Data Standardization Archives

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.

October 21, 2020October 28, 2020

Voter Registration Modernization in Colorado: Implications for UOCAVA voters and the EAVS Section B Data Standard Pilot

The ESB Data Standard Roundtrip Pilot

In June 2020, The Council of State Governments (CSG) Overseas Voting Initiative launched the first Elections Administration Voting Survey, Section B (ESB) Data Standard Pilot. Throughout the course of the pilot, election officials in three states — California, Colorado and Washington — will work closely with Overseas Voting Initiative staff to fully implement the ESB Data Standard in their local jurisdictions by March 2021.

Achieving full implementation will require election officials to develop an in-depth understanding of the standard’s conventions as well as the actions necessary to conform their jurisdiction’s existing data to the standard. The diversity among state processes of collecting and storing election data will bring about unique challenges as officials attempt to do so. These challenges may stem from jurisdictional variation in date formats, capitalization (e.g. some values entered as “mail” others as “Mail”) or country names (e.g. some entries spell out “Cote D’Ivoire” while others “Ivory Coast”), among others.

Colorado’s Progress Toward Full Implementation of the ESB Data Standard

Of the pilot’s participants, the Colorado Elections Division has uniquely positioned itself to overcome these challenges and fully implement the ESB Data Standard by March. This stems from the division’s previous involvement with the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) EAVS Section B Working Group as well as its efforts to modernize the state voter registration system.

In 2015, FVAP created the EAVS Section B Working Group. This group consisted of state and local election officials experienced in Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) voting who sought to both reduce the burden of EAVS, Section B reporting and enhance its overall utility. Among the Working Group’s 13 members was Hilary Rudy, Colorado deputy director of elections.

Not only was Rudy a staunch advocate of adopting the ESB Data Standard, but she was also among the first to implement the standard in her state’s election jurisdictions.* By 2018, election officials had not only established internal procedures for conforming EAVS Section B data to the standard but had also begun standardizing voters’ country codes and names according to United States Postal Service (USPS) guidelines.

Although the ESB Data Standard requires physical addresses to be formatted according to ISO 3166, Colorado’s adoption of USPS standards significantly reduces the time and effort necessary to ensure the validity of UOCAVA voters’ country data. This has, in part, allowed the state’s Elections Division to supply the CSG Overseas Voting Initiative with its first set of ESB standard-compliant data within one month of the pilot’s kickoff. As of late August 2020, this data set had passed one of two validations necessary to ensure its accuracy and validity.

Benefits of Colorado’s Address Standardization Beyond the ESB Data Standard

Colorado’s voter address standardization was initially intended to facilitate implementation of the ESB Data Standard; however, the benefits of this work have extended much further. According to Rudy, both election officials and UOCAVA voters alike have experienced significant improvements in the voting process as a result of these efforts.

Prior to standardization, the ability of local election officials to conduct outreach to UOCAVA voters was limited. If valid, active addresses could not be derived from a voter’s state records, the likelihood of an election official to successfully contact an overseas voter was slim. Upon adopting USPS address standards, the success rate of this outreach improved significantly.

With the threat of U.S. withdrawal from the Universal Postal Union in 2018 and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the ability of local election officials to acquire additional contact information became increasingly important. Upon obtaining this information, Colorado election officials would not only be able to successfully inform voters of any international mail delays, but also educate them on alternative voting options. Contingency plans could then be developed to help prevent disenfranchisement.

Through the Election Division’s outreach to overseas voters, Rudy and her colleagues also found that former UOCAVA voters often failed to update their registration status upon returning stateside.** In response, the Elections Division was able to add a checkbox to various state forms allowing these voters to indicate a change in their registration status. This addition has improved Colorado’s overall voter registration system as well as the accuracy of their EAVS Section B data.

Despite the demands of a tumultuous election year, Rudy and her colleagues have continued to prioritize the standardization of the voter registration system and the improvement of the overall voting experience in Colorado. Not only has the Elections Division successfully incorporated country name dropdown boxes into its online voter registration system, but it has also developed Colorado’s first statewide ballot tracking system. Officials anticipate full implementation of this system by the end of the year. Through these efforts, the Elections Division has demonstrated their commitment to both strengthening the state’s voting system and fostering confidence in its efficacy.

*For further information on the successes and impacts of these efforts, read FVAP’s 2018 research note Data Standardization and the Impact of Ballot Transmission Timing and Mode on UOCAVA Voting.

**For more information about the conduct of elections in Colorado, please visit https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/main.html

October 15, 2020October 28, 2020

Mapping the UOCAVA Voting Process Through Modeling

In 2017, the Overseas Voting Initiative (OVI) published Using Technology to Enhance Military & Overseas Voting Vol. 2: Recommendations for Use of Data Standardization and Performance Metrics, a report identifying the need for the development and implementation of the Elections Administration Voting Survey, Section B (ESB) Data Standard. This standard seeks to capture anonymized, transactional level data about the voting experience of citizens living abroad as well as members of the armed forces and their family members. As jurisdictions fully integrate the ESB Data Standard with existing election administrative systems, election officials will achieve the following aims:

Enhance their ability to identify factors that lead to voter success and allow for analysis across jurisdictions.
Ease the burden of post-election reporting.
Support the identification of best practices to improve customer service, among others

For more information about the benefits of the ESB Data Standard, visit https://ovi.csg.org/esb-data-standard/

Generating the Process Model

To conduct the process modeling exercise, the OVI—the interviewers—will convene a small group of state and local election officials—the subjects. Together, these teams will walk through each election jurisdiction’s UOCAVA voting processes and generate a visual model articulating the key steps within each process (see Figure 1).

Business Process Model for Maintaining remote voter lists. — Figure 1: Maintain Remote Voter List

According to John Dziurłaj, Solutions Architect at The Turnout and chair of the EAC-NIST Election Modeling Public Working Group , the size and structure of the subject group is vital to the success of this exercise. Smaller subject groups ensure quick resolutions to any disagreements and also facilitate discussion regarding deciding on and interpreting common terms. The size and composition of the subject group ensures that all discussions remain relevant to the exercise.

The Pennsylvania Pilot

In September of 2020, the OVI initiated its first process modeling pilot with state and local election officials from Pennsylvania. Both the workability of the state’s existing EAVS Section B data as well as their administrative capacity to collaborate with CSG on these efforts have uniquely positioned them to participate in the pilot.

In the months to come, five participating counties will assemble subject teams and attend virtual convenings to examine the UOCAVA voting process within their local context. By mid 2021, the OVI will publish a comprehensive analysis of the pilot’s outcomes and its implications for a future expansion.

For questions regarding the Overseas Voting Initiative process modeling exercises or the ESB Data Standard Roundtrip Pilot, please reach out to the OVI team or email [email protected].

August 18, 2020October 7, 2020

The EAVS Section B Data Standard: Development and Implementation

Casting a Ballot: Challenges Faced by Overseas Voters

In 2016, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) conducted the biennial Overseas Citizen Population Analysis. This analysis indicated that there were approximately 5.5 million uniformed military and overseas citizens living abroad, of which 3 million were eligible to vote.