Election-Campaign Law

Problems in Ohio

Posted on March 04, 2008
So there is an AP story where this is the lead:Save for bad weather and scattered precincts that ran out of ballots, voting appeared to run smoothly Tuesday in four state primaries that drew record voter turnout.Since when is running out of ballots something that you lump in with bad weather? Isn't running out of ballots in an election criminal? Especially if everyone already has done that on Super Tuesday?So I know you are wondering, how many people were affected? One? Two? Oh not even close...

Record turnout predicted in Texas primary

Posted on March 03, 2008
This is from the AP:An estimated 60 percent, or 2 million of the 3.3 million total voters, cast their ballots early, Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson said Monday. The estimate is based on the slightly more than 1.2 million who voted in the 15 most populous counties during a 10-day period that ended Feb...

Will voter turnout swamp election officials in November?

Posted on March 03, 2008
There was an interesting story last week in USA Today, "High voter turnout prompts resource concerns for November." In the story, Kim Brace (Election Data Services) warned "This could be a tsunami coming" (great quote, Kim!). Indeed, if the primaries are indicative of things to come this fall, we could see a surge in turnout in many states and that could lead to a variety of problems before, during and after Election Day.

One thing to watch in Ohio and Texas: the performance of their voter registration systems

Posted on March 03, 2008
There's an AP story this morning on voter registration issues, pointing out that one thing to watch regarding Ohio and Texas will be the performance of their new voter registration systems:But Ohio and Texas have had problems getting their registration databases up and running, creating fears that it may take days to tally votes from these important contests — and Ohio knows a great deal about delays...

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Election Updates down ... but we are now back up!

Posted on March 03, 2008
Election Updates was down yesterday for most of the afternoon. Sorry for the system crash, and sorry that we were unable to blog yesterday. Hopefully we will catch up today, as there are a number of interesting things going on in the election world, ranging from the Russian election to the primaries tomorrow in Ohio and Texas.

Felon and Prisoner Voting in Alabama

Posted on March 02, 2008
There is a great story in the NY Times today about felon voters in Alabama. Check out this line:Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a ?felony involving moral turpitude.? Those who have committed other felonies ? like marijuana possession or drunken driving ? can cast ballots even if they are still in prison, according to the state attorney general...

E-Vote: Election Markup Language 5.0 Approved as OASIS Standard

Posted on March 01, 2008
Mike and I have been noting for some time the benefits of having interoperability in voting technologies. OASIS, one of the international standards boards, has approved Election Markup Language as such a standard. As govtech.com noted:OASIS, the international open standards consortium, this week announced that its members have approved the Election Markup Language (EML) version 5...

NPR: Ohio's New Voting System Revs Up for Primary

Posted on February 29, 2008
Pam Fessler, who is a great reporter on the voting technology beat, has a great story today about the transition in Ohio to paper systems. Parts of the story are pretty amazing and the logistics of it seem daunting, especially the idea that some counties are going to do mid-day ballot pick ups so that the counts will work...

Turnout Smackdown in the WSJ

Posted on February 29, 2008
Carl Bialik's column in todays Wall Street Journal has a nice smackdown between Curtis Gans and Michael Mcdonald on turnout over the past quarter century. Besides featuring some of the best people in our profession on this topic, the article does a nice job illustrating the kinds of data issues that often bore the non-academic community, but which are so important to settle if we're going to have solid empirical evidence on elections related topics.

High voter turnout prompts resource concerns for Nov

Posted on February 29, 2008
USA Today has a warning: Voters may turn out in November. Ok, seriously, they have a story noting thatRecord turnout in this year's presidential primaries has election officials worried about possible shortages of machines, ballots and poll workers in November...

Most of LA County problem ballots to be counted

Posted on February 29, 2008
While I was in New Mexico earlier this week, Dean Logan, LA County's acting registrar-recorder, announced that it looks like they will be able to count most of the problem ballots from the February primary. Here's some quotes from a story that ran in the Pasadena Star-News earlier this week:On the Scantron-like ballot, bubbles 8-10 were assigned to candidates from both parties...

Live from Texas: one person's early voting experience!

Posted on February 29, 2008
This came in this evening from a friend of Election Updates who wanted to share their early voting experience:I am typing to you live from a totally gigantic line to vote on the last day of Early Voting in the Texas primary in Austin, Texas - 10 minutes before polls close...

Stolen ballots can't be used

Posted on February 28, 2008
Here is an interesting reversal of the debate over electronic ballots. Here, the electronic system had the better backup.Paper ballots taken during a theft outside a Thermal polling precinct on the night of the Feb. 5 primary election were unused or spoiled and contained no votes that could be counted in Riverside County's final tally, it was announced today...

TX EV Turnout now up 66%, five days to go

Posted on February 28, 2008

Paper Ballot Measure introduced in CO

Posted on February 28, 2008
The link to the legislation can be found here.

Democratize the United Nations

Posted on February 28, 2008
I'm currently in London, attending the Local E-Democracy Symposium (http://www.empowerment-symposium.com) . There I came across an interesting project which tries to do a world-wide e-vote on the opinion of the world's population on United Nations resolutions...

Handwritten primary votes won't be counted

Posted on February 28, 2008
Here is a great story that addresses the question: when is a ballot not a ballot?The 299 Chesterfield County votes handwritten on blank paper for the Virginia presidential primary do not count. The State Board of Elections yesterday certified the statewide results of the primary without the 299 Democratic votes, which Chesterfield election officials allowed to be written on blank pieces of paper after nine precincts ran out of printed ballots...

Early Voting may be a double edged sword for Clinton

Posted on February 27, 2008
The general sense up to now is that early voting advantages certain candidates in a dynamic primary race, usually the presumptive front runner who may be losing support to an insurgent. That's how I think it may have functioned for Guiliani in Florida (before he dropped out of course)...

New Mexico Election Audit: Day One

Posted on February 26, 2008
For those who have been watching the webcast of the NewMexico Election audit project, you've no doubt seen that wespent the morning training the audit team members, mainlyon the procedures associated with the machine recount ofprecinct ballots. This afternoon we will continue with themachine counting, but we will also be training audit teamsregarding the manual counting process...

New Mexico Election Audit

Posted on February 25, 2008
Well, thanks to Melissa for posting the link to the webcast of the New Mexico Election Audit (turned out that the firewall in the election warehouse in Bernalillo County would not let me access blogger.com!). All is now quiet in the warehouse, as we are done for the day...

University of New Mexico Collaboration

Posted on February 25, 2008
Michael Alvarez and Thad Hall are in New Mexico with Lonna Atkeson at the University of New Mexico where they are collaborating on a research project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts "Make Voting Work" initiative, titled "Lessons for All in Determining Voter Intent and Election Integrity: A 2006 Post Election Audit Study of New Mexico's Optical Scan Ballots in Bernalillo County, New Mexico...

What a difference a competitive election makes: Early Voting Turnout in TX

Posted on February 25, 2008
I regularly get requests from state legislators, election administrators, and journalists to comment on the impact of early and other convenience voting systems on turnout. My position on this is well-known--these reforms have small but significant impacts on turnout...

Paper Ballots and Chains of Custody

Posted on February 24, 2008
Mike and I have long contended that chains of custody are critical for all ballots (and we have an article about this issue under review currently.) To appreciate the problems with chains of custody, read this from Mississippi.Chancery Judge Jim Persons has notified the attorneys involved in the long-running Wilkinson County Democratic primary election contest that he intends to call a new election...

I just got a copy of Electronic

Posted on February 22, 2008
I just got a copy of Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy in my mailbox. Nice job!The best thing about the book is the last blurb on the slipcover. Man, that guy is smart!

Joe Hall on Ohio

Posted on February 21, 2008
Joseph Lorenzo Hall has more to say about Ohio and the possibly unintended consequences of the administrative changes instituted by SoS Brunner.

Texas Primary Rules: A More Detailed Explanation

Posted on February 21, 2008
This morning, I was emailed a link to this much more detailed analysis of the Texas Democratic Party rules for allocating delegates. It is a great read and very helpful (and written by a fellow University of Georgia PHD). It also provides an analysis of the Latino vote debate that is raging as well (and whether Obama can capture those votes).

Early Voting Underway in Texas

Posted on February 20, 2008
Early voting is underway in Texas, and 65,293 Democrats (.84% of registered voters ) and 25,673 Republicans (.33% of registered voters) have cast ballots.Stories about early voting in Texas:Dallas Morning News story on heavy Democratic turnout in the first day, also Travis County and Collin CountyAP Story (Dallas Morning news) on GOP and Democratic "get out the early vote" rallies...

Foley's essay on Ohio

Posted on February 20, 2008
Ned Foley raises some excellent issues to watch in the lead up to Ohio's presidential primary on March 4th.I'd like to highlight two issues, both of which occurred in California, and are likely to reoccur in Ohio, in part due to the unintended consequences of decertification of electronic machines, the move to paper ballots, and the use of a central count...

The Weird Texas Rules

Posted on February 20, 2008
I finally read in the Chicago Tribune how the Texas primary delegates are allocated:126 of the delegates will be awarded based on the March 4 popular vote,35 are unpledged super delegates, and67 delegates will be distributed according to the results of a series of precinct caucuses...

Washington State Primary -- After the Caucus and Delegates....

Posted on February 18, 2008
Now here is a great story that illustrates everything weird about the presidential selection process. Washington State is having a meaningless primary after they already handed out delegates in their caucuses. As the NY Times reports:As many as 1.5 million votes are projected to be cast in Washington State?s presidential primary on Tuesday...

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