As the United States went for mid-term elections last week, almost 40% of the states and territories could update voter addresses real time. This is surely a cause for cheer, since geo-enabled elections enhance accuracy and efficiency — location errors are removed, and a voter is further sure of being placed in the right precinct.
However, that’s only part of the story. A recent report from the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC) reveals progress is slow in others.
Most state election administrations in the US hope to have integrated GIS in their voter registration systems, not by 2024, but by 2027, in time for the presidential election the following year.
“Currently, only 39% Election Directors (ED) reported having a voter registration system (VRS) which supports geospatial data and not all use that functionality,” Jamie Chesser, Project Manager, Geo-Enabled Elections, NSGIC, told Geospatial World, while explaining the key findings of the State to Election Director Report.
While this is a significant increase from 2018, the electioneering process henceforth will be to ensure EDs use geospatial capabilities. As much as 86% of US states and territories participated in the Geo-Enabled Elections project, in some form or the other.
NSGIC is a state-led organization for developing, exchanging, and endorsing geospatial technology and best practices. Currently, nearly every state (96% in 2022) has representation with the NSGIC. However, the council has no representation from the territories yet.
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“In many states, the project has revealed the tremendous potential that GIS and geospatial tools have for making elections administration more efficient and transparent,” said NSGIC President Jonathan Duran, who is also deputy to the state Geographic Information Officer of Arkansas.
Why geo-enabled elections?
Mapping election information — voter locations, election district boundaries etc. — enhances transparency, accuracy and visibility. This helps eliminate distrust as data is easier to view and review.
“Election errors can lead to lengthy legal processes and costly do-overs. Modern GIS technology transforms voter lists into geospatial pinpoints and ensures that voters and candidates are placed in the right precinct,” explained Chesser.
GIS does away with time-consuming manual voter-address updates, lending more efficiency to the process. A user can simply update the boundaries and update all impacted points. GIS also enables authorities to run an analysis based on an area of interest.
Apart from efficiencies in terms of time, geo-enabled elections help in making work flows methodical and seamless. More accuracy is ensured – for example, in redistricting and voting district boundary management — since geospatial data is made visual on a map, much easier to pinpoint and check, rather than the lengthy voter address lists. Similarly, assigning voters to a new voting district and creating precinct definitions can be done in minutes with GIS.
Such an enhanced free-flowing process, where the chances of errors have been significantly eliminated boosts voter confidence. “When fewer errors are reported after an election, voters’ confidence that their voices are being heard increases, and their faith in the democratic system is strengthened,” said Chesser.
The Geo-Enabled Elections Project
In 2017, when the NSGIC Geo-Enabled Elections project was launched, the concept was relatively new. Only a handful states consistently and procedurally used GIS technology for election administration, and even as others were still debating on the use of GIS in election work. Since then, NSGIC has focused on assisting states and other election authorities in implementing geospatial technology in order to ensure voters are placed in their districts correctly, receive the right ballot, and vote in the right electoral contests.
Back then, NSGIC found that while majority of the states and territories were using geospatial data and GIS for other purposes — such as emergency response systems and land use — very few used it for elections. Interestingly, many such states had a Geographic Information Officer (GIO) or equivalent responsible for coordinating various state and local GIS-based initiatives.
NSGIC decided it had to promote a stronger dialogue between the GIOs and Election Directors in states. This promised to be a win-win for both the sets of stakeholders. It was felt that election officials would gain advocates for geospatial data and technology. On the other hand, in the GIO, EDs had a supply of a variety of data, including boundaries, addresses, and others. This data, when added to a GIS, inject exponential improvement and efficiencies in the work of local authorities.
“The key to progress in this area is partnerships between EDs and GIOs — something we have seen in all states that have made significant progress. We continue to encourage this,” iterated Chesser.
The progress?
Five years down the line, NSGIC feels America’s elections management is headed in the right direction. “EDs rated themselves a 5 this year versus a 4 in 2018, when it comes to the state of geo-enabled elections in their state, on a 10-grade scale – a fair reflection of that progress,” revealed Chesser.
In 2018, few voter registration systems supported geospatial data types, either unused or underused then. In 2022, 10 of 28 EDs (39%) were confidence their systems can use geospatial information. Yet, not all reported actively using it. Nonetheless, this is a significant leap from 2018 and the future focus will be to ensure actual of the geospatial capabilities.
NSGIC’s Raising Election Accuracy and Efficiency with GIS, released in 2018, lists five best practices to integrate GIS in elections. These include involving specialists; adding a voting unit GIS layer; a geocoding strategy; adding contextual GIS layers; and finally, the data validation process.
As part of the data validation process, NSGIC prescribes systematic spatial data audits executed routinely. This should include voting unit GIS data, geocoding resources, and the results.
However, the 2022 report finds that while the use of regular audits has increased significantly, not all are of spatial category and lack complete, external address information.
“A large number of states continue to do spatial data audits irregularly or lack some of the spatial data needed for a complete audit,” Chesser added.
Spatial data audits such as risk-limiting audits, need to be procedural, consistent, and frequent.
The best use cases?
The top performers were found to be Utah, Hawaii, Washington and North Carolina.
Utah’s election management system has been GIS-enabled since prior to the 2012 Election. “Utah’s journey into GIS-enabled elections began in earnest as we approached the 2010 Census. GIS utilization had been growing (in the state) and had become a critical part of the daily operations of some of our sister government agencies. Finding the time and resources to fold GIS capabilities into our elections processes was something we regularly discussed,” said Justin Lee, Director of Elections, Utah.
Lee outlined how the office of the lieutenant governor initiated a project to implement GIS in Utah’s elections system to make “redistricting” easier leading up to the Election in 2012.
Similarly, Hawaii’s use of GIS in elections was also flagged in with redistricting. The State Reapportionment Commission, which oversaw redistricting, was already using GIS very effectively before 2011. After redistricting that year, the counties needed to create new precincts and correctly assign voters. “The voter management system in use at that time used street segments and address ranges to assign voters to precincts. Without GIS, this was an intensive manual process to examine the streets and determine the new address ranges for the new precincts,” revealed Marc Arakawa of Computer Services dept in the Hawaii Office of Elections, in a success story.
Other than the time saved and ease of use, Arakawa narrated an interesting way GIS was used by Hawaii’s election office in the 2018 direct primary elections.
The sudden eruption of the Kilauea volcano and subsequent lava flow had destroyed thousands of home, forcing evacuation of residents just before the primaries. The GIS team in the state’s election department was able to obtain a spatial data layer of the path of the lava flow, which helped them determine the exact homes that were in the direct path of the destruction.
“With this information, we were able to determine how many registered voters were affected and how many of these voters had previously mailed in their ballot. We used this information to determine whether to open additional early voting locations and polling places on election day,” said Arakawa.
The State of Washington has a Geospatial Program Office that provides several geospatial tools, including the Washington Master Address System (WAMAS). Utilizing the tools and data from the office and collaborating with them was an essential step-up.
“We collected our County Auditors’ data. If they didn’t have the data, they usually have a relationship with their county leadership to get that data for improving election administration,” shared the state’s Director of Elections, Lori Angino.
“We believe that using GIS will assist us in providing automatic and same-day registration for voters in Washington State. It will allow us to immediately know the exact location of that voter and assign them to the correct precinct. Additionally, if the voter provides an unknown address or has a non-traditional address, GIS will allow us to ‘drop a pin’ on a map the voter can find out about and vote on the issues they are eligible for. Previously, a non-traditional address would require manual entry, which could result in incorrect precincting.”
Likely completion of the process?
“That is a tough question,” said Chesser. “In many ways, geo-enabled elections is a lot like online voter registration (OVR)”.
In year 2000, only one state — Arizona — had OVR. In 2008, Washington state adopted the process, looking for increased accuracy and efficiency. As of 2022, 42 states and Washington D.C. have adopted OVR.
“It’s a great example of how ideas spread across the states. It makes sense; the American public has changed over the years. Citizens expect to be able to do business with the government online. The parallel for geo-enabled elections is clear. Some states are pioneers, others are following, and the American public uses GIS every day. Both OVR and geo-enabled elections are technology advancements in elections, and neither has a partisan bent. With continued attention to geo-enabled elections, there is every reason to think it will spread,” the NSGIC report quoted Wendy Underhill, Director of Elections and Redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL as saying.
“If we are correct in making this comparison, geo-enabled elections may take 10+ years to implement nationwide,” Chesser added.
In January this year, NSGIC launched the Resources for Election Directors to help states and counties looking to modernize their electoral systems by further integrating GIS. The web page offers access to a range of tools, helping users to begin the dialogue, build a coalition of stakeholders and experts to facilitate implementation, and develop decision support. It also provides a link to five hands-on training courses; even offers help to states wishing to enshrine the use of GIS in elections in state statute.
“NSGIC will strive to build upon its successes and the knowledge gained from the geo-enabled elections project and continue to deepen our understanding of the elections,” said Duran.
“EDs want to integrate GIS into their elections. They want to build a connection or continue to nurture their relationships with the state GIO. They are open to change and know they must innovate and adopt new processes that help them work more efficiently,” added Chesser.
As the next step, NSGIC is organizing a virtual conference, called the Elections GeoSummit, on December 8.
Slowly but steadily, geo-enabling elections is finding its way into the DNA of those working in elections management. There is still much work to be done to have all 50 states geo-enabling their elections.
