Election-Campaign Law

Michigan Law Review Online Electoral College Reform Symposium

Posted on January 31, 2008
The University of Michigan recently published an online symposium on proposals for electoral college reform. The link above takes you to Dan Tokaji''s paper and all of the other papers can be linked to from that page.

A Potential Problem in California's February 5th Primary: What Will "Decline-To-State" Voters Do?

Posted on January 30, 2008
There's a lot of talk about how Obama's campaign in California is seeking out support from those who are registered as "decline-to-state" voters. These are voters who have not registered with any political party, instead have registered as not affiliated with a political party...

Part II of LA Times story, "Electronic voting is facing a recall"

Posted on January 29, 2008
Here's Part II of the article that the LA Times ran on election administration in California. This sound familar? "The primary results will probably take until 6 a.m. on the day after the election to tabulate, and counting absentee ballots could take additional days, according to interviews with registrars across the state...

TN Early Voting: Turnout up 50% already

Posted on January 29, 2008
Early voting turnout in the presidential primary Tennessee is blowing the old numbers away. Already the state reports 169,367 early votes, as of Monday. If the voting continues just at the current pace, we are looking at 250,000 early votes, almost two and half times higher than the previous high water mark in 2000 (110,000)...

To access this complete feed in the blog feed reader login or register for free.

"A Paper Jam Roils California Vote"

Posted on January 28, 2008
There's a story in today's Los Angeles Times, "A Paper Jam Roils California Vote", that echos a number of concerns that Paul and I wrote about last week regarding the upcoming primary vote in California. No doubt, there will be some snafus on February 5th in California, but hopefully voters will take the time to check their ballots carefully, and the media will give election officials the time to do their work well.

I lied: Some Tennessee numbers

Posted on January 28, 2008
Sunday night, kids are in bed, so what's one more state? Tennessee does not have data files but they provide a fairly nice report on early voting. (No data on party breakdowns.)In 2004, 485,850 Tennesseans cast primary ballots, for a total turnout of 14...

Final update on Florida early voting

Posted on January 27, 2008
I suspect our last update on Florida's in-person early voting has been posted here. Thanks to James Hicks for keeping these up to date.Not a lot changed on Saturday, but there is one interesting pattern: Tuesday and Friday are popular voting days. I'm not sure why, but the pattern held for both weeks...

South Carolina Primary Update: Big Turnout, Big Obama Win, No Voting Machine Problems!

Posted on January 26, 2008
I've been closely following reports from South Carolina today. Turnout was high, Obama seems to have pulled out a big win, and following up on my posting yesterday, there seem to have been no major problems with voting machines (unlike last week's Republican primary in South Carolina)...

Florida early in person: end of week two

Posted on January 26, 2008
Only a few days left in in-person early voting in Florida. Our most recent update is at earlyvoting.net, and Adam Nagourney's story will appear in tomorrow's NY Times.GOP turnout continues to grow; on Friday, almost 40,000 voters cast a ballot. Democratic turnout is lagging but grew slightly on Friday to 28,000...

South Carolina Democratic Primary --- Will The Voting Machines Work This Time?

Posted on January 25, 2008
In last week's Republican primary in South Carolina, two counties (Florence and Horry) experienced problems with their voting machines, and the problems were relatively severe in Horry, where it took a few days for election officials to figure out the results of the election...

Herron, Mebane and Wand: "Voting Technology and the 2008 New Hampshire Primary"

Posted on January 25, 2008
Earlier this week Michael Herron sent along a copy of the working paper that he has written with Walter Mebane and Jonathan Wand, in which they dig into some of the allegations of irregularities in the recent New Hampshire primary (here's a link to the most recent version...

Florida Update: Jan 24th 2008

Posted on January 25, 2008
Updates to the current early in-person voting are posted at earlyvoting.net.Three quick points:Republican turnout is beginning to outpace Democratic turnout (as we'd expect).Second week turnout rate is leveling off at 20,000 per day for Democrats and 26,000 (and climbing) for GOP...

More thoughts on CA

Posted on January 25, 2008
Nice posting, Mike! I am heading down the California Feb 2-5th, and a number of county elections officials have been courteous to be willing to meet with me and show me how they are processing the tide of absentee ballots.I'll try to put up a few postings and possibly pictures here during my trip...

Will We Know The Winners on February 5th?

Posted on January 25, 2008
Maybe not.Yesterday, Dean Logan, the acting Registrar-Recorder in Los Angeles County, held a press conference that generated a decent bit of buzz in the local news media yesterday and this morning. I did an interview for KTLA news, with Jim Nash .....

More Florida Early Voting Info

Posted on January 24, 2008
I was crunching Florida's early in-person voting files last night, and penned this article for electionline.org's weekly newsletter (not online yet, but will be soon).A few highlights:If we figure turnout at 50%, and given the reports coming out about absentee ballots, about 20% of Florida's presidential primary ballots have been cast...

UK Electoral Commission Study, "Compulsory Voting Around The World"

Posted on January 23, 2008
While reading that new Argentina Elections website I wrote about last night, I came across a link to a report from the UK Electoral Commission, "Compulsory Voting Around The World." Every once in a while I field questions about compulsory voting, and whether or not it might be a good mechanism for increasing voter participation in the U...

"Frontiers of Electronic Voting", Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings 07311 available

Posted on January 23, 2008
The Dagstuhl Seminar Proceedings (07311) for the "Frontiers of Electronic Voting" seminar are now available. This was an event that both Robert Krimmer and I attended, and which Robert has written about earlier. It was a very interesting and productive event, organized by David Chaum, Miroslaw Kutylowski, Ron Rivest and Peter Ryan...

New website on elections and election reform in Argentina

Posted on January 22, 2008
As readers know, we've recently been studying elections, election reform, and voting technologies in South American (including the e-voting pilot project in Argentina, and other election reforms in neighboring nations). I received an interesting link today for a new website on elections and election reform in Argentina, Elections Argentina...

What about Fred's early votes in FL?

Posted on January 22, 2008
TW pointed this out to me in an email: anyone who voted early for Fred Thompson have just been disenfranchised. Well, sort of; I suspect that Thompson is still going to be on the Jan 29th ballot. But it does mean those voters do not have a chance to vote their second preference...

CO next to go full by mail?

Posted on January 18, 2008
From the electionline.org mailbag comes this story from Denver's Rocky Mountain News: Sec'y of State Coffman has "bowed to pressure" from county clerks and is getting behind a move to fully by-mail balloting for the 2008 presidential contest.As readers here probably know, Coffman decertified electronic machines currently in use in Colorado a few months ago, throwing election planning into chaos...

Early returns in TN trending Democratic

Posted on January 17, 2008
I heard from a reporter in Nashville that early votes are heavily Democratic--more than 5 to 1. About 7500 votes are in from this county, and Nashville is more Democratic than the state at large, but this is still quite a large margin.We speculated that the heavy Democratic turnout may be caused by the high degree of excitement on that side (and, conversely, disappointment among Thompson faithful), but it was also interesting to learn that Sen...

SPSA Meeting Papers

Posted on January 16, 2008
Papers that may be of interest to our readers, from the Southern Political Science Association meeting in New Orleans, Jan 10-12, 2008. Papers titles, authors, and abstracts are accessible by following the conference link at spsa.net."The Straight Ticket Option and Race: Implications for Roll-Off", Douglas Feig (MissState)...

Herrnson, Niemi, Hanmer, Bederson, Conrad and Traugott: "Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot"

Posted on January 14, 2008
The long-awaited book by Paul S. Herrnson, Richard G. Niemi, Michael J. Hanmer, Benjamin B. Bederson, Frederick C. Conrad, and Michael W. Traugott, "Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting A Ballot" has just been released by Brookings Institution Press...

AALDEF Report: "Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections"

Posted on January 14, 2008
Recently the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) released a study of Asian Americans and their ability to participate in the 2006 elections, "Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections." The report is based on an exit poll of over 4,700 Asian American voters in 82 polling places throughout the nation, as well as monitoring efforts in 123 polling places...

Spell Checker on Aisle 5

Posted on January 14, 2008
Obama's name misspelled on 2,000 Fla. ballots From WKMG Local 6 OrlandoORLANDO - As Florida's primary approaches, there are already reported problems concerning ballots in Central Florida. Some 2,000 absentee ballots in Volusia County have been mailed with Barack Obama's first name misspelled...

Expensive absentee ballots in FL

Posted on January 14, 2008
Just saw this story on electionline.org: some voters using absentee ballots in Florida may have to fork up 97 cents for mailling. The ballots are outsized. Postal officials say that they'll deliver the ballots regardless, and charge the elections offices...

The Last 3 Democratic Primaries....Stolen Since 2000? Not Actually.

Posted on January 13, 2008
The Washington Post has a great analysis showing that, if the Diebold-optical-scan-tabulators-stole-the-election-for-Hillary theory is correct, optical scanners were also stealing elections for Al Gore and John Kerry too. How vast conspiracies are (especially if you don't care about statistics).

John Zogby on the Daily Show

Posted on January 10, 2008
John Zogby on the Daily Show is really interesting explaining New Hampshire polling.

FRAUD! FRAUD! FRAUD!

Posted on January 10, 2008
OK, that was a rhetorical headline. But it seems as though some people are shocked that polling in a primary can be wrong. The Dallas Morning News article says:Curious about the "wildly inaccurate" polls that put Mr. Obama in a double-digit lead going into Tuesday's primary, blogger Brad Friedman, a Los Angeles-based election-fraud watchdog, questioned the results as soon as they arrived, and all day Wednesday...

The Court and Voter ID?s

Posted on January 10, 2008
For various reasons, I generally do not quote the New York Times opinion page. However, on days when they have the decency to cite research I have worked on, I make an exception. (Actually, kudos to our collaborator, Lonna Atkeson, a very distinguished political scientist at the University of New Mexico, who identified this issue and worked with Mike and I on a paper that is currently under review, where we discuss these findings in depth)...

Bloggers, promote your law blog by nominating your blog for inclusion in USLaw.com's Law Blog Directory and RSS Reader. Benefits described.