Thursday, December 8th, 2016

Time	Event
9:00a	Evaluating voter experience While many voters reported long lines at polling locations around the country during the 2012 presidential election, this year the overall amount of time people had to wait to vote improved significantly, according to a new survey examining voter experience during the 2016 presidential election. Charles Stewart III, the Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT, today presented the preliminary findings of the Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), during a conference hosted by the Pew Charitable Trusts on the evolution of voting administration since the 2012 election. Stewart found that in a number of states where voters experienced some of the longest waiting times in the 2012 presidential election — including South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland — there was notable improvement in 2016. In Florida, Stewart found “tremendous improvement in terms of how long people reported that they waited to vote.” The findings show that “all the effort over the last four years that was invested in dealing with problems President Obama identified with lines, those efforts appear to have paid off,” Stewart says. However, Stewart cautions that while the overall picture shows a trend in the right direction, voter experiences still vary between states, and some states still have a ways to go before wait times are within acceptable limits. For instance, in about half the states over 10 percent of voters waited more than 30 minutes to vote in 2016, which exceeds the benchmark established by the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration. Other states, such as North Carolina, saw significant improvement on Election Day that was not matched in early voting. “The value of the SPAE is that it shines a spotlight on the specific places in America where further improvement is needed, while also identifying jurisdictions that may have a lesson to teach others,” Stewart explains. The SPAE was conducted as part of the Pew Charitable Trusts Elections Performance Index, which is aimed at providing a comprehensive assessment of election administration across the nation. The index comprises data compiled on election administration policy and performance during the 2008, 2012, and 2014 elections, and will soon include information from the 2016 election. For the 2016 SPAE, Stewart analyzed data gathered by YouGov, an Internet polling operation, starting the day after Election Day. Survey participants, who hailed from every state in the nation, were posed questions about critical factors impacting whether Americans are able to vote successfully. In particular, voters were asked if they experienced difficulties with finding their polling location, checking in or registering, sending in mail and absentee ballots, or operating voting machines. The nationwide survey was created in the wake of the 2000 election, which left Americans unsure of the outcome of the presidential race and uncovered issues with several critical voting factors, including how ballots are marked and the accuracy of voter registration lists. Stewart developed the survey in an effort to better understand “the voters’ perspective on how they perceive the act of voting. It is important to figure out whether certain problems are widespread and common, or focused in particular states,” he says. The first survey was conducted in 2008, and it was repeated during the 2012, 2014, and 2016 elections to get an accurate look at the “general satisfaction with each of the critical links in the voting chain,” Stewart explains. Early voting Stewart’s analysis shows the number of people voting ahead of Election Day, either through mail or absentee ballots or early voting opportunities, has continued to increase since the 2012 election, with almost half of the electorate voting beforehand. While an increasing number of Americans are voting prior to Election Day, according to Stewart, researchers have a less complete understanding of best practices for early voting administration. For example, while people waited for a shorter time overall to vote on Election Day in 2016, the survey’s findings show people who vote early wait longer than those who vote on Election Day. Research could be conducted into the best hours and locations for early voting locations, and ways to make mail and absentee ballots more secure and less error prone, Stewart notes. Furthermore, the results show that the overall discrepancy in voting experience between black and white Americans continues. On a national level the disparity between waiting times for black and white voters improved among Election Day voters during the 2016 election, but the gap between waiting times for black and white Americans voting early has not improved significantly since the 2012 election, according to the survey. In an effort to examine which constituents took advantage of early voting opportunities, survey participants were asked how early voting fit into their daily activities. Stewart found that many people who participated in early voting did not have work or school obligations on the day they voted, and that many early voters identified themselves as retired, stay-at-home parents, or unemployed. These findings point to an issue with how early voting is implemented in many jurisdictions, Stewart explains. “If you are trying to design early voting in a way that’s convenient for people, then these findings tell you that election administrators will want to take into account the different schedules of early voters compared to Election Day voters,” he says. Voter confidence The survey also examined voter confidence following the 2016 presidential election among the different political parties. While Democrats became less confident that their vote was counted as cast, Republicans became more confident. While this finding is historically in line with how voters from the winning and losing political parties tend to feel about the integrity of the election results, Stewart believes that President-elect Donald Trump’s attack on the legitimacy of the election may, ironically enough, have reduced the drop in Democrats’ confidence in the integrity of the election outcome. Additionally, Stewart notes that a majority of voters tended to be more confident about the integrity of their individual vote and the votes counted in their locality than they were about election reporting on the state and national levels. Going forward, Stewart is interested in seeing more state and local election officials conduct postelection surveys evaluating the voter experience. Stewart explains that replicating his nationwide survey at a local level could provide “opportunities for states and localities to build off of our model and conduct their own surveys. These surveys provide a benchmark at the state level and nationally against which you can judge your jurisdictions’s performance and find out what voters think about their experience and how you can improve.”  (Comment on this)
12:30p	President Reif calls for renewed national commitment to support basic science Writing in The Wall Street Journal, MIT President L. Rafael Reif has called for renewed federal support in basic science research, “for the nation’s long-term security, prosperity, competitiveness and health, and for generations of lasting new jobs.” Noting that President-elect Trump has announced his intention to reinvest in public infrastructure, Reif noted in an op-ed published in Tuesday’s newspaper, “we must also rebuild another kind of infrastructure now eroding — by renewing our national commitment to fundamental science.” For decades, federal research and development (R&D) funding provided the basis for much of the nation’s innovation and economic growth, Reif noted. The development of GPS technology, MRI scanners, and E-commerce, to name just a few examples, all rest on knowledge gleaned through fundamental research. At its height in the 1970s, government funding for basic research represented more than 2 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), according to Reif. Known as R&D intensity, this ratio measures society’s commitment to science, and by 2014, it had dropped to just 0.78 percent of the GDP. Furthermore, “industry hardly touches the earliest form of “R” — fundamental science — although that is where the gains can be transformational,” the op-ed states. The United States has long been the unquestioned global leader in transformative science, but without more federal support for basic research, the country is at risk of falling behind. China is set to overshadow total U.S. government R&D spending within a decade, Reif noted. “We should not be surprised if, within a generation, the talent and the discoveries go to the countries with the wisdom to invest in them,” he wrote. “Any of us who travel to the great Asian transit centers — Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing — know the sinking sensation upon realizing that the airport we just came from in the U.S. is way out of date. For the sake of the nation’s future, we must not allow the invisible infrastructure of our scientific enterprise to suffer the same fate,” he concluded. (Comment on this)
2:00p	Study: Mobile-money services lift Kenyans out of poverty Since 2008, MIT economist Tavneet Suri has studied the financial and social impacts of Kenyan mobile-money services, which allow users to store and exchange monetary values via mobile phone. Her work has shown that these services have helped Kenyans save more money and weather financial storms, among other benefits. Now, Suri is co-author of a new paper showing that mobile-money services have had notable long-term effects on poverty reduction in Kenya — especially among female-headed households — and have inspired a surprising occupation shift among women. Published in today’s issue of Science, the study estimates that, since 2008, access to mobile-money services increased daily per capita consumption levels of 194,000 — or 2 percent — of Kenyan households, lifting them out of extreme poverty (living on less than $1.25 per day). But there’s an interesting gender effect: Female-headed households saw far greater increases in consumption than male-headed households. Moreover, mobile-money services have helped an estimated 185,000 women move from farming to business occupations. “Previously, we’ve shown mobile money helps you with financial resilience. But no one has understood, if you improve resilience, what happens over the longer term. This is the first study that looks at long-term poverty reduction and at gender,” says Suri, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a faculty member in MIT's Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, who co-authored the paper with longtime collaborator William Jack, an economist at Georgetown University. By 2015, more than 270 mobile-money services were operating in 93 countries, with an estimated 411 million accounts. The Kenyan study is important, Suri says, because it shows that mobile-money services aren’t just conveniences but do, in fact, have a positive impact on people’s livelihoods. “[That] can be useful for regulators trying to figure out if they want to allow it in their country, or whether someone wants to start a service in their country as an entrepreneur,” Suri says. Measuring “agent density” The study looks at M-PESA, the country’s most popular service, which launched in 2007 and has more than 25 million Kenyan users. There are more than 120,000 M-PESA agents scattered around the country, who handle deposits and withdrawals.  In 2010, Suri and Jack co-authored a study that showed M-PESA helped users borrow, save, and pay for services more easily. A 2012 study by the pair showed M-PESA helped Kenyans manage financial uncertainties caused by crop failures, droughts, or health issues. The idea is the M-PESA users can use a wider network of support, and receive payments more quickly, during dire financial times. This new paper is “the grand finale” of the researchers’ long-term examination of the impact of M-PESA in Kenya, Suri says. For this study, the researchers compiled surveys of 1,600 households across Kenya over the years, looking at, among other things, average daily per capita consumption — meaning total money spent by the individual and household — and occupational choices.   Instead of looking at the number of individuals using M-PESA, the researchers measured the rise in the number of service agents within 1 kilometer around each household — or “agent density” — during early rollout of the mobile-money services. They then compared the consumption and occupation, and other outcomes, of households that saw relatively large increases of agent density, with those that saw no increases or much smaller ones, over the years. Not surprisingly, households where agent density increased by five agents — the average in the sample — also saw a 6 percent increase in per capita consumption, enough to push 64 (or roughly 4 percent) of the sampled households above poverty levels. The World Bank defines spending less than $1.25 per day as “extreme poverty,” and spending less than $2 per day as “general poverty.” Mean daily per capita consumption among the sample was $2.50. The impact was even more pronounced among female-headed households. When agent density rose — from zero to six agents over six years — these households saw a daily per capita consumption increase of about 18.5 percent. This level of agent density growth also reduced extreme poverty among female-headed households by 9.2 percent, and reduced households in general poverty by 8.6 percent. Another surprising finding, Suri says, was that increases in agent density caused about 3 percent of women in both female- and male-headed households to take up business or retail occupations over farming. These occupations generally entailed single-person businesses based around producing and selling goods, which is made easier by mobile money, Suri says. “You used to grow vegetables, but now you take your vegetables to the market and sell them, or you open a little food cart or kiosk,” she says. Using extrapolation methods on their data, the researchers estimate that the spread of mobile-money services has helped raise 194,000 Kenyan households out of extreme poverty, and induced 185,000 women to work in business or retail occupations over farming. “Suri and Jack's results are provocative and enticing,” says Dean Karlan, a professor of economics at Yale University. “Provocative in that they find long-term impacts on poverty for women from an important, growing, and profitable business innovation, mobile money. Enticing in that they show us a clear base on which further innovation can and should expand, to find even better ways to use mobile money to target specific problems and make important impacts on issues of poverty around the world.” Savings and independence Exactly why M-PESA causes increases in per capita consumption and shifts in occupation remains unclear, Suri says. But the researchers have a few ideas, one being that more secure storing of money leads to better financial management and savings, especially among women: The study found that female-headed households that saw greater agent density also saw around a 22 percent rise in savings. The researchers also think mobile money could give women in male-headed households, who are also usually secondary income earners, more financial independence, which could help them start their own businesses. “As a woman, sometimes you’re not able to save on your own, because cash gets used by the whole house. [Mobile money] allows you to keep separate cash and … manage a source of income on your own,” Suri says. Moving forward, Suri and Jack now aim to conduct similar research on the impact of mobile-money services on poverty in Uganda, Tanzania, and Pakistan “to find out if this is just an effect for Kenya or more systematic across other countries,” Suri says. The research was funded, in part, by Financial Sector Deepening Kenya and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (Comment on this)

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