Basic Election Administration Facts

• Diversity is the underpinning of Elections.

50 States

3,140 Counties

1,620 NE Townships

5,312 Midwest Townships

10,072 Election Jurisdictions

Basic Election Administration Facts

• Size is important to remember

− Mean size of jurisdictions in nation in terms of registration?

• 1,492 registered voters

− Just under 1/3rd of nations’ counties have fewer than 10,000 registered voters in them

− Half of the nation’s counties have less than 16,500 registered voters

− Only 403 jurisdictions have more than 100,000 registered voters

− Only 15 counties have more than 1 million voters

• Smallest County: Loving County, Texas: 123 voters

• Largest County: Los Angeles, CA: 4.7 million voters

− Take 947 smallest counties to reach LA’s total.

Basic Election Administration Facts

Basic Election Administration Facts

• Elections are run in small jurisdictions

− With small staff

− Many of which are part-time or performing other

functions

• Reliance upon vendors for help

History of Voting Equipment

• First 100 years – Paper Ballots

− Fine for rural nation, small precincts, easy to count

History of Voting Equipment

• Late 1800s – Urban areas growing, precincts

became bigger, counting of paper ballots took

longer.

− Industrial revolution lead to mechanical solution:

Lever Machines• AVM Corp in Jamestown, NY

• Lever machines popular in urban areas

of nation for first half of 1900s

− Paper ballots continued for

rural parts of nation

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• By late 1950s, urban areas continued to grow.

− Precincts continued to get more voters

− Lever machines more costly

• (generally 2 per precinct)

− Transportation & trucking costs grew,

− Precinct lines got longer

− Early start of women entering job market meant

poll workers became harder to find.

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• 1964 -- IBM introduced punch card system− Cost of 1 Lever Machine =

10 punch card devises

− Election administrators could deal with

larger precincts by having

10 voting booths in a single precinct.

− Long lines were eliminated.

− Transportation costs smaller

− Went back to a physical ballot

− Early systems designed so punch cards were brought to court house for

central counting

• IBM short lived in market as they discovered

downside of being in public eye.

− Computer Election Systems (CES) created in late ‘60s

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• Punch cards became very popular for suburban

communities.

− Chicago purchase created first precinct counting

machine (PBC)

• 1980 Election Data Services compiled first census

of voting equipment usage for every county in

nation.

1980 General Election

Type of Device Percent of

Counties

Percent of

Registered Voters

Punch card 17.0 28.6

Datavote 2.1 2.5

Lever 36.4 42.9

Paper Ballots 40.4 10.8

Optical Scan 0.8 2.1

Electronic 0.2 0.7

Mixed 3.0 12.5

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• By mid 1980s,

− Small company in Omaha, NE

• called American Information Systems (AIS)

− Focused on rural counties

• Way to count paper ballots

• Optical Scan systems developed

− Originally central count

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• 1986: Punch Cards used by more voters than any

other system.

• But Paper Ballots still used in more counties

History of Voting Equipment (cont.)

• 1996

− Merger of largest punch card company with largest

optical scan organization

• CES + AIS = Election Systems & Software (ES&S)

• Optical scan used by most counties (30.3%)

• But Punch Cards still used by more voters (31.3%)

2000 Presidential General Election

Type of Device Percent of

Counties

Percent of

Registered Voters

Punch card 16.8 28.2

Datavote 1.4 2.7

Lever 14.3 16.7

Paper Ballots 11.8 1.4

Optical Scan 41.9 30.3

Electronic 9.3 12.0

Mixed 4.4 8.7

“Butterfly” Ballot

2000 Presidential Election:

“A Perfect Storm”

• Florida Official Results

• George W. Bush – 2,912,790 votes

• Al Gore – 2,912,253 votes

• Bush wins Florida by 537 votes.

• Approximately 180,000 ballots in Florida failed to record a vote for president (roughly 3% of ballots cast).

• Nationally, about 2 million unrecorded votes in the presidential election of 2000.

Unrecorded Votes in the 2000 Presidential Election by Voting Equipment

Voting Technology Unrecorded Votes

Punch Card – Votomatic

(28% of ballots) 2.8%

Optical Scan – Central Count

(15% of ballots) 1.8%

DRE (11% of ballots) 1.7%

Lever Machine

(15% of ballots) 1.6%

Paper Ballot (1% of ballots) 1.6%

Punch Card – Datavote

(3% of ballots) 1.2%

Mixed (6% of ballots) 1.1%

Optical Scan – Precinct Count

(20% of ballots) 0.9%

Drop-off (Residual Votes)

• Difference between Total Turnout and Total Votes for an office =

− Overvotes +

− Undervotes

• Normal elections

− Overvotes = 10% of drop-off

− Undervotes = 90% of drop-off

• Florida 2000 – opposite of above

− Problem of ballot design

• Problem is getting overs & unders data

− Need for every office on ballot

Drop – off (or Residual Votes)

Electronic Voting Machine (DRE)

Electronic Voting Machine (DRE)

# of Counties

346 – 11.0%

292 -- 9.3%

855 – 27.2%

2008 General Election

What does the future hold?

• Uncertainty− Machines purchased 10 years ago need to be replaced

• Unlike previous decades

− Funding – who will pay for change?• Unlikely Congress with come up with more $$

• County governments more like to pay for bridges, etc.

− Will Vendors be able to survive?• Delays in certification of systems

• R & D – anyone doing this?

• Hardware sales only now picking up.

− Election Administration Commission (EAC)• Certification process took longer than expected

• Only now back in business

• Will it survive?

− States• More changes to election laws, timetables & procedures?

• Any money to pay for new machines?

Thank you

Kimball Brace

President

Election Data Services, Inc.

6171 Emerywood Court

Manassas, VA 20112

(703-580-7267 or 202-789-2004)

KBrace@electiondataservices.com or KBrace@aol.com

www.electiondataservices.com