Late ballots may put Congress in limbo

The Journal Gazette | Fort Wayne, IN: "The nation may be waiting well beyond Election Day this year to find out who won control of Congress.
It’s a troubling ballot-box scenario that has hundreds of lawyers from both parties preparing for battles that could drag on days, weeks or even months past the Nov. 3 day-after.
Some states don’t count substantial amounts of votes until after Election Day. Others require mail-in ballots to be postmarked – not received – by Nov. 2, leaving the tally until well afterward."

Related articles

• Other factors, not voters, could determine control of Congress (capitolhillblue.com)
• Fight for Congress could last past Election Day (sfgate.com)
• Fight for Congress could last past Election Day (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Counting Mail-In Votes Could Hold Up Election Results in at Least 3 States (politicsdaily.com)

Competitiveness in national elections does not trickle down to state level

Ballotnews: "77.3% of incumbents faced no primary challenger. Of the 1,133 incumbents who did face a primary, only 95 were defeated by the challenger. Thus, 91.6% of all incumbents who faced a primary opponent won their primary. But, if all 4,985 incumbents who elected to run for re-election are counted, only 1.9% of incumbents did not make it to the general election."

How Selection Methods Shape Their Policy Preferences and Affect Voter Turnout

SSRN- by Barry Burden, David Canon, Stéphane Lavertu, Ken Mayer, Donald Moynihan: "The method by which we select public officials can have a significant effect on their incentives, the constraints they face, and ultimately the policy goals they pursue. We explore this phenomenon using election administration as a case. We examine differences in the policy preferences among elected and appointed election officials, and explore the relationship between those attitudes and the administrative outcomes they may engender. We employ a uniquely rich dataset that includes the survey responses of over 1,200 Wisconsin election officials, structured interviews with dozens of these officials, and data from the 2008 presidential election. Drawing upon a natural experiment in how clerks are selected, we find that elected officials support policies that emphasize voter access rather than ballot security, and that their municipalities are associated with higher voter turnout. For appointed officials, we find that voter turnout in a municipality is noticeably lower when the local election official’s partisanship differs from the partisanship of the electorate. Overall, our results support the notion that selection methods, and the incentives that flow from those methods, matter a great deal. Elected officials are more likely to express attitudes and generate outcomes that reflect their direct exposure to voters, in contrast to the more insulated position of appointed officials."


See also passage in House of H.R. 512 this week, 296 - 129.  CRS Summary: Amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to make it unlawful for a chief state election administration official to take active part in political management or in a political campaign with respect to any election for federal office over which the official has supervisory authority. Waives application of this Act if the chief state election administration official himself or herself, or an immediate family member, is a candidate.

Related links

• "Election Officials: How Selection Methods Shape Their Policy Preferences and Affect Voter Turnout" (electionlawblog.org)
• The Persistence of Partisan Election Administration (moritzlaw.osu.edu)
• CA SOS Debra Bowen on passage of H.R. 512

California Voter Registration Totals

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen today released a new Report of Registration showing 72 percent of eligible Californians were registered to vote 60 days prior to the November 2 General Election. The report shows there are now close to 17 million Californians registered in the Golden State, up from 15.6 million at this same time four years ago.


Related articles

• Calif. GOP failing to close voter registration gap (sfgate.com)

Third-party candidates could tip close elections

RealClearPolitics: "Whether they are sore losers or never-say-die patriots, third-party candidates threaten to tip a handful of congressional and gubernatorial races to contenders who otherwise might have lost this fall."

Related articles

• Mapping Third-Party Spending (thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com)

Legislative candidate seeks ballot ruling from high court

Postbulletin.com: Last week, Fillmore County Auditor and Treasurer Shirl Boelter sent a letter to all of the candidates saying that she had determined that Hein had failed to get the 500 voter signatures required to file for office. State law requires that non-major party candidates gather the signatures since independent candidates are not subject to the primary election. But Boelter said all of the general election ballots had already been printed in Fillmore and Houston counties and she did not believe she had the authority to take Hein's name off the ballot. Hein said he did not know about the requirement when he filed for office.

Related articles

• Minnesota Independent Candidate, who is on Ballot, Asks State Supreme Court to Rule that He is On Legally (ballot-access.org)
• Minnesota Independent Legislative Candidate On Ballot Even Though he Filed No Petition (ballot-access.org)

Weekly Wrap-Up -- State of Elections

From State of Elections.com:

Fox News wants to make sure their viewers know they don’t endorse Democrats. The network has sued Democratic Senate candidate Robin Carnahan for copyright violations based on a campaign ad.

Dreaming of a Third Party? Libertarians in Georgia are dreaming of a permanent place on the ballot. Their gubernatorial candidate, John Monds, is polling at 9% while the Republican candidate, Nathan Deal, continues to have financial problems. If Monds can capture over 20% of the vote, the Libertarians will be considered a “political party” under state election law, allowing them to hold primary elections and be guaranteed ballot access in future races.

Texting to support a candidate may soon be more than simply asking your friends to vote for someone. Cell phone carriers are seeking approval from the Federal Election Commission to allow customers to make campaign donations via text message, similar to the recent campaigns for donations to help victims in Haiti and Pakistan.

Politically motivated non-profit organizations have been cropping up in order to campaign for parties or candidates without having to reveal where their donor money is coming from. Groups such as Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies are listed as 501(c)(4) non-profit corporations, but spend millions on political advertisements while taking advantage of an exemption that allows non-profits to keep their donor list to themselves.

Republicans Better at Social Media

HeadCount: According to a study, Republicans are much more adept at connecting to their base via social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

While Democratic U.S. Senate candidates have a little less than 300,000 followers on Facebook, their Republican counterparts have 1.43 million “fans.” On Twitter, 520,000 people follow Republican candidates for Senate, whereas only 90,000 follow Democratic candidates.

Related articles

• Republicans Dominate Democrats in Social Media (fastcompany.com)
• Study: Voters Expect Politicians to be Active on Social Networks...Are they Listening? (socialtimes.com)

Probe in New Black Panther case

The review by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is an outgrowth of the political controversy over a 2008 voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. Some conservative lawyers, politicians and commentators have said that the civil rights division improperly narrowed that case, part of their broader allegations that the Obama Justice Department has failed to protect the civil rights of white voters.

via washingtonpost.com

Voting System Failures: A Database Solution | Brennan Center for Justice

When it comes to system failures, however, voting machines are different from automobiles and airplanes, and other products, in at least one important respect: for the vast majority of voting systems in use today, (1) manufacturers are not required to report malfunctions to any government agency, and (2) there is no agency that either investigates such alleged failures or alerts election officials and the general public to possible problems (let alone requires voting system manufacturers to fix such problems).

via brennancenter.org

Cybersquatters Muddy Political Waters - NYTimes.com

“They do it for profit,” Matthew Sanderson, the counsel for Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, wrote last year in the Election Law Journal. “They do it for spite. They do it to broadcast criticisms. They do it out of egotism or to indulge their idea of fun.”

Mr. Sanderson cited the case of a Florida private investigator named Joseph Culligan who owned more than 500 political domain names, including PresidentBillClinton.com and ReelectPresidentBush.com. He said that Mr. Culligan had offered PresidentHatch.com to Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, for $45,000. Another squatter is said to have sold Forbes2000.com to Steve Forbes, the presidential candidate, for more than $10,000.

via nytimes.com