[EL] Over-reporting of voting

[John Tanner]

The NVRA requires each state to maintain a record of who has voted in
recent federal elections - at least for states that have voter
registration.  I don't see why the summary data would not be available.


On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Larry Levine <larrylevine at earthlink.net>wrote:

> 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
>
> "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>
>
> [image: 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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