[EL] Over-reporting of voting

[Larry Levine]

Here in California every registrar of voters provides a tape of voter
turnout after each election. Data services store this information and
aggregate it for use in campaigns and other research. So we don't need to
rely on the voter to tell us if he or she voted. This is a huge benefit when
selecting a universe for polling or for targeting campaign activities. 

Larry

 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Lorraine
Minnite
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 9:04 AM
To: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: [EL] Over-reporting of voting

 

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

 <http://electionlawblog.org/?p=58972> "New Pew Dispatch Examines Research
on Over-Reporting of Turnout in Surveys" 

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_exami
nes_new.php> 

 
<http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%
3Fp%3D58972&title=%E2%80%9CNew%20Pew%20Dispatch%20Examines%20Research%20on%2
0Over-Reporting%20of%20Turnout%20in%20Surveys%E2%80%9D&description=> Share

Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>  

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140224/98612ce1/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1504 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140224/98612ce1/attachment.png>