Florida Election Research Articles

Can electoral management bodies expand the pool of registered voters? Examining the effects of face-to-face, remote, traditional, and social media outreach

ABSTRACT Electoral management bodies have a responsibility to ensure voters have equitable access to the election process, starting with providing information to successfully navigate it. In this article, we assess the educative effects of different modes of election official voter education on completing the voter registration process. We use surveys of voter education activities submitted by the state of Florida’s 67 County local election officials (LEOs) in the United States to evaluate their impact on new voter registrations between 2014 and 2018. We also use a dataset of Florida election officials’ monthly Facebook activity during the 2020 election to examine the relationship between content-specific social media posts and new voter registrations, and usage of Florida’s online voter registration (OVR) portal. We find that traditional media, specifically newspaper ads, and face-to-face outreach – visits to local communities, and training for third-party voter registration drives – increase new registrations. We also find that sharing Facebook posts about voter registration specifically during the 2020 election cycle increased new registrations and usage of Florida’s OVR system. Our findings have important implications about the breadth of tools electoral management bodies across the world have to inform voters, and how they can use them to facilitate voter access.

Vanishing wealth, vanishing votes? Latino homeownership and the 2016 election in Florida

ABSTRACT In this article, I explore how race, class, and migration influence Latino household wealth, and uncover important implications for the close 2016 US presidential election outcome in Florida. I follow over 11,000 homeowners in the Orlando area of Orange County, Florida from 2004 to 2016. To proxy for immigrant incorporation, I leverage matched voter registration records and direct observation of borrower identification – driver’s license, green card/passport, or undocumented identification. Documented immigrants appear least vulnerable to foreclosure; multivariate analyses show that Latinos with undocumented identification are most vulnerable. Foreclosure and negative equity predict decreases in voter activity among Latino Democrats and Latino Independents, respectively, but not among Latino Republicans. I confirm this pattern at the precinct-level using data on all Orange County voters. Across Florida, county-level Latino foreclosures and lagging home prices correspond to a decline in the Democratic presidential vote from 2012 to 2016. My analysis reveals the mechanisms that erase Latino home equity and how the loss of wealth may have played a role in flipping Florida from a blue state to a red state.

A Place at the Table: Bush v. Gore Through the Lens of Race

Although African Americans cast a majority of ballots rejected by counting machines following the 2000 presidential election in Florida, legal academic commentators have not grappled with the significance of race in their discussions of Bush v. Gore. This Essay uses race to expose structural shortcomings of merit-based assumptions about democracy embedded in the U.S. Supreme Court's majority per curiam. The Court prohibited a manual count of imperfectly marked ballots, effectively conditioning membership in political community on individual capacity to produce a machine-readable ballot. Despite the Court's individualized focus, however, merit-based assumptions about democracy interfere primarily not with individual rights, but with the ability of groups of voters like African Americans to identify with one another as a political community, to create alliances with others of different backgrounds, and to use the vote to enact political change. Further, merit-based criteria convey an expressive harm of exclusion that carries particular potency in light of a history of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other devices used to suppress political participation. While the merit-based vision's adverse impact on African Americans should prompt concern in and of itself, the shortcomings of the vision adversely impact many other Americans.

Of Money, Machines, and Management: Election Administration from an Administrator's Perspective

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the almost $4 billion it authorized for election improvements changed the way America votes. State and local jurisdictions upgraded voting technology to solve the residual vote problem, highlighted by the 2000 presidential election in Florida. They also adopted statewide voter registration lists and made other election administration improvements. This essay explores the impact of modernized voting technology from the perspective of a local and state election administrator. It considers both the short- and long-term impacts of these changes, particularly in terms of ongoing expenses, sustaining improvements, and the shift in power relationships between federal, state, and local policy-makers and election administrators. The essay concludes with thoughts on where the U.S. could go next to continue the modernization of its election systems.

Leveling the Playing Field in a Changed Game: Florida's Reduction of Early Voting Days and Its Impact on African-American Voters

This paper will discuss the 2011 Florida Legislature’s alteration of the state election laws in House Bill 1355, specifically the reduction of early voting days from 14 to 8 days statewide and the elimination of early voting on the final Sunday before Election Day. Because early voting, and especially early voting on the final Sunday, was disproportionately used by African-American Floridians in previous elections, the reduction in early voting days has a disproportionate impact on African-Americans. As such, this raises questions of whether the reduction constitutes a violation of § 2 of the Voting Rights Act. In order to analyze this issue, this paper will delve into the Florida election experience in the modern era, specifically the 2008 election which saw a great expansion in the use of early voting, especially by African-Americans, and the 2011 passage of the controversial new election laws which opponents claim restrict the ability of African-Americans to meaningfully participate in the election process. Through the lens of historical VRA § 2 jurisprudence, this paper will analyze HB 1355’s reduction in early voting and its effect on African-American voters in the 2012 election.

Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the 2000 Presidential Election

AbstractWhat effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

Minding the Polls

Eric Bjornlund opens his study of international and domestic elec- tion monitoring with a brief assessment of the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Applying international norms for democratic elections, he finds that international election observers, had they been present, would have concluded that the election in Florida—and possibly in other states as well—was fundamentally flawed. As a consequence of the 2000 elec- tion fiasco in Florida, various organizations interested in the democratic process and the upholding of electoral standards invited some foreign politicians, electoral experts, and others to observe the 2004 presiden- tial election. The lack of coordination among these observer groups, as well as their distinct agendas and methodologies, would have provided Bjornlund with good illustrations of some of the issues he raises in the book; unfortunately, Beyond Free and Fair was already in bookstores when the 2004 vote took place. Drawing on worldwide experience since the mid-1980s, the book in- cludes case studies and examples from countries across the globe. At the outset, Bjornlund provides his own definition of international election observation, highlighting all of its core elements: International elec- tion observation is the purposeful gathering of information about an electoral process and public assessment of that process against universal standards for democratic elections by responsible foreign or interna- tional organizations committed to neutrality and to the democratic

Counting Votes: Lessons from the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

Foreword: Let Every Voice Be Heard, Let Every Vote Be Counted, by Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, League of Women Voters 1. The State of Elections: People, Politics, and Problems, by Robert P. Walson Part 1. The Florida Election Controversy 2. The Election, Miami, and the Recount, by Thomas R. Spencer 3. Some Things Are Not Meant to Be: The Florida Controversy and the Vote Recount by Mitchell Ceasor 4. Public Information: Dealing with the Media in an Election Crists, by Gisela Salas Part 2. Running an Election 5. Running an Election and the Work of the Elections Office 6. A Look at Voting Machines and Voting Systems 7. The Role of Grassroots Organizing and the Political Party in Elections, by Mark Hoch 8. Candidates, Parties, and Local Election Politics, by Cathy Dubin Part 3. Voting Systems and Problems 9. Voting Technology and Voting Access in Twenty-first-Century America, by C. Green, Rhonda S. Kinney, and Jason Mitchell 10. Balancing Competing Interests: Voting Equipment in Presidential Elections, by Marthn E. Kropf and Stephen Knack 11. Unrecorded Votes and Political Representation, by David C. Kimball, Chris Owens, and Katherine McAndrew Keeney Part 4. The Electoral College Reconsidered 12. The 2000 Presidential Election: Is There a Better Way of Determining the Election Outcome? by Jim Corey 13. The Electoral College: Political Advantage, the Small States, and Implications for Reform, by Glenn W. Rainey Jr. 14. Electoral College Reform at the State Level: Choices and Trade-Offs, by Paul D. Schumaker and Bruce L Oppenhelmer Part 5. Election Reform 15. The Elusive Promise of Democratic Elections? by Victoria A. Farrar-Myers 16. The Fiasco in Florida: Ferille Ground for Election Reform, by Blair Bobier 17. Is Election Reform Necessary? Yes

Raiders of the Lost Vote: A Theory-Driven Model of Ballot Invalidation in Florida's 2000 Election

In analyzing the results of the 2000 Florida election, we argue the need for a more theoretical model of ballot invalidation. The majority of studies to date link together both undervotes and overvotes into one measure of “rejected,” “voided” or “invalidated” ballots. We demonstrate that these two types of errors are notably distinct. Specifically, overvoting involves more cognitive or “decision” errors, while undervoting is more a product of mechanical or “physical” errors. As such, we maintain that undervotes are more likely to be the product of random error and are less likely to be related to the racial composition of a district than are overvotes.

Counting votes: lessons from the 2000 presidential election in Florida

Counting votes: lessons from the 2000 presidential election in Florida

Beyond Direct Mail

Abstract Political candidates face the endless challenge of finding ways to communicate directly, substantively, and persuasively to the voting public. Growing numbers of candidates are offering electronic newsletters (candidate campaign e-mail messages) as political marketing instruments. This study content analyzed the candidate campaign email messages (N = 89) from the 2002 gubernatorial election in Florida (Jeb Bush and Bill McBride). Intercoder reliability was .98 across all 50 categories. Candidates were found to have mentioned personal qualities in 24.7% of the campaign e-mail messages, with Democratic candidate McBride mentioning attributes more frequently (32.6%) than Republican incumbent Bush (17.4%). More often than not, candidates omitted mention of their opponent in the e-mail messages. The present study found that 62.1% of the messages addressed the reader directly, with 50% of Bush's messages addressing the reader directly and 75.6% of McBride's messages doing so. There was a statistically ...

The Wrong Man is President! Overvotes in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

Using ballot-level data from the NORC Florida ballots project and ballot-image files, I argue that overvoted ballots in the 2000 presidential election in Florida included more than 50,000 votes that were intended to go to either Bush or Gore but instead were discarded. This was primarily due to defective election administration in the state, especially the failure to use a system to warn each voter when too many marks were on a ballot and allow the voter to make corrections. If the best type of vote tabulation system used in Florida in 2000—precinct-tabulated optical scan ballots—had been used everywhere in the state, Gore would have won by more than 30,000 votes. Florida's election experience points to the need to gather ballot-level data to evaluate the success of election reform efforts now underway in much of the United States.Walter R. Mebane Jr. has published numerous articles concerning topics in American politics, especially elections, and political methodology. An early version of this work was presented at a seminar at the University of Minnesota in April 2003. The author thanks Jason Conn, Anthony Keeney, and Mike Rosenberg for assistance, and Jasjeet Sekhon for helpful discussion.

Non-voted Ballots, Voter Fatigue, and Race

With the enormous controversy over the 2000 Presidential election in Florida, the focus on the non-voted ballots in Presidential races is understandable. Yet, those going to the polls fail to select a candidate in other races down the ballot at even higher rates, and the voting system used. The ward-level data presented here for Ohio elections during 1992, 1996, and 2000 demonstrate that the focus on races at the top of the ballot has been very misleading. The rush to eliminate punch card ballots actually risks increasing the number of non-votes for other offices by much more than non-votes for Presidential elections are reduced.

A CRITICAL GUIDE TOBUSH V. GORESCHOLARSHIP

▪ Abstract This review evaluates the emerging legal and political science scholarship created in the wake of the United States Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore, the case that ended the 2000 Florida election controversy between supporters of George W. Bush and those of Al Gore. The article surveys scholars' answers to four central questions: (a) Were the Supreme Court's majority or concurring opinions legally sound? (b) Was the Supreme Court's result justified, even if the legal reasoning contained in the opinions was unsound? (c) What effects, if any, will the case and the social science research it has spurred have on the development of voting rights law? (d) What does the Court's resolution of Bush v. Gore tell us about the Supreme Court as an institution?

The 2000 Presidential Election: A Statistical and Legal Analysis

In this article, Judge Posner summarizes and updates his previous analysis of the failed 2000 Presidential election in Florida, and the ensuing litigation that culminated in the Supreme Court's decision in Bush v. Gore. The article uses multivariate statistical analysis to demonstrate the causes and consequences of the numerous spoiled ballots and evaluates the claim that Al Gore won at least a moral victory in the Florida election. The article then analyzes the litigation over the election, and concludes that there are pragmatic justifications for the Supreme Court's controversial decision that gave the Presidency to George Bush.

Postponing the California Recall to Protect Voting Rights

by Henry E. Brady, University of California, Berkeley Political scientists usually study elections. I tried to postpone one. Here's my story with some social science lessons. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals postponed the California Gubernatorial Recall Election on September 15, 2003. The threejudge panel leaned upon the 2000 Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore to justify postponing the October 7th election until better voting systems could be installed in six California counties. The panel's reasoning echoes the 2000 Florida election controversy:

Could the Florida Election Disaster have been Avoided by Competition Among Polling Stations?

We study a model of competition among polling stations where polling stations have to invest in counting precision to attract voters. The benchmark is the (current) monopolistic case in which there is no incentive to provide particularly good counting technologies. Unsurprisingly, we find that competition enhances precision when compared to a monopoly. The somewhat surprising part of our result is that the optimal number of polling stations is two.

Reliability of the Uncertified Ballots in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida

Following one of the most closely contested elections in American history, a group of the nation's largest media organizations retained the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) to conduct an in-depth inventory of all uncounted ballots from the 2000 presidential race in Florida. This article describes the planning and implementation of the project and its resulting databases. The State of Florida employed three major voting systems for the election: two systems based on punch cards, and various optical scanning systems. We analyze and present statistics regarding the reliability of the various voting systems. Although none are perfect, we generally found optical scanning to be superior to the punch card systems. We summarize analyses of project databases conducted by the Media Group with respect to new vote totals that hypothetically might have been achieved had the U.S. Supreme Court not stopped the vote counting. We offer recommendations to policy makers for future elections.

Misvotes, undervotes and overvotes: The 2000 presidential election in Florida

The 2000 presidential election was the most controversial U.S. election in recent history, mainly due to the disputed outcome of the election in Florida. Elsewhere in this issue, Richard Smith analyzes the high vote for Pat Buchanan in Palm Beach county. As background for his article, we summarize this and other voting-related issues that may have affected the outcome of the election in Florida, such as the undervote in counties that used a punch-card ballot and the overvote in counties that used multicolumn and multipage ballots.

Voting Technology and Democracy

Voting Technology and Democracy, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 625 (2002), examines a phenomenon that I term the voting-technology divide. The was caused by the deployment of election technology in November 2000 with better and worse levels of feedback to voters. Through an analysis of data from the contested Florida election of November 2000, this article demonstrates the critical importance of feedback in informing voters whether the technology they use to vote will validate their ballots according to their intent -- an advantage I find to have been distributed on unequal terms. In this article, I also examine the various judicial opinions in the litigation following the Florida election and argue that they differed most dramatically in their embrace of competing epistemologies of technology. Finally, I evaluate the ongoing efforts to reform the unequal distribution of technology in the United States. Some efforts at litigation and legislation have promise, but in many instances they are stalled, and in many others they exhibit shortcomings that would leave the voting technology divide in place for future elections.