Washington Post: The decision by Nevada’s most populous county to mail ballots to all registered voters ahead of the state’s June 9 primary has intensified a partisan debate about the security of all-mail voting, putting sharp focus on how states … Continue reading
Category Archives: election administration
NYT: Keith Sellars and his daughters were driving home from dinner at a Mexican restaurant last December when he was pulled over for running a red light. The officer ran a background check and came back with bad news for … Continue reading
Release: Today the League of Women Voters of Alabama (LWVAL) filed a lawsuit in State Court against Secretary of State John Merrill, Governor Kay Ivey, and Montgomery County election officials to protect the rights of Alabama voters to safely cast … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Wisconsin election officials agreed Wednesday to send absentee ballot applications to most voters this fall, but the plan could face obstacles next month if Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on the wording of the mailing.The members of the … Continue reading
AP: While each state runs its own process, those mail ballots can take longer to count. In some states, the ballots can be accepted several days after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked before polls closed. And while … Continue reading
Nate Persily and Tom Westphal oped in the Philly Inquirer. … Continue reading
Relatively good news from the WSJ. … Continue reading
Draft here (paper is forthcoming in the University of Chicago Law Review Online). Abstract: Putting aside the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, the case over extending the date for receipt of absentee ballots … Continue reading
Press release. Complaint. … Continue reading
Recent Jonathan Lai reporting: Montgomery County sent 2,000 Pa. voters the wrong ballots for next week’s primary (closed primary, Ds received R ballots, Rs received D ballots)Thousands of Pa. voters might not get their mail ballots in time to actually vote (processing … Continue reading
You can find the per curiam opinion of the three-judge panel here. This opinion is troubling, and fits into a larger pattern of the court not protecting direct democracy during the pandemic. Indeed, I have this forthcoming piece in the … Continue reading
You can find the district court’s opinion at this link. On the witness requirement, the district court found that South Carolina does not use the witness requirement to ferret out voter fraud and in any case there is virtually nothing … Continue reading
I have posted this draft on SSRN (forthcoming, University of Chicago Law Review Online). Here is the abstract: Putting aside the Supreme Court’s controversial decision in Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee, the case over extending the date for … Continue reading
Jonathan Lai for Philly Inquirer: It’s a familiar election night routine: Polls close, and everyone wants to know who won — immediately. Every minute matters for Americans anxiously awaiting the results. News organizations race to meet the demand by using … Continue reading
WRAL: House leaders are close to filing a bill, with bipartisan support, changing state election rules because of the pandemic.The measure has most of what the State Board of Elections asked for two months ago when it rolled out a laundry list … Continue reading
I talked to KJZZ about our Fair Elections During a Crisis report. … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A federal judge in Cincinnati has ordered Ohio officials to allow state issue campaigns to collect the signatures needed to make the ballot electronically, granting a request from backers of two campaigns targeting the November election.Ohioans for Raising the … Continue reading
Frank Wilkinson for Bloomberg View: The state’s 88 county boards of election are all bipartisan, consisting of two Republicans and two Democrats, limiting the scope of partisan temptation. Its chief election officer is Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an … Continue reading
Release: The Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD) at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) today released 20 for 20: 20 Ways to Protect the 2020 Presidential Election. In this report, ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and … Continue reading
In a sweeping opinion complete with lofty language and an odd choice of using Appendices, a federal district court has held that it would be unconstitutional to bar Texas voters who lack immunity from COVID-19 and wish to vote by … Continue reading
New NBER paper from Chad D. Cotti, Bryan Engelhardt, Joshua Foster, Erik T. Nesson, and Paul S. Niekamp: On April 7, 2020, Wisconsin held a major election for state positions and presidential preferences for both major parties. News reports showed … Continue reading
Politifact reports. … Continue reading
Details: Election Day does not end on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in November. Election administrators across the country must count and reconcile vote totals across all methods of voting—early, in-person on Election Day, and absentee. The 2020 … Continue reading
I have posted this draft on SSRN, which is a work in progress aimed at a moving target. Comments welcome. Here is the abstract: The COVID-19 global pandemic, which already has claimed approximately 90,000 lives in the United States as … Continue reading
Looking forward to participating in this event with Ned Foley Tuesday at noon eastern (registration required): The recent primary elections in Wisconsin and Ohio demonstrated just how disruptive the current global health crisis is to voting – and how important … Continue reading
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: A disability rights group and others sued Wisconsin election officials Monday to try to ensure the state has enough poll workers and guarantee voters who want absentee ballots receive them, adding to a cascade of litigation over how … Continue reading
You can find this troubling ruling here. I’ll have more to say about it in a long piece in the works. … Continue reading
New report from the Fair Elections Center. … Continue reading
New from the Bipartisan Policy Center: State and local election administrators across the country are planning for voting in primaries and the November general election during the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic. These officials are guided by the deeply held belief … Continue reading
Sun-Sentinel: Florida elections supervisors said Wednesday that Gov. Ron DeSantis needs to “act immediately” to take steps to alleviate coronavirus-caused strains on the state’s voting systems.They want emergency changes in state rules, and they said DeSantis needs to access $20.2 … Continue reading
Danielle Root for CAP. … Continue reading
I was glad to be a guest on the Free & Fair podcast. Episode description: With the American electoral system under unprecedented stress, an expert committee led by legal scholar Richard L. Hasen (UCI Law and author of Election Meltdown) … Continue reading
Looking forward to this: Join the DiscussionThursday, May 282pm – 3:30pm ETPHIL WEISERCOLORADOATTORNEY GENERALLAWRENCE WASDENIDAHOATTORNEY GENERALCOVID-19 may fundamentally alter the way Americans vote. The Supreme Court’s decision in the Wisconsin primary is anticipated to spur future litigation. Petition gatherers are … Continue reading
Details here. … Continue reading
Event announcement: Voting in the Time of COVID-19: Can We Make It Work? An Ash Center/Harvard Kennedy School Event, Tuesday, May 19th, 12:00-1:15 Ash Center Senior Practice Fellow Miles Rapoport will moderate a discussion with four leading voices with differing … Continue reading
This seems to be an attempt to circumvent other federal and state court cases on this question. … Continue reading
Carrie Levine for CPI. … Continue reading
AP reports. … Continue reading
Cleveland.com reports. … Continue reading
NPR: The federal government is letting states know it considers online voting to be a “high-risk” way of running elections even if all recommended security protocols are followed.It’s the latest development in the debate over Internet voting as a few states have … Continue reading
AJC: Some churches, senior centers and fire stations are shutting their doors because of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving Georgia voters with fewer places to cast their ballots in the June 9 primary.Polling places have closed across Georgia, but especially in Fulton County, … Continue reading
The Washington Post reports. … Continue reading
Brennan Center release. … Continue reading
Stephen Stromberg WaPo column. … Continue reading
LAT: Citing public health concerns over millions of Californians showing up at voting locations this fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered ballots to be mailed to the state’s 20.6 million voters for the November election while imposing strict new … Continue reading
Eric Lach for the New Yorker: In April, Wisconsin held elections even as covid-19 was spreading quickly through the state’s communities. Election officials there scrambled both to find safe ways to hold in-person voting and to keep up with a surge of absentee-ballot … Continue reading
Alex Zaheer and Tom Westphal for Lawfare. … Continue reading
WaPo: Russian hackers could target election officials working from home. Adversaries could spread rumors about coronavirus outbreaks at polling sites to deter people from showing up on Election Day. Or they could launch disinformation campaigns claiming elections have been delayed … Continue reading
David Cole in NYRB: Why was there so much drama over such a minor election? And what does it portend for the momentous election coming in November? The answer is disturbing: in the coronavirus pandemic, Republicans may have discovered the … Continue reading
The Hill: A group of more than 800 public health experts on Tuesday called on Congress to fund mail-in voting amid rising concerns about in-person voting related to the coronavirus pandemic. The experts — made up of professors, phycologists and doctors … Continue reading