Election-Campaign Law

eDemocracy Conference: "New Opportunities for Citizen Participation in an Information Society"

Posted on June 11, 2008
This conference was held last week in Estonia. Our colleagues Alexander Trechsel and Guido Schwerdt participated in the event, and their presentations can be obtained from the conference agenda page.

On election information data security ...

Posted on June 11, 2008
There's a very interesting study that was recently released by the Verizon Business Risk Team, "2008 Data Breach Investigations Report." The report presents data from hundreds of cases that were investigated in the past four years, and discusses a variety of mitigation strategies to prevent data security breaches...

"Building Secure and Transparent Elections Through Standard Operating Procedures"

Posted on June 11, 2008
We recently posted this working paper to the VTP working paper archive, "Building Secure and Transparent Elections through Standard Operating Procedures." It's a paper that Thad and I have been working on for some time, and here is the abstract:Election reform has evolved since the 2000 election...

CGS Report: "Democracy by Initiative"

Posted on June 09, 2008
I got a hard copy of the nearly 400 page report from the Center for Governmental Studies, "Democracy by Initiative: Shaping California's Fourth Branch of Government." It's the second edition of this report, and will make excellent beach reading for election geeks ...

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Data for Democracy Website and Blog

Posted on June 04, 2008
Welcome to the post-event website for Data for Democracy, a conference sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts' and the JEHT Foundation?s Make Voting Work project, and held May 12-13 in Washington D.C. Data for Democracy is a part of Make Voting Work's initiative to address the need for empirical data to improve election administration in the United States...

Ballot misprint in Torrance County, CA

Posted on June 02, 2008
A local City Council race in Torrance may be called into question when erroneous ballot instructions were included with the ballot. Some unknown number of ballots were mailed that incorrectly stated that voters can cast only one vote (the correct number is four).

Turks abroad cannot cast an absentee vote by mail

Posted on June 02, 2008
The Turkish Supreme Court rules that Turkish votes cannot be cast by mail. The practical impact is to place a high hurdle in place of Turks who wish to vote from abroad and cannot easily get to an embassy or consulate.

Same day registration in Oregon?

Posted on May 28, 2008
Caitlin Baggott, Reed '99 and co-founder of the Bus Project, argues in today's Oregonian that instituting voting by mail without accounting for the high mobility rates among young people reduces participation.She editorializes in favor of same day registration as a solution...

FEC Reports overwhelm Excel. Maybe it's time to learn a real program ...

Posted on May 27, 2008
Dan Toffey sent me a link to today's Politico report that the Obama and Clinton campaign have reshaped campaign finance in an unexpected way: the reports are so large that they overwhelm the capacities of Excel to process the data.Excel is limited to 65,536 rows and 256 columns, but the most recent reports are larger than that...

To Politico: Maybe updating your copy would help

Posted on May 27, 2008
From a helpful correspondent: They could also get a more recent copy of MS Excel... any version past 2003 can handle one million rows per sheet:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120596:-)

The self-fulfilling prophecy of election-stealing. - By Dahlia Lithwick - Slate Magazine

Posted on May 24, 2008
Dahlia Lithwick has a new article on "election stealing." It is too bad she didn't come to our event at Brookings Wednesday(!) but it is an interesting piece.

New book: "E-Voting: The Last Electoral Revolution."

Posted on May 23, 2008
I just got a copy of a new book, edited by Josep M. Reniu, "E-Voting: The Last Electoral Revolution." It was published by the Institut de Ciencies Politiques i Socials in Barcelona, and it containes eight essays. One, "The Development of remote electronic vote in Europe", was written by our colleague Robert Krimmer, so I'll leave it to him to say more about his contribution...

Voting Information project launched

Posted on May 22, 2008
From Doug Chapin at electionline.org:Fellow Election Geeks! I?m writing to share the news about the Voting Information Project, an exciting new joint endeavor of Google, the JEHT Foundation, and Pew?s Make Voting Work. The Voting Information Project was born of the recognition that increasingly American voters are clamoring for easy access to answers to three basic questions: ?where do I vote??, ?what?s on the ballot?? and ?how and where do I find out if I?m registered to vote?? This information has always been kept in election offices at the state and local level ? but it isn?t always easily available in the places where voters are accustomed to looking...

Netherlands refrains from using EVMs for good

Posted on May 20, 2008
The Dutch council of ministers decided yesterday to refrain from using electronic voting machines for good.This dates mainly back to the activities from the "We don't trust voting computers group" by Rop Gongrijp who demonstrated on Dutch TV live how one change the EPROM of the Nedap voting machine and make it play chess...

Election Fraud book event tomorrow!

Posted on May 20, 2008
If you happen to be in DC tomorrow, and you are free in the afternoon, you might want to stop by the Brookings Institution. They are hosting an event for our new Election Fraud book, and my co-editors Thad and Susan will be on hand to discuss the book...

AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project Conference

Posted on May 20, 2008
Paul, Thad and I are now at a conference that the AEI/Brookings Election Reform Project is hosting today. They have assembled a great group, and so far we have heard interesting talks from Bob Stein (Rice University) on early voting centers and Caroline Tolbert (University of Iowa) on election reform...

Some absentee voters in LA County get incorrect ballot

Posted on May 19, 2008
This story was in the Pasadena Star News this weekend, "A new ballot slip-up surfaces; cross-over voters get wrong ballot".Here's a summary of the issue from the story:Non-partisan voters who requested absentee ballots for the Republican or Democratic primaries have instead received non-partisan ballots that do not list any partisan candidates...

Memo to Clinton: It's Very Easy to Track OR Voters

Posted on May 14, 2008
Given how well Hillary Clinton performed in West Virginia yesterday, I think we'd have to give round one of the Clinton/Gronke smackdown to the Big Dog.No surprise there; William Jefferson Clinton has just a bit more political experience than yours truly...

And We Wonder Why Young People Dont Vote

Posted on May 12, 2008
Here is a story that will make you think, "what were they thinking"? There is nothing like an administrative bureaucracy taking the excitement out of becoming a voter. Seventeen-year-old Bethesda resident Sarah Boltuck cast a provisional ballot in February?s primary election ? and legally, her vote counted...

AEI/Brookings release: "A review of proposed Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines"

Posted on May 08, 2008
The AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project released their "A review of proposed Voluntary Voting System Guidelines" today. I was on their VVSG Task Force which helped to put together this review.Bottom line, as quoted in the executive summary, "... we find the VVSG to be in need of extensive revision...

On that new Election Fraud book ...

Posted on May 08, 2008
Paul, in case you were missing the url for that book that Thad referenced, "Election Fraud: Detecting and Deterring Electoral Manipulation", here's a link to Brookings Institution Press, to amazon.com, and to Barnes & Noble. Might even soon be in your neighborhood bookstore soon ...

Lake County, Indiana -- in the election spotlight

Posted on May 08, 2008
There are a variety of stories out today about why the ballot count in Lake County, Indiana was so slow on Tuesday evening, including details of past election problems in Lake County:AP: "History of Corruption Clouds Primary in Northern Indiana."Chicago Tribune from LA Times: "Indiana Election Results Held Up By Outdated Procedures...

Indiana too close to call?

Posted on May 07, 2008
Indeed, as I wrote earlier this evening, the Democratic primary in Indiana has become quite interesting. It's nearly 10pm Pacific, the Democratic primary results are close, and CNN is focusing on why the count is so slow in Lake County, Indiana ... Given the heavy turnout in Indiana, and in particular the large number of early and absentee ballots cast in Indiana, it's no surprise that we are still waiting for final results...

Fraud and Paul

Posted on May 07, 2008
To finish Paul's thought, he leaned over and said, David Becker, read the new book that Thad, Mike and Susan Hyde have out on election fraud. You will love it.

Live blogging from NAS Voter Reg Conference #2

Posted on May 07, 2008
The group has warmed up after lunch; I wonder if they spiked the soda.We're in the midst of a long drawn out conversation about interstate interoperability standards and voter fraud. But I have to admit that the conversation is a bit frustrating to me...

Nuns and students have trouble with Indiana voter identification law

Posted on May 07, 2008
I wrote yesterday about the report of the Indiana nuns who had trouble voting yesterday in Indiana's primary. That story received a lot of play yesterday, but some of the stories also noted that college students in Indiana were having trouble with the voter identification law...

NAS Live Blogging #1

Posted on May 07, 2008
Session Two: Midrange solutions.We started by reviewing the California Vote Reg system. Comments were made by Bruce McPherson, past SoS of California, Lee Kercher, Chief of IT for the California SoS, and Dean Logan, Acting County Clerk of LA County, CA...

Two Important Upcoming Conferences

Posted on May 07, 2008
In Portland today and tomorrow, the National Academy of Sciences is holding some public sessions about their voter registration reforms.  Some details later today, and I'll try to blog a bit today.Next Monday and Tuesday, I'm organizing a conference sponsored by the Make Voting Work initiative called "Data for Democracy"...

Indiana Reflections: Paper Takes Time

Posted on May 07, 2008
I'm sure more reports will come out of Indiana, specifically Lake County, this week, but I can't help but making one quick comment: paper takes time.Lake County had a record number of absentee ballots, and they should have expected this if they'd been reading electionupdates!  Paper takes time...

The Irony of the 2008 Democratic Primaries

Posted on May 06, 2008
One short thought: In 2006 and 2007, numerous states moved primaries up to Super Tuesday and earlier so that they could be more "relevant". Isn't it ironic that it is the states that did not move -- North Carolina, Indiana, Oregon -- who are basking in unprecedented attention by the candidates? Those states that did move often received little more than a wave from the candidates; if they had not moved, they could be being romanced right now.

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