Election-Campaign Law

Appleton PostCrescent editorializes against early voting

Posted on June 23, 2009
Wisconsin is considering whether it will allow early in-person voting in Wisconsin, in addition to absentee balloting. The Government Accountability board is holding hearings around the state this month. This editorial argues against the change.

Online voter registration in Oregon

Posted on June 23, 2009
From the Oregonian newspaper: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/online_voter_registration_pass.html Oregon joins a number of other states who are moving to an electronic online voter registration system.  The hopes are that this modernization of our registration system will reduce data entry errors, speeed changes, and reduce pressures on election officials on election day (in Oregon, most of the lines the last [...

Chatham House study raises questions about Iranian election

Posted on June 22, 2009
Chatham House has released a study of the Iranian election, “Preliminary Analysis of the Voting Figures in Iran’s 2009 Presidential Election.” Here is the study’s executive summary: Working from the province by province breakdowns of the 2009 and 2005 results, released by the Iranian Ministry of Interior, and from the 2006 census as published by [...

Call for papers: ?The Politics of Open Source?

Posted on June 20, 2009
Got this in my email: New JITP Annual Conference Web Site: http://www.umass.edu/jitp/ Call for Papers JITP-2010 ?The Politics of Open Source? May 6-7, 2010 - Amherst, Massachusetts A two-day University of Massachusetts Amherst conference jointly hosted by the: Department of Political Science Science, Technology, and Society Initiative (STS) Journal of Information Technology & Politics (JITP) Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) Approach Free/Libre and [...

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An initiative under way to VBM in Idaho

Posted on June 19, 2009
An initiative has been filed and is currently gathering signatures to move to full vote by mail in Idaho.

Changes in no-excuse absentee coming in NJ?

Posted on June 19, 2009
The “Vote by Mail” act in New Jersey is sitting on Gov. John Corzine’s desk awaiting his signature.  We will find out in the next few days whether he signs it or not. The two main provisions in the bill are: It would allow permanent no-excuse absentee balloting (prior research shows that this will increase the number [...

Limited recount coming in Iranian election dispute?

Posted on June 16, 2009
This is from the BBC, “Iran to hold election recount:” The Guardian Council - Iran’s top legislative body - said votes would be recounted in areas contested by the losing candidates. But a spokesman for the council told state television it would not annul the election - as moderate candidates have demanded...

Brennan Center report on voter registration practices in other nations

Posted on June 16, 2009
The Brennan Center has just released a report on voter registration practices in other nations, “Expanding Democracy: Voter Registration Around the World.” Here’s the report’s summary: The United States is one of few democratic nations that place on individuals the entire burden of registering to vote on individual citizens...

Protests continue in Iran over disputed presidential election

Posted on June 16, 2009
The protests over the disputed Iranian election continue, and are perhaps growing, according to many stories out in the media this morning. I thought that this photograph, from the LA Times story “Hundreds of thousands in Iran protest vote result” summarizes the situation pretty well.

Detecting election fraud

Posted on June 15, 2009
There is a fascinating exchange on the Election Law listserv about detecting election fraud in Iran using statistical methods. At this point, Juan Cole and David Epstein (Columbia), Nate Silver (538), and Walter Mebane (Michigan) are involved.  There is a nice citation in Rick Hasen’s posting to Michael’s colleague Peter Ordeshook (Caltech), who has done [...

More on detecting election fraud in Iran

Posted on June 15, 2009
I’ve been digging around most of the afternoon, along the lines of Paul’s recent post, to see what the allegations are, what data exists, and how these allegations might be studied using the sorts of statistical tools that have been discussed in recent research on election anomalies...

Ahmadinejad wins in Iran, 85% voter turnout, expatriates vote

Posted on June 13, 2009
See the BBC report. The reported outcome has sparked protests in Iran, according to this story in the LA Times. One of the interesting stories of the Iranian election regards voting by expatriates, in particular those in the US. There apparently were 41 polling sites set up around the US, according to this AP story [...

Huge turnout in Iran?s presidential election

Posted on June 12, 2009
There have been a flurry of news reports on huge turnout in Iran’s presidential election. The BBC is reporting that polling has been extended for two extra hours, “Huge Turnout in Iran Presidential Poll.” NPR is reporting that there have been some claims of irregularities: There were no immediate reports of unrest, though Mousavi’s campaign lodged [...

Early voting usage in the first and subsequent years

Posted on June 10, 2009
I just got back from the Maryland Association of Election Officials (MAEO) meeting in Rocky Gap, MD. My assigned task was to sit on a panel on early voting with Connie Schmidt of the electioncenter (and past county clerk in Johnson County, KS) and Keith Long of the North Carolina Board of Elections...

Election reform bills clear committee

Posted on June 10, 2009
Sending along a press release from Rep. Nancy Davis’s office: House Panel Passes Rep. Susan Davis?s Election Reform Bills: No Excuse Absentee, Absentee Tracking and Election Integrity Bills Approved WASHINGTON ? A package of election reform bills sponsored by Rep...

New VTP working paper by Jonathan Katz and Gabriel Katz, ?Correcting for Survey Misreports using Auxiliary Information with an Application to Estimating Turnout?

Posted on June 08, 2009
This is an interesting VTP working paper for those who study voter participation, by Jonathan N. Katz and Gabriel Katz: “Correcting for Survey Misreports using Auxiliary Information with an Application to Estimating Turnout.” Here is their abstract: Misreporting is a problem that plagues researchers that use survey data...

New VTP working paper by Stephen Ansolabehere: ?Is There Racial Discrimination at the Polls? Voters? Experience in the 2008 Election

Posted on June 05, 2009
Here’s a new VTP working paper by Stephen Ansolabehere, “Is There Racial Discrimination at the Polls? Voters’ Experience in the 2008 Election.” Here is the abstract: In 1965, the United States Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act to end discrimination against black voters at the polls in Southern states and throughout the nation...

In the news: Justice rejects GA voter verification system and skepticism in MN?s Supreme Court over Coleman?s claims

Posted on June 02, 2009
Here is a link to an AP story on the Justice Department’s decision to reject Georgia’s voter verification system. The story said: “In a letter released on Monday, the Justice Department said the state’s voter verification program is frequently inaccurate and has a “discriminatory effect” on minority voters...

CCES Working Papers

Posted on June 02, 2009
There are a number of working papers now archived on the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) page, a number of which might be of interest to those who study election administration and voting technology. There was a great deal of such content on the 2006 and 2008 CCES surveys, and I suspect we will [...

2009 EVT/WOTE program now established and available.

Posted on June 02, 2009
The 2008 EVT/WOTE “Workshop on Trustworthy Elections” is set in place and is now available. It looks like a great event!

California proposes to balance budget ? by eliminating voting by mail?

Posted on May 30, 2009
Apparently California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday proposed to put voting by mail in future California elections on the budget-cutting block. I’ve not seen the precise details yet, but here are what some of the state newspapers have said...

NAS studies regarding security in cyberspace ?

Posted on May 29, 2009
Due to the announcement that the U.S. will likely have a Cyber Czar, the National Academies put up this webpage to highlight some of the NAS work on cybersecurity. Some of these studies I’m written about earlier, but this is a helpful accumulation by the NAS of their work on this issue...

Election decided by one vote

Posted on May 23, 2009
Often students challenge me for examples of when a single vote matters.  Here is one, in the story , “Tran loses Rosemead election by one vote.” Voters who needed a reminder that every vote counts got one today ? former mayor John Tran lost his city council seat by only one vote in the March 3 [...

High turnout noted in Sierra County, California

Posted on May 22, 2009
There was this story in the LA Times, “Sierra County (where everyone votes by mail) is serious about elections.” Here’s the relevant info from the story: The unofficial voter turnout in the conservative, rural enclave was 53.6% — higher than any other county in the Golden State, nearly double the statewide figure and more than [...

Five disqualified ballots could lead to a tie in city council race

Posted on May 22, 2009
Here’s an interesting story, “Judge to rule on Rosemead City Council election results:” A judge today is expected to open at least four ballots that could affect the results of the Rosemead City Council election in March. Former mayor John Tran, who lost the election by five votes, asked to have five ballots, which had [...

CA Special Election polling place observations

Posted on May 20, 2009
As readers will guess, since it was Election day here in California yesterday, I was out in the field with students and colleagues studying Election day polling place operations. We concentrated our efforts on Los Angeles County, in particular cities that were within Congressional District 32...

Public Opinion and Election Reform: Valence Issues vs. Choice Issues

Posted on May 15, 2009
In a classic illustration statement of the dilemma of grasping that elusive entity called “public opinion,” Walter Lippman relates the story of a story of a group of Europeans residing on a remote island while World War One had broken out...

New Book on Election Fraud: Myagkov, Ordeshook and Shakin, ?The Forensics of Election Fraud?

Posted on May 15, 2009
My Caltech colleague, Peter Ordeshook, along with his collaborators Mikhail Myagkov (a Caltech Ph.D.) and Dmitry Shakin have recently published their book on election forensics, discussing in detail their approach to election forensics and election fraud...

New VTP working paper by Charles Stewart III: ?Election Technology and the Voting Experience in 2008?

Posted on May 13, 2009
This working paper was recently made available, Charles Stewart III, “Election Technology and the Voting Experience in 2008.” Here is the paper’s abstract: The 2000 election brought the issue of voting machine performance to national attention...

Public opinion about primary reform. Does it matter?

Posted on May 09, 2009
One of the more interesting exchanges during the first day of the Iowa Election Reform Conference is whether public opinion about presidential primary reform really matters if primary reform is an elite and party driven process. Caroline Tolbert presented some work, I think done in collaboration with Jeff Karp and Todd Donovan, where they asked survey [...

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