AJC: The unsettled race for Georgia governor tightened over the weekend as Democrat Stacey Abrams prepared litigation aimed at counting a trove of pending votes, while Republican Brian Kemp’s campaign said her refusal to concede was “a disgrace to democracy.” … Continue reading
Category Archives: election administration
Chicago Tribune: In light of a lengthy list of election woes for Porter County’s midterm election, including a preliminary tally of results that wasn’t complete until Friday, the Porter County Board of Commissioners and two members of the County Council … Continue reading
H.R. 1: First Item on the Agenda? Improving the 2020 Election. … Continue reading
NYT’s The Upshot: The vote count in Florida’s Senate race keeps getting tighter. Gov. Rick Scott’s lead over the Democratic incumbent, Bill Nelson, is down to 15,000 votes, and it’s likely to narrow further as provisional and late overseas ballots are … Continue reading
Read the complaint. This occurs as ballots continued to be counted in the very close McSally-Sinema Senate race. … Continue reading
AJC: A day after the election, the governor’s race remained in limbo, with Secretary of State Brian Kemp declaring victory and Democrat Stacey Abrams vowing to hang in the race until every vote is counted. A number of other races could result in … Continue reading
Release via email: Today, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, The Arizona Advocacy Foundation and All Voting is Local-Arizona sent a letter, demanding that the Maricopa County Arizona Board of Supervisors and the County Recorder extend voting hours … Continue reading
WhoWhatWhy: WhoWhatWhy asked the secretary of state’s office if it planned to conduct an audit to ascertain that unauthorized changes had not been made to voter registrations. Broce responded, “There is no such vulnerability in the system as alleged by your … Continue reading
Devastating for an agency that’s had such promise, from Jessica Huseman: One of the EAC’s commissioners has dismissed the threat of foreign governments undermining American elections in private meetings with state election officials, and often personally appealed to individual officials … Continue reading
APM reports. … Continue reading
Ned Foley and Steve Huefner at Slate: This year, in particular, the temptation may be especially strong to distort the vote-counting process to achieve a victory for one side or the other. Given the refrain that the current elections are … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: In perhaps the most outrageous example of election administration partisanship in the modern era, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor while simultaneously in charge of the … Continue reading
NYT reports. … Continue reading
The Fresno Bee reports. … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. it begins: In separate rulings on Thursday, two federal courts had the same message for minority voters making credible claims of potential disenfranchisement: Your arguments may be good on the merits, but it’s … Continue reading
They say that Dodge City voters can't vote in their usual polling location because it is inaccessible due to construction. So we went there to see for ourselves. Wanna guess what we found? pic.twitter.com/dO5BVUOtkP — Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) November 1, … Continue reading
I had been expecting an emergency stay request from Ohio, but it’s not going to happen: Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, said he disagreed with the ruling but called it “temporary and narrow.” He said he would … Continue reading
Josh Douglas oped. … Continue reading
Announcement via email: The Election Law Program is pleased to announce the expansion of its eBenchbook platform to include North Carolina and Nevada. ELP aims to offer annotated state election statutes in all fifty states. Visit the beta site at … Continue reading
Eliza Newlin Carney deep dive for TPM. … Continue reading
NLJ: A federal judge in Atlanta turned Secretary of State Brian Kemp’s own words against him in denying a request to postpone a court order intended to reduce the number of rejected absentee ballots across the state. Judge Leigh Martin May of … Continue reading
Cleveland.com: A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that boards of election in Ohio must count provisional election ballots cast by certain people previously purged from voter rolls for the 2018 midterm elections. A three-judge panel from the 6th U.S. … Continue reading
See this order. … Continue reading
Release: Tonight, the Texas Civil Rights Project (“TCRP”) sent a letter to the Secretary of State asking that his office take immediate action to inform Texans regarding the straight-ticket voting issues on the Hart eSlate voting machines. The letter asks … Continue reading
Wichita Eagle: After the ACLU objected to Dodge City’s single, out-of-town polling place, the local official in charge of elections forwarded to the state an ACLU letter asking her to publicize a voter help line. “LOL,” she wrote in an … Continue reading
TPM: A state court judge in Tennessee ruled Thursday that Shelby County, which contains Memphis, must let voters whose registrations were stalled due to incomplete information to vote with regular ballots on Election Day, once the deficiencies are corrected. The ruling came … Continue reading
It is here. I expect the district court, which just issued its order, will deny the request for a stay. This is more of a formality before seeking relief in the 11th Circuit. This could end up before the Supreme … Continue reading
AJC: A federal judge intends to issue an injunction barring Georgia election officials from tossing certain absentee ballots without giving would-be voters advance notice and a chance to rectify any issues. The implementation of the injunction — which U.S. District … Continue reading
Following up on this post, see this Michael McDonald thread starting here: @monkeycageblog has become its namesake, a blog lacking vetting of the claims put forth. Quite sad, really, since it used to showcase peer-reviewed scholarship. Case in point: this … Continue reading
Hot off the presses is the edited volume, Electoral Integrity in America: Securing Democracy Edited by Pippa Norris, Sarah Cameron, and Thomas Wynter. You can order from Oxford U. Press at a 30% discount using the code: ASFLYQ6. I have a chapter … Continue reading
I have written this piece for Slate. It begins: Over the weekend, President Donald Trump threatened prosecutions against nonexistent voter fraud, a message likely aimed at intimidating voters and stopping some from voting. With Trump’s heightened rhetoric and a seemingly increasing number … Continue reading
Bloomberg: Allegations that Georgia’s Republican-led election officials are unfairly throwing out mailed ballots over hyper-technical errors are set to go before a federal judge two weeks before Election Day. Hundreds — perhaps thousands — of ballots are being rejected because … Continue reading
Ted Enamorado at the Monkey Cage: That’s why I have spent the past three years helping to develop an algorithm that uses probabilistic record linkage called “fastLink” that not only makes record linkage across data sets speedy and automated, but also tells … Continue reading
AP: Access to the ballot box in November will be more difficult for some people in Dodge City, where Hispanics now make up 60 percent of its population and have remade an iconic Wild West town that once was the … Continue reading
McClatchy reports. … Continue reading
Good news: Florida eased restrictions Thursday on vote-by-mail ballots in eight counties ravaged last week by Hurricane Michael, while also giving elections supervisors more time to conduct early voting. Secretary of State Ken Detzner, the state’s top election official, said … Continue reading
Charles Stewart has posted this draft on SSRN. Here is the abstract: This paper presents an intellectual history of the Elections Performance Index (EPI), originally produced by the Pew Charitable Trusts, now produced by the MIT Election Data and Science … Continue reading
Governing: When the stakes are high, the temptation is always there to bend the rules to give your own side an advantage. Civil rights groups argue that Georgia GOP Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor, is doing … Continue reading
Is the state of Georgia going to disenfranchise voters over missing hyphens on voter registration cards? What can be done about new strict voting rules, such as the North Dakota residential address rule that may disenfranchise Native American voters? Will … Continue reading
News and Observer: The government board that oversees elections in North Carolina is unconstitutional, a panel of judges ruled on Tuesday — just weeks before Election Day in the 2018 midterms, and only a day before the start of early … Continue reading
TIME on Secretary of State races. … Continue reading
AJC: Nearly one in 10 vote-by-mail ballots have been rejected by Gwinnett County election officials, alarming voting rights groups. Gwinnett is throwing out far more absentee ballots than any other county in Georgia, according to records from the Secretary of … Continue reading
Pete Williams and Ken Dilanian for NBC News: The Department of Homeland Security says it’s working to identify who — or what — is behind an increasing number of attempted cyber attacks on U.S. election databases ahead of next month’s … Continue reading
Daily Beast: The midterms are less than a month away. But working groups inside the intelligence community charged with overseeing election security are still trying to finalize plans for countering foreign interference in the 2018 elections, three senior officials involved … Continue reading
Steven Rosenfeld for Salon. … Continue reading
Missourian: As the Nov. 6 general election approaches, a new shake-up regarding voter identification laws has election authorities across Missouri — including in Boone County — on their toes. Cole County Judge Richard Callahan on Tuesday blocked provisions of the … Continue reading
LA Times: Randall Marquis has lived in California for 31 years, but he knew it was a mistake when he received a notice last month that said he was newly registered to vote. He may have a state driver’s license, … Continue reading
Larry Schwartztol oped in The Hill. … Continue reading
Release: Today, leading experts in the field of election security released a report outlining the serious and unaddressed threat to the integrity of the nation’s elections and democracy posed by the continued use of online voting in 32 states. The … Continue reading
Miami Herald: That huge swirling menace in the Gulf known as Hurricane Michael has the attention of Floridians four weeks before Election Day. But a disturbance of another kind is intensifying, and it involves voting. Two controversies erupted at once … Continue reading