Archive for 2019

Murrysville, PA will have to subdivide its voting precincts after a court agreed that they far exceed state guidelines for maximum number of voters, leading to long lines at the polls. In communities where in-person voting is still prevalent, finding enough places to vote and assigning the right number of voters to those places is a critical task.

Los Angeles County, CA’s long-awaited voting system is beginning its public rollout and will debut in 2020. Obviously, this is a huge step for Los Angeles, but it also signals a potential new phase for voting technology nationwide. It’s a story that is likely to resonate in the election community for years (if not decades) to come.

Tennessee’s Rutherford County (Murfreesboro) is facing a $300K lawsuit after an elderly voter suffered injuries after a trip and fall in a polling place last year. It’s a reminder that while larger threats like mass shootings and terrorism get attention, things like extension cords can literally and figuratively trip up election officials.

Hawaii lawmakers have approved legislation that moves the Aloha State to all-mail voting, provide postage-paid return  and clarify when ballots must be received for counting. The changes would apply to the 2020 election, meaning that Hawaii will likely be leaning on a deep bench of mail-voting jurisdictions nationwide for advice.

Texas’ Secretary of State is scrambling for legislative support to keep his job amid concerns over voting rights after a federal court settlement ended a controversial voter list purge aimed at non-citizen voters.

New York City’s Board of Elections has put its entire voter list online – highlighting the fact that voter lists are public records but doing so in a way that has some critics nervous about privacy.

All of Washington State’s county auditors have signed on to a joint letter asking the state to cover its fair share of election costs. It’s just the latest example of the contentiously cooperative (cooperatively contentious?) relationship between states and localities on election administration.

Yesterday, Ohio’s new Secretary of State announced a bipartisan effort to consider automatic voter registration – with a possibility that it could be in place for the 2020 election. It’s definitely newsworthy for Ohio to see the SoS and lawmakers talking with (instead of at) one another on an issue of this magnitude.

The U.S. Census Bureau yesterday released the first data from its 2018 Registration and Voting Supplement, which provides the first detailed look at how many Americans voted in the recent midterm election.

E-pollbook vendor VRSystems is vigorously pushing back against a suggestion by the North Carolina State Board of Elections, drawing on the recently-released Mueller Report, that it was hacked during the 2016 election.