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Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the 2000 Presidential Election Author(s): Daniel J. Palazzolo and Vincent G. Moscardelli Source: State Politics & Policy Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3 (FALL 2006), pp. 300-321Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41289392Accessed: 09-06-2015 16:05 UTC

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Policy Crisis and Political Leadership: Election Law Reform in the States after the

2000 Presidential Election

Daniel J. Palazzolo, University of Richmond Vincent G. Moscardelli, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

ABSTRACT

What effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymak- ers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leader- ship variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commis- sions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

what is the role of policy entrepreneurs and political leadership in state policy adoption in a time of crisis? Traditionally, scholars explained policy innovation and diffusion largely with readily available state-level indi- cators of demographic, economic, and political conditions (Savage 1985; Berry and Berry 1990, 1992, 1999). But more recently, some scholars have

investigated the effects of key actors on the policymaking process, such as policy entrepreneurs (Mintrom 1997; Mintrom and Vergari 1998), interest

group advocates ( Haider- Markel and O'Brien 1997; Haider- Markel 2001), and executive agency officials (Balla 2001). These studies have emphasized how such actors can advance policies by working through issue networks, advocacy coalitions, and national groups. Yet few scholars have considered the effects of formally elected or appointed leaders on policy adoption, par- ticularly in response to major events or crises.1

State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Fall 2006): pp. 300-321

©2006 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 301

We argue that policymaking in response to a crisis may be especially influenced by the actions of formally appointed and elected leaders. Unlike policy innovation that occurs over a long time and through an advocacy coali- tion framework (Sabatier 1993), crisis-induced policy innovation can force leaders who are accountable for government performance to act relatively quickly. As such, policy crises not only give official leaders the responsibility and incentive to act, they also give them an advantage over informal, non- official political actors who may require more time to mobilize necessary resources. Still, even when faced with a crisis, some leaders may be more

likely to act as entrepreneurs than others. As a test of this hypothesis, we examine the influences on state election

reform following the crisis in counting the 2000 presidential election votes in Florida. This event thrust election law reform onto the agendas of state

governments, provoking a response from election administration leaders. A state's governor, legislative leaders, and specifically its chief election offi- cial (CEO) (in most states, the secretary of state) are most responsible for a state's election system. We find that the activities of those officials after the Florida crisis had measurable effects on the degree of election reform adopted by a state. Among these three types of leaders, the CEOs assumed the most critical role, setting the pace for the policymaking process. They were chiefly responsible for informing legislators and the public about the election reforms needed in order to improve their state's election administra- tion and to prevent a similar crisis. Thus, we find that elected and appointed leaders have a special impact on state policy responses to a crisis. This finding contributes both to the growing body of literature on election reform and to our general understanding of policy adoption and innovation.

POLICY WINDOWS, ELECTION REFORM, AND LEADERSHIP ROLES

Policy windows occur when problems emerge, policy solutions are proposed, and political conditions are suitable for policy change (Kingdon 2003). A crisis, or "focusing event" (Kingdon 2003, 95-8), can push an issue onto the governmental agenda and create a policy window. The policy window pres- ents "an opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems" (Kingdon 2003, 165). But windows that are opened by crisis are likely to remain open only briefly. To be successful in achieving policy change, policy entrepreneurs must quickly seize the opportunity to bring together the problem, policy, and political streams.

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302 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

Of course, policy entrepreneurs do not need to be formally elected or appointed leaders; entrepreneurs may be advocates, business leaders, bureau- crats, or concerned citizens (Kingdon 2003, 179-80). And the inverse propo- sition is just as plausible: formally elected or appointed leaders need not be policy entrepreneurs. At a minimum, entrepreneurs must be people who have a "claim to a hearing" as a result of "expertise; an ability to speak for others, as in the case of the leader of a powerful interest group; or an authoritative decision-making position" (Kingdon 2003, 180). Elected and appointed offi- cials meet this minimum, if only because of their official position. But when a crisis presents an opportunity to appointed or elected leaders, some may act as entrepreneurs - seeking to advance major policy changes - and others may not, and the outcome of the policymaking process may rest heavily on how the leader acts.

The dramatic unfolding of the 2000 presidential election in Florida was typical of a focusing event (Watson 2004). The Florida recount controversy lifted the veil covering a shaky framework of election laws and procedures in the states and exposed a broad range of vulnerabilities and inadequacies in the election system. The responsibility for dealing with the crisis was felt most acutely by the appointed and elected state-level executive and legisla- tive officials with jurisdiction over election law and administration. The legitimacy of representative democracy rests on the capacity of governments to conduct fair and unbiased elections, ensure that individual voting rights are protected, and produce a clear winner in each race. The Florida crisis gave state policymakers a strong incentive to review their own election laws, providing a special opportunity for entrepreneurs to advance policy ideas. As Colorado Secretary of State Donetta Davison remarked: "There isn't an Election Official in the United States that isn't using the Presidential recount in Florida as a tool to evaluate their (sic) own election laws and processes" (Colorado Secretary of State 2000). The National Association of Secretaries of State (2001 ) convened shortly after the 2000 election; it created an election reform task force and was the first organized group to make policy recom- mendations after the crisis. Thus, the 2000 election offers a rare opportunity to examine systematically the effects of appointed or elected leaders on policy adoption in response to a crisis.

Our study also contributes to, and draws insights from, a growing body of research on election administration and reform. The 2000 presidential election inspired numerous national- and state-level commissions to col- lect data on election policy and practices in order to recommend reforms.2 These commission reports were accompanied by academic studies on various aspects of election administration and reform. In addition to cataloguing

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 303

the various problems with American election systems (Caltech/MIT Vot- ing Technology Project 2001) - specifically the causes and consequences of voided or residual ballots (Brady et al. 2001; Edley et al. 2002; Ansolabehere and Stewart 2005) - political scientists have also studied the effects of the "butterfly ballot"3 on voting errors in Palm Beach County, Florida (Wand et al. 2001), the relationship between demographic and socioeconomic fac- tors and the type of voting equipment voters use (Knack and Kropf 2002, 2003; Alvarez, Sinclair, and Wilson 2003; Tomz and Van Houweling 2003), the inconsistencies in ballot designs (Niemi and Herrnson 2003), voters' perceptions of election administration (Bullock, Hood, and Clark 2005), and the challenges and prospects of internet voting (Alvarez and Hall 2004). Thus, the Florida crisis ended a long hiatus, causing political scientists to rediscover the importance of studying election administration (Niemi and Herrnson 2003).

Most scholarly findings about legislative efforts to reform election systems and procedures after the 2000 Florida crisis have been based on case studies of various states (Palazzolo and Ceaser 2005). For example, we know that entrepreneurial leadership by Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox (Strahan and Gunning 2005) and Maryland Secretary of State John Willis (Gimpel and Dyck 2005) facilitated major election reforms in their states. Yet, elected or appointed leaders were less successful in other states. For instance, Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell failed to convince legislators in his state to pass major reforms (Election Reform Information Project 2002). Case studies have provided detailed accounts of how specific leaders have advanced election reform, but we undertake a more systematic investigation of the general effects of leaders on policy adoption in response to this crisis.

MEASURING ELECTION REFORM IN THE STATES

A critical step in our more general analysis is to develop a valid and reliable dependent variable to measure the extent of election reform in the 50 states. Most recent studies of policy innovation have used a simple dummy vari- able to assess passage or non-passage of a discrete reform in a given year as the dependent variable in an event history analysis (Berry and Berry 1990; Mooney and Lee 1995; Mintrom 1997). Conversely, Berry and Berry (1999, 189) suggest that policy innovation studies should "involve more complex dependent variables than the probability that an individual policy will be adopted." To this end, we created a comprehensive index of state election reforms adopted by the states after the 2000 election.

Using legislative tracking data from the National Conference of State

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304 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

Legislatures (NCSL), our index measures the number and types of reforms passed by the states in the two years immediately following the 2000 election crisis, 2001 and 2002. The NCSL defines 13 categories of electoral reform issues and identifies which states passed legislation in each category for each year. The categories used are new voting equipment, voting equipment standards and procedures, ban on punch cards, new or improved central registration database, improved registration list maintenance and purging procedures, voter intent, recount procedures, absentee voting procedures, provisional ballots, poll- workers, polling place and voting machine accessibil- ity for elderly and disabled voters, improved voter education, and legislative task forces, study commissions or interim committees on election reform.4 We used 12 of these 13 categories in our index, leaving out the category of interim committees on election reform since it is too closely associated with one of the independent variables in our model. We also added four other policy categories to our index to assess whether state legislatures appropriated money for improvements in each of the following areas: voting equipment, registration systems, polling place and poll- worker training, and voter educa- tion.5 Thus, we assess whether each state adopted electoral reforms in each of 16 categories.

We also took steps to weight and standardize our election reform index to improve validity and comparability. Since not all of these reforms were equally innovative, we weighted each of the categories by the inverse of the probability that any state passed a law within that category during the study period.6 Then we added the weighted number of election reform categories in which each state passed a law to obtain an aggregate reform score for each state. To standardize these aggregate scores to account for the states that had laws prior to the 2000 election covering one or more of three reform cat- egories (centralized registration databases, ban on punch card ballots, and provisional balloting), we divided the aggregate score by the total number of categories - ranging from 13 to 16 - in which a state could reasonably have passed a reform measure.7

The Appendix (see Table A1 ) lists these weighted and standardized elec- tion reform index scores for all 50 states. Although several states are at the high end of the distribution, Florida is the only one that is more than three standard deviations from the mean. This result is not surprising, given that Florida was at the epicenter of the 2000 election crisis and the abysmal state of its election laws at that time (MacManus 2005). 8 But more generally, these index scores reflect closely the more detailed qualitative reports that summarized legislative activity on election reform in the states during this period (Election Reform Information Project 2001, 2002).

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 305

EXPLAINING ELECTION REFORM AS POLICY INNOVATION

Models used to explain policy innovation can be classified into three broad categories: internal determinants models, which emphasize the impact of various social, political, and economic factors internal to a state; diffusion models, which emphasize the effect of other states' actions on policy adop- tions; and models that consider the effects of both internal determinants and diffusion (Berry and Berry 1999). Our model of state election law reform primarily emphasizes internal determinants. The greatest external force driv- ing election reform in the states during the study period was the 2000 election crisis. Florida obviously bore the brunt of this shock, but policymakers and voters in every other state witnessed the events that unfolded in Florida. While we would certainly expect Florida to engage in major election law reform, we see no reason why states physically close to Florida would have an increased incentive to pass reforms. Thus, given the national visibility of and close attention paid to the Florida crisis, we do not hypothesize the regional diffusion process found with issues such as tax policy or state lottery adoptions to be present here (Berry and Berry 1990, 1992). Therefore, while blending internal and external forces and applying time-series analysis may be appropriate for modeling much policy adoption (Berry and Berry 1999), for issues involving an external force felt generally across the states, cross- sectional models emphasizing internal determinants are most appropriate.

Since our primary objective is to test the effects of the leadership of state policymakers on reform, we created a leadership index that measures the reform proposals advanced by the three most likely sources of official lead- ership on election reform: a state's chief elections officer (CEO), governor, and legislative leaders with jurisdiction over election law. We collected data by conducting a comprehensive search of news articles on the Lexis/Nexis database in all 50 states and conducting content analysis on these articles.9 We counted the number of instances in which any of the leaders proposed major election reform, minor changes in election law, or no changes at all.10 For each state, we searched for the CEO's name in order to identify his or her proposals for reforming the election system, assigning 1 for major proposals, .5 for minor proposals, and 0 if there was no evidence of any proposal. We applied the same technique for the governor, except that we searched for the governor's name plus the words "election" and "reform." To gather articles about state legislative leadership, we searched on several key terms: Speaker, Senate leader, House leader, committee chairman, election, and reform. We coded the governors' and leaders' reform proposals just as we did those of

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306 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

the CEO. To calculate an overall elected or appointed leadership index for each state, we simply totaled the scores on these three components.11

Such a measurement approach could have identified one or more of these three sources of leadership, but the data in the Appendix (see Table A2) indicate that the primary source of election reform leadership was the CEO in most states. The press reported at least some leadership efforts by the CEO in 41 states, compared with reports of governor leadership in 13 states and legislative leadership in 26 states. In 10 states, the CEO was the only reported source of elected or appointed official leadership on election reform, compared with six states where either the governor or a legislative leader reportedly took a leadership role and the CEO did not. Over half of the total aggregate score for our overall leadership index comes from observa- tions of leadership by the CEO. Thus, although our leadership index assessed the leadership of three types of elected or appointed officials, the CEO was the primary source of leadership on election reform in the states during the study period.

Control Variables

To get unbiased estimates of the effects of leadership on election law reform, we controlled for other factors that might have affected the level of reform adopted by the states in the study period. Consistent with previous studies, our model includes a combination of relevant political, cultural, fiscal, and demographic conditions that typically affect policy adoption (Savage 1985) along with variables that relate specifically to election law reform (Berry and Berry 1999).

Political parties and politicians should be especially concerned with elec- tion reform because such alterations may affect who becomes elected and which party controls government offices (Greco 2002). Thus, our model includes measures of political competitiveness, party control, and the degree of risk individual politicians assume in adopting reforms. First, we include a folded Ranney index of party competitiveness (Bibby and Holbrook 2004). We hypothesize that if parties and elected officials are risk averse and reform increases electoral uncertainty, political competitiveness should be inversely related to the degree of electoral reform (Greco 2002).

Many studies of state policymaking have tested whether party control influenced policy adoption, with mixed results (Winters 1976; Hansen 1983; Berry and Berry 1992; Morehouse 1996). In their study of policy gridlock in the states, Bowling and Ferguson (2001) found that the effect of divided government on the odds of bill passage in the states differs depending on the specific configuration of divided government. They found that the presence

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 30 7

of compound divided government - in which "control of the two chambers of the legislature is split between the two parties" ( 1 89) - is negatively associ- ated with bill passage, whereas simple divided government - in which "the party in opposition to the governor controls both chambers of the legislature" ( 1 89) - "may actually improve the chances of a bill's success" ( 1 94) . To control for this contingent effect of divided government, we use two dummy variables in our model: one where states with simple divided government are coded 1 and all others are coded 0, and another where states with compound divided government are coded 1 and all others are coded 0. In this scheme, states with unified government are the suppressed category. In light of the mixed findings in the literature regarding divided government, we hypothesize only that a relationship exists between the presence of divided government and the degree of election reform; we remain agnostic as to its direction.

If political risk affects the degree to which policymakers are willing to engage in election reform (Greco 2002), states with term limits should be more likely to enact such reform (Kousser 2005, 195). We include an ordinal variable in our model to control for the relative effects of term limits, and we expect term limits to be positively correlated with election reform.12

A state's political culture and ideology may also affect its policy adoption (Nice 1992; Balla 2001 ). King (1994) found that states with traditionalistic cul- tures (Elazar 1984) - where elites dominate the process and are more inclined to discourage voter participation - had more restrictive registration rules than moralistic states that value democratic governance and citizen participation. Following this logic, states with a moralistic culture should be more likely to adopt election reforms than those with either traditionalistic or individualistic cultures. We use a dummy variable to test this hypothesis, coding moralistic states as 1 and traditionalistic and individualistic states as 0.

A state's citizens' ideology on the liberal/conservative continuum may affect its adoption of election law reform insofar as it reflects a state's ten- dency to favor an active role for government in the administration of elec- tions. We use Norrander's (2001 ) index of state citizen ideology in our model, which codes more conservative states higher than less conservative states.13 Our expectations of the effect of political ideology are mixed. On one hand, if liberals are more likely to attribute problems in the election system to flaws in government administration and conservatives are more likely to assign responsibility to individual voters (McCaffery, Crigler, and Just 2004), policymakers in more liberal states may enact more reforms. On the other hand, precisely because conservative states will have been less likely than liberal states to have created administrative structures and policies to assist voters, conservative states might have had more antiquated election systems

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308 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

prior to the 2000 election. If so, conservatism may be positively related to the extent of election reform because of conservative states' greater need for reform after 2000. Consequently, while we have no directional hypothesis about the effect of ideology on reform, we include it as a control variable.

A state's fiscal situation may also affect the volume of election law reform it adopts. After years of full coffers, many states experienced revenue short- ages in 2001 and 2002, and costly election reforms had to compete with other spending priorities (National Conference of State Legislatures 2001b). Fiscal constraints may have prohibited upgrades in registration systems, investments in new machinery, and funds for voter education or poll-worker training, even if policymakers believed that these were worthy improvements. Thus, we expect that states with greater fiscal resources would have been more likely to adopt the reforms in our index that required expenditures. We measure a state's fiscal status as the ratio of its revenues to its expenditures (Berry and Berry 1990, 1992). 14

Interest groups also affect policy adoption (Bowling and Ferguson 2001; Gray and Lowery 1995). Several non-economic interest groups lobbied for state election reforms during the study period, including civil rights groups, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters (Palazzolo and Ceaser 2005). The degree to which these groups lobbied in all 50 states is difficult to measure precisely, but we use the information from a survey of the lob- bying activities of state chapters of the League of Women Voters (LWV) as a surrogate measure of reform group lobbying.15 We constructed a dummy variable, coded 1 where a state or local LWV chapter lobbied or testified about election reform before the legislature, secretary of state, or governor, or participated in an official capacity on a statewide electoral commission, and 0 otherwise.

Studies of policy adoption also typically control for a "set of variables that are ad hoc from the point of view of innovation theory but critical given the character of politics surrounding the issue area in question" (Berry and Berry 1999, 180). We control for three such variables: the threat of a close election, the capacity of election administration prior to 2000, and legislative recommendations by a state commission. Each of these factors relates to the aftershocks of the 2000 election, as policymakers in all states were forced to consider whether the problems that occurred in Florida could happen in their states.16

The threat of a close election could inspire policymakers to reform their election laws. After all, it was a close election that triggered the investigation into voting irregularities in Florida. Had it not been for the close election in Florida, problems with the electoral system might well have been overlooked

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 309

and election law reform would never have reached the political agenda during the study period. Policymakers in other states with close presidential elec- tions might have been more likely to make election reform a priority, whereas policymakers in states without the threat of a close election might not have sensed any urgency to respond as quickly or as comprehensively. Thus, we expect that the closer the margin of victory for the winning presidential candidate in a state in the 2000 election, the greater the degree of election reform after 2000.

The magnitude of a crisis resulting from a close election depends entirely on a state's capacity to conduct an election able to sustain close scrutiny. The 2000 Florida election debacle resulted from the combination of a close election and deficient state election laws. No single measure can capture all of the shortcomings of a state's election system, but the proportion of uncounted ballots in an election, known as the residual vote rate, is a good indicator of such deficiencies (Indiana Bipartisan Task Force on Election

Integrity 2001, 28-9; Caltech/MIT 2001; Edley et al. 2002). We expect that the higher a state's residual vote rate was in the 2000 election, the greater the degree of reform during the study period. Additionally, to assess the multiplicative effect of having both a close election and deficient election administration, we include in our model an interaction between these two variables.

Many states formed commissions or task forces to study their election laws and procedures and make recommendations to address deficiencies. While such ad hoc groups may be established for a variety of reasons (Camp- bell 1998; Becker 2005), these state election reform commissions were created mainly to solicit information about the status of electoral systems.17 These commissions tended to constitute a policy community (Kingdon 2003, 1 17- 30) of legislators, election administrators, lobbyists, and informed citizens who evaluated the election problems, discussed ideas, and recommended improvements in the election system. To estimate the effect of a commission on reform in a state, we created a continuous variable capturing the number of reform commission recommendations to the legislature during the 2001 and 2002 legislative sessions. We expect the number of such recommenda- tions to have positively affected the degree of election reform.

RESULTS

We used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to estimate the effects of the variables outlined above on the level of election reform enacted by states in the wake of the 2000 election. The dependent variable is the

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310 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

weighted count of election reforms adopted each year, as described above.18 The results of this analysis are presented in Table l.19

These results provide strong support for our primary hypothesis that formal leaders played a central role in driving election administration reform in the states in the wake of the 2000 election. The leadership index is a positive and statistically significant predictor of the degree of reform enacted by a state. Holding the other variables in the model constant, a one-unit increase in the leadership index (which is equivalent to the proposal of another major

Table 1. Impacts on Election Reform in the States, 2001-02

Leadership index 0.959* (0.370)

Competitiveness (folded Ranney index) -1.474 (5.169)

Simple divided government -0.617 (0.713)

Compound divided government 0.627 (0.845)

Term limits 0.892* (0.409)

Moralistic political culture 1.046* (0.571)

Conservative state ideology 3.079* (1.210)

Proportion of state revenues to expenditures -0.033 (0.022)

Reform group mobilization (LWV) -0.820 (0.531)

Winner's margin in 2000 presidential election 0.092 (0.055)

Residual vote rate in 2000 election -0.862 (0.724)

Interaction of 2000 margin (recoded) and residual vote rate 0.047* (0.026)

Number of commission recommendations 0.084* (0.049)

Constant -7.684 (6.110)

F 2.12* (13,34) Adjusted R2 .236 N 48 Note: Numbers in cells are OLS regression coefficients (standard errors in parentheses). The dependent variable is the weighted count of reforms enacted (N=48; mean=2.52; std. dev.= 1.77; min=0; max=7.76). See text for a discussion of the calculation of the dependent variable. Florida and Nebraska excluded from analysis. * p<0.05. One-tailed test employed for variables associated with directional hypotheses; two- tailed test employed otherwise.

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 311

reform by an entrepreneurial leader) is associated with an increase of .96 on the weighted reform index. States whose leaders engaged in no such entre- preneurial activities had a mean predicted value on the weighted count of 1.06, as compared with a mean predicted weighted count of 2.77 for states in which we observed entrepreneurial leadership activity.

Similarly, as hypothesized, the greater the number of recommendations for specific legislative action included in commission reports, the greater the degree of election reform eventually enacted, although the impact of such recommendations appears to have been limited. Each additional recommen- dation (the variable ranges from 0 to 22) was associated with an increase of just .083 on the weighted reform index, controlling for other factors.

Factors related to the overall political context in a state also emerge as significant predictors of its election reform. The more conservative a state, the more reforms it adopted, controlling for other factors. A one standard deviation increase around the mean of the ideology variable (from 3.42 to 3.65) is estimated to increase the weighted index by 33 percent. Similarly, moralistic states averaged a significantly greater amount of reforms than traditionalistic or individualistic states. A moralistic state was associated with a 1.05-point increase in the weighted index, controlling for other factors.

Another political variable that affected reform was the presence of legisla- tive term limits. As expected, term-limit states engaged in more reform than states without such limits. Consistent with arguments made by Greco (2002) and Kousser (2005), states in which legislators had shorter expected career spans appear to have been more willing to enact reforms that potentially increase electoral uncertainty than those with longer expected career spans and thus greater potential for longer legislative careers. A one-unit increase in the term limits variable (equivalent to the move from no limits to a 12-year limit) was estimated to increase the weighted reform index by .89.

While neither the residual vote rate nor the presence of a closely con- tested election is estimated to have a statistically significant direct impact on election reform, the interaction of the two does produce such an impact.20 Furthermore, the impact of the interaction of these two factors appears to have been quite large in the most competitive states. At a five-point margin of victory for the winning presidential candidate, an increase in the residual vote rate from one to three points was estimated to have increased the weighted reform index by 3.54 units - an increase equal to almost half of the variable's observed range. But at a 15-point election margin (the mean in 2000 among the 48 states included in the analysis), the same increase was estimated to lead to just a 2.59-point increase in the dependent variable. This result is consistent with our argument that the combination of both conditions - a

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312 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

close race and evidence of electoral problems - forced states to re-evaluate their election laws more so than the presence of either condition alone.

Finally, none of the remaining variables - competitiveness, divided gov- ernment (simple or compound), state fiscal health, group activity, residual vote rate, or the winning presidential candidate's margin of victory in the state in 2000 - emerge as a statistically significant predictor of reform.

CONCLUSION

Policy windows borne of crisis can force elected or appointed leaders to respond to the problems associated with that crisis. In fact, political lead- ers with formal jurisdiction over the policy domain related to that crisis have a special opportunity to be effective entrepreneurs. Yet, faced with this responsibility to act, some leaders behave as policy entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major policy changes, but others do not. When a cri- sis calls on formally appointed or elected leaders to respond, the propensity of individuals in those positions to act as entrepreneurs affects policy adoption. Crisis leadership involves more than a functional response to a set of condi- tions; it also depends on the policy goals and activities of individual leaders. Thus, our findings complement those of other studies that show how elite actors and policy entrepreneurs can influence policy adoption under certain conditions (Mintrom 1997; Mintrom and Vergari 1998; Balla 2001).

While the policy literature has traditionally emphasized the difficult, incremental nature of policy change (Lindblom 1959, 1979), scholars have also recognized that crises, such as the Florida election debacle of 2000, may generate periods of opportunity during which the political environment may be more easily changed or altered (Greenstein 1968; Kingdon 2003). Recent research has challenged this assertion, suggesting instead that "the opportuni- ties for reform in the wake of crisis are smaller than often thought" and "the requisites of crisis leadership are at odds with the requirements of effective reform" (Boin and 't Hart 2003, 545). Our findings corroborate the more traditional understanding of the opportunities afforded political leaders in times of crisis. While crisis moments may be brief, they are undoubtedly recurring; political scientists will benefit from bringing their analytical tools to bear on these moments if they wish to understand fully the role political leaders play in policy change.

Additionally, this study contributes to scholarship on policy innova- tion by creating a unique measure of policy adoption for an issue that has generated great interest among political scientists in recent years: election reform. In contrast with settling for testing policymaking hypotheses with the probability of adopting a single policy, our index offers a more nuanced

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 313

measure of election reform. Similar indices might work well for assessing the effects on policy adoption regarding other issues. Furthermore, our findings should inform subsequent research on election law reform, an evolving and multi-dimensional policy issue with important implications for democracy. State responses to the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, the controversy over provisional ballots in Ohio after the 2004 election, ongoing partisan differences over voter identification, and questions about electronic methods of voting suggest that the issue of election administration reform will likely remain on the agendas of state legislatures for years to come. Scholars would do well to account for the effects of leaders on subsequent attempts to reform election law or other policy issues, especially when a crisis compels leaders to act.

APPENDIX

Table Al. Weighted Index of State Election Reform, 2001-02

State Index Score State Index Score Florida 9.70 West Virginia 2.26 Indiana 7.76 Wyoming 2.24 Georgia 7.08 Arkansas 2.14 South Dakota 5.12 Vermont 2.02 Maryland 4.74 Arizona 2.00 North Carolina 4.50 Idaho 1.94 Virginia 4.44 Ohio 1.84 Missouri 4.28 Tennessee 1.82 Michigan 4.26 Montana 1.74 Texas 4.18 Oklahoma 1.68 Utah 4.10 Nebraska 1.64 Colorado 4.04 Maine 1.60 California 3.98 Louisiana 1.50 Kentucky 3.50 Wisconsin 1.38 New Mexico 3.34 Alaska 1.06 Nevada 3.12 North Dakota 0.96 New Jersey 3.06 South Carolina 0.86 Iowa 3.02 Alabama 0.50 Rhode Island 3.00 New York 0.36 Kansas 2.72 Connecticut 0.00 Mississippi 2.72 Delaware 0.00 Pennsylvania 2.64 Hawaii 0.00 Minnesota 2.52 Illinois 0.00 Washington 2.48 Massachusetts 0.00 Oregon 2.32 New Hampshire 0.00 Note : Index scores (N=50; mean= 2.64; std. dev. = 2.01) were compiled by aggregating weighed values of 16 categories of election reform derived from the National Conference of State Legislatures' election reform data- base (http://www.ncsl.org/programs/legman/elect/elections.cfm). See the text for details on how the index was calculated.

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Table A2. Index of Election Reform Leadership by Elected or Appointed State Officials, 2001-02

Overall Chief Election Legislative Leadership

State Officers (CEOs) Governors Leaders Index Alabama 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 Alaska 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Arizona 1.0 -1.0 0.0 0.5 Arkansas 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 California 1.0 0.0 1.0 2.0 Colorado 0.5 0.0 1.0 1.5 Connecticut 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.5 Delaware 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Florida 1.0 1.0 1.0 3.0 Georgia 1.0 0.5 0.0 1.5 Hawaii 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Idaho 0.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 Illinois 0.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 Indiana 1.0 1.0 0.0 2.0 Iowa 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 Kansas 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 Kentucky 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Louisiana 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 Maine 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 Maryland 1.0 1.0 1.0 3.0 Massachusetts 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.5 Michigan 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 Minnesota 0.5 0.0 1.0 1.5 Mississippi 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 Missouri 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 Montana 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 Nebraska 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 Nevada 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 New Hampshire 0.5 -1.0 0.5 0.0 New Jersey 1.0 1.0 1.0 3.0 New Mexico 0.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 New York 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.5 North Carolina 0.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 North Dakota 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Ohio 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.5 Oklahoma 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 Oregon 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.5 Pennsylvania 1.0 1.0 0.5 2.5 Rhode Island 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 South Carolina 0.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 South Dakota 0.5 0.0 0.0 0.5 Tennessee 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.5 Texas 0.5 0.5 0.5 1.5 Utah 0.5 0.0 1.0 1.5 Vermont 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Virginia 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 Washington 0.5 0.5 0.0 1.0 West Virginia 0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 Wisconsin 0.0 1.0 0.5 1.5 Wyoming 0.0 0.0 0.5 0.5 Totals 28.5 6.5 18.0 54.0 Note: Index scores were derived from a comprehensive search of the Lexis/Nexis media database and the content analysis of the resulting state news reports of leadership proposals for election reform, 2001-02. See the text for details on coding rules for the index.

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 315

ENDNOTES

We thank Laura Liefer for her research assistance, Chris Cooper, Ben Bishin, David Kim- ball, Martha Kropf, Randall Strahan, Chris Zorn, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Data for this study are located at http://www.ku.edu/pri/SPPQ/jour- nal_datasets.shtml.

1. Entrepreneurs can be in either formal or informal positions, such as lobbyists, policy analysts, bureaucrats, or businesspeople (Kingdon 2003, 179-80). Mintrom (1997) and Mintrom and Vergari ( 1998) found entrepreneurs in school choice reform in a mixture of formally elected positions (e.g., governors and state legislators) and informal settings (e.g., think tanks, businesses, and grassroots organizations). On the other hand, Weissert (1991, 262) found that "policy opportunists" in legislative bodies tended not to hold formal leadership positions.

2. The most prominent of these studies include Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project 2001, National Commission on Federal Election Reform 2001, and the National Confer- ence of State Legislatures 2001a.

3. The "butterfly ballot" is a ballot design for punch card machines on which candidate names are on opposite sides and a punch hole is in the center between them (Barnes 2003, 121).

4. The NCSL's categorization of those reforms suits both the theoretical and empiri- cal aims of this study, reflecting a comprehensive set of the issues dealing with election administration. (We do not include items associated with campaign finance or redisrict- ing, since these issues are not related to election administration.) The items tracked by the NCSL reflect the range of policy ideas that emerged from various commissions in the wake of the 2000 election. Although commissioners from such bodies as the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, the Election Center, the National Association of Counties, and the Constitution Project disagreed over the proper role of the federal government in the election system, the commission reports indicate a broad consensus about the issues policymakers needed to consider (Election Reform Information Project 2001). The NCSL's categories cover those issues.

5. The NCSL categories do not distinguish between states that spent money on those reforms and those that did not. But if we did not include appropriations measures in our index, states that devoted money to reform (which is certainly an indication of a greater commitment to reform) would score the same as those that did not do so, at least under the categories of new voting equipment, registration, poll-workers, and improved voter education. Ideally, in addition to identifying the presence of spending in these categories, we would also assess the level of spending for each reform category in each state. But specific spending formulas and allocations contained various special contingencies and were spread over different lengths of time, so we could not feasibly incorporate specific spending levels into our reform index.

6. For instance, only seven states passed legislation dealing with voting equipment standards and procedures, whereas 33 states passed measures dealing with absentee vot- ing. We interpret this difference as an indication that passing voting equipment standards was more difficult than passing a bill dealing with absentee voting and, thus, that the latter reflects greater innovativeness and reform effort. The weights were calculated by subtracting the number of states that passed a bill in the category from 50 (the total num- ber of states) and determining the percentage of those that did not pass such a reform.

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31 6 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

For example, since seven states passed bills dealing with voting equipment standards and procedures, 86 percent of states did not pass a bill in this category. Each state that passed a bill in this category was then given a score of .86, and those that did not pass such legislation were given a score of 0.

7. For instance, Alabama had already banned punch cards, causing its reform score to be based on the total weighted number of categories divided by 15; conversely, because Colorado had none of these three policies in place prior to 2000, its aggregate score was divided by 16.

8. As we discuss below, because of Florida's outlier status, both substantively and statistically, we remove it from our statistical analysis.

9. The activities of executives (Rosenthal 1990; Morehouse 1996) and legislative leaders (Jewell and Wicker 1994) certainly involve more than we are able to measure with this index. Furthermore, content analysis may produce inconsistent results and these news articles may miss unreported acts of leadership. Nevertheless, a leader's ability to attract media attention is an important aspect of policy entrepreneurship, and a leader's policy recommendations are a good approximation of that leader's view of reform needs. Based on our experience with these searches, we think the actions of the CEO and governor are readily detected through the news, while actions by legislative leaders may have gone unreported in some cases. Consequently, if our index is in error, it is from underestimat- ing legislative leadership actions that were not reported in the media.

10. We distinguish between major and minor reform proposals on expectations from various studies of election reform by five national commissions. These commissions agreed that election systems in all states should meet certain minimum requirements that involved no additional commitment of financial resources (Election Reform Information Project 2001). These minimum requirements included statewide recount rules, voter intent provisions, clear and consistent rules for absentee ballots, and provisional balloting. We considered proposals to adopt one or more of these minimum requirements to be a minor reform proposal. These commissions also agreed that states should have statewide registration databases, although for many states this would require an infusion of new funds and constitute a major reform. Thus, we considered major reform proposals to include either new voting equipment or a statewide registration database that required state funding and upgrades in either poll-worker training or voter education.

11. We assigned a negative value to governors in a few states where he or she vetoed legislation, thus neutralizing any attempts of leadership by the CEO or legislative leaders.

12. We constructed this ordinal-level term limits variable as follows: states with no limits were scored 0; for states with term limits, we computed a ratio so that the states with the shortest limits had the highest score. In a few states, the term limit length in the House differs from that of the Senate, in which case we used the higher limit, thinking that the incentive structure depended on those with the greater risk of change in election law. Based on this assumption, the shortest limit during the period of study was eight years (e.g., Arkansas, California, and Colorado), and the longest limit was 12 years (e.g., Louisiana, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Wyoming). As a result, for each state we made twelve the denominator and the state's limit the numerator, and then we inverted this fraction. Thus, a state with an 8-year limit was scored as 1.5 (8/12=2/3, inverted=1.5), and a state with a 12-year limit was scored 1.

13. We use Norrander's (2001 ) measure of state ideology, although several are available. For example, Erikson, Wright, and Mclver's (1993) state ideology measure is widely used

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FALL 2006 / STATE POLITICS AND POLICY QUARTERLY 317

in studies of state politics, but it excludes three states (Alabama, Hawaii, and Nevada) and is comprised of polling data from 1976 to 1988, well before our study period. Gray (2004) devised a measure of policy liberalism based on legislation passed in several policy areas, but Norrander's measure, based on National Election Study data from 1988 to 1992, has the advantage of being comprehensive and based directly on public opinion. Notwithstanding, these three ideology measures are highly correlated with each other and the substantive conclusions we draw from our analysis are not fundamentally different regardless of which is used.

14. Since a state's fiscal situation could have changed during the two legislative sessions in the study period, measuring a state's fiscal situation for our cross-sectional analysis posed a challenge. Indeed, during the study period, the fiscal situation grew worse in almost all states (National Conference of State Legislatures 2002). But given the reasonably short study period (two years) and the fact that by the end of 200 1 virtually all states were projecting revenue shortages for the coming year, the most reliable measure of a state's fiscal condition is the proportion of revenues to expenditures for fiscal year 2001.

15. "Election Administration Reform, Leagues in Action," http://www.lwv.org/join/ election/ear_leagues-in-action.html (March 9, 2005).

16. This generalization is based on interviews with various state officials and observers, newspaper reports, press releases announcing the formation of state-level commissions, and reports of state commissions. Although election reform efforts varied in intensity from state to state, they remained an issue in every state during the study period.

17. We draw this conclusion from public remarks by state executives, statements of objectives contained within the commission reports, and legislative language in the bills forming commissions, all of which suggest that the primary goal of these commissions was to create a platform for analysis and deliberation. We have no clear explanation for why some states formed commissions and others did not, and modeling commission creation is beyond the scope of this article. Given the fact that 15 state commissions made recommendations and the variety of states that established them, the decision to form a commission appears to have been independent of other factors that might have affected election reform.

18. A Shapiro-Francia W' test for normality indicates that we cannot reject the null that the dependent variable is normally distributed (W' = 0.967; p=.172). However, given that the (unweighted) number of laws passed might have been generated through a Poisson process, we also estimated our model using a Poisson regression. The results of the Poisson regression were substantively identical to those generated by OLS. We also estimated the model with a zero-skew, log-transformed reform index. Again, the results were substantively identical to those reported here, yielding only small differences in the degrees of statistical confidence associated with the estimated effects of two of our control variables.

19. Diagnostics revealed that the Florida case has undue leverage in this model and dataset. Because of its status as an outlier (falling more than three standard deviations above the mean of the reform index) and its disproportionate influence on our results, we excluded Florida from the reported analysis. For a thorough discussion of the forces driving election administration reform in Florida in the wake of the 2000 election, see MacManus 2005. We also excluded Nebraska from our analysis because the state's non- partisan, unicameral legislature makes it a missing case on the compound divided gov- ernment indicator.

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31 8 PALAZZOLO AND MOSCARDELLI

20. To ensure that the expected direction of the relationship would be the same for both margin of victory and residual vote, we recoded the margin of victory variable before computing the interaction term, so that higher values were associated with closer races.

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