Science Policy News
This month’s guest columnists, Arlene Ash and Philip B. Stark, have been very active in election integrity work. I’m grateful for their
instrumental role in shaping and guiding the ASA science policy work in this area, particularly when it comes to interacting with
election officials. I especially appreciate their willingness to write this month’s column, which provides an update on this rapidly
developing area and suggests a road map for further activity.
~steve Pierson, AsA Director of science Policy, pierson@amstat.org
Thinking Outside the Urn
statisticians make their marks on Us ballots
Arlene Ash, Boston University school of Medicine, and Philip B. stark, University of California at Berkeley
F
ree, fair, and accurate elec- — Designing, printing, and mail-
tions are the cornerstone of ing election information, such as
democracy, yet troubling sample ballots
failures of equipment, software,
and procedures continue in the
— Managing early, absentee, and
United States. For example,
Election Day voting
we have all heard that some
— Educating poll workers and
ballots “went missing” in
the public
Minnesota’s 2008 famously close
Senate race recount.
— Allocating staff and equip-
Elsewhere in 2008: Florida
ment for polling places
lost more than 3,400 ballots
— Preparing and delivering poll
initially counted on Election
books and other voting materials
Day; a bug in commercial elec-
and equipment to election sites
tion software dropped 197 bal-
routine quality-control tests,
lots from the totals in Humboldt — Maintaining a secure chain
and—ultimately—assessing the
County, California; the same of custody of all relevant mate-
uncertainty in election outcomes.
voting machines used in 34 rials while developing prelimi-
The Help America Vote Act
states lost votes in Ohio; several nary, first-reported, and certified
of 2002, responding to problems
states reported vote-flipping on vote counts
in the 2000 presidential elec-
electronic voting machines; and
tion, encouraged jurisdictions to
thousands of phantom votes were
— Reporting Election Day results
retire punchcard voting. Many
reported in washington, DC,
— Performing a full canvass and
switched to electronic voting.
inflating the apparent number of
reporting final election results
Unfortunately, most of the new
votes to 4,759 from a group of
“direct-recording electronic”
326 actual votes.
— Conducting routine audits, (DRE) voting machines pro-
U.S. elections are complicated,
and sometimes full recounts of duced no paper trail, so the only
involving at least the following:
election tallies possible checks on machine totals
rely on the accuracy of the same
— Quality checking and public
— Registering voters and main-
machines being tested.
reporting
taining up-to-date registries
Independent verification is the
keystone of good electoral audit-
— Certifying (the usually many)
Statisticians have much
ing. Hand counting paper records
candidates and measures to be on
to offer election administration,
is a good check on machine tal-
each ballot
including specifying data col-
lies, as the two methods tend to
lection and reporting require-
— Designing, testing, and print-
err for different reasons and in
ments, monitoring the integ-
ing (or programming) ballots,
different ways. Jurisdictions that
rity of data and data processing,
with up to hundreds of variants
scan voter-marked paper bal-
designing and computing with
by language and jurisdiction
lots or use DREs that produce a
large databases, conducting
voter-verifiable paper audit trail
JUNE 2009 AmstAt News 37
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