The American Society for Quality (ASQ) Government Division has initiated a bold new project to show the power of quality management and quality science as a solution to perceived and real problems in the conduct of American elections.  ASQ is now asking its membership and American Election Officials to help get it done.  The Government Division American elections initiative is structured around the themes of making elections “easy to vote and hard to cheat,” and will use basic quality practice and competencies to build best practices models for the conduct of elections.  It will also develop standardized measures of efficient and effective operations, and these will include measures of error and waste.  The project will create a best practice operational model based on the ASQ/ANSI G1 standard, and a Voice of the Customer best practices model using Baldrige Excellence Framework.

This volunteer effort is being led by the Government Division’s Center for Electoral Quality and Integrity (CEQI) and will be working directly with County and City election departments.  Its goal will be to complete a best practice model by Summer of 2023 and use that model as an evaluative standard to “grade” the good management practices of a group of pilot election departments.  Once finalized, those models will allow examination and objective scoring of any and all County election departments to show their excellence of operation, and where they may deviate from best practices.

CEQI has developed and deployed a voice of the customer election experience survey that was conducted from Dec. 1 through Dec. 21,2022 and that was distributed to all ASQ members via email.  A total of 2,238 member responses were received.  A large majority of those ASQ member respondents indicated it is “appropriately easy to vote” in US elections and that their vote in the last general elections was “counted as intended.” Almost half expressed some concerns about integrity however, and feel that “cheating in the electoral system” may need a closer look.

Specifically, 91.5% expressed confidence that their vote was counted correctly (“as they intended”), and 86.6% stated “it is appropriately easy to vote.”  Only 56.8% agreed with the statement that “cheating the electoral system is very rare,” and 24.4% disagreed or strongly disagreed.  The remaining 18.8% responded they had mixed feelings about cheating (17.4%) or needed more information (1.4%).

The CEQI effort to develop best practice operational plans depends on the participation of city and county election organizations and their subject matter experts.  This working group is now being assembled, and will be asked to review and comment on standardized best practice workflows as they are developed.  Current CEQI efforts are focused on making contacts with local election offices, to solicit their participation, and to request their comments regarding best practices.

The CEQI American elections initiative is also working in partnership with the University of Georgia at Athens, and its school of Public and International Affairs, and is building collaborations with existing election organizations to locate and review best practice information to include in its workflow modeling.

The CEQI goals are focused on development of its best practice operational models and professional benchmarks by the middle of 2023, so that pilot elections organizations can be audited and certified for quality of operations prior to the 2024 general elections.  The best practice models being created will be based on the ANSI G1 standard, ISO9001, and ISO54001.

Those who may like further information can contact CEQI Chair Kerry Bass at kbass@memberleader.asq.org, or Vice-Chair and Rich Mallory at rmallory01@gmail.com.  Volunteers will be briefed on activities and invited to participate as Advisory Committee members for the project.  Information will also be posted on the CEQI web page at http://elections.asq.org