Experience. Most of this panel will be focused on data, and the importance of how we use it in the Elections Community. We have a great panel here for you. You have biographies in front of providedmy staff has some abbreviated biographies which i will read. Then we will start hearing from the panel. I have asked each of them to speak for about five minutes or so. I then have some questions for them, and then we will go to questions from you. Started, i want to thank all of you for being here. For helpingank you to kick off the 2018 elections. Its hard to believe its already 2018. We are taking them off, but officials have already started working on this the day after their last election. So i know those of you who are Election Officials in the audience know this is an your first kickoff. Others have said its just the kickoff in january, but you have all been working on the selection since the last election. And i appreciate all the hard work youve put into making our elections so good in this country. So i will do some brief Panel Introductions before getting going. Right, secretary barbara. She has served as the secretary of state since 2015. She has more than 30 years of Public Service and Small Business experience. Prior to becoming secretary of state, she represented clark County District eight in the nevada senate. She was elected to three consecutive terms representing clark county, district five. Thank you for being here. Left, she is a Senior Researcher at the group were she served as a lead researcher for the eacs Election Administration survey. They did a fantastic job for us this year. Thats not an easy task, believe me. For more than a decade, she is Worker Private and public partners, including charitable trust, and our friends at the federal Voting Assistance program. So thank you for being here. , michael as the registrar of voters for San Bernardino county, california, which is actually the largest geographical jurisdiction in the country. Michael has spent more than 18 years working as a director in three states. Reportingise is in results quickly and accurately, as well as assisting voters. He has made his mark at each post. In San Bernardino county, he made the office into a more efficient and effective organization, and i know that from visiting out there. It is quite an impressive operation. He has consolidated underused polling places and improved poll worker efforts and much more. So we are excited to hear about what you are doing with your office there. To my far left, maybe , i have dr. Charles stewart. Distinguished Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of technology, or m. I. T. His Extensive Research includes close looks into congressional politics, elections and important american political developments. Those of us in this room who have come to rely on his undeniable ability to help us better understand voters in how Election Administrators can best serve them. Thank you very much for taking time to be with us today. So i have asked each of the panelists to make about a five minute presentation. I will start on my far right with michael. Take it away. For allowing me to serve on this panel with such accomplished panelists. I have to warn you, i am an elections geek. I can go on for hours about this the. I know we have a short amount of time, so i will refer to my notes. Goal of the goal of a local election official is to conduct elections in a fair, accurate, accessible, efficient and transparent manner. Meeting that goal is difficult. We rely on temp workers and poll expectation ise perfection from the public and media. So we are constantly thinking about ways to improve our processes. One of the ways we can do that is to use data. We typically collect raw data, we analyze that data and convert it into information. The analysis to prepare that data has been simple. We look at the number of registered voters. We look at the store turnout. Computations into law. Though, is that many of those computations are based on averages across the county. Thats helpful, but it can be problematic because if we base things on averages, sometimes we weerestimate how much supply need. Sometimes we overestimate and waste money. So in reaction, many officials like myself have spent a lot of time crunching data to try and be more efficient. In my 18 years in this business, i have challenged my staff to crunch their numbers. I always tell them that they shouldve paid attention in math class. I remind them that everything we do must be based on numbers. Whoave an elections analyst does nothing but crunch numbers and develop processes. So we currently analyze data in every area of our organization. The process goes like this. Data about how we look at polling places, for instance. So we collect data about the polling places. I think well talk more about that this afternoon. We inventory the number of Parking Spaces at those locations, we measured the square footage, and then we collect data on voter behavior. Historically when you look at voter turnout, you look at where people live and when they vote. We measure when people vote by the hour. This is something that is kind of unique. I dont think too many counties do that across the country. We also look at how people vote. Did they vote on a regular ballot, a provisional ballot, or just a by mail ballot . Predict how the voter will behave on election day. We do simulations. We look at how long it takes a voter to drive to their location. We look at how long it takes them to park their car, walked into the location. Is a long ballot . Is it a short ballot . We gather that data. About pollher data worker behavior. How long does it take for a provisional supervisor to process a provisional voter . We take all of this information and we crunch it. We take this data and calculate the capacity of each of our polling places. We then take that information and put it into software before assigning people to polling places. The goal is to keep every , but not havebusy any polling place be overwhelmed. We also protect the number of voters by the hour at each voting place. We use this information to determine how many supplies and put in in every location. And then a balance of how many types. Keep in mind, people always ask how may ballots, well, it is not just one ballot. In our county, it is over 400 different ballot types that you have to distribute through the county. You have to calculate the number of each of those types. So it is very complicated. We also assigned the number of poll workers based on projections. We do that for pete hours, so we dont have problems. The number varies. It is not just three or five at any location. Its anywhere from five to 18 poll workers at any given location. Dinner plan lunch or breaks around peak times, so we dont have a lot of voters coming during break. We have found this Data Analysis is helpful. It has helped to keep things smooth. It is not always dependable. To beforen addition election day, we surveyed each and every one of our polling places to see what turnout will be like. We make corrections as necessary. The result of our Data Collection and analysis has been that we have created more convenience for our voters. We have very few lines, and if we do they are very short. Not justsed that money to give taxpayers back the money, but to expand services. This we conduct similar analyses of early voting for mail ballot dropoffs was , andjust one example. So this means we conduct similar analyses of early voting for mail ballot dropoffs as well. Progress. The we analyze the time it takes to process ballots each step of the way. To count them. To duplicate them. To store them. To adjust as necessary. To assigne numbers poll workers. We have over 3500 workers in our county. To get them, we have to contact over 10,000 people. 7000. E to schedule over we train over 5000. We have to sign over 4000 to get the 3500 to work on election day. We must also recruit and train people in six different certains and place people at different precincts. Because we are a large area of 20,000 square miles, we are assigning by region. What we have found is that in h region, people behave their behavior is different. Some are more dependable than others. So thats a quick look at how we use data. It has increased our efficiency and it has made the Voter Experience better. We also passed information to state and federal officials to compare our performance against other jurisdictions. Thank you so much and theres an unending number of data points that we connect and do other things with. Thank you from the local level. We now go to the state level. Interested in hearing what you have to say. Thank you for having me today. We have 17 counties and we have 15 that are elected clerks and registrars. Er we have a very large county in clark. We understand the pain that you are going with. One of the things i wanted to explain to everybody, one of the things that is always unusual to me is to hear acronyms. They can mean Something Different. So i want to make sure youre aware of the acronyms ill be using to talk about what were required to do. One of them is the Election Administration and Voting Survey. It is i biannual it is a biannual survey. Collectedthat is includes voter turnout, registration, preelection voting, absentee voting, overseas voting, poll workers. Vra, theave the Voter Registration agency. It is required to offer its customers the opportunity to register to vote. , welfare orthe dmv employment assistance agencies and Disability Service division and military recruitment offices. The next one you will hear about, the cover transactions. Every time a client is requesting a service, filling out a former application, the vr required by law to give the person the opportunity to register to vote. These are called cover transactions. Offer thes the dmv to opportunity to register vote. I want to make sure Everybody Knows our acronyms. In nevada, we use data to the the amiss ration administration of elections. We are focusing on transactional data to monitor the effectiveness of Voter Registration agencies. On a regular basis, we are looking at what they give us to find out if it is accurate and if there are any issues we might see. We coordinate routine reporting. Agencies registration record and report the number of covered transactions, whether the client chooses to register or if they will send it in later. Those numbers are tracked. The number of Voter Registration applications at each local office transmits to the county election office. Local officials track and record the number of ballots applications received from each Voter Registration agency and send that information to the secretary of States Office. The secretary of state receives monthly reports from the department of Motor Vehicles. We get it from health and Human Services and these reports are made Available Online at ww w. Nvsos. Gov. I will give you an example. If a significant decrease from previous reporting periods is being transmitted from the Voter Registration agency to a local election office, the secretary of state Program Staff and the Voter Registration agency will investigate to determine the cause of whether any corrective action is necessary. We do that on a regular basis between the two agencies. We are evaluating the offices, it isng another metric Program Staff uses to identify where review and corrective action might be necessary. A local Voter RegistrationAgency Office that exhibit slower than average completed Voter Registration applications or rejected applications can indicate potential issues during the covered transaction and the need for staff to review training materials. The secretary of States Office puts this Data Collection into charts and graphs which allows for the review of large amounts of data at a glance as well as the identification of statistical variations. This allows for other data sets. The department of health and Human Services reports multiple figures for more than 100 offices on a monthly basis. In the raw data format, interpreting this data can be daunting. By placing this data in a line program, staff can easily determine if there are any deviations. Collecting this data from Voter Registration agencies allows the secretary of state to be proactive during conversations with any of the advocacy groups. Nevada uses Voter Registration turnout also to identify best practices at the local level. We feel very confident in the information we are getting and being able to work with any of the agencies in nevada to see if we have any issues or where we might need to go in a different direction or look at how we might need to change what we are doing. I look forward to the next part. Is both of these presentations the goal here is to make the process better for the voter and serve our taxpayers better as well. Servants, atblic least this side of the aisle. Collecting that data makes a big difference in how we can make the Voter Experience better. From the west side of the country, i am now turning to the other side of the country. The two panelists are both researchers, academics. Very interested in hearing what you all have to say and what you have seen with the data and how to make things more efficient and bring more integrity to the voting process. Thank you so much for having me today. Im a Senior Researcher at marsh group. We had the pleasure of working to administer the 2016 Election Administration and Voting Survey. I am happy i got to follow our Election Officials because these are exemplary of how powerful data can be, if used correctly, to improve our processes and evaluate whether policies we have in place and the investments we are making in the election system are having the intended effect. We dealt withnge as part of the Election Administration and Voting Survey is how can we learn from each other . They talked about elections create so much data and we have great examples of harnessing that data to do ones job better and make sure elections are run well. It is really important to remember, and i am lucky im on one of the early panels, there is no one election in the United States. There are thousands of independent elections that run at the state and local levels. They are run with their own processes and frankly, their own vocabulary. We talk about acronyms, it is really important because without having common definitions, we really struggle to talk to each other. The Election Administration and Voting Survey, it is a largescale Data Collection process, Data Collection instrument. Calling it a survey is a misnomer. Variety of topics. Is 2004 is remarkable was the first survey and it is remarkable to think fundamental questions about elections in the United States for example, how many precincts and polling places are in the United States . It is mindboggling to think there was no one place you could find that information. It seems so basic and fundamental. The answer to that question for 2016, 178,000 individual precincts. 117,000 individual polling places. 8500 early voting locations in the u. S. Those numbers are still complicated to interpret. Pieces a very important of information and it is shocking that we would not have known that before. A couple of other highlights we learned, there were about officials processed about 77. 5 million registration forms. Dmv, department of Motor Vehicles offices, about a third of them were coming from our dmvs. One change was increasing use of online Voter Registration systems. We had about 17. 4 of registration forms coming from online systems. 5 . 012, it was only about books, we saw an increase. 2. 5 million provisional ballots. Full. Unted in part or that is an important metric to consider how that protection is working. Very active overseas voter population. 178,000ballots ballots transmitted. Than about 100,000 more 2012. Almost 80 were ultimately returned and counted. These are important pieces of information about elections and United States are doing. While these are neat insights, what is important about the develop ait helped us common language to talk about elections. Our secretary from nevada mentioned this. , without aronyms common definition of these basic terms, we really cant. It becomes very difficul