A Republic, If You Can Keep Its Elections Secure, Accurate, and Fair

• Author: Martha Kropf
• Date: 01 November 2020
• Published date: 01 November 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X20922527
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X20922527

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(6) 667 –669

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X20922527

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Article

As this symposium goes to print, the United States and the

world are in the throes of a lockdown as we try to control the

exponential growth of the Coronavirus pandemic. Election

administration scholars and policymakers are working to ensure

that the November election will take place as scheduled and

provide legitimate results. Some scholars indicate we will have

real changes in the 2020 election. At a minimum, we will likely

have expanded “vote-by-mail” (Persily & Stewart, 2020).

Twenty years ago, scholars, policymakers, and American

citizens alike held their breath as they waited for results in the

fateful 2000 election. The problems with the 2000 election

provided a focusing event that hailed a variety of election

changes and federal funding for “modern” voting equipment

(Kropf & Kimball, 2012). Replacing aged voting equipment

and voter registration databases stood out as problems 20

years ago, as they do today. Scholars in the field of Election

Science and Administration (ESA) have worked for more cen-

tralized data collection (e.g., Election Administration and

Voting Survey [EAVS]), valid measurement (Burden &

Stewart, 2014), and preservation of both access and integrity

in elections. They continue. In fact, this is a burgeoning area of

scholarly inquiry with crucial links to democracy. This field

has both theoretical import as well as practical application.

“Election Science and Administration” is an interdisci-

plinary and multidisciplinary field. As a key subset of schol-

ars in the fields of political science, public administration,

and public policy have provided development to ESA (e.g.,

Caltech/MIT, 2001; Hale et al., 2015), several new voices—

as well as established voices—have contributed to this sym-

posium. This particular symposium focuses on election

policy issues in the United States because of the American

Politics Research focus, but of course, much of this research

is externally valid.

Along with new voices, this symposium is designed to

showcase a variety of data collection and analytical methodolo-

gies—from experiments, to matching combined with a differ-

ence-in-difference approach, to probabilistic record linkage, to

qualitative research. Some data acquisition required court cases

and/or Freedom of Information Act requests. The symposium

is also designed to provide the reader with short—around 10

pages—manuscripts that scholars and policymakers may con-

sume more quickly. When necessary, more detail is provided in

on-line appendices.

Our pandemic election is not the sole concern as we send

this symposium to press. In fact, as we move through 2020, it is

important to point out that dealing with voter registration data-

bases is an ever-present and on-going concern, particularly

with concerns about foreign interference in elections. That is

what makes the work by Seo-young Silvia Kim, Spencer

Schneider, and R. Michael Alvarez so vital. They have devised

a methodology to analyze databases for suspicious activity.

By-mail elections will require accurate databases. Enrijeta

Shino, Michael Martinez, Michael McDonald, and Daniel

Smith suggest that the voter registration database is a holistic

process. Using a framework derived from survey methodol-

ogy, the scholars show that errors in a voter registration data-

base should be considered in a total survey error framework.

These scholars check Florida’s voter registration database as

they might conduct a telephone survey, but with follow-up

922527APRXXX10.1177/1532673X20922527American Politics ResearchKropf

research-article2020

1University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, USA

Corresponding Author:

Martha Kropf, Department of Political Science & Public Administration,

University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd.,

Charlotte, NC 28223, USA.

Email: mekropf@uncc.edu

A Republic, If You Can Keep Its Elections

Secure, Accurate, and Fair

Part of Special Symposium on Election Sciences

Martha Kropf1

Abstract

We have kept our republic through a variety of localized disasters and various problem elections. The research presented

here highlights the field of “Election Science and Administration” (ESA). Research in our field maximize our probability of

continuing to keep our republic—even in the face of a pandemic which is a national—and international challenge. As the

United States and the world deal with the specter of a pandemic election, the growth of the scholarly field designed to

advocate for transparency in data collection and to improve the quality of elections is more important than ever.

Keywords

election science, election administration, voter registration