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 -----
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)
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