RPEAVT Archive

Long Lines at Polling Stations? Observations from an Election Day Field Study.

gbain — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:14:23 -0700

ABSTRACT

This paper details the design and implementation of an Election Day field study targeting the operation of polling stations. This pilot study represents the first systematic attempt to determine how common lines are on Election Day, at what times of day lines are most likely to form, bottlenecks in the voting process, and how long it takes an average citizen to cast his or her ballot. We collected data during the 2008 presidential primary election in California measuring the efficiency of the operational components of 30 polling stations across three counties. During the Election Day, voter arrivals peaked twice: in the early morning and the early evening. Our data suggest that experienced poll workers are not more efficient than first-time poll workers. We also find that voters who used a DRE machine took a 1 minute 40 seconds longer to cast their ballot than voters marking paper ballots that were subsequently scanned. This study highlights the importance of evaluating polling station operations as a three-step process: voter arrives, voter is served by poll workers, and voter interacts with a voting machine. This study also illustrates the need for further and more extensive data collection about the operation of polling stations to better help election officials make critical decisions on the allocation of capital, labor and other resources.

I Will Register, if You Teach Me How: Results from Voter Registration Field Experiments on College Campuses

gbain — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:05:01 -0700

ABSTRACT:

In the United States, the burden of registering to vote falls upon prospective voters. Voters must learn how, when, and where to register, and they must take the time to complete a registration form each time they relocate. College campuses provide excellent testing grounds to measure the students to different registration appeals, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of face-to-face, classroom-based appeals, and the corresponding ineffectiveness of less personal mail- and email-based approaches to registration. Unlike mail and email campaigns, classroom presentations provide young citizens with the combination of information, motivation, and designated time required to successfully complete the registration process.

The effects of Election Day vote centers on voter experiences

gbain — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:55:54 -0700

1. Introduction

Election Day vote centers, first adopted in Larimer County, Colorado in 2003, were used in 21 Colorado counties and a number of counties in Texas and Indiana in the 2008 Presidential Election. Election Day vote centers are intended to make Election Day voting more convenient and accessible and thereby increase voter turnout, especially
among infrequent voters. The evidence to date demonstrates that vote centers have had a significant and positive effect on voter turnout, especially among infrequent voters (Stein and Vonnahme 2008; 2009). Why?

In this paper we examine how the attributes of Election Day vote centers shape the voting experience. Our focus is on how different voting systems effect voter satisfaction with voting technology; paper versus direct recorded electronic (DRE) voting machine, the places at which voters vote, the number of races voters ballot in, voter
confidence that their ballot will be counted accurately and the time voters spend waiting to vote and to cast their vote. Our central thesis is that voting, especially for the first time and infrequent voters is an ‘acquired taste.” Voters rely on a learning mechanism for determining the likely costs and benefits of voting when deciding whether or not to vote.

Positive voting experiences reinforce and increase the likelihood that the satisfied voter will vote again.

Three questions motivate our research:

1. Do vote centers provide the voter a better voting experience?
2. Why do vote centers provide a better voting experience?
3. Is the effect of vote centers on the voter’s experience different for frequent and infrequent voters?

Section 2 reviews current research on convenience voting and explicates the reasons underlying the adoption of Election Day vote centers and how this method of voting might influence voter satisfaction and voter turnout. Section 3 and 4 presents a research design and measures for testing our hypotheses about how vote centers effect
voter satisfaction and participation. We provide the estimation results in section 5 drawing on an exit poll conducted on Election Day 2008 in Colorado. We conclude with a discussion of how experiences with Election Day vote centers might be used in precinct voting systems.

People Power or a One-Shot Deal? The Legacy of the Colored Revolutions Considered from a Collective Action Framework

gbain — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:25:37 -0800

***DRAFT IN PROGRESS.***

Introduction
In the first half of the first decade of the 21st century, it was clear something special was occurring in the post-communist world. In a series of stunning developments, a number of countries that had by and large failed to establish viable democratic governments in the original period of post-communist transitions ten years earlier suddenly rose up to demand democratic accountability following a series of fraudulent elections in such previous hotbeds of democracy as Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. Scholars of course took notice, with a flurry of articles on each individual “Colored Revolution”, as they collectively came to be known, as well as a number of more recent papers that have tried to make sense of them collectively (e.g., McFaul 2005; Beissinger 2007; Bunce and Wolchik 2007; Tucker 2007). The focus of these papers, not surprisingly, lay in trying to explain how and why the Colored Revolutions took place. To the extent that they looked at all to the future, it was largely to speculate as to the next country that was likely fall in the path of this democratic onslaught (Belarus anyone?). Left relatively unexplored, however, was the legacy of the Colored Revolutions for the future of political protest for the countries in which they had occurred.

In this paper, I take up precisely this question. More specifically, I lay out two possible legacies of the Colored Revolutions for the countries in which they take place. The most intuitive expectation would be one that highlights citizens’ discovery of their own “people power”, leading us to expect to see protests again in the future when democratic development is threatened by corrupt or inept leaders. Surprisingly, though, when we consider in sufficient detail the micro-level motivation of protestors that took to the streets in the original Colored Revolutions, a paradox emerges: to the extent that the need for a second “Colored Revolution” might emerge in a country, it will simultaneously call into question whether the gains from the original Colored Revolution was worth the cost paid by the people who participated in it. I will spend the bulk of this paper drawing out this paradox, noting why it is especially serious in the case of protests that followed electoral fraud (as all the Colored Revolutions did), and attempting to highlight the specific variables that would make it more likely that the Colored Revolutions will in fact turn out to be “one-shot deals”.

In order to do this, I draw upon a framework that I have presented in detail elsewhere that suggests one way to think about the Colored Revolutions is in terms of the collective action problem faced by citizens who are confronted by an abusive or unrestrained regime (Tucker 2007; see Weingast 1997, 2005 on the idea of unrestrained regimes1). In a sense, I utilize a “bottom-up” approach to understanding the Colored Revolutions by focusing on the motivations faced by individual citizens to participate in protest following instances of electoral fraud; most of the rest of the literature on the Colored Revolutions tends to focus on the actions and motivations of elites (although see Way 2006; Fournier forthcoming for an exception in the case of Ukraine). In this paper, I will then extend this bottom-up approach to considering the longer-term future of protest in the Colored Revolution countries.

I proceed as follows. I begin by laying out a very concise summary of the events of the Colored Revolutions in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. I then briefly sketch out the arguments that I have made previously regarding how we might consider the Colored Revolutions as an example of how the prevalence of publicly known major electoral fraud is a particularly useful confronted by abusive governments. In what is the heart of the paper, I then expand upon this argument to consider what it has to teach us about whether we ought to expect to see more protest in the future in these countries, concluding with the somewhat counter-intuitive observation that the set of circumstances in which we might expect this to occur is actually rather limited. I conclude the essay with a number by briefly speculating about how I might further develop this argument in the future.

The 2008 Presidential Primaries through the Lens of Prediction Markets

gbain — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:21:42 -0800

To explore the influence of primary results during the 2008 nomination process we leverage a previously unused methodology—the analysis of prediction market contracts. The unique structure of prediction markets allows us to address two unexplored questions. First, we analyze whether primary results affect candidates’ chances in the general election, as candidates who take strong positions during the nomination contest may be unable to easily appeal to centrist voters in the general election. We also assess whether states with early primaries, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, have a disproportionate effect on the nominating process. We show that the length of the primary season has a minimal impact of the electability of candidates in the general election, and that some states have a disproportionate impact on the nominating process. However, the states that have the largest impact are not necessarily New Hampshire and Iowa, the states that have often been assumed to be the most influential because of their early position on the primary calendar.

Residual Votes in the 2008 Minnesota Senate Race

gbain — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:53:09 -0800

The 2008 United States Senate race in Minnesota is one of the closest electoral
contests in recent history: as of this writing, out of over 2.9 million ballots cast only 206 votes separate incumbent Republican Senator Norm Coleman and his Democratic challenger, Al Franken. The Minnesota Senate race is slated to be recounted starting on November 19, 2008, and a key issue in the recount will be the approximately 34 thousand residual votes associated with it. A Senate residual vote is, roughly speaking, the product of a ballot that lacks a recorded Senate vote, and in the Minnesota Senate race there is no doubt that the number of residual votes dwarfs the margin that separates Coleman from Franken. We show using a combination of precinct voting returns from the 2006 and 2008 General Elections that patterns in Senate race residual votes are consistent with, one, the presence of a large number of Democratic-leaning voters, in particular African-American voters, who appear to have deliberately skipped voting in the Coleman-Franken Senate contest and, two, the presence of a smaller number of Democraticleaning voters who almost certainly intended to cast a vote in the Senate race but for some reason did not do so. Ultimately, the anticipated recount may clarify the relative proportions of intentional versus unintentional residual votes. At present, though, the data available suggest that the recount will uncover many of the former and that, of the latter, a majority will likely prove to be supportive of Franken.

Detecting Fraud in America’s Gilded Age

gbain — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:52:00 -0800

Abstract: This paper extends recent developments in election forensics to test for electoral fraud during a period of American history widely suspected to be ripe with fraud. It uses the second-digit Benford’s Law test in an effort to identify possible instances of election fraud during the Gilded Age—an era of highly competitive party politics. The study focuses on presidential and gubernatorial elections in Southern US states during the period from 1872 to 1896. The empirical results corroborate some of the extant historical anecdotes of electoral fraud during this period.

Fraud, Elections and the American Gene in Taiwan’s Democracy

gbain — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:18:52 -0700

Using several indicators that have been applied elsewhere to detect election fraud using official election returns, this essay takes close look at Taiwan’s three most recent presidential contests. However, rather than simply see if we can find evidence of fraud in those returns, we also see how close the patterns in the numbers mimic what we find in the United States and in this way offer a measure of the extent to which America’s “genetic gene” has taken root in Taiwan. Our general conclusion is that, with the exception of data from precincts that correspond to military districts, the patterns in the data more close match what we find in the United States as opposed to authoritarian regimes such as Russia or transitional democracies such as Ukraine.