[EL] making a Democracy Index at the ballot box

Tue May 8 08:13:30 PDT 2012

While I agree that far more data gathering (and in a sound manner) is needed, few seem to recognize that the voting and registration technologies constitute a weak link that can bring down election administrative performance regardless of the other successes and regardless of the administrative capacity and dedication of the lead officials.  This is the deep, dark secret of election administration.  

The tech options for both voting and registration are seriously flawed and will perform in unpredictable ways (say leading academics in computer science who have a subspecialty in election tech) .  Yet, the officials must conduct the election with this flawed tech and the shrinking budgets provided to them.  

Before engaging in the comparative assessment of election officials, we need to gather far more data on the performance of the tech systems. The EAC survey does not gather meaningful data on incidents with voting systems.  Mixing the rating of election officials with the effort to gather more data is fraught with "tension."  

In particular, there's a politically and possibly even partisan-charged aspect of "rating" election officials.  The Florida Secretary of State's recent comparative ranking of Florida's independently elected county Supervisors of Elections has deeply flawed and politicized. We cannot escape this fact.  In many states, counties do not have the same resources for election admin, not even on a per capita basis, so rating them against one another is no answer and arguably unfair.  

I would counsel leaving out of the mix the LEO ratings and just focus on the other data.  The FL SOS provides a current, prime example of political mischief that perturb LEOs nationally.  Biases can also affect nonprofit ratings organizations and academics.  For now, would suggest that you focus on gathering data on all the rest of the issues, including contingency planning and quality assurance techniques where flawed equipment is deployed.  No need to get personal, and no need to comparatively rank officials.  Grouping counties within size and resource constraints and assessing internal to each group (rather than their officials) would be less personal and more valuable. 

—Candice Hoke
from the Ohio trenches, where we successfully achieved transformed EA practices by collaborative work between academics, LEOs, and scientists— and a bit of litigation-- with some support from political leaders of both major parties

Professor Candice Hoke
Law School
Cleveland State University
216 687-2313

shoke at law.csuohio.edu

Disclaimer:  Any opinions I may have expressed are my own and do not reflect the positions of any university, State or Federal institutions, boards, or committees with which I may be affiliated, although I may wish that they did.

On May 7, 2012, at 6:13 PM, Gerken, Heather wrote:

> It turns out that there are lots of possibilities, both public and private, for improving data collection.  On the private side, you might use testers and observers, as Doug suggests.  Or you might create what I call “Nielsen voters” – the voting equivalent of Nielsen families.  Voters surveys can similarly provide information on some issues.  And, of course, the states and federal government can mandate basic data collection if they wish.
>  
> As to Paul’s comment, indices always carry a set of costs and benefits, and the decision to rank will depend on the quality and comparability of the data available.  But an index would not prevent us from holding a locality accountable for its missteps.  If a locality loses 200 absentee ballots, no ranking will prevent us from complaining about that fact. 
>  
> Indices do, of course, grade local officials on a curve.  I myself think that’s a feature, not a bug.  Local officials are often trying to do an incredibly difficult job with incredibly few resources.  I think it’s fairer to rank them against one another than to hold them up to an ideal and possibly unattainable standard.  If, for instance, every locality loses ballots during every election cycle, it would be useful to know that fact (we’d know that we’re dealing with a systemic problem, not partisan mischief or an unusual level of local incompetence).  Similarly, if every locality is losing ballots but some localities are losing many more ballots than the rest, that’s also useful information for those interested in reform.  Precisely because indices grade on a curve, they allow us to identify problems that run through the system as well as spot troubling outliers.
>  
> -Heather
>  
>  
>  
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>  
> From: Doug Hess [mailto:douglasrhess at gmail.com] 
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 5:51 PM
> To: Rick Hasen
> Cc: Gerken, Heather; law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] making a Democracy Index at the ballot box
>  
> 
> Maybe. Such a cynic! :)  I was guessing that states might already require officials to fill out something. No? I assume there's a procedure for reporting problems, and confirming that this, that and the other thing happened on time and correctly. E.g., "We had two machines go up in flames when plugged in, and the screens on the other four show Bush vs Dukakis." 
> 
> Funding to have independent observers could make it work better, I guess, and somewhat independent of officials. Could be a good project for some funders out there (cough cough) to organize with college students. Have them drop in on precincts and fill out an observational survey at certain hours. I don't know what advice they'd need to have minimal conflict with precinct officials, but presumably there are ways to handle that in advance...it's data the state and count officials should be happy to get. No? Or have the party observers do it? Perhaps they are too busy elbowing each other.   
> 
> Douglas 
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 5:40 PM, Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
> And one might suspect that those administrators with the worst records would be least likely to conduct such a voluntary survey.
> 
> 
> On 5/7/2012 2:37 PM, Gerken, Heather wrote:
> Dear Doug,
>  
> I’ve made just such a proposal in my book (entitled, conveniently enough, The Democracy Index).   Putting the question on the ballot itself runs one into a set of tricky questions about what’s allowed to appear on the ballot.  But that doesn’t mean poll workers can’t hand out a sheet of paper and do a stand-alone survey with one or two questions on it.
>  
> I know of a tiny handful of local administrators who conduct such a survey (Gary Smith of Forsyth County is one of them), but my own research suggests it’s decidedly not the norm.  The same is true of reporting how long the lines were – here again, there’s no widespread norm.
>  
> Best,
>  
> Heather
>  
> Heather Gerken
> J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law
> Yale Law School
> 127 Wall Street
> New Haven CT  06511
> ph (203) 432-8022
> fax (203) 432-8095
>  
>  
>  
>  
> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Doug Hess
> Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 5:28 PM
> To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: [EL] making a Democracy Index at the ballot box
>  
> An idea I have thought about before, but not kicked around:
> 
> Administrative data resulting from elections and survey data on or around election day provide information that can be used to inform a "Democracy Index" (metrics on the quality of the election process), but what about adding a few questions to the ballot to make it into a mini survey? For instance, after you vote for the candidates, there could be a question that says: How long did you wait in line today? Or whatever. It could then be tabulated and reported with that precinct. 
> 
> You would not have to ask everybody the same question, or even ask everybody any question. Thus, it wouldn't intrude too much on the voters' time...and it would not make the process at the precinct much longer overall. Randomly distributing ballots within a precinct might be tricky since it is not the usual, but there could be ways to ease this by the printers. Or, it could be a stand-alone survey that people are given at random and submit with their ballot. 
> 
> Do any states or counties (or have any in the past) have an "election day experience" survey and incorporate it into the election process itself? 
> 
> On a related note: do precinct directors report data at the end of the day on events at the precinct? E.g., number of people standing in line at certain hours, etc.?  
> 
> Doug
>  
> 
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> -- 
> Rick Hasen
> Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
> UC Irvine School of Law
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Professor Candice Hoke
Law School
Cleveland State University
216 687-2313

shoke at law.csuohio.edu

Disclaimer:  Any opinions I may have expressed are my own and do not reflect the positions of any university, State or Federal institutions, boards, or committees with which I may be affiliated, although I may wish that they did.

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