Is your county passing their finals?
Meet the researchers ranking counties by access to the vote
Editor’s note: Election administration in the US is suuuuper decentralized. Voters’ experience of elections varies not just by state, but by county.
How does access to the vote differ across counties within the same state? The Measure of Vote Equity (or MOVE) project addresses just that. Read on for more about their methods!
What’s all this about, again?
This is the second of three interviews with researchers who studied the 2024 election. You can find the first interview here.
For context, Public Agenda connects research to action in service of a healthier democracy. We built the Democracy Renewal Project (DRP) to answer questions that matter to people doing the practical work of strengthening democratic processes, institutions, and cultures.
In the first DRP cycle, we funded ten research teams who are using rigorous methods to produce practical evidence on how we can increase access to electoral participation while strengthening trust in elections. We timed our grantmaking so researchers could study the 2024 presidential election, and right now they are wrapping up data analysis. We eagerly await their findings. But even before we have answers to specific research questions, we can learn from their experience conducting research during an election cycle.
Now that the 2024 election is several months behind us, most Americans are naturally focused on the actions of the people who won those elections, not least because we are experiencing rapid and dramatic change. That makes sense. But the pace and magnitude of change should remind us that the primary way Americans can act on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with elected officials is through elections. So now is a great time to dig into the latest high-quality election research.
The interview
Democracy Renewal Project researchers Joe Dietrich (Towson University) and Melissa Rogers (Claremont Graduate University), in collaboration with Jean Schroedel (Claremont Graduate University) and Tessa Provins (University of Arizona), are creating a Measure of Vote Equity or MOVE score to compare ease of voting across US counties. Joe and Melissa’s focus on how elections are run at the local level gives them particular insight into our highly decentralized election administration process. I have condensed and revised our conversation.
Emily Sandusky, Director, Public Agenda: What are the origins of the MOVE project?
Joe Dietrich: The project started with an idea from Four Directions Native Vote, a Native-led national voting rights organization. Four Directions was looking for an early warning system for potential voter access issues, and they asked our team to identify counties or jurisdictions that might need support with get out the vote efforts, working with local officials, or legal action. We came up with this notion of distinct state and county level election administration ecosystems and decided to focus at the county level.
The idea was to combine the different factors and create a score, so we could say that one county has a much more open election system than a neighboring county or a county across the state. We started in Arizona and Nevada with Four Directions, and now we’re closing in on 15 states.
ES: What characterizes an open election?
JD: We are measuring how easy it is for a person to simply register their vote, to say this is who I want to run the county, the state, or the federal government. We ask about the number of polling places, the ballot deadline, ease of voter registration, and access to information about polling places. We also look at the local postal service, which makes a big difference for mail-in voting.
Melissa Rogers: The Native voting rights activists we work with were seeing problems at the local level. In Nevada, for example, there are a lot of protections at the state level, but the local level is where the costs of voting really compile. Issues like limited hours for voting, having to travel far distances to polling places, and long lines are all under the purview of the local election administrator.
ES: State-level differences in voting laws are quite familiar. I didn’t realize there was so much flexibility for local officials.
JD: In Georgia, for example, the state can argue that they give every county the same tools for election access, and they can choose how to use them…some counties may need more ballot drop boxes than others, and it’s a local choice. In this situation, county officials can either open or hinder voting, all within state law.
On the other hand, North Carolina election officials are required to do the same thing in every county. That takes choice away from local officials, but the state guarantees a degree of equity.
ES: This seems like part of a broader conversation about risks and benefits of our decentralized election administration.
MR: It's no doubt a mixed bag in terms of rights. Decentralization within states also allows for some protections. There are definitely ways that some counties do better than states, but they don’t draw attention to it. At the same time, for election oversight and for the average voter, it’s an enormous mess.
JD: The classic argument is that we have 50 individual election systems in this country. I’m not 100 percent on this idea, but from working on MOVE, I might say it's even more.
MR: Local level decisions may be half of the voting access story. We're hitting upon something that people think is important, but haven’t been willing to invest in. It’s time consuming and tedious, not glamorous work.
ES: Who can act on what you are learning from the MOVE project?
JD: I had a meeting with Four Directions a couple of days ago. They are going to county officials in Nevada and Arizona and saying, “here’s a ranking that shows your county at the bottom.”
MR: Advocates, nonprofits, and other organizations that work with local governments. These are the groups that we want to MOVE project to reach.
Emily Sandusky is a Director at Public Agenda.
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