My comments about my time spent as an election observer in Ukraine are featured in this week’d electionline.org newsletter:
‘Don’t go, just don’t go.’
‘You realize you just spent a week’s wages on that souvenir?’By Paul Gronke
Reed CollegeThose two quotations — the first from a concerned coworker before I left and the second from my translator at the end of the mission — reflect much of my experience as an election observer for the OSCE/ODHIR mission to Ukrainian presidential election on May 25, 2014.
The mission to Ukraine was my third time as an election observer for ODIHR. Previously, I’ve served as an observer for the Albanian parliamentary election in June 2013 and the Kyrgyz presidential election in October 2011.
While many of my friends and colleagues were intrigued by the trip to Kyrgyzstan, and a bit jealous of my mid summer trip to Albania, the Ukrainian mission — for obvious reasons — prompted the most interest and concern. ….
To read the rest, go to this week’s electionline.org newsletter.
The Presidential Commission on Election Administration, also known as the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, has issued its final report. Rick Hasen, waking and working before all of us, has already provided a great summary of findings and recommendations. I’m particularly excited to see the Election Toolkit produced by the Voting Information Project.
I testified before the Commission in Denver, accompanied by Jacob Canter (exp. ’14). Our work last summer was partially supported by the Alta S. Corbett Summer Research Program of Reed College.
Congratulations to Nate, Charles, Tammy, Ann, Chris, Ben, Bob, Trey, and all the commission members and staff!
I appeared along with a number of poll workers, local election officials, advocates, and academics at a full day post-election meeting organized by the Election Assistance Commission.
You can watch the full day webcast here. Each segment is 90 minutes long and it’s pretty easy to pick and choose according to your interest.
There are 720,694 early in-person ballots processed by the State Board of Elections in NC as of this morning. We finally have enough leverage–and enough days–to compare the turnout rates and trajectory to previous elections.
Signs of a rising Democratic tide, at least in this one state, appear to be accurate. The gap between the 2008 rate and the 2012 rate widened for the first three days of early in person voting and has held steady since then. The GOP, by comparison, is not doing much better in 2012 than they did (as a proportion of identifiers) in 2008.
We’ll be updating these graphics every few days as early voting continues.
Data from NC Board of Elections Website
Got to give NPR props on this Early Voting Calendar. It’s not as neat and precise as ours, but it looks really good.
Michael McDonald and I have agreed on a hashtag: #earlyvote.
Set your twitter filters accordingly. Back to your regularly scheduled blog.
It’s early, but the first ballot return rates are coming in from North Carolina and some patterns are emerging.
- Of the 41,245 absentee ballot requests, 83% were from civilians, 8.7%were from the military, and 8% were from overseas voters.
- Civilian ballots that have been returned thus far have the highest acceptance rate (90.5% of the 1089 returned), compared to 87.4% of overseas ballots and 82.4% of military ballots.
- The main reasons for rejected ballots were cancellations, 6% of civilian and 10% of UOCAVA (there is no difference by status).
- However, already 6% of the military ballots have been returned as undeliverable, compared to only 1% of civilian ballots. This is based on an extremely small sample size–that 6% is based on just 10 returned ballots out of 165 total returned. Nonetheless, undeliverable military ballots have been a point of concern in the past.
More updates as I process this file. I think this is a great assignment for my Statistics class!
Kherson is in the south of the country, and is best known as the dying place of John Howard, famous British prison reformer. (I haven’t visited the pub named after Howard just yet.)
Because Kherson is located just west of Crimea and has more than 50% of the population who report Russian as their native language, you’d think that this region would be tense. We had to sit through extra security briefings before we were deployed to the area.
But the two words that would describe the election thus far are busy and calm. The election is busy because the lines are long and voter interest is high. These lines aren’t helped by the economic crisis in the country which has resulted in understaffed polling places and too few voting booths. Things aren’t so different in the United States!
Nonetheless, voters seem to be in good spirits, perhaps helped by the beautiful, warm, sunny summer Sunday, and generally calm–except when they’ve had to wait for an hour to vote!
I hope for a free and fair outcome, one that may help the country move forward. I’m sure everyone here hopes for the same.