Archive for February 2012

Wisconsin’s 2012 recipe of voter ID and a statewide recall election could mean a wealth of real-world data on the impact of ID requirements as well as its interaction with Election Day registration. It will likely be exhausting, however.

Nothing is as amazing to behold as a newspaper on an outrage rampage – and right now the New York Daily News is pounding the Board of Elections over its (puzzling) inaction in the face of evidence of a faulty Bronx ballot scanner in the 2010 election.

The Indiana Supreme Court will decide this week what to do with the office of Secretary of State in the aftermath of former Secretary Charlie White’s felony convictions. As in any disputed election, the Court’s choices are limited – and each one is unattractive in its own way.

AIGA’s Design for Democracy has a new list of top 10 election design recommendations. This list is valuable for designers but also for policymakers who should examine whether existing laws and old habits are getting in the way of good design.

Summit County, OH is involved in a budget battle between the election board and county legislators about the 2012 budget. The latest salvo in that battle – a pile of data comparing election spending in several counties – is a valuable window into the cost components of election administration.

Wisconsin’s first primary under the new voter ID law went smoothly overall, but the problems that did occur are illustrative of how hard it is to change in any endeavor – but especially elections.

Pew’s recent registration report indicates that election officials have work to do in finding and fixing erroneous, outdated and duplicate entries on their lists. But they may also be facing considerable work related to adding as many as 51 million eligible but unregistered Americans to the nation’s voter rolls.

It’s that time of year when reporters start asking which are the states to watch … and while the old standbys remain, pound for pound the most interesting state in the nation for me is Colorado. Read why.

The President’s new budget contains continued funding for the EAC. While it’s barely above zero (about 0.0003% of the total), the fact that it’s still a non-zero number means the EAC still has a future – if only on paper, and if only for now.

A new study from Pew finds that one in eight voter registrations nationwide is inaccurate or out-of-date … and is already gathering states to pioneer a new approach that would address the problems identified in their study.