Voting Blogs: ‘Vote shaming’ grows in popularity for GOTV | electionlineWeekly

In the days leading up to the 2014 Midterm Election, our former colleague Dan Seligson became part of a growing trend. In his mailbox was an official-looking document detailing his voting history and comparing his voting history to his neighbors’. While the details about his voting history weren’t correct, Seligson, like many others, was none-too-pleased about the attempt to “vote shame” him. “…[F]rankly, it wasn’t an incentive to vote. It made me lash out at the organization that thought this was a good idea,” Seligson said. “I was motivated alright, motivated to tell them how much they insulted me.” Seligson isn’t alone. Since 2008, “vote shaming” or social pressure as academics and others prefer to call it has become an increasingly popular tool in the GOTV toolbox. During the 2014 election cycle, there were news reports — typically about angry voters — from Alaska to Maine to Florida and lots of places in between about voters receiving “vote shaming” materials.

California: Major challenges await Bowen’s successor in California | Sacramento Bee

Voting equipment around the state is breaking down. There is limited money for new systems. A complex statewide voter registration database has been years in the making. And while hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars change hands every day in California, the state’s public-disclosure system confuses searchers and occasionally stops working. Whoever gets the keys to California’s secretary of state’s office in January will inherit a lengthy to-do list for the post’s role overseeing voting and elections, its most public responsibility. The office also handles businesses filings. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who recently disclosed that she is battling depression, has defended her tenure and blamed politics for would-be successors’ criticism of her office during this year’s campaign. Budget cuts during the recession and a lack of new funding have hampered efforts to improve some programs, she has said, such as the Cal-Access campaign-finance website. But whether it is Republican Pete Peterson or Democrat Alex Padilla, California’s next secretary of state will need to hit the ground running, county registrars and other experts say.

Texas: Data discrepancy delays voter ID trial | Corpus Christi Caller-Times

The State of Texas’ legal team still plans to wrap up its defense of the voter ID law in federal court Thursday, but it will be a while before the two sides make their final pleas to the judge. Closing arguments were delayed Wednesday after a data discrepancy was discovered this week. Originally slated for Thursday, the closing arguments are rescheduled for Sept. 22 so some experts who provided reports for the trial can reanalyze their data. The trial is over Senate Bill 14, a law passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2011 that requires Texans to show certain forms of state or federal photo identification before casting a ballot. Opponents say it forces an undue burden on minority and low-income voters, and supporters say requiring photo ID is already commonplace in American society. The data issue comes from a category of about 183,000 voters in the Texas voter registration database who have surrendered their driver’s licenses. The opponents’ experts counted those individuals as lacking a license, and therefore unable to vote if they don’t possess one of the other forms of approved identification.

Editorials: Legislature puts stumbling blocks in the way of voters | Catherine Turcer/Cleveland Plain Dealer

For Ohioans concerned about strengthening our democracy — which should be all of us — this legislative session has been extremely disappointing. While Secretary of State Jon A. Husted and voter advocates have been urging the passage of cost-saving legislation to improve voter access and the voter registration database, the Ohio General Assembly instead focused on reducing early voting (Senate Bill 238) and making voting more difficult (Senate Bills 205 and 216). Two bills have been introduced to implement online voter registration: one sponsored by a Democratic House member (House Bill 78) and one by a Republican Senator (Senate Bill 175). Online registration is more convenient for potential voters and more efficient for election administrators because it reduces data entry errors based on scrawled signatures and basic human error. This means a more accurate voter database that actually saves money. Husted’s office estimates that online voter registration between 2010 and 2012 would have saved county boards of elections up to $3 million.

Oregon: Secretary of State website back online after hacker attack | KATU

Oregon’s secretary of state’s website was fully back in business Monday after “an unauthorized intrusion” earlier this month, according to the agency. But in a statement, the secretary of state’s office warned that while all systems were working again, some applications may need to be taken down temporarily to fix any bugs. “I appreciate the enormous patience that Oregonians have demonstrated during the website outage,” said Secretary Kate Brown in a statement. “I’d also like to thank everyone in this office who worked incredibly long hours to restore these important services as quickly and securely as possible.”

Oregon: Secretary of state to ask lawmakers for cash to fix hacked website | Associated Press

Secretary of State Kate Brown has informed the Oregon Legislature that she’ll be asking for money to hire a security contractor to fix her website, which was taken offline after hackers broke in. Brown’s office hired a contractor to review security upgrades and another to help manage communication with website users, said Tony Green, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Brown’s office has cut off access to the state’s business registry and campaign finance records since the hacking was discovered Feb. 4. Officials have said little about what information was compromised or when the website will work, but they insist personal information is safe. The hackers did not get access to the state’s central voter registration database, officials say. Green declined again Friday to say when the website might return or whether the public can be assured of having access to campaign finance information before the primary in May or local elections next month. The office has suspended fines for businesses that are late in paying annual fees.

California: Same-Day Voter Registration Law Delayed Until 2016 | PublicCEO

Californians can expect to wait at least two more years for the state’s same-day voter registration law to take effect. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, the state’s chief elections officer, says that the state won’t meet the legal requirements to implement the law until 2016 or later. It’s been frequently ignored, but a late amendment to Assembly Bill 1436 required officials to conduct a statewide voter review before California’s same-day voter registration law can be implemented. According to the Legislative Counsel’s digest for the bill, it becomes operative “on January 1 of the year following the year in which the Secretary of State certifies that the state has a statewide voter registration database that complies with the requirements of the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002.”

Texas: Election officials expect Voter ID problems in Texas | Fort Worth Star Telegram

As the March primary election approaches, election officials throughout the state are gearing up for potential problems. This March 4 primary will be the biggest election since the state’s Voter ID law, which requires voters to show government issued photo identification at the polls, went into effect last year. Dallas election officials have sent out hundreds of thousands of notes to voters informing them of potential problems with the way their names are listed on photo ID cards versus the way they are listed in the voter registration database. Tarrant County officials chose not to sent out notes, saying any name problem can be handled at the polls. “We are taking a different approach and we will let voters handle it at the polling place,” said Steve Raborn, Tarrant County’s election administrator. “You could send these postcards out and ask people if they want to match their names beforehand. “My greater concern is that it might cause voter confusion and could even make someone not vote.”

Texas: Fallout from voter ID law continues in Dallas County | Dallas Morning News

Dallas County officials are looking at doubling down on voter outreach, days after launching perhaps the state’s most extensive attempt to alert voters to potential identification problems resulting from Texas’ new voter ID law. County commissioners will examine on Tuesday a proposal to spend up to an additional $165,000 on efforts to resolve voters’ complications with improper photo ID and name discrepancies between required forms of identification. The infusion — which won’t be voted on for at least another week — would come on top of $145,000 that commissioners approved in October to spend on mailings aimed at clearing up lingering conflicts and confusion ahead of the March primary. That first allocation resulted in the mailing on Jan. 24 of notices to 195,000 voters about the ID law’s provision that a voter’s name on a valid photo ID must exactly match the name listed in the voter registration database. It remains to be seen specifically how the extra funds would be used, as officials offered on Friday varying descriptions of possible outreach efforts. But given the voter ID law’s hot-button status, Tuesday’s commissioners court meeting figures to be a heated affair.

Texas: 200,000 Dallas County voters warned of possible problems under new ID law | Dallas Morning News

Nearly 200,000 Dallas County voters have been told of possible problems with their identification, as county elections officials work to resolve complications arising from Texas’ new voter ID law before the March primary. The county elections department mailed out letters on Friday to alert voters to potential conflicts resulting from one part of the contentious law: the requirement that a voter’s name on a valid photo ID must exactly match the name listed in the voter registration database. That requirement could be particularly nettlesome for women, who are more likely to have changed their names after getting married or for other reasons, such as adopting their maiden names as middle names. The issue surfaced in the November election, when some voters complained about having to deal at the polls with name discrepancies. Those hiccups didn’t prevent anyone from voting. Elections officials created a relatively simple way to resolve the problem on the spot, but that added time to the act of voting. The letters — sent at a cost of $79,000 — represent a push by the county to allow voters to square things away before the March 4 primary. There’s a short form to fill out to reconcile differences between how names are listed on photo IDs and in the county’s voter database. The mailing offers the best glimpse yet of the scope and nature of ID problems among Dallas County’s 1.2 million registered voters.

Ohio: Voter data-sharing proposal heads to Ohio governor | Associated Press

The state’s top election official sees a bill aimed at keeping Ohio’s voter registration database up-to-date as a missed opportunity to also let residents register to vote online, his spokesman said. The measure passed the Republican-led House on a 60-33 vote Wednesday. It now goes to the governor, who is likely to sign it. The bill would require state agencies to share data with the secretary of state to help maintain Ohio’s voter records. For instance, the state’s health director would have to file monthly reports concerning voters who have died so the deceased could be removed promptly from the voter rolls in the perennial battleground state. It also reduces the minimum number of electronic voting machines a county must have by changing the formula used to calculate it. Secretary of State Jon Husted, a Republican, already has the authority to do what’s included in the bill, said his spokesman, Matt McClellan. “What it should do is authorize online voter registration, which would make it easier to vote, harder to cheat and save the taxpayers millions of dollars,” McClellan said in an email. “It does no harm, but it is a missed opportunity.”

Ohio: House likely to take up voter database legislation this week, hold off on other elections bills | Cleveland Plain Delaer

The Ohio House of Representatives is likely to vote Wednesday on legislation to increase state agency cooperation for Ohio’s voter registration database. A couple of other, more contentious voting bills, meanwhile, are likely to stay in a House committee until next year, according to a House GOP spokesman. The House Policy and Legislative Oversight Committee is set to vote Tuesday on Senate Bill 200, which would require state agencies such as the Ohio Department of Health and Bureau of Motor Vehicles to send updated voter information to the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. It would also, among other things, reduce the minimum number of electronic voting machines that a county must have.

Texas: 1 of 7 early voters in Dallas County being forced to sign affidavit to verify ID | Dallas Morning News

At least one out of every seven early voters in Dallas County has had to sign an affidavit verifying his or her identity as part of Texas’ new voter ID law. Though no one in Dallas County has been prevented from voting — or even forced to cast a provisional ballot — because a name discrepancy, officials said women are being especially impacted by the requirements. And Toni Pippins-Poole, the county’s elections administrator, said the totals through the first five days of early voting for the Nov. 5 election are a conservative estimate of the potential inconvenience. “I know it’s more,” she said, adding that the totals don’t cover all polling locations. “Not all the reports have come through.” Most of the talk about the new voter identification law, which went into effect this summer, has focused on the requirement that voters present a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot.

Texas: Voter ID law sparks some name-discrepancy hiccups | Associated Press

Newly enacted state law requiring voters to show picture identification is causing some hiccups at early-voting locations around Texas, according to a report published Sunday. Rules requiring that a voter’s name on IDs exactly match that listed in voter registration databases are especially problematic for women, The Dallas Morning News reported. The general election is Nov. 5. To lessen the hassle, state officials say that if names are “substantially similar,” a voter can immediately sign an affidavit verifying his or her identity, and then vote. Another option is casting a provisional ballot, then providing supporting information later. Provisional ballots are held until elections officials can verify that they should count. State officials have promised to err on the side of the person trying to vote, rather than the other way around. The voter ID law, championed by conservative activists, was approved in 2011 but didn’t take effect until recently because of legal challenges. It requires voters to produce picture identification, such as a Texas driver’s license, a concealed handgun license or a special election ID certificate issued just for voting.

Oregon: Brown Answers Voter Fraud Questions | OPB

Oregon’s voter registration rolls are getting more secure, according to Secretary of State Kate Brown. She visited Hermiston on Friday morning for a question and answer session sponsored by the Hermiston Government Affairs Team and the Eastern Oregon Women’s Coalition. One point of interest for listeners was Brown’s views on voter fraud. Brown said her office has been working hard to clean up the voter registration rolls in cooperation with the Department of Motor Vehicles and other secretaries of state. “We are using database matching to ensure the centralized voter registration database is secure and accurate,” she said.

Pennsylvania: State joins multi-state initiative to prevent voter fraud | PennLive.com

Pennsylvania is joining a multi-state consortium that aims to preserve the integrity of every vote by preventing voters from voting in an election in more than one state. Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele announced this new effort today at a statewide conference of county election officials in Philadelphia. “One concern about the integrity of voter lists has always been whether someone who moves to another state could be registered and possibly cast votes in both states, which is against the law. Participating in this consortium is our best way to prevent that,” said Aichele, whose department oversees elections in Pennsylvania.

Illinois: Quinn signs bill allowing online voter registration in Illinois | Chicago Tribune

Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn signed a measure into law Saturday that will make Illinois the 18th state to allow voters to register online. Supporters say the move could increase turnout at the polls and cut down on paperwork costs, while critics question the security of an online registration system and say there is a potential for fraud in a state where Chicagoans have been known to vote from beyond the grave. Under the legislation, anyone with a valid driver’s license or state identification card can go online to sign up to vote online beginning July 1, 2014. That’s the target date for the State Board of Elections to have the new system up and running.

Pennsylvania: Statistician claims hundreds of thousands lack ID to vote | PennLive.com

This morning’s session of the trial on the state’s controversial voter ID law concluded after hearing nearly three hours of testimony from a statistician who concluded hundreds of thousands of registered voters lack identification required to vote. Bernard Siskin, a Philadelphia statistical consultant, spent the morning on the witness stand in the Commonwealth Court dissecting his analysis that compared the state’s voter registration database with the state Department of Transportation database. Siskin told Judge Bernard McGinley that his comparison of the databases found 511,415 registered voters in Pennsylvania who had either no valid PennDOT or Department of State ID or one that would be expired by the upcoming November election, the first election when the law is to take effect. He said allowing for margins of error and data issues, the number of registered voters lacking ID to vote come November would still be in the hundreds of thousands.

California: CGI to implement new centralized statewide voter registration system, VoteCal | Santa Barbara Independent

CGI Group Inc. today announced it will implement California’s new centralized statewide voter registration database system, VoteCal, providing a single official source of voter registration information. The contract is valued at US$38.75 million over four years. VoteCal will connect to multiple state agencies and all 58 county election official offices to improve the efficiency of the voter registration process. Currently, information about new and existing registered voters is separately maintained in county election management systems with the current statewide voter registration database (CalVoter) storing a copy of each county’s voter registration data and refreshing that data based on daily updates.

Colorado: County clerks blast Gessler for “errors and oversights” | The Denver Post

The Colorado County Clerks Association today unleashed a litany of complaints on Secretary of State Scott Gessler, pointing to a “cumbersome list of issues” with his office.In a letter from Executive Director Donetta Davidson, the clerks’ association called for greater cooperation. Gessler, a Republican, was not available for comment, but a spokesman Andrew Cole, defended the office. “The items that they (clerks) are complaining about have all been meant to and have increased voter registration to the highest level ever in Colorado and have made it easier for military voters to vote than ever before,” Cole said.

National: Voter Purges Under Review Ahead Of Election Day | NPR

Noncitizens aren’t allowed to vote in federal and state elections, but efforts to remove them from the nation’s voter registration rolls have produced more angst than results. Opponents say the scope of the problem has been overblown; those behind the efforts say they’ve just begun to look at the problem. Last year, Florida officials said they found 180,000 possible noncitizens on the voter registration rolls. Officials in Colorado said the number in their state was about 11,000. But it turns out many of these people were citizens. Now, after some names were checked against a federal immigration database, the number of suspected noncitizens is closer to a few hundred. Even those numbers are under review.

Florida: State releases obsolete list of possible noncitizen voters | Miami Herald

It took weeks and weeks, but the state of Florida on Thursday finally released a list of 180,506 voters whose citizenship is in question, based on a cross-check of a database of Florida drivers. But state officials called the list “obsolete” and said they would not use it to “purge” anyone from the right to vote this fall — leaving open the possibility that some noncitizens could cast ballots. The list includes voters’ names, dates of birth, and their nine-digit voter ID numbers. Information on voters’ race, party affiliation home address was not included, and the state said that data was not part of the information the state used to create the list. An initial review by the Times/Herald showed that people with Hispanic surnames have a strong presence on the list, including 4,969 people with the first name of Jose; 2,832 named Rodriguez; 1,958 named Perez and 1,915 named Hernandez.

Pennsylvania: Judge in voter ID case asks witness: Let’s say I grant an injunction? | witf.org

Day four of the court hearing on the state’s new photo identification requirement at the polls brought more testimony on the implementation of the new law, and a rare question for a witness from the judge presiding over the case.  Jonathan Marks, a Department of State employee who oversees elections programs, testified that his office has worked out how to deal with exceptional cases for those people who have difficulty even obtaining the yet-to-be-released Department of State voting ID. “We’re ready to go,” said Marks on the stand.  “It’s just a matter of training help desk staff [on] how to deal with these oddball exceptions.” Within the past month, the state revised its estimate of the number of people who may lack PennDOT-issued ID (driver’s or non-) to roughly 759,000.  Commonwealth Secretary Carol Aichele has said her office is confident many of those people actually do have PennDOT ID but were flagged because of discrepancies between the state’s voter registration database and PennDOT database.

Colorado: Election Officials Respond to Illegal Voter Study | KREX

Findings from state officials suggest that Colorado has potential illegal voters across some of the state’s largest counties, including Mesa County. Secretary of State Scott Gessler cross-referenced Colorado’s immigration detainer list with the voter registration database and found 85 potential matches of non-citizens who are reportedly registered to vote. Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Sheila Reiner called the findings inaccurate and misleading to the public. “We did the same type of data match against the Mesa County voter rolls and we get zero,” said Reiner. Gessler’s office couldn’t give us the number of people they say are illegally registered in Mesa County because the research is ongoing. However, since the lists only check names and dates of birth, someone with the same name and birthday could mistakenly be included. “If you take a population that has 30,000 names that are the same names, birthdays would match up,” said Karl Castleton, the chair of the Mesa County Democratic Party.

Florida: Noncitizen voter database has flaws, local elections officials say | Tampa Bay Times

Florida election supervisors, at their annual convention in Tampa this week, find themselves focusing once again on a familiar and troubling issue: the accuracy and reliability of the state voter registration database. It’s not a problem of their making, and that only adds to their frustration. As the elections officials convene, they are simultaneously seeking to verify the legal status of about 2,700 voters who were red-flagged by the state motor vehicle agency as non-U.S. citizens and thus ineligible to vote. Problem is, some people on that list can legally vote. One of the people on the list is Manoly Castro-Williamson, 48, of Wesley Chapel, a U.S. citizen and a registered Republican who has voted in every election in Florida since 2004. She was one of 13 potential noncitizen voters forwarded to Pasco County by state elections officials.

Indiana: Access to Marion County voter database triggers lawsuit | Indianapolis Star

Three Marion County judicial candidates and two candidates for the Indiana House on Thursday sued the Marion County Election Board and the Board of Voter Registration for access to the county’s voter registration database. The complaint, filed in Marion Circuit Court, says the voter registration office unlawfully denied requests to access the database for their campaigns. The plaintiffs are running against their parties’ endorsed candidates in the May 8 primary.