For years, analyzing Ohio’s early vote numbers has required a little skill and a lot of patience.A new upgrade from the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office should put that information closer to everyday voters’ fingertips. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, is launching a data dashboard that provides nearly up-to-date details about early voting. The interactive tool allows voters to view how many absentee ballots have been requested, how many have been returned and how many early-in person votes have been cast, with the information broken down by county.This information previously had been available, via spreadsheets that LaRose’s office either voluntarily released in news releases or starting in 2023 under a law change LaRose backed, via mandatory regular reports. But understanding the reports required some basic proficiency in data analysis and time to crunch the numbers.In contrast, the new tool displays the information visually. It also includes new information on who’s returning and requesting absentee ballots by layering in party affiliation and age.State says dashboard will promote transparencyA Signal reporter got an exclusive early look at the tool to provide feedback. LaRose’s aides said the initiative is meant to promote voter confidence through transparency, as well as to streamline frequent requests they get from political campaigns, news media and other researchers.“Elections are under a microscope like never before, and transparency is essential to the accountability of our elections,” LaRose said in a statement. “We led the passage of landmark legislation that enables us to more effectively retain and report election data, and this resource is the first of several we’ll be launching in the coming months to make good on that commitment. We’re working with our county boards of elections to build a data reporting infrastructure that will allow us to provide daily trends related to voting behavior. We’ll ultimately add new dashboards showing voter registration trends and election history.”The office describes the tool as a “work in progress,” and expects the public will help find flaws.“It’ll take some time to work out the reporting requirements with each county so we can ensure that every input is consistent, but we want to put this out there and let people kick the tires a bit,” LaRose said.LaRose’s aides acknowledge that sharing the information in real-time could invite conspiracy theories and litigation from across the political spectrum, if a county elections official makes what amounts to a typo that could look to an observer like an irregularity. Ohio has a ground-up elections system, with bipartisan boards of elections administering elections in each of the state’s 88 counties, which have varying levels of resources and staff. Counted votes won’t be displayedThis long has posed problems for data reporting consistency, and in the past prompted LaRose to favor centralizing elections administration. But the decentralization also can function as a safeguard. That’s why as a precaution, LaRose’s office says it will report the data daily, but spend time first confirming it to to improve quality control.Importantly, the data will show ballots that have been received by elections offices, but not display counted votes. Elections officials aren’t allowed to tabulate votes until after the polls close on Election Day.What is early-vote data good for? Quickly understanding the early vote is most useful for political campaigns. Once someone submits their ballot, the campaign can stop focusing on that voter. If this is especially true in one area of the state, campaigns can start focusing their resources elsewhere.But if a particular region or group of voters aren’t requesting early ballots like they used to, it can be a public sign of flagging enthusiasm – particularly for Democrats, who in recent years have been more likely to vote early. By tracking this information, I picked up on flagging Black voter turnout that spelled trouble for Democrats in the 2022 election, and quickly detected extraordinarily high turnout in last August’s special election in which voters ended up rejecting a Republican proposal to make it harder to amend the state constitution.But it’s not an exact science. The comparisons are only helpful if there’s a previous similar election to use as a benchmark. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic forced record numbers of voters to vote early that year, and so it’s not a great comparison for this year’s election. Something that looks like a decrease or increase in early voting could just be people changing their habits and shifting when they vote.Early vote totals can be misleading It also can be misleading. Most of Ohio’s voters officially are political independents, since partisan affiliation is only assigned to those who participate in partisan primary elections. The state’s open election system also makes it easy for voters to switch parties. So it’s not always useful to look at results by party registration. Political campaigns have a much better idea of who voters are, thanks to expensive consumer data to which they have access. But it’s still basically just guesswork, since actual votes are confidential.So in short, try not to overreact to anything you see.But if nothing else, tracking the early vote can be fun for political junkies. It’s the only tangible numbers available until voting ends on Election Day, which this year falls on Nov. 5. And now as long as this new tool is properly maintained, it will be easier to do than ever.The post Ohio making it easier to track early-voting figures ahead of November election appeared first on Signal Cleveland.First published by Signal Cleveland.