Archive for October 2014

electionlineWeekly’s latest focuses on contingency planning – an issue that is better understood after 2012’s Superstorm Sandy but is being tested for different reasons in communities like Monroe County, PA, Dallas, TX and Ferguson, MO.

How much does it cost when a candidate whose name wasn’t on the ballot in the first place withdraws? In Brevard County, FL the answer is $13,000 – thanks to a quirk in state law and the failure of someone in Tallahassee to make a phone call.

New research in California says that the vast majority of uncounted vote-by-mail ballots are because they arrive late, are missing a signature or can’t be matched to a signature on file – and a group dedicated to improving elections has a toolkit to help prevent those errors.

With Election Day about three weeks away, electionlineWeekly looks at the 2014 races for Secretary of State, where retirements and term limits mean that at least 12 states will have a new chief state election official starting in 2015.

MinnPost’s Doug Grow has a great “curtain-raiser” on the Minnesota Secretary of State’s race – which is a nice lead-in to a conversation with the candidates we’ll be hosting at Humphrey on Monday, October 20.

NPR’s Pam Fessler takes a look at the now-familiar if not-yet-well-understood issue of provisional ballots, which are about to get renewed attention because of law changes and recent court decisions like the Supreme Court’s ruling in North Carolina.

Akron, Ohio’s home county is moving to staff up with nonpartisan pollworkers in an effort to alleviate shortages related to the traditional reliance on the partisan “adversary system” in managing the polls on Election Day.

The lead story in NCSL’s latest Canvass looks at the urban/rural divide in election administration and flags an issue of which everyone should take notice: the voting experience in different-sized communities grows more different every year.

Once again, litigants on both sides are running to court seeking election law changes right before Election Day. To this I say: ENOUGH. Let’s make it so such changes are rare – and when they do occur, they come with sufficient funds to make them work.

In Iowa, voting and high school football – two popular autumn pastimes – are together in the same place as Johnson County brings its VoteMobile to schools on Friday nights. As electionline’s Mindy Moretti notes: “With clear eyes and full hearts voters … can’t lose.”