Election-Campaign Law

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
“You can use it if you want to vote for him” We were going to post this in a “collected issues” post, but as Mike said about the voting-machine-lands-in-driveway story, “this was too good to pass up”! In the same NPR story, you can find the following comment about voting in one Ohio precinct: In one Ohio polling [...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
Problem with ballot design in Ohio Have a look at the following NPR story: NPR’s Andrea Seabrook reports that first-time voters are causing a snag known as the “double bubble.” This is when a voter marks the circle next to a candidate’s name and also writes the candidate’s name in the section that says, “Write in Candidates...

What Does Retained Mean?

Posted on November 04, 2008
So Morgan and I are out doing election observations in New Mexico and twice we have seen people ask poll workers a very simple question: What does “retained” mean? This is in the context of judicial retention races, where the question is “Shall X be retained as district judge in Y district?”  This is not a question [...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
Registration Issues Louisiana (Orleans Parish): Citizens registered at the DMV don’t show up as registered. However the source points out that most of the cases were resolved in the last few days. Maryland (Baltimore): A YPR listener complained about a bottleneck created by too few registration books...

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Election Day Report from Oregon

Posted on November 04, 2008
As most readers here are aware, Oregon is a fully vote by mail state, so election day is somewhat unique.  I toured the Multnomah County elections office yesterday, and was driving around today, and here is my report. We don’t exactly have long lines, but there is a wait of about 20 minutes to get into [...

Voting Problems Nationwide

Posted on November 04, 2008
Charles Stewart posted a few sites below that offer continuing coverage of voting problems.  One of these, Our Vote Live, has a color-coded map that gives the number of reported problems in each state.  If you click on each state you can get a break down by county, and you can [...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
Kentucky (Kenton): AP reports having to take 108 eSlate voting machines out of service after a learning that they would not light up for straight-party ticket votes.  The Republican Party has issued warnings to all voters. New Jersey (Essex): A few voting machines malfunctioning, leading to voters being asked to come back later or vote on [...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
Polls Close, A Long Night Still Ahead You would think electronic ballots could be quickly tallied.  That is not always so, and here’s why. First machines  have to be “decommissioned.”  Pollworkers have to take each machine’s memory card, wrap it in the paper printout, put it in a bag and [...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 04, 2008
Mixed News California (San Diego): In one polling place, “the touch-screen voting machine for disabled voters was not functioning properly. No disabled voters ended up needing it, and all voters were handed paper ballots and pens, with completed ballots being placed inside a locked box...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 03, 2008
Use of partisan slogans: Contrasting decisions Public Opinion reports that Franklin County, Ohio, “will require you to remove or cover” partisan slogans “if you wear them to the polls on Tuesday, despite the gauntlet of aggressive supporters and campaign workers you may face a mere 10 feet from the polling place...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 03, 2008
Election administrators ready for Tuesday, …or not? Less than two days before Election Day, the main factors election administrators nationwide are worrying about, given the large expected turnout, are the number of poll workers -in particular,  well trained poll workers, the number of voting machines, the number of voting booths, the number of paper and provisional [...

Why are we releasing exit poll data now?

Posted on November 03, 2008
I have seen the polls of early voters, and I think the argument that these are not exit polls, simply tracking polls that have accumulated enough early voters to make inferences about vote choice is not tenable. I think early voting this year has all but destroyed the media agreement not to release exit poll information [...

Residual vote forecast

Posted on November 03, 2008
Following the 2000 presidential election, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project coined the term “residual votes” to describe ballots that did not record a vote for president, for whatever reason — the ballot was outright blank, the vote cast on the ballot wasn’t counted, or the ballot contained an over-vote...

EARLY VOTING ?EXIT POLLS?

Posted on November 03, 2008
You can check out the this link for a compilation of poll results based on samples of early voters. These are the National results: National Early Voting Fox News (11/1-11/2) (29% of sample) Obama 48% (+1) McCain 47% NBC/Wall Street Journal (11/1-11/2) (30% of sample) No breakdown of early voters...

Final thoughts on election eve

Posted on November 03, 2008
My prediction: tomorrow is going to be an interesting, and long day! From my perspective here in New Mexico, there is great interest and excitement about the election. Thad and I came in on Saturday, and did precinct judge training on Saturday, and then watched the flood of early voters at one [...

Presidential Election: Polls Update

Posted on November 03, 2008
Political markets: Who will win and how many will vote… Mike and Thad have both mentioned political markets before.  With the election just a day away, they are worth looking at again: As of Monday afternoon, Obama is trading at .92 on Iowa Electronic Markets,  ...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 03, 2008
Thad on RadioWest There was a great interview on KUER’s RadioWest this morning which discussed several issues of interest to Election Updates readers. The first half of the show covers the history of voting, and the second half, with Thad as special guest, covers the present and future of voting...

Election Day dispatches from Pew Center on the States

Posted on November 03, 2008
http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/template_page.aspx?id=45626

CO Count likely to be delayed due to mail in ballots

Posted on November 03, 2008
I hate to do an “I told you so” but I have warned reporters that there are three states I would watch for slow counts this year.  Each of them only recently adopted no-excuse absentee voting, and I was concerned that they were not prepared for the avalanche of paper they will receive...

Pay no attention to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia (well, maybe, Virginia)

Posted on November 03, 2008
The most common sign-off question to ?experts? today is ?which states should we be watching on Election Night?? The answer is usually ?Pennsylvania? or ?Ohio? or ?Indiana.? Wrong. If Obama is going to win, he is going to need to do between 3 and 4 percentage points better than Bush did nationwide in 2004...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 02, 2008
Early voting coming to an end Early voting –with long lines and delays, was also intense on Friday in Atlanta, Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington D.C.. In Georgia, the long lines affected voters’ mood...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 02, 2008
Extension of early voting hours: Contrasting decisions Extending early voting hours up to Saturday was considered in Clayton County, Georgia. However, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the chairman of Clayton’s Elections and Registration Board gave up the idea because “workers were too tired and had already worked 12-hour days all week...

Early Voting Figures

Posted on November 02, 2008
According to a nationwide compilation of early voting statistics made by Michael McDonald from George Mason University, the 2008 early vote stood above half of the 2004 total vote in several states. In Colorado, this figure was as high as 70% . Similar numbers were observed in some Nevada counties and in North Carolina...

Guest Bloggers: Peter Foley and Andy Sinclair, ?Early Voting in Los Angeles County: 31 October, 2008?

Posted on November 02, 2008
Editorial Note: This is another voter experience guest blog. Andy Sinclair is a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology; Andy wrote the text. Peter Foley is also a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology; Peter provided the photos in the slide show at the bottom...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 02, 2008
More on voting techonology The New York Times reports that an ImageCast machine will be available at each polling location in Westchester County, New York. According to the story, “the county intends to replace all mechanical lever-style voting machines by next year...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 02, 2008
Voting Technology In Franklin County, Ohio, shorter lines are expected for Tuesday because, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch, “there will be more machines overall than in 2004.” The expected number of voters per machine for Election Day is 106 –taking both early voting and an 80% turnout into account, compared to 170 in 2004...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 01, 2008
In today’s news, there were numerous stories about intense early voting taking place in several states - Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois (AP via HOI-19 and AP via Chicago Tribune), New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee ( AP and Chattanooga Times Free Press), Texas, Oklahoma, Washington D...

Elections in the News

Posted on November 01, 2008
Early voting trends Some days ago, Charles Stewart III wrote that “it looks like Democratic registrants are taking more advantage of in-person early voting than Republicans” and Paul Gronke posted a link to a Pew (early voting) exit poll putting Obama up by 19...

I Love the Automark ? And Long Lines

Posted on November 01, 2008
Mike and I watched early voting in New Mexico and we watched two voters vote on the Automark.  It was quite interesting to watch for a couple of reasons.  First, it was so easy to use.  The woman–who had a motor disability–voted without need for assistance on the equipment...

Who Comes Up With These Numbers?

Posted on November 01, 2008
Having Janell and Ines blog for us has been great, since Mike and I are in New Mexico.  I wanted to take a moment to debunk the myth that the GA Secretary of State and the media generally (see below) is perpetrating that the average age of poll workers is 72...

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