[EL] Over-reporting of voting

Tue Feb 25 09:37:47 PST 2014

True - California still does not yet even have a statewide voter database,
much an less accurate list of vote histories in that database. 

(The list vendors Larry Levine mentioned in an earlier email gather their
data directly from each individual county.)

-        Doug

Douglas Johnson, Fellow

Rose Institute of State and Local Government

at Claremont McKenna College 

douglas.johnson at cmc.edu

310-200-2058 

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu
[mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Paul
Gronke
Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 9:28 AM
Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
Subject: Re: [EL] Over-reporting of voting

John

One would assume all states are in compliance with NVRA.  And one would
assume among the set of states that are in compliance with NVRA, that such
data are reasonably priced.  

My past experience writing a report for Pew four years ago was that neither
is true.  

BUT even if it were available, the reason that some want to use survey data
is that it provides a far richer set of correlates to help us understand the
determinants of turnout, candidate choice, and a whole host of other things.
The state of the art is to "validate" survey reports using state and county
files, but that can be extremely expensive.

---

Paul Gronke  Ph:   503-517-7393

                        Fax: 503-661-0601

Professor, Reed College

Director, Early Voting Information Center

3203 SE Woodstock Blvd

Portland OR 97202

On Feb 25, 2014, at 7:10 AM, John Tanner <john.k.tanner at gmail.com> wrote:

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

 <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%
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0Over-Reporting%20of%20Turnout%20in%20Surveys%E2%80%9D&description=>
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Posted in campaign finance <http://electionlawblog.org/?cat=10>  

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