Indiana: Bill would allow absentee ballots from dead voters to count | Associated Press

Someone who casts an absentee ballot but dies before Election Day would still have their vote count under a proposal being considered by Indiana lawmakers. The provision is part of a bill that the House Elections Committee took up Wednesday. Rep. Matt Pierce of Bloomington told members about how disappointed he was when former U.S. Rep. Frank McCloskey’s absentee vote that he cast while fighting cancer didn’t count because he died before Election Day in 2004. Pierce said that only some county clerks actively check for deaths of absentee voters.

Oklahoma: Committee approves absentee voting bill | The Edmond Sun

Voters could apply to become permanent absentee voters under a measure approved by the Oklahoma House Elections and Ethics Committee today. State Rep. Elise Hall, author of House Bill 1559, said the intent of her legislation is to improve the absentee ballot system and encourage greater voter participation. “The current absentee ballot process forces individuals to apply for a ballot each and every election,” said Hall, R-Oklahoma City. “That can be a real hardship for traveling voters, nursing home residents and other incapacitated individuals. It makes more sense to allow people to apply for a permanent absentee status so that they can receive ballots for each election in which they are eligible to vote.”

Hawaii: Lawmaker wants to hold elections officer accountable | Associated Press

A lawmaker from Hawaii’s Big Island wants to hold Hawaii’s Chief Elections Officer Scott Nago accountable for voting problems that she says denied residents of her district the right to vote. Tropical Storm Iselle hit Hawaii’s Big Island a few days before Hawaii’s primary election last year, felling hundreds of trees and knocking out power to thousands of residents. Voting was postponed in two precincts. But some residents in the precincts where the polls were open had blocked driveways or were too busy struggling without power or water to vote. A makeup election was called, but many Puna residents weren’t sure who could participate, and the instructions were changed with just a few days’ notice, said Rep. Joy San Buenaventura, a Big Island Democrat.

Iowa: Legislators propose changes to election regulations | The Iowa Statesman

The General Assembly wants to tinker with how elections operate in Iowa. Since the opening of the 2015 session, there have been five bills relating to the electoral process offered in the House and Senate. They range from a bill to allow small cities to hold their municipal elections by absentee ballot only to a wholesale change to how elections are funded in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Senate File 10, offered up by state Sen. Brad Zaun (R-Urbandale), would require runoff primary elections whenever there is an “inconclusive” primary election. Iowa law requires a candidate to have at least 35 percent of the vote to win a primary election. When no candidate reaches the 35-percent threshold, a convention is held to determine the winner. U.S. Rep. David Young was the fifth-place finisher in the June primary election last year, but won the Republican nomination after several ballots at a district convention.

Ohio: Husted wants to reassure absentee voters in Ohio | Toledo Blade

Ohio should do more than just put absentee ballots in the hands of voters, the state’s top elections official said Wednesday. It should also reassure those voters that those ballots were ultimately counted. “With the increased popularity of our vote-by-mail program, we should also take steps to ensure that we do what we can to build confidence in that system as well,” Secretary of State Jon Husted told the Ohio Association of Election Officials at their winter conference. “A major step in this direction is to do for all voters what we already do for military voters, and that is to ensure that all Ohio voters can track their absentee ballots online,” he said. He wants local boards of elections to have such a system up and running by the presidential primary election of 2016 when the eyes of the nation again turn to the critical battleground state. That would serve as a test for the general election that November.

Ohio: Husted to seek review of 2014 election | Associated Press

Ohio’s elections chief said Wednesday he wants all voters in the swing state to be able to track their absentee ballots online, as military voters and some residents in larger counties already do. The idea was among several priorities that Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted discussed at a conference of the Ohio Association of Election Officials. Husted said he would like to see online tracking in all 88 counties in time for the 2016 primary elections. “This will further increase voters’ confidence in casting ballots by mail and in Ohio elections overall,” he told the group of bipartisan elections officials. While voters would not see every movement of their ballot through the mail, Husted said online tracking would let voters verify that their local board of elections had received their ballot.

United Kingdom: Elections watchdog backtracks over new postal vote secrecy rule | Herald Scotland

Britain’s elections standards watchdog says it will allow political campaigners to handle completed postal votes, marking a U-turn in plans it drew up in the wake of controversy surrounding the independence referendum. It comes as Police Scotland continues to investigate allegations that pro-Union campaigners breached electoral law by examining Scottish Referendum postal ballot papers to gauge how well the Better Together campaign was doing before the polls had closed. nThe day after September’s referendum the Electoral Commission circulated a consultation revealing proposed code changes that “make clear that campaigners should not handle any completed electoral registration, absent vote application forms or postal ballot packs”. The experience of the referendum fed into the consultation which has now stepped back from preventing campaigners from assisting voters.

Florida: Orange County updating voting equipment for $1.5 million | Orlando Sentinel

Orange County’s voting equipment is undergoing a $1.5 million upgrade aimed at modernizing the system, making the ballot-counting faster and improving access for disabled voters. The County Commission on Tuesday is expected to authorize spending about $1.35 million on the project in the current fiscal year. The remainder was spent last year. Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles said he had hoped to have the new system up and running in time for this spring’s municipal elections, but that timetable didn’t work out because an element of the system has yet to be certified by the state. If all goes according to plan, Cowles now hopes it will be in place for the presidential preference primary slated for March 1, 2016. One key change will be to do away with land lines for transmitting results. “We want to upgrade them from land line to wireless modeming on election night because more and more facilities are getting away from land lines,” he said. “The trade off is, I don’t have to put land lines into the polling places. “Savings will come in not having to install land lines in the future.” The new system also will include vote-counting machines.

India: Expats To Be Allowed To Vote Through Absentee Ballot, Court Rules | International Business Times

India’s Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, on Monday asked the government to allow Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), or Indian citizens living abroad, to vote remotely. This would mean that Indians living in foreign countries would be allowed to vote from their country of residence. Until now, Indian citizens living abroad have had to travel back home in order to exercise their franchise, something not many people do. India had given voting rights to NRIs in 2010. Under the new system — e-voting — a blank postal ballot paper is emailed to the voter, who has to then fill it and send it to their constituency via post, according to a report by NDTV, a local news network. India already allows on-duty defense personnel and certain categories of government officers and exiled Kashmiri Hindus to cast their vote remotely. The apex court has reportedly said that the proposed e-voting mechanism, which could require a constitutional amendment, should be implemented within eight weeks.

Editorials: Reforms would make it easier to vote in Pennsylvania | Daily Local

Pennsylvania state government behind the times? Let’s count the ways. We can list failure to privatize liquor sales and a system so far behind that visitors are amazed at the hoops we jump through to buy beer, wine and spirits. Go up the scale in intensity and we encounter an outdated property tax system for funding schools, and a public pension system racking up a $50 billion liability shortfall. Our lawmakers choose denial over solutions. Twice a year, we encounter another area in which the Commonwealth falls woefully short — ease of voting. Unlike other states, Pennsylvania has failed to adopt practices made possible in the internet age that make it easy for people to register and to vote. Instead of making the process more customer-friendly, Republicans two years ago used their majority in the House to push through even stricter requirements for voter ID. The new law which required a state-issued photo ID for all voters was challenged and struck down in Commonwealth Court. Now, some legislators are hoping to enact some meaningful reform and get Pennsylvania voter services out of the past. PAIndependent reported last week that a number of proposals are in the works to make voting more user-friendly.

Colorado: More workers, training helped avoid delays in voting, registrars say | Journal Inquirer

Changes made by the registrars of voters after problems with long lines in the 2012 election successfully addressed problems, the registrars reported recently. There were “no major issues” in November’s voting, registrars said. Two years ago, the registrars office came under fire for not being prepared for the last presidential election when voters were forced to wait in line for hours.
That was the first election after 10 precincts had been consolidated into eight, with polling places at Washington and Nathan Hale schools dropped to reflect shifting legislative district boundaries.

Georgia: Voting case mirrors national struggle | Atlanta Constitution Journal

Four years ago, black candidates won a majority of seats on the Brooks County school board, which had always been controlled by whites. They did it through an organized absentee ballot effort that generated close to 1,000 votes. Here’s what happened next: Armed agents of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Secretary of State questioned more than 400 of those voters, a small percentage of whom said they did not fill out their own ballot or could not recall doing so. A dozen organizers, all of them black, were indicted for more than 100 election law violations, each of which carried the potential of up to 10 years in prison. The most common charge was illegal possession of a ballot, often for the act of taking a willing voter’s completed, sealed ballot, which they said they had voted as they wished, to the mailbox for them.

Connecticut: New panel to review problems reported in local election | Associated Press

A bipartisan committee has been appointed by the Board of Selectmen to review the recent election process, which was marred by long delays in reporting results, incorrect ballots and a vote-scanner breakdown. The review, First Selectman Michael Tetreau said at last week’s board meeting, “is not a witch hunt. This is about the process.” The registrars of voters, Republican Roger Autuori and Democrat Matthew Waggner, who by state law oversee elections in town, have been at odds for several years and work in separate offices in old Town Hall. Autuori was charged with breach of peace after the two had a dispute while preparing for the 2013 election, and Waggner told police Autuori had slapped him. Later, Autuori reported Waggner to police for ripping down signs directing the public to Autuori’s new second-floor office. “This is not a witch hunt,” agreed Selectman Kevin Kiley. “We’re just trying to raise awareness and maintain the integrity” of the election process.

North Carolina: Questions raised about access to state’s election database system | Star News

Just weeks after the availability of completed absentee ballots on the public email server came to light, questions are being raised about access to login information for the state’s election database system. The email server makes available to the public correspondence between officials in New Hanover County, including emails to and from elections director Marvin McFadyen. Since the ballots issue came to light last month, the county removed McFadyen’s email from the public server. According to a news release in late November from the Derrick Hickey Campaign, it found a “stockpile” of voted absentee ballots.

District of Columbia: September To April And Back? The Saga Of D.C.’s Primary Date Continues | WAMU

D.C. could soon return to a September primary date for local elections, abandoning a brief and controversial experiment with holding the primaries in April. Under a bill set to be considered by the D.C. Council on Tuesday, the city’s primary election would be moved to the first Tuesday in September, effectively reversing a 2011 bill that pushed the primary date to the first Tuesday in April. That bill was passed to put D.C. in compliance with a federal law requiring 45 days between a primary and general election, to better allow military and overseas voters that chance to cast absentee ballots. It also aligned the city’s presidential and local primaries, which prior to 2012 had been held on different dates. But legislators, candidates and voters seemed to have had a hard time adjusting to the new electoral calendar, which required candidates to campaign in wintry weather and left incumbents who failed to win re-election a nine-month-long lame duck period. It also seemed to depress turnout; the April 1 D.C. primary saw less than 27 percent of registered voters actually cast ballots, a historic low for the city’s mayoral primaries. “Given the District’s unique position of having no voting members of the House of Representatives or Senate, District-wide elections have a deep impact on the lives of D.C. residents. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to maintain an electoral process that meets the needs and desires of the District’s residents while maintaining accessibility for military and overseas voters,” said a report from the Council’s Committee on Government Operations, which last week approved the measure.

District of Columbia: Election Over, Workers Keep Counting Ballots — Thousands Of Them | WAMU

“It’s exhausting.” That’s how Clifford Tatum, the executive director of the D.C. Board of Elections, describes the work that has taken place after the Nov. 4 general election. Though the campaign signs are coming down, public attention has shifted away and most of the top-ticket races — mayor, attorney general, D.C. Council seats, the marijuana legalization initiative — were settled after votes were tallied on election night, work has since continued for Tatum and his staff. That’s because as with every election, the elections board is charged with counting every ballot that’s properly cast. The bulk of those come during early voting or on Election Day — 25,750 residents voted early, while 125,606 voted on Nov. 4. But for those residents living outside the city, or those who fall into a number of categories that may require that they vote using a special — or provisional — ballot, their votes are counted in the two weeks following the election. For the general election, that adds up to a lot of ballots — close to 6,000 absentee ballots and over 20,000 special ballots.

Illinois: Danville election official, criticized over absentee ballots, opts for retirement | News-Gazette

Almost three weeks after local Republicans called for the firing of Danville Election Commission Director Barbara Dreher for counting absentee ballots early, she has decided to retire. Dreher said Monday that she was planning to retire next year or the year after, but the election commission board members decided they couldn’t support her any more. She said she’s over the age of 60 and has more than 22 years of employment with Vermilion County, including the last 10 leading the election commission, so she will retire effective Dec. 1. But her last day will be today as she has vacation and personal time to use, she said. “I don’t need this,” said Dreher, adding that this election was very stressful with all the changes in voting times, policies and procedures. Barb Bailey, who is chairman of the three commissioners who oversee the election commission office, said Monday that she and the other two commissioners, Tom Mellen and Charles Bostic, knew this was coming. Bailey did not confirm whether the commissioners asked Dreher to resign but said that they felt Dreher’s leaving “was best.”

Connecticut: Anatomy Of A Flawed Election | Hartford Courant

At 4 a.m. on Election Day, a bleary-eyed group of poll workers walked into the Hartford town and city clerk’s office to check the last of more than 1,200 absentee voters off the voter registration lists. The task was routine; the time and day troublesome. The job, crucial to ensuring that absentee voters couldn’t show up Tuesday at city polling places and vote again, should have been mostly finished days earlier, city and state officials said. The last-minute scramble, completed less than an hour before polls were to open, was one in a series of lapses that led to some polling places not having registration lists when voting was scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. As a result of the failure, voters were turned away, a judge ordered the extension of hours at two polling places and the state’s chief election official filed a complaint with the State Elections Enforcement Commission. Interviews show that the problems were widespread.

Michigan: Old technology blamed for drip-drip election results | The Macomb Daily

The extremely slow Macomb County election returns on Tuesday night are blamed, in part, by county officials on outdated technology. Despite mediocre voter turnout typical of a midterm election, many Macomb County voters went to bed on Election Night with no idea who had won the races in their community. Three of the county’s largest towns — Warren, Sterling Heights and Shelby Township –- kept voters in the dark until well after midnight. The lack of results also delayed an outcome in numerous races for the state Legislature and county Board of Commissioners that extend beyond the borders of those three municipalities. The county’s cities and townships rely upon election tabulators – the polling place machines that swallow up each voter’s ballot – which run on technology from 10 to 15 years ago. In addition, each voting precinct’s computerized results are transported by an analog line – a modem – to the county Clerk’s Office. The final step involves putting the election updates on the county’s heavily traveled election returns website.

Alaska: Knowns and Unknowns Among Uncounted Ballots | Alaska Public Media

With a few candidates up and down the ticket unsure whether they won or lost, a lot of Alaskans are looking to the thousands of ballots that remain uncounted. Division of Elections chief Gail Fenumiai says it’s too early to say exactly how many ballots are outstanding. “Right now we have, in the offices within the state, 23,608 absentee and early votes that are eligible to be counted,” said at mid-day today. They are from voters who live throughout the state, not in any particular district. “The majority of them are from non-rural areas of the state, meaning Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, the Mat-Su area,” she said. Those are, if you will, the known unknowns. But there are thousands of other kinds of ballots to be added to the total. It’s not clear how many are in these other categories.

Alabama: Voter ID law changes absentee ballot process for elderly, disabled voters | AL.com

Voters who will be unable to go to the polling place on Nov. 4 must request an absentee ballot by today. “If a voter will be out of the county on the day of the election, has a physical illness, is in the military or is a student, is working as a poll worker or works a shift of over 10 hours or more, that voter may request and vote an absentee ballot,” Secretary of State Jim Bennett said. Absentee ballot applications can be downloaded from www.alabamavotes.gov and mailed to the Absentee Election Manager in the county where the voter is registered. (You can see that list here). A voter may also request an application by phone or receive an application from their Absentee Election Manager in person.

California: Heavy ballots may need extra postage; still getting delivered to elections office | Redding Searchlight

Blame the October moisture. But some Shasta County voters are paying an extra 21 cents in postage — this on top of the 49-cent stamp — to mail their absentee ballots. Voters who have mailed their ballot with 49-cent postage only, fear not. The ballots — no matter that they are slightly heavier than in the bone-dry summer — will get to the Shasta County Elections Office by Nov. 4. Cathy Darling Allen, county clerk and registrar of voters, said the U.S. Postal Service will still deliver, and her office is picking up the difference for any extra postage. “They already know about this issue,” she said of the postal service. “They understand that the purple and green ballots” are being dropped off “and they get them to us as fast as they can.” To date, the elections office has mailed 61,741 ballots and 14,675 ballots have been returned.

Voting Blogs: Virgin Islands Supreme Court ignores federal court on election dispute | Excess of Democracy

I blogged earlier about the extraordinary dispute in the United States Virgin Islands, in which the Virgin Islands Supreme Court ordered a sitting senator off the ballot because it concluded she had committed a crime involving moral turpitude that rendered her disqualified for office. In response, the governor pardoned her, and an ensuing case in federal court resulted in an order to get her back on the ballot. I thought that would end the matter. It didn’t. The case has become even more surreal.

National: Want Your Absentee Vote To Count? Don’t Make These Mistakes | NPR

Millions of voters — about 1 in 5 — are expected to vote absentee, or by mail, in November’s midterm elections. For many voters, it’s more convenient than going to the polls. But tens of thousands of these mail-in ballots are likely to be rejected — and the voter might never know, or know why. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission found that in 2012 more than a quarter of a million absentee ballots were rejected. The No. 1 reason? The ballot wasn’t returned on time, which in most states is by Election Day. Sometimes it’s the voter’s fault. Others blame the post office.

Florida: Miami-Dade absentee ballot law upheld by court | The Miami Herald

Miami-Dade County’s law aimed at curbing absentee-ballot fraud has withstood a first big legal challenge. An appeals court on Wednesday shot down the case of Hialeah’s Sergio “El Tio” Robaina, who claimed the county law was unconstitutional and unfair to elderly Hispanic voters who rely on friends to deliver their absentee ballots. The ruling is a resounding victory for Miami-Dade County, which in 2011 passed the ordinance amid fears of growing election fraud. Under the law, a person can only turn in two absentee ballots other than their own: one belonging to an immediate family member, and another belonging to a voter who has signed a sworn statement designating that person as responsible. The Third District Court of Appeal issued the ruling without a written opinion, which means that Robaina will likely be unable to appeal his case to the Florida Supreme Court.

California: Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Admits More Mistakes for Mail-in Ballots | San Jose Inside

Just weeks after the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters re-printed a slew of sample ballots missing entire races and candidate info, the agency has to deal with another batch of faulty election literature. Earlier this month, the county had to re-print and re-mail 100,000 sample ballots because of entire sections missing candidates from the Gavilan Joint Community College District and Santa Clara Unified School District races. The county corrected the slip-up and alerted voters by snail mail, email and phone calls. But the printing company for absentee ballots used proofs from those older samples, running off 1,007 mail-in ballots missing the same information. Voters have already received those faulty ballots.

Editorials: California politicians would never suppress voting, but they might not count all the ballots | The Sacramento Bee

It’s tempting to be smug in the face of other states’ fights over voter suppression. California, thankfully, isn’t Texas, where voter-ID requirements were compared to a poll tax by a federal judge last week. Signed into law by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011, the ID requirement was just one of many ways in which the Lone Star State historically blocked participation among minority voters, said U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos, who ruled that the requirement had an “impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose.” And Texas, of course, isn’t the only part of the nation where voter protections aren’t, well, Californian. A year after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision narrowing the Voting Rights Act, 15 states controlled by Republicans have imposed tighter restrictions on voting for the Nov. 4 election, the Los Angeles Times reported last week.