Bernard Fraga for the Monkey Cage: But Democrats confront a major challenge: People of color vote at a substantially lower rate than whites. In my new book, “The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America,” I … Continue reading
Category Archives: election administration
ProPublica: In June, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation mandating that all early voting sites in the state remain open for uniform hours on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., a move supporters argued would reduce confusion and … Continue reading
You can find the majority and dissenting opinions at this link. Given the divided Supreme Court and the composition of the full 8th Circuit, this ruling is likely to stand, despite the state’s delay, the proximity to the election, and … Continue reading
NPR: It’s been a tough couple of years for the business of voting. There’s the state that discovered a Russian oligarch now finances the company that hosts its voting data. Then there’s the company that manufactures and services voter registration … Continue reading
Read it here. … Continue reading
WSJ: “Hoping to quell fears about foreign hackers and repel potential threats, many states and counties are beefing up their plans to deal with cyberattacks.” … Continue reading
NPR’s Morning Edition on the role that private companies, including one whose largest investor is reportedly a Russian oligarch, play in running our elections. … Continue reading
BREAKING: Federal judge in Atlanta denies motion for preliminary injunction to force the state of Georgia to switch to paper ballots for the 2018 midterms. But Judge Totenberg warned the state "further delay is not tolerable" in confronting election … Continue reading
WaPo: Logan Lamb, a cybersecurity sleuth, thought he was conducting an innocuous Google search to pull up information on Georgia’s centralized system for conducting elections. He was taken aback when the query turned up a file with a list of voters and … Continue reading
ProPublica: More than one-third of counties that are overseeing elections in some of the most contested congressional races this November run email systems that could make it easy for hackers to log in and steal potentially sensitive information. A ProPublica … Continue reading
Thanks to Doug Chapin for calling attention to this Concord Monitor piece on the nuts-and-bolts of getting polling sites ready for an election. The URL for the piece offers a nice insight not in the piece itself: “If you build … Continue reading
The State Board’s unanimous decision pertains to the subject of an ongoing lawsuit as well. Independent of the merits, it’s awfully close to the election to be making a statewide change of this magnitude. … Continue reading
NPR this morning, digging into the reasons why nonvoters don’t. … Continue reading
The state supervision will include the conduct of the recount in the Democratic primary for the 3d Congressional District. … Continue reading
LAT: Tens of thousands of Californians have been registered to vote incorrectly by the state Department of Motor Vehicles, including some who were assigned the wrong political party preference, officials said Wednesday. Officials insist the errors were limited to 23,000 … Continue reading
News and Observer reports. … Continue reading
NYT: Amid a chorus of warnings that the American election system is ground zero for foreign attackers, a panel of leading scholars and election experts issued a sweeping set of recommendations on Thursday for how to make elections more secure. Several similar reports … Continue reading
BAN: On September 5, the Sixth Circuit issued an order that permits Michigan to remove the straight-ticket device from 2018 ballots. Michigan State A. Philip Randolph Institute v Johnson, 18-1910. The state legislature had repealed the authorization for the device in early … Continue reading
NYT: The purpose of the bill seemed unassailable: to ensure that state officials could protect their elections against the kind of hacking or interference that has clouded the 2016 campaign. Although it started out backed by election integrity advocates and … Continue reading
Arizona Republic: Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes rode into office in 2016 in the wake of a “presidential preference” election that went terribly wrong, with people standing in line for too long at too few polling places. So when 62 of … Continue reading
The Tampa Bay Times reports. … Continue reading
Press release: Robert J. Higdon, Jr., United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina today announced that nineteen foreign nationals were charged with, among other crimes, voting by alien for their actions prior to and on November 8, … Continue reading
This is a new one to me. … Continue reading
NHPR on a very important election administration decision: A federal judge has struck down a New hampshire law that allows pollworkers to toss out absentee ballots if they don’t believe the signature adequately matches the one used on other voting … Continue reading
Charles Stewart for The Monkey Cage: Forty-four states and the District of Columbia had higher overall scores in 2016 than in 2012. Six states declined, but by tiny amounts, often because of random variability. You can see the measures in … Continue reading
McClatchy reports. … Continue reading
New Brennan Center report: Cyberattacks pose a growing threat to our election infrastructure, and while efforts to prevent these attacks are critical, it is as important to ensure preparations are in place to quickly and effectively recover if those efforts … Continue reading
Neil Makhija on Husted at the Regulatory Review. … Continue reading
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
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