[EL] The timetable of reporting results on or after Election Day

[Charles H Stewart]

It needs to be underscored that the exit polls are not designed to estimate state or national vote shares, but to characterize who voted for whom.  You will notice that the reports on election night do their best to mask the implied candidate vote divisions.  There are some, myself included, who have tried to back out the implied candidate vote shares from the exit poll reports.

Having learned more about how the exit polls are designed, I regret ever doing that and posting the results publicly.  I worry that in 2020, people will do this, and leap to conclusions about what the final vote shares will be in the states.
I’m convinced that doing so is a bigger risk of misinformation in the hours after the polls close than media outlets reporting correctly the reported vote tallies, or even the networks reporting what they can infer from the reported official vote tallies.

I will have more to say about this in the coming days.

Charles
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Charles Stewart III
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts   02139
617-253-3127
cstewart at mit.edu<mailto:cstewart at mit.edu>

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of David
Sent: Friday, September 4, 2020 4:52 PM
To: paul.gronke at gmail.com
Cc: edu law-election at uci. edu law-election at uci. <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] The timetable of reporting results on or after Election Day


I've been thinking for a while that one way to help ease election night confusion is for networks to do "extended" exit polls. That is, they should not just ask people at the polling stations whom they voted for, but also do a telephone/online canvass to see if people voted by mail, and if so whom they voted for. Then announce the (statistically) combined results on election night.

It won't be perfect, and it won't eliminate the need for days-long recounts in some areas, but at least we'd have a better idea on election night as to what's going on.

Has anyone heard of/suggested this before?

David


On Thu, Sep 3, 2020 at 4:09 PM Paul Gronke <paul.gronke at gmail.com<mailto:paul.gronke at gmail.com>> wrote:
I’m leery of generalizing from the California example because California has traditionally allowed absentee ballots to be dropped at polling places.

As far as I understand the California work flow, the absentee ballots that were delivered to local precinct poling places are placed in a special bag (often called the “red bag”) and these bags / ballots are not even opened until Election Night, and in some counties, not until the next morning.

That contrasts with other jurisdictions where those ballots are placed into drop boxes which are emptied on a very regular basis leading up to and including Election Day.

Just to give another example from Oregon, which is also not a great example because we’ve been voting by mail for two decades, and the voters and the LEOs have all adapted their processes to account for this. We typically see about a quarter of all of our ballots come in during the last two days, and 15-20% on Election day (https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/Ballot-Return.pdf).

And for states like NC, much will also depend on the ability to get temporary staff in place to process the ballots and put in place the administrative procedures to move the ballots through on the last few days.

Larry is right that there will be a substantial number of ballots that have not yet been processed at the close of polls on Election Day.  I just am not sure its going to be the same magnitude as we’ve traditionally seen in California.

---
Paul Gronke
Professor, Reed College
Director, Early Voting Information Center
http://earlyvoting.net

General Inquiries: Jane Calderbank calderja at reed.edu<mailto:calderja at reed.edu>

Media Inquiries: Kevin Myers myersk at reed.edu<mailto:myersk at reed.edu>


On Sep 3, 2020, at 12:53 PM, larrylevine at earthlink.net<mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net> wrote:

Given what we know about absentee ballot voting patterns and human nature, it is unlikely any elections office will be able to process the number of ballots arriving the day before the election in time to be part of the Tuesday night total. Some 20 years’ worth of tracking in California shows 84% of the absentee ballots arrive at elections offices in the last 12 days, including what gets turned in at the polls. The flow increases day-by-day. The Monday arrivals will include what the post office didn’t deliver Sunday, plus the regular Monday mail and probably a residue from Friday and Saturday. Elections offices are under great stress the day before the election in preparing for the actual day. North Carolina’s good intentions are likely to run into a different reality. But it won’t be any different any place else. It will be up to the media reporting on election night to keep reinforcing the information about the need to count all late arriving absentee ballots and provisional ballots after election night and that the election night reports are by no means complete. Even then, there will be certain interests intent upon fomenting doubt and confusion.
Larry

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>> On Behalf Of Samuel S. Wang
Sent: Thursday, 3 September 2020 12:20 PM
To: law-election at uci.edu<mailto:law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: [EL] The timetable of reporting results on or after Election Day

Dear Election Law List,

The timetable of reporting results on Election Night may lead to substantial public unrest. In a recent NBC/WSJ survey, in-person voters break heavily toward Trump, while mail voters break heavily toward Biden.

What do we know about the planned timetables of reporting results in all the states?  This timetable may dramatically affect what the public sees on Election Night. If one candidate is ahead on Election Night, and the other pulls ahead in the days following, major protests might ensue.

For example, my understanding in North Carolina is that if a mail-in ballot arrives in the local elections office by 5:00 pm on Monday, November 2, the day before Election Day, it goes through the board approval process and through the tabulator, and will count in the unofficial election results released on November 3, Election Day. That approach could reduce any massive swings in the vote count.

Another solution would be to advocate for a deliberate and unhurried report of final or near-final totals. For example, in the April primary and state judicial elections, Wisconsin officials did not release results until something like a week after the election. That strikes me as a sensible and de-escalating move.

Sam Wang

>>>
Prof. Samuel S.-H. Wang
Neuroscience Institute, Washington Road
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
Virtual office: http://princeton.zoom.us/my/samwang

Neuroscience: synapse.princeton.edu<http://synapse.princeton.edu/>
Elections: election.princeton.edu<http://election.princeton.edu/>
Redistricting: gerrymander.princeton.edu<http://gerrymander.princeton.edu/>

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