Election-Campaign Law

Shakespeare 2008: Thank All the Lawyers?

Posted on October 26, 2008
Delia Lithwick of Slate.com has a great piece about the role that lawyers are playing in the 2008 election wars over the rules.  Although I disagree with her premise–after all good public administration are really our best hope on election day (hey, if she can tout her profession, so can I!)–she has a really interesting [...

A Yogi-ism for Election Administration

Posted on October 25, 2008
In a Thomasville Times-Enterprise article about early voting in Thomas County, Georgia, Eunice Cook, a local election official, is quoted as saying the following about the growing numbers of people voting early in her county:  “Lines are getting longer,? Cook said...

Where do those NC absentee votes come from?

Posted on October 25, 2008
A brief additional word about the NC absentee ballots. A lot has been written about the two campaigns (particularly Obama) encouraging students who are away at college in safe red or blue states to vote absentee back home, if they come from battleground states...

More on those NC early voting trends

Posted on October 24, 2008
The North Carolina Board of Elections has perhaps the most extensive election data available for download on the web. There is no better example of this than the voter files posted that report who has already voted in that state. James Hicks at the Early Voting Information Center has posted some informative graphs [...

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Early voting number point to Democratic advantage in Nevada

Posted on October 24, 2008
Just saw this on Fox News: “Massive Democratic Advantage in Early Voting in Nevada.” After six days of early voting in Nevada (5 electoral votes), Democratic turnout exceeds Republican turnout 57 percent to 27 percent. When the early walk-in vote is combined with mail-in absentee vote, the Democratic advantage is 54 percent to 30 percent...

Computer error causes high number of Georgia SSA voter reg checks?

Posted on October 24, 2008
There’s been some mention in recent discussions of statewide voter registration systems regarding variance across states in the number of SSA checks that states are conducting. Here’s a story from Georgia, about what appeared to be a high rate (perhaps as much as 2 million) of SSA voter registration verification requests set by Georgia [...

Ballot printing mistake leads to 10,000 flawed absentee ballots in Gwinnett County

Posted on October 24, 2008
Here’s the emerging story from Georgia, “10,000 absentee ballots in Gwinnett are flawed.” Details from the story: The original ballots, designed to be filled out by hand, are flawed because of a printing error. The circle beside the candidate?s name is too thick and somewhat misshapen, and consequently an optical scanning machine won?t be able [...

The Odd Vote Suppression Problem

Posted on October 24, 2008
It is interesting that both Democrats and Republicans keep talking about vote fraud.  In our work that was just published in the Journal of Politics, we know that voters who are less confident that their vote will be counted are less likely to vote.   One has to wonder if people on the left who keep [...

What is the effect of cell-phone use on presidential election polling?

Posted on October 24, 2008
There’s a really interesting analysis by Brian Schaffner on pollster.com that Thad pointed out to me, “Obama’s Double-Digit Lead? The Cell Phone Only Difference in the National Trend Estimate.” Here’s a quick summary of his analysis: The comparison between the two trends is remarkably consistent with what the Pew Report would lead us to [...

Welcome to Charles Stewart!

Posted on October 24, 2008
Thought I’d welcome Charles Stewart to Election Updates; he wrote his first Election Updates post last night, an interesting analysis of “More on those NC early voting trends.”

Voter registration declines in uncompetitive states?

Posted on October 23, 2008
We’ve seen a lot of reporting in the media — some of which I’ve blogged about here recently — about surges in voter registrations, especially in the battleground states. A study was recently released, authored by Lawrence Jacobs and Melanie Burns of the University of Minnesota, “The Unregistered: Voter Registration Declines in Many States, that [...

Some thought on early voting trends

Posted on October 23, 2008
Early voting has been widely covered in the news recently, and of course we’ve blogged a fair bit about some of the trends. Paul’s the expert on early voting, and he’s been watching things closely. Other than the big trend that we’ve all been following — what looks like record early voting turnout in many [...

Ballot tracking in Oregon

Posted on October 22, 2008
This on top of an email from my old friend and Dookie Mike Alvarez, noting that I am still on the rolls in North Carolina (as are Mike and his wife, Sarah): http://www.sboe.state.nc.us/VoterLookup.aspx?Feature=voterinfo Select First Name Middle Name Last Name Address CHESTER PAUL GRONKE 3202 IDLE HOUR DR ELIZABETH ANN GRONKE 911 BURCH AVE MATT DYLAN GRONKE 634 KEY WEST MEWS PAUL W GRONKE 3403 SHAFTSBURY ST I’m related to one of these people...

The Forsyth Co, GA Wait Time Page

Posted on October 22, 2008
http://www.forsythco.com/DeptPage.asp?DeptID=123&PageID=1153 Real time updates of wait times in Forsyth County, GA early voting stations. Thanks, Gary!

First Ohio Numbers are In

Posted on October 22, 2008
Franklin County, OH: As of Monday, 9000 Democrats, 9000 unaffiliated, and 900 Republicans have cast an early ballot.

?Early voting suggests 2008 may see record turnout ??

Posted on October 21, 2008
On CNN … political scientist … “Michael McDonald, an associate professor of politics and government at George Mason University, said at least 2.2 million people already have voted using absentee or other types of ballots that allow them to vote before the polls open on November 4...

New Jersey breaks voter registration record

Posted on October 21, 2008
And here’s another state with record voter registration, New Jersey.

West Virginia hits a record of 1.21 million registered voters

Posted on October 21, 2008
USA Today has the story, “West Virginia sets state voter registration record.

Ohio SOS Website Hacked

Posted on October 21, 2008
Just saw this come in on The CNN Wire, “Ohio secretary of state’s Web site hacked.”

Early voting records being ?shattered? in Texas

Posted on October 21, 2008
Here’s a report from Texas, “Turnout high on first day of early voting.” Note some of the details: In Bastrop County, election officials said the one-day early voting total record of 700 voters was shattered by 2 p.m. The 435 ballots cast Monday in Lockhart broke the previous record for the first day of early [...

Drive-Thru Voting in The OC

Posted on October 21, 2008
Here’s some interesting video from KTLA, on “Drive-Thru Voting Kicks Off in Orange County.”

Shameless promotion: why we need to study election administration

Posted on October 21, 2008
I just watched the CNN video, and read stories last night about five hour lines.   This link takes you to a Google news search for “early voting lines florida.” The only point I wanted to add is this: we knew this was likely to happen.  Conny McCormack went down to Florida during their primary, measured the [...

Three hours and fifteen minutes to vote early in Broward County, Florida?

Posted on October 21, 2008
CNN’s John Zarrella has a report this morning on CNN that it took him three hours and fifteen minutes to vote in Florida’s Broward County. I could be wrong, but that has got to be close to a record wait for early voting. Perhaps Paul knows what the record wait is …

Assisting new citizens with voting

Posted on October 21, 2008
There’s an article in this morning’s LA Times on efforts to help new citizens, especially in Southern California, navigate the electoral process this fall.

Betsy Sinclair, Guest Blogger: ?Grace Period Registration and Voting in Chicago?

Posted on October 21, 2008
Today I both registered and cast my Presidential General Election ballot — October 21, 2008 — courtesy of the ‘grace period registration and voting’ conducted by the Chicago Board of Elections. Grace period voting differs from early voting, absentee voting, and polling place voting in two ways: first, it is possible to simultaneously register [...

Lines in Florida

Posted on October 20, 2008
As predicted on this blog by Conny McCormack, we are already seeing lines of 30 minutes to one hour in Miami-Dade Florida, and likely in other counties. Conny’s full report is at earlyvoting.net

Weekend cleanup on early voting

Posted on October 20, 2008
A few cleanup items on Monday morning. Mike writes below about New Mexico.  The states that we are tracking are showing the same pattern.  Fairfax County (courtesy of Michael McDonald) is running way ahead of 2004.  North Carolina turnout is almost double what it was at this same date last year...

LA Times: ?Tsunami? feared on Election day

Posted on October 20, 2008
Here’s an article in this morning’s LA Times, “Clerks fear a ‘tsunami’ on election day.” One component to the story is a discussion of the same thread that we’ve been writing about here for a long time — surges in voter registration applications (many at the last minute), and surges in absentee ballot requests [...

More than 350,000 have already voted in North Carolina

Posted on October 20, 2008
This is from MSNBC: “Tar Heel early voting going Carolina Blue?” From the story, note the update info at the bottom: As of this morning, over 340,000 North Carolinians have cast general election ballots, with the vast majority taking advantage of the state’s early in-person absentee voting, dubbed “One Stop” by Tar Heels...

Seen at a 7-11 in Texas ?

Posted on October 20, 2008
Okay, so this image has little to do with election administration or voting technology … but it is good for a laugh. This was in the window of a 7-11 in the Austin, TX area. Wonder how that election will come out? “7-Election 08″

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