Archive for 2012

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.

Voters across Ohio will be able to cast early votes the weekend before Election Day, thanks to a Supreme Court order and a Secretary of State directive. Why, then, isn’t everyone happy? Blackberry owners might be able to give you a clue.

Pew’s latest Election Data Dispatch describes the national move toward online voter registration and finds that nearly 300,000 new voters in six states have recently added their names to the rolls using online registration.

The latest federal appeals court decision on Ohio provisional ballots raises two “big-little” issues for election officials facing the “right church, wrong pew” issue in 2012 and beyond.

A new Bipartisan Policy Center report suggests that voter turnout was down during the 2012 presidential primaries. That’s obviously a problem for America; is it a problem for America’s election officials?

Allen County (Lima), Ohio’s saga of ballot design and printing – shared by CivicDesigning’s Dana Chisnell – is a snapshot of the kind of things that have to happen in order for elections to come together.

Ohio’s Secretary of State has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a ruling allowing early voting the weekend before Election Day. Not everyone likes the action – and I don’t like pre-election uncertainty – but the case has to be allowed to reach a full conclusion.

A recent New York Times piece on absentee voting and vote-by-mail identifies real challenges associated with the shift away from polling places. I’m not sure those challenges are unique – nor that voters can be persuaded to return.

Louisiana has always been a little bit different. Now, following local redistricting, some precincts are so small that they have as few as one voter – and are stretching voting machine inventories painfully thin.