Today, Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh held the first meeting of a study group he formed to study the future of elections in Kansas.
Secretary Thornburgh invited several key groups to the meeting to discuss what elections might look like in perhaps 20 to 30 years. After the introductory remarks by Secretary Thornburgh, Brad Bryant from the Elections Division gave some background information and gave an overview of research materials.
Paul Gronke from Reed College gave a presentation via telephone about “Early Voting in 2008: The Lessons for Reform.” Gronke is the author of an academic paper, “Convenience Voting,” which was given to the participants in advance to stimulate discussion. Secretary Thornburgh collected suggestions for agenda items for future meetings. While various options may be explored, such as mail ballots, satellite voting, and possibly voting by telephone for the visually impaired, it’s also possible the group may decide the current system may be adequate with only minor improvements. Cost per ballot was suggested as a metric to consider with any option.
Three political parties were represented by the their chairmen, including the Democratic Party (Larry Gates), Libertarian Party (Rob Hodgkinson), and the Republican Party (Kris Kobach). If anyone has concerns about voting and elections in Kansas from a party perspective, then you should considering giving that feedback to your party leaders.
Three different groups at the meeting represented those with disabilities: the Kansas Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns, and the Kansas Dept. of SRS. If you have voting concerns for those with disabilities, please give that feedback to these groups.
Because of their involvement in local elections, representatives from the Kansas Association of Counties, the League of Kansas Municipalities, and the Kansas Association of School Boards were present. Election officials from several representative counties attended for their insight on elections from both urban and rural areas.
Two academics gave research comments: Prof. Bob Beatty from Washburn University, and Prof. Joseph Aistrup from Kansas State. [Prof. Aistrup made an insightful comment that some elections are really "ties" since they are within the margin of error of the election process.]
Why was I there? For a number of years I’ve been a consultant to various groups and individuals about voter data in Kansas. I have studied the Kansas voter registration/voter history data for several years. I have documented problems and pushed for better data quality both from the Secretary of State’s Office, and directly with several county clerks. I’d like to see the ability for retrospective studies of election results, which should give everyone confidence in the system that anomalies can be found and corrected. For example, right now it’s extremely difficult to compare voter registration data with election results because different codes are used for precincts between the two systems. We can’t easily verify, like the problem in Minnesota, that the number of ballots does not exceed the number of voters in all precincts. I’d also like to see a cleanup up the data so simple statistical summaries have fewer outliers. For example, the state code for one voter in Hill City should be “KS” not “HI” — likely a typo when the city name was entered for the state. For the most part, the data problems are more of a reporting problem, and do not directly affect elections, so the time and money to fix them is not a priority.
During a break I had a brief discussion with the Executive Director of the Kansas Democratic Party, Kenny Johnston, who had also seen many of the problems I described with the data. We agreed that we should work together to ask for improved data quality, which should benefit all candidates for office.
Tags: Elections, Mail Ballots, Satellite Voting
