Archive for December 2014

From September 2011: A fun (if not entirely scientific) recent experiment on WNYC’s Radiolab points out the power of language to assist – and prevent – communication. This post looks at this phenomenon in the field of election administration.

A rare but crucial recount mistake flipped a Maine Senate race – and the race un-flipped when the mistake was discovered during a legislative hearing.

Former Harvard President and Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has a new op-ed that looks at infrastructure challenges and their impact on public confidence. His approaches to addressing those challenges apply to election administration, too.

FiveThirtyEight’s Stephen Pettigrew has a fascinating look at tie votes and the various procedures used to resolve them … ultimately, it’s not really an election administration issue unless you count envy that resolving an outcome could be that easy!

electionlineWeekly’s Mindy Moretti (my electiongeek brain twin, apparently) continues the focus on same-day registration with a long look at how it’s progressing (and faring) nationwide.

Illinois is about to enact sweeping election law changes, including making Election Day registration permanent, joining the ERIC exchange and broadening just about every other aspect of the voting process. It’s a big job and it’s only beginning.

Paul Gronke of the Early Voting Information Center recently shared his frustration at not being able to find early voting statistics. The reasons why such data can be hard to find vary – but I suspect it will become easier as more jurisdictions recognize its value.

Brian Newby’s latest ElectionDiary describes his plan to handle a small but significant paper ballot election by testing a high-speed scanning system that may not save money in the short term but will get the job done and provide a test run for the long term.

Complaints about slow counts of early votes in Arizona are beginning to move beyond typical media/campaign impatience and are raising eyebrows among voters – which suggests that the state will have to do something about it.