What Do Local Election Officials Think about Election Reform?: Results of a Survey

Publication Date: June 2005

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Politics

Type:

Abstract:

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.