Election-Campaign Law

Elections in the News

By inelefi

In today’s news, there were numerous stories about intense early voting taking place in several states - Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois (AP via HOI-19 and AP via Chicago Tribune), New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee ( AP and Chattanooga Times Free Press), Texas, Oklahoma, Washington D.C., and West Virginia. With this heavy amount of early voting, it’s not strange to find stories about delays taking place at polling locations. Democrat politicians requested the extension of voting hours during the weekend, and indeed early voting hours were extended in North Carolina. Remember that early voting hours were extended in Florida last Tuesday. At the same time, the Washington Post mentioned that Republican politicians in Florida are “fighting efforts by the NAACP to extend the hours that polls will be open and allow the use of paper ballots in Tuesday’s election”.

There are reports about problems with voting technology in some early voting polling locations: In Atlanta, terminals connecting the polling place to the voter database went down at the Adamsville Recreation Center. In Florida, internet problems were said to slow down early voting. In addition, voters in some states complaint about “electronic touch-screen voting machines (…) ?flipping’ their votes to another candidate on the screen”.

Also, there are several stories related to voter registration: In Colorado, There was a judicial order to stop purging rolls, and an agreement was reached for purged citizens to be allowed to vote in that state. In Michigan, a court ruled out the removal of voters from registration rolls. Several sources mention concerns about fraudulent or incorrect voter registration -AP via Las Vegas Sun, AP via WTOL11, The Columbus Dispatch, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Newsday. Finally, news regarding record registration continue to appear in the media -AP via Boston Herald and KSNT NBC 27 from Kansas.

Inés and Janell

Full post as published by Election Updates on November 01, 2008 (boomark / email).