Elite Statecraft and Election Administration: Bending the Rules of the Game Toby S. James Palgrave Macmillan This is pre-print of: Toby S. James (2012) Elite Statecraft and Election Administration: Bending the Rules of the Game (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan). Please use this citation and reference the published text. Acknowledgements I am indebted to many people for helping me write this book. Mark Evans and Jim Buller supervised the PhD thesis from which much of this work is drawn. They taught me how to study politics for many years and even play football a little better too. Before this, Gordon Parr and Ivan Howe taught me that history matters and how to make an argument (not that I admitted that to them at the time). The work was much improved after critical (but fair) comments from Martin J. Smith, Neil Carter, Jonathan Bradbury, anonymous referees of this book and journal articles, participants at the EPOP Conference 2007, PSA Annual Conferences in 2007 and 2008, and Public Administration Conferences in 2008 and 2011. Frances Fox Piven was enormously helpful and her work has been a continued source of inspiration. Many other colleagues and friends, past and present, at the University of York and Swansea University helped in many other ways. There are too many to list. I am very grateful to the ESRC and AHRC for the financial support that facilitated this research. The staff and fellow scholars at the J.W. Kluge Center and Department of Political Science, Trinity College, Dublin made overseas trips successful. I owe much to those who were generous with their time and allowed themselves to be interviewed for this research. Amber Stone-Gailee and her colleagues at Palgrave have supported the project throughout. I wish to thank the following for permission to reproduce copyright material: • Taylor and Francis for James, T.S. (2011), 'Only in America? Executive partisan interest and the politics of election administration in Ireland, the UK and USA', Contemporary Politics, 17(3), p.219-240; James, T.S. (2010) 'Electoral Administration and Voter Turnout: Towards an International Public Policy Continuum', Representation, 46(4), p.369-89. 2 • Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers for James, T.S. (2011) 'Fewer "costs," more votes? U.K. Innovations in Electoral Administration 2000-2007 and their effect on voter turnout', Election Law Journal, 10(1) p.37-52; • Palgrave Macmillan for James, T.S. (2010) 'Electoral modernisation or elite statecraft: Electoral administration in the UK 1997-2007', British Politics, 5(2), p.179-201; • John Wiley and Sons for James, T.S. (2010) 'Researching Electoral Administration in America: Insights from the "post-Florida" era', Political Studies Review, 8(3); • Saint Louis Art Museum for The County Election by George Caleb Bingham (1852). Above all, I owe much to my family and friends for tolerating an obsession with politics, political science and elections. Without my wife’s support this book would not have been started, let alone finished. Dylan made taking a break from finishing the book a lot of fun, and made some colourful edits to the manuscript. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 2 List of Tables 5 List of Figures 6 List of Abbreviations 7 Chapter One 8 Election Administration and Electoral Studies: Theories, Frameworks and Anomalies Chapter Two 37 Election Administration – a Tool for Political Statecraft? Chapter Three 79 The Statecraft Approach: Bringing Political Elites Back In Chapter Four 111 ‘Stopping the Vote’: Election Administration in the USA Chapter Five 156 ‘Modernising’ Elections? Election Administration in Britain Chapter Six 209 ‘Our silly aul’ pencils’: Election Administration in Ireland Chapter Seven 252 Agendas, Systems and Processes: Elite Strategy and Election Administration in Comparative Perspective Chapter Seven 276 Conclusions and Lessons for Theorists and Constitutional Designers Bibliography 290 4 List of Tables 1.1 Aspects of electoral institutions 11 2.1 A continuum of registration procedures based on their 57 effect on electoral turnout 2.2 A continuum of voting procedures based on their effect 57 on electoral turnout 2.3 Kohler and Rose’s hypotheses about the circumstances under 75 which higher turnout might effect electoral outcomes 4.1 Main provisions of the National Voter Registration Act 122 4.2 Legislation on Election Administration in the U.S. and 139 Virginia 2001 – 2009 4.3 Registered voters in Virginia in 2004 and 2008 153 5.1 Key moments in Election Administration, 1832-1997 167 5.2 New Labour reforms to election administration 1997-2008 176 5.3 New Labour’s Electoral Pilot Schemes, 2000 to 200 179 5.4 Registration Initiatives introduced in Northern Ireland 2005-8 204 6.1 Key moments in the consolidation of election administration in 226 Ireland, 1922-1997 6.2 Key moments in electoral registration in Ireland 1998-2007 246 7.1 Findings and factors from three case studies 258 5 List of Figures 3.1 The statecraft approach 93 3.2 The revised statecraft model 107 3.3 Bending the Rules of the Game: Possible Sites for Elite Strategy 108 5.1 Registrations and Voting Age Population in Northern Ireland 1976-2010 203 6.1 Register of electors’ online enquiries 230 6.2 Poster from the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local 231 Government to encourage voter registration 6.3 Commission on electronic voting website 240 6 List of Abbreviations DOJ U.S. Department of Justice EC Electoral Commission EONI Electoral Officer for Northern Ireland EPLE European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Act FPTP First-Past-The-Post HAVA Help America Vote Act 2000 HI Historical Institutionalism NI New Institutionalism NIR Northern Ireland NRG Natural Rate of Governability NVRA National Voter Registration Act 1993 OPCS Office of Population Census Surveys OLS Ordinary Least Squares ROPANI Representation of the People Act (Northern Ireland) RPA2000 Representation of the People Act 2000 PPS Personal Public Service Number 7 Chapter One Election Administration and Electoral Studies: Theories, Frameworks and Anomalies ‘It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting’ Tom Stoppard, Jumpers (1972) act 1 Introduction The 26th of February 2007 was a historic day for the ancient institution of democracy. At 9am that day, voting began in the parliamentary elections in the small East European state of Estonia. These elections were unique. It was the first time that binding parliamentary elections had ever been held through the internet. Six days before the polls opened as normal, citizens were able to cast their vote from the comfort of their own home using their PC, an electronic smart card reader, their national identity card and a password which had been sent to them. Over 30,275 people did so – about one in 30 registered voters. Internet voting had been tested before in Estonian local elections in October 2005 and other countries had held pilots, but this time the e-votes cast would determine the composition of the national parliament, and the balance of power within Estonia. The public reaction to this historic day appeared positive. A 24-year old IT 8 worker described the process as being ‘pleasant and simple’. Speaking to a TV news network he said that: ‘I moved quite recently so I am still registered in my old home town. This means that to have voted, I would have had to returned home' (sic) (Cowan, 2007). Tarvi Martens from the National Electoral Committee which organised the election was the Project Manager of i-voting. According to him: ‘internet voting is [here] to stay… there is no way back’ (Martens, 2007). Academic observers suggested that the scheme did appear to work well, but this was due to the small size of the state, the high degree of centralization and the less partisan nature of elections (Alverez, Hall, & Trechsel, 2009).1 A citizen casting a ballot paper, in person, at a polling station has been an emblematic image for democracy. The innovations in Estonia suggested that this image was under threat. Estonia at the turn of the twenty-first century represents a case of rapid reform. Estonia is not alone, however. Around the world the way in which elections are run is being changed, or subjected to a new critical review. Radical reforms or experiments have been introduced replacing procedures which have often been in place since the 19th century. Brazil and India have introduced electronic voting terminals. Other electronic pilots have taken place in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Reforms do not always involve new technology. The U.K. intends to introduce individual rather than household registration by 2014. In the U.S. voter identification laws have proliferated since 2000. Patterns of change, however, have been uneven and not uniform. Some countries have been sluggish to introduce reform and keen to maintain procedures for much the twentieth century. So why does reform occur? What explains the choice of election administration? Electoral laws and institutions are not neutral. They advantage some individuals, groups or interests and disadvantage others (Grofman & Lijphart, 2003; Rae, 1967). If elites are proactive in picking and choosing the rules which govern elections for partisan 1 There was a later backlash against e-voting in Estonia. See: (Rikken, 2011). 9 gain, then it follows that there are consequences for the legitimacy of democracies. How and why electoral laws change is, therefore, central to who has power in the state and Dahl’s (1961) question of ‘Who Governs?’. There have been some popular and academic claims that politicians have sought to bring about or prevent changes to election administration. Whether political elites strategically manipulate election administration for partisan interest has not been explored in a comparative context, however. Some have accepted the rhetorical claims from politicians’ claims that reforms have been introduced to ‘save’ democracy’, ‘modernise elections’ or ‘reduce fraud’.