Late to the finish

Just in time for the added voting concerns caused by the virus, new rankings of state-by-state election performance show Arkansas in last place in the way Secretariat was in first place in the Belmont States in 1973.

Secretariat crossed the finish line 31 lengths ahead of the place horse. Arkansas is 51st among the states and the District of Columbia in these election performance rankings, and conspicuously so. The scoring system is based on 100 possible points. All other states and D.C. are between 90 and 62. You must keep rolling down the online chart to find Arkansas at 48.

With a little checking, I determined that the Arkansas performance is not quite that awful, but only generally bad. We’re in the national “mainstream low” except in regard to data that our state officials were unable to submit as fully as other states. That’s what caused the state’s subterranean plummet.

I’m advised that such a data-reporting failing suggests a broader failing in transparency and accountability, perhaps based on breakdowns in communication between the secretary of state and the state board of election commissioners, if that makes you feel any better.

More interesting about this study, beyond the routine of Arkansas looking substandard again, is the criteria used for effective election performance.

This is about the biennial Election Performance Index compiled by the Election Data and Science Lab at MIT. It took over this report in 2017 from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which began it in 2013 on the inspiration of a book by Heather Gerken, now dean of Yale Law School, called “Democracy Index.”

The book argued that we needed to be able to grade elections in the way we grade schools or health outcomes.

So, political science faculty and other staff at the MIT lab collect data submitted by states after each federal election—in presidential years and midterm years—to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. That is the report for which Arkansas was lacking in 2018, submitting only 83 percent of the data sought while all other states got above 95 percent.

The MIT experts then design a scoring system that defines good performance as resulting from such factors as high voter registration rates, ease of voter registration with an online option, general Web usage for voter information and services, short wait times at polls, efficient handling of absentee ballots that result in few votes being set aside as provisional, a post-election accounting of the disposition of provisional ballots, and voter turnout itself.

It stands to reason that a state on the wrong side of the digital divide like Arkansas would lag in some of those categories.

But being routinely low in this report is a warning sign, especially in regard to the current virus-beset election season with any-excuse absentee voting permitted in the state amid concerns about mail service.

With tens of thousands more absentee ballots coming in than before, the state needs to be ready to deal with the barrage administratively in responsible and accountable terms. If some ballots are set aside for provisional consideration owing to questions, or even thrown out, the state needs to be able to account for that county by county, ballot by ballot.

And yet this report says the state hasn’t been able to get that kind of thing done or at least reported even before the barrage.

Meantime, The Washington Post reports that there were more than 500,000 absentee ballots rejected nationwide in this year’s primaries for arriving too late or having errors. And primaries are much smaller events than a major presidential election.

Considering that the presidential election was decided in 2016 by 80,000 voters in three states— Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—we must do better in terms of getting votes submitted on time and accounting for the rejection of anybody’s vote.

Only Trump versus Biden might hang in the balance.

It’s probably good that Arkansas is not a presidential battleground state.

But there’ll be close races within the state. Candidates in those deserve competence and accountability. Those who cast votes deserve at least as much.

We’re not as bad as this ranking indicates. We’re not a nag coming in 31 lengths behind the field, covered in dust.

But we’re crossing the finish line much too late and too dusty for good health.

The purpose of this ranking is for everyone to learn from each other and do better, as Arkansas must.

The state’s data reporting failure in 2018 was not the fault of Secretary of State John Thurston, who took office in 2019.

But he could commit to being more responsive, beginning with inquiries for this column, for which I got less cooperation than even a national data collector.