Election-Campaign Law

DemTech call for Ph.D applications

Posted on March 16, 2011
Just got this call from Joseph Kiniry, announcing a new research effort, “DemTech”, and calling for Ph.D. applications. Looks like an interesting new effort, and I look forward to hearing about it!

NM Secretary of State Examines Voter Registration File for Fraudulent Voters

Posted on March 15, 2011
The New Mexico Secretary of State testified in a morning legislative hearing on Tuesday, March 15 that her office has merged the Motor Vehicle Division file with the statewide voter registration file and has found 37 people who she believes are non-citizens who voted between 2003 and 2010...

Arguments about voter ID in NC

Posted on March 14, 2011
I know one of the things about academics that drives policy makers batty is that we pick and criticize,but often don’t propose.  I plead guilty, however, this story from the Charlotte Observer on the arguments for voter ID is just too easy of a target...

Wisconsin recall elections ? lessons from the 2003 California recall

Posted on March 13, 2011
I’ve been hearing a bit of buzz in academic circles recently about potential recall elections in Wisconsin. For a lot of reasons, recall elections haven’t been widely studied by political scientists: they are not terribly common in the types of elections we tend to study, and when they do occur they are often over and [...

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New IFES publication on Electoral Fraud

Posted on March 11, 2011
Just got this in email this morning, a new publication from IFES on electoral fraud: “Assessing Electoral Fraud in New Democracies.”

Early analysis of voter participation in the recent Estonian election

Posted on March 11, 2011
This is from e-voting.cc, “Internet voting in Estonia.” I’m sure we will hear more from Thad on his experiences soon.

New article: Complex ballot questions fatigue voters, decrease turnout

Posted on March 10, 2011
There is a nice article in the new Political Research Quarterly (gated) by Shanna Reilly and Sean Richey on the relationship between “roll off” (voters not completing a ballot) and complex ballot questions. The takeaway quote should be of interest to our readers in state legislatures and others working on state and local referenda and initiatives: Our research [...

Pew report on the cost of delivering voter information in California

Posted on March 10, 2011
I just picked this report up (thanks to my colleagues at the LACRR who do a great job using Facebook to disseminate information of interest!). It’s an informative look at how much it costs to send voter information in California, and it has a number of ideas for how our election officials in California [...

Those Latvian graphs

Posted on March 09, 2011
I referred to these in my previous posting; here are graphics of the effective number of parties, based on seat shares, then on vote shares, for Latvia.  One of the fascinating features in the graphic is the district of Riga, which follows the rest of the country closely in vote shares, but is far less [...

Some questions on Estonia Data

Posted on March 09, 2011
I have been teaching my elections class this semester, and we are at that point when the students have to calculate the “effective number of parties” in a number of different countries.  The effective number of parties is defined in a number of places; the assignment has them update tables from Taagpera and Shugart’s book Seats [...

Felon disenfranchisement proposal in FL

Posted on March 09, 2011
This is one of a number of election reform stories that have hit the wires of late: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030806672.html I know many are taking this on from a rights perspective, but I wonder if there is an additional task...

Photos from yesterday?s election in Bell ?

Posted on March 09, 2011
Campaigning outside a polling place. Polling place entrance, note the buzzer. Long lines, media vans. Voters lined up outside a polling place.

Big election in Bell

Posted on March 08, 2011
I spent the afternoon in Bell, where they are having a big election after months of political turmoil. Bell is a relatively small city, and for this election had only four polling locations: two in churches, one in an elementary school, and one in a banquet hall...

Estonian Riigikogu Elections 2011

Posted on March 07, 2011
OSCE/ODIHR has deployed an election assessment mission to Estonia (read the needs assessment report ahead of the mission here). The mission consists of 14 experts and focuses on internet voting, political party and campaign financing, as well as on participation of national minorities...

In Case You Ever Wondered?..

Posted on March 07, 2011
…people around the world are as psychotic about knowing the results of the election 5 minutes after the polls close as they are in America. In Estonia last night, the National Electoral Committee’s website froze for over an hour and, of course, that is the talk of the election today...

Postal mail delivered 66 years late

Posted on March 07, 2011
This news story, “From the wartime ’40s, two letter eye-openers” , reminded me that we don’t know a lot about postal mail delivery rates — and consequently how much election mail, especially ballots, get delayed or even lost in the mail...

E-Voting in Estonia

Posted on March 06, 2011
Estonia had their elections for parliament Sunday and there were several interesting aspects to the event today. E-voting exploded as a percent of votes cast, with almost one-quarter of votes cast online. There was an invalid vote cast.  This has never happened before; in general the system is designed for there to be only valid votes — [...

Susan Hyde, ?Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion?

Posted on February 28, 2011
Susan Hyde, a co-editor with Thad and I on our Election Fraud book, has just published an interesting and innovative article, “Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion” in the American Journal of Political Science...

Release of the New Mexico 2010 Election Administration Report

Posted on February 24, 2011
Today we released our 2010 New Mexico Election Administration report authored by myself, R. Michael Alvarez, Lisa Bryant and Alex Adams (both PhD students at the University of New Mexico). The report is publicly available here. The 2010 study is a continuation of our examination of the election landscape in New Mexico...

King Conservation District Holds Largest Online Election

Posted on February 24, 2011
The largest Internet voting election in the US is currently taking place in King County, Washington. Registered voters must first FAX, mail or email their signatures to the private company conducting the election to confirm their identity after which they are sent an ID code to vote online...

Special elections today in Southern CA!

Posted on February 15, 2011
There are two special elections today in Southern California, for state Senate seats. These are the first to be run under the new top-two primary election procedures. Here’s an example of a sample ballot from one of the two special elections, if you are curious about what the ballot looks like for a [...

VTP is now on Facebook

Posted on February 10, 2011
The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project is now on Facebook!

?The Effects of Voting Systems on Voter Participation?

Posted on February 10, 2011
The VTP, as part of our RPEAVT working paper series, recently made a classic available, by Herb Asher, Russell Schussler, and Peg Rosenfield, “The Effect of Voting Systems on Voter Participation.” Charles Stewart wrote a brief description of the importance of this 1982 paper: Herb Asher?s 1982 conference paper, ?The Effect of Voting Systems on [...

States rescheduling 2012 primaries to save money

Posted on February 06, 2011
This interesting report was in the news this morning, California is joining a number of states that are considering rescheduling or even canceling their 2012 presidential primaries to save money. In California, that might mean the 2012 presidential primary would be in June.

NM Introduces Voter ID Bill

Posted on February 06, 2011
The New Mexico legislature has introduced a voter ID bill. Both the newly elected Governor Susana Martinez and newly elected GOP Secretary of State Dianna Duran supported voter ID during their general election campaigns.  The new bill, which can be downloaded here, is a bit unusual...

Observation reports and upcoming missions

Posted on January 31, 2011
In the last month OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights has been very active to publish a couple of reports on recent missions. These were: Final Report Limited Observation Mission to Latvia. Final Report Election Assessment Mission to USA...

Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver and her Deputy Robert Adams Receive Award

Posted on January 29, 2011
Friday I attended an award ceremony in the Rotunda of the Roundhouse in Santa Fe for Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver and her Deputy Robert Adams. The award was the “2010 Distinguished Service Award” from Verified Voting NM and United Voters of NM...

Reflections on Footnote 24 of the 6th Circuit Hunter Decision

Posted on January 28, 2011
The Election Law @ Moritz web site has published a quick analysis I did concerning an aside found in the Hunter v. Hamilton County Board of Elections by a panel of the 6th circuit court of appeals. Hunter is the case involving a juvenile judge race in Hamilton County (Cincinnati), Ohio, in which quite a [...

Napa County move to VBM raises interesting accessibility issues

Posted on January 24, 2011
This story about Napa County, California considering moving to vote-by-mail for special elections contains this very interesting analysis, in which the county elections registrar explains where the main savings come from: Essentially, savings come not from the elimination of each individual polling place, but from the fact ?that you don?t have to gear up for a [...

When does vote by mail cost less?

Posted on January 24, 2011
I was fascinated by the story that Charles posted out of Napa Valley. I just got back from DC where I testified in front of Mary Cheh’s committee of the DC Council on the costs of conducting an upcoming special election.  Rokey Suleman estimated that a vbm election in the District would cost nearly double (1...

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