Archive for October 2012

The biggest source of uncertainty on Election Day will be citizen poll watchers, including those affiliated with True the Vote. Will they show? What will they do? How good is their information? And what effect will it have on polling places? Stay tuned.

Hurricane Sandy – and all of the damage in its wake – has once again prompted a discussion about whether and how to deal with a disaster’s impact on Election Day. Unfortunately, discussing it appears to be all that’s happening.

Sandy Koufax – who used fear as part of his Hall of Fame repetoire – has a lot to teach us about contingency planning when, like Joaquin Andujar, hurricanes or other contingencies force us to say “youneverknow.”

Lots of people think we should panic about the prospect of problems on Election Day. I think everyone should chill the HECK out.

Pew’s newest Election Data Dispatch reveals that one in three dollars spent in Wisconsin on elections this year went to pay pollworkers – the largest single slice of the elections pie.

A small printing error on thousands of Palm Beach County absentee ballots has created a big series of problems for voters, candidates – and the county’s election supervisor.

Here’s my piece from the recent report by the CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project, discussing the relationship between voting technology and election administration [HINT: it’s less one-sided than you think.]

Brian Newby’s latest ElectionDiary demonstrates how residential mobility means that the process of updating and maintaining voter rolls is an endless task – even two weeks before Election Day.

Recent news reports have identified potential vulnerabilities in two states’ online voter registration systems that could and should result in improvements to the process by which voters and election officials populate and maintain the voter rolls.

CalTech/MIT’s Voting Technology Project has released a new report that looks back at the years since the 2000 presidential election and ahead to the future of voting in America. It’s a must read, chock full of data and ideas for election geeks everywhere.