Georgia has an election law that says absentee ballots can only be mailed to the voter’s permanent address, or to a temporary address that is outside the voter’s home county or municipality. On September 29, two voters filed a federal lawsuit, alleging that that law is unconstitutional as applied to registered voters who happen to be in jail (in their home town or city) because of a misdemeanor. Ironically, if either of them had been in jail in a city other than their home city, they could have received an absentee ballot.

The case is based on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision from New York, which struck down a virtually identical New York law. The ACLU National Voting Rights Office is representing the two voters. The case is Swann v Handel, 1:09-cv-2674, northern district. Thanks to ElectionLawBlog for this news.

The June 2009 issue of the Journal of Marketing Research has an article, “Could Ralph Nader’s Entrance and Exit Have Helped Al Gore?”. The three authors are University of Iowa Professor William Hedgcock, Professor Akshay Rao of the University of Minnesota, and Professor Haipeng Chen of Texas A&M University. On September 29, the University of Iowa News Service sent out this press release, publicizing the article.

The article is in Volume 46, pages 330-343, of the Journal of Marketing Research. It depends on experimental research conducted by the authors. The thesis is that when undecided people make a decision about something, whether it’s a political candidate or a brand of soda, and identify with that decision, that when their original choice becomes unavailable, they select an alternative option with the most similar attributes. UPDATE: here is a link to a preliminary draft of the article.

On September 28, the Georgia Supreme Court unanimously upheld Georgia’s use of electronic vote-counting machines that don’t leave any paper trail or other audit trail. The case is Favorito v Handel, S09A1367. The decision, which is only eleven pages long, is here.

The lower court had not permitted a trial, so the case was decided with virtually no evidence on either side. The Georgia Supreme Court expended very little effort on its decision. It is mostly quotations from other courts from other states that also ruled nothing in any Constitution protects the right of voters to vote using methods that provide an audit trail. The Court also said, on page 9, “The undisputed evidence shows that the touch-screen machines accurately record each vote when they are ‘properly operated’, which is odd, since the plaintiffs were never given an opportunity to present evidence.