State of Elections

William & Mary Law School | Election Law Society

Secretary of State

Weekly Wrap Up

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Voter fraud by the Chief Election Official?: Charlie White, the Indiana Secretary of State, is being investigated by a grand jury to determine if he committed voter fraud during the May 2010 primary. White is accused of intentionally voting at the wrong precinct, a potential felony.

Misspellings can count: The Alaska Senate unanimously passed a bill on February 14 clarifying procedures for counting write-in ballots. The bill, a response to the highly-contested 2010 election of write-in candidate Lisa Murkowski, allows votes that misspell the candidates name to count. The bill now moves to the Alaska House.

$2,500 recuses a judge: Elected judges in New York will no longer be allowed to hear cases where a lawyer or party has made contributions to his/her campaign in excess of $2,500 in the last two years. The decision, a new rule announced by the state’s chief judge, is designed to curtail the effects of money in judicial politics and will take effect after a 60-day comment period.

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Weekly Wrap Up

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

– Soon, even a candidate’s tweets will be governed by a legion of rules and regulations.  The Maryland Board of Elections is attempting to devise rules for the use of social media by candidates.

– The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill that would require potential voters to show proof of citizenship before registering.  The state Attorney General believes that the law could potentially violate the federal Motor Voter Act.

– Congressman Michael Capuano has written an editorial for the Boston Herald about Citizens United and the proposed Shareholder Protection Act.  For more about shareholder protection and Citizens United, see this post by William and Mary law professor William Van Alstyne.

– The recent British election and the swift transfer of power from Gordon Brown to David Cameron has some wondering how the U.S. could reduce the time between elections and inaugurations.  See this article from Slate for a proposal for how such a reduction could be accomplished without a constitutional amendment.

– Pedro A. Cortés, Pennsylvania’s Secretary of the Commonwealth and the top election official in that state, has resigned. Cortés will be pursuing opportunities in the private sector, as vice president of a voting technology company.

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Weekly Wrap Up

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This weekly wrap up is a little late, since we posted a summary of our Symposium on Friday instead of our typical weekly wrap up.   To anyone who was waiting with bated breath for the latest news in state election law, I apologize.

Anyway, here’s a slightly belated summary of last week’s state election law news.

– According to a study by the Brennan Center, state judges are raising significantly more money for their campaigns than ever before.  In the last decade, candidates for state judgeships have raised more than 206 million dollars, which is more than double the 83 million raised by candidates in the 1990s.

– Lawmakers in Maryland and Washington D.C. are considering abandoning their traditional September primary dates, as the requirements of the newly passed “Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act” make it impossible to hold a primary so late in the year.

– There’s some controversy in New Mexico over whether Joe Campos, Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, qualified to appear on the primary ballot.  Mr. Campos received 19.69% of delegate votes in that state’s pre-primary nominating convention.  Under New Mexico law, a candidate must receive 20% of the vote to appear on the ballot, and for the last week, the New Mexico Democratic Party has been debating whether to round up to 20% and allow Campos’s name on the primary ballot.  Luckily for Campos, the party eventually ruled that the law requires them to round up.  Interestingly, a Republican candidate who received 19.5% of delegate votes was kept off the primary ballot for failing to reach the 20% threshold.

-The Democratic Party is considering launching a 20 million dollar campaign to maintain  or take control of seventeen pivotal state legislatures, in anticipation of 2011 redistricting. The party that controls those state legislatures will have the power to redraw 198 congressional districts.

– The Election Assistance Commission now provides voter registration forms in five Asian languages,  Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Chinese.

– Chris Biggs has been appointed the new Kansas Secretary of State. The previous Secretary of State, Ron Thornburg, resigned his position on February 15th, forcing Governor Mark Parkinson to appoint a successor to serve the remainder of the term.  Kansas elects its Secretary of State and some fear that being appointed interim Secretary will give Biggs an unfair advantage in the upcoming Secretary of State campaign.  Essentially, Biggs gets all the advantages of incumbency, without having to win an election in the first place.

– Check out our Citizens United and the States page, which tracks the impact of the Citizens United decision on the states.  The page  has reached 72 links and more are being added everyday.

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Interview with Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie

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Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie

Mark Ritchie,  the 21st Minnesota Secretary of State, oversaw the state-wide recount of the 2008 U.S. Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.  After the official canvass of votes following the 2008 election, the margin separating the top two candidates was less than .5% of votes cast, triggering a mandatory recount.  Ritchie, as chair of the State Canvassing Board, oversaw the recount.  The widely publicized recount took 47 days. Under Minnesota law, the candidate losing a recount has a right to judicial review. Norm Coleman did request a judicial review, a process that took an additional six months.

State of Elections co-editor Laura Deneke recently spoke with Sec. Ritchie regarding the state’s electoral process.  [Read more…] about Interview with Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie