Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC)

Election Science Office Hours is back! This is our second post-election episode, in which Christian Grose, Andrew Sinclair, and I talk about how state election reforms fared on the ballot this fall. A very interesting conversation about ranked choice voting and primary process reform! https://lnkd.in/gyXG2Vrn

In case you missed our October 8, 2024 webinar “The Impact of EVIC’s Local Election Official Survey Program on Election Science Research and Election Administration” – or want to re-watch this fantastic discussion – the conversation between Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC)’s Founder and Director and?Reed College?Political Scientist?Paul Gronke, PhD, and 2024-2026?Andrew Carnegie Fellows?(Carnegie Corporation of New York) and Election Science researchers?Lisa A. Bryant, PhD?(California State University, Fresno), and?Mara Suttmann-Lea, PhD,?Connecticut College), is posted to our new?EVIC YouTube channel. Please visit the following post on EVIC's website to access the You Tube video and learn more about EVIC's work. https://lnkd.in/gTJ-geZY

My next Election Science Office Hours is next Wednesday, November 20 at 11am Pacific. I'll be talking with Christian Grose and Andrew Sinclair about ranked choice voting. Join us, please register using the link below! https://lnkd.in/g7NV7G7y

At The Turnout, we undertake a wide variety of projects, including those that help build community in the Election Science space. Over the past few years, our team has supported the work of academic researchers at the?Engineering for Democracy Institute (EDI) - formerly known as URI VOTES - at the?University of Rhode Island, led by Gretchen Macht, PhD. Recently, The Turnout moderated three workshops for EDI’s?STEM for Elections Network. Read more about this effort, and our work to support it, in "Increasing STEM in Elections: Supporting the Engineering for Democracy Institute" - an article on The Turnout's website drafted by Research Lead and Project Manager Grace Gordon. https://lnkd.in/gKmMadub

Sometimes you got to go back to Political Science 101. "Paul Gronke, a Reed College political science professor, said factors such as enthusiasm for the candidates, campaign efforts and an election’s competitiveness all affect voter turnout. "If the final results show that 20 million fewer votes were cast for the Democratic candidate for President in 2024 than in 2020, what that indicates is that 20 million voters made a decision not to cast a ballot, either not turn out at all, or not check the top contest," Gronke said. "That’s the end of the story." https://lnkd.in/gBENZ-9K

Counting ballots in Multnomah County for the Portland, OR races is slowly proceeding. Tonight's updated totals are not huge with 14k more ballots processed. I will continue to update results on the Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) blog here: https://lnkd.in/g8HbnRfU

Today I had a chance to work with data from the Portland ranked choice voting to explore what voters shared in their preferences. Overall, the races have been pretty stable as ranks are processed. Voters seemed to have three or four camps in some districts that limited the amount of substantial vote transfers. District 4 and the Mayor's race were surprisingly stable - with initial winners holding on to the end. More here on the Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) blog: https://lnkd.in/gDdFd3qa

Later tonight, Multnomah County Elections Division will release new results for City of Portland races. I will post on Elections & Voting Information Center (EVIC) blog our first visualizations there. We noticed last night that the percent of ballots processed in time for the first preliminary results were lower than we felt comfortable presenting. Initially looking at those data though we found some promising patterns in terms of how voters were managing choices. District 1 results in particular seem to be made up of a lot of ballots that have not been processed yet. Preliminary results last night showed about 50% less total ballots in District 1 compared to the other districts. That gave us reason to pause on data analysis. Below is the results for the Mayor's race - which has more votes as a citywide race. Here we see the outsider Keith Wilson besting three sitting city commissioners. We will publish an update tonight around 6:30pm!