Archive for September 2011

In March 2008 Butler County, OH suffered voting machine problems that resulted in the loss of about 200 votes. Yesterday, they reached a settlement with their vendor worth $1.5 million. Wow.

A new piece by Governing’s Lou Jacobson looks at the role of Secretaries of State. While the job may not be the political plum it once was, it still carries tremendous weight in the world of elections.

Pew’s new Election Data Dispatches offer a window into the power of data to illuminate and guide election policy. This post looks at the first post on cost data from North Dakota and makes some observations about what might be going on and how else to view the data.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – the federal government is suing New York for failure to implement a federal election law. This time, the issue is the conflict between the state’s primary date and requirements for military and overseas voting.

NPR’s Pam Fessler – an unsung rockstar on election issues – has a piece today about the impact of budget cuts and turnout on lines at the polls in 2012. This post acknowledges the potential problem but sees it as an opportunity for the election community.

Today’s premiere of Moneyball brings to mind the contributions of Bill James, whose love of baseball – and commitment to using data to explore it – changed the game. This post anticipates the emergence of someone similar in the field of election administration.

In late August 2010, Harris County TX’s entire inventory of voting machines was destroyed by fire. How the County responded – and managed to hold a normal election that November – is a story worth remembering.

Colorado’s Secretary of State and Denver’s Clerk are blaming one another in a dispute over mailing 2011 ballots to inactive voters; however, the changing nature of Colorado’s election laws might be equally to blame.

A fun (if not entirely scientific) recent experiment on WNYC’s Radiolab points out the power of language to assist – and prevent – communication. This post looks at this phenomenon in the field of election administration.

Monday morning, AEI and the Pew Center on the States will look a new approach to voter registration. This new approach could be the kind of bipartisan effort that is needed to overcome the fierce, yet tired, partisan debates over election policy.