<x-flowed>Thanks for the thoughtful response, Michael. I completely agree with you
that the current survey data would not provide everything one would need
for the proposal I'm making -- there's a phrase that gestures in that
direction in the editorial, but the space constraints imposed by the
editorial format made it impossible to develop all of the caveats that will
appear in the longer paper I'm writing on the subject. It will be
interesting to watch what happens if the EAC succeeds in standardizing
reporting practices going forward.
Best,
Heather
Heather Gerken
Visiting Professor
Yale Law School
Box 208215
New Haven CT 06520-8215
(203) 432-8022
heather.gerken@yale.edu
Sept. 1, 2005 - June 1, 2006
Professor
Harvard Law School
1525 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02138
617-496-8262
gerken@law.harvard.edu
At 01:06 PM 9/28/2005,
mmcdon@gmu.edu wrote:
In response to Heather Gerken's op-ed on the EAC's Election Day Survey:
As a co-author of the EAC Election Day Survey report (see:
http://www.eac.gov/election_survey_2004/toc.htm), it is easy for anyone to
download the Excel spreadsheets associated with the data and to sort them
to their purpose. Our goal was not to shame any state by ranking them, it
was to provide the information we collected to the public in a careful and
neutral manner. But I would caution against ranking states as in most
cases this would be extremely misleading, becuase of missing data and
common definitions among the states.
As a voluntary survey, not all local election jurisdictions provided data
on all question items to the EAC. Some questions have better coverage
than others and I have some confidence in the patterns that we observe
among those jurisdictions that did report as they are often similar to
other academic work. But these data are not a perfectly valid snapshot of
the 2004 election.
Furthermore, states and even local jurisdictions vary their definitions on
basic things such as what constitutes a poll worker or a polling
place. Let me take just one example that came up in discussions with
commissioners after the EAC meeting: Maine counted 100% of its provisional
ballots cast. However, Maine has election day registration and uses
provisional ballots only in instances where a voter is contested at the
polls. This was a rare event in Maine, and thus there were few
provisional ballots cast in the state. Thus, to be meaningful, ranking
the states on percent provisional ballots counted would need to take into
account the varying definitions of what constitutes a provisional ballot
and under what circumstances they are counted.
This is just one example, and the entire report is full of similar
instances. We found several data entry errors, and I am certain others
remain in the data. Almost half a million data items were requested and
we did not have the resources to validate them all. But in many other
cases, when we would find data from a state or local jurisdiction that
didn't look right, we often found there was a valid explanation for the
odd looking data. I am again sure that we didn't discover every odd
practice by local election officials in the United States. Again, before
anyone makes generalizations about states or local jurisdictions by
ranking them, I strongly encourage them to carefully research their
findings and look for plausible explanations before jumping to conclusions.
One of our major recommendations to the EAC was to improve the
questionairre design and to develop a survey instrument that will
encourage jurisdictions to respond. In some cases, local election
officials simply did not know that the EAC would seek information on such
things as absentee ballots, and did not maintain a record. The EAC put
out an RFP to study these issues, but to our disappointment decided not to
award a contract until 2006 at the earliest, pending their
budget. Resolving these data collection and definition issues sooner,
rather than later, is important as the EAC contemplates new voluntary
certification standards for voting equipment and as states upgrade their
voter registration database management to a centralized statewide
database. New technology that capture and record the data asked by the
EAC would help in participation by states and local jurisdictions in
future Election Day surveys.
Heather was certainly quick in getting out her op-ed. I thought I would
have more time to sit down and write one on my own thoughts, but these are
a beginning.
Michael P. McDonald
Assistant Professor, George Mason University
Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution
703-993-4191
mmcdon@gmu.edu
elections.gmu.edu
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