National: Early Voting Didn’t Boost Overall Election Turnout, Studies Show | Wall Street Journal

Most early voting programs didn’t increase the number of people who cast ballots in 2016, they just changed the way people participated, according to examinations of this year’s election results. President-elect Donald Trump’s Nov. 8 victory also put aside long-held notions that pre-Election Day indicators from early-voting data could serve as useful predictors of who would win the election. Election figures in Ohio bear out the lack of relationship between the availability of early voting and overall turnout. Before the 2008 election, Ohio lawmakers for the first time introduced early and no-excuse absentee voting in the state. When President Barack Obama defeated Sen. John McCain that year, 1.72 million Ohioans voted before Election Day. But postelection figures showed that overall turnout increased from 2004 by just 51,000 votes. Fewer Ohioans voted in 2012, and fewer still in 2016, even as early voting numbers rose to 1.86 million in 2012 and 1.88 million in 2016.

National: Hurricane victims face another challenge: exercising their right to vote | The Washington Post

In the wake of Hurricane Matthew, residents still struggling to return to their homes and assess the damage are facing another challenge: registering to vote before it’s too late. Nowhere is the issue more acute than in Florida, where a fight to extend that deadline has turned bitterly partisan and litigious. Some 1.5 million Floridians were placed under evacuation last week as the Category 4 hurricane bore down on the state’s coast, closing down county and state government services. After Gov. Rick Scott (R) refused to extend Tuesday’s deadline to register, a federal judge ruled against him, extending it at least until Wednesday and rebuking Scott’s decision as “irrational,” “nonsensical” and “poppycock.” “These voters have already had their lives (and, quite possibly, their homes) turned up-side down by Hurricane Matthew,” U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker wrote. “They deserve a break, especially one that is mandated by the United States Constitution.”