Archive for January 2015

Florida’s Seminole County has released the 2014 results of its regular voter experience survey, using comment cards to generate discussion and awareness of the voting process – and settling the crucial ballpoint vs. felt-tip debate once and for all.

Illinois’ Will County is raising concerns about the newly-enacted same-day registration law and is recruiting other counties to resist it or at least demand it be properly funded. This is inevitable and unsurprising given the manner in which the law was enacted.

Ohio’s Hamilton County discovered 26 double ballots cast in the 2014 election – but because of provisional voting none of those extra votes were counted. It’s an encouraging story, both because of the small number and the effectiveness of the county’s system.

Nevada’s new Secretary of State – who supported voter ID during her time in the state legislature – is signalling that she is prepared to support an ID bill by the new Republican majority. You can bet it’ll be a fight – one that could stretch well into next year.

Outgoing Election Center executive director Doug Lewis has some strong, impassioned “first person singular” words about the state of the field in this week’s electionlineWeekly.

Guadalupe County, TX’s election administrator quit this week – partly because she wasn’t enjoying it anymore but mostly because her 2014 experience seemed to suggest that she was in an increasingly no-win situation. Going forward, she may not be the only one.

Rick Hasen’s new paper looks at the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2014 rulings in last-minute election cases; he suggests the Court may be over-relying on the threat of “voter confusion” and calls on Justices to issue opinions in these cases eventually, if not right away.

Kitsap County, WA’s new auditor is a 30-year veteran of the office who rose from temporary worker to the top job. Her story is typical of the “accidental” nature of election administration, but it’s also an opportunity to capture that knowledge for the next generation.

County officials in St. Charles, MO have forcibly refunded hundreds of thousands of dollars in election costs that they say overcharged local governments and the county itself. The election director disagrees, and says he’ll go to court to get the money back.