On Electoral Reform

Exit Polls Legacy blog posts

This site aims to be about political polling and opinion surveys, not about voting irregularities or election reform. Nonetheless, since the controversy over the exit polls has been at the center of the debate over alleged irregularities in the 2004 election, our conversation has sometimes touched on that issue but never addressed it thoroughly.  Last night, a prominent FOMP (friend of Mystery Pollster) alerted him to a "preliminary" yet comprehensive report that was issued just before Christmas by the National Research Commission on Elections and Voting. MP recommends it highly to those with a genuine desire to understand what we really know (and don’t know) about the shortcomings in the way we count our vote. Anyone interested in electoral reform should read it in full.

The report has received remarkably little attention both in the mainstream media and the blogosphere (NashuaAdvocate excepted). I say remarkable for two reasons. First, the authors represent an all-star team of non-partisan academic specialists in political science, sociology, statistics and election law. Second, the report is a uniquely fair, rational and exhaustive review of the available evidence on all the major vote count controversies. Those journalists still following Mickey Kaus’ original call for "debunking and more debunking" ought to give it a thorough read. Keith Olberman, this means you!

Here are the key findings from the report’s executive summary:

  • Discrepancies between early exit poll results and popular vote tallies in several states may be due to a variety of factors and do not constitute prima facie evidence for fraud in the current election.
  • Recent studies noting disparities between county registration rates and voting outcomes in Florida, as well as apparent "machine effects" favoring George W. Bush, are of limited significance and cannot be considered as evidence of election fraud.
  • Ohio witnessed significant variability in wait times in some districts, sporadic instances of machine malfunctions, and possible voting tabulation errors, undercounts, and overcounts. Based on data available to this working group, it is extremely unlikely that the absence of these irregularities would have shifted popular vote tallies sufficiently to change the declared winner in Ohio. However, continuing uncertainty over the extent of irregularities merits closer public scrutiny and full disclosure of relevant data.
  • A definitive resolution of some allegations of malfeasance or irregularities in the most recent presidential election may never be possible, due to inadequate data and insufficient transparency of the election administration process in many states.
  • To restore public credibility in our election system, and to ensure the effective resolution of electoral process controversies in future elections, full and transparent collection and public disclosure of electoral process data are vital.

The section on the exit poll controversy plows ground that should be familiar to regular MP readers. Here’s the money quote:

Although these disparities have alarmed many observers, for several methodological reasons there is no a priori reason to believe that these differences reflect problems with the actual vote tallies. Rather, exit polls as currently designed and administered in the United States are not suitable for use as point estimators for the share of votes that go to different candidates. Their results, in conjunction with other elements of statistical models used by the National Election Pool (NEP) and the decision desks of their news organization members, are best suited for determining the difference between the two leading candidates and whether it is safe to call a particular race for one of them. Furthermore, the current design of exit polls is not well-suited to estimating whether certain aspects of an election functioned properly or not (for instance, efforts to assess whether particular types of voting machines were accurate).

Finally, for those who think that calls for greater transparency come from bloggers, there is this graph:

To ensure that the public and researchers are fully able to assess the significance and limitations of current and future exit polls, this working group recommends that methods, data, and weighting procedures should be fully disclosed for all exit polls in accordance with accepted public opinion survey research practices, such as those endorsed by the American Association of Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and the National Council on Public Polls (NCPP). The timely disclosure of such information would allow public observers to ascertain the significance and limitations of purported findings.

I couldn’t agree more.

One last thought. Like the authors of the report, I have been a skeptic of claims that the exit polls present "a priori" evidence of vote fraud. My single-minded focus on that point represents the narrow focus of this blog. However, conspiracy theories aside, very legitimate concerns remain about the variability in wait times and the distribution of voting equipment, legitimate counting of provisional ballots, use of voting equipment without a paper audit trail and a lack of a transparent process free of partisanship to count and verify the vote. Kos, over at DailyKos, summed it up this way:

The wacked out conspiracy theories hijacked the [electoral reform] issue, taking it away from the obvious travesties — the long lines in Democratic precincts, attempted voter intimidation, etc., to the realm of fantasy… All the crying wolf is hurting the cause for electoral reform.

Kos is right. Electoral reform is important. Those of us who support it need to start talking to the 87% of Americans (and 78% percent of Kerry Voters), according to the Annenberg National Election Study, who are "confident" that this year’s vote was "accurately counted."

Mark Blumenthal

Mark Blumenthal is political pollster with deep and varied experience across survey research, campaigns, and media. The original "Mystery Pollster" and co-creator of Pollster.com, he explains complex concepts to a multitude of audiences and how data informs politics and decision-making. A researcher and consultant who crafts effective questions and identifies innovative solutions to deliver results. An award winning political journalist who brings insights and crafts compelling narratives from chaotic data.