Walter Olson
Number 19 in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy:
Here’s the deal, says the US Department of Justice to states: We’re going to send you lists of voters we think are ineligible, and you’re going to take them off the rolls. That “would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution” [Jonathan Shorman, Stateline]. Related: “Explainer: Can the Federal Government Force States to Hand Over Citizens’ Voter Information?” [Derek Clinger, State Democracy Research Initiative (University of Wisconsin Law School)].
Of interest to everyone involved in the practicalities: “Reform Meets Reality: How Ranked Choice Voting Impacts Election Administration” [Lily Kincannon, Theo Menon, and Michael Thorning, Bipartisan Policy Center]. Plus: Summarized highlights from Martin Austermuhle (a “longer runway is better,” switching to ranked-choice voting for the first time “is better done in off-cycle elections,” and outside groups should be recruited to help with voter education).
Important but under-covered topic: Who pays for election administration? Look up how your state does it [Center for Election Innovation and Research].
“States should amend their laws to significantly narrow the circumstances in which recounts take place” [Derek Muller, NYU Law Democracy Project].
Fulton County, Georgia, administrators failed to follow proper security steps in the 2000 election, but no, this doesn’t amount to a big national story [Jason Shepherd, PeachPundit (“sloppy paperwork is not equivalent to tampering with ballots,” and no evidence of the latter is evident); Scot Turner, same site (violation of the rulebook in the handling of legitimately cast votes calls for “accountability, not retroactive vote deletion”); and Stephen Richer, The Dispatch (“I suspect the [Georgia] AG’s investigators will find that some election workers simply forgot their training.”)]
Sounds hard to scale, though: Researchers threw 200 Pennsylvanians of diverse political views and backgrounds together for a few days of discussion and found considerable depolarization and the emergence of areas of common agreement [Holly Otterbein, Politico].