Archive for October 2014

DC’s Board of Elections has had a rough 2014 – from counting delays to an embarrassing misprint on the cover of its voter guide – and now the agency and its director are working hard to restore confidence in their performance. It’s probably their last chance.

Shasta County in northern California is facing slightly higher postage due costs because autumn humidity has made ballots slightly heavier than a first-class stamp. While ballots are still getting delivered, mail ballot postage is a growing problem that demands a solution.

Political science is at a high-water mark as a source of analysis of elections, but a pair of pre-election controversies threatens to discredit this otherwise valuable tool because of concerns that researchers are affecting and not just studying voting outcomes.

Pew’s Voting Information Project has partnered with the Internet Association on a suite of online voting lookup tools – and is also giving election offices the capability of providing these services from their official sites as well. It’s a big deal.

After an Illinois Attorney General’s opinion that prohibited counting early and absentee ballots before Election Night, Cook County is asking the state to recognize its program of pre-tabulation scanning of ballots as something distinct from “tabulation.”

New Mexico is swapping Sharpies for Flairs at the polls after voter concerns about spoiling ballots – a change that will cost the state some money but is emblematic of the kinds of big “little decisions” that dominate election administration nationwide.

NPR’s Pam Fessler has another election story – this time, a deeper dive into the story of absentee ballots that don’t get counted because voters wait too long to send them or make other errors – including accidentally (or deliberately, to be safe) voting in person too.

Thanks to human nature, a quirk in state law and modern technology, New York City has 850 voters who (according to the rolls) are 164 years old. Fixing the problem is as easy as getting people to divulge their real age – which means it isn’t easy at all.

The federal-state fight over proof-of-citizenship in Arizona – and the resulting decision to print federal-only ballots – is proving to be an expensive proposition for local governments like Pima County (Tucson).

Two weeks from Election Day, Minnesota’s campaign for Secretary of State is heating up on the eve of an event with all four candidates today at the Humphrey School.