Elections Performance Index!!!

If there are two things I am passionate about they are election reform and interactive infographics. So I just about squealed over the Pew Charitable Trust's Election Initiative's Elections Performance Index when it was released earlier this week.

The EPI measures states's overall election administration performance based on 17 criteria: Absentee Ballots Rejected, Provisional Ballots Rejected, Absentee Ballots Unreturned, Registration or Absentee Ballot Problems, Data Completeness, Registrations Rejected, Disability- or Illness-Related Voting Problems, Turnout, Military and Overseas Ballots Rejected, Voter Registration Rate, Military and Overseas Ballots Unreturned, Voting Information Look-Up Tools Available, Online Registration Available, Voting Technology Accuracy, Post-election Audit Required, Voting Wait Time and Provisional Ballots Cast.

The data is illuminating. For instance, did you know that 3% of (non-provisional or absentee) ballots in West Virginia don't get counted? Ruh Roh. But it's poor old Mississippi at the very bottom of the list. They really need to be first in something good and soon. Wisconsin is at the top of the pack. There are a lot of really sexy infographics to choose from, but I am linking to this interactive graph that lets you sort states by any combination of criteria, shows which criteria were most important in each state and ahh well...it's just divine. I will let you check it out for yourself. Click around the rest of the report too.

Charles Stewart III, an MIT Political Science Professor whose research created the basis for the EPI analyzed some of his findings in this interview.

"States with election-day registration have more people registered to vote … [and] people in those states are less likely to say that they had registration problems that kept them from voting. Jurisdictions that have electronic voting machines tend to have longer lines than those with optical scanners."

Enjoy! I'm going to go back to nerding out.

Electronic Voting In Brazil

Great article in the Boston Review about how electronic voting has helped combat vote fraud and disenfranchisement in Brazil:

"Between 1994 and 2002, the blank and invalid vote rate in national legislative elections dropped by 34 percentage points. Traditionally, observers attributed the high rate of invalid and blank votes to either dissatisfaction or disinterest in the political system, but the switch to electronic voting revealed that the paper ballot had been effectively disenfranchising Brazil’s poorest and least educated.

Electronic voting also sharply reduced incumbents’ ability to use electoral fraud to hang on to power. Incumbent parties, especially those in states long governed by political machines that emerged during the era of military rule, suffered major electoral losses. In several states in the poorer Northeast, voters witnessed real electoral competition for the first time in decades. Electronic voting isn’t solely responsible for these shifts, but it undoubtedly contributed to the fall of local oligarchs."

Very interesting short read! Check out the whole thing here.

An Elephant Carrying a Voting Machine

You might think that title was a clever metaphor to describe the current state of US elections, but it is in fact, a voting machine being carried on the back of an elephant.

My classmates gave a talk today about elections in India and it was very interesting! I am hoping after finals that some of my fellow grad students will be willing to guest blog about how elections are run in their countries. Our Professor asked us specifically (*twice*-you guys who has been breaking this rule if not me?) not to blog about class, but since I am just passing on an article, I can't see that he'd mind.

It's a pretty wonderful image, don't you agree?