[EL] Security issues with revealing residential location
Paul Gronke
paul.gronke at gmail.com
Sun Sep 11 11:09:16 PDT 2011
From the 2010 NVRA Report of the EAC, the table below reports the total, average (across reporting jurisdictions), and count (number of reporting jurisdictions) for the provision Prof. McDonald cites. Please note that change of party registration are (unfortunately) lumped in with change of addresses. I apologize for the formatting.
. tabstat qa5f, by(state) stat(sum mean count)
Summary for variables: qa5f
by categories of: state (State)
state | sum mean N
-------+------------------------------
AK | 130028 130028 1
AL | 440068 6568.179 67
AR | 71315 950.8667 75
AS | 91 91 1
AZ | 1024541 68302.73 15
CA | 1397606 31763.77 44
CO | 3434212 53659.56 64
CT | 346458 2050.047 169
DC | 76713 76713 1
DE | 77629 25876.33 3
FL | 0 . 0
GA | 495215 3114.56 159
GU | 0 . 0
HI | 43736 21868 2
IA | 342774 3462.364 99
ID | 56154 1276.227 44
IL | 0 . 0
IN | 517488 5624.87 92
KS | 0 . 0
KY | 0 0 120
LA | 300998 4703.094 64
MA | 175750 500.7123 351
MD | 615776 25657.33 24
ME | 94556 187.2396 505
MI | 772714 9309.807 83
MN | 196065 2253.621 87
MO | 1058392 11630.68 91
MS | 116984 2924.6 40
MT | 114653 2047.375 56
NC | 621168 6211.68 100
ND | 0 . 0
NE | 251097 2699.968 93
NH | 0 . 0
NJ | 588505 28024.05 21
NM | 199984 6060.121 33
NV | 14032 1079.385 13
NY | 281338 4850.655 58
OH | 770687 8961.477 86
OK | 170455 2213.701 77
OR | 0 . 0
PA | 1202822 17952.57 67
RI | 23971 614.641 39
SC | 0 . 0
SD | 50038 1389.944 36
TN | 359565 4609.808 78
TX | 1198473 4718.398 254
UT | 433818 14959.24 29
VA | 0 . 0
VT | 2677 20.59231 130
WA | 195965 5024.744 39
WI | 117272 1628.778 72
WV | 40016 3637.818 11
WY | 0 . 0
-------+------------------------------
---
Paul Gronke Ph: 503-517-7393
Fax: 503-661-0601
Professor, Reed College
Director, Early Voting Information Center
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland OR 97202
EVIC: http://earlyvoting.net
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On Sep 11, 2011, at 9:50 AM, Michael McDonald wrote:
> With regards to registered voters who move some little known provisions in
> the NVRA and VRA are relevant...
>
> The National Voter Registration Act provides for a procedure for registered
> voters who move within a local jurisdiction to change their address and vote
> on Election Day. Some states further apply these portable registration
> procedures statewide under state law. I found a positive turnout effect for
> movers of statewide portable registration, similar to the effect for
> Election Day registration in Michael P. McDonald. 2008. "Portable Voter
> Registration." Political Behavior 30(4): 491?501. I also found that these
> procedures to not entirely mitigate the negative effect of moving on voter
> turnout, suggesting that something about moving beyond registration
> requirements lowers participation.
>
> The 1970 Amendments to the Voting Rights Act allow movers -- who cross state
> boundaries within the registration deadline for their new state -- to vote
> for president and vice-president in their state of former residence, what is
> often called "presidential ballots" in state law. Interestingly, early
> adopting Election Day Registration states may have been responding to the
> 1970 VRA Amendment, prompting them revisit their voting procedures.
>
> The relevant NVRA citations:
>
> ? 1973gg?6(f) Change of voting address within a jurisdiction
> In the case of a change of address, for voting
> purposes, of a registrant to another address
> within the same registrar?s jurisdiction, the registrar
> shall correct the voting registration list
> accordingly, and the registrant?s name may not
> be removed from the official list of eligible voters
> by reason of such a change of address except
> as provided in subsection (d) of this section.
>
> ? 1973gg?6(d)(2)(A) (2) A notice is described in this paragraph if it
> is a postage prepaid and pre-addressed return
> card, sent by forwardable mail, on which the
> registrant may state his or her current address,
> together with a notice to the following effect:
> (A) If the registrant did not change his or
> her residence, or changed residence but remained
> in the registrar?s jurisdiction, the registrant
> should return the card not later than
> the time provided for mail registration under
> subsection (a)(1)(B) of this section. If the card
> is not returned, affirmation or confirmation of
> the registrant?s address may be required before
> the registrant is permitted to vote in a
> Federal election during the period beginning
> on the date of the notice and ending on the
> day after the date of the second general election
> for Federal office that occurs after the
> date of the notice, and if the registrant does
> not vote in an election during that period the
> registrant?s name will be removed from the
> list of eligible voters.
>
> ============
> Dr. Michael P. McDonald
> Associate Professor, George Mason University
> Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution
>
> Mailing address:
> (o) 703-993-4191 George Mason University
> (f) 703-993-1399 Dept. of Public and International Affairs
> mmcdon at gmu.edu 4400 University Drive - 3F4
> http://elections.gmu.edu Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
>
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Larry
> Levine
> Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 12:03 PM
> To: JBoppjr at aol.com; douglasrhess at gmail.com;
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Fwd: MAINE GOP UNCOVERS 19 ELECTION DAY REGISTRATIONS FROM
> ONE MAINE...
>
> My firm was running the campaign of a candidate in a hotly contested state
> assembly race several years back. About two weeks before the election, one
> of our staffers was at the registrar of voters office for some reason I
> can?t recall. While waiting to receive the information he requested, he took
> a look at the file of late registrations ? the physical list of voters who
> had registered too late to be added to the computer generated roles that
> would be used on election day. He noted that some 3,000 of those
> registrations were in the district in which our campaign was being waged and
> they represented about 90% of the late registrations in the entirety of Los
> Angeles County. We also sent staffers to a random selection of the address
> of some 100 of those registrations. We found not one of them was legitimate,
> so we call the matter to the attention of elections officials and the
> district attorney. I suspected from the start that it was not part of some
> scheme to steal the election, but rather was the work of someone who was
> being paid piece meal to register voters. After the election we checked the
> names of those 3,000 people and found that not one of them turned up to
> vote. By the way, we lost the election by a large margin. So, do I think we
> need to outlaw paid registration drives. NO. Those of us involved in the
> process just need to be alert. In the case cited above and individual
> eventually was identified as the culprit and was convicted of several counts
> of I-can?t-remember-what.
> I cited the above as an anomaly. From my 41 years of experience in the
> electoral process I believe that is true of almost all of the cases of
> registration, or ?voter fraud? that are commonly cited as the reasons for
> enactment of policies to restrict the registration and/or voting process.
> Others on this list have made compelling arguments for that position. I
> agree with them.
> I do believe, however, based on evidence of actual experience, that the
> process is open to substantial mischief on the part of elections officials
> and partisans involved in campaigns. I was involved in one such campaign in
> Brooklyn, NY in 1972, when a judge threw out the results of a Democratic
> Congressional primary election and ordered the election re-held because of
> ?substantial mischief? by elections officers.
> Larry
>
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
> [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of
> JBoppjr at aol.com
> Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 4:35 AM
> To: douglasrhess at gmail.com; Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Fwd: MAINE GOP UNCOVERS 19 ELECTION DAY REGISTRATIONS FROM
> ONE MAINE...
>
> Of course I don't know if this situation is true here or not, and maybe not,
> but one of my experiences, that all seem to acknowledge and that I draw on,
> is false registrations. If they were false, it seems that requiring a voter
> ID would likely prevent voting based on the false registration. There are
> many documented cases of false registrations, so why isnt this a remedy to
> prevent voting based on the false registration? And if the intent behind
> false registration isn't voting based on them, what would it be? Jim Bopp
>
> In a message dated 9/10/2011 9:01:46 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> douglasrhess at gmail.com writes:
> Thanks for Megan, et al. for following up on the ME case (or non-case).
>
> My first thought was that this was another example of ID proponents only
> going with their own experience: most of us only stay at hotels for short
> stays, so these people must be the same. My first thought was that these
> were likely employees of some firm or business who were in the state for an
> extended off and on again stay...maybe they knew they were going to be in
> the state for the days/weeks around election in thought this was the best
> way to vote. Or even campaign workers who decided that after several months
> in the state they might as well vote there (nothing illegal about that...is
> there?). My final thought was that homeless can use as their address a
> location where they get mail, even if they don't sleep there. If the hotel
> was in an area with lots of poverty, this address might serve that purpose.
>
> Lots of possibilities...did the GOP in Maine make a statement regarding the
> explanation given my the Dems there?
>
> [Note: I cut the text from the thread because it was doing something odd in
> gmail with the length of lines.]
>
> -Doug
>
>
>
>
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