[EL] Over-reporting of voting

[Lorraine Minnite]

I applaud the effort to improve the quality of voting survey data. It 
looks like prompting respondents with a kind of warning about the 
ability of the survey researcher to check up on what the respondent says 
can cause the respondent to think more carefully about his or her 
answer.  What most of these efforts and the commentary on them neglect 
is the fact that 1) many people attempt to vote and are thwarted for one 
reason or another - they go to the polls and confront a line they don't 
have the time to wait in, or they cast a provisional ballot that isn't 
counted, for example.  This can lead to a false presumption or even 
memory that the respondent actually voted when there is no recorded vote 
for the person.  So research that aims to improve the accuracy of voting 
data should operate both ways - in reducing what many (but not me) call 
"lying" by survey respondents, and (and this is much more difficult to 
operationalize in relevant detail) in accounting for and measuring the 
votes "lost" to problems we can fix with better designed and 
de-politicized election administration.  Given what we actually do know 
about the voting experience and what we should incorporate into our 
analysis regarding the predictability of human error, all of the error 
in the mismatch between what respondents recall from memory and election 
records can not possibly be due to respondent misreporting alone.

Lori Minnite

"New Pew Dispatch Examines Research on Over-Reporting of Turnout in 
Surveys" <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=58972>
>
> Posted on February 24, 2014 7:22 am 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=58972>by Rick Hasen 
> <http://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>
> A ChapinBlog. 
> <http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cspg/electionacademy/2014/02/new_pew_dispatch_examines_new.php>
>
> Share 
> <http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D58972&title=%E2%80%9CNew%20Pew%20Dispatch%20Examines%20Research%20on%20Over-Reporting%20of%20Turnout%20in%20Surveys%E2%80%9D&description=>
> Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>
>
>

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