The Voting News Weekly: The Voting News Weekly for February 16-22 2015
NPR reviewed the state of voting technology in the US, while in ab Atlantic oped Noah Gordon considered gerrymandering and proportional representation. Pew Charitable Trust’s Make Voting Work Initiative and the JEHT Foundation have released the Survey of the Performance of American Elections, a comprehensive national public opinion study of voting from the perspective of the voter. Less than 24 hours after beginning what many expected to be a long, heated debate, Nebraska lawmakers voted 25-15 to table a voter ID proposal. Just as Secretary of State Kate Brown became Oregon’s Governor, the automatic voter registration that she has championed cleared its first legislative hurdle. In a disappointing decision for election integrity advocates, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court denied an appeal of 2013 Commonwealth Court decision allowing the continued use of direct recording electronic voting machines without voter-verified paper records in the State. the postponement of Nigeria’s Presidential election has raised fears of vote rigging and increased violence and the United Kingdom is poised to join the only 20 countries around the world that look to private corporations to provide electronic voting systems, a potential windfall for the international voting industry.