Megan Rilkoff has this story about the beneficial uses of write-in space on ballots, with two interesting examples from last week’s election. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.
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Late on Wednesday, November 14, U.S. District Court Judge J. Thomas Marten, a Clinton appointee, ruled that nothing in federal law prohibits the release of names of voters who cast a provisional ballot. The decision is a victory for Democratic legislative nominee Ann Mah, who is trailing by 44 votes in her race, but who desired to contact the voters who had cast a provisional ballot (the provisional ballots hadn’t been counted yet), to assist them and motivate them to complete the provisional ballot process.
Most of these provisional ballots were apparently cast by voters who didn’t have the proper government photo-ID at the polls. Their votes won’t count unless they return to the county elections office after the election and show a proper ID.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach personally argued the case, which is Mah v Shawnee County Commission, 12-cv-4148. He said that if the names of provisional ballots could be known to the public, that would make it possible to deduce whom those voters voted for, especially in a small-population county. For example, he said that if Mitt Romney’s total vote increased by ten votes, after the ten provisional ballots had been counted (whereas President Obama’s total did not increase at all), then anyone could deduce that all ten provisional voters had voted for Romney. This is hypothetically true, but not very likely, and not germane to this particular instance, when there are over 100 provisional ballots.
On November 15, voters in England and Wales will elect Police and Crime Commissioners, in non-partisan elections. This is a new elected office. See here to see the ballot. Voters will choose a first choice and also a second choice. Second choice ballots won’t matter unless no candidate receives a majority of first choice votes. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
This year, Americans Elect became a fully-qualified party in twenty-eight states; also it became ballot-qualified just for President in Alaska and Arkansas. Of those twenty-eight states, nineteen have registration by party. The number of voters who registered as members of Americans Elect is interesting, because the national office of Americans Elect did not encourage voters to register into the party, so the voters who changed their registration were generally acting on their own.
There is no registration data for Delaware, Nevada, and North Carolina for Americans Elect. Delaware simply included all Americans Elect in the “other” category and never bothered to tally them. Nevada followed the same policy. North Carolina State Board of Elections told the counties to convert all Americans Elect registrants to independents, and says it has no data about how many voters ever registered into Americans Elect.
For the other sixteen states, the number of registered voters during 2012 in Americans Elect will be included in the December 1 print edition of Ballot Access News, in a chart that will show the number of registered voters in each qualified party in each state as of the close of registrtion before the election.
Both federal and state courts in Kansas have acted to prevent various candidates in close elections from contacting provisional voters. See this story. The candidates are in elections for which the vote totals are very close. The candidates want to contact the provisional voters in their districts, to assist them in returning to the elections office and finalizing their provisional ballots. But, the courts ruled that this would violate the privacy rights of the provisional voters.