Methodology:

Election Administration and Voting Survey

Every two years, the Election Administration Commission conducts the Election Administration and Voting Survey, a survey of election administrators to collect state and county-level data on how federal elections are administered.^[1] As the most comprehensive dataset on election administration in the country, the EAVS is the best source for data to analyze the correlation between identifiable election irregularities and other variables.

For this analysis, we will focus primarily on voting technology in Texas counties in the 2008, 2010, and 2012 elections. After we analyze the Texas Legislative Council precinct and county-level data using both the Benford law method and the Kilmek method, we will compare our results to the voting technologies in each county for each of those elections. In this analysis we will ask: does the technology used in an election have an effect on the likelihood of finding election irregularities?

As mentioned previously, even answering “yes” to the above question is not enough to prove there is actual election fraud. What it can reveal is a way of measuring voting technology reliability. Those technologies that correspond to the lowest rates of detected election irregularities are likely more reliable forms of voting methods for election administrators to use.

To analyze this voting technology, we will look at the results of the EAVS, which are publicly available on the EAC website. Section F7 on the EAVS refers to the number and type of voting equipment used in each particular election, as well as how the machines were used in the voting process and where the ballots for the machine type were tallied.

The survey lists these types of equipment:

• DRE machines with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT);
• DRE machines without a VVPAT;
• optical or digital scan systems, in which voters fill out a paper ballot which is then read by a scanner;
• hybrid systems combining a DRE with an optical scanner;
• punch card systems;
• lever machines; paper ballots;
• other systems

Machine use options listed by the survey:

• In-precinct regular ballot voting;
• Special device accessible to disabled voters;
• Provisional ballot voting;
• Early vote site voting; and
• A “not available” option

Location of vote options (responders asked to select all that apply for each machine use option):

• A central location;
• A precinct/polling place; and
• A “not available” option

If the Benford and Kilmek analyses of the levels of irregularity as they correspond with changes in voting technology raise no red flags -- as we suspect they will not -- we can observe a number of other variables. There are several interesting variables that have a role in election administration and thus might be involved in any irregularity therein. Among these are:

• The partisanship of a given district, measured easily by the percentage of registered voters who are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. This data is available on the website of the Secretary of State Office of Texas. We expect no link between the partisan makeup of an area and frequencies of irregularity.
• The number of poll workers at a given polling place, which could affect a number of voting-related factors related to crowd control, technical difficulties, etc. Further, a smaller number of polling workers in a busy district could allow for more instances of foul play.
• The age of the poll workers, which could affect performance with technology, particularly changing methods of voting. We expect to see a relationship between older poll workers, newly changed methods of voting at a precinct/county level, and higher numbers of irregularities.
• Race and ethnicity of the voters in a given district. We expect no relationship between race or ethnicity and instances of voter irregularity.

EAVS 2012 Survey, Section F: Voting Technologies