Archive for 2016

Last week, the Technology Working Group of CSG’s Overseas Voting Initiative released a new report detailing its recommendations for state and local election offices aimed at improving the voting process for Americans abroad.

Post-election examinations of election results are getting lots of attention these days, but electionlineWeekly’s Mindy Moretti has a story that may have gotten lost in all the excitement over presidential results: Maryland just conducted its first statewide independent automated audit.

I’m honored to be attending and taking part in the third edition of The Pew Charitable Trusts’ “Voting in America” – a quadrennial meeting designed to look back at the past election and ahead to the future of democracy and the voting process across the nation.

While there is disagreement about the presidential recount underway in Michigan – first in the court of public opinion and now the courts – many eyes are now turning to a state law that prohibits a precinct from being recounted if it cannot be reconciled; that is, the total number of ballots cast don’t match the number of names in the poll book.

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released its latest minority language determinations under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. These determinations set the list of jurisdictions for which voting materials must be made available in languages other than English. That full list – and a few key deletions – is included in today’s post.

Election Day 2016 brought many surprising results – but in the tiny Kansas town of Frederick, the surprise was that the election returns showed that the town would continue to exist despite a lack of support from its nine(!) residents. What’s more, it now appears the votes to keep the town alive came from people who don’t live there, thanks to an error at the polls.

It’s no secret that Election Day 2016 has been the subject of much unhappiness in the last several weeks, but a story by Mindy Moretti in the latest edition of electionlineWeekly looks at a new poll by the Democracy Fund that has good news – plus some insights – about voters’ experiences on November 8.

Election results are still being finalized in many places – and fought over in others – but in New Mexico, longtime Bernalillo County (Albuquerque) election official Maggie Tolouse Oliver will be sworn in as New Mexico’s Secretary of State next week after winning a special election to finish out the last two years of the term.

After several successes in 2016, supporters of automatic voter registration (AVR) are looking ahead to more states joining the list in 2017 – but those hopes suffered a setback yesterday when the Illinois House was unable to join the Senate in overriding Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of an AVR bill. It will be interesting to see what this means for AVR legislation nationwide in the post-2016 legislative environment.

My friend and colleague Merle King from Kennesaw State University sent me the attached yesterday – and it was so good I had to share. Recounts are in the news again – and Merle has a fantastic take (focusing on the difference between hunting and fishing licenses) that will clarify the issues involved, helping you separate signal from noise in the next few weeks.