respondent whether they “voted in person on election day or before, or by mail.” From 2004 onwards, the CPS asked (PES5) “Did you vote in person or did you vote by mail?” and followed up with (PES6)“Was that on election day or before election day?”
McDonald’s and Chapin’s comments zero in on the number of respondents who cast a “by-mail” ballot but returned it on Election Day. In some jurisdictions, the number of citizens who cast a ballot this way are not inconsequential. According to Dean Logan, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles County, 202,584 vote by mail ballots were delivered in person to polling places in 2012. These totaled 6.3% of all ballots and 20.8% of no-excuse absentee ballots. Nationwide, however, the totals are far lower. In the 2012 CPS, only 458 or 59713 respondents, or 0.76% of all voters said the “voted by mail” and “voted on Election Day. To Doug’s point about California, twice as many Californians gave this response than nationally (8.27% vs. 4.83% of vote by mail respondents).
It doesn’t appear that the question wording made much of a material difference in how citizens reported voting (see the graphic below), although the terrain was changing so rapidly that it would be nearly impossible to separate question wording effects from actual changes in rates.
Source: Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement
Our second source is the EAC. This is generally the best source for early voting returns, especially since 2008 when state response rates have improved dramatically. There is only one minor quibble with the EAC, and it’s not with their data but their reports. The reports calculate statistics exactly as the states report them, even though the agency continues to wrestle with non-response problems. The careful user needs to be attentive to this fact. For instance, in 2010, Table 28A in the EAVS has 4678 reporting jurisdictions and 90,810,679 total voters. The same table reports that 8.2% of votes were cast early in-person, basing that result on 2318 jurisdictions.
The means that the EAC data probably slightly underreport the number of early in-person and no-excuse absentee voters.
Our third source is the AP. The Associated Press’s Elections Services Unit is an interesting entity. The AP is a no-profit cooperative of news organizations, and the Elections Unit begins to compile data from states and counties on early in-person and no-excuse ballots as soon as this information is available. They use this information on election night to help supplement their vote tabulation work. Post-election, they shift into a different mode, trying to assemble official results on total ballots cast, total vote, early votes cast/counted, mail ballot absentees cast/counted, provisional cast/counted, including digging down into precinct level certified results to compile some information not available from counties or states (including valuable breakouts of “advance” vs election day votes by candidate for key races).
In my past work, I’ve relied heavily on the AP’s data, because, unlike the EAC, they have reported results in a relatively consistent fashion back to 2000, and unlike the CPS, the data are ideally based on certified election returns and not on survey results.
These different data sources reflect different perceptions of the same reality. The Census Bureau data is invaluable because it tells us what voters did behaviorally and over 20 or more years. The EAC provides us insight into how states and local jurisdictions have categorized their ballots three to six months after the election.
If I were to make one suggestion, it would be to look closely at what is being done by the AP. The AP has a strong incentive to continue to go back to local jurisdictions and make sure that its final figures our correct.
The same incentives should be applied to whatever entity continues to collect the data for the EAVS. The EAC currently is focused on producing a congressionally mandated series of post-election reports. After that point, they are little incentive–and no funding–to go back and correct or amend their data. It would not be hard to provide a data collection and funding model that would incentivize not just timely reporting, but also ongoing data maintenance.