[EL] ELB News and Commentary 2/11/13

Sun Feb 10 21:20:05 PST 2013

    Cardozo Law "Author Meets Readers" Voting Wars Event Monday at Noon
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47117>

Posted on February 10, 2013 9:12 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47117> by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Hope to see some ELB readers in NYC Monday at noon at this event 
<http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/MemberContentDisplay.aspx?ccmd=ContentDisplay&ucmd=UserDisplay&userid=10374&contentid=25758&folderid=340> 
with Mark Alexander, Richard Briffault, and Janai Nelson, moderated by 
Michael Herz.

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Posted in The Voting Wars <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=60> | 
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    Gerken: Pew's Election Performance Index
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47114>

Posted on February 10, 2013 9:05 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47114> by Heather Gerken 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=6>

A few years ago, I proposed creating a "Democracy Index" 
<http://www.law.yale.edu/faculty/democracyindex.htm> that would rank 
states and localities based on how well they run elections.  Since then, 
the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonpartisan organization well known for 
promoting data-driven governance, has tried to put these ideas into 
action.  It created the nation's first Elections Performance Index 
<http://www.pewstates.org/research/reports/elections-performance-index-85899445029>, 
which was released this week.  The EPI measures state performance based 
on seventeen indicators, which include the length of lines, the accuracy 
of voting technology, and the percentage of voters who experienced 
problems registering or casting an absentee ballot.

The process for creating the Index was remarkable -- as serious and 
professional an undertaking as I've witnessed. Pew itself devoted 
significant funding and top-notch staffers to the project.  It also 
assembled an extraordinary group of advisors, which included some  of 
the top state and local election administrators in the country.  The 
legendary Charles Stewart, the former chair of MIT's political science 
department, served as the data expert (though that seems a bit like 
calling a Ferrari a "car").  The Pew staff and advisors --- along with 
numerous outside experts Pew called in to poke and prod and test and 
challenge the validity of the indicators -- narrowed down a list of 
almost fifty potential performance indicators to the seventeen you see 
on the website.  A huge amount of effort was put in to be sure the 
indicators were measuring something meaningful, and that the data gave 
us genuine signals rather than noise.  I am frankly amazed that Pew came 
up with so many good measures -- it's a testament to the creativity of 
the team, especially the political scientists who were involved.

I devoted a book 
<http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Index-Election-System-Failing/dp/0691136947> 
to explaining why an election performance index like Pew's has the 
potential to make a difference in election administration.  Indices are 
incredibly useful tools in the policymaking world.  They allow us to 
spot, surface, and solve problems by making election problems visible to 
everyone. They help policymakers identify the drivers of performance and 
sort useful policy needles from a haystack of disparate practices.  They 
allow us to judge state performance against a realistic baseline -- how 
a jurisdiction compared to its neighbors -- rather than relying on a 
crisis to tell us there's a problem.

Rather than rehash all of those arguments here, I'll just note two 
things that really came through during the process. The first was how 
important it is to have an EPI.  The EPI isn't perfect, to be sure.  It 
measures what can be measured using the best means available.  But there 
are obviously areas where we can and ought to have better measures in 
the long run (something that Pew itself has shown itself expert at 
generating in other areas).  The EPI is thus best understood as a 
baseline for measuring election performance going forward.

Nonetheless, it makes a huge difference to have that marker laid down.  
Going forward, we'll be able to trace the effects of policy 
interventions (like the reform to the military and overseas voting 
process).  We'll be able to identify problems we might not have seen 
before (even within this short period, we've already seen tantalizing 
glimpses of this possibility). For the first time, we've had a chance to 
acknowledge the unsung heroes of our democracy -- the election 
administrators whose only reward for doing a good job before today has 
been a quiet election and no media firestorm.  And the EPI should help 
low-performing jurisdictions lobby for the resources they need to improve.

The second thing that process underscored was how seriously election 
administrators take these numbers.  I spent a chunk of the book talking 
about the ways in which professional norms may be the best guarantor of 
a well-run election system.  I wrote that we often think that reform and 
high-quality performance are due to pressure from the outside, but it's 
actually the people inside the system who are best situated to improve 
it.  I've now begun to wonder whether I should have devoted the entire 
book to the idea.  Election administrators do a very hard job with very 
few resources.  They care deeply about whether they are doing a good 
job, and they all want to do their jobs better.   What I found most 
impressive about the meetings of the Pew advisors was how much they 
cared about their own performance on each and every indicator.   These 
folks, after all, were chosen because they are so well regarded in the 
field.  And yet every time a number was put up on the screen, the room 
fell silent as the administrators absorbed the results.  What happened 
next was even more striking.  They started to talk to each other.  They 
talked about where they fell short and why, whether a low ranking was a 
glitch or trend, whether a high ranking was due to luck or skill.  And 
they began to swap information about how similar problems were addressed 
or similar practices were used elsewhere.  The data generated exactly 
the kind of conversations that will lay the groundwork for a better-run 
system.  The EPI, in short, is the type of reform that makes bigger, 
better reform possible.

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Posted in election administration <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> | 
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    "Florida Republicans Brace for a Fraud Trial, and an Airing of Old
    Grudges" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47110>

Posted on February 10, 2013 8:55 pm 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47110> by Rick Hasen 
<http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

NYT 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/us/politics/florida-republicans-brace-for-greer-trial.html?ref=politics&_r=0> 
on the Jim Greer trial.

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Posted in chicanery <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=12> | Comments Off

    "FEC chairwoman warns of super PAC corruption"
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47107>

Posted on February 9, 2013 2:40 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47107> 
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

CPI reports 
<http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/09/12176/fec-chairwoman-warns-super-pac-corruption>.

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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10> | 
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    ACS Sets Up Voting Rights Resource Page About Shelby County Case
    <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47104>

Posted on February 9, 2013 2:36 pm <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=47104> 
by Rick Hasen <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>

Check it out <http://www.acslaw.org/voting-rights?mgs1=2353atLyG4>.

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Posted in Supreme Court <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=29>, Voting 
Rights Act <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=15> | Comments Off

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
http://law.uci.edu/faculty/page1_r_hasen.html
http://electionlawblog.org

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