Posts by Doug Chapin

New Hampshire’s Supreme Court has reinstated a state law that requires voters to show proof of residency if they register within 30 days of an election. It capped off a hectic week of litigation where the law went from on to off to on again. Last week’s wild ride – just like a rollercoaster, in that it ended up right where it started – will probably raise as many questions as it answered with Election Day just eight days away.

A judge in Ramsey County (St. Paul), Minnesota has ruled that the federal Voting Rights Act supersedes state law in a criminal case alleging that a St. Paul city council member illegally assisted a voter in a recent mayoral race. This ruling is obviously important to the defendant, but it’s also instructive on the interaction between federal protections and state prohibitions on election matters like language assistance.

Mail ballots are finally on their way to 61,000 voters in Colorado’s Adams County – but not until they went missing for a week on a wayward truck due to miscommunication between the printer, a truck driver, the U.S. Postal Service and the county elections office. It’s just another example of how every election relies on successful execution of numerous tasks by many different people. When things go wrong, however, each of those people needs to be prepared to notify someone else that there’s a problem so it can be resolved. Election officials are masterful problem solvers – but only if they know there’s a problem to solve.

The State of Alaska is advertising for pollworkers in the tiny Yukon River community of Stevens Village after receiving no votes (or ballots, or anything) at all in the 2018 primary. This is an extreme version of the recruiting challenges that many localities face – but it’s rare that a community will have no one.

Reed College professor Paul Gronke has a new blog post at his Early Voting Information Center site examining public attitudes toward the process of choosing election officials and the role partisanship should play. SPOILER ALERT: voters like their election officials, but they’re not keen on partisanship.

Election Day is two weeks from tomorrow and I know there is a ton of election news, but LOOK EVERYBODY ALASKA HAS COOL “I VOTED” STICKERS FOR EARLY VOTERS AND THEY ARE INCREDIBLE. Setting aside how fantastic these stickers look, the idea of using “premium” (my word) stickers to encourage early voting is an interesting tactic – and the results could tell us a lot about the power of giveaways like this to shift voters away from Election Day voting.

Regular readers may have noticed an exciting new change at electionline.org – an updated look accompanied by some functional changes intended to keep the site informative and useful to the election community for years to come. This refresh comes at a key point in the election cycle; if experience is any guide, traffic (both news and visitors) spikes in the weeks before and after Election Day. Go take a look!

Ballots for Colorado voters have begun to make their way to voters this week – and the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul has a fascinating inside look at the part everyone plays – especially the United States Postal Service – in making it happen. Given that Colorado’s ballot delivery system could be the wave of the future in many states, it’s a great window into how thoughtful and thorough the process is in preparing, sending and receiving ballots from voters.

A new report suggests that several state voter registration files are available for sale on the “dark web”. This data may not have been stolen via a “hack” but rather represents a misuse of voter files by an unauthorized party; still, this threat – large files with voters’ personally identifiable information being offered for sale to individuals who may not respect state and local laws regarding what can (and cannot) be done with such information – is the kind of election cyberthreat (an attack on voters rather than outcomes) that worries me the most.

The weather has once again been a major player this election season, with hurricanes swamping the Carolinas, the Florida Panhandle and large swaths of the Southeast – but severe weather is also affecting voters in Arizona, where the combination of mail ballot delivery and torrential hurricane rain have resulted in soaked, unusable ballots. Election officials are moving swiftly to alert and assist voters with getting replacements.