Election Day (Not-So) Live Blog 2015
[Image courtesy of theeverydayadventurer]
Kind of a late start this morning, but I’ll be watching to see if any interesting Election Day stories pop up … I’ll be interested to see what effect the Royals victory parade has on the Kansas City election (new EAC executive director and soon-to-be former Johnson County, KS official Brian Newby has some thoughts here) as well as other odds and ends throughout the day.
I’ll continue to update throughout the day … not expecting a huge news day but sometimes those turn out to be the most exciting!
Stay tuned …
9:30am Eastern – so far this morning, the thing that strikes me the most is the number of election offices using social media to tell voters there’s no election today. I like it – a subtle reminder about future votes even though there isn’t one today.
9:45am – The folks at the Voting Information Project have put all of their 2015 data at gttp.votinginfoproject.org … lots of information for elections that may be slipping a little under the radar!
10:30am – Not really an election administration story, but one candidate in Staten Island is unhappy with the local paper after her sticker ad in today’s paper incorrectly read “Vote Tomorrow!”
11:15am – Johnson County (CORRECTED – Iowa City), IA’s auditor is cautioning on Twitter that a Daily Iowan news article about Election Day isn’t clear that voters can only vote in their assigned precinct: “News article looks like you can vote at any polling place near campus. Not true. You have to go to the ONE polling place for your precinct!”
11:45am – Santa Cruz, CA’s Gail Pellerin has one local election that’s already over 70% and she’s hoping for 100% … here’s what she said on Twitter: Election today with 14 property owners. Still waiting for 4 ballots. Come on folks! Let’s hit 100% turnout! [UPDATE: Gail says she will be watching the mail for the remaining ballots, which if postmarked by today can arrive by Friday.]
3:00pm – Back in in the old electionline days, we used to joke that one reliable Election Day occurrence was a car driving into a polling place … while this doesn’t exactly qualify, here’s a story from Pew researcher (and electionline alum) Sean Greene: North Utica [NY] Polling Place Remained Open After Crash Left Neighborhood Without Power. As usual, no one was hurt (thankfully).
3:30pm – It wouldn’t be Election Day without some problems, and it appears the big culprits today are e-pollbooks – which is not entirely unexpected given that they are new technology to pollworkers … there are reports of delays in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) OH, Portage (Valparaiso) IL, Houston TX and Roanoke VA … Portage has pushed voting to 7pm according to the Chicago Tribune.
4:00pm – Sad news from Indianapolis, where a 74-year-old man on his way to serve as a pollworker was killed in an accident early this morning.
5:00pm – Barring any major problems, I’m shutting this down for the day … polls close starting at 6:00pm in Kentucky. Check electionline.org tomorrow morning for the headlines and then stop by here and see if I have anything to add!