Casandra Hockenberry, Author at CSG OVI

October 8, 2021October 8, 2021

Enhancing the EAVS with Administrative Data

Heat map of the World showing number of ballot requests by country excluding US

The Election Administration and Voting Survey – Purpose and Limitations

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released the 2020 biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) results. The EAC administers the EAVS to state election officials, who provide aggregated administrative election data. That data is analyzed by the EAC, researchers, and election officials to better understand the voting process—including voter registration, voting equipment, poll workers, polling locations, and a variety of other topics. EAVS is an important mechanism providing a source of data that is unavailable anywhere else.

As important as the EAVS is, there are still issues with the data that is supplied. For example, election administrators report that EAVS questions are often confusing and attempt to translate practices that vary widely across localities to standardized categories. As a result, administrators may be asked to supply answers to questions that are not applicable to their locality. While we have seen steady improvement in the level of data completion of the data sets, there is still work to be done.

As Jack Williams, Senior Researcher at MIT Election Lab, noted in a recent article, “(The EAVS) is the most valuable in getting a national perspective on how Americans vote. Still, it’s no substitute for the administrative data maintained by the states themselves, which often differ from EAVS for many reasons that are justified.”

The EAVS Section B Data Standard – Purpose and Added Value

A comprehensive analysis of administrative election data stands to provide critical insight into effective policies. At this time, the EAVS can only provide limited information due to the nature of aggregated date and, at times, ambiguous questions subject to interpretation by election officials. The Council of State Governments Overseas Voting Initiative (OVI) is dedicated to improving the process of voting for military and overseas citizens and intends to use the implementation of the EAVS Section B (ESB) Data Standard as a catalyst to do so. We wrote more about the development of the ESB Data Standard here.

Section B of the EAVS collects data about military and overseas citizen voting. There is a wealth of knowledge that can be gleaned from this data, especially if collected at a transactional level. The ESB Data Standard does just this. This standard allows us to dig deeper into the data than EAVS, thus providing us with a better understanding of what can lead to either voting success or voting failure among military and overseas citizens.

More than that, the data can point to opportunities for further research. This would involve meeting with states and local jurisdictions to better understand what the data is showing. For example, perhaps we suddenly see a sharp decline in the rejection of ballots due to a missing voter signature. This could be caused by any number of things—more effective voter education, a new curing policy, a different set of instructions included with balloting materials, or just sheer luck. Upon speaking with election officials, we could determine if there was a particular action that yielded this result and highlight these findings for jurisdictions interested in doing the same. As another point of analysis, the ESB Data Standard can help officials mitigate the ever-changing difficulties of mail delivery during a pandemic. Data gathered according to the Standard can determine where a voter is located overseas , where a mail service disruption(s) took place, and if the mitigating strategies put in place were successful . This information is collected through multiple data fields of the Standard such as a voter’s mailing country. A visualization is provided below demonstrating the number of ballot requests by country. This figure was generated using the ESB data provided by a subset of working group members who have implemented the standard in their local context.*

It is important to work with the election officials to not just understand what is in the data set, but “the why” behind that data. Because EAVS is asking very specific questions that are at times confusing to election administrators, the full story behind the data is sometimes lost. Our goal with our project is to ensure that we are asking the why, as that can better inform reflections on policy changes.

Additionally, the work election administrators put into completing the EAVS is extremely burdensome. Often, states must enlist the help of local election officials to answer some parts of EAVS. These officials often have limited resources and, in many cases, numerous other job duties in addition to election administration. Our hope with the ESB Data Standard is that, upon creating either a database query or a report that aligns with the standard, it will be easy for election officials to pull all relevant transactional data with little effort.

Adaptability of the Standard

What is most exciting about the ESB Data Standard is its adaptability. Because the standard was designed to accommodate both traditional absentee voting models and vote-by-mail models, it can easily be modified to capture EAVS Section C data. EAVS Section C deals with all other by mail voting from absentee voting (other than military and overseas citizens), permanent absentee voting, to by-mail voting. As such, the structure of the ESB Data Standard already aligns with Section C of the EAVS.

Development of the Standard

The ESB Data Standard was developed in collaboration with election officials. Through soliciting their insight, the Standard was designed to incorporate the data that jurisdictions currently collect as well as the data that are central to a comprehensive understanding of the voting process. The OVI has also worked with election officials in one state to map processes pertaining to how military and overseas citizens register to vote, request their ballot, and vote their ballot. Such work revealed where the state’s database system captured or failed to collect ESB data points. The OVI also learned that some data points were captured and maintained outside of the state database, helping to explain why certain data points were not available in our research.

Overall, the EAVS provides us with a wealth of information. However, we believe that leveraging data standards such as the ESB Data Standard is a worthwhile investment. These standards allow us to acquire transactional level administrative data directly from the states in a manner that is less time consuming, creates less ambiguity in the data responses from election officials, and provides a more robust data set to analyze.

*The map was generated with the data from Colorado, Washington, Orange County, and Los Angeles County, and excludes records where the mailing location was the United States.

November 3, 2020November 3, 2020

Every Vote Counts: Military and Overseas Voting Ballots

In the lead up to the Nov. 3, there have been countless articles about military and overseas voters. Some encouraging the voters to return their ballots as soon as possible. Others are speculating about how important these voters may be to the election. It has brought to the forefront of our minds the age-old myth that military and overseas ballots are only counted if it is a close race.

Traditionally, the majority of Americans head to their local polling place on election day and cast their vote in person with not much thought given to absentee ballots. Polls are often congested places on Election Day. In light of Covid-19 health risks, many states have turned to absentee voting as a method of cutting down on the number of people crowded into gymnasiums, churches, and other polling locations. However, military voters have voted via absentee ballot since the U.S. Civil War, and those protections were codified in 1986 with the Uniform and Absentee Citizen Voting Act (UOCAVA).

Election officials are required count every valid ballot that comes into their possession prior to their state’s relevant deadlines. For a ballot to be valid, a voter must have completed the ballot and relevant identification processes according to state law. This can include signatures on envelopes, proof of identification, witness certification, etc.

Deadlines for ballots to be received by election officials are different for each state and there are special considerations for military and overseas citizens- find yours here. For example:

In Florida, if you are living outside of the U.S. your ballot must be postmarked by Nov. 3 and will be counted as long as it is received by the 10^th day AFTER the election.
In New York, your ballot must be postmarked by Nov. 3, and the received by the local election office by the 13^th day AFTER the election.
In California, your ballot must be postmarked by Nov. 3 and, for the November General election only, must be received no later than 17 days AFTER the election.
In Arizona, your ballot must be received by your election office by 7:00p.m. Nov. 3.

If you have concerns about the status of your ballot, contact your local election official, or check their website. States are required by the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act to have some method by which UOCAVA voters can track their ballot. In some states there is a phone number to call, but many states have websites dedicated to tracking the status of your absentee ballot.

Election officials do not “call” elections. That is something done by the media . Instead election officials are responsible for counting each and every valid ballot that receive before deadlines. The media have methodology they employee in order to “call” an election. Even after the media has “called” an election, election officials continue their official counting process, which can include recounts. Local election officials provide their official count to a state’s chief election officer (oftentimes the Secretary of State), who will certify the official count. See more on that here. Record numbers of absentee ballots are expected this year which could cause some delay to election results, but rest assured that election officials will be working hard to get every validly submitted timely ballot counted

October 28, 2020October 28, 2020

How did they get my voter information!?: Access and Use of Voter Registration Lists

There is a difference between general voter information that is readily available to the public in voter registration lists; and sensitive personal information that is protected by numerous safeguards.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 requires the chief election official of each state to implement a “single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list.” This list is to be “defined, maintained, and administered at the State level.”[1] The goal is to allow states to have a computerized list of voters. This allows state and local election officials immediate electronic access to check the registration status of a voter. It also allows verification of voter information with other state, local and federal agencies; provides a means for list maintenance; and tracks certain appropriate voting histories.

Historically, these lists have been available for campaign purposes. But different states have different requirements for who can request a list of voters and what information that list includes.[2] Additionally, many states have specific Address Confidentiality Programs (ACP) to keep voter information confidential for certain classes of voters, such as victims of domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking. Some examples of state requirements for requesting a voter registration list include:

Alaska: Anyone can request a copy of the state voter registration list, which contains the names, addresses and party affiliations of all registered voters in the state. Voters may request in writing to keep their residential address confidential, if they provide a separate mailing address.[3]
Colorado: Voter registration lists are available to the public upon request and contain a voter’s full name, address, year of birth, political party and vote history. Information remains private for ACP participants and pre-registrants[4] (a procedure that allows individuals under 18 to register to vote so they are eligible to cast a ballot when they reach 18).
Massachusetts: State party committees, statewide candidate committees, state ballot question committees, the jury commissioner, adjutant general and any other individual, agency, or entity that the Secretary of State designates may request the list, which includes names and addresses. Information on ACP participants remains private.[5]
Idaho: Any person may request a voter registration list, which include voter name, address and precinct – excluding ACP participants.[6]

Thus far in 2020, there is no evidence that voter registration systems have been penetrated by foreign or domestic actors. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), in conjunction with the FBI, has released a public alert about false claims of hacked voter information. The agencies believe the intention of these claims is to cast doubt of the legitimacy of U.S. elections.[7]

Importantly, that a voter registration system is experiencing an outage does not necessarily mean a voter registration information or other election system has been compromised.[8] In fact, there are many innocuous reasons such errors occur, including configuration errors and natural disasters. [9] Additionally, foreign and domestic cyber actors may make claims they have “hacked” these databases in order to undermine confidence in the November 3 election and U.S. election institutions. In reality, these actors merely have information that is publicly available.

Voter misinformation (false information) and disinformation (false information designed to mislead) campaigns by foreign and domestic actors have been and will continue to be an issue for U.S. election institutions. It is important that federal, state, and local election officials and voters continue to question the veracity of these campaigns and claims. State and local election officials in collaboration with federal agencies, such as CISA, work and train to conduct elections as safely, fairly and securely as possible.

[1] Help Americans Vote Act §303(a)(1)(A0(i)-§303(a)(1)(A)(viii)

[2] Access To and Use of Voter Registration Lists, National Conference of State Legislatures https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access-to-and-use-of-voter-registration-lists.aspx

[3] AS §15.07.127 and §15.07.195

[4] Colo. Rev. Stat. §1-2-302, §24-30-2108, §1-2-227

[5] Mass. Gen. Laws Ch. 51 §47C, §37, §44

[6] Idaho Code §34-437, §34-437A, §19-5706

[7] False Claims of Hacked Voter Information Likely Intended to Cast Doubt on Legitimacy of U.S. Elections https://www.cisa.gov/publication/false-claims-hacked-voter-information-likely-intended-cast-doubt-legitimacy-us

[8] See CISA Cyber Threats to Voting Processes Could Slow but Not Prevent Voting, https://www.cisa.gov/publication/cyber-threats-voting-processes-could-slow-not-prevent-voting

[9] CISA #Protect2020 Rumor vs. Reality https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol

July 1, 2020September 24, 2020

Overseas Voting Initiative Special Task Force Issues Recommendations to Improve Ballot Processes for Overseas Citizens

The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic has caused mail disruptions around the world that will undoubtedly impact the many American citizens living and working abroad when it comes time to vote in the November election. As of late June, the United States Postal Service (USPS) lists 103 international mail disruptions — a number that changes regularly.