Beyond Campaign Finance prepping for an election in a battleground state

1
Beyond Campaign Finance prepping for an
electionin a battleground state

• The data you need in anticipation of trouble
• Maurice Tamman
• Herald Tribune, Sarasota
• mo.tamman_at_heraldtribune.com
• [phone]

2
Getting and Preparing

• Ballot logs and event logs
• Voter rolls and history
• Relevant geospatial data

3
Ballot and Event Logs

• Identify voting systems
• Diebold (touchscreen)
• ESS (touchscreen)
• Accu-Vote (optical scanner)
• Identify different versions of the system.
• Be prepared to request these files immediately
  after an election.

4
Play around with old data

• Get a copy of logs from an old election
• These are used for auditing and recounting.
• Event log includes info for every machine,
  including errors.
• Broken down by precinct and machine with ids
• Sensitivity can be set by election official
• At least, should include when the machine was set
  up, turned on and off, major errors, and a
  ballots cast.
• All events have a date-time stamp.
• Ballot log is a randomized list of all ballots
  cast.
• Includes affirmative votes on each ballot and the
  precinct where it was cast and which machine was
  used.

5
Voter Rolls

• State should have all counties rolls
• The rolls data includes
• Voter ID
• Name
• Age (DOB)
• Sex
• Address
• Precinct
• Sometimes Party Affiliation

6
Voter History

• Contains all ballots cast in current county of
  residence
• Date of Election
• Type of Election

7
Watch out for

• When a person moves, previous voter history
  sometimes goes away.
• Previous party affiliation not reflected in
  update when next release comes out.
• Check updates for substantive changes and put in
  a historic table

8
Why?

• Patterns of registrations
• Patterns in changes
• Great look-up tool for finding voters
• Candidate backgrounding

9
Maps

• Basic Geographies Counties, places, zip codes.
• Election Related Geos Federal house districts
  state legislative (senate and house districts)
  county city special districts precincts.

10
Tie them all together

• Make sure all the election geos are tied to basic
  geos.
• For Example.
• Know all the election districts, regardless of
  level, are within basic geos.
• Know the precincts in each election geo.

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Why?

• Pre-Election
• Demographics of voters in any election geos.
• Voting tendencies in any election geos.
• Post-Election
• Tie precinct results to particular elections
• See how results influenced by results in very
  small geographies.

12
Bring it all together Money isnt just about
individuals

• Post Election
• Ballot data gives a real picture of the voting
  pattern on election day.
• Ballot data shows how effective was the money
  spent on voting patterns down the ballot.
• Ballot and event logs will be the key to
  explaining what happened when an election (in
  Florida) blows up.
• Pre Election
• Where the money is being collected and spent and
  the voting demographics of those areas.
• Are there similarities in the places where money
  is spent and collected?