Archive for 2014

More than a year after Minnesota resisted one popular national trend by rejecting ID, it is now appearing to stall somewhat on another one: adoption of e-pollbooks. Indeed, the two developments appear to be somewhat related.

An Iowa court has struck down a controversial rule allowing the state to identify suspected non-citizen voters using a federal database and then remove them from the rolls.

Students at the well-regarded Rhode Island School of Design have applied their talents to election signs and ballots – and the results are fantastic and encouraging for the future growth of the elections field.

A summer 2013 break-in in Santa Rosa County, FL resulted in the theft of ballots and equipment valued at over $5,000. The case has now run cold – in part because no one seems very interested in investigating.

Brian Newby’s latest ElectionDiary is topical with Mother Nature’s latest – namely, snow. Brian looks at how continued snow challenges could (and should, in his view) lead to consolidation of elections to more metereologically friendly times of year.

electionline.org’s latest newsletter has a rundown of all the candidates for Secretary of State in what will be a busy (and likely hard-fought) 2014 election cycle.

About one-third of North Carolina’s counties are seeking to cut early voting even further than the new reduced days and hours in state law – not because they want fewer voters, but because there aren’t enough voters to make the days and hours they already have worthwhile.

A postal worker in Texas didn’t feel like doing his job, so he marked lots of mail “return to sender.” Unfortunately, some of that mail included voter registration cards, and now hundreds of voters (and maybe more) are on the inactive “suspended” voter list.

A long-running vote fraud probe in Iowa has concluded and the results are in the hands of prosecutors. Here’s hoping the state follows Ohio’s lead and shares how the stories uncovered illuminate what happens when election rules are applied in the real world.

A new Pew Election Data Dispatch highlights research that seeks ways to counteract voters’ tendency to over-report (or, in lay terms, “lie about”) whether they voted in an election. Hopefully, the findings will help fine-tune the data to permit more accurate forecasting and analysis.