More on turnover in state houses

Karl Kurtz of The Thicket provides some additional information on legislative turnover rates in state houses.

Wisconsin absentee ballot returns?

I found absentee ballot counts in Dane County, WI but I don’t have the energy to search all the other townships and counties in the state.  There are  lots of reports of heavy absentee voting in the recall election, which could be a result of mobilization efforts, or could mean that Wisconsin voters have made up their minds, or both.

It would be nice if the Govt Accountability Board posted something on their website.   The recall election page is here but there are no returns.

Candidates for MT Sec’y of State oppose same day registration, voting by mail

As reported in today’ Helena Record.

I’m not clear whether or not this race is competitive for the GOP, but if any have a good chance to be the next SoS of Montana, I hope they will look closely at the empirical evidence on SDR/EDR, vote by mail, voter turnout and vote fraud.

There are good reasons to oppose voting my mail–it removes ballots from the hands of government officials, it lengthens the voting period, it increases voter error (overvotes and undervotes).  While the amount of voter fraud is miniscule, it’s also the case that most notable cases of fraud are associated with absentee ballots.  However, states with VBM have experienced almost no fraud, have very high voter turnout, and lots of citizen engagement in elections.

I can see no reason for the candidates to oppose same day registration, which has been consistently shown to be cost effective and consistently shows a substantial positive impact on voter turnout.  There is no evidence of a partisan advantage to same day registration.  All this information comes from the Nat’l Conference on State Legislatures, as about a non-partisan source on these matters as one would want: http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/same-day-registration.aspx

NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy dedicated to elections and election law

Volume 15, Issue 2 of the NYU Journal of Legislation and Public Policy has some interesting articles on Citizens United and election law.  You can peruse the volume here: http://www.law.nyu.edu/journals/legislation/issues/Volume15Number2/index.htm

Making Electoral Democracy Work Project

I just attended a panel with Laura Stephenson and Andre Blais, two of the primary investigators for the “Making Electoral Democracy Work” project on comparative campaigns, voting,and elections.  There is an election administration component to their project, although the depth of research in that area is not yet clear.

This is a website and project to monitor for the future.