Election-Campaign Law

Todd Rokita calls for vote centers in IN

Posted on December 27, 2008
This story just in from the Chicago Tribune:  SoS Todd Rokita is calling for a major expansion in the use of vote centers in Indiana.  No mention of Pew’s Make Voting Work project which funded a pilot study of the concept this year in the state.

Calls for early voting in MN

Posted on December 27, 2008
I expect to see more of these soon: calls for early voting in MN.  Early voting is becoming something of the swiss army knife of election reform this year.  Got an election administration problem?  Institute early voting and it will go away. Ignore the fact that absentee ballots have been a crux of the controversy in [...

I?m getting scotch for Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2008
What an amazing year for early voting.  This in from my good friend Michael McDonald.  While I “predicted” this six months ago, those in the know (Tova?  Michael?) can tell you that the “one third” estimate was out on a limb.  Looks like that limb just got a lot thicker...

Last minute holiday gift tips for election geeks on your list

Posted on December 23, 2008
Now here is a deal for that election geek on your list. If you click around enough on amazon.com, on these three book titles, “Voting Technology”, “Electronic Elections”, and “Election Fraud”, you’ll eventually get a “Price for All Three” of $76...

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A Note on the Jeht Foundation

Posted on December 16, 2008
As many of you know, the Jeht Foundation is closing its doors in January.  Here is a story in the NY Times that explains everything.

Nice press release on the Maholtra and Meredith paper

Posted on December 16, 2008
Found on Marketwatch.

Daily audits called for to resolve absentee ballot issues in NC

Posted on December 16, 2008
Interesting story out of New Bern, NC about the need for daily ballot audits when conducting in-person absentee balloting.  Election geeks will enjoy the note at the end about an election worker using a “spare personal electronic ballot card” to store 337 votes.

New NDI publications: two guidebooks on election monitoring

Posted on December 16, 2008
I received in the mail two new election monitoring guidebooks from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI): “Promoting Legal Frameworks for Democratic Elections: An NDI Guide for Developing Election Laws and Law Commentaries”, and “Monitoring Electronic Technologies in Electoral Processes: An NDI Guide for Political Parties and Civic Organizations...

JEHT Foundation shuts its doors

Posted on December 15, 2008
Sad news from the JEHT Foundation.  The statement of Bob Crane is available here. JEHT has partnered with the Pew Charitable Trusts in the Make Voting Work initiative, and has also funded important projects on voter participation and campaign finance...

More from The Economist, on the secret ballot

Posted on December 12, 2008
Since Thad put links up to those two stories from The Economist, I thought I’d also post this one, to the story “A Really Secret Ballot”. This story discusses work by Peter Ryan, Ben Adida, Ron Rivest and David Chaum.

M-Voting in Estonia

Posted on December 12, 2008
According to a recent report: After pioneering online voting, the Baltic state of Estonia aims to be the first in the world to give voters the right to cast ballots using mobile telephones. Parliament adopted a law Thursday allowing “m-voting” from 2011, six years after a landmark election in which Estonians were able to vote via the [...

The Internet Voting World

Posted on December 12, 2008
So at this Pew Trusts conference, the words internet voting came up a lot, or a lot more than either Mike or I expected.  On this note, I want to post two interesting articles about the Internet from the Economist’s Technology Quarterly. The first article notes that the tubing of the Internet — the bandwidth — [...

Report from Pew conference: ?Election Day Went Smoothly but Trouble Spots Remail, Survey Shows?

Posted on December 11, 2008
This story from MarketWatch summarizes the presentation that Charles Stewart made at the Pew event, talking about some of the early results from the election performance survey that Charles ran during this fall’s presidential election. Note that the survey found, quoted from the MarketWatch story: — On Election Day, African [...

More from Pew conference

Posted on December 09, 2008
Kurt Browning, Secretary of State in Florida, is now talking about the implementation of early voting. He said one thing that I found quite interesting, when be said that issues of early voting implementation are “where politics and election administration collide”...

Pew conference

Posted on December 09, 2008
It’s been a really interesting event so far; Andrew Kohut talked about the election, Charles Stewart talked about the performance of American elections survey, and now Paul is talking about early voting. In introductory comments, Michael Caudell-Feagan from Pew gave some good news: Pew and JEHT plan to continue making considerable investments in their effort [...

NAS, and now Pew ?

Posted on December 08, 2008
Well, back on the road … I’m now in DC for a big event that Pew is hosting tomorrow and Wednesday on election reform. As our blogging team is here in full-force (Paul, Thad, Charles, and I are all here) we will no doubt write more about the event as it progresses...

Afternoon update from AEI

Posted on December 04, 2008
Glad to see Michael’s posting from NAS.  I am watching a voter registration panel right now with Nate Persily, Michael McDonald, Doug Chapin, and Kain Mac Donald. Karin presented some results from a set of surveys and data collection efforts that tracked polling place incidents...

NAS State Voter Registration Database Workshop V

Posted on December 04, 2008
Okay, so if Paul is going to do live blogging, I’m going to have to as well from Atlanta. We’ve spend the day so far hearing from election officials throughout the nation about the performance of their voter registration databases in the 2008 election cycle...

Second update from the ELJ Post Election Conference

Posted on December 04, 2008
Panel two covered campaign finance reform.  Good presentations from Tony Corrado (another liberal arts college prof!), Michael Toner, Michael Malbin, and Rick Hasen. This was an interesting followup to the first panel, since the members of this panel, other than Toner, have all taken public positions in favor of public financing, and I think each of [...

First report from the ELJ Post Election Conference

Posted on December 04, 2008
I am attending the ELJ / AEI / Brookings / UCDC post election conference. The first panel included the general counsels for the McCain (Trevor Potter) and Obama (Bob Bauer) campaigns.  There was an interesting discussion of the complicated role of the general counsel...

The continuing MN absentee ballot issue

Posted on December 03, 2008
Today’s story in the Star Tribune highlights what is going to be an ongoing issue as (not if) we move toward more use of absentee ballots in this country.  There are inconsistent rules across states regarding when and how absentee ballots are accepted, and even within states, rules are unequally applied...

National Academies of Science voter registration workshop

Posted on December 03, 2008
I’m off to Atlanta — the site of yesterday’s Senate runoff election — for two days of discussion regarding voter registration systems as part of the ongoing National Academy study of Statewide VR systems. So if you happen to be in the area, Thursday’s open sessions look pretty interesting...

Let us be thankful for recount updates on Thanksgiving

Posted on November 27, 2008
I’ve posted my daily recount update, reflecting yesterday’s counted ballots in Minnesota, here. Yesterday’s challenged ballots reached an astounding 66.9% of the residual vote rate, which suggests that pretty soon every remaining ballot that wasn’t counted successfully by the machines will be hand-counted by the state canvassing board.

Minnesota recount scorecard for 11/25

Posted on November 25, 2008
My latest recount scorecard is here. Watching the recount has lost most of its charm.  The challenged ballots today, as a fraction of residual votes, was 40%.  Today’s precincts counted were the most Democratic counted thus far, by far (having given Franken 55% of the two-party vote, compared to 49% for the precincts counted before today...

Minnesota Recount Scorecard update

Posted on November 24, 2008
I have posted an update of my Minnesota recount scorecard here. As many have remarked, the rate of challenging has certainly picked up.  I have been expressing challenged ballots as a percentage of residual votes in the Senate race, since the challenges probably showed up originally as over- or under-votes...

Minnesota challenge variability

Posted on November 21, 2008
The real action in the Minnesota recount will be the ballots challenged by the two campaigns on the grounds that the voter intent was not properly ascertained.  These challenged ballots are emerging even when the county recounts show no discrepancy with the count of the ballots successfully scanned by the machines...

A contrarian prediction on the Minnesota recount

Posted on November 21, 2008
The obsession with the changing vote margin in Minnesota is missing the big story, which is the much larger number of ballots that have been challenged by the two campaigns.  Franken’s people have challenged 777 ballots that otherwise would have been awarded to Franken...

Minnesota recount scorecard, Day 3

Posted on November 21, 2008
My daily Minnesota recount scorecard is posted here. Much of the comment today is about the rise in challenged ballots, which certainly is true.  Still, the main story is how few challenges there are overall.  Through the first two days of counting, only 20% of all precincts witnessed a challenge...

Minnesota recount, day 2

Posted on November 20, 2008
I’ve created a simple Minnesota recount scorecard Excel spreadsheet, which is available for download here.  I’ve updated it with results from Day 2. Both today’s and yesterday’s recounted precincts are more Republican than the remaining precincts, so it’s reasonable to expect that Franken might pull closer to parity at a faster rate tomorrow and Saturday (assuming [...

Alaska, by wave

Posted on November 19, 2008
Counting in Alaska is finished for the day, and it looks like Begich now has an insurmountable lead that will withstand anything that comes in the remaining overseas ballots. The following is the count, by wave of ballot counting over the past two weeks: [...

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