How Election Science Can Support Democracy

IRA FLATOW: This is “Science Friday.” I’m Ira Flatow. This week, the election season shifted into full gear with Super Tuesday.

But it’s not just pollsters and campaign operatives who are preparing for the elections. Scientists are too. The Union of Concerned Scientists has an election science task force in operation looking at everything from ballot design to disinformation to voting security. Joining me now to talk about that is Dr. Jennifer Jones, the program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. Welcome to “Science Friday.”

JENNIFER JONES: Thanks for having me.

IRA FLATOW: Tell us about the project in a nutshell. What’s your aim here?

JENNIFER JONES: Well, Ira, first off, we want folks to know that science really matters for our democracy, that all of us should be able to show up and participate in our democracy, and that our vote should count. It should matter. And so we really want to use science, data, and evidence to help create that free, fair, and transparent election system that we need. So we’re doing that by looking at a number of different issues from fair maps to ballot design and the role that data transparency can play in making sure that everyone’s vote counts and matters.

IRA FLATOW: When you say data transparency, how transparent and accessible is the data behind an election? Will officials learn from past problems here?

JENNIFER JONES: Well, data is not transparent, and that is a huge issue, right? So what we mean when we talk about data, this is the sort of thing where we’re tracking how many voters actually showed up. Were there errors with voters and their votes?

If I showed up and I made a mistake on my ballot, which is easy to do because ballots can be very poorly designed and confusing, did anybody contact me? Did I get a chance to fix that error? So some of the data that we want to look at is looking at those participation rates, looking at those ballot rejection rates, those error rates. What can we learn from that?

And then what we ultimately want to do is be able to call out the best practices and make recommendations for the future. Ira, let me also just note that part of the issue here is that there’s no standardized protocol within states and across states. So that’s a real issue.

IRA FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Are there new risks that we’re seeing this election, or are we mainly dealing with the same lists of threats that we have had in previous elections?

JENNIFER JONES: There are absolutely threats that have existed since, you know, really voting in elections have happened in this country. You know, disinformation that is used against voters, especially communities of color, falling out fake data, and then using that in the future to further restrict the voting rights of people of color, continues to be a major issue, bad ballot design, again, where it’s so easy to make a mistake and have your vote not counted, and then let’s also talk about the role of gerrymandering, creating voter districts that intentionally seek to dilute the votes of some groups of people– again, especially communities of color. So these are long standing and well known tactics that keep us from having a democracy. And then we can also talk about some of our concerns with artificial intelligence and disinformation and deepfakes this year that are going to be a real problem.

IRA FLATOW: These deepfakes are real now, right?

JENNIFER JONES: They are, and a real concern is that at the federal level, we do not have any meaningful policy and legislation that’s been enacted this year to protect the voters from deepfakes, to even stop candidates or supporter groups from using deepfakes and other forms of disinformation. I think it’s also important to call that out in past elections we have seen the use of disinformation– you know, purposely misleading people about issues, about polling places. So this is not new.

It’s existed especially with the rise of social media in recent years. But the concerns around artificial intelligence means that you could have bad actors, whether it is an international group, whether it is a domestic group, purposely seeking to keep people away from the ballots, mislead people on issues, to again sway elections that are not free and fair and truly representative. We have at the Union of Concerned Scientists what we call the disinformation playbook that people can check out and educate themselves about what to look for. And I think that’s a starting place.

IRA FLATOW: All right, that’s a good way to end our conversation with useful information. Dr. Jones, thank you for taking time to be with us today.

JENNIFER JONES: It was a pleasure.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Jennifer Jones is the program director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Copyright © 2023 Science Friday Initiative. All rights reserved. Science Friday transcripts are produced on a tight deadline by 3Play Media. Fidelity to the original aired/published audio or video file might vary, and text might be updated or amended in the future. For the authoritative record of Science Friday’s programming, please visit the original aired/published recording. For terms of use and more information, visit our policies pages at http://www.sciencefriday.com/about/policies/