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1 [1] (July 9, 2019)

handle is hein.crs/govbaet0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Cogesoa Resarc Servic S July 9, 2019 The Election Administration and Voting Survey: Overview and 2018 Findings The Election Administration and Voting Survey (EAVS) is a biennial survey of state and local officials about the administration of federal elections. The survey is conducted for each regular federal election cycle by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which reports its findings to Congress and the public the year after the election. The EAVS is not the federal government's only election administration data collection effort-the U.S. Census Bureau conducts surveys about voting and registration behavior, for example, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office has studied topics such as voting equipment use-but it is the most comprehensive regular survey of the state and local officials who run U.S. elections. The data it collects have the potential to offer insight into how, and how well, states and localities are administering elections. So, the interpretation and findings of the EAVS may be relevant to Members who are interested in assessing state and local implementation of federal election law, identifying problems with the conduct of elections, or considering changes to election laws or procedures. This In Focus provides an introduction to the EAVS. It starts with an overview of the survey and then describes topline findings of the 2018 EAVS, some caveats about EAVS data, and legislative activity related to the EAVS. Overview of the EAVS The current iteration of the EAVS contains six sections, with questions about voter registration, military and overseas voting, and a range of other elections topics (see Table 1 for details of each section). It has been accompanied since 2008 by another survey-introduced as the Statutory Overview and redesigned and recast as the Election Administration Policy Survey (Policy Survey) for 2018-that asks about states' election policies. Sections A and B of the EAVS are conducted to meet specific reporting requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA; 52 U.S.C. §§20501- 20511) and the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986 (UOCAVA; 52 U.S.C. §§20301- 20311), respectively. The Policy Survey and Sections C through F of the EAVS fall under a broader EAC mandate, provided by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA; 52 U.S.C. §§20901-21145), to serve as a clearinghouse of election administration information. The EAVS is distributed to the 50 states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (referred to herein as states). States compile data about the most recent federal election cycle for the survey, using state-level resources such as voter registration and voter history databases, information supplied by local officials, or some combination of the two. The EAC builds validation checks into the data collection templates it distributes to states, conducts further checks on the data they submit, and works with states and localities before and after they submit their data to clarify survey requirements, collect missing data, and correct errors. Table I. Sections of the 2018 EAVS Section Description Selected Citations A Voter Registration 52 U.S.C. §20508; II C.F.R. §9428.7 B Uniformed and Overseas 52 U.S.C. §§20301- Citizens Absentee Voting 20302 C Domestic Civilian By-Mail 52 U.S.C. §20922 Voting D Total Votes Cast and In- 52 U.S.C. §20922 Person Voting E Provisional Ballots 52 U.S.C. §20922 F Voter Participation and 52 U.S.C. §20922 Election Technologies Source: CRS, from the 2018 EAVS, the U.S. Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations. Notes: The EAVS has had this basic structure since 2008. The 2004 and 2006 surveys were structured differently. Responding to the EAVS takes an estimated average of 88 hours per state, and some state and local officials have indicated concern about the time and effort it involves. Changes have been made to the survey since its inception to ease this administrative burden, encourage participation, and streamline data collection and reporting. NVRA questions, UOCAVA questions, and general election administration questions were combined into a single questionnaire in 2006, for example, and reporting on the three sets of data was combined into a single product for 2014. The 2014 survey also marked the beginning of a collaboration between the EAC and the U.S. Department of Defense's Federal Voting Assistance Program to reduce redundancies in UOCAVA data collection. Findings of the 2018 EAVS The EAC presents topline findings of the EAVS in the report it releases to Congress and the public after each midterm and presidential election. These topline findings may be suggestive of general trends although, as noted in the next section, some should be interpreted with care. https://crsreports.congress.g

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