[EL] State Election Reporting Status

Tue Nov 27 12:07:48 PST 2012

I am the source for the USA Today editorial. 17 states reported "official" or "final" results as of yesterday. I made clear that these are not certified results. For at least one large state -- still trying to confirm -- the official results do not include provisional ballots. Many of these official results do not include tallies for unofficial write-in candidates.

It looks like we're on track to crack 130 million total ballots counted; 129 million votes for president. There still remains a good amount of uncertainty, mostly to the upside of these projections. One of the odd things I'm wrestling with this cycle is localities seemed to not have reported as high a percentage of their eventual votes for president to the Associated Press immediately following the election as in the recent past. Projecting out the turnout immediately following the election using recent patterns of post-election ballot counting produced an underestimate of turnout for some states that has since corrected itself as updates have been reported. What is the cause? Is is a higher number of provisional ballots? Mail ballots? Just slower counting immediately following the election (some a consequence of Sandy)?

============
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
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Just a comment re "17 states have completed their tallies".  Not sure if the author is using the phrase "completed their tallies" deliberately, or mixing up "completed their tallies" with the state's final action of certifying election results.

Here in DC, the Board of Elections has completed the tallying of votes, is currently doing a statutorily required pre-certification audit, with tentative certification scheduled for Thursday.

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Sean Parnell
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2012 11:52 AM
To: law-election at UCI.EDU
Subject: [EL] Two thoughts on the Electoral College and National Popular Vote

Two items came across my Twitter feed today (h/t to Rick for both) that I think have some bearing on the whole National Popular Vote/Electoral Issue.

1.       Apparently only 17 states have completed their count of all ballots, per this USA Today editorial (as a rule, I abhor citing editorials, but I'm going to trust they got this fact right): http://usatoday.com/story/opinion/2012/11/26/counting-votes-voting-system/1728529/ I think the implications for National Popular Vote are pretty obvious - had this been a closer election (say, Bush-Gore or Kennedy-Nixon close) we'd still not know who the president was, and there would be horrific legal battles being waged right now all across the country over which ballots should or should not be counted. The Electoral College seems to have provided conclusive clarity rather quickly.

2.      Second, apparently there's a theory floating around out there that Romney could still be elected by the House of Representatives if a number of states voting for Romney failed to submit their electoral votes, depriving the Electoral College of a quorum (see here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/11/27/2360565/lawmaker-shares-last-chance-idea.html). Absolute malarkey, to borrow from our Vice President. Still, it does help to show the fallacy of what I call the 'English Bob'<http://www.quotefully.com/movie/Unforgiven/English+Bob> theory touted by advocates of National Popular Vote, which is basically that the passage of NPV would be so popular and accepted that there would be little thought of challenge through the courts or legislative hanky panky. To paraphrase, "Well there's a dignity to National Popular Vote. A majesty that precludes the likelihood of partisan games. If you were to attempt to draft a lawsuit or bill aimed at changing the election your hands would shake as though palsied. I can assure you, if you did, that the popularity of NPV would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of resistance and you would stand... how shall I put it? In awe."

And yes, I have been waiting for a long time to unleash my English Bob analogy.

Best,

Sean Parnell
President
Impact Policy Management, LLC
6411 Caleb Court
Alexandria, VA  22315
571-289-1374 (c)
sean at impactpolicymanagement.com

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