Illinois: Chicago election official fired | Chicago Sun Times

A Chicago election official has been fired in the aftermath of a contentious election that has resulted in a criminal probe of disruptive robocalls and complaints about “irregularities” in handling ballots in the state treasurer’s race. A division supervisor for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners has been fired, said Jim Allen, a board spokesman. Allen would only say the person fired was a division supervisor and not “a top manager.”  He declined to say why the person was fired, saying it was a personnel issue.  But the firing comes amid complaints from the campaign of Republican candidate for state treasurer Tom Cross. A lawyer for the campaign wrote a letter to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners about “numerous irregularities identified by election monitors in the handling of ballots” for the Nov. 4 election.

California: Tight races again put spotlight on California recount rules | The Sacramento Bee

Four months after the photo finish in the California controller primary put a spotlight on the state’s unique recount rules, possible recounts loom in a handful of close legislative and congressional races on last week’s ballot. In Sacramento County’s 7th Congressional District, Rep. Ami Bera has cut the lead of Republican former Rep. Doug Ose to 530 votes, just 0.35 percent of the total counted so far, with thousands of late-arriving mail and provisional ballots still to process. Bera’s campaign has already launched a drive to raise money for a possible recount. The next official vote tally is expected Wednesday.

Alaska: Uncounted votes grow in Alaska Senate race | Alaska Dispatch

The number of uncounted votes in Alaska’s tightly fought U.S. Senate race grew by 21,000 between Wednesday and Friday — and more than 5,000 of those were votes that hadn’t been predicted in early accounts of the number of ballots outstanding. After election night on Tuesday, incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Begich trailed Republican challenger Dan Sullivan by 8,000 votes, or 3.6 percent, and both campaigns have been closely watching as state elections officials collect additional ballots cast by mail, or at more than 200 so-called “absentee in-person voting locations” around the state, where people could vote early. More than 40,000 ballots will likely be counted starting Tuesday, though the number will probably climb even more before then. To win, Begich would have to reverse election night trends and win a substantial majority — though his allies have pointed out that in the count following Election Day in 2008, Begich overcame a 3,000 vote deficit to Republican Ted Stevens and ultimately won by 4,000 votes. The spike between Wednesday and Friday was a reflection of state elections officials’ new accounting for more than 13,000 provisional ballots, 2,200 absentee ballots submitted by fax, mail or email, and some 5,200 ballots cast early at the in-person absentee voting locations across the state.

Arizona: Barber-McSally race heads toward potential recount | The Arizona Republic

Arizona could be headed toward its first congressional recount ever, as Republican challenger Martha McSally’s lead over incumbent Democratic Rep. Ron Barber dwindled to only 179 votes Monday. A mandatory recount will occur if either candidate wins the race by fewer than 200 votes. There are still about 6,000 provisional votes left to count in Pima County, although not all of those votes will be in Barber and McSally’s 2nd Congressional District race. There are another 150 early ballots still to be processed and 300 “conditional provisionals” where a voter showed up to the polling place with no identification, said Pima County Registrar of Voters Chris Roads. Both candidates have started fundraising for legal bills for a potential recount, which election observers and campaign officials increasingly see as a possibility. “We’re down into Florida 2000 territory with this,” said Tempe pollster Michael O’Neil, referring to the historic standoff in the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. “With a margin potentially in the two digits.”

Arizona: Judge Denies Team McSally’s Motion, Allows Vote Count To Continue in Hotly Contested Race | Tucson Weekly

A Pima County Superior Court judge has denied an effort by Republican Martha McSally’s congressional campaign to stop counting a group of ballots in Democratic precincts in her hotly contested race against Democratic incumbent Ron Barber. Superior Court Judge James Marner said that he would not issue a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction to stop the count of provisional ballots that were missing a signature from a poll worker. The race remains extremely tight, with McSally leading Barber by 341 votes. County officials say there are an estimated 9,300 provisional ballot awaiting tabulation in Pima County, where Barber ran ahead of McSally. An unknown number are in Congressional District 2. Pima County Election Director Brad Nelson said ballot counting would resume this afternoon but he did not expect the complete the count of the provisional ballots. Lawyers for both campaigns, as well as a deputy county attorney, were in court this morning to debate whether the questioned ballots should be set aside until a substantive argument could be made as to whether they are valid.

Arizona: Barber-McSally Count Resumes Monday Under Legal Cloud | Arizona Public Media

Ron Barber and Martha McSally may find out Monday which of them will represent Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District in the next Congress. Outcome of the too-close-to-call race will hinge on two factors: Pima County completing its count of early, duplicate and provisional ballots; whether the Republican McSally pursues a legal challenge that her lawyer brought up Sunday. The count, including several hundred votes posted Sunday, showed McSally with a 341-vote lead, or 0.16 percent. An estimated 9,000 Pima County provisional ballots and an unknown but likely much smaller number of ballots in Cochise County remained to be counted. Pima County officials were processing provisional and duplicate ballots all weekend and said they will count the ballots Monday with results expected in the afternoon. That could complete the count leading to declaration of a winner. That is, unless McSally’s campaign pursues a legal challenge it raised over provisional ballots Sunday.

National: Preliminary Turnout Numbers Are Way Down From 2010 And 2012 | FiveThirtyEight

We don’t know final turnout numbers for Tuesday’s elections for the same reason we don’t have official winners in the Senate races in Alaska and Virginia: Ballots remain uncounted. Nonetheless, enough data is in for Michael P. McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida, to make preliminary estimates of turnout. And what they show is a steep decline from recent national elections. McDonald estimates that just 36.6 percent of Americans eligible to vote did so for the highest office on their ballot. That’s down from 40.9 percent in the previous midterm elections, in 2010, and a steep falloff from 58 percent in 2012.

National: Voter ID Laws Sowed Confusion Tuesday, Lawyers Report | National Law Journal

Civil rights lawyers monitoring polls across the country on Tuesday reported some confusion in states where contested voter identification laws were in effect. In Texas, where the state’s voter ID law faces a court challenge, voters reported receiving contradictory information about what types of identification they could show at the polls, according to Nicole Austin-Hillery of the Brennan Center for Justice. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that Texas officials could enforce the law while a court challenge was pending. In Virginia, there were inconsistencies in how poll workers implemented the state’s voter ID law, according to Hope Amezquita of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia; this was the first statewide election with the law in effect. Amezquita said her team fielded reports from two counties about voters showing up without identification who weren’t provided with provisional ballots, which should have happened. “There are people out there who did not vote and should have been offered the opportunity,” Amezquita said. “If it’s happening and we’re hearing about it, it’s probably happening elsewhere and we’re not hearing about it.” Vicky McPherson, a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig who was coordinating lawyers monitoring polls through the National Bar Association, reported situations in which Virginia voters were asked to provide supplemental identification when they weren’t legally required to do so. She said her team was in touch with state officials to make sure they were giving poll workers proper instructions.

National: With new voter laws, fears persist of fraud | McClatchy

With several key elections potentially hinging on razor-thin margins, Americans went to the polls Tuesday in 34 states with new voting laws that critics fear will adversely impact minority turnout and proponents say are needed to protect against voter fraud. The new laws – ranging from photo identification requirements to restrictions on same-day registration – brought increased scrutiny Tuesday from the two major political parties, civic groups, voting rights advocates and the Justice Department, almost all deploying monitors and lawyers to polling stations to look out for voting problems. “It’s the new normal since 2000,” said Richard Hasen, a law and politics professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “The Voting Wars: From 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown.” “Some of this is legitimate fear, some of it is a way of getting the base wound up and (to) raise funds.” From the moment polls opened ‑ and in some cases before ‑ reports of voting irregularities began. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law’s election protection program reported more than 12,000 calls to its hotline – the bulk of them from Florida, Georgia, Texas, New York and North Carolina.

Kansas: More than 21,000 voter registrations in suspense because of proof of citizenship | The Wichita Eagle

De Anna Allen has served on a jury. She has served her country. So she was surprised when she couldn’t vote. Allen went to cast a ballot in the primary election in August and poll workers couldn’t find her name among the list of registered voters. She did cast a ballot, but it was provisional and did not count. Allen was among 27,131 people statewide who had signed up to vote but whose registrations were considered in suspense, or limbo, as of Oct. 14, the last day to register before the midterm election. Most of them – 23,026, including Allen – had not yet provided proof of citizenship. By Friday, the state had whittled that number to 21,473. The numbers of Kansans with incomplete registration because of citizenship are highest among the young and unaffiliated, an Eagle analysis found. Statewide, 12,327 people who identified as unaffiliated had their registrations suspended because of lack of proof of citizenship, compared with 4,787 who identified as Republicans, 3,948 who identified as Democrats and 361 who identified as Libertarians. Not all who applied identified a party, records requested by The Wichita Eagle from the state show. The number of men and women with suspended registrations was split pretty evenly. “It just caught me off guard that I was not registered,” Allen said. “I served for a week on a jury trial, which basically told me I was a registered voter. I’m a disabled veteran, so it’s particularly frustrating. Why should I have to prove my citizenship when I served in the military?”

Georgia: Minority Voter Registrations Unprocessed in Georgia Senate Race | Bloomberg

At least 40,000 minority voter registration applications had yet to be processed as of last week in Georgia as a close vote for a U.S. Senate seat approaches. The applications are among more than 80,000 submitted since March by a voter registration organization called the New Georgia Project, along with the NAACP and other groups. New Georgia revealed the figure in an affidavit filed in Fulton County Superior Court on Oct. 24.

Georgia: Parties brace for war over voter registrations in Georgia Senate race | The Hill

Georgia’s tight Senate race could be headed for the courtroom after voters head to the ballot box. A state judge ruled earlier this week against civil rights groups seeking to force the Georgia secretary of State to account for roughly 40,000 voter registrations that were filed but allegedly haven’t shown up on the voting rolls. Those voters could have a big impact on the tight open seat contest between Democrat Michelle Nunn and Republican David Perdue. That initial ruling raises the possibility of further post-election legal action — and is likely to increase the number of potential provisional ballots, the type of votes that get fought over in court in close elections. Civil rights groups are vowing to fight to make sure every new voter they helped register gets their vote counted after next Tuesday. And both parties are quietly preparing for chaos in close races like the current deadlocked battle, where the results could be fought out in the courts as well as in a runoff. At issue are a large chunk of the more than 100,000 new voters registered by the state NAACP and the New Georgia Project, a nonpartisan group focused on registering African-American, Asian-American and Hispanic voters.

Georgia: Court Ruling May ‘Wreak Havoc’ On Election Day | Huffington Post

Voting rights advocates are considering legal options after a Georgia judge denied their lawsuit that would have compelled the state to add 40,000 newly registered voters to the rolls. Judge Christopher Brasher said voters whose registration applications were lost may cast provisional ballots in next week’s election. But he declined to force Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp and counties to ensure voting for the thousands of new voters. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the New Georgia Project, and the Georgia branch of the NAACP are weighing whether to appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court. “You’ve got a situation that was designed to wreak havoc on the elections office if a large number of provisional ballots are cast,” Julie Houk, a senior special counsel with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights’ voting rights project, told The Huffington Post Wednesday. She said provisional ballots are “not an adequate remedy” because “registered voters are entitled to cast a regular ballot.”

New Jersey: E-vote experiment after Sandy declared a disaster | Al Jazeera

Five days after Hurricane Sandy demolished the Eastern Seaboard on Oct. 29, 2012, and left the state of New Jersey in particularly horrific disarray, an exhausted Christopher Durkin listened in on a conference call while sitting in his black 2010 Chevy Malibu, charging his cell phone outside his darkened, juice-less home. Durkin was one of 21 county clerks who had been urged to join the hastily arranged call by Robert Giles, the state’s director of elections, who had promised an important announcement. Giles gave many of them a preview of what the coming days would be like, shortly before the lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno, came on the line. “Put your phones on mute,” he said, according to several clerks on the call. “The lieutenant governor will not entertain questions.” The week, no doubt, had been grueling for all. And it was about to get even more challenging. Guadagno, in her dual role as the New Jersey secretary of state, spent her few minutes on the line rewriting the rules for the Nov. 6 general election, which was only three days away. She had, in those traumatic days after the storm, made a number of emergency changes to voting procedures. Because some 900 of the state’s 3,500 polling places had been destroyed or otherwise rendered unusable as of Friday, Nov. 2, clerks’ offices around the state were open for long hours all weekend to give residents a chance to vote in person using absentee ballots, a practice known in New Jersey as “vote by mail.” Another option was for voters to visit any polling place on Election Day and vote in the federal races — president and U.S. Senate — via provisional ballots, which would be sent to their county and tallied if the local board of elections decided the voter was properly registered and hadn’t already cast a ballot. Similar measures were taken in New York and Connecticut, states that had also suffered major damage that made the coming election a logistical nightmare.

Maryland: Democrats launch effort on voting rights | Baltimore Sun

The state Democratic Party, mindful of past “shenanigans” at the polls, launched a program Wednesday that they said would protect Marylanders’ right to vote in the Nov. 4 election. Two of the party’s senior leaders, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin and U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, held a news conference in Baltimore to call attention to the Democrats’ “voter empowerment operation.” Cummings said voters in Maryland face fewer barriers than those in many other states that have adopted voter ID requirements that Democrats believe are designed to suppress the minority vote. But he said Maryland Democrats have to be on guard. “We cannot remain silent when people are trying to lessen the rights of people to vote,” said Cummings, a veteran Baltimore congressman. With eight days of early voting starting Thursday, the Democrats have set up a hotline — 1-888-678-VOTE — where people can receive information on when and where to vote and report any problems at the polls.

National: Republicans Set to Gain From Laws Requiring Voter IDs | Bloomberg

Republicans are poised to gain next month from new election laws in almost half the 50 U.S. states, where the additional requirements defy a half-century trend of easing access to the polls. In North Carolina, where Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan’s re-election fight may determine the nation’s balance of power, the state ended same-day registration used more heavily by blacks. A Texas law will affect more than 500,000 voters who lack identification and are disproportionately black and Hispanic, according to a federal judge. In Ohio, lawmakers discontinued a week during which residents could register and vote on the same day, which another judge said burdens lower income and homeless voters. While Republicans say the laws were meant to stop fraud or ease administrative burdens, Democrats and civil-rights groups maintain they’re aimed at damping turnout by blacks, Hispanics and the young, who are their mainstays in an increasingly diverse America. Texas found two instances of in-person voter fraud among more than 62 million votes cast in elections during the preceding 14 years, according to testimony in the federal case. “You’re seeing the use of the election process as a means of clinging to power,” said Justin Levitt, who follows election regulation at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “You have more states passing laws that create hurdles and inconveniences to voting than we have seen go into effect in the last 50 years.”

National: Rules For Provisional Ballots All Over The Map | NPR

The fail-safe for many voters who run into problems at the polls — such as a lack of ID or an outdated address — is called provisional voting. The person votes, and his or her ballot only counts after the problem is resolved. But many of these ballots never do count, raising questions about how good a fail-safe they really are. In Virginia, for example, some residents have been preparing to meet a new state requirement that all voters show a photo ID at the polls. Bernest Sellars, 87, is one of several elderly voters who lined up recently to get a new ID at a senior center in Arlington. After checking that he’s registered to vote, county election workers ask Sellars to look into a tiny camera attached to a laptop computer. His new photo immediately pops up on the screen. For the most part, this process is pretty easy. Still, it’s estimated that 200,000 voters in the state might not have the right ID. If they show up at the polls, they’ll likely be asked to use a provisional ballot.

North Carolina: Officials scramble after new voter law blocked by court | Reuters

North Carolina officials, scrambling to comply with a court ruling that blocked parts of a restrictive voter law just weeks before the November election, were in federal court on Tuesday to detail a proposed overhaul of their election plans. North Carolina was ordered to restore provisional ballots and same-day voter registrations last week when a U.S. appeals court found some provisions of a wide-ranging voter law, with restrictions considered among the nation’s most stringent, could disproportionately harm black voters. State attorneys said they did not anticipate problems bringing back provisional ballots, typically cast by voters who went to the wrong precinct. But they told the court it could be difficult to electronically process voter registrations occurring during early voting.

National: A month from Election Day, election rules still in flux | The Washington Post

The ballots are printed, election workers trained and voting locations scouted. But with just a month to go before Election Day, the rules under which the midterms will be conducted remain in flux in four key states. The outcomes of legal challenges could determine just who is eligible to vote on Election Day — and, in states where Senate and gubernatorial races are nail-bitingly close, just who wins when the votes are counted. In Wisconsin, voting rights advocates have appealed to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, seeking an injunction to halt the state’s voter identification measure. A federal district court in Texas is weighing whether to block a voter identification law after hearing arguments last week. Justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday over the constitutionality of a similar law. And North Carolina officials are seeking an injunction from the U.S. Supreme Court after the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the state must allow eligible residents to register and vote on the same day, and to cast provisional ballots if they show up at the wrong precinct.

Rhode Island: New voter ID requirements spur complaints of disenfranchisement | Brown Daily Herald

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is leading a drive to educate eligible voters on the state’s new voter ID law in time for the general election, after errors made in the law’s implementation during the Sept. 9 primary led to voter disenfranchisement, said Hillary Davis, RIACLU policy associate. As of Jan. 1, 2014, the voter ID law requires people to show photo identification in order to vote. In the past, state requirements had called for either photo ID, bank statements or government-issued documents. Voters who do not have a valid photo ID can either cast a provisional ballot or obtain a free voter ID upon request. Votes submitted using these provisional ballots are counted only after signatures are matched with voter registration records. RIACLU poll watchers positioned at various polling sites throughout the state on primary day noted cases in which poll workers mistakenly dismissed voters due to misunderstandings about the new policy, Davis said.

Arkansas: Arguments set this week in Arkansas voter ID case | Associated Press

Arkansas’ highest court is set to take up a case this week that could decide whether the state’s voters will be required to show photo identification at the polls in the November election. The state Supreme Court on Thursday is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the lawsuit over Arkansas’ voter ID law, which took effect in January. With a U.S. Senate race that could determine which party controls that chamber, how the court rules could have national implications. … The Republican-led Legislature approved the voter ID law last year, overriding a veto by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe. At the time, Beebe called the proposal an “expensive solution in search of a problem.”

Virginia: 450,000 may lack proper ID needed to vote | The Washington Post

About 450,000 voters in Virginia may lack the proper identification needed to cast a ballot in the November midterm elections, the Virginia State Board of Elections said Thursday. Under a state law that took effect this year, Virginia voters must present a driver’s license or some other form of photo identification at their polling stations before they cast a vote. Although voters who lack such proof would be allowed to fill out provisional ballots on Nov. 4, election officials hope more people will obtain state ID cards or some other valid form of identification so that their votes could be more easily counted — particularly in the event of close contests.

Editorials: America is a democracy. So why do we make it hard for certain people to vote? | Steven W Thrasher/The Guardian

Since I first registered to vote on my 18th birthday, I haven’t missed voting in a single election that I can remember. My feat has been nothing short of a pain in the ass, given that I have moved 14 times in the 19 years since. This week, I almost failed to vote for the first time: I had moved – again – in the gap between the board of elections deadline to change my address and the New York state primary election. I did try to update my voter registration online, but didn’t receive a confirmation. I was confused if I was eligible to vote where I now live, or at the last address where I had been registered. We don’t have same-day registration here in New York, so I steeled myself against the guilt and decided not to bother. But the guilt set in anyway: I saw on Facebook how many of my friends had voted; I felt the ghosts of my father, grandfather and great-grandfather prepare to raise up from the grave and beat my black behind for giving up so easily when they’d fought much harder challenges – like the Klan – to exercise their right to vote. So I went down to what should be my precinct (and will be, once the change of address takes effect). My name wasn’t on the rolls, but because I was already a registered voter, I was allowed to fill out a provisional ballot. It wasn’t an easy process to navigate, it took a lot of time, and my vote may not even be counted.

North Carolina: ‘Monster’ election law disenfranchised more than 450 primary voters, report finds | Facing South

More than 450 North Carolina citizens whose votes would have counted in the 2012 election had their ballots rejected during this year’s primary due to election law changes made last year by the Republican-controlled legislature. Those disenfranchised were disproportionately African Americans and Democrats, lending support to claims that the new law is discriminatory. Those are among the findings of a new report by the voting rights watchdog group Democracy North Carolina, which analyzed provisional ballots cast in this year’s primary. The analysis focused on provisional ballots rejected due to two recent changes in state voting rules: one ending same-day registration and the other requiring election-day ballots to be cast in one’s own precinct. Bob Hall, the group’s executive director, interviewed a dozen of the affected voters to gather more details about what happened. “I was blown away, I have to say,” Hall said at a Sept. 10 press conference outside the state elections board, referring to what he heard from voters whose ballots were rejected.

Rhode Island: More Debate Over Rhode Island Voter ID Law | ABC6

By most accounts voting in Rhode Island had few problems on Tuesday. But for the first time ever, voters – yes even famous voters (like Mayor Angel Taveras) – had to present photo ID’s to cast a ballot. But the ACLU had poll watchers at 12 of the states 411 precincts, and said some voters were wrongly turned away. “It is of great concern to us that people who showed up at the polling place without proper ID, were told they didn’t have the right to vote, instead of being given a provisional ballot which is what the law authorizes,” said Steve Brown, Executive Director of the ACLU Chapter in Rhode Island.

Voting Blogs: State of Texas v. Women: is Texas violating the 19th Amendment? | State of Elections

What do Greg Abbott, Wendy Davis, State Senator Letitia Van De Putte, Former U.S. House Speaker Jim Wright, and U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Watts all have in common? They all apparently have high potential for committing voting fraud– at lest according to the State of Texas. All five of these prominent Texas leaders were hassled by the new Texas Voter ID Law this past November. It has been a concern for those opposed to the Voter ID Law that it will make it difficult for individuals to obtain appropriate identification, and thus poor, elderly, and minority voters will be disenfranchised because they lack appropriate identification. However, it seems that one distinct group that also may be affected are people whose photo ID’s don’t match the name that is recorded in the voter rolls. Of the five people listed above, the only individual who had trouble obtaining an ID was 90-year-old former Speaker Jim Wright. The other four were forced to sign an affidavit because their names on their IDs did not match exactly to their names on the poll books.   Only 0.2% of the voting population had to cast a provisional ballot presumably due to improper ID, while some precincts are estimating that as high as 40% of voters had to sign an affidavit for name inconsistencies.

North Carolina: Hundreds of Voters Are Disenfranchised by North Carolina’s New Voting Restrictions | The Nation

Craig Thomas of Granville County, North Carolina, registered to vote before he deployed to Afghanistan with the US Army. After serving abroad for eighteen months, he went to vote early in the state’s primary on April 30. He returned from Afghanistan to the same house, in the same precinct, but was told at the polls that there was “no record of registration” for him. In the past, Thomas could’ve re-registered during the early voting period and cast a regular ballot under the state’s same-day registration system. But same-day registration was one of the key electoral reforms eliminated by the North Carolina legislature last year when it passed the nation’s most onerous package of voting restrictions. In 2014, Thomas had to cast a provisional ballot, which was not counted. After fighting abroad, he was disenfranchised at home. Thomas was one of 454 North Carolina voters who would have had their ballots counted in 2012 but did not have them counted in the 2014 primary because of North Carolina’s elimination of same-day registration and prohibition on counting a provisional ballot cast in the wrong precinct, according to a new review by Democracy NC. (North Carolina also cut early voting by a week and mandated a strict voter ID law for 2016, among other things.)

Rhode Island: ACLU sees ‘warning sign’ over voter ID law day before primary | Providence Journal

A man who tried to vote at the Providence Board of Canvassers was initially denied a provisional ballot Monday — a violation of the voter ID law — according to the Rhode Island Affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union. The man tried to cast an emergency vote, “but he did not have the proper ID, was not given a provisional ballot, but instead was told he was simply unable to vote,” the ACLU alleged in a news release. A witness drew the incident to a supervisor’s attention, and the man was provided with a provisional ballot, the ACLU statement said. “Although the error was resolved for this complainant,” the ACLU called the incident “a warning sign” on the day before the primary.

Alabama: Voter ID law blamed for at least 282 ballots uncounted in primary | AL.com

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is alleging that at least 282 ballots in the state’s June 3 primary election were not counted due to Alabama’s law requiring voters to show a valid photo identification card. In a letter dated today to Jean W. Brown, the Alabama Secretary of State’s chief legal adviser, the group raised concerns about disenfranchisement associated with the identification law during the primary election — the first statewide contest with the requirement. The organization obtained the figure after trying to contact election officials in each of Alabama’s 67 counties. Of the 49 counties that provided full or partial responses, the group determined that at least 282 voters “went uncounted solely due to the failure of otherwise eligible voters to provide ID,” according to the letter. The group’s figures included six in-person provisional ballots uncounted due to no photo identification and another 276 that were labeled as uncounted absentee ballots lacking an ID card.

Tennessee: DesJarlais outcome still up in the air | Winchester Herald Chronicle

The count is over in the political race between U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais and state Senator Jim Tracy, with the former ahead by 38 votes, making the count thus far, 34,793 to 34,755. On Friday, election officials in Franklin County threw out one provisional ballot, which was the last to be counted, after they determined that the voter had not been registered. A provisional ballot is counted only after a voter provides additional documentation or other necessary paperwork to make their vote official. In this case, there was a conflict with the voter’s comments and their registration paperwork, thus their provisional vote had to be thrown out. Raymond Council, Democratic representative on the Franklin County Election Commission, said Monday that the provisional vote being discounted occurred because a voter thought they were registered, but were not.