Election-Campaign Law

More on the newspaper voter reg form

Posted on January 03, 2010
Just a quick update for interested readers: It looks like this form appeared after some quick partnerships between Ben Cannon, a newly elected legislator (and full disclosure son of a good friend of mine) and some local election officials I might be able to report on the take up rate for this form in a few weeks There [...

Voter registration form from the Portland Mercury

Posted on January 03, 2010
Front cover of the Portland Mercury

Important changes brewing in Ohio election administration

Posted on December 31, 2009
Legislation moving through the Ohio Senate (SB8) could signal come major changes in the way that elections are conducted in Ohio.  Much of the legislation is in response to election anomalies and controversies during 2008. The full text of the bill is here: http://www...

Interesting idea to boost voter registration?

Posted on December 31, 2009
A local publication, the Portland Mercury, has reportedly created a front cover that is a valid voter registration form.  The deadline for an upcoming referral election on two tax measures is early next week. I am trying to find an image of the cover to post...

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New Book About Bilingual Voting

Posted on December 17, 2009
James Tucker, a voting rights attorney, has written a new book through Ashgate on bilingual voting. Ashgate’s description of the book notes: recent years, few federal requirements have been as controversial as the mandate for what critics call ‘bilingual ballots’...

Wisconsin Election Administration Project

Posted on December 16, 2009
Recently I learned that some of our colleages at the University of Wisconsin have started an election administration project. Here is a link to their website. This is a welcome sign; it is fantastic to see that we are continuing to build a strong academic foundation for the scientific study of election administration.

New Pew Study on Costs of Voter Registration

Posted on December 16, 2009
The Pew Center on the States released this report this morning, “The Real Cost of Voter Registration: An Oregon Case Study.” The report contains an important and extremely helpful study of the cost of voter registration in Oregon.

LA to go fully vote by mail?

Posted on December 04, 2009
The Los Angeles City Council asked for a report form their June Lagway, City Clerk, about the feasibility of going fully vote by mail for certain city elections. The full report is contained here: http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2009/09-1222-S1_rpt_clk_11-18-09...

Carter Center Report on Biometric Registration in Bolivia

Posted on December 02, 2009
The Carter Center released a report today on biometric voter registration in Bolivia. The release says: The Carter Center observation mission has been impressed by the dedication and commitment of the Bolivian electoral authorities to register voters in a short period of time using biometric technology for the first time...

Much ado about nothing? Debate over early voting hours in Florida neglects most empirical research

Posted on November 30, 2009
There is a heated debate going on in the Florida state legislature over a permanent extension to early voting hours. In the 2008 election, in the face of long lines, Governor Charlie Crist issued an executive order extending early voting hours to 12 hours/day, 4 hours longer than mandated by law...

Survey on the Performance of American Elections Data Available

Posted on November 25, 2009
As part of my pre-Thanksgiving clean-up, I have finally gotten around to posting the data sets and documentation for three surveys my colleagues and I did in 2007 and 2008 to gauge the quality of American elections. The studies were funded by Pew, as part of their Make Voting Work Initiative, along with the [...

Utah New ID Check-In

Posted on November 19, 2009
Utah is creating a new cool check in process for voters. The State’s voter registration data base will be able to read the bar codes on a voter’s driver’s license. So when a voter goes to check in to vote, a poll worker will be able to scan the bar code on the [...

Analysis of the Connecticut November 2008 post-election audit

Posted on November 17, 2009
The University of Connecticut’s Voting Technology Research Center has recently made available the results of their analysis of the State of Connecticut’s post-election audit of the November 2008 election. The report “Statistical Analysis of the Post Election Audit Data 2008 November Elections” is available here...

New research on the consequences of election fraud

Posted on November 16, 2009
My colleague, Peter Ordeshook, passed along to me this reference to a new research paper, “Democracy’s Achilles Heel or How to Win an Election without Really Trying”, by Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler. Here is a summary of some of their results, from a briefing paper: ?- Using dirty tactics during [...

More on differential turnout by mode and the implications for ballot measures

Posted on November 16, 2009
Doug Chapin of the Pew Center on the States sent me this story from Nebraska. Like yesterday’s posting of DiCamillo’s article, the Nebraska pieces notes the dramatically different turnout rates for low level contests (in this case, non candidate ballot measures) when using vote by mail...

DiCamillo on ?The Rapid Growth of Permanent Mail Ballot Registration in California and its Impact?

Posted on November 16, 2009
Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, published a piece in Survey Impacts on the growth of permanent absentee balloting in California and how it has changed the composition of the California electorate. He shows that nearly one-third of California’s registered voters now opt for permanent by-mail status, and the higher probability of turnout among this [...

Why Data ARE good for Democracy (and for the EAC)

Posted on November 11, 2009
There has been a fairly active set of threads on Rick Hasen’s Election Law listserv about the newly released EAC reports on UOCAVA and the Election Day Survey (full disclosure: I worked as a subcontractor on both of those reports). Ned Foley of the Moritz School at the Ohio State University expressed some concern about the [...

Gregoire pushes to make WA election results more timely

Posted on November 09, 2009
Governor Christine Gregoire (WA) has publicly announced (as reported in this story) that she is meeting with SoS Sam Reed to figure out ways to speed up the reporting of election results in WA. The current race that is causing controversy is the Seattle mayor’s race, which still has not been announced...

Call for Papers: EDem10 conference

Posted on September 30, 2009
Readers might be interested in this conference: EDem10 4th International Conference on eDemocracy 6 and 7 May 2010 Danube University Krems Austria www.donau-uni.ac.at/edem Call for Papers It is only now, during the first decade of the 21st Century, that those scientific eDemocracy visions developed in both in the 60s and the 90s are becoming reality and implemented...

New NASS report on maintenance of state voter lists

Posted on September 29, 2009
I just received this release this morning: New Report Aims to Inform Debate Over Voter Registration Modernization in the U.S. Secretaries of State Release Overview of State Voter Registration Database Maintenance Laws & Procedures (Washington, DC) ? The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) today released a report designed to serve as a key resource in deliberations [...

Will early voting change campaigns? (Has it done so already?)

Posted on September 28, 2009
A story in today’s NJ Courier-Post speculates about the change that will occur in NJ politics as a result of the new permanent absentee balloting law.  They speculate that campaigns will have to get their ads out earlier, run them longer, and can’t hold last minute surprises until the end...

Early voting proposed in Phillippines

Posted on September 25, 2009
An interesting story about early voting in the Phillippines came across today’s wire. Reference is made to successful early voting in the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. For reasons the story does not make completely clear, the national election board is particularly concerned about voting fraud in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), [...

The costs of running ?dual? elections

Posted on September 24, 2009
One of the most common questions I am asked by officials contemplating early voting regards costs: how much money will we save–or spend–if we provide convenience voting options? There is not a good answer to this question yet, but I think we’ll know a lot more in the next 12 months as some research projects in [...

The Hammer and the Wild Thing

Posted on September 23, 2009
I monitor news about early voting and absentee balloting via a google news search filter. It works pretty well, but sometimes it comes up with goofy stories like this one: http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/delays-daughters-plea-vote-early-and-often/

LA County Registrar/Recorder Voting System Modernization

Posted on September 22, 2009
The LA County Registrar/Recorder put out this press release about the event that the VTP hosted last week on modernizing the voting system in LA County. We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the LACRR on this important project! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 21, 2009 [...

Link to the 2008 EAC Survey instrument

Posted on September 22, 2009
For anyone interested in commenting on the 2010 survey, here is a link to the 2008 survey instrument: http://www.eac.gov/program-areas/research-resources-and-reports/eac-research-in-progress

Billings officials believe voting by mail increased turnout

Posted on September 18, 2009
In the most recent Billings mayoral primary, turnout increased by 87%, from 20% to 38%. Election officials attribute the increase to the new balloting system. Story here.

Residual votes in LA and Palm Beach Counties

Posted on September 18, 2009
During my lunch talk at the Technology, Diversity, and Democracy conference Mike has previously reported on, I used the case of Palm Beach County, Florida to discuss how metrics to gauge the quality of the voting process sometimes are right under our noses, and under-utilized...

Indiana Court of Appeals strikes down Indiana voter identification law

Posted on September 18, 2009
A three-judge panel threw out Indiana’s voter identification law yesterday. Here is the rationale, from The Indianapolis Star: But the three-judge panel, led by Judge Patricia A. Riley, unanimously ruled that two provisions of the law run afoul of the Indiana Constitution’s “Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause...

EAC seeks public comment on 2010 election administration survey

Posted on September 18, 2009
Here’s the link for more information.

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