When it involves the integrity and accuracy of voting methods in the United States, the excellent news is that widespread technological upgrades have largely eradicated the voting-machine issues that had been so evident when Florida’s disputed recount decided the 2000 presidential election.
The unhealthy information is that some of these enhancements in accuracy may very well be undermined by will increase in early voting by means of the mail, which is popping out to be a comparatively low-accuracy technique of voting, in accordance with a brand new analysis report launched by MIT and the California Institute of Technology.
“A lot of changes over the last decade have made voting in America better,” says Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, who co-authored the new report with 5 colleagues at 4 universities. “The possibility of a [situation like Florida’s 2000 election] is much lower now than it was 12 years ago.”
However, Stewart provides, “We have possibly gotten way ahead of ourselves in encouraging people to vote by mail. It’s pretty clear that the improvement we’ve gotten by having better voting machines in the precincts may be given back by having more and more people voting at home.”
Mailing it in
The new report was launched at this time by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. It is the newest in a sequence of experiences by the group, which shaped in the aftermath of the 2000 election.
A significant change since 2000 has been the alternative of outdated voting methods — principally punch playing cards and lever machines — with extra dependable optical-scan or digital voting machines. Today roughly 60 % of counties throughout the United States use optical-scan machines, and 40 % use different varieties of digital gear. (A small set of counties nonetheless hand-count paper ballots.)
The upshot of this transformation is that the general residual vote price — the distinction between the quantity of ballots solid and counted — dropped from 2 % of ballots solid in 2000 to 1 % in 2006 and 2008, as the report notes.
On the different hand, the report states, “absentee voting is more prone than in-person voting to residual vote rates.” That presents new issues, since the proportion of Americans voting by mail or at early election facilities has doubled, the report notes, from 14 % in 2000 to twenty-eight % in 2008. One examine by Voter Technology Project researchers, primarily based on 20 years of information from California, has proven that the residual vote price for absentee voters was bigger than that for votes solid at polling locations — by 2.2 proportion factors in presidential races, 3.3 % in gubernatorial races, 4.9 % in U.S. Senate races, and three.0 % for poll propositions.
Still, in terms of voting by mail, Stewart observes, “The genie may be out of the bottle. We’ve settled for convenience at the cost of accuracy and making sure that every vote counts.” In all, 36 states now conduct some form of early voting.
To additional consider the effectiveness of all these methods, a central suggestion of the report is laws mandating post-election audits of all voting applied sciences.
Resolving voter identification points
Stewart additionally means that expertise can assist mediate one of the hottest disputes in celebration politics at this time, the battle over voter identification legal guidelines.
Broadly, Republicans have claimed that instances of voter fraud imply it’s essential to enact stricter controls over who can vote on Election Day — normally by requiring voters to current picture ID. Democrats have argued that claims of voter fraud are overblown and assert that the challenge is a pretext for limiting the participation of Democratic-leaning voters. New voter ID legal guidelines have been handed in lots of states; in some locations, judges have struck down or restricted, quickly or completely, the utility of these legal guidelines.
As the report states, “ensuring the strictest security for our entire electoral process is paramount.” On the different hand, it notes, “there simply is not a strong record demonstrating the prevalence of voter impersonation fraud or voting by ineligible individuals.” Still, Stewart notes, the common sense use of present applied sciences might, in concept, assist resolve these considerations.
“Assuming that states are going to be adopting more laws requiring voter ID at the polls, through the application of technology we can shift the burden of acquiring the ID from the voter to the state,” Stewart says.
The report means that the computerized statewide voter-registration databases required by federal legislation must be utilized in polling locations, and coordinated with driver’s license images or different identification databases. Rather than forcing all voters to first purchase ID playing cards, ballot employees might rapidly verify voters’ identities by means of the use of linked databases in the polling place.
“That really could be a kind of win-win, and certainly no diminution of the right to vote, which is what people who are opposed to voter IDs are worried about,” Stewart provides.
While different political scientists and voting consultants haven’t but seen the newest report, they are saying the venture’s previous work has had a big affect.
“The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project has been the most important source for information about problems with the technology used in … our elections,” says Rick Hasen, a legislation professor at the University of California at Irvine, and creator of the influential Election Law Blog. “Its fair metrics for measuring voting technology issues helped this country move from the era of ‘hanging chads’ to more accurate and better voting systems.”
As some students notice, the venture’s affect has gone past the academy and reached officers in cost of election-technology selections. “I think practitioners are listening,” says Barry Burden, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “That’s the gratifying part.” By distinction, Burden notes, earlier than the venture started, in 2000, “there was very little interchange” between researchers and election officers.
The principal authors of the report are R. Michael Alvarez, a political scientist at Caltech; Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of authorities at Harvard University; Thad E. Hall, an affiliate professor of political science at the University of Utah; Jonathan Katz, a professor of social sciences and statistics at Caltech; Ronald L. Rivest, a professor of electrical engineering and laptop science at MIT; and Stewart. The report was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The Voting Technology Project has additionally been supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts.