What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? write by . This book was released on 2005. What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. There are more than 9,000 local election jurisdictions in the United States. Local election officials (LEOs) are responsible for administering elections in those jurisdictions. LEOs are therefore critical to the successful implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252) and state election laws, but there has been little objective information on the perceptions and attitudes of those officials about election reform. This report, which will not be updated, discusses the results of a recent scientific survey of LEOs. The findings may be useful to Congress in considering funding and possible reauthorization of HAVA. The demographic characteristics of LEOs are unusual for a group of government officials. Almost three-quarters are women, and 5% belong to minority groups. Most do not have a college degree, and most were elected to their positions. Some survey results suggest areas of potential professional improvement, such as in education and in professional involvement at the national level. Over the past 20 years, jurisdictions have turned increasingly to computerassisted voting systems -- especially optical scan and direct recording electronic (DRE) systems. The most important factors reported by LEOs in the acquisition of new systems are federal and state requirements and funding. HAVA encourages but does not require systems that detect voter error, but it does require that voting machines be available that are fully accessible to persons with disabilities. About half of jurisdictions with optical scan systems use central-count, which cannot help voters to correct mistakes before casting the ballot. However, most jurisdictions acquiring new voting systems are choosing either precinct-count optical scan or DREs, both of which can help voters avoid errors. LEOs are generally highly satisfied with whatever voting systems they are using now. They have less confidence in the performance and security of other systems. DRE users generally oppose the use of voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPAT) for DREs, but users of other systems favor it. This result could mean that users are overconfident in DREs or that nonusers are insufficiently knowledgeable about them. LEOs also tend to favor new systems that have characteristics similar to what they have been using -- for example, lever machine users tend to favor DREs. LEOs trust the voting system vendors they work with but do not believe that those vendors are very influential in decisions about acquiring new voting systems. LEOs consider themselves knowledgeable about and familiar with HAVA. They support individual provisions of the act, most strongly for federal funding and least strongly for provisional balloting. To some extent, provisions rated more difficult to implement receive less support. Most LEOs believe that HAVA has resulted in some improvement in elections in their jurisdictions. Those rating HAVA higher overall tend to be younger, more comfortable with technology, and more familiar with the act. The areas for improvement of HAVA most commonly listed are federal funding and the requirements for registration, voter identification, and provisional balloting.
Election Reform and Local Election Officials
Election Reform and Local Election Officials - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Election Reform and Local Election Officials write by Eric A. Fischer. This book was released on 2008. Election Reform and Local Election Officials available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Local election officials (LEOs) are critical to the administration of federal elections and the implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA,P.L. 107-252). Two surveys of LEOs were performed, in 2004 and 2006, by Texas A&M University; the surveys were sponsored and coordinated by the authors. Although care needs to be taken in interpreting the results, they may have implications for several policy issues, such as how election officials are chosen and trained, the best ways to ensure that voting systems and election procedures are sufficiently effective, secure, and voter-friendly, and whether adjustments should be made to HAVA requirements. Major results include the following: The demographic characteristics of LEOs differ from those of other government officials. Almost three-quarters are women, and 5% are minorities. Most do not have a college degree, and most were elected. Some results suggest areas of potential improvement such as in training and participation in professional associations. LEOs believed that the federal government has too great an influence on the acquisition of voting systems, and that local elected officials have too little. Their concerns increased from 2004 to 2006 about the influence of the media, political parties, advocacy groups, and vendors. LEOs were highly satisfied with whatever voting system they used but were less supportive of other kinds. However, their satisfaction declined from 2004 to 2006 for all systems except lever machines. They also rated their primary voting systems as very accurate, secure, reliable, and voter- and pollworker-friendly, no matter what system they used. However, the most common incident reported by respondents in the 2006 election was malfunction of a direct recording (DRE) or optical scan (OS) electronic voting system. The incidence of long lines at polling places was highest in jurisdictions using DREs. Most DRE users did not believe that voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPAT) should be required, but nonusers believed they should be. However, the percentage of DRE users who supported VVPAT increased in 2006, and most VVPAT users were satisfied with them. On average, LEOs mildly supported requiring photo identification for all voters, even though they strongly believed that it will negatively affect turnout and did not believe that voter fraud is a problem in their jurisdictions. LEOs believed that HAVA is making moderate improvements in the electoral process, but the level of support declined from 2004 to 2006. They reported that HAVA has increased the accessibility of voting but has made elections more complicated and has increased their cost. LEOs spent much more time preparing for the election in 2006 than in 2004. They also believed that the increased complexity of elections is hindering recruitment of pollworkers. Most found the activities of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that HAVA created only moderately beneficial to them. They were neutral on average about the impacts of the requirement for a statewide voter-registration database.
What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform?
What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? write by Eric A. Fisher. This book was released on 2005. What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform?
What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? write by Eric A. Fisher. This book was released on 2005. What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform? available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Helping America Vote
Helping America Vote - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Helping America Vote write by Martha Kropf. This book was released on 2013-06-17. Helping America Vote available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A repeat of the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential election is the fear of every election administrator. Despite the relatively complication-free 2008 election, we are working with fairly new federal legislation designed to ease election administration problems. The implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) raises the question, how effective have reforms been? Could another Florida happen? Helping America Vote is focused on the conflict between values of access and integrity in U.S. election administration. Kropf and Kimball examine both what was included in HAVA and what was not. Widespread agreement that voting equipment was a problem made technology the centerpiece of the legislation, and it has remedied a number of pressing concerns. But there is still reason to be concerned about key aspects of electronic voting, ballot design, and the politics of partisan administrators. It takes a legitimacy crisis for serious election reforms to happen at the federal level, and seemingly, the crisis has passed. However, the risk is still very much present for the electoral process to fail. What are the implications for democracy when we attempt reform?
