Returning to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story from last week: Georgia has passed a law that entitles workers up to two hours off to cast a ballot during early voting. The statute also establishes routine audits of primary, runoff, and special elections.
Tag Archives: early voting
Breaking News–GA Trial Court Rules Voting May Proceed on Saturday, Nov. 26, in the GA Senate runoff election
Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that a Georgia Trial court has granted the Democratic Party and Warnock Campaign’s request for a declaratory judgment and injunction to allow for early voting on Saturday, November 26. Order is embedded in the article.
“Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox decided Friday that state law permits counties to offer voting Nov. 26, finding in favor of Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock’s campaign.
County governments may now choose to offer residents an opportunity to vote on that Saturday in addition to five mandatory weekdays of early voting the following week.”
Breaking: Georgia Democrats File to Expand Early Voting
The Georgia Democratic Party has filed a suit challenging the Secretary of State’s decision to bar counties from permitting early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Thank you to Stephen Fowler. There is a fuller article now at the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Eyes Turn to Georgia–and Impact of Democratic Control on Turnout in the Run Off
Atlanta Journal Constitution reports on the how the Walker and Warnock campaigns are reacting to the news that Democrats have maintained their 50 seats in the Senate. The Warnock campaign is urging early voting and its allies are reframing the “race as a crucial 51st vote to better insulate Democrats from the whims of U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.” Meanwhile, the Walker campaign is clearly worried that it will be difficult to turnout Republicans now that the Senate is not in play. This seems reasonable since I would have thought they should already have been a little concerned about turnout given Brian Kemp won handily. Meanwhile, the AP reports on how the narrower window for early voting works and its potential impact on Democratic turnout.
65 Ways to Improve Our Democracy
Today the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Political Reform rolled out its recommendations and report today on strengthening American democracy. Academics are usually on the outside looking in for such processes, but I was lucky enough to serve as one of the BPC’s 29 commissioners. I left incredibly impressed with the spirit of cooperation and bipartisanship shown by all the members of the commission — particularly its chairs, Senators Lott, Snowe, and Daschle, Secretary Dan Glickman, and Governor Dick Kempthorne, who took a hands-on role in making the report happen and were engaged in the project from beginning to end. As cynical as I am about such processes generally, I left this one feeling heartened.
You all should read the report, which contains no fewer than 65 recommendations for improving American democracy. For the most contentious issues – the ones where we disagreed on the fundamentals – the Commission largely confined itself to proposals that were politically realistic and still likely to accomplish something. For the issues on which we all agreed – especially those having to do with leadership and service – we tended to dream big.
Election law junkies will find much of interest in the report. First, note that this is the second time in recent months that a commission that included prominent members of both parties endorsed early voting. As I’ve said elsewhere, early voting is at the “sweet spot” of election reform. It’s one of the rare examples where the so-called the “access/integrity tradeoff” isn’t a tradeoff. Early voting makes it easier for people to vote, particularly working people. By extending the voting process, it also helps reduce the pressures on election day that can lead to long lines. But early voting also helps on the fraud side of the policymaking equation. Voters crave convenience voting. And early voting is a far superior alternative to the other, common form of convenience voting – absentee balloting. Absentee voting, not in-person voting, is where there’s a real risk of fraud. Early voting, then, is both secure and convenient, and it’s something that voters are quickly coming to expect.
Second, one of the freshest ideas in the report goes to the problem of primaries. We all know what a problem low-turnout primaries are. But there have been precious few new ideas about how to address it. The Commission proposes creating the equivalent of a “Super Tuesday” for primaries – one day in June when all primaries would take place. The aim of the proposal is clear – to focus the media and the parties’ turnout efforts and the attention of citizens on a single event in the hope of building better voting habits among our citizenry. Although the proposal was addressed to the problem of turnout, it also helps solve a crucial problem for election administrators. Elections are expensive. The proliferation of primaries and election days drains election administrators of time and financial resources. There’s no question that it will take some work to consolidate all primaries on a single day. But the savings involved could be substantial.
Finally, the Commission put some time into thinking about what happens after all the ballots are cast. The commissioners were acutely aware of the problems associated with recounts. The report includes a variety of pragmatic, good-governance reforms that would lower the temperature for the recounts that will inevitably happen (at least they would reduce the number of things the parties can go to war over). Perhaps the most important of these proposals were the ones aimed at reducing the number of provisional ballots and absentee ballots that that are uncounted on election day. As an elections lawyer will tell you, these ballots are the ticking time bombs of the elections process. I remember being in the Boiler Room for the Obama campaign in 2012. For a moment, it looked as if the race might come down to Ohio, which had thousands and thousands of provisional ballots waiting to be counted. As a member of the recount team, I briefly wondered whether I should tell my family I wouldn’t be seeing them for the next month as the campaigns were sure to litigate the status of each and every one.
I’ll just close by noting that while I don’t agree with every single proposal made by the commission, I am honored to have my name on the report. It’s a serious report drafted by serious people. More importantly, it’s aimed at deep and serious problems. When I thought about whether to sign, I asked myself the question that political scientists routinely ask: as opposed to what? The proposals might not be my vision of the perfect. But they are so far superior to the status quo that it would be great if even a fraction of them were implemented. Here’s hoping.