Archive for 2014

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.

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.