State of Elections

William & Mary Law School | Election Law Society

Electronic Voting

Weekly Wrap Up

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Every week, State of Elections brings you the latest news in state election law.

– Implementation of the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act has been delayed until 2012. The Act, which would require paper ballots in all Tennessee elections, has been highly controversial and strongly opposed by Republicans in the legislature.  Lt. Gov Ron Ramsey even declared that delaying the bill was his No. 1 priority.  Bernie Ellis, a leading proponent of the Act, posted this editorial on State of Elections in December.  For more background, check out this article by Drew Staniewski.

– A federal judge in Arizona appears ready to dramatically change that state’s system of funding elections.  Under Arizona’s Clean Elections system, certain candidates receive government funding for their campaigns.  The system is designed to allow less well-funded candidates to compete with more affluent opponents.  Judge Roslyn Silver, however, has written a draft order that would strike down these matching funds as unconstitutional.

– Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed have announced that they will appeal the 9th Circuit Court’s decision in Farrakhan v. Gregoire.  The decision restored the voting rights of felons in Washington.  For more of State of Election’s coverage of the debate over felon voting rights, go here and here.

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Weekly Wrap Up

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Every Friday, State of Elections brings you the latest news in state election law.

– Two citizen initiatives in Florida, designed to limit gerrymandering, have faced opposition from the Florida legislature.  Opponents of the initiatives claim that they reduce election opportunities for minorities.

– In Illinois, a lawsuit has been filed over an Illinois law that requires the county to use vote-counting machines that make an audible beep if a voter attempts to cast a vote that is blank for some offices.

– The Governor’s Commission on Strengthening Utah’s Democracy has issued a new report recommending “automatic and portable” voter registration in that state.

– Enjoyed last week’s post on felon disenfranchisement?  Want to know some of the historical roots and reasoning behind the policy?  Then check out Professor Pippa Holloway’s article “‘A Chicken-Stealer Shall Lose His Vote’ – Disfranchisement for Larceny in the South, 1874-1890”

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Op Ed: In Response to Tennessee Voter Confidence Act

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Our thanks to Drew Staniewski for this review of where we stand in Tennessee re: free, fair and verifiable elections.

Our group (Gathering To Save OUR Democracy) worked hard to pass the TVCA in time for it to be implemented in 2008, before the last election. There was enough time (and enough remaining HAVA money) to accomplish that. However, as a concession to some, TVCA implementation was delayed until 2010. When Republicans not only won control of our legislature for the first time in 140+ years but also won every open seat in our legislature, they announced that one of their three top legislative priorities was to repeal the TVCA.

It is quite instructive that Tennessee became the ONLY state in 2008 where Republicans won more seats in our legislature, despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans here by a 47-39% margin and despite Democratic voter registration efforts outpacing Republicans by better than 4-to-1 in the months leading up to the 2008 election. [Read more…] about Op Ed: In Response to Tennessee Voter Confidence Act

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act

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On November 5, a Tennessee judge declined to an issue an injunction that would have forced the Secretary of State to comply with the Tennessee Voter Confidence Act passed in 2008. The act requires all 95 counties to discard electronic voting machines in favor of paper ballots. Understandably, the act has become an extremely controversial issue in Tennessee politics.

The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act (TVCA) passed nearly unanimously last year in response to growing fears over the integrity and security of electronic voting machines. Tennessee was recently rated by the organization Gathering to Save Our Democracy as one of the eight states in the nation most vulnerable to vote-counting abuse because of its reliance on computerized systems.  Currently, 93 of the 95 counties in Tennessee use some form of electronic voting machine or touch-screen system that records votes but does not produce an individual paper record of each vote.  The act requires a move to paper ballots read by optical scanners, which would allow for a paper trail and eliminate the corruption and abuse concerns associated with computerized systems. When it was first presented to the legislature, the TVCA had bipartisan support in both houses of the legislature, and was passed by an overwhelming majority. [Read more…] about The Tennessee Voter Confidence Act