2008 Presidential Election

Voter Opinions about Election Reform: Do They Support Making Voting More Convenient?

gbain — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:35:14 -0700

We study public opinions about convenience voting reforms, using a unique state-by-state survey conducted in the 2008 presidential election. Our analysis of the American voting public’s support for potential convenience voting reforms provides a variety of important insights into the potential direction of innovations in the electoral process in the near future. First, we find that the most prominent convenience voting reforms have mixed support. These include attitudes toward automatic voter registration, Election Day voter registration, and moving Election Day to
a weekend. These reforms do not have majority support among all voters in the United States but there are some states where these reforms do have majority support and could be implemented. Second, we find that Internet voting and voting-by-mail do not receive a great deal of support from American voters. There was no state where Internet voting was supported by a majority of voters and there were no states that do not already have expanded vote by mail (Washington and Oregon) where expanded vote by mail had majority support.
Finally, we find that a majority of Americans support requiring showing photo identification (overwhelming support) and making Election Day a holiday (bare majority support).

Making Voting Easier: Convenience Voting in the 2008 Presidential Election

gbain — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:52:10 -0700

In this study we analyze the choice of voting mode in the 2008 presidential election. We use a large-sample survey with national coverage that allows us to overcome limitations of previous studies. Our analysis provides a number of insights into some of the important debates about convenience voting. Among other things, we find little support for the hypothesis that convenience voting methods have partisan implications; although we do find voter attributes that lead to the choice of some particular convenience voting mode. Results like these have important implications for future moves towards convenience voting and the design of new outreach campaigns.

A Data-Centered Look at the Election of 2008

gbain — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:25:43 -0700

My expertise is in trying to use data to identify where election problems lie in America, especially at a broad level --- such as comparing states with each other or comparing counties with each other. I know that the purpose of today’s conference is to think about LA County, but there are lessons to be learned from looking across the country. So, what I thought I would do today is look at the election of 2008 to ask what do the data tell us about the experience of voters nationwide on Election Day? At the end, I’ll also say some words about where California fits into national trends --- not to put anyone on the spot, but rather, to get us thinking about where the special challenges are in improving elections here.

Speech from September 16, 2009 event Hosted by Caltech/MIT for the Los Angeles County Registrar Recorder's workshop on "Technology, Diversity, and De"mocracy: The Future of Voting Systems in Los Angeles County.

2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections

gbain — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:32:27 -0700

Survey Background
• Gauging the quality of the voting experience
• Research design
– 200 respondents contacted in every state, or 10,000
total
– Survey in the field the week following Nov. 4
– Pilot surveys conducted on in Nov. ’07 and Super
Tuesday ’08
– Parallel nationwide survey
• Limited set of questions
• 32,800 total respondents

Voting Technology and Innovation

gbain — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:55:50 -0700

The 2008 election was different from the last two presidential elections in that there was a clear winner on Election Day and the winner was a Democrat, Barack Obama. Controversies over voting technology that raged in 2000 and 2004 were relatively dormant. Instead, the election controversies that did come up were mostly discussions of lines to vote.1 This lack of discussion does not mean that there were not important issues related to voting technology that took place in 2008, just that they were not things deemed important by the media. In fact, the 2008 election has proven to be a watershed election in voting technology considered more broadly because in this election, more than one-third of voters nationally voted before election day. As the 2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections (Alvarez, Ansolabehere, Berinsky, Lenz, Stewart III, & Hall, 2009) noted, “37% of voters cast their ballots before Election Day, either in-person at early voting centers (18%) or by mail, mainly via absentee ballots (19%). The elderly, individuals with disabilities, and bettereducated voters were more likely to use these “convenience voting” methods.” This slow revolution in voting is requiring election officials, policy makers, and voters alike to rethink what elections mean, how voting technologies function in this new environment, and how laws, processes, and procedures need to be updated to reflect this new reality. The old mindset of election day as a singular event is no longer a reality. In that vein, voting technology is not some “thing” that is used by a voter to vote but rather is part of a larger process that runs from pre-election voting machine testing through post-election audits.

Voter Attitudes Toward Poll Workers in the 2008 Election

gbain — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 07:48:56 -0700

At a conference on election reform held by the National Academies of Science in 2004, Indiana’s Secretary of State, Todd Rokita, referred to poll workers as “the street level lawyers” of elections. The reason for his statement was obvious: poll workers, in polling places, are the people who determine how well an election is run and have the power over its implementation (Alvarez and Hall 2006; Claassen, Magleby, Monson, and Patterson 2008; Hall, Monson, and Patterson, forthcoming). Because elections are held on a single day in a single window of time, poll workers often are the final arbiters of the electoral process because only with difficulty can voters appeal the decision of a poll worker on election day. Given the critical role of elections in allowing voters to express their preferences for candidates and government policy, poll workers play a critical role in politics and are key front-line, albeit largely volunteer, public administrators.

Is There Racial Discrimination at the Polls? Voters' Experience in the 2008 Election

gbain — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:28:32 -0700

In 1965, the United States Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act to end discrimination against black voters at the polls in Southern states and throughout the nation. The Act prohibited the use of “tests” and other devices used to prevent people from voting. At issue was not the content of tests themselves but the wide latitude available to those charged with registering and authenticating voters. Poll workers and election officers applied literacy tests, poll taxes, and other mechanisms differentially to voters according to race, resulting in extremely low rates of voter registration and participation among blacks and Hispanics.

Forty years after the Voting Rights Act went into effect, concerns about discriminatory treatment and differential consequences of election administration practice have returned. General polling place operations are alleged to be much worse in areas where large numbers of minorities vote, yielding long lines. Procedures for maintaining registration lists are thought to make it more likely that there will be an improper purge of minority voters, leading to more problems with registration on Election Day. And, voter identification requirements, which states have strengthened considerably since 2000, are alleged to be applied more frequently and strictly to Black and Hispanic voters than to Whites.

This paper examines the experiences of voters expressed in two surveys, the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey and a 2008 survey conducted by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project with support of the Pew Foundation. Both surveys were conducted over the Internet by YouGov. The CCES has a sample of 32,800 respondents, and the VTP-Pew Survey has a sample of 12,000 respondents. In addition to the Internet component, the VTP-Pew survey contains a separate phone sample used to validate the surveys. Additional information about these surveys is available at the websites of the CCES