Archive for January 2015

Orange County, CA conducts a series of surveys intended to identify to move past anecdotes and learn how its election system is performing so the office can focus on constant improvement. That project is the subject of this week’s electionlineWeekly profile.

North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has notified counties that existing DRE machines will be decertified in 2018 – and they will be financially responsible for replacing them. Counties are unhappy – both about the required switch and the cost.

Washington State is once again discussing whether or not to cover the cost of ballot postage – a proposal that would cost the state about $2.7 million over the next two years, though state and local officials (while supportive) are careful not to oversell the benefits.

Three months after Mineral County, NV elected new local officials, discovery of a missing cartridge containing as many as 172 votes (which could swing outcomes) may trigger a criminal investigation and presents the County with a dilemma of how to respond.

A New Mexico state senator has proposed legislation to have the state study the feasibility of biometric identification for voting. While that change isn’t likely to happen fast, the political, technical and fiscal issues it raises will be worth watching.

51 years after ratification of the 24th Amendment banning poll taxes in federal elections, the arguments continue over “poll taxes” – in essence, unfair costs imposed on voters. It will be interesting to see how this issue evolves as elections do.

New data from the 2014 election in California suggests that age is a major driver of turnout – if that’s representative of larger trends nationally it could provide clues on how election officials can best serve the needs of their “customers” in the electorate.

Hartford’s City Council has begun the process of removing three registrars in the wake of crippling problems on Election Day 2014. The issues in that story highlight the challenges that face soaring calls to make voting easier like those in last night’s State of the Union.

Ohio will once again debate the move to online voter registration, just as the SoS announces a sharp drop in provisional ballots thanks to online address changes – and county election officials ask for the ability to pilot vote centers in the Buckeye State.

This week, both electionlineWeekly and NCSL’s Canvass have pieces looking ahead at 2015 – it’s a nice “curtain-raiser” on the issues, challenges and debates that will shape the coming year in elections.