To further complicate the search for information, here in California there is a patchwork quilt of election administration. Right now, for instance, there is an election in Los Angeles for city council, board of education and 10 ballot measures. There also is an election of community college trustee. But the college district includes 27 cities outside the boundaries of the City of Los Angeles. Some of those have local city council elections and most don't. All these contract with the Los Angeles City Clerk to administer the election. But Los Angeles is a charter city and all the others are general law cities. Thus, the clerk follows the L.A. City elections code in running the election and there are sections of that code that contradict the state elections code, which should apply to the general law cities. Among the contradictions is the order in which offices appear on the ballot and the requirements for candidate-identifying ballot titles. Then there are some 30 cities outside the college district that will be holding elections on the same day but do not contract with L.A. to run the election. Those are run by the local city clerk in each city. In addition there are a large number of cities who have their local elections on other dates scattered through February, March, April, May and June, also administered by local city clerks. Then, in November, we do it all over again with scores of cities and school districts across the state holding local elections administered either by county registrars of voters or local city clerks.

It's a researchers nightmare.

Larry

----- Original Message -----

From: Leslie Graves

To: Doug Hess

Cc: election-law

Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 8:04 AM

Subject: Re: [EL] reviews of local election administration quality,compliance

On Ballotpedia, we cover local ballot measure elections in 11 states.  These elections are for the most part administered by county election officials.  For example, if a school district is having an election on a school bond, they will typically contract with the county elections office to administer the election, and then get billed for that by the county.

In the course of trying to cover local ballot measure elections in the 11 states we thought had particularly interesting local ballot measure elections, we discovered a wide variation in excellence from one county election website to the next and we wrote up our findings here:

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/County_election_website_evaluations

We were basically interested in just two components of local administration election:

1.  Does the elections office put information about their local ballot measures up on their website before an election?  (With ballot text, arguments pro and con and other standard voter guide/sample ballot information)
2.  Does the elections office provide election results for local ballot measures?

This is not as important an aspect of election administration as the features you mention.

It does, though, lead to difficulties in developing comprehensive databases (and if you're a voter, to reading a sample ballot/voter guide online before you vote).

The database problem has been an issue recently because of heightened interest in local recall elections, such as the forthcoming recall election targeting Carlos Alvarez, mayor of Miami, and the recently held election targeting Jim Suttle, mayor of Omaha.  Because of these high profile elections, national journalists were looking for comparative figures on questions like, "Are there more recalls of mayors going on in 2011 than in 2010 or 2009?"  A number of journalists called Ballotpedia's office, since we have a database of sorts on that, and I had to explain that the fact that local recalls are administered by county election officials, and a % of county election officials throughout the country do not include election information on their websites about local recalls (which are a species of ballot measure, rather than a species of candidate election, in most states), and are also not required to report information on local ballot measures (or recalls) to state or federal agencies, this leads to inevitably messy and incomplete data on the number of recalls past and present.

Leslie Graves
Editor
Ballotpedia

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Doug Hess <douglasrhess@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

Three related questions that different list-members may have thoughts on:

1) I'm looking for general reviews (academic articles and papers, as
well as government reports or advocacy reviews, etc.), literature
summaries, or even reference sections/bibliographies of the quality of
local election adminstration. Essentially, what do we know about the
degree of variation across a state or the nation in quality? How has
that changed with time? Does GAO or CRS report on this in a general
way on occaision? I know there are lots of studies/reports on
particular problems (or that reveal variation in compliance quality,
such as ID requirements), but any general reviews or broader
summaries?

2) I know, or assume, no general index has been developed (no?), but
are there any past reports on what problems exist, their source or
cause, and where things stand on those issues? Is there a survey of
problems?

3) Data: Do any of the EAC surveys include questions that would
reflect the identification of compliance problems by local offices?
(I'm most familiar with the NVRA questions in the survey, but not some
of the other elements.)  What different databases of voter reported
problems exist, or summaries of these reports?

I know that's a tall request, but I'm just looking for some documents
to skim for background on the general "state of things."  Thanks.

Doug Hess
202-277-6400 (cell)
_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law

--
Follow Ballotpedia on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/Ballotpedia

---

_______________________________________________
election-law mailing list
election-law@mailman.lls.edu
http://mailman.lls.edu/mailman/listinfo/election-law