Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don't (25 page)

Furthermore, Mexican voters cannot register by mail; they must go in person to a registration office to apply for a voter ID card, then return three months later to get it. Absentee ballots were banned due to their misuse during the 1988 presidential election. Although they were reintroduced for the 2006 election, their use is closely regulated, with voters required to request a ballot at least six months prior to the election.
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How have these measures affected voting rates? Voter turnout averaged 68 percent in the three presidential elections held since the reforms were adopted, compared to a 59 percent average rate in the three elections before the reforms.
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Clearly, more citizens were encouraged to vote by the prospect of clean elections.
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We cannot expect to find this large of a change when American voting regulations are strengthened because there is nowhere near the
same level of corruption as in Mexico. Additionally, in the United States, photo IDs have only been required in a few state general elections beginning in 2006, making it too early to evaluate their effectiveness. However, we do have data on the effect of other regulations. These include anti-fraud measures such as non-photo ID requirements and registration deadlines, as well as rules meant to increase voter turnout such as allowing provisional ballots, “no excuse” absentee ballots, registration by mail, and pre-election day voting.
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Surprisingly, none of these regulations appear to have any effect on voter participation rates.
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Yet, these “non-results” may be misleading. Consider just the anti-fraud measures. On the one hand, these regulations may reduce the total number of votes cast either by usefully eliminating fraudulent votes or by detrimentally discouraging voters by complicating the voting process. On the other hand, anti-fraud regulations may increase voting rates by raising confidence in the voting system. A non-result may simply be the result of all these effects occurring at the same time.

How can we disentangle the different possibilities? One solution is to study the effect of the two kinds of regulations—those that make voting more “costly” by making regulations more strict, and “easy” regulations that make voting less costly by simplifying voting procedures—on voting rates in counties with low rates of fraud. We can then compare these results with the regulations’ effect on voting rates in high-fraud counties known as “hot spots.”

The American Center for Voting Rights provides the only comprehensive national list of voter fraud hot spots.
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Its 2005 report listed six major hot spots: Cuyahoga County, Ohio; St. Clair County, Illinois; St. Louis County, Missouri; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; King County, Washington; and Milwaukee County, Wisconsin. Analyzing the effect of voting regulations in these counties, we find that “costly” regulations increased voting rates, while “easy” regulations reduced them. The changes were small, never exceeding a few percentage points, but
neither type of regulation had any discernable effect outside the fraud hot spots. This result strongly indicates that “costly” regulations encourage voting by instilling confidence in the voting system, while “easy” regulations lower turnout by increasing the perception of a high likelihood of fraud.
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There is only one regulation that impacts turnout outside of fraud hot spots: pre-election day voting. Allowing voting before election day results in a 1.5 to 5 percentage point drop in voter participation. This would surprise some analysts who would expect pre-election day voting to increase voting rates either by making voting easier or by allowing the casting of more fraudulent votes.
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Yet, the result is quite consistent with the general connection between voting turnout and fraud outlined above: by loosening voting regulations, pre-election day voting increases fraud and thereby discourages voters from participating in an election.

Ballot fraud by individuals is clearly a problem in the American electoral system. But many people believe there is a far more extensive crisis in American voting. There is a corrosive perception that the voting system selectively prevents certain people, especially African Americans, from voting through the widespread manipulation of voting machines. Democratic operatives repeatedly asserted that punch card machines disenfranchised large numbers of Florida voters in the 2000 presidential election. Since then, litigants with complaints about punch card voting
machines tried unsuccessfully to derail California’s 2003 special gubernatorial election, which was eventually won by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other states, such as Ohio, faced similar litigation from the American Civil Liberties Union during the 2004 election.
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Polls show that a high percentage of Americans believe that systematic disenfranchisement is occurring. A 2006 poll found that only 30 percent of African Americans and 45 percent of Democrats feel confident that their votes will be counted. Among all voters, the number is still low at 60 percent.
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The question of disenfranchisement, it seems, has become an increasingly pressing political issue.

Concerns over punch card ballots have led to billions of dollars being spent to develop new voting methods, reversing a decades-long increase in the prevalence of punch cards. The number of voters using punch cards plummeted from 34 million in 2000 to just over 4 million in 2006. Optical scan ballots, used by 69.5 million people, are now the most frequent method for voting. Electronic machines are a close second, with 66.6 million users.
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All these efforts to eliminate punch cards, however, were counter-productive because punch cards perform better in many ways than the machines that are replacing them.

Some legitimate problems with voting machines do exist. Perhaps the most famous of these is the occurrence of “non-voted” ballots—punch cards on which a vote is recorded either for more than one candidate in a single race or for none at all. During the 2000 presidential election in Florida, representatives from both parties—as well as their lawyers—spent hours discussing ballots that lacked a recorded vote for the presidential race. Some argued that non-voted ballots stemmed from problems in using punch card machines, while others maintained that they largely reflected a voter’s choice simply not to vote for the top race on the ballot.

Nationally, the non-voted ballot rate for typical presidential elections is about 3 percent for punch cards, 2.9 percent for electronic voting machines (DREs), 2.1 percent for optical scans, and 1.9 percent for
paper ballots and lever machines.
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In a study of the 2004 presidential elections in Ohio, I arrived at a similar finding. Votomatic punch cards, used in 69 of Ohio’s 88 counties, averaged a 2.4 percent rate of non-voted ballots, compared to 2 percent for optical scans, 1.5 percent for levers, and 1.1 percent for electronic machines.
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These findings, however, do not tell the entire story. The debate has overwhelmingly focused on the presidential race, which is understandable in light of the worldwide publicity generated by the 2000 Florida vote. But if we look at races lower down the ballot than the presidential race, such as those for Congress and state legislatures, we find that Votomatic punch card machines actually perform much better than electronic or lever machines and are about as reliable as optical scans.

People naturally cast fewer votes for races lower down the ballot because they don’t know or care as much about those positions as they do about the presidency. But the drop-off rate varies systematically according to the type of voting machine. And, most interestingly, this drop-off is much less evident for punch cards than for other types of machines. The rate of non-voted ballots for Ohio Senate races on Votomatic punch card machines was just under 10 percent, compared to 18 percent for electronic and lever machines. Looking across all of Ohio’s races, switching from Votomatic punch cards to electronic or lever machines—as so many precincts have done nationwide—would have resulted in about 200 more non-voted ballots in the average Ohio ward of 1,696 voters.
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Why do punch cards do so well at the bottom of the ballot? The answer lies in what I call “voter fatigue.” People will vote in fewer races when it takes them more time or effort to vote. Recent research indicates that electronic machines encounter problems with “the willingness of voters to navigate through multiple ballot screens before casting a vote (and) delays caused by the use of the review feature when coupled with extended ballots.”
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These extra screens and reviews mean it takes up to 20 percent longer to use electronic voting
machines than punch cards. Consequently, voters on electronic machines get tired faster, and some don’t make it to the end of the ballot. The ability of elderly voters to master the technology of electronic voting has also been questioned, as “older adults consistently perform more poorly than younger adults in performing computer-based tasks.”
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Whatever their other faults, punch cards are relatively quick and simple to use.

Contrary to popular belief, Votomatic punch card machines were also the only voting method for which African Americans had consistently lower rates of non-voted ballots than whites had.
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With all the debate over voting machines and non-voted ballots, one would think that the machines must be too complicated for many people to figure out. But education is not systematically related to the rate of non-voted ballots. The pattern appears completely random, with the rate high for those with less than a ninth grade education, low for those with some high school, high for high school graduates, low for college graduates, and high again for those with post-graduate degrees. Nor does income level consistently correspond to the rate of non-voted ballots although, quite interestingly, the richest voters are fifteen times more likely to cast a non-voted ballot than the poorest ones.
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Ironically, the switch to electronic machines not only failed to rectify the problems they were supposed to solve, but they have sparked new concerns over potential vote fraud. These range from the lack of a “paper trail” on most machines to the possibility of manipulating their programming.
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Similar to the concerns over punch cards, these new objections are largely misguided—paper records are not necessarily superior to electronic voting machines, which keep three separate “read only” memories that are unchangeable. Likewise, tampering would be near-impossible, since electronic voting machines are stand-alone units that are not connected to the Internet or any other network.
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Tampering with them would be akin to someone trying to hack into your own personal computer while it isn’t online.

Most electronic voting machines transfer election results to a compact disk or some other “read only” format. These CDs are then taken to a central location where they are read into a computer. In the twenty-plus years that these machines have been used in counties across the nation, there has never been a verified case of tampering.
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When computer scientists warn of possible tampering with voting machines, they are not referring to hacking attempts, but to someone physically breaking open the lock on each individual machine and reprogramming each computer. Even if someone could break into a machine and overcome the supposedly tamper-proof seals without being noticed, going through one computer at a time hardly seems like a realistic way to steal an election. Besides, accuracy checks conducted on the machines before, during, and after the votes would detect any reprogramming to transfer votes from one candidate to another.

Contrary to the various conspiracy theories, many people who registered non-votes for some races were most likely conflicted over whom to vote for and simply decided not to support anyone. Undoubtedly, the promotion of these unfounded accusations of selective disenfranchisement offer a short-term political benefit for certain groups. But such claims risk poisoning the political debate for years to come.

Florida’s 2000 presidential election was a battleground for not just punch card voting, but for explosive charges of systematic discrimination against African American voters. Reverend Jesse Jackson was not alone in charging “a clear pattern of suppressing the votes of African Americans.”
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Mary Francis Berry, then chairwoman of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, called for a criminal investigation of the vote. But how does one determine empirically whether there was systematic discrimination against African Americans during the Florida election and whether such discrimination cost Al Gore the election?

Data are available for every Florida precinct on vote totals for each candidate, the number of non-voted ballots, and on voters’ race and party affiliation. At first glance, the numbers seem to confirm the disturbing claims that African American had higher rates of non-voted ballots than other groups. But critics are wrong in charging that this aberration cost Gore the election, for the group most “victimized” by non-voted ballots, in fact, was African American
Republicans
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African American Republicans who voted in Florida were an incredible fifty-four to sixty-six times more likely than the average African American to have had a ballot declared invalid. Another way of phrasing this is that for every two additional African American Republicans in the average precinct, there was one additional ballot that did not register a vote for president.
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