Archive for 2017

Giving thanks this week for all of this blog’s faithful readers AND a decidedly NON-empty nest … blogging returns Monday, November 27!

The latest electionlineWeekly looks at New Mexico’s efforts to improve participation and elections in an often-overlooked community: Native Americans. This is an important effort in the Land of Enchantment; the “disconnect” Native Americans feel regarding American elections is significant – and there are often logistical challenges (distance, language, etc.) to running elections in tribal jurisdictions.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s latest “Deep Dive” brief on 2016 election data is out, focusing on election offices’ use of polling places and the need for, and recruitment of, poll workers to assist voters on and before Election Day. It’s a snapshot of the human factor on the other side of the voting table, illustrating the scale and nature of the effort election offices must put forth to allow voters to cast their ballots.

A tight legislative race in Stafford County (Quantico), Virginia is generating frustration and controversy after the county board of elections voted to exclude 55 absentee ballots that arrived on Wednesday morning after the Election Day deadline. The problem is, it isn’t clear when the ballots arrived at the post office – meaning that the delay could have been a failure of the county to pick up timely ballots.

Almost four years ago, I wrote about the U.S. Supreme Court declining to hear a case challenging Minnesota’s rules regarding political attire in the polling place. Now, another variation of that case has made it back to the Court – which announced yesterday it will hear the appeal. The Court rarely grants cert to affirm, so we could be seeing some changes to those rules in the foreseeable future.

electionlineWeekly’s latest exit interview features Utah’s Mark Thomas, who is stepping down as the state’s election director to take a new position with the Utah Senate.

MIT Professor Charles Stewart has been doing a series of voter registration posts on the Election Updates blog – and a recent one looks at the impact of residential mobility. Spoiler alert: it’s tricky.

Election Day 2017 seemed to go fairly smoothly yesterday; there were some power outages, issues with e-pollbooks and unexpectedly high turnouts that taxed election offices – but York County, PA had a situation that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen before: voting machines that allowed multiple votes for the same candidate.

It’s Election Day across the nation, and for many voters that could mean waiting in line to cast a ballot. John Fortier and Don Palmer of the Bipartisan Policy Center have a new post on Medium describing the work they’re doing in Virginia and elsewhere to help election officials track lines so voters can avoid some or all of the wait.

Election administration has a well-deserved reputation for developing reliable procedures and carrying them out accurately time and again. It’s largely true and a good reputation to have, but it overlooks a key aspect of the job that can be just as important: inventiveness. That’s why I was tickled to see a story out of Reno County (Hutchinson), KS focusing on a homemade solution to a potentially difficult equipment problem.