[EL] Over-reporting of voting
John Tanner
john.k.tanner at gmail.com
Tue Feb 25 11:04:03 PST 2014
It sounds as if the out of court agreement we (DoJ while I was there) reached with the State on HAVA compliance has been a failure, and a lawsuit is in order.
Sent from my iPad
> On Feb 25, 2014, at 1:25 PM, "Douglas Johnson" <djohnson at ndcresearch.com> wrote:
>
> California provides a file containing a list of voters registered statewide, but the file is merely a compilation of separate databases submitted by the various counties for archiving with the state. The dates submitted are not necessarily the same for all counties, and the list is not up-to-date. – it’s only a compilation of archived files. The Secretary of State officially hopes to roll out the NVRA-required system by June 2016.
>
> But: the state hired contractor CGI to implement the system. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because they were the primary contractor for HealthCare.gov until they were fired by the Obama administration in January. CGI’s $53 million project is already a full year behind its original schedule. (And the $53 million figure is from 2012.)
>
> California’s original attempt to build a NVRA-compliant system, with contractor Catalyst Consulting Group, was abandoned after spending $4.6 million. CGI was the only bidder when the state put out a post-Catalyst RFP.
>
> - Doug
>
> Douglas Johnson, Fellow
> Rose Institute of State and Local Government
> at Claremont McKenna College
> douglas.johnson at cmc.edu
> 310-200-2058
>
>
>
> From: Maceda, Cliff [mailto:cmaceda_CONTRACTOR at ap.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 9:56 AM
> To: djohnson at ndcresearch.com; 'Paul Gronke'
> Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: RE: [EL] Over-reporting of voting
>
> I was able to get a statewide registration list from California SOS a few years ago. The voter history was indeed inaccurate, but it was, according to the state, a complete list of registrants. I couldn’t dispute that after doing various cross-checks, but it’s pretty easy for records to get lost in the wash in a state the size of California.
>
> That said, the availability and quality of data varies tremendously among the states. Which is a statement that can be applied to a lot more than just registration lists.
>
> Cliff
>
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> <image001.jpg>
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> <image002.jpg>
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> Clifford Maceda
> Senior Research Coordinator
> Election Research & Quality Control
>
>
> cmaceda at ap.org
> www.ap.org
> 450 West 33rd St – 15th Floor/Elections
> New York, NY 10001
> T 212.621.5458
> F 212.506.6740
>
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> From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Douglas Johnson
> Sent: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 12:38 PM
> To: 'Paul Gronke'
> Cc: law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] Over-reporting of voting
>
> 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
>
> “New Pew Dispatch Examines Research on Over-Reporting of Turnout in Surveys”
> Posted on February 24, 2014 7:22 am by Rick Hasen
> A ChapinBlog.
>
> <image001.png>
> Posted in campaign finance
>
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