Over the past few weeks, the Election Assistance Commission has issued a series of RFP’s, including studing free return postage on absentee ballots (05-03), efforts to construct a legal resources clearinghouse (05-04), pollworker programs (05-05, 05-06), studying ballot counting and recounting procedures (05-07), setting up a voter information portal design conference (05-08), voter hotlines (05-09), improvement of election data collection (05-10), information management analysis and procedures (05-11).

At this point, it is unclear how many of these RFP’s have been awarded; as of today, five of the projects are still listed on the EAC RFP page for current RFP’s (05-04, 05-08, 05-09, 05-10, 05-11), so one might assume the rest had been awarded. But many of us who are on the EAC mailing list for RFP received the following notice:

EAC is withdrawing the following solicitations. None of the proposals received met the minimum technical
evaluation threshold.

        RFP#05-03 Research Assistance to Study the Feasibility and Advisability of Establishing a Program of Free Return Postage for Absentee Ballots

        RFP #05-10 Research Assistance to Improve Election Data Collection

Anyone who submitted a proposal for either of these solicitations and wishes a de-brief may email their request …

As additional information comes along on these RFP awards, we’ll do our best to keep our blog readers updated.

For those interested in the issue of election data collection, there are some reference materials that have been placed on the EAC RFP page for study 05-10 (“Improvement of Election Data Collection”) worthy of reading. In particular, take a look at the “EDS Recommendations on Future Data Collection” which has a detailed eight-page discussion of future ideas on how the EAC or others can better collect data like that in the 2004 EAC election day, voter registration, and military/overseas absentee ballot surveys (which are also provided on the RFP page for 05-10).