Hey Joe, et al --
I too noted the Canvass piece (and knew it was coming). It turns out they dropped a number that I had listed separately ... that of the townships located in New England states (there are 1,620). The 5,312 townships are those located in the Midwest states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, that we had cited separately. The 10,072 should be more correctly noted as "local jurisdictions that conduct elections and currently, or in the past, have made determinations on what kind of voting equipment they will use to conduct such elections."
I have been interested in determining jurisdictions that have an existing office that either works full time, or part time, on elections. These are entities where you might find persons who have either a title or a role in election administration functions in their jurisdiction. Because we have kept track of what kind of voting equipment is used in each county or jurisdiction in the nation since 1980, long ago we built a database to handle that kind of information. In many instances these include entities that a state election office might report separately, for example, the eight city election boards in Illinois that get added to the 102 counties in any report of data or equipment for that state. Those eight have separate election boards or offices that conduct elections within their jurisdiction, as opposed to having the county run the elections.
While Keith and Jon are correct in their own right of the number or type of offices for which elections are held, many of those are not run by that school board or taxing district, but instead the conduct of the election functions are farmed out or contracted for by the county they are located within. Hense we don't treat them as separate entities that are involved in conducting or managing the elections process.
Hope that provides some clarity
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <
joehall@gmail.com>
To: Election Law <
election-law@mailman.lls.edu>
Cc: Kim Brace <
KBrace@aol.com>
Sent: Tue, May 10, 2011 7:54 am
Subject: Re: [EL] Electionlawblog news and commentary 5/10/11
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 11:25 PM, Rick Hasen
<rhasen@law.uci.edu> wrote:
May Issue of NCSL's "The Canvass" Now Available
Maybe Kim can help me out here... This issue of The Canvass has a factoid that says:
"10,072 - That’s the number of jurisdictions in the United States that conduct elections. It includes 50 states, 3,140 counties and 5,312 townships. (Thanks to Election Data Services for this information.)"
If I add those numbers up, I get 8,502; 1,570 less than 10,072... what am I missing? And are there distinct election administrations for each of these? best, Joe
--
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
ACCURATE Postdoctoral Research Associate
UC Berkeley School of Information
Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy
http://josephhall.org/