With the November 2014 elections around the corner, the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules & Administration hosted a hearing titled “Collection, Analysis and Use of Data: A Measured Approach to Improving Election Administration” where witnesses testified on how data collection can improve the election process. The 2012 elections were marred with incidents such as long lines in the battleground states of Florida and Virginia, and these experts pointed to data collection as a solution to some of these problems.
There was a common consensus among the witnesses that there needs to be an improvement in the way election data is collected. One of the key improvements in the last 10 years has been the trend towards online voter registration. According to Mr. David J. Becker, Director of Election Initiatives at The Pew Charitable Trusts, 19 states currently offer online voter registration, and more states are expected to add it in the future. Mr. Becker stated that online voter registration provides a win-win situation because it provides for a more accurate, more convenient, less erroneous, and less expensive way to register voters. The trend towards online voter registration is a positive step towards promoting accurate data collection in the world of election administration, and this will reduce mistakes associated with ineligible voters voting on Election Day. As noted by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who used to work as a prosecutor, a majority of the (very few) people who vote illegally do so because they don’t know that they are ineligible. Online voter registration can help solve this problem by walking would-be registrants through the eligibility requirements.
While Project Vote supports online voter registration efforts, it is important to remember that online voter registration is not a cure-all. As Project Vote’s Michelle Kanter Cohen has explained, online voter registration is less expensive than paper registration, reduces data-entry errors caused by administrators who cannot read a registrant’s handwriting or who make typos when entering information off of a paper form into a voter registration database, and can reduce the number of incomplete forms that are submitted. However, it risks leaving behind people without easy access to computers and people who do not have drivers’ licenses, because most states only permit electronic submission if the applicant has a signature on file with the state’s department of motor vehicles. Unfortunately, people in these demographic groups are disproportionately members of other demographic members that have traditionally been under-represented in the electorate: low-income people, racial minorities, and people with disabilities.
Another important point of discussion was the role of surveys, particularly the Pew Charitable Trust’s Elections Performance Index; the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, which includes a voting supplement, and the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Election Administration & Voting Survey. Ms. Heather Gerken, a professor at Yale Law School, noted that before these surveys, election administration was a world without data. She explained that the federal government is uniquely well-suited to assist in data collection by providing a cost-effective and easy-to-use structure for data collection and analysis. She also said that the federal government needs to support the EAC survey and that its importance cannot be overstated, because it provides the best data that exists and provides a way for scholars and election administrators to compare apples to apples. However, the EAC faces some problems due to a lack of reporting by states and the fact that much of the data comes from poll workers who have not been adequately trained to do the data collection. Finally, Ms. Gerken called for the federal government to maintain a clearinghouse for policy matters, so that election administrators can learn best practices from each other, and noted that the EAC is “all but built to do this already.”
Similarly, Mr. Charles Stewart III, a professor at MIT, said that the EAC is very important but that the continued uncertainty surrounding it as well as its current lack of commissioners is a “major barrier.” In particular, Mr. Stewart noted that Commissioners are needed so that the Election Administration & Voting Survey can be improved, and so that the EAC can approve voluntary systems standards (which would include having machines that can collect and report data themselves, thus increasing efficiency and accuracy). Mr. Stewart also suggested two steps that the federal government could take to improve data collection: creating an EAC grant program to design systems to improve data collection, and to create a common system of data sharing.
Project Vote legal intern, Jude Nwaokobia and election counsel, Michelle Rupp contributed to this post.