SPA Professor Coauthors Book on Election Security
As contested U.S. presidential results lead some voters to question the security and integrity of American elections, one SPA scholar can say that she has written the book on the subject.
SPA Assistant Professor Seo-young Silvia Kim co-wrote Securing American Elections: How Data-Driven Election Monitoring Can Improve Our Democracy, which introduces evaluation methods for measuring free and fair elections. It was published on November 26 by Cambridge University Press, and a is available for free through December 2.
鈥淭his book is trying to answer how citizens, candidates, and stakeholders can know that an election was conducted with integrity,鈥 said Kim. 鈥淲e as researchers come in as an external entity to provide an additional layer of security and assurance to the voters, in cooperation with election administrators.鈥
Kim, who earned her PhD from Caltech this year, coauthored the book with R. Michael Alvarez, Professor of Political and Computational Social Science, and fellow graduate students Yimeng Li and Nicholas Adams-Cohen. The team鈥檚 research, funded through a grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation, focused on the 2018 midterm elections in Orange County, California. County election administrators were highly cooperative and open to scholarly input on metrics and tools, said Kim.
鈥淥ur combination of methods ranged from voter and poll worker surveys, to social media monitoring, to voter registration database auditing,鈥 said Kim. 鈥淭hese methods can come together to create a safety net to assure that elections have been conducted freely and fairly and in the manner in which they were designed.鈥
The study, which discovered no significant errors or challenges to integrity, represents the importance of the field of election science, a previously underappreciated academic branch of the political science family.
鈥淓lection scientists can dissipate the myths,鈥 Kim said. 鈥淔or example, the 鈥榖lue shift鈥 that occurred after Election Day as the votes-by-mail were being counted occurred because those who vote by mail are actually more Democratic, or are likely to lean Democratic, for a variety of reasons.鈥
The tracks its expansion from Orange County to Los Angeles County and the state of Oregon. Their March 2020 study investigated long voting lines in LA County鈥檚 2020 primary using similar methods, identifying database synchronization issues that slowed down the voter check-in process. An cited their work in planning remediation. Kim hopes that the book鈥檚 example will inspire similar relationships with election administrators in other states and jurisdictions, eventually leading to nationwide expansion.
Kim sees the current lack of public trust in election administrators as an opportunity to introduce greater transparency in the process. 鈥淭he conspiracy theories arise because the public hasn鈥檛 seen the work being done . . . Election administrators are improving public trust by bringing in voters to see the process. Some have had livestreaming of how they count votes and conduct recounts.鈥
When asked to identify the biggest current threat to the electoral process, Kim pointed to hacking or software or clerical malfunctions that could affect key states鈥 voter registration infrastructure and lead to disenfranchisement. A printing error in Los Angeles County, for example, accidentally left 118,000 eligible voters off of its rolls in 2018.
Kim鈥檚 current research covers the dynamics of political behavior, both in election administration and campaign finance. She expects incredible insights into election security and integrity through an ongoing audit of voter registration data, she said.
鈥淭here is a need for election science, and I think the field will grow after this importance has been demonstrated.鈥
For more information, and to download the book for free for a limited time, visit the .