HuffPo: Ohio’s secretary of state subtly condemned the right-wing websites, including Breitbart, that published stories last week alleging that 170 listed registered voters in the state’s 12th Congressional District were over the age of 116. The Breitbart piece accused “the Left” … Continue reading
Category Archives: election administration
Mark Joseph Stern for Slate: It has never been clear whether Kris Kobach understands what his job is. As Kansas’ secretary of state, a position he’s held for nearly eight years, Kobach’s main responsibility is to serve as the state’s … Continue reading
Wichita Eagle: Johnson County will accept nearly 1,500 provisional ballots either in full or in part, including dozens cast by unaffiliated voters who were incorrectly told by poll workers to cast provisional ballots. The ballots could tip the balance in the GOP … Continue reading
KC Star: Local officials spread across Kansas’ 105 counties will exercise an incredible amount of power this week when they determine whether thousands of ballots should count in the closest primary race for governor in Kansas history. The roughly 9,000 provisional … Continue reading
Pema Levy for Mother Jones. … Continue reading
BBC News reports. … Continue reading
Electionline Weekly: States’ administration of elections overall improved by 6 percentage points between 2012 and 2016, according to the Elections Performance Index (EPI) released today by the MIT Election Data & Science Lab. As many readers will know, the index, which was developed … Continue reading
LAT: Los Angeles County’s election software was unable to process a formatting change in state voter data, contributing to 118,500 names being omitted from eligible-voter rosters on election day in June, according to an executive summary of an independent review … Continue reading
KC Star: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said in a cable news interview Thursday night that he plans to recuse himself from the vote tally process in the face of pressure from Gov. Jeff Colyer and mounting confusion over … Continue reading
Baltimore Sun: Less than three months before early voting begins, Maryland’s U.S. senators have joined the chorus of elected officials warning that the November elections could be threatened by a Russian oligarch’s stake in a firm that manages some of … Continue reading
BuzzFeed: Florida Senator Bill Nelson claimed Wednesday that Russian hackers “right now” are “in (the) records” of county election offices, prompting confusion from Florida state and county officials who said they are unaware of such an attack. Speaking to the … Continue reading
Jonathan Lai in the Philly Inquirer: In 2010, election officials reported 2,162 absentee ballots were rejected for coming in too late; 2,030 were rejected in 2014. And given all the cuts endured by the postal service in recent years, election officials … Continue reading
CNN: Kris Kobach, the former vice-chair of President Donald Trump’s now-disbanded commission on election integrity, and Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap have engaged in a public back and forth over the issue of voter fraud, with Kobach accusing Dunlap, a … Continue reading
WaPo: Activist groups in Georgia are calling on Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp to step down as secretary of state, a post that includes responsibility for overseeing the state’s elections. Kemp, through his campaign spokesman, has said he will not … Continue reading
The Detroit Free Press reports. … Continue reading
See this order in Curling v. Kemp. (Background with link to motion for a preliminary injunction.) … Continue reading
WaPo: One of the foremost proponents of stricter voter identification laws, Kobach, who is running in the primary Tuesday for the Republican nomination for the state’s governorship, has been undeterred since a federal judge struck down a restrictive voting law … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld: That overall tally means that 17 out of the 28 states that were in Crosscheck as of early 2017 have backed away, at least for now. That list of states, that, under a legal memo, agree to share … Continue reading
ProPublica: Today, thousands of commission documents were released that show aspects of the body’s inner workings. As critics have suggested, the records — a mix of memos, internal emails and reports — make clear the commission’s work was driven by … Continue reading
NYT: Top national security officials vowed Thursday to defend American elections against what they called real threats from Russia only weeks after President Trump seemed to accept President Vladimir V. Putin’s denials of interference during a summit meeting in Finland. … Continue reading
CNN: Two leading senators are asserting that President Donald Trump has not focused on the clear threat the Kremlin poses in the 2018 elections, with one Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee contending that Russian hackers may have already targeted … Continue reading
USA Today: Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic push Wednesday that would have provided $250 million to beef up election security. The money would have been doled out in grants through the Federal Election Assistance Commission and helped, among other things, … Continue reading
Common Cause: Today a federal judge struck down a 2015 bill passed by the Michigan legislature and signed by Governor Snyder to ban straight-ticket voting. Common Cause joined the A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Democratic Party of Michigan, and Michigan … Continue reading
AL.com: The Alabama Secretary of State’s probe into absentee voting irregularities during the July 17 primary runoff could be expanded to include more Black Belt counties. Secretary of State John Merrill said that Wilcox and Perry counties, initially named last week … Continue reading
Politico: President Donald Trump on Friday promised an intense, “whole-of-government” focus on securing the nation’s elections from cyberattacks — but a POLITICO survey of states finds ample reasons to worry about both this year’s midterms and 2020. Only 14 states … Continue reading
Philly Inquirer: More than 11,000 non-citizens who weren’t eligible to register to vote in Pennsylvania since the mid-1990s inadvertently registered because of an oversight in the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s motor-voter system, a State Department analysis revealed. The thousands of … Continue reading
NBC News: After nearly two years of calling Russian election interference a hoax and its investigation a witch hunt, on Friday afternoon President Donald Trump is scheduled to preside over the first National Security Council meeting devoted to defending American democracy from … Continue reading
Interesting contrast: The candidates largely agreed that voter fraud is not a systemic issue but committed themselves to enforcing the state’s election laws. They also said they want to focus on improving the less-talked-about administrative side of the office, such … Continue reading
WaPo: President Trump will convene a meeting Friday of the National Security Council on election security, a session that could include a discussion of possible Russian interference in November’s midterm elections, according to a White House official. … Continue reading
This item appears at the New Yorker. … Continue reading
A very thoughtful opinion granting a preliminary injunction in League of Women Voters v. Detzner. In addition to applying the Anderson-Burdick balancing test for equal protection claims, the court also applied a Twenty-Sixth Amendment analysis, finding that the Secretary of State’s … Continue reading
This post appears at Protect Democracy. … Continue reading
The Las Vegas Sun reports. … Continue reading
Mary Kiraly oped in WaPo. … Continue reading
Myrna Perez NYT oped: In the past decade, attacks on the vote have been treacherous: discriminatory voter ID laws, cutbacks in early voting and other complications that emerged from bad laws or policies formulated weeks, months or even years before … Continue reading
WaPo: House Republicans plan to vote Thursday on a spending bill that excludes new money for election security grants to states, provoking a furious reaction from Democrats amid a national controversy over Russian election interference. At issue is a grants … Continue reading
Politico reports. … Continue reading
Kim Zetter for Politico. … Continue reading
Release: Common Cause, the National Election Defense Coalition and Protect Democracy today filed an Amicus Curiae brief in support of all plaintiffs in the Curling v. Kemp lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. The … Continue reading
Kim Zetter: The nation’s top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of … Continue reading
WSJ: A senior FBI official overseeing a government task force that addresses Russian attempts to meddle in U.S. elections has left the government for a job in the private sector, a departure that comes just months ahead of the 2018 … Continue reading
WaPo on yesterday’s hearings on both sides of Capitol Hill: “Momentum may finally be building in Congress to take new action to secure the elections from cyberthreats as the midterms approach.” Politico reports that: “The top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee … Continue reading
Available here. From the introduction: This report also outlines the following recommendations to drive voter participation and make the process of voting more convenient for eligible Americans: 1. Streamline voter registration with automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration (SDR), preregistration of … Continue reading
Slate: The new measure, which will take effect for the upcoming midterm elections, requires every early voting site in the state to stay open 12 hours a day each weekday (in addition to any weekend hours). By mandating such a … Continue reading
Celia Llopis-Jepsen reports for Kansas News Service. … Continue reading
NYT: Eight of the tech industry’s most influential companies, in anticipation of a repeat of the Russian meddling that occurred during the 2016 presidential campaign, met with United States intelligence officials last month to discuss preparations for this year’s … Continue reading
KC Star: Four days after a federal judge threw out a Kansas voting restriction, 72 newly naturalized Americans became registered voters in the same courthouse where the landmark voting rights trial took place. “That’s the reason why I became a citizen: to be … Continue reading
The opinion here is no surprise and seems right given that any California voter can vote by mail if she wishes. (On when lack of uniformity across counties or voters creates constitutional problems, see my University of Chicago Legal Forum piece, When … Continue reading
CBS News: A Texas woman plans to challenge a judge’s decision to deny her a new trial after sentencing her to five years in prison for voter fraud. Crystal Mason was convicted in March of voting illegally in the 2016 presidential … Continue reading
ABC7: A week after a huge glitch during the California Primary, Los Angeles County moved to modernize its voting system. It comes with a big price tag and a lot of questions. The mystery of the 118,000 missing names on L.A … Continue reading