Archive for 2019

This week, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission announced the winners of its 2018 “Clearie” awards recognizing state and local election offices for best practices in election administration – and, as usual, electionlineWeekly’s Mindy Moretti has the story.

Today in Washington, DC the Bipartisan Policy Center – with support from the Democracy Fund – is hosting a conference entitled “The Voting Experience: 2018 and the Future” and focused on “key moments in election administration during the 2018 midterm elections, and a look ahead to what steps can be taken to improve the voting experience for all Americans in 2020.”

Minnesota’s legislature is still debating legislation to release millions of dollars in federal cybersecurity funding, despite the Secretary of State’s insistence that the delay will negatively affect preparations for the 2020 election and beyond.

Ohio’s new Secretary of State is taking steps to soften – at least temporarily – a controversial state practice that resulted in the removal of hundreds of thousands of voters in 2018 by sending recently-purged voters a voter registration card at their last known address.

Sandusky, Ohio leaders are making national news after moving to make Election Day a paid holiday by swapping it with Columbus Day. The city’s move is certain to inspire conversation and maybe even action in other communities – especially with elections front of mind with the 2020 election rapidly approaching.

This week’s electionlineWeekly features a story on Florida’s Brevard and Collier Counties, who are using some of their new federal election funding to incorporate biometrics into their plans for election security.

Yesterday, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) was formally restored to full membership for the first time in nearly ten years with the swearing in of two new recently confirmed Commissioners.

Palm Beach County, Florida’s new election supervisor has sought – and received – $15 million to replace County voting equipment in an effort to move past recent problems that ultimately cost her predecessor her job.

Minnesotans offering language assistance to voters would no longer be as limited in doing so, according to a new bill recently filed by a new Hmong-speaking representative in the state legislature in response to a recent federal ruling blocking a prosecution under that law on voting rights grounds.

Last July, I wrote about how voter misassignment errors led a Georgia judge to order a do-over of a primary in a state house race. Last week, the same judge ordered a second do-over – after another close result between the same two candidates – after evidence that the problem had occurred again.