Election-Campaign Law

Technology, Diversity, Democracy ? the day after

Posted on September 17, 2009
The event yesterday at Caltech was great, while I don’t now have final numbers we had a very large crowd of stakeholders, academics, election officials, policymakers, and interested members of the public in attendance. There was a lot of frank, open and productive conversation about the future of voting systems in Los Angeles County; [...

Technology, Diversity, Democracy: The Future of Voting Systems in Los Angeles County

Posted on September 16, 2009
We are hosting this event today at Caltech, bringing together researchers, stakeholders, and election officials to discuss the future of voting systems in LA County. The morning so far has involved presentations by LA County Registrar/Recorder Dean Logan, Caltech President Jean-Lou Chameau, and US EAC Commissioner Donetta Davidson...

Recounts and audits ordered in Afghan election

Posted on September 09, 2009
Here is the order from the Electoral Complaints Commission.

Special provisions for emergency personnel participation in yesterday?s elections

Posted on September 02, 2009
Here’s an interesting media advisory from LA County detailing the special procedures implemented to allow emergency personnel fighting the Southern California wildfires to participate in yesterday’s elections.

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Panels of Interest at the upcoming APSA

Posted on September 01, 2009
The APSA meeting is in Toronto this year. I’ve begun to assemble a list of panels with papers on or about election administration: You can search for the panels at apsanet.org, and individual papers can be downloaded here . (Unfortunately I have not found a good way to search within APSA papers; perhaps [...

Sorry ? we?ve been down

Posted on August 31, 2009
As some readers have noticed (and emailed me about), Election Updates has been down for the past week. I am sorry for this, we had a variety of technical issues that kept us offline. If readers experience anything unusual, please let me know.

Signatures ? The Difficult Part

Posted on August 21, 2009
In our edited book Election Fraud there is a Chapter by Todd Donovan and Dan Smith about signature fraud and their analysis shows that a small but significant number of signatures in petition drives are fraudulent. Also, and even more problematic though, is that signature checking is not easy but is often treated as a “duh” [...

?The Signature Check?

Posted on August 21, 2009
This YouTube link was just posted on the LACRR Facebook page. It will take you to a very interesting video from the Washington Secretary of State’s office on signature checking.

Two new research papers published on the voting experience in PRQ

Posted on August 21, 2009
The current issue of Political Research Quarterly has two interesting publications on the voting experience. The first, by Matt A. Barreto, Mara Cohen-Marks, and Nathan D. Woods, is titled “Are All Precincts Created Equal? The Prevalence of Low-Quality Precincts in Low-Income and Minority Communities...

New database on election and election reform research

Posted on August 14, 2009
This just came in over the wire: Dear Colleagues, I am pleased to announce that the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has launched a web-based, searchable Voting Research Database that includes empirical and analytical research on issues related to the U...

EVT/WOTE ?09

Posted on August 12, 2009
Here are the titles and short descriptions of some of the papers presented at the workshop. E-Voting and Forensics: Prying Open the Black Box Authors: Matt Bishop, Sean Peisert, Candice Hoke, Mark Graff and David Jefferson The authors describe the application of a model of forensic logging...

EVT/WOTE ?09 paper: ?Interstate Voter Registration Database Matching: The Oregon-Washington 2008 Pilot Project?

Posted on August 11, 2009
Now I’m listening to Rebecca Wright (Rutgers University), who is presenting the paper titled “Interstate Voter Registration Database Matching: The Oregon-Washington 2008 Pilot Project”, a joint work with Mike Alvarez, Jeff Jonas (IBM) and William Winkler (Bureau of the Census).

EVT/WOTE ?09

Posted on August 11, 2009
I am attending the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE ‘09) in Montreal, organized by David Jefferson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), Joseph Lorenzo Hall (University of California, Berkeley/Princeton University) and Tal Moran (Harvard University)...

CA state auditor issues proposed regulations for implementation of Prop 11 (implementation of Citizens Redistricting Commission)

Posted on August 06, 2009
The proposed regulations, and supporting memoranda, are now available on the State Auditor website.

Guest Column: Michael Hamner (University of Maryland) on EDR and Turnout

Posted on July 27, 2009
The back and forth last week between me, Curt Gans, and Barry Burden about early voting and turnout on Rick Hasen’s election law listserv prompted this contribution from Michael Hanmer of the University of Maryland. He’s submitted it to election updates as a guest column: === I read with interest the exchange about the turnout effects [...

A few questions for Charles on voter confidence

Posted on July 22, 2009
I’m glad to see Charles’s posting about voter confidence among by-mail voters. His posting raises a few questions in my mind. There is a conversation underway among some scholars about the precise meaning of the voter confidence items, which are regularly referred to in public discourse but haven’t really been subjected to much [...

Confidence in mail-in ballots

Posted on July 17, 2009
I’ve been looking at the results from our Pew/MIT survey on the election experience from last November.  A battery of questions asks about support for a range of election reforms.  One of those reforms is to “run all elections by mail.”  Nationwide, only 16% of respondents supported all-mail elections...

Three new working papers by Thad Hall

Posted on July 15, 2009
Thad’s been busy: “Electronic elections in a politicized polity.” “Voter attitudes toward poll workers in the 2008 election.” “Voting technology and innovation.”

Society for Political Methodology conference ? lots for election geeks!

Posted on July 15, 2009
The Society for Political Methodology is holding it’s annual summer meeting next week at Yale University. Here is the complete program. Some highlights for election geeks include: Philip Stark’s paper, “Election auditing: How much is enough?” Kevin Arceneaux, Thad Kousser and Megan Mullin, “Do vote-by-mail elections work? A randomized field experiment estimating the [...

An Election Geek Dies and Goes to Heaven

Posted on July 10, 2009
One of the highlights of the IACREOT Conference was the opportunity to tour the Associated Press election data center in Spokane.  This is one of a couple of centers nationwide that are responsible for aggregating election returns on election night (and primary night, and caucus night, etc...

Charles Stewart at IACREOT

Posted on July 09, 2009
Charles is at IACREOT, here is a link to the slides for his presentation.

IACREOT dreams

Posted on July 08, 2009
I’ve been attending the annual conference of IACREOT, in beautiful downtown Spokane.  I’ve worked with many local election officials before, but I’ve only gone to a few of the election official conferences over the years, so this has been a treat...

Corzine signs the NJ Permanent Absentee Bill

Posted on July 01, 2009
As reported in the South Orange Patch (who picks these names??). The story is odd though, the author writes: a new law allowing voters to send their ballots through the mail instead of appearing in person at a polling place I think NJ already had no-excuse absentee balloting...

New VTP working paper: ?Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation: An Application to the 2006 Mexican Election?

Posted on July 01, 2009
Ines Levin and I recently posted a new working paper studying the causal effect of voter confidence on political participation, sing data from the 2006 Mexican Election, “Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation: An Application to the 2006 Mexican Election...

Record number of ballots cast by mail in California?s May 19 special election

Posted on June 27, 2009
A record 62.19% of voters in the May 19 special election in California cast their ballots by mail, according to the recently released final results.

GAO interim report on polling place accessibility in 2008

Posted on June 26, 2009
The GAO issued this interim report recently, “Voters With Disabilities: More Polling Places Had No Potential Impediments Than in 20008, but Challenges Remain.” Here’s a summary of their results: We found that,comparedto 2000, the proportion of polling places withoutpotential impediments increased and the most significant reduction in potential impediments occurred at building entrances...

Call for Participation: NIST End-To-End Voting Systems Workshop

Posted on June 24, 2009
Here is the call, and link to the workshop website: The goal of this workshop is to understand the security and usability properties of end-to-end voting systems, one type of next-generation system of interest. The last few years have witnessed the emergence of end-to-end voting systems, which enable voter-verification of election outcome...

Call for papers: Experimental Methods in Political Science Conference

Posted on June 24, 2009
Here’s the call for papers: Dear Colleagues We are pleased to announce the Third Annual NYU-CESS (New York University Center for Experimental Social Sciences) Conference on Experimental Political Science on Friday, February 5th, 2010 and Saturday, February 6th, 2010...

California man charged with election fraud

Posted on June 24, 2009
This is from a press release from the CA Secretary of State office: Felony charges were filed and an arrest warrant issued Monday for an Orange County man suspected of committing voter registration and election fraud, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today...

Walter Mebane on the Iranian Presidential Election

Posted on June 23, 2009
Walter Mebane has been analyzing data from the recent Iranian Presidential Election, and posting updates of his analysis here.

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