As reported in the South Orange Patch (who picks these names??).
The story is odd though, the author writes:
a new law allowing voters to send their ballots through the mail instead of appearing in person at a polling place
I think NJ already had no-excuse absentee balloting. The difference in this law is permanent status.
Ines Levin and I recently posted a new working paper studying the causal effect of voter confidence on political participation, sing data from the 2006 Mexican Election, “Measuring the Effects of Voter Confidence on Political Participation: An Application to the 2006 Mexican Election.”
Here is the paper’s abstract:
In this paper we study the causal effect of voter confidence on participation decisions in the 2006 Mexican Election. Previous research has shown that voter confidence was a relevant factor in explaining participation during the years of the PRI hegemony. An open question is whether this relationship is still significant after the democratic transition taking place in the years 1997-2000. Moreover, in the previous literature, this problem was studied in a regression framework. In this article we argue that, since voter confidence and participation decisions are affected by similar covariates, a regression approach may lead to results which are too model dependent, and do not account for the heterogeneity of effects across voters. To solve this problem, we use matching methods, and find that voter confidence has considerable effects on participation decisions, but substantially different in magnitude from those found using the usual regression approach.
A record 62.19% of voters in the May 19 special election in California cast their ballots by mail, according to the recently released final results.
The GAO issued this interim report recently, “Voters With Disabilities: More Polling Places Had No Potential Impediments Than in 20008, but Challenges Remain.”
Here’s a summary of their results:
We found that,comparedto 2000, the proportion of polling places withoutpotential impediments increased and the most significant reduction in potential impediments occurred at building entrances. We estimate that 27 percent of polling places had no features that might impede access to the voting area for people with disabilities—up from 16 percent in 2000; 45 percent of the polling places had potential impediments but offered curbside voting; and the remaining 27 percent of polling places had potential impediments and did not offer curbside voting. While the percent of polling places with multiple impediments decreased significantly from 2000, still a fair number—16 percent—had four or more potential impediments in 2008. The most significant reduction since 2000 was that potential impediments at building entrances—such as narrow doorways—decreased from 59 percent to 25 percent.
Most polling places we visited on Election Day 2008 had features in the voting area to facilitate private and independent voting, while some had features that could pose challenges. Virtually all polling places had at least one voting system—typically an accessible voting machine in a voting station—to facilitate private and independent voting for people with disabilities. However, we found that 29 percent of the voting stations were not arranged to accommodate a wheelchair. Seventy-seven percent of polling places had voting stations with accessible machines that offered the same or more privacy than stations for other voters, while the remaining polling places had stations that offered less privacy. For example, some voting stations were not positioned to prevent others from seeing how voters using the accessible machines were marking their ballots.
This is from a press release from the CA Secretary of State office:
Felony charges were filed and an arrest warrant issued Monday for an Orange County man suspected of committing voter registration and election fraud, Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced today.
An investigation by the Secretary of State’s Election Fraud Investigation Unit revealed that Nativo Lopez of Santa Ana leased office space in the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles and allegedly registered to vote at that commercial address although he lived with his family in Orange County. Lopez also allegedly cast an illegal ballot from Los Angeles in the 2008 Presidential Primary Election.
…
On June 22, the Public Integrity Unit of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office charged Lopez with four felonies: fraudulent voter registration, fraudulent document filing, perjury, and fraudulent voting. A warrant was issued for his arrest and bail was set at $10,000.
Under state law, registering where you are not entitled to vote is a felony punishable by up to three years in prison; fraudulent voting is also a felony punishable by up to three years in prison.
Here is the call, and link to the workshop website:
The goal of this workshop is to understand the security and usability properties of end-to-end voting systems, one type of next-generation system of interest. The last few years have witnessed the emergence of end-to-end voting systems, which enable voter-verification of election outcome. Several proposed systems have been prototyped; some have been used in binding elections. As such, these systems demonstrate considerable promise. NIST is interested in understanding the properties of this class of systems: in particular, what kind of auditability, vote secrecy, and incoercibility properties do these systems possess? What are their security assumptions? How usable are these systems, by poll workers and by voters? How interested are voters and election officials in the properties provided by these systems? Can the strong auditability properties of current paper-based E2E systems be obtained without the use of paper? What would electronic end-to-end voting systems look like?
This workshop aims to (a) begin a discussion on the above issues, among experts in diverse fields, such as cryptography, security and usability, and (b) encourage research on the development of electronic end-to-end voting systems with an emphasis on usability. Workshop discussions could influence future standards.
Two types of submissions are sought:Position papers (length about 2 pages). Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
Definitions of: end-to-end voting systems and their properties, such as usability, auditability, vote secrecy, and incoercibility. Relative importance of the properties. Extent to which the properties are achieved.
Impact of usability and accessibility on the security model
Impact of the security model on usability and accessibility
Electronic end-to-end voting systems: Are certain types of properties difficult to obtain in an electronic end-to-end voting system? Is it worth trying to build electronic end-to-end voting systems?
Reports of experiences with the use of end-to-end voting systems
Papers describing an electronic end-to-end voting system (These are expected to be more detailed than position papers; length about 5-15 pages).
Authors may submit papers that have been presented or published elsewhere. Accepted papers will be made available on the web as well as in printed form to workshop attendees. Manuscripts will not be formally published.
Here’s the call for papers:
Dear Colleagues
We are pleased to announce the Third Annual NYU-CESS (New York University Center for Experimental Social Sciences) Conference on Experimental Political Science on Friday, February 5th, 2010 and Saturday, February 6th, 2010. Last year’s conference was a huge success with over 100 attendees and 10 papers presented. The Conference is now an annual event that we hope will bring together researchers interested in experimental methodology in political science broadly. That is, we welcome the participation of scholars who work in the field and those who work in the lab as well as the participation of political psychologists and political economists. Furthermore, we welcome the participation of scholars who are not experimentalists themselves but are interested in learning and discussing experimental methods as well as those interested in the relationship between experimental methods and analyzing observational data in political science.
We invite submissions of papers for possible presentation at the third annual conference. Because we would like to be as inclusive as possible and continue to have a wide range of papers on experimental political science, we will not be able to subsidize paper presenters’ expenses in full, but will offer each paper presenter a partial stipend to help defray expenses of attending the conference. If you would like to submit a paper, please send the paper or a detailed abstract to Rebecca Morton, rbm5@nyu.edu by October 1st, 2009. We will notify authors by October 15th, 2009.
Please save the date as we hope to see many of you at nyu on Friday, Feburary 5th and Saturday, February 6th!
Eric Dickson
Rebecca Morton
Wisconsin is considering whether it will allow early in-person voting in Wisconsin, in addition to absentee balloting. The Government Accountability board is holding hearings around the state this month.
This editorial argues against the change.
From the Oregonian newspaper: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/06/online_voter_registration_pass.html
Oregon joins a number of other states who are moving to an electronic online voter registration system. The hopes are that this modernization of our registration system will reduce data entry errors, speeed changes, and reduce pressures on election officials on election day (in Oregon, most of the lines the last few days before an election are voters who need to update their registration record).
Walter Mebane has been analyzing data from the recent Iranian Presidential Election, and posting updates of his analysis here.