Posts Tagged ‘news’

This week’s electionlineWeekly spotlights the new Virginia Election Data Project, a cooperative effort between the state, localities and the elections team at The Pew Charitable Trusts. It’s a really nice use of election data to examine and illuminate the voting process and highlight potential areas of improvement – and could be a model for other states.

In Wicomico County, MD on the state’s Eastern Shore, the library and the county executive are fighting over access to the library building for voting equipment storage. It’s a battle that’s emblematic of the ongoing struggle that election offices nationwide face in balancing operational needs with limited budgets – which often conflicts with other local programs’ similar challenges.

Back in February, I wrote about a legislative proposal by Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill to join the small but growing list of states offering automatic voter registration to eligible residents. It didn’t happen in the legislature, but yesterday the SoS and the state DMV announced an administrative agreement to bring it to the Nutmeg State.

New Mexico’s State Auditor has written a letter to the interim Secretary of State saying that the state’s elections have been persistently underbudgeted for almost a decade – and that the shortfall is being covered by a variety of methods that could be costing the state money. The letter comes against a complicated partisan backdrop as the state will elect a new SoS this fall.

Last Friday, the Maryland State Board of Elections took a very unusual step to deal with problems with the City of Baltimore’s primary: it decertified the results and is carrying out an audit to determine what went wrong. It appears that the focus of the audit will be provisional ballots, which may have been scanned incorrectly – though if so there is disagreement as to who (the state or the city) is at fault.

electionline’s Mindy Moretti has an update in this week’s electionlineWeekly analyzing efforts underway across the country to adjust laws disenfranchising people convicted of felonies. It provides some context for the re-emerging nationwide discussion about the policy of disenfrachisement and the legal and implementation issues involved with changes to those rules.

Arizona’s recent Election Day woes are well-documented, but a group of Phoenix-area advocates is going beyond the usual route of litigation and public criticism and seeking a partnership with state and local officials on issues with the election process. Similar efforts in California have been incredibly productive – and if successful, can benefit not only participants and election officials but voters as well.

Wisconsin’s Kevin Kennedy will retire at the end of next month, leaving the state’s election agency after 37 years rather than stay on in the wake of a legislative overhaul of the state’s election structure. It’s a huge loss for Wisconsin but a tremendous opportunity for his colleagues nationwide to take advantage of his vast knowledge and experience.

A new piece in Alaska Public Media takes you inside the process of translating the state’s election materials into Native Alaskan languages like Yup’ik, where a team is working to see and hear English terms with new eyes and ears in order to convey key concepts in such a way that all voters can understand them and make informed choices. Quite simply, it’s fascinating.

Two Colorado U.S. Senate candidates who had lost their place on the ballot due to signature-gathering issues got help from a judge last week, who ordered that both of them be added to the ballot (at least temporarily). The fight illuminates how separate aspects of an election official’s job – here, the SoS’ responsibilities for ballot access and ballot preparation – can come into conflict as elections approach.