tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/early-voting-14769/articlesEarly voting – The Conversation2022-12-06T13:34:58Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1949722022-12-06T13:34:58Z2022-12-06T13:34:58ZEarly and mail-in voting: Research shows they don’t always bring in new voters<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/496871/original/file-20221122-26-sz3ow1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5142%2C3423&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">More than 110 million votes were cast in the U.S. midterm elections of November 2022.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hispanic-voter-voting-in-polling-place-royalty-free-image/138711489?phrase=U.S.%20voting&adppopup=true">Hill Street Studios/Digital Vision via Getty Iag</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>SciLine interviewed <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/faculty/leighley.cfm">Jan Leighley</a>, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 4, 2022. Leighley discussed how early voting affects turnout, how turnout differs for midterm and presidential elections, how pollsters predict turnout and how to understand the persistent gap between people’s intention to vote and actual turnout.</em> </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jan Leighley, professor of government in the School of Public Affairs at American University, discusses voter turnout.</span></figcaption>
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<p><em>Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity.</em></p>
<p><strong>How do we know after an election how many people ultimately voted?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> It’s usually January by the time we really have a good sense <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90807427/midterm-election-results-2022-when-timeline">of how many people voted</a>, and there can be corrections after that. Now those are usually small corrections. But it takes a lot of people a lot of time even to <a href="https://www.electproject.org/2022g">ensure that number is correct</a>. </p>
<p><strong>How do newer forms of voting, such as early voting or mail-in voting, affect turnout?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> The assumption has always been if we make it easier to vote using these methods, more people will vote. (But) most research suggests that the people who take advantage of these newer ways of voting <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12063">would have voted anyway on Election Day</a> if they weren’t able to vote in those other ways. </p>
<p>The original intention of those reforms was to get new people into the voting pool. We have a little bit of evidence that – under some circumstances – we can indeed increase turnout in the range <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691159355/who-votes-now">of 2 percentage points or so</a>. </p>
<p>But it depends on what parties do. It depends on the competitiveness of elections and other factors unique to specific elections. </p>
<p><strong>How does turnout differ between midterm and presidential elections?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> Presidential turnout is <a href="https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present">substantially higher than midterm elections</a>, when members of Congress and a set of senators and governors might be up for re-election or election.</p>
<p>Turnout in presidential elections tends to be around 50% to 60%, depending on various circumstances associated with the election. Midterms are usually in the 30% to 40% range. Again, depending on candidates, competitiveness, economic conditions and what the parties do to try to mobilize turnout.</p>
<p><strong>Does higher turnout mean better representation of the voter population?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> The turnout level, which is what we hear about the most, isn’t the only feature that’s important. The other feature is whatever 50% or 30% of voters who do show up, who they are. </p>
<p>And so, low turnout levels – like 30%, if you believe that’s low – that are nonetheless representative of all eligible voters, wouldn’t necessarily be a problem for representation … if those 30% of voters were like that larger pool of everyone who’s eligible. </p>
<p>And, in fact, what we find in midterms compared to presidential elections is that one group – younger individuals – (are) especially underrepresented in midterms. </p>
<p>The sense is younger individuals who are getting established as voters and figuring out how to vote and deciding whether it’s a priority, <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/04/behind-2018-united-states-midterm-election-turnout.html">they vote far less in midterms</a> than they do in presidential elections. And so that’s a voice that isn’t heard perhaps as strongly as you might hope. </p>
<p><strong>How do pollsters predict voter turnout?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> Pollsters predict voter turnout <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/course/public-opinion-polling-basics/">using a variety of means</a>. They have extensive databases on past turnout behavior of citizens, and they use past behavior to predict what will happen in the current environment. (The pollsters) connect those historical details with the current environments and attitudes of their potential voters to predict what voter turnout will look like.</p>
<p><strong>What drives the persistent gap between people’s intentions to vote and their actions?</strong></p>
<p><strong>Jan Leighley:</strong> I think voting is like a lot of things that we have good intentions to do, right? It takes time, it takes effort, it takes presence of mind, and life is complicated. And, oftentimes, the short-term, immediate, right-in-front-of-our-faces issues or problems or tasks take precedence. </p>
<p><em>Watch the <a href="https://www.sciline.org/elections/voter-turnout-science/">full interview</a> to hear about voter turnout.</em></p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.sciline.org/">SciLine</a> is a free service based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/194972/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jan Leighley received funding from Pew Research Center around 2010.</span></em></p>Compared with past midterms, voter turnout among young people jumped in 2022 – but it was still below 30%.Jan Leighley, Professor of Government, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1927062022-10-27T12:26:07Z2022-10-27T12:26:07ZMost voters skipped ‘in person on Election Day’ when offered a choice of how and when to vote<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/491128/original/file-20221021-16-hvjygo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C44%2C5982%2C3943&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Most voters in the 2020 presidential election didn't stand in line at their polling place, as these Nevada voters did.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022NevadaEqualRights/874a791921304dca91c92395301c6816/photo">AP Photo/John Locher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, state lawmakers, election administrators and others realized they had to move quickly. A presidential election was coming in just a few months, along with elections for every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, one-third of the U.S. Senate, and all sorts of state and local positions. Primary season was already underway. And nobody was sure how safe it would be to vote in person at polling places.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the collective efforts of these public servants delivered an election with a <a href="https://twitter.com/ElectProject/status/1323897443398942726">turnout rate higher than any in the past century</a>. <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/record-high-turnout-in-2020-general-election.html">Almost 67% of eligible voters</a> cast a ballot. This happened even as the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html">pandemic swept the nation – and the globe</a>.</p>
<p>A key factor in that success was adaptability – of elected officials, election administrators and voters themselves. Officials knew they had to make changes so people could vote safely, and they had to find ways to protect the integrity of the process. </p>
<p>Partisan politics played a role, too.</p>
<p>Many Democrats <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/04/22/republicans-and-democrats-move-further-apart-in-views-of-voting-access/">support a range of options for voting</a>, such as early in-person voting and voting by mail. Many Republicans <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/04/22/republicans-and-democrats-move-further-apart-in-views-of-voting-access/">oppose these options</a>. President Donald Trump especially objected to mail voting, tweeting, “<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/twitter-fact-checks-trump-s-misleading-tweet-mail-voting-n1215151">Mail boxes will be robbed</a>, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed.” Numerous GOP leaders followed his lead, though no fraud sufficient to change the election results <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/exhaustive-fact-check-finds-little-evidence-of-voter-fraud-but-2020s-big-lie-lives-on">was ever found</a>.</p>
<p>Research my colleagues and I have conducted has found that when it came down to the people’s choice, there was a clear outcome: <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4154606">Alternatives to traditional in-person gathering</a> at a polling place on Election Day are becoming more common, and more popular. Of the <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2020presgeresults.pdf">158.4 million votes cast</a> in the 2020 election according to the Federal Election Commission, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/03/voter-turnout-2020-early-voting-tops-100-million/6133004002/">at least 101.2 million</a> – 64% of them – were cast by mail or by early in-person voting. A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/22/us/politics/midterm-early-voting.html">similar trend is underway</a> for the 2022 midterms.</p>
<h2>Options for voting</h2>
<p>Even before the pandemic, most states offered one or more of what are sometimes called “convenience voting” options – alternatives to showing up in person on the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1910/11/01/archives/why-the-tuesday-after-the-first-monday.html">Tuesday after the first Monday</a> in November.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vote.org/early-voting-calendar/">Early in-person voting</a> lets someone come to a government office, school, shopping mall or other designated site and cast a ballot in the days or weeks before Election Day.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.eac.gov/election-officials/voting-by-mail-absentee-voting">mail voting</a>, election officials use the U.S. mail to send ballots to voters, who fill out their ballots at home and either mail them back or drop them off at a designated location.</p>
<p>Before 2020, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjac030">16 states</a> required a voter to provide a specific reason, such as age or disability, to receive a ballot by mail. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia required no excuse. And the five states where elections were conducted by mail automatically sent a ballot to each registered voter.</p>
<p>Before the 2020 election and afterward, Trump and many of his allies questioned the integrity of mail voting. They filed court cases, called for recounts, and even conducted a partisan review of votes cast in Arizona, which was widely discredited. <a href="https://cyber.harvard.edu/publication/2020/Mail-in-Voter-Fraud-Disinformation-2020">Despite the news coverage devoted to their efforts</a>, little evidence of fraud in mail voting – or in any other type of voting – was uncovered. Even U.S. Attorney General William Barr, a Trump appointee, conceded there was insufficient evidence to cast doubt on the election outcome.</p>
<p>Instead of injecting fraud, mail ballots have made it easier for people to cast a ballot and play a role in charting the course of our nation’s future.</p>
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<h2>States made changes</h2>
<p>Data my colleagues and I collected from states’ websites and other sources shows <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjac030">16 states introduced new mail ballot policies</a> in 2020. The result was that registered voters in nine states and the District of Columbia were automatically mailed a ballot. In 36 states, voters could successfully apply for a mail ballot without providing an excuse or listing COVID-19 as an excuse.</p>
<p>Voters in the remaining five states qualified for a mail ballot only if their application included a sanctioned excuse, such as out-of-town travel on Election Day, that did not include concerns about contracting COVID-19. </p>
<p>Our analysis found that partisanship played a role in which voters had which options. States with Democratic governors and Democratic-controlled legislatures were the most likely to adopt mail voting, followed by states where party control was divided. Republican-controlled states were the least likely to make changes. Indiana and three of the four conservative Southern states that continued to require a non-COVID excuse for a mail ballot were under Republican control. Louisiana, the other state maintaining an excuse requirement, had a Democratic governor and a GOP-controlled legislature. </p>
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<h2>How Americans voted</h2>
<p><a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4154606">State policies affected</a> how people voted, we found. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/03/voter-turnout-2020-early-voting-tops-100-million/6133004002/">Most voters</a> <a href="https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/2020presgeresults.pdf">in the 2020 election</a> <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/what-methods-did-people-use-to-vote-in-2020-election.html">cast ballots in other ways</a> than showing up on Election Day 2020. </p>
<p>Voters’ familiarity with the options affected their choices. In the 25 states that had a history of no-excuse mail voting (excluding the five that switched to automatically mailing registered voters a ballot), voters were <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4154606">about 22 percentage points more likely</a> to use a mail ballot in 2020 than voters first given a no-excuse option that year. </p>
<p>And voters in these same 25 no-excuse states were almost 27 points more likely to vote by mail than voters in the five states that continued to require an excuse.</p>
<p>We also found that partisanship played a role in what methods people chose to vote. Democratic voters were <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4154606">13 points more likely</a> to vote by mail than independents, and a whopping 26 points more likely to vote by mail than Republicans. GOP voters vastly preferred going to the polls on Election Day, and more of them voted early in-person than by mail.</p>
<p>In addition to selecting a president, the 2020 election made clear that many Americans – all across the nation and of all political stripes – prefer to cast their ballots by methods other than showing up on Election Day itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Herrnson receives funding from Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Connecticut.
Details:
COVID-19 Research Seed Funding, Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Connecticut, The Pandemic Elections Project, 2020-2021, $10,000.</span></em></p>Nearly two-thirds of all votes cast in the 2020 presidential election were made through early in-person voting or by mail, rather than by people who visited their local polling places on Election Day.Paul Herrnson, Professor of Political Science, University of ConnecticutLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1901872022-09-13T12:22:56Z2022-09-13T12:22:56ZShould you vote early in the 2022 midterm elections? 3 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483520/original/file-20220908-9292-6v006w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2372%2C203%2C3279%2C3550&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A voter fills out his ballot at an early voting location in Massachusetts.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/voter-fills-out-his-ballot-at-the-early-voting-location-at-news-photo/1242803355?adppopup=true">Craig F. Walker/The Boston Globe via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As political campaigning for the midterm elections is ramping up, millions of voters are considering how they should cast their ballots on Nov. 8, 2022. In addition to the traditional way of voting at their local precinct on Election Day, many have the option to vote earlier by mail.</p>
<p>With the exception of Alabama, Connecticut, Mississippi and New Hampshire, early voting is <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Early_voting#Early_voting_by_state">allowed in 46 states</a> and is offered in different forms such as drop boxes, mail or early voting in person. </p>
<p>It’s important to check with your state’s election office, because different states have different deadlines and options available. </p>
<p>In Montana, for instance, early voting is allowed for about four weeks between Oct. 11 and Nov. 7. But in Texas, the early-voting period is only the 10 weekdays between Oct. 24 and Nov. 4. </p>
<p>The Conversation U.S. has published several articles looking at not only the integrity of early voting but also the larger question of turning out the vote. </p>
<h2>1. The long, long history of early voting</h2>
<p>Early voting periods are as old as presidential elections in the U.S.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/presidential-election-of-1789/">first presidential election occurred in 1789</a> and started on Dec. 15, 1788. It ended almost a month later, on Jan. 10, 1789, with the election of George Washington. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until 1845 that Congress adopted the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the national Election Day.</p>
<p>Given the long history, <a href="https://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/person/terri-bimes">Terri Bimes</a>, an associate teaching professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, raises an interesting point on the impact of early voting on turnout. </p>
<p>“While some scholars contend that early in-person voting periods potentially can decrease voter turnout,” Bimes writes, “studies that focus on vote-by-mail, a form of early voting, generally show an increase in voter turnout.”</p>
<p>Regardless of overall turnout, more and more voters are choosing nontraditional ways of casting their ballots. In <a href="https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/04/record-high-turnout-in-2020-general-election.html">the 2020 election</a>, for instance, 69% of voters nationwide voted by mail or through another means earlier than Election Day. That number was 40% in 2016.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-nothing-unusual-about-early-voting-its-been-done-since-the-founding-of-the-republic-146889">There's nothing unusual about early voting – it's been done since the founding of the republic</a>
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<h2>2. Is early voting safe?</h2>
<p>Election fraud is rare. </p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-voter-fraud-facts-explai/explainer-despite-trump-claims-voter-fraud-is-extremely-rare-here-is-how-u-s-states-keep-it-that-way-idUSKBN2601HG">mail-in ballot fraud</a> is even rarer. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.heritage.org/article/about-the-election-fraud-database">conservative Heritage Foundation</a> conducted a survey in 2020 and found 1,200 “proven instances of voter fraud” since 2000, with 1,100 criminal convictions over those two decades. </p>
<p>Only 204 allegations, and 143 convictions, involved mail-in ballots – even with more <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/494189-lets-put-the-vote-by-mail-fraud-myth-to-rest/">than 250 million mail-in ballots cast since 2000</a>. </p>
<p>Edie Goldenberg is a University of Michigan political scientist who belongs to a <a href="https://napawash.org/grand-challenges-blog/election-2020-protect-electoral-integrity-and-enhance-voter-participation">National Academy of Public Administration working group</a> that offered recommendations to ensure voter participation and public confidence during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. </p>
<p>Goldenberg writes: “The evidence we reviewed finds that voting by mail is rarely subject to fraud, does not give an advantage to one political party over another and can in fact inspire public confidence in the voting process, if done properly.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-best-way-to-get-out-the-vote-in-a-pandemic-146523">What's the best way to get out the vote in a pandemic?</a>
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<h2>3. Voting turnout is key to democracy</h2>
<p>More people voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any election in the past 120 years, even as nearly one-third of eligible voters sat it out. That means <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/494189-lets-put-the-vote-by-mail-fraud-myth-to-rest/">nearly 80 million Americans</a> did not vote. </p>
<p>Among <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/15/945031391/poll-despite-record-turnout-80-million-americans-didnt-vote-heres-why">the reasons nonvoters gave were</a> not being registered, not being interested or not believing their vote made a difference. Despite such apathy, about 155 million voters – that’s 67% of Americans over 18 – did vote in 2020. </p>
<p>Part of the problem of reducing the percentage of nonvoters at the street level can be getting people to answer their doors to strangers or answering a telephone call placed by a campaign volunteer from an unrecognized number. Before the pandemic, an effective door-to-door campaign could increase turnout by almost 10%; a well-run phone campaign could add an additional 5%. </p>
<p>When University of California, Berkeley’s Vice Provost for Graduate Studies <a href="https://bse.berkeley.edu/lisa-garc%C3%ADa-bedolla">Lisa García Bedolla</a> began studying voter mobilization in 2005, it was common for door-to-door campaigns to reach half of the people they tried to contact. By 2018, that number had dropped to about 18%.</p>
<p>To close the gap, campaigns moved toward asking people to contact people they knew and help turn out those supporters and social networks. Text messages, especially reminder texts, became the virtual door knock. </p>
<p>“These friend-to-friend approaches are seen as a way to cut through the noise,” Bedolla writes.</p>
<p>These personal approaches can also create a sense of accountability.</p>
<p>Knowing that someone is paying attention to your vote, however it is cast, might make a difference in a local, state or federal election. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-the-best-way-to-get-out-the-vote-in-a-pandemic-146523">What's the best way to get out the vote in a pandemic?</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The balance of US political power is at stake in the 2022 midterm elections. Voters have several ways to cast their ballots – and the majority of Americans are choosing one of them.Matt Williams, Senior International EditorHoward Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1444762020-08-18T18:23:24Z2020-08-18T18:23:24ZHow to make sure your vote counts in November<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352828/original/file-20200813-20-m7w6df.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7711%2C4786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voting is important. Make sure you know how to do it!</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/spaced-out-in-every-other-voting-booth-to-maintain-physical-news-photo/1227832715">Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The time is now! Voting in the presidential election will begin in many states in just a few weeks – <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-or-biden-voters-north-carolina-could-pick-soon-next-n1235688">as early as Sept. 4</a> in North Carolina. <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/how-to-vote-2020/">Every state’s regulations and procedures are different</a>, so it is vital that you understand the requirements and opportunities to vote where you live.</p>
<p>Here’s how to make sure you’re ready to vote, and that your vote will count.</p>
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<h2>Check your registration</h2>
<p>Make sure that you are registered to vote at your current address. You may not have voted in a while. You may have moved or changed your name. You may have forgotten when you last registered to vote. Calling or visiting your <a href="https://www.thebalancesmb.com/secretary-of-state-websites-1201005">secretary of state’s office</a> or local Board of Elections may be a good place to start. </p>
<p>You can also visit <a href="http://www.vote.org/">Vote.org</a>, <a href="https://www.rockthevote.org/">Rock the Vote</a>, <a href="https://iamavoter.com/">I am a voter</a> or the <a href="https://www.usvotefoundation.org/">U.S. Vote Foundation</a>, all nonprofit, nonpartisan websites providing lots of detailed information about voting rights, registration and the process of voting. It took only a few minutes online for me to verify my own registration and voter ID number.</p>
<p>The federal government offers <a href="https://www.usa.gov/voting">lots of useful voting information</a>, too.</p>
<h2>Not registered? Register now!</h2>
<p>If you’re not registered – whether you have never registered or your registration is out of date – there is still time. September 22 is <a href="https://nationalvoterregistrationday.org/">National Voter Registration Day</a>, when millions of individuals register to vote. </p>
<p>Each state has its own process and deadlines, and <a href="https://www.vote.org/register-to-vote/">you may be able to register online</a> through Vote.org, which can take <a href="https://www.rockthevote.org/about-rock-the-vote/">less than two minutes</a>. </p>
<p>If you’d rather register to vote on paper, download and print <a href="https://www.eac.gov/voters/national-mail-voter-registration-form">a simple form from the federal government</a>, which asks you to provide some personal information, like your name and address. The instructions give state-specific details and provide the mailing address you need to send the form to.</p>
<p>While you’re at it, encourage your friends to register too.</p>
<h2>Make a plan to vote</h2>
<p>Not everyone who is registered to vote <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/21/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/">actually casts a ballot</a>. You’re more likely to actually vote if you make a plan.</p>
<p>You’ll need to find out when to vote in person and where to do it. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020 – but different cities and towns have different voting hours. Many communities have several polling places, and you need to go to the right one, depending on where you live. Make sure you know <a href="https://www.vote.org/polling-place-locator/">where to go</a>.</p>
<p>In some places you can vote in person for some number of days ahead of Election Day, often at the main municipal government building. Your town office – and its website – will likely have the dates and location information prominently displayed. </p>
<p>If you don’t want to vote in person, either because of your work or personal schedule, or because of the pandemic, think about voting by mail. Some states will mail you a ballot automatically, either because they conduct their elections by mail or because they have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/11/us/politics/vote-by-mail-us-states.html">made special provisions</a> to do so as a result of the pandemic. In other states you have to request one – and sometimes you need to provide a specific excuse for wanting to avoid in-person voting.</p>
<p>If you’re voting by mail, you may need to pay postage to send your ballot back in. Call your local election office and ask how much you’ll need – and get the right postage. You can <a href="https://store.usps.com/store/results/stamps/_/N-9y93lv?_requestid=244016">order postage online</a> for free delivery – and splitting the cost of a book of stamps is another great opportunity to share voting with a friend.</p>
<p>In 2016, nearly <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-does-vote-by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/">one-quarter of U.S. votes were cast by mail</a>. Research and evidence show that it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/research-on-voting-by-mail-says-its-safe-from-fraud-and-disease-141847">safe and reliable</a> – though with large numbers of people expected to vote by mail this year, it’s best to mail your ballot back as early as possible to make sure it has plenty of time to arrive before it needs to be counted. The U.S. Postal Service recommends mailing your ballot <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mail-in-ballot-deadline/">at least a week before the deadline</a>.</p>
<p>Large amounts of mail also might mean you don’t get your ballot in the mail until just before the election. If it arrives with less than a week to go, call your local Board of Elections or municipal clerk immediately to find out what your options are. You may be able to drop off the ballot rather than mailing it in, and you should also still have the option to vote in person, either on or before Election Day.</p>
<p>If you’re worried about the safety of voting by mail, there are plenty of administrative and legal <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-does-vote-by-mail-work-and-does-it-increase-election-fraud/">protections for mailed-in ballots</a>, and steep penalties for those who tamper with election mail.</p>
<p><iframe id="pOULd" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/pOULd/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<h2>Set reminders to vote</h2>
<p>Many people set reminders for all sorts of important things: medical appointments, friends’ birthdays, bill payment dates and so on. Add voting to your calendar – including alerts to request a mail-in ballot, to vote early, to mail your ballot and certainly for Election Day itself.</p>
<h2>Tell your friends and family</h2>
<p>Every vote that is cast is a vital contribution to the nation’s future. Encourage everyone you know to vote. You can even invite people to your calendar events – or share your plans on social media, in an email to family and friends. Send texts to people you know. Pledge to call 10 people and ask them to vote, and ask each of them to call 10 more people.</p>
<h2>Do not be intimidated or afraid</h2>
<p>If you make your plan and follow the requirements of your state and local government, you can cast your ballot and be certain that your vote will count. </p>
<p>You may encounter people claiming there could be “widespread” voter fraud or that the election is somehow “rigged.” But the biggest problem is that so few people actually vote: In 2016, <a href="http://www.electproject.org/2016g">40% of eligible American voters</a> didn’t cast a ballot.</p>
<p>It is your right to vote. Exercise that right proudly and make your voice heard.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144476/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amy Dacey is a former CEO of the Democratic National Committee.</span></em></p>Double-check that you’re registered, find out where and when you can vote, make a plan and tell your friends. Set a reminder on your calendar, and make sure you actually vote.Amy Dacey, Executive Director of the Sine Institute of Policy and Politics, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1347612020-03-31T12:19:45Z2020-03-31T12:19:45ZHow to protect elections amid the coronavirus pandemic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323683/original/file-20200327-146689-1t9q21z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C4424%2C2969&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Voters in line for Illinois primary election ballots keep their distance on March 17.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Illinois-Primary/c046ce2990234f6cbcd843ed2cb17829/33/0">AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>At least <a href="https://www.rollcall.com/2020/03/19/connecticut-joins-states-delaying-elections-moves-presidential-primary-to-june-2/">seven states</a> have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/us/politics/election-postponed-canceled.html">postponed their presidential primaries</a> in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. </p>
<p>That has <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/21/21188152/trump-cancel-november-election-constitution-coronavirus">raised concerns</a> about the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/23/it-not-too-early-ask-can-us-pull-november-election-amid-coronavirus">other states</a> that have <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/2020-state-primary-election-dates.aspx">state elections and federal primary elections</a> planned for later this summer – and of course the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/28/politics/coronavirus-2020-election-challenges/index.html">general election in November</a>.</p>
<p>The main concern, in terms of the pandemic, is that elections cause people to congregate at the polling places on Election Day. If it’s not safe to be within <a href="https://abc7.com/6022704/">six feet</a> of someone outside your immediate family, it’s seems ill-advised to line up with all your neighbors to check in, or to visit a small voting booth someone else was just in, or to pick up the same pen or touch the same touchscreen they used just moments ago. </p>
<p>The solution so far has been to postpone elections until some future time when it’s safe to gather again. But it’s <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/t0309-covid-19-update.html">not clear how long</a> that will be.</p>
<p>To hold elections without delays, the obvious solution is to let people vote elsewhere, at other times. </p>
<p>As an election law <a href="https://hq.ssrn.com/submissions/MyPapers.cfm?partid=114356">scholar and author</a>, I have good news: Many people already can – and more people could easily be allowed to – vote before Election Day, or even vote from home, by casting their ballots on paper and mailing them in or dropping them off at a municipal office.</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/03/23/states-begin-prep-for-mail-in-voting-in-presidential-election">already possible in many states</a>, where research has shown it’s good for democracy by making voting more accessible, even when there is not a pandemic. A bill already in the works in Congress would require states to <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3529?s=1&r=1">adopt these measures as part of their administration of federal elections</a>. States and municipalities could easily mirror the practices for their own elections. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323684/original/file-20200327-146671-1nv36x7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Wisconsin voter casts a ballot ahead of primary election day, avoiding lines and finding a more convenient time to vote.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Election-2020-Primaries-in-Turmoil/7d9b5eb950704553a6feaf8e00b98406/3/0">AP Photo/Morry Gash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Voting before the big day</h2>
<p>One way to spread out the Election Day crowds would be to let people vote early, in advance of the day itself. As of this writing, <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/early-voting-in-state-elections.aspx">39 states</a> <a href="https://sos.tn.gov/products/elections/early-voting-person">across</a> the <a href="https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleev/evidx.htm">political</a> <a href="https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/for-voters/voting/early-voting/">spectrum</a> let voters show up at municipal offices or other community centers to cast their ballots in the week or two before Election Day. </p>
<p>The remaining 11 states could do the same, again making voting more convenient and accessible. </p>
<h2>Skip the touchscreen</h2>
<p>For physical safety, it’s probably best that voters use paper ballots, not electronic ones. Computerized touchscreens are exactly the kind of hands-on surface that health <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/20/coronavirus-grocery-pharmacy-touch-screens-can-spread-infection-epidemiologist-warns/">experts have warned</a> can spread the coronavirus easily. Voting on one of them is like shaking 300 – or more – strangers’ hands in a single day.</p>
<p>Advocates of touchscreens argue that the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/public-touch-screens-coronavirus-expert-121149598.html">screens can be wiped down</a> periodically, but doing so after every voter (or every other voter) would be time- and labor-intensive, risking long lines. Worse, at least some brands of touchscreen machines <a href="https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/electionofficials/coronavirus/DVS_CoronavirusCleaningNotice_030920.pdf">have to be turned off</a> to be cleaned, exacerbating the potential for delays.</p>
<p>There might be some people whose physical disabilities <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-universal-design-can-help-every-voter-cast-a-ballot-54373">prevent them from using a paper ballot</a> – but having everyone else do so would free up the machines for those who most need them, and ease the burden of cleaning them between users.</p>
<p>No formal studies have compared whether paper ballots carry or spread fewer germs than touchscreens – it’s a relatively new research question. But it’s useful to note that the government has not shut down the paper-handling postal system, even as <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/20/coronavirus-grocery-pharmacy-touch-screens-can-spread-infection-epidemiologist-warns/">officials have warned</a> the public to be careful around <a href="https://www.cujournal.com/news/are-atms-making-the-coronavirus-crisis-worse">ATMs</a> and <a href="https://www.digitaltransactions.net/how-the-coronavirus-scare-is-leading-some-experts-to-look-for-a-boost-in-contactless-payments/">computer cash registers</a>.</p>
<p>Even if there were not a pandemic, having a paper ballot is a key way to <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/12/17/how-new-voting-machines-could-hack-our-democracy/">protect public trust in elections</a>, <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3375755">allowing recounts</a> in case machines are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/us/politics/pennsylvania-voting-machines.html">hacked or suffer software or hardware problems</a> that could affect vote counting.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323686/original/file-20200327-146724-1vwgxkg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Election workers sort mailed-in ballots in Washington state on March 10.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ballot-processing-manager-jerelyn-hampton-sorts-vote-by-news-photo/1206477759">Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Voting by mail</h2>
<p>If nearly everyone is voting on paper, they could easily cast their ballots by mail. <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/25/ohio-vote-by-mail-primary-election-149012">Ohio has already converted</a> its Democratic primary to all mail-in ballots.</p>
<p>All states let people vote by absentee ballot if they won’t be in their voting district on Election Day, for instance if they are traveling. <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx">About two-thirds of the states</a> let anyone who wants to do the same, whether they’ll be home on Election Day or not. They simply call up their local election office and ask for a paper ballot to be mailed to them. When they get it, they fill it out and mail it back or drop it off at a municipal office before Election Day.</p>
<p>The remaining states require voters to certify that they’re sick, elderly, out of town, or otherwise <a href="https://sos.tn.gov/products/elections/absentee-voting">unable to vote on Election Day</a> before being allowed to vote absentee. Those states could loosen their rules, opening absentee voting to anyone who wants to do it.</p>
<p>Even more effective at social distancing for voters would be a complete system for everyone to vote by mail. Five states – again, <a href="https://voteinfo.utah.gov/learn-about-voting-by-mail-and-absentee-voting/">with</a> <a href="https://sos.oregon.gov/voting/pages/voteinor.aspx">varying</a> <a href="https://www.sos.state.co.us/pubs/elections/FAQs/mailBallotsFAQ.html">alignments</a> – automatically mail all registered voters a ballot. Like with absentee ballots, voters can mail them back or drop them off at secure locations.</p>
<p>These methods are obviously excellent for keeping people from flocking to the polls in person on the same day. They also are more convenient for voters, who would no longer have to get to a particular polling place on one particular day, and take their chances on traffic and lines to vote – not to mention shifting work and child-care schedules to make time.</p>
<p>As a general rule, <a href="https://www.memphis.edu/law/documents/01_mulroy.pdf">making voting more convenient</a>, including <a href="https://washingtonmonthly.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/colorado2014voterfileanalysis.pdf">voting by mail</a>, <a href="http://www.umsl.edu/%7Ekimballd/KimballRCV.pdf">boosts turnout</a>, which makes election results more broadly representative of the views of the entire citizenry.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323689/original/file-20200327-146712-5cbtmi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Utah election worker verifies a signature on a mailed-in ballot during the 2018 midterm elections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/utah-county-election-worker-verifies-signatures-on-mail-in-news-photo/1058239656">George Frey/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Ensuring election integrity</h2>
<p>Some critics have raised concerns about <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/voting-by-mail-would-reduce-coronavirus-transmission-but-it-has-other-risks">voter fraud with mail-in ballots</a>. In the few instances that the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/6/30/15900478/trump-voter-fraud-suppression-commission">rare problem with voter fraud</a> occurs, it does often involve <a href="https://www.memphis.edu/law/documents/01_mulroy.pdf">using absentee voting</a> to let one person vote on behalf of another.</p>
<p>But security procedures, like matching the ballot signature with a voter signature on file, can address these concerns. Vote-by-mail states have <a href="https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/ef45f5_81a3affd554e4b5b9b5852f8fb3c10fd.pdf">not seen a higher rate of election fraud</a> cases than <a href="https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud/search?combine=OR&state=OR&year=&case_type=All&fraud_type=All">states with strict rules</a> on who can vote absentee, according to a database of fraud cases compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an organization <a href="https://www.heritage.org/election-integrity/commentary/more-proof-voter-fraud-real-and-bipartisan">concerned about voting fraud</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3529?s=1&r=1">bill promoting all these changes for federal elections</a> is under consideration in the Senate right now. State and local election officials prefer to have – and voters find it easier to understand – similar practices across all the elections they conduct. A set of federal rules would encourage the states that haven’t done so already to adopt them too.</p>
<p>[<em>Insight, in your inbox each day.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=insight">You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134761/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steven Mulroy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most states have rules that could preserve the integrity of an election while also allowing social distancing.Steven Mulroy, Law Professor in Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Election Law, University of MemphisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1219292019-08-18T20:02:31Z2019-08-18T20:02:31ZSurge in pre-poll numbers at 2019 federal election changes the relationship between voters and parties<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288260/original/file-20190816-136199-o8otuy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Another issue is that pre-polling gives an advantage to the major parties over the smaller ones, due to the latter having fewer resources.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Bianca de Marchi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On the morning of the last Monday in April, 2019, federal election officials opened the doors of more than 500 pre-poll voting centres around Australia, and waited for the voters to turn up. It was the first day of the three-week early voting period leading up to the May 18 election day. </p>
<p>They didn’t have to wait long. By the end of the day, 123,793 voters had walked through the doors and cast their votes – more than the enrolment of an average House of Representatives electorate, and a record number for the first day of pre-polling. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/three-weeks-of-early-voting-has-a-significant-effect-on-democracy-heres-why-115909">Three weeks of early voting has a significant effect on democracy. Here's why</a>
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<p>That evening, the rush to the polls attracted <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6093970/voters-give-the-first-debate-to-shorten/?cs=14231">comment</a> at the first leaders’ debate. Opposition leader Bill Shorten claimed people were voting early because they wanted “change”; Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted it showed people “deserve” to know the cost of opposition policies.</p>
<p>In turn, pre-polling attracted more media attention than in previous campaigns.</p>
<p>Pre-polling increased steadily through the campaign, culminating on the last Friday with 710,000 pre-poll voters. The total for the full three weeks was 4.7 million, or 31.6% of total turnout. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288257/original/file-20190816-136208-xo66st.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Picture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author supplied</span></span>
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<p>Another 1.6 million voted early by post. In short, nearly four in ten voters decided, before the campaign had finished, that they had heard enough and were ready to cast their votes. </p>
<p>Pre-polling has come of age. While it has been on the rise in recent electoral cycles, it reached record levels federally in 2019. Casting a vote before election day has been transformed, over a very few electoral cycles, from the occasional practice of a limited number of eligible voters to the habitual form of electoral participation of a large minority of the electorate. </p>
<h2>Who votes early?</h2>
<p>Despite the popularity of pre-polling, there is a puzzling unevenness about it. Some voters love it more than others. <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/Federal_Elections/2019/downloads.htm">Australian Electoral Commission data</a> show the Northern Territory, with its own particular geography and demography, had the highest form of pre-poll voting at 42.9% of turnout. Victoria (37.2%), ACT (36.5%) and Queensland (35.6%) were well above average, while Tasmania (19%), SA (21.7%) and WA (22.9%) lagged. NSW sat just below the national average at 30.1%.</p>
<p>While the rates of all states and territories were lower in 2016, their relative percentages were very similar. </p>
<p>Pre-polling is particularly strong in rural electorates. Ten of the 15 electorates in the country with the highest pre-poll percentage were rural electorates, despite the fact that the <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Electorates/maps.htm">AEC</a> has less than one third of seats classed in this category. All 15 of these seats are in Victoria, NSW or Queensland.</p>
<p>By contrast, 13 of the 15 electorates with the lowest percentage of pre-poll voters came from WA, Tasmania and South Australia, and just three of these were from outside the main metropolitan areas. </p>
<p>In terms of political allegiance, the inclination of early voters is well known: those voting early have tended to lean towards the Coalition. As psephologist Peter Brent has shown, this gap has only widened in recent electoral cycles, despite the growing number of early voters.</p>
<p>In 2004, the Coalition did 4% better in early voting than voting on election day; by 2019 this gap rose to just over 5%. There is strong evidence for Coalition mobilisation of postal voters, with 312,391 postal vote applications received from Coalition parties in 2019, and just 149,582 from the Labor party.</p>
<p>The reasons why people vote early are still widely debated, but the key <a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2902152/Convenience-Voting-Report-1-October-2018.pdf">reasons</a> are convenience and access.</p>
<p>There is also <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00323187.2018.1561155?journalCode=rpnz20">evidence</a> that indicates older people like voting earlier. Such arguments are borne out in those figures, given the older demographics of rural areas, and the greater distances that voters may need to travel to access voting booths.</p>
<h2>Has deregulating early voting made a difference?</h2>
<p>One factor cited as an explanation for the increase in early voting is the easing of restrictions on the practice. A number of jurisdictions including Victoria (2010), Queensland (2015), and Western Australia (2016) have made it easier to vote early at pre-poll booths for state elections by removing the need for voters to provide justifications for doing so. The rationale when doing so has been that this would make such voting forms more accessible.</p>
<p>While we would expect to see these jurisdictions record higher levels of pre-poll voting, the outcomes of these changes in legislation have been mixed (see chart two). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=331&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288263/original/file-20190816-136186-11wzl45.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=416&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author supplied</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>Victoria’s 2018 state election recorded the highest levels of pre-poll voting of any state, at 37.29%, and this may be linked to their decision to deregulate the practice earlier than elsewhere. But at their last state elections, WA, while recording a boost in postal voting (which remains regulated) had a pre-poll rate of 15.47%, and Queensland of 19.64% - both still well short of Victoria. </p>
<p>While pre-poll voting in Queensland and WA increased after deregulation, it did not increase any more markedly than other jurisdictions that retained regulation.</p>
<p>Moreover, each of these jurisdictions recorded a prepoll rate for the 2019 Federal election equal to, or higher than, the previous state election, despite the Commonwealth retaining the need for voters to justify their decision to do so. </p>
<p>While in Victoria the rate was almost identical, in WA and Queensland the Federal rate of pre-poll was much higher.</p>
<h2>Conclusions: unexpected implications</h2>
<p>An examination of early voting data, particularly around the practice of pre-polling, demonstrates clear but unexplained trends. Tasmania, WA and South Australia lag well behind the other states and territories in pre-polling. There is even clearer unevenness within states, where rural and regional voters are voting early in significantly higher numbers than their metropolitan counterparts.</p>
<p>The data also indicate that making forms of early voting more accessible (such as by deregulating pre-polling) has in itself not led to marked increases in the practice.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/difficult-for-labor-to-win-in-2022-using-new-pendulum-plus-senate-and-house-preference-flows-119005">Difficult for Labor to win in 2022 using new pendulum, plus Senate and House preference flows</a>
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<p>What we also know is that the large rates of early voting have changed the relationship between voters and the people or parties they are choosing to vote for, in that many voters cast their ballots before the parties have released all their policies. </p>
<p>Other unanticipated effects have emerged. In 2019, we saw many early voters casting votes <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-03/how-you-can-vote-when-federal-election-candidate-has-resigned/11072830">for candidates who were later disendorsed</a> by their own parties.</p>
<p>This arises because the early voting period occupies the maximum available time on the campaign calendar, beginning as soon as possible after close of nominations. This may create a dysfunction between voters and the parties candidates claim to represent on the ballot. </p>
<p>Pre-polling also leads to uneven playing fields between major parties as opposed to minor parties and independents, due to the latter having fewer resources.</p>
<p>There are also additional challenges faced by electoral commissions in the provision of pre-poll centres and staff to manage this surge. This research has been published in <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-weeks-of-early-voting-has-a-significant-effect-on-democracy-heres-why-115909">The Conversation</a> and in a previous <a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/2943386/Changes-to-Voting-Report-December-2018-FINAL.pdf">report</a> on voting flexibility late last year.</p>
<p>The increased uptake of early voting in 2019 only exacerbates these implications, many of which may not have been anticipated until recently. </p>
<p>While early voting is important in providing greater accessibility to voters and encouraging turnout, thought should be given to reviewing the full implications through the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM).</p>
<p>One possibility is to retain the current forms of early voting but limit the pre-poll period to two weeks rather than three. This would retain flexibility for voters, but make the process more manageable for all the stakeholders concerned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121929/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Mills and Martin Drum's research was funded through the Electoral Regulation Research Network which is jointly funded by the New South Wales Electoral Commission, the Victoria Electoral Commission, and Melbourne Law School.
Neither author works for, consults, owns shares in or receives funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Drum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>An analysis of pre-polling figures shows a surge in early voting, particularly in regional areas. But questions remain about how it affects the relationship between voters and parties.Stephen Mills, Hon Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyMartin Drum, Lecturer Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1159092019-04-28T20:17:35Z2019-04-28T20:17:35ZThree weeks of early voting has a significant effect on democracy. Here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/271119/original/file-20190426-121237-1rt369o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Early voting is convenient for voters, but is three weeks of it too long?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australians’ enthusiastic uptake of early voting is changing the traditional election campaign in largely unexpected ways. Candidates are spending less time campaigning in the community and more time at pre-polling stations. Parties are announcing their more attractive promises earlier. Party volunteers are being exhausted by long weekday shifts on the hustings. And many voters are casting their votes with incomplete knowledge. </p>
<p>Starting today, hundreds of pre-poll voting centres will open in every electorate around the country for the federal election. They’ll operate on weekdays for the first week, weekdays and Saturday in the second week, and weekdays in the third week running up to May 18. So this federal election will have, in effect, 17 election days – on 16 of those, the campaign will still be in full swing. </p>
<p>There has been little consideration of the implications of allowing voting to run concurrently with campaigning. Our research suggests it is causing substantial changes to the structure and content of campaigning.</p>
<h2>Why do we have early voting?</h2>
<p><a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2902152/Convenience-Voting-Report-1-October-2018.pdf">Voters, it seems, like the convenience</a> of early voting and the flexibility of fitting it in around work, travel, family and other commitments. And the queues, theoretically at least, will be shorter. </p>
<p>At the same time, election administrators feel obliged, given compulsory voting, to make it as easy as possible for voters to do their duty. This logic seems unassailable. Tasked with the enormous project of running an election smoothly and accurately, election officials also like how early voting spreads their workload over a longer period. </p>
<p>But after <a href="https://law.unimelb.edu.au/centres/errn/research/research-projects/implications-of-changes-to-voting-in-australia-project">interviewing party officials and candidates</a> about their experience of early voting in the 2017 Western Australian state election and New South Wales byelections, it became clear to us that those actually running for office have a much more nuanced view of this voting innovation.</p>
<p>On one hand, they accept the democratic desirability of early voting. They see, too, that it can make campaigning more efficient. As one Greens party official put it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The voters come to you, rather than you coming to the voters. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a result, many candidates now stand at pre-poll centres for the entire period, meeting voters, hoping to impress them in the final moments before they vote. This means they are spending less time in the community, meeting commuters and shoppers and doorknocking residents in their homes. </p>
<p>But there are too many pre-polling centres, and too many voters, for candidates to do the job alone. Parties need an army of volunteers to press how-to-vote cards into the hands of early voters. This in turn requires, in the words of the same Greens official, a “massive logistical operation” involving “a huge volunteering engagement and coordination effort”. Officials and candidates from Labor, Liberals and Nationals agreed with this analysis. </p>
<p>Extending the voting period stretches everyone. The traditional election-day effort has been upgraded to a sustained process of recruitment, mobilisation and training of volunteers who are rostered on to as many shifts as they can offer. </p>
<h2>Who benefits most from early voting?</h2>
<p>Early voting is not a level playing field. Recruiting and organising volunteers for three weeks is more of a challenge for smaller parties and independents than for the major parties. Larger parties with the luxury of enthusiastic volunteers can use early voting as a means of keeping them engaged for longer. Likewise, incumbent MPs are more available to stand at pre-poll centres all day than, say, a minor party candidate with a job and other non-campaign commitments. </p>
<p>Our research also revealed other important campaign changes. Early voting means early policy announcements. Parties, we were told, all want to “get our policies out” before pre-polling starts. In WA (and in the more recent NSW state election), both the Liberals and Labor held their policy launches on the Sunday before early voting opened. </p>
<p>Fine. But parties still hold back on providing the nitty-gritty of costings until late in the campaign. This may amount to releasing unpopular revenue measures in the final days of campaigning, and then claiming a mandate for them if they win. So early voters almost certainly cast their vote with incomplete knowledge of what the parties and candidates are offering. Gaffes and scandals late in the campaign may also become less electorally damaging.</p>
<p>And there are no democracy sausages at the pre-poll centres; early voting is less a celebration of democracy than a queue-avoiding chore.</p>
<p>In previous federal elections, pre-polling has run for nearly three weeks. In NSW and Victorian state elections, there are just two weeks of pre-polling. In WA, there were three full weeks. </p>
<p>How much time is enough to promote electoral participation without exhausting the parties and subverting the very concept of a campaign? Is 17 election days too many?</p>
<p>Our respondents in WA all felt three weeks was too long. <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2016Election/Submissions">Submissions</a> to the federal parliamentary committee reviewing the 2016 federal election expressed similar views. Voices for Indi – the campaign organisation behind independent Cathy McGowan – suggested one week would be enough. </p>
<p>On the other hand, Unions NSW – whose members have become prominent campaigners in recent election campaigns, especially on industrial relations – argued in its submission that pre-polling plays a crucial role in breaking down barriers to electoral participation by shift and weekend workers and those with a disability. It argued that proposals to “remove or limit” pre-polling could be motivated by political parties “more concerned with their ability to staff pre-poll booths than the accessibility of the electoral system for all voters”.</p>
<p>The committee <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Electoral_Matters/2016Election/2016_election_report/section?id=committees%2freportjnt%2f024085%2f26084#s26084rec18">recommended</a> pre-polling be “restricted” to no more than two weeks. </p>
<p>But the Coalition government rejected that recommendation. It took the side of the union movement rather than the political parties when it <a href="https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/australian_electoral_system/modernisation-legislation-changes.htm">legislated</a> late last year for a three-week period for pre-polling. </p>
<p>This means that, for the time being at least, candidates and campaign volunteers will spend long hours trying to buttonhole those who choose to vote before election day. Let’s hope someone buys them a democracy sausage or two along the way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/115909/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Mills and Martin Drum's research was funded through the Electoral Regulation Research Network which is jointly funded by the New South Wales Electoral Commission, the Victoria Electoral Commission, and Melbourne Law School.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Drum does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australians now have effectively 17 election days. This means parties change how they campaign – and many people cast their votes without being fully informed.Stephen Mills, Hon Senior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of SydneyMartin Drum, Lecturer Politics and International Relations, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1017652018-09-06T10:45:30Z2018-09-06T10:45:30Z4 ways to defend democracy and protect every voter’s ballot<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/233981/original/file-20180828-86123-bdmwev.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4297%2C3047&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">How confident should voters be that their ballots will be counted accurately?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Florida-Primary/0b1cdb68c2b5403fb0b1884673e55b55/12/0">AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As voters prepare to cast their ballots in the November midterm elections, it’s clear that <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611830/hackers-are-out-to-jeopardize-your-vote/">U.S. voting is under electronic attack</a>. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-russian-government-used-disinformation-and-cyber-warfare-in-2016-election-an-ethical-hacker-explains-99989">Russian government hackers</a> probed some states’ computer systems in the runup to the 2016 presidential election and are <a href="https://theconversation.com/securing-americas-voting-systems-against-spying-and-meddling-6-essential-reads-99986">likely to do so again</a> – as might <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/technology/facebook-political-influence-midterms.html">hackers from other countries</a> or nongovernmental groups interested in sowing discord in American politics.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there are <a href="http://homepage.divms.uiowa.edu/%7Ejones/voting/">ways to defend elections</a>. Some of them will be new in some places, but these defenses are not particularly difficult nor expensive, especially when judged against the value of public confidence in democracy. I served on the Iowa board that examines voting machines from 1995 to 2004 and on the <a href="https://www.eac.gov/about/technical-guidelines-development-committee/">Technical Guidelines Development Committee</a> of the <a href="https://www.eac.gov/">United States Election Assistance Commission</a> from 2009 to 2012, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/guardian-of-the-vote/544155/">Barbara Simons</a> and I coauthored the 2012 book “<a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo13383590.html">Broken Ballots</a>.”</p>
<p>Election officials have an important role to play in protecting election integrity. Citizens, too, need to ensure their local voting processes are safe. There are two parts to any voting system: the computerized systems tracking voters’ registrations and the actual process of voting – from preparing ballots through results tallying and reporting.</p>
<h2>Attacking registrations</h2>
<p>Before the passage of the <a href="http://legislink.org/us/pl-107-252">Help America Vote Act of 2002</a>, voter registration in the U.S. was largely decentralized across 5,000 local jurisdictions, mostly county election offices. HAVA changed that, requiring states to have centralized online voter registration databases accessible to all election officials.</p>
<p>In 2016, <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/grand-jury-indicts-12-russian-intelligence-officers-hacking-offenses-related-2016-election">Russian government agents</a> allegedly tried to access <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/23/what-we-know-about-the-21-states-targeted-by-russian-hackers/">voter registration systems in 21 states</a>. Illinois officials have <a href="http://www.govtech.com/security/Hacked-Voter-Records-in-Illinois-Soar-to-Half-a-Million.html">identified their state</a> as the only one whose databases were, in fact, breached – with <a href="http://www.govtech.com/security/Hacked-Voter-Records-in-Illinois-Soar-to-Half-a-Million.html">information on 500,000 voters</a> viewed and potentially copied by the hackers. </p>
<p>It’s not clear that any information was corrupted, changed or deleted. But that would certainly be one way to interfere with an election: either changing voters’ addresses to assign them to other precincts or simply deleting people’s registrations.</p>
<p>Another way this information could be misused would be to fraudulently request absentee ballots for real voters. Something like that happened on May 29, 2013, when Juan Pablo Baggini, an overzealous campaign worker in Miami, <a href="https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/After-Raid-at-Home-of-Campaign-Worker-Mayoral-Candidate-Francis-Suarez-Says-No-Election-Laws-Were-Violated-211516981.html">used his computer to file online absentee ballot requests</a> on behalf of 20 local voters. He apparently thought he had their permission, but <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1952450.html">county officials noticed the large number of requests</a> coming from the same computer in a short period of time. Baggini and another campaign worker were <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article1954359.html">charged with misdemeanors and sentenced to probation</a>.</p>
<p>A more sophisticated attack could use voters’ registration information to select targets based on how likely they are to vote a particular way and use common hacking tools to file electronic absentee ballot requests for them – appearing to come from a variety of computers over the course of several weeks. On Election Day, when those voters went to the polls, they’d be told they already had an absentee ballot and would be prevented from voting normally.</p>
<h2>Two defenses for voter registration</h2>
<p>There are two important defenses against these and other types of attacks on voter registration systems: provisional ballots and same-day registration.</p>
<p>When there are questions about whether a voter is entitled to vote at a particular polling place, federal law requires the person be issued a <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/provisional-ballots.aspx">provisional ballot</a>. The rules vary by state, and some places require provisional voters to bring proof of identity to the county election office before their ballots will be counted – which many voters may not have time to do. But the goal is that no voter should be turned away from the polls without at least a chance their vote will count. If questions arise about the validity of the registration database, provisional ballots offer a way to ensure every voter’s intent is recorded for counting when things get sorted out.</p>
<p>Same-day voter registration offers an even stronger defense. <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/same-day-registration.aspx">Fifteen states</a> allow people to register to vote right at the polling place and then cast a normal ballot. <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/%7E/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/pcs_assets/2009/uwisconsin1pdf.pdf">Research on same-day registration</a> has focused on turnout, but it also allows recovery from an attack on voter registration records.</p>
<p>Both approaches do require extra paperwork. If large numbers of voters are affected, that could cause long lines at polling places, which <a href="https://www.eac.gov/documents/2017/02/24/waiting-in-line-to-vote-white-paper-stewart-ansolabehere/">disenfranchise voters who cannot afford to wait</a>. And like provisional voting, same-day registration may have more stringent identification requirements than for people whose voter registrations are already on the books. Some voters may have to go home to get additional documents and hope to make it back before the polls close.</p>
<p>Further, long lines, frustrated voters and frazzled election workers can create the appearance of chaos – which can play into the narratives of those who want to discredit the system even when things are actually working reasonably well.</p>
<h2>Paper ballots are vital</h2>
<p>Election integrity experts agree that <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/defcon-election-threat-funding/">voting machines can be hacked</a>, even if the devices themselves are <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/14/first_virus_elk_cloner_creator_interviewed/">not connected</a> <a href="https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdown-to-zero-day-stuxnet/">to the internet</a>. </p>
<p>Voting machine manufacturers say their <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/tensions-flare-as-hackers-root-out-flaws-in-voting-machines-1534078801">devices have top-notch protections</a>, but the only truly safe assumption is that they have not yet found additional vulnerabilities. Properly defending voting integrity requires assuming a worst-case scenario, in which every computer involved – at election offices, vote-tallying software developers and machine makers – has been compromised.</p>
<p>The first line of defense is that in most of the U.S., <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/08/on-election-day-most-voters-use-electronic-or-optical-scan-ballots/">people vote on paper</a>. Hackers can’t alter a hand-marked paper ballot – though they could <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/08/2016-elections-russia-hack-how-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-minutes-214144">change how a computerized vote scanner counts</a> it, or what <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/an-11-year-old-changed-election-results-on-a-replica-florida-state-website-in-under-10-minutes">preliminary results are reported on official websites</a>. In the event of a controversy, paper ballots can be recounted, by hand if needed. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/08/on-election-day-most-voters-use-electronic-or-optical-scan-ballots/ft_16-11-07_votingtechnology/"><img width="640" height="600" src="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology.png" class="attachment-large size-large" alt="" srcset="http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology.png 640w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-300x281.png 300w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-200x188.png 200w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-260x244.png 260w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-432x405.png 432w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-50x47.png 50w, http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/11/07164119/FT_16.11.07_votingTechnology-160x150.png 160w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px"></a></p>
<h2>Conduct post-election audits</h2>
<p>Without paper ballots, there is not a way to be completely sure voting system software hasn’t been hacked. With them, though, the process is clear.</p>
<p>In a growing number of states, paper ballots are subject to routine statistical audits. In California, post-election audits have been required <a href="https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/28/AUDIT%20PILOT%20FINAL%20REPORT%20TO%20EAC%20FINAL.pdf">since 1965</a>. Iowa allows <a href="https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/code/50.50.pdf">election officials who suspect irregularities</a> to initiate recounts even if the result appears decisive and no candidate asks for one; these are called <a href="https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/28/recounts.pdf">administrative recounts</a>. </p>
<p>Based on that experience, some election officials have told me that they suspect the current generation of scanners may be misinterpreting 1 vote in 100. That might seem like a small problem, but it’s really way too much opportunity for error. Voting simulations show that changing <a href="https://doi.org/10.1145/1022594.1022621">just one vote per voting machine</a> across the United States could be enough to allow an attacker to determine which party controls Congress.</p>
<p>Recounts are expensive and time-consuming, though, and can create illusions of disarray and chaos that reduce public confidence in the election’s outcome. A better method is called a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1109/MSP.2012.56">risk-limiting audit</a>. It’s a straightforward method of determining how many ballots should be randomly selected for auditing, based on the size of the election, the margin of the initial result and – crucially – the statistical confidence the public wants in the final outcome. There are even <a href="https://www.stat.berkeley.edu/%7Estark/Vote/auditTools.htm">free online tools</a> available to make the calculations needed.</p>
<p>Preliminary experiences with risk-limiting audits are <a href="https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/28/AUDIT%20PILOT%20FINAL%20REPORT%20TO%20EAC%20FINAL.pdf">quite promising</a>, but they could be made even more attractive by <a href="https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/evt07/tech/full_papers/calandrino/calandrino_html/">small changes to ballot-sheet scanners</a>. The main problem is that the method is based in math and statistics, which many people don’t understand or trust. However, I believe relying on verifiable principles that any person could learn is far better than believing the assurances of companies that make voting equipment and software, or <a href="https://triblive.com/news/allegheny/11013043-74/machines-election-county">election officials who don’t understand</a> how <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/40448876/how-hackers-are-teaching-election-officials-to-protect-their-voting-machines-learned-from-hackers-to-improve-security-for-future-elections">their machines</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/magazine/the-myth-of-the-hacker-proof-voting-machine.html">actually work</a>. </p>
<p>Elections must be as transparent and simple as possible. To paraphrase Dan Wallach at Rice University, <a href="https://www.cs.rice.edu/%7Edwallach/pub/texas-senate-state-affairs-15oct08.pdf">the job of an election is to convince the losers that they lost fair and square</a>. The declared winners will not ask questions and may seek to obstruct those who do ask. The losers will ask the hard questions, and election systems must be transparent enough that the partisan supporters of the losers can be convinced that they indeed lost. This sets a high standard, but it is a standard that every democracy must strive to meet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/101765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Douglas W. Jones was a co-principal investigator in the National Science Foundation funded ACCURATE (A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections) project. He was a co-founder of the Open Voting Consortium, but is not currently affiliated with that group, and he is a registered Democrat.</span></em></p>Ensuring the integrity of democratic elections from hackers and electronic tampering, and boosting public confidence in democracy, isn’t very difficult, nor expensive.Douglas W. Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of IowaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/675112016-11-09T11:06:30Z2016-11-09T11:06:30ZThis election was not hacked – but it was attacked<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145121/original/image-20161109-16727-dq8tug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">All indications are that voting was not subject to a cyberattack.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-184143842/">Ballot box via shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The presidential campaign of 2016 thankfully – and we can only hope officially – ended this evening. As of when this article was posted, there are no reports of widespread cyberattacks or other digital interference against state voting systems. Of course, since votes are still being tallied, we’re not in the clear yet. But current indications are that this was a fairly uneventful election, from a cybersecurity perspective at least.</p>
<p>So far, we’ve seen no public evidence of Russian hackers, <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/09/27/tech-crowd-goes-wild-trumps-400-pound-hacker/91168144/">400-pound</a> or otherwise, attacking individual voting machines from their bedrooms (to use a very tired old trope). There have been reports of <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/2016/11/08/colorado-reports-voting-system-briefly-crippled-by-computer-problem/">brief computer problems</a>, but they were easily remedied. And there’s no indication that state voter registration databases were compromised by hostile third parties.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, cybersecurity units of several states’ <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/01/politics/election-hacking-cyberattack/">National Guard forces were mobilized</a> ahead of the election, in a manner reminiscent of the reassuring and public show of force when airports reopened following 9/11. The military’s hackers at <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-nsa-and-cyber-command-have-separate-leadership-65986">U.S. Cyber Command</a> reportedly <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-hackers-ready-hit-back-if-russia-disrupts-election-n677936">stood ready to retaliate</a> against cyberattacks on the election – in particular, <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-cyber-play-what-are-all-these-russian-hackers-up-to-65777">from Russia</a> as well.</p>
<p>These possibilities and preparations reinforce the need for America to place a greater emphasis on election-related cybersecurity, if not also cybersecurity more generally. Even though nothing suspicious appears to suggest the election was “hacked,” we must still make improvements. At stake is the trustworthiness of the electoral systems and processes of the world’s leading democracy. </p>
<h2>Time for governments to act</h2>
<p>Politically motivated digital attacks during the latter months of election 2016 raised concerns about the electronic security of the American electoral process. These events included the hacking of the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/21/politics/dnc-hack-russians-guccifer-claims/">Democratic National Committee</a> and the ongoing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/06/wikileaks-emails-hillary-clinton-campaign-john-podesta">Wikileaks disclosures</a> of email accounts of Clinton advisers. These events increased public interest in cybersecurity beyond the effects of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files">revelations</a> of NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 and many high-profile <a href="http://www.idtheftcenter.org/images/breach/DataBreachReport_2016.pdf">data breaches</a>.</p>
<p>In recent months, <a href="https://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-ElectionCyberThreats.pdf">government agencies</a> and experts (including myself) <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/04/how-hackers-are-trying-to-cast-their-ballots-for-president-this-election-season.html">have recommended improvements</a> to the electronic security of our <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/we-dont-want-voters-to-be-terrified-officials-play-down-fears-of-a-rigged-election/2016/10/23/091d9bf8-949b-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html">hodgepodge collection</a> of voting systems.</p>
<p>Among our suggestions are that states ensure their <a href="https://theconversation.com/aging-voting-machines-threaten-election-integrity-54523">voting systems are modernized</a>, properly updated, tested and secured from both physical and network-based tampering. States must continually ensure the integrity of their <a href="https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voter-registration-technology/">voter databases</a> to help minimize the potential for voter fraud. And they must provide a trusted audit trail (for example, <a href="http://votingmachines.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000291">paper receipts</a>) for election officials and the public to fall back on. There must be a way to clearly resolve questions about the security and integrity of the system, process or reported results.</p>
<p>All of this requires strong political will for <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/voting-machines-cybersecurity-homeland-security-230773">meaningful action</a>. It also means we’ll need to ensure the necessary money and expertise are available to make it happen in communities all across the country – admittedly not an easy task during a period of widespread budget constraints.</p>
<p>These concerns align with the basic principles of cybersecurity that apply to any organization. Information resources and their data must remain available and accessible to authorized users, confidential from unauthorized users, and protected from intentional and accidental tampering or modification. In meeting these challenges, organizations must find the resources to implement those safeguards in a proactive, effective, and ongoing fashion.</p>
<p>But there is a crucial difference that makes these particular cybersecurity efforts especially important: Election systems are truly critical foundations for our nation’s underlying social and political infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Rhetoric attacked legitimacy</h2>
<p>Although this election does not appear to be “hacked” in the manner that <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/09/russian-hackers-change-election-result-160917041811733.html">many predicted</a>, I do believe that it was successfully and directly attacked, repeatedly. These attacks did not come in the form of hackers altering vote counts. Rather, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/election-legitimacy-at-risk-even-without-a-november-cyberattack-64418">attacks on this election’s integrity</a> came from assorted and perhaps nontraditional threats, both foreign and domestic.</p>
<p>Over the past year, Republican Donald Trump repeatedly made vague claims of a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/06/donald-trump-accuses-democrats-of-voter-in-nevada">rigged</a>” system, possibly related to unsubstantiated allegations of <a href="http://www.factcheck.org/2016/10/trumps-bogus-voter-fraud-claims/">widespread voter fraud</a> or Russian <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-aggressive-power-is-resurgent-online-and-off-64336">influence</a>. In addition, politically sensitive information was regularly revealed by groups and <a href="https://wikileaks.org/Assange-Statement-on-the-US-Election.html">organizations</a> believing themselves to be above the rules of law and common sense. And, the media itself became the recurring <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/08/business/media/tv-networks-big-worry-voters-wont-trust-them-on-election-night.html">target of scorn</a> as <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/02/les-moonves-trump-cbs-220001">enablers</a> of the alleged election “rigging.”</p>
<p>These claims targeted the <a href="http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG654.pdf">public’s behavioral and cognitive systems</a>. Consequently, many Americans believe that the voting “system” in America cannot be trusted – even though there is no such thing. Rather, the country’s elections <a href="https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-equipment/">operate on a patchwork</a> of local and state rules, procedures and technologies. </p>
<p>To wit: Some states use fully electronic voting while others retain the traditional paper ballot. Polls open and close at different times across the country. Some states may offer a window for early voting while others do not. There is no unified national election “system” that could be attacked or disrupted in a single effort.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, refuting claims of vote-rigging or offering contrary views – even when based on documented evidence – was <a href="http://politicsmadepublic.com/living-in-a-post-factual-era/">dismissed by believers</a> as further proof of a “rigged” system.</p>
<p>Oddly, Trump made these “rigging” claims despite the fact that he was the nominee of a <a href="http://www.salon.com/2016/10/18/donald-trumps-rigged-election-talk-rebuked-by-republican-secretaries-of-state/">party whose own members oversee voting matters</a> in many states. That means his allegations suggested his own party’s officials and election procedures were conspiring against him.</p>
<p>All this made it more difficult to discuss legitimate voting security concerns objectively, rationally or meaningfully. When everyone believes their own set of “facts,” it is hard to address collective problems.</p>
<p>For these reasons, I believe election 2016 demonstrated the fragility of the American electoral process. It is susceptible to various types of attacks, overt and subtle, technical and nontechnical.</p>
<h2>Protecting the voting system</h2>
<p>Efforts to protect the American voting system can learn from the practice of cybersecurity. Cybersecurity professionals work to prevent attacks, and to respond to those that happen, <a href="http://programs.online.utica.edu/articles/moulden-info-security-interview">in several ways</a>. They identify threats and vulnerabilities in their systems and networks. They create and execute procedures to operate those systems. And they otherwise work to provide a secure cyberspace for their organizations. </p>
<p>They also <a href="http://www.nationalisacs.org/">share threat information</a> and best practices across companies and government agencies. This is because they recognize that cybersecurity is a shared responsibility and collective efforts are more helpful than working alone.</p>
<p>The electoral equivalent of this problem involves much more than identifying and reducing the technical vulnerabilities with electronic voting machines from their assembly all the way to when they’re used on Election Day. We must also ensure the integrity of all election data and systems, from the time a citizen submits their personal information when registering to vote, through casting their ballot, and on into counting the vote, tabulating it, and having it formally recorded by state election officials.</p>
<p>Elections, like cybersecurity, are a shared effort involving many different people and organizations from industry and all levels of government. To carry the metaphor further, let’s also take steps to ensure that the <a href="https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram/archives/2000/0915.html#1">proverbial “window of vulnerability”</a> is as small as possible. In the electoral process, reducing the potential time for an attacker to cause mischief is a valuable thing to consider. For example, is there <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-05-14/opinion/ct-oped-0514-british-20100514_1_campaign-spending-candidates-election-day">really a need</a> to have a multi-year presidential campaign that can be swayed regularly by any number of hacks in the cyber or cognitive domains?</p>
<h2>Errors still happen</h2>
<p>As of this evening, the process of voting appears to have encountered minimal, if any, cybersecurity-related problems. However, we may not learn about them immediately – unless attackers claim responsibility or government agencies make a public statement. Again, trust in the system, and trust in the people, processes and technologies, is crucial.</p>
<p>Yes, there will be <a href="http://www.the-dispatch.com/news/20050730/lawmakers-shouldnt-experiment-with-ballots---remember-carteret-county">human or procedural errors</a> made in vote-casting and vote-counting. They, like any human process or organizational system, are not totally foolproof or errorproof. We must accept that fact. Will there be voter fraud somewhere? Perhaps. But in widespread numbers? Doubtful. And will votes be changed by overseas hackers? Probably not.</p>
<p>Certainly, there will be periodic and likely very minor errors, glitches, and hiccups in the overall election process – there almost always are. The <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/voting-machine-problems-reported-tenn-n-states-article-1.2864094">media will report</a> on them, social media will <a href="http://www.thv11.com/news/local/what-is-the-impact-of-social-media-on-voting/349534749">amplify</a> them, and certain <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/2016-election-glitches-trump-230953">candidates</a> or their supporters might use those reports as evidence of a larger conspiracy and evidence of a system “rigged” against them.</p>
<p>But even if tonight’s vote count isn’t hacked, the damage is done. We must acknowledge that the integrity of America’s election system has been attacked successfully. Accordingly, once people have recovered from election 2016, we must implement a series of bipartisan, nationwide, rational and objective discussions about our election processes and technologies so that citizen trust in this most cherished national infrastructure – and feature of American democracy – can be restored.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67511/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Forno has received research funding related to cybersecurity from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the State of Maryland during his academic career. He is a registered independent voter and was quite disgusted by the nature of the 2016 presidential campaign.</span></em></p>Though there is no indication hackers affected the outcome of the election, we still must act to improve the cybersecurity of American elections.Richard Forno, Senior Lecturer, Cybersecurity & Internet Researcher, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/396892015-04-08T20:06:40Z2015-04-08T20:06:40ZEarly voting hits new highs in NSW and Australia, but is it a good idea?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77287/original/image-20150408-26515-ujbvqs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">About one in four Australians are skipping the polling day queues and voting early.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sunanda Creagh</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The ultimate result of the New South Wales election is still waiting on the resolution of the upper house where <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/nsw-election-2015/results/lc/">counting continues</a>. A <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mike-baird-better-off-sacrificing-seat-than-face-re-run/story-e6frg6n6-1227294795925">possible court challenge</a> could lead to a fresh upper house poll being called. That leaves the re-elected Baird government’s plans hanging in the balance.</p>
<p>Unlike the narrow Labor wins at the recent <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-01/queensland-election-2015-kap-ready-to-cut-deal-with-labor/6060296">Queensland</a> and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bushtelegraph/vic-election/5931224">Victorian</a> elections, which caught many pollsters off-guard, the comfortable NSW Liberal National victory on <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsw-voters-set-to-back-baird-but-upper-house-is-too-close-to-call-38034">March 28</a> was widely predicted. </p>
<p>But the elections did all have one thing in common: they showed that the old notion of “polling day” is increasingly outdated. Early voting is rising rapidly across Australia, including in the latest NSW election.</p>
<p>In 1995, only <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/about_elections/electoral_statistics">4% of NSW electors</a> voted early. By the 2011 election, it was <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/about_elections/electoral_statistics">15%</a>. The early figures indicate that could climb to <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/prepoll-results-for-nsw-election-2015-electoral-commission-says-increasing-numbers-voting-before-election-day-20150331-1mb8ii.html">about 25%</a> in 2015. (That includes about 640,000 prepoll votes and 284,000 online votes via the iVote system, while the final number of postal votes is still to be confirmed.)</p>
<p>According to the company operating iVote at this election, <a href="http://www.scytl.com/en/">Scytl</a>, NSW <a href="http://www.scytl.com/en/news/new-south-wales-leads-the-way-in-internet-voting-and-edemocracy-innovation/">set a record</a> for the most online votes in any government election worldwide, beating the previous record of more than 240,000 online votes set by <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/speaker/digital-democracy/FR_Successcase.pdf">France</a>, as well as recent online votes in <a href="https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-nsw-election-online-votes-open-to-tampering-39164">Estonia and Norway</a>. It also represented a sixfold increase from the <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/96297/SGE_2010-2011_Amended.pdf">46,864 iVotes</a> at the 2011 NSW election. That’s entirely in line with Australians being early adopters of technology, such as <a href="http://landing.deloitte.com.au/rs/deloitteaus/images/Deloitte_Mobile_Consumer_Survey_2014.pdf">smartphones</a>.</p>
<p>Overall, the high early vote in NSW mirrors a trend seen <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-and-more-australians-are-voting-before-election-day-37159">in other state</a> and federal elections. For instance, at the 2013 federal election, more than 26% of voters voted early. That was more than double the rate of a decade earlier.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76850/original/image-20150402-31287-1ko0v8z.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Early voting in Australian federal elections.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">Australian Electoral Commission, 2014</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=70&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/76849/original/image-20150402-31312-ae42vl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=89&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian Electoral Commission.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">Early Voting in Australian Federal Elections: Causes and Consequences, 2014</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But is it good for democracy to have so many people voting before polling day? And how are Australia’s political parties likely to change their campaign strategies to woo early voters?</p>
<h2>Electoral commissions offering more options</h2>
<p>Australian election commissions like to be thought of as custodians of their electoral system and tend to see themselves as the most <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/%7E/%7E/link.aspx?_id=AE1A1EC4416D423A94F9BFAB52215FD2&_z=z">independent parts of the public service</a>. With a limited role in policing candidates’ political behaviour (with the exception of South Australia, where the commission <a href="http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/australia/by_area/sa.htm">regulates truth in political advertising</a>), their focus is on protecting the integrity of the electoral administrative process and expanding participation.</p>
<p>While the former is most visible in the <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/wa-senate-2014/">breach rather than the observance</a>, the latter is seen in voter awareness campaigns, personalised reminder services, electoral reminder mail, easier voter enrolment (such as <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/enrol_to_vote/smartroll">automatic enrolment in NSW</a>) and an increased range of options for early voting.</p>
<p>In NSW, those options include pre-poll voting at physical voting locations, postal ballots and the predominantly online <a href="http://www.elections.nsw.gov.au/voting/ivote">iVote</a> electronic voting system.</p>
<p>iVote is not without its <a href="https://theconversation.com/nsws-online-gamble-why-internet-and-phone-voting-is-too-risky-37465">critics</a> – and in this election a <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/nsw-state-election-2015/nsw-election-2015-19000-electronic-votes-considered-valid-despite-error-on-ballot-paper-20150318-1m21pi.html">human error</a> meant 19,000 votes were cast online while two minor parties (the Outdoor Recreation Party and the Animal Justice Party) were not listed above the line on the upper house ballot paper. The Animal Justice Party is still in the race against the Coalition for the final upper house seat. If it narrowly misses out, there is a strong chance of a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/mike-baird-better-off-sacrificing-seat-than-face-re-run/story-e6frg6n6-1227294795925">legal challenge</a>.</p>
<p>But even amid widespread media coverage of that error and other <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4202723.htm">potential security concerns</a>, the popularity of online voting in this election beat even the state electoral commission’s <a href="http://www.cio.com.au/article/545546/nsw_electoral_commission_cio_says_ivote_system_will_ensure_counting_accuracy/">forecasts</a> of 200,000 to 250,000 iVotes.</p>
<h2>Convenience vs cohesion: the pros and cons of early voting</h2>
<p>It is generally agreed why electors vote early: <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2440075">convenience</a>. Rather than lining up on a Saturday, what many people see as a chore can now be completed at leisure. </p>
<p>Swinburne’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-more-and-more-australians-are-voting-before-election-day-37159">Nathan Reader</a> has previously pointed out that that this matches a changing tempo of life: more Australians work on weekends, are busier than ever before and are less tolerant of what they perceive as inflexible compliance with government.</p>
<p>So the real question is whether the early voting trend in Australia is significant, or just another part of the larger change that has come with the rise of the convenience economy.</p>
<p>The most prevalent argument against early voting is that it undermines the “function” of elections: that in a representative democracy, citizens who are largely absent from the day-to-day governmental process should stop once every few years and have a good, hard think before voting.</p>
<p>This is a “republican” (as in Rome) model of citizenship that places emphasis on the individuals adherence to the civic duties to be <a href="http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/early-voting-the-case-against-102748.html#.VSHPZOThlC0">engaged, informed and participative</a>. In this context, then, elections should be “focusing events” filled with information-rich political discourse: from candidates to electors in the form of policy ideas; from electors to candidates in the form of questions; and between electors, debating the key issues. </p>
<p>This allows citizens to make informed decisions they can feel committed to. It also gives governments legitimacy for their programs and allows political elites to accurately gauge popular opinion.</p>
<p>The idea is that the contest of ideas runs right runs up to polling day. And the electronic media blackout just before the poll gives us all time to retire to our homes unmolested to reflect, weigh up what policies matter most to us and consider all the pros and cons, opportunity costs, risks and trade-offs.</p>
<p>There is another argument against early voting: that it undermines an important <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/dft/publications/electoral-simultaneity-expressing-equal-respect">social cohesion process</a>, emphasising collectivity and equality, which is the point of having elections in the first place. Some people feel that by removing the “gathering together” aspect of elections, pre-poll, postal and online voting also undermine a key civil ritual.</p>
<p>These perspectives do have merit, but they overstate the significance of elections. Indeed, these views make elections synonymous with democracy itself: a formalistic view of a complex concept. Elections can be important civic rituals, but they can also be ritualistic. Elections are often not competitive, but simply serve to re-endorse an existing government. </p>
<h2>The battle for swinging voters</h2>
<p>Concerns that early voting will significantly change exactly “when” people make a vote decision also appears unfounded. As the figure below shows – drawing from <a href="http://aes.anu.edu.au/">Australian Electoral Study</a> data – the majority of Australian voters have already made a decision on how to vote before a federal election is called.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/77079/original/image-20150406-26481-7irnu2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Drawn using data from the 2013 Australian Electoral Study.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://aes.anu.edu.au">aes.anu.edu.au</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Swinging voters who decide how to vote late in the campaign are often disparaged as uninformed, “soft” and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-11/throsby-swinging-voters/4950200">under-engaged</a>. </p>
<p>Whether that is true or not, our political parties have tended to respond as if it is. Electoral messages are simplistic and put on high rotation, following a model of audiences that assumes low levels of attention, interest, recall and cognitive processing. The rise of early voting in Australia does not appear to have significantly changed this jaundiced view of the public.</p>
<p>However, one way that increased early voting is changing elections campaigns is that parties know that electors may “defect” from the campaign and vote early. </p>
<p>Traditional election campaigns have four distinct time periods: frame (the campaign); defame (the opponent); explain (the policy); and acclaim (move to a positive commitment decision close to polling day).</p>
<p>The increased availability of early voting options will mean there is a stronger incentive for parties to “win” the political communication game in each day of the campaign.</p>
<p>Early voting options also means that campaign communications will try to be more persuasive: don’t just vote for me, but vote for me <em>right now</em>. Opposition parties will need to have higher visibility between elections, so will need to campaign rather than attempt small-target strategies. Governments, as always, will need to perform because elections are theirs to lose, not to win.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39689/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter John Chen is a bad republican citizen and has voted early.</span></em></p>More than 280,000 votes were cast online at the NSW election, which has been claimed as a new world record. The state’s early vote also looks set to hit a new high, mirroring a trend across Australia.Peter John Chen, Senior Lecturer, Department of Government and International Relations, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/371592015-02-05T02:07:19Z2015-02-05T02:07:19ZWhy more and more Australians are voting before election day<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71011/original/image-20150204-25531-pew6fa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If recent trends hold, early voting in Australia is here to stay.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Dan Peled</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As counting for the Queensland state election continues, the Electoral Commission of Queensland has reported a record number of pre-poll votes. More than <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-01-30/queensland-election-2015-early-voting-sees-1-in-5-vote-early/605897">200,000 Queenslanders</a> cast their vote early. This result once again confirms early voting as the fastest-growing trend in Australian electoral participation.</p>
<p>Australians have been voting early in one form or another since the start of the 20th century, when postal voting was introduced for the first federal elections. But the recent, growing popularity of early voting in person is a newer phenomenon. </p>
<p>The statistics are remarkable. At the 2013 federal election, 2.5 million Australians <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2013/downloads.htm">voted before election day</a> – an increase of one million from the 2010 numbers. </p>
<p>Among the states and territories, the ACT and Victoria have the highest rate of pre-poll voting. At the 2014 Victorian state election, 25% of Victorians voted early in person. In some electorates, such as then-premier Denis Napthine’s electorate of <a href="http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/State2014/FPVbyVotingCentreSouth-WestCoastDistrict.html">South-West Coast</a>, around 50% voted before election day.</p>
<h2>What’s behind this change?</h2>
<p>Australia’s electoral commissioners <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/research/paper3/page3.htm">think</a> the answer is convenience, driven by social changes. At face value, this is hard to disagree with. </p>
<p>Consider how different the Australian electorate of 2015 is to the electorate of 1924, when compulsory voting was <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/Publications/voting/">first introduced</a>. One in three now <a href="http://www.unisa.edu.au/PageFiles/34117/PenaltyRatesReport_Oct2014%20Final_R1.pdf">work on weekends</a>. Overseas and interstate holiday travel is the norm – how many Queenslanders took holidays in January? People are also simply “busier” and less inclined to give up their leisure time to vote.</p>
<p>As research commissioned by the Australian Electoral Commission <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/about_aec/research/files/social-media.pdf">notes</a>, people expect to engage with government on their own terms. This includes elections.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the growth in pre-polling also owes something to Australia’s patchwork electoral legislation. While clear rules govern postal voting for federal and state elections, there is less prescription around pre-poll voting. For example, pre-poll voting has <a href="http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/file_uploads/Final_Report_Future_of_Victoria_1D37LWnX.pdf">increased dramatically</a> in Victoria since 2002, just after legislative changes stipulating that attendance at a pre-poll centre is deemed to constitute a declaration. Prior to 2002, electors had to declare in writing that they were unable to vote on election day. </p>
<p>In this context, it is easy to appreciate why an electoral commission might want to increase access to early voting services. They would rather deal with a flurry of early votes than long queues of disgruntled voters.</p>
<p>Lengthening the electoral timetable has several ramifications, though. In an administrative sense, increased rates of early voting have prompted calls from <a href="http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/count-pre-poll-votes-earlier/story-fni0ffsx-1227136149087">major political parties</a> and some electoral commentators for electoral commissions to start counting early votes on election night amid concerns about delayed election results.</p>
<h2>Early voting and democracy</h2>
<p>There is also the developing issue of how early voting affects campaigning. While major parties are relatively well-resourced and capable of sending volunteers to hand out how-to-vote cards at early voting centres, minor parties are finding it tough to compete. </p>
<p>These concerns lie at the heart of a legal challenge by Maria Rigoni, the Palmer United Party candidate for the Northern Metropolitan Region in the 2014 Victorian state election. Rigoni has <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/pup-candidate-maria-rigoni-in-court-action-to-have-victorian-election-declared-void-20150107-12j73p.html">lodged a petition</a> in the Supreme Court alleging that the Victorian Electoral Commission breached electoral legislation by allowing people to vote before election day without signing a pre-poll declaration. In reality, only postal voters need to apply formally for an early vote.</p>
<p>While the Rigoni case is unlikely to result in a new election, larger issues are at play here, as <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/trial-set-for-palmer-united-party-candidates-challenge-to-victorian-election-20150121-12uta0.html">hinted</a> by the presiding judge Jack Forrest. If one type of political participant is disadvantaged by the move to flexible voting services, is early voting as essential as it is elsewhere – such as in the US, where voting is not compulsory and convenience voting is an <a href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053006.190912?journalCode=polisci">essential component</a> of getting out the vote?</p>
<p>More broadly, with one in three electors voting before election day, what is the impact of this trend on the civic norms that traditionally underpinned the Australian electoral experience? One of the key tenets of democratic theory is that citizens should, as much as possible, vote <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/dft/publications/electoral-simultaneity-expressing-equal-respect">at the same time</a>. Doing so confers equality on the contest. If some people vote ten days out before the election, there is always the chance they may miss a major campaign announcement.</p>
<p>Or are people simply making an informed choice to participate at a time that suits them? Is this then an instance of citizens reclaiming something from political parties, who tightly control the rules governing elections?</p>
<p>Either way, as the federal parliamentary committee on electoral matters <a href="http://www.aec.gov.au/elections/australian_electoral_system/jscem/">found in 2014</a>, early voting is here to stay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37159/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathaniel Reader does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As counting for the Queensland state election continues, the Electoral Commission of Queensland has reported a record number of pre-poll votes. More than 200,000 Queenslanders cast their vote early. This…Nathaniel Reader, PhD Candidate, Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.