[EL] Husted decided

Tue Jun 12 13:04:07 PDT 2018

This has nothing to do with “wishing” facts to be true or not, an apocalypse, or Donald Trump. Those statements clearly miss the point.*

My fear was (is) that the “lists are dirty” strategy fed the existing emphasis on list cleaning and the view that it was a neutral, administrative concern when it has often not been neutral at all. Looking at the EAC, for instance, much is said on cleaning, but little on increasing registration among those least registered and even less on registration of the poor. (Reporting on the NVRA is one of its legal obligations and improving sections 5 and 7 of the NVRA would clean lists and arguably reduce registration inequality, but you won’t hear that from the EAC.)

Anyway, if the “lists are dirty” strategy did lead to decreases in voter registration inequality it may have been a very smart strategy. Has it? Otherwise, I fear it has led to just more of the same (i.e., helping people who would have been registered in time anyway or increasing registrations in a pattern that widened the inequality problem). In policy studies this would be a classic case of worrying about efficiency more than other values or to their detriment.

BTW, struggling with the difficulty of plausible counterfactuals in impact evaluations of registration efforts is occupying a good part of my summer, so I’d be glad to hear (read) more about the impact of ERIC (not just numbers).

[* To be pedantic, my concern has to do with how facts, ex ante and ex post evaluations, needs assessment, stakeholders’ values, and goal selection all mix with policy processes, issue framing, etc. to produce change in US election policy. Although this largely stems from my work experience, it also stems from well-worn areas of research in policy studies. Some of this literature has the awkward name of “knowledge utilization,” but you can also come at it from framing, problem definition, and agenda setting literatures, as well as program evaluation. My concern also has to do with the oft-mentioned potential of policies to have unintended (or even perverse) consequences and the difficulty policy entrepreneurs have with optimism bias.]

Douglas R Hess
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Grinnell College
1210 Park Street, Carnegie Hall #309
Grinnell, IA 50112
phone: 641-269-4383

http://www.douglasrhess.com<http://www.douglasrhess.com/>

From: David Becker [mailto:dbecker at electioninnovation.org]
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 2:52 PM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Husted decided

Ha! As the author of this piece that Doug believes led to apocalypse, I’ll just note that:

  1.  This research was hardly dispositive in this case.
  2.  It’s factually sound (as a snapshot of data from 2010-2011), and we can try to avoid facts, but they’re stubborn things. Just because we pretend they don’t exist doesn’t mean they’re not true.
  3.  There’s a lot of great policy that this research helped spur, including the development of ERIC, and its expansion to 23 states plus DC, resulting in over 8 million voter records updated to the correct address, and 4-6 million new registrants being registered in those states, in only 6 years of existence.

That said, I probably should have known in 2012 that Donald Trump would be elected four years later while losing the popular vote by millions, and that he’d cite this little (then out-of-date) report five years later. My humble apologies for that.

David

David J. Becker
Executive Director and Founder
Center for Election Innovation & Research
1015 15th Street NW, Washington, DC, 20005
(202) 550-3470 (mobile) | dbecker at electioninnovation.org<mailto:dbecker at electioninnovation.org>
www.electioninnovation.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.electioninnovation.org&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=7h70RzQZ38kDiP9tGu8JTqclCGvxMK6F1LoBE92V9go&s=IbV7FNwI-bKk1FTdobt49iaxrqymYZrYxOyD0LrV1xc&e=> | @beckerdavidj

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>> On Behalf Of Hess, Doug
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 3:33 PM
To: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
Subject: Re: [EL] Husted decided

Worth noting to researchers out there on the topic of “who will use my research to what end” that the opening paragraph by Alito frames the topic of one of list security by citing the Pew Center:

“It has been estimated that 24 million voter registrations in the United States—about one in eight—are either invalid or significantly inaccurate. Pew Center on the States, Election Initiatives Issue Brief (Feb. 2012). And about 2.75 million people are said to be registered to vote in more than one State. Ibid.”

I cannot think of a single research project that has generated so much use to poor ends as this one.

Douglas R Hess
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Grinnell College
1210 Park Street, Carnegie Hall #309
Grinnell, IA 50112
phone: 641-269-4383

http://www.douglasrhess.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.douglasrhess.com_&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=7h70RzQZ38kDiP9tGu8JTqclCGvxMK6F1LoBE92V9go&s=TqdKqqkwd731YJjuMaQ-rzeJN24r0zcHsr_NMjk_Yj4&e=>

From: Charles H Stewart [mailto:cstewart at mit.edu]
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 9:17 AM
To: rhasen at law.uci.edu<mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu>; Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>>
Subject: Re: [EL] Husted decided

Try this instead:  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-980_f2q3.pdf<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.supremecourt.gov_opinions_17pdf_16-2D980-5Ff2q3.pdf&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=HuQVpxdWxO2uRe3AY0R4EOGaCuyRdGR76eOiM1aIGNY&s=MXU7ayfIHRb7xIVmLMQbW2JmCKD9fRhEtv_pgrJcJoU&e=>.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Stewart III
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science

Department of Political Science
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
E53-449
30 Wadsworth Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts   02139

Office:  617-253-3127

From: Law-election [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Rick Hasen
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2018 10:14 AM
To: Election Law Listserv
Subject: [EL] Husted decided

Breaking: Supreme Court Upholds Ohio Voter Purge Law<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D99446&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=HuQVpxdWxO2uRe3AY0R4EOGaCuyRdGR76eOiM1aIGNY&s=4aLZyeGwZFzYlcK8OZDxhQjK3iibapVO03zobNG_FIM&e=>
Posted on June 11, 2018 7:10 am<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fp-3D99446&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=HuQVpxdWxO2uRe3AY0R4EOGaCuyRdGR76eOiM1aIGNY&s=4aLZyeGwZFzYlcK8OZDxhQjK3iibapVO03zobNG_FIM&e=> by Rick Hasen<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__electionlawblog.org_-3Fauthor-3D3&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=HuQVpxdWxO2uRe3AY0R4EOGaCuyRdGR76eOiM1aIGNY&s=0VszvGHNu-I0kBwLsKSgYF4yTeDsllJy5BQ_z8-KqQM&e=>

You can find the 5-4 decision, breaking down along party/ideological lines, here<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.supremecourt.gov_opinions_17pdf_16-2D1432-5F7j8b.pdf&d=DwMGaQ&c=HUrdOLg_tCr0UMeDjWLBOM9lLDRpsndbROGxEKQRFzk&r=xr_OjwGHtP-zw6I-DJj_MQ4cusLbiVT1bScGa0c8ZJo&m=HuQVpxdWxO2uRe3AY0R4EOGaCuyRdGR76eOiM1aIGNY&s=oo1sLQMmTNaUntcLrEFoy0ba-Wq3Wm5nn61c-AlZCWE&e=>.

[This post will be updated.]
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Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
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