Data plays a vital role behind the scenes of administering elections, helping officials identify election trends, anticipate changing voter needs and determine how to invest their often scarce resources to improve election administration and the voter experience. For over a decade, the EAC has provided election officials with key information on the fast changing landscape of American elections through its biennial Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS), the most comprehensive survey about election administration in the United States. Even beyond the EAVS there is much more data that is collected and analyzed by election officials, experts and researchers from across the nation
With so much available data, figuring out how to analyze and use it can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Ways to use the EAVS and other election research to improve elections will be the focus of the panel “Election Efficiency & Integrity: Improving the Voter Experience” during next month’s EAC Summit: The 2018 Federal Election. This morning, the EAC announced the four expert panelists who join me for this discussion, including:
- Secretary Barbara Cegavske, Nevada Secretary of State
- Krysha Gregorowicz, Senior Researcher, Fors Marsh Group
- Michael Scarpello, Registrar of Voters, San Bernardino County, California
- Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, MIT
Each of these expert panelists will bring a unique perspective to this conversation about how best to use election data, as well as research trends moving forward. We look forward to hearing from them about their work, including new tools that are now available. For example, after the EAC heard from election administrators throughout the country that having the ability to easily compare data between jurisdictions with similar characteristics could make the survey even more valuable, we responded by launching a series of tools to present the data in new and dynamic ways. The EAVS Data Interactive allows users to quickly pull data from the thousands of local jurisdictions that comprise the EAVS data and compare jurisdictions side-by-side. The commission also released a series of “Deep Dives” into specific sections of the EAVS data, such as voter registration and early, absentee and mail voting.
Data is one of the most important tools we can use to improve elections. I hope you’ll join us for this important discussion on Wednesday, January 10, 2018 at the National Press Club. Please visit our EAC Summit: The 2018 Federal Election website to learn more about the full summit agenda and to reserve your spot!