Ep. 15: Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science, MIT

The Ballot Box Briefing is a weekly segment on Sirius XM’s The Briefing, that examines the issues and storylines at the heart of running an efficient and accurate election. Guests include election administrators, local, state, and federal officials, cybersecurity experts, legal analysts, and members of BPC’s Democracy Program.

Episode 15. MIT Professor Charles Stewart discussed the role and responsibilities of poll watchers and outlined key findings from the most recent “Elections Performance Index,” which assesses election administration policy and performance across all fifty states.

Transcript

The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Steve Scully (SS): And every Friday, we’re taking a closer look at things you need to know about in advance of the November elections, ensuring that they are safe and accurate, and that the results verify the feelings of the people, the votes of the people. So this week we are pleased to welcome Professor Charles Stewart. He is a distinguished professor at MIT, a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences here in this country. Professor Stewart, thank you very much for being with us. 

Charles Stewart III (CS): My pleasure to be here. 

SS: You recently released what you’re calling the Elections Performance Index with the help of the team at MIT. Take us through the process, what you did and what you learned. 

CS: The Elections Performance Index—elections.mit.edu—is an effort to rate all the states on 18 measures to see how well they basically perform core election administration functions related to registration, counting ballots, those sorts of things. It’s now a dozen years old, and it was originally developed—I was involved in the development working with the Pew Charitable Trusts—a dozen years ago with a group of election officials and academics, and we’ve put together this index now every federal election since 2010. My lab at MIT took it over a couple of years ago. And we’ve been looking at things like the accuracy of voting rolls, problems with voting lists, problems with using machines, things like that, and we have these 18 indicators that we that we add up, and the most important takeaway in the most recent release of the EPI which was for the 2022 election is that if we look across the last decade—election administration at this very fundamental blocking and tackling (level)—the election administration has improved in every state, in some states quite dramatically so. 

SS: So that’s the good news over the last 10 to 12 years, the study from 2010 onward. Where are the nagging persistent problems that you think need to be addressed on the state and local level? 

CS: I’d say there’s two issues, some very, very small, and some a little easier. (Some) small and niggling and hard to address and others may be easier to address. The small niggling ones is that there’s still some states here and there that have some issues with too many rejected absentee ballots or too many provisional ballots being given out to get very much into the weeds. And it would be great if those states could review their policies and correct that. There’s big policies that are relatively easy to change that I think a lot of states could take the initiative in enacting. One is having a robust post-election audit program. Most states now have it. They didn’t 12 years ago, but some still don’t. That’s a really important measure for ensuring the results are right and for reassuring the public that the results are right. And then also really engaging with the electorate in using the Internet to communicate with them, allowing voters to see whether they’re registered to vote, see whether their mail ballot has been stuck in the mail and returned back to the election office and then finally to allow voters to review their voter registration and update it online rather than rely on the antiquated way of paper forms that are prone to data entry errors. 

SS: You’re listening to our Friday Ballot Box Briefing and we’re checking in with Professor Charles Stewart. He has been a distinguished professor at MIT since the 1980s. I apologize for having to date you, but I mentioned that because you have a long record in assessing elections, and certainly you’ve seen a lot of changes from the 1980s to where we are today. And that is an understatement. 

CS: Oh, absolutely. I’ve been following elections, but that interest got really acute in the [2000] election, I think for obvious reasons related to the recount in Florida and especially… the Bush v Gore business and all of that. We’ve seen election voting machines become much more accurate and less prone to breakdown. We’ve seen the job of the election official become much more professionalized. We’ve seen improvements in the voter registration systems. We’ve seen better training for election officials. So, a lot of these are big changes like the improvement in the voting equipment—we don’t have hanging chads anymore. Some of these changes are very nuanced but nonetheless very profound, such as the professionalization of election administration. Those are the sorts of things that have come together to lead to election administration in the U.S. improving so much over the last decade plus. 

SS: Can you clear something up? Because last month Lara Trump, who is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, announced that the RNC has a plan that would essentially deploy about 100,000 poll watchers into the battleground states to monitor the results as they come in that night. Can they do that? 

CS: Well, they can do some things, but they can’t do other things. Certainly states do have provisions for people to observe the voting on election night. Those provisions are different by state, and some states, any citizen can come in and observe. In other states that has to be representatives of the parties or the candidates. But in every case, what happens there is that there are restrictions on where those observers can be and what they can watch. They can’t look over the shoulders of voters. They can’t even interact directly with the poll workers who are managing the polling place. All they can do is watch, write down things, (and) if they observe problems in general there’s one person in the polling place they can interact with to clarify situations. So they have very limited authority other than watching in the polling place and that’s allowed for by state laws. And then finally, when the polls closed again, these same state laws allow observers to be in the polling place observing the closing down, observing the paid workers as they count the votes or get the results off the voting machines and then are certainly there when the results are posted and they can call those results in to the party or the candidate that they’re representing. So they can observe, but they can’t interfere. And that’s one of the issues that’s arisen, and one of the misunderstandings I think that has arisen, especially as the Republican Party, but others as well have kind of doubled down on observing elections up close in in the upcoming November election. 

SS: Well, thank you for clarifying that. And again, I encourage the POTUS audience to check out the Elections Performance Index. We’re talking to Professor Charles Stewart, or I should say Charles Stewart the Third from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Professor at MIT. Hey, final question because I’m asking all of the guests a similar question: if there was one thing that you wish the American people knew or better understood about elections in this country. What would it be? 

CS: I’d start very quickly by saying what they currently misunderstand. I think everybody underestimates how hard it is to run elections, and therefore overestimate how easy it is to reform things and to change. Running elections is very hard, and if you are inclined to want to change things, change the laws, change practices, you need to study what the laws and the practices are, and don’t assume that it’s trivial to change registration or how people vote or any of those things. Educate yourself and find out the details. In fact, volunteer, sign up to be a poll worker and observe for yourself what it takes to run an election. Then I think you will begin to learn the sorts of things about the complexities of elections that I wish more Americans knew about. 

SS: Congratulations on the great work at MIT with you and your team, and again the Elections Performance Index. We’ll continue to check that out. And if we could, check in with you as this campaign and the election process continues to unfold. 

CS: Absolutely. I look forward to it. Thank you very much. 

SS: Charles Stewart the Third, so long lineage in your Stewart family. Thank you again professor, I appreciate it. 

CS: My pleasure.