{"schema_version":1,"assessment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_opportunity320_20260801","source_experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp03_full320_20260801","cell_id":"deadweight_loss_reduction__political_science","archetype_slug":"deadweight_loss_reduction","domain_slug":"political_science","title":"Risk-Calibrated Ballot Access with a Notice-and-Cure Path","opportunity_summary":"Test whether local candidate-qualification thresholds and error-intolerant verification exclude otherwise credible candidates, then compare the existing process with calibrated thresholds, standardized review, and notice-and-cure while retaining uniform eligibility rules, audits, and integrity safeguards. The packet provides a coherent and safely bounded test design, but neither the prevalence of burden-caused exclusion nor the redesign's incremental effect is established.","adopter_authorizer":"Local election administrators can authorize records access and nonbinding shadow processing within existing law. A legislature, council, or other legally designated rulemaker would have to authorize statutory threshold or procedure changes, subject to court and election-oversight review.","scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"If marginal qualification burdens materially reduce credible entry, the proposal could improve contested elections, voter choice, and equal political participation. The consequence is democratically important, but the packet supplies no evidence about how often the hypothesized exclusion occurs."},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":2,"rationale":"The packet identifies affected candidates, voters, administrators, rulemakers, and oversight bodies, but provides no stated demand, partner commitment, administrator request, or evidence that any authorizer prioritizes this reform."},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"The composition addresses more failure modes than the stated nearest rival by combining calibration, standardized review, notice-and-cure, audits, incidence review, pilot boundaries, and rollback. Whether this yields more credible entrants or better integrity and workload outcomes than the current process or a simple threshold reduction remains untested."},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":2,"rationale":"The candidate is explicitly classified as prior art unsearched, and the packet supplies no basis for determining whether its threshold, cure, review, audit, or pilot components—or their composition—differ materially from established ballot-access reforms."},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"The first step uses bounded retrospective record reprocessing rather than novel technology, and the proposed mechanisms are administratively legible. Implementation still depends on usable records, defensible calibration, consistent defect classification, and operational capacity for cure notices and audits."},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"The packet clearly separates administrators' authority to conduct a shadow audit from rulemakers' authority to change statutory requirements. Adoption is nevertheless exposed to legislative approval, equal-treatment constraints, court review, public notice, and potentially partisan disagreement."},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"A completed election cycle offers an identified baseline, records-based comparison, outcome measures, and explicit falsifiers. Administrative records may not capture people deterred before filing and may not reliably distinguish credible entrants from nuisance candidacies or separate ballot-access effects from rival causes."},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"Standardized review and notice-and-cure directly offer a procedural safety net for candidates facing marginal signature defects, including constituencies with fewer organizing resources. Uniform eligibility, audits, halt criteria, and rollback limit downside, although unequal administration remains a stated risk."},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"The audit-and-redesign method could in principle be repeated across local election systems, but statutory rules, record quality, race types, administrative capacity, ballot design, and judicial constraints vary by jurisdiction and may require substantial adaptation."}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"One retrospective shadow audit of a completed local election cycle, including secure record extraction, anonymization, baseline and redesign reprocessing, legal and privacy review, workload and distributional analysis, and publication of results.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["One local jurisdiction and one completed election cycle are included.","Qualification records are substantially digitized and can lawfully be analyzed.","The estimate includes election-office labor, analysts, legal review, data handling, partner coordination, and evaluation.","It excludes a new live election process, major records reconstruction, and litigation."]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Preparation for an authorized local implementation, including legal and rulemaking work, calibration, procedure design, system configuration, forms and notices, staff training, public communication, safeguards, and evaluation protocols.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Deployment is limited to one local jurisdiction.","Existing election-management systems can be configured without full replacement.","The rulemaker provides legal authorization and equal-application requirements before launch.","The estimate excludes major contested litigation or jurisdiction-wide replacement of election infrastructure."]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Operation and independent evaluation of one authorized election-cycle pilot, including verification, cure notices, audits, applicant support, monitoring of fraud and workload, ballot-usability assessment, legal support, public reporting, and rollback readiness.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The pilot covers a bounded set of legally comparable local races.","Preset safety and workload thresholds are approved before processing begins.","Launch uses existing staff and systems supplemented by temporary capacity.","No severe litigation, recount, or emergency system replacement occurs."]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Per-jurisdiction recurring administration after adoption, including standardized verification, cure communications, audit sampling, staff refreshers, monitoring, reporting, and periodic recalibration.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The intervention does not cause a large increase in filings or disputes.","Core election systems and permanent staff remain available.","Recurring independent evaluation is lighter than the initial pilot evaluation.","The range excludes extraordinary litigation and major statutory redesign."]}},"research_burden":"HIGH","earliest_credible_horizon":"3_TO_12_MONTHS","pipeline_gates":{"recognizable_externally_supportable_problem":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The packet defines observable rejection, abandonment, and low-contestation patterns, but explicitly treats their frequency and causal importance as hypotheses and supplies no observed records showing that qualification burdens materially bind credible entry."},"identifiable_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Election administrators are identified for the nonbinding audit, while legislatures, councils, or other legally designated rulemakers are identified for statutory changes, with courts retaining review authority."},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The proposal can be compared with the current threshold and verification path and with a simple threshold reduction; its claim is that calibration, standardized review, and cure increase credible qualification without unacceptable integrity, workload, usability, legal, or distributional harms."},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"The sealed candidate authorizes a nonbinding retrospective shadow audit of one completed local election cycle that changes no ballot result and reports rejection causes, modeled qualification outcomes, workload, and distributional effects."},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"YES","reason":"The retrospective step is expressly confined to anonymized, nonbinding processing within administrators' existing authority. Live changes require separate legal authorization, public notice, equal application, preset halt limits, and rollback."},"implementation_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The candidate bounds the audit and a possible pilot but provides no information about record condition, filing volume, system changes, staffing, legal process, or litigation exposure sufficient to validate implementation resource ranges."}},"blocking_evidence":["Administrative evidence that thresholds or verification defects cause a nontrivial number of plausible candidacies to fail or exit, rather than merely coinciding with low entry.","A defensible method for identifying deterrence before filing and distinguishing credible prospective candidates from frivolous or ineligible candidacies.","Comparative evidence that the composed redesign improves credible qualification or contestation relative to both the existing process and a simple threshold reduction.","Evidence that fraud, workload, ballot usability, litigation, and disparate-treatment outcomes remain within preset acceptable limits.","A documented prior-art review establishing whether the proposed composition adds a distinct increment beyond existing ballot-access reforms.","Jurisdiction-specific legal confirmation, data-access feasibility, and operational cost evidence before any live pilot."] ,"next_evidence_step":"Conduct a nonbinding retrospective shadow audit of one completed local election cycle. Reprocess anonymized records under the existing baseline, a simple across-the-board threshold reduction, and the full calibrated-threshold plus standardized-review and notice-and-cure design. Predefine credible-candidacy criteria and acceptable fraud-proxy, workload, usability, and distributional limits. Stop or deprioritize if almost no plausible failures are attributable to the baseline, the full design does not outperform the simple reduction on credible qualification, or either redesign breaches a preset harm limit.","research_questions":["How many filed or plausibly deterred candidacies were affected specifically by signature thresholds or curable procedural defects?","Which rejection causes represent marginal procedural exclusion rather than substantive ineligibility or credible fraud concerns?","After accounting for incumbency, campaign cost, party recruitment, and office desirability, is ballot-access burden associated with fewer contested races?","Does the full composition qualify more credible candidates than the current process and a simple threshold reduction?","What changes occur in verification workload, fraudulent-signature indicators, ballot length and usability, disputes, litigation risk, and unequal treatment?","Can pre-filing deterrence be measured without relying solely on incomplete administrative records?","Which authority, public-notice, equal-protection, and election-law requirements govern a bounded live pilot in the target jurisdiction?","Which components or compositions overlap with existing ballot-access reforms or prior evaluations?","What jurisdiction-specific staffing, data, software, legal, and evaluation resources would implementation require?"],"recommendation":"VALIDATE_PROBLEM_FIRST","uncertainty_constraints":["All claims about prevalence, causal importance, entry effects, contestation effects, and integrity tradeoffs remain hypotheses in the sealed packet.","Administrative data may omit candidates deterred before filing and may not reveal candidate credibility.","Observed low contestation may be caused primarily by incumbency, campaign costs, weak recruitment, or low office desirability.","The democratic value of additional candidates cannot be inferred solely from efficiency or candidate counts.","World novelty, reform prevalence, market size, realized impact, and exact costs are unmeasured under the closed-book constraint.","Cost bands are resource-equivalent planning ranges based only on the stated scope and may shift with jurisdiction size, record quality, legal requirements, system compatibility, and litigation.","Retrospective modeled qualification cannot by itself establish actual candidate entry, voter response, ballot confusion, or live administrative behavior."],"closed_book_prior_art_boundary":"No prior-art or prevalence conclusion is supported. The packet explicitly marks prior art as unsearched; therefore this assessment does not claim that notice-and-cure, threshold calibration, standardized review, shadow processing, safeguards, or their composition are new, uncommon, or superior to existing reforms."}