Absentee

Recount in Virginia’s 21st District

Election Law Society · November 30, 2009 ·

Can a change in the law change the outcome of an election?

Bobby Mathieson On November 3^rd, voters in Virginia went to the polls and handed Republicans a statewide office sweep and gains in the House of Delegates, but, as has become a common occurrence in Virginia, there is one election headed for a recount.

In the 21^st House of Delegates district, Delegate Bobby Mathieson (D) and Virginia Beach City Councilor Ron Villanueva (R) battled throughout the summer and fall and after injunctions, questions about absentee ballots, the Virginia Beach electoral board certified Villanueva the winner by 14 votes. The current margin of victory is a mere nine-tenths of one percent.

Virginia law allows for the trailing candidate to request a recount if the margin of victory is less than one percent and Mathieson has stated that he will be seeking a recount. The state Board of Elections has certified the outcome of the election, and it appears that Mathieson will soon officially request a recount. Any recount would likely occur in mid-December. [Read more…] about Recount in Virginia’s 21st District

The Military and Overseas Empowerment Act

Election Law Society · November 23, 2009 ·

In Virginia, nearly 2,000 ballots cast by voters overseas were initially not counted in last year’s general election. The Uniform Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) allows citizens abroad, including military personnel, the ability to vote in federal elections. The U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia for violating the act, because of the state’s failure to count the absentee ballots. The Virginia Board of Elections contended that they were not bound by UOCAVA because it did not give a specific deadline to mail ballots out. A federal judge decided that, although this may true, the UOCAVA was established to give Americans abroad a “real chance to vote.” [Read more…] about The Military and Overseas Empowerment Act

Vote by Mail: Wave of the Future?

Election Law Society · November 18, 2009 ·

In 1998 Oregon voted by a wide margin to expand its experimental vote-by-mail system to all primary and general elections in the state. Oregon was followed by Washington, which with the exception of a single county, has adopted a similar vote-by-mail system. The typical voting procedure in these states is that three weeks to a month before the election the state mails ballots to all registered voters who fill them out and have until the night of the election to return them via mail or by dropping them off at a county office. Now, in 2009, the model pioneered by the northwest is being tested in the east, as New Jersey is moving towards its own version of the vote-by-mail system. New Jersey has allowed voters to vote absentee without restriction since 2005, but the off-year elections in November 2009 were the first test of a new system that more fully embraced the vote-by-mail concept, by removing any pretense to the ballot being for absentee purposes. This system differs from that embraced by Oregon and Washington in that voting by mail is not mandatory, it’s just another option in addition to more traditional polling systems. New Jersey embraced the program for the same reason that states like Oregon and Washington did, in an attempt to boost voter participation by making voting more convenient. The New Jersey Secretary of State touts the new program as removing any excuse for Jerseyites not to vote, and Oregon boasts of an 86 percent voter turnout in the 2004 Presidential Election and a 70 percent turnout in the 2006 midterms.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the vote-by-mail model is truly successful in driving up voter participation. The change to New Jersey’s early voting law in 2009 was likely a response to the lack of success from its 2005 expanded absentee voter law. According to numbers tabulated by the New Jersey Secretary of State, in every statewide primary and general election from 2003 to the 2008 primaries, absentee voting never amounted to more than .05 percent of ballots cast. Even Oregon and Washington, the two states that have implemented mandatory vote-by-mail systems, the results may not be as remarkable as advertised. [Read more…] about Vote by Mail: Wave of the Future?