IowaPolitics.com BlogWatch

Senator Tom Harkin has joined other senators from states with election
day voter registration is backing a bill that would extend same-day
registration to all states. But the delegation from Iowa, the newest
same-day registration state, is not united, with Rep. Steve King
voicing his opposition. Harkin is cosponsoring Senate bill 2959, first
offered by Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Russ Feingold of
Wisconsin. Senator Jon Tester of Montana has also co-sponsored the
bill. All four co-sponsors are Democrats from states with election day
voter registration. The issue has a long partisan history.

Labels: voting

Gov. Chet Culver signed legislation Tuesday that provides nearly $5
million to Iowa counties to upgrade their voting systems to ensure
they are using machines that leave a paper trail. Touch-screen voting
machines that had been acquired by some counties have come under
scrutiny by critics who fear they wouldn't provide an accurate voting
record that could be verified in the event of a recount. Proponents of
a system that provides a paper trail point to the presidential
election in 2000, with its lengthy recount and legal battle. Culver
said the bill he signed would ensure voters in all 1,784 Iowa
precincts have a paper trail when they cast their ballot in the
November general election and future elections.

Labels: Chet_Culver, voting

Florida's U.S. House delegation threw another monkey wrench into the state's delegate dilemma Tuesday night. "Our House delegation is opposed to a mail-in campaign or any redo of any kind," the House members said in a joint release. Their preference is to seat the delegates chosen in the rule-breaking Jan. 29 primary, a move that would give Hillary Clinton an advantage. Momentum had been rapidly moving toward a do-over primary on mail in ballots, a plan pushed by Sen. Bill Nelson, a Clinton supporter. The state Democratic Party has been preparing a new delegate selection plan and was expected to send it to the Democratic National Committee as soon as Thursday. Florida chair Karen Thurman wants to get ballots sent to overseas and military voters as soon as possible.

Labels: voting

State Representative Mary Gaskill wants to check on those computerized ballot scanners by counting 5% of the ballots by hand. She has filed a bill creating a state election audit board to oversee the process. The board would also have broad authority to review election administration in five randomly chosen counties after each general election.

Labels: voting

In previous posts, before the Iowa caucuses, I predicted that the young Obama supporters wouldn't actually turn out on caucus night. Traditionally, this group of voters disappoints pollsters when it actually comes to showing up to vote. I am pleased to say that I was dead wrong. These young folks are turning out in droves this year, but their candidate of choice, Barack Obama, is only partially responsible for this overwhelming turnout. ... In 1990, the largest group of babies born in the United States since the baby boom made their debut. This year, those young people are coming of age in the most fortuitous way. They are eligible to vote!

Labels: voting

Secretary of State Mike Mauro wants every precinct in Iowa to have an
optical scanner that reads paper ballots. Legislators should listen to
him, even though the plan would cost $9.7 million, according to the
Des Moines Register. A new state law says there has to be a paper
trail, leading some to call for retrofitting touchscreen machines with
windows that would let voters view a "receipt" to confirm their votes.
This "verified paper audit trail" would cost about $2 million to put
in place, but I'm with Representative Pam Jochum of Dubuque, who says
it would be a "total waste of money" to retrofit touchscreen voting
machines.

Labels: voting

A citizen group has urged Governor Culver to provide funding for paper
ballot equipment in time for the November 2008 elections. The Governor
has said that the state should consider a vote by mail system before
funding new voting equipment, and there is discussion of a small vote
by mail pilot project in 2008. This would leave many counties using
touch screen voting machines in 2008. "A vote by mail pilot should not
distract the state from the urgent need to replace touch screen
machines in time for the Presidential election," said Sean Flaherty,
co-chair of Iowans for Voting Integrity.

Labels: voting

Auditors around Iowa are concerned about the cost of same-day, instant voter registration. In Johnson county, it is estimated that it will cost an extra $20,000 to bring in 100 extra people to staff the polls. It is also projected that 10% more voters will show up at the polls to vote on election day. Depending on the type of election, this works out to add between $3 per vote (based on the 2004 Johnson county presidential election turnout) and $51 per vote (for the 2005 county school board election) to the expense of the auditor's office.* (This assumes 1) the same amount of workers regardless of election-type and 2) the same % turnout increase)

Labels: voting

First there were the Soccer Moms sought by candidates for political office. Then, in 2004, there were the Security Moms and NASCAR Dads blocs to be turned into voters. Or were there? The Social Science Quarterly has published a study by two political science professors that claims the Soccer Moms and NASCAR Dads blocs don't actually exist. According to the study done by Steven Greene of North Carolina University and Laurel Elder of Hartwick College in New York, mothers are more concerned about social welfare than national security, and fathers as a group don't vote any differently than men without children. The professors said "the hype" about the two groups was wrong: "The NASCAR Dad stories implied that fathers were a conservative bunch, and that Democrats needed to move to the right side of political issues to have a shot at winning their votes. Security Mom stories implied that post-9/11, mothers had become more supportive of President Bush because of his stance on national security." Information on the SSQ study can be found at www.blackwellpublishing.com.

Labels: elections, voting

It passed 45-5. It spells the end of touchscreen voting in Iowa, since current equipment can be replaced only with scannable paper ballot systems. That's good news. Unfortunately there's more. The bill allows the new paper trail to be "machine readable" as well as visually readable by real people. This opens the door to misuse of the paper trail, wherein one set of software creates the trail and another set of software reads it. If no one's eyes are ever employed to examine the paper and compare it to the alleged vote tally, we are hardly better off than we were.

Labels: voting

Today, we need action at the grassroots and netroots level to the bring Voter-Owned Iowa Clean Elections law out of subcommittee, to the full House Appropriations Committee, and then to the floor for debate in the Iowa House. Ed Fallon (and his group I'm For Iowa) and former Governor Tom Vilsack both support HF 805 and right now the bill is in an appropriations subcommittee with instructions to kill the bill. ... . The subcommittee is expected to meet either tomorrow or Wednesday — without large citizen support and efforts to communicate that support to them, they'll kill the bill. We cannot allow that to happen. If the bill comes out of the subcommittee, it essentially becomes "funnel-proof" and must then be considered before the full House Appropriations Committee and would likely make it to the floor of the House for consideration.

Labels: voting

There is a new map at Verified Voting. It shows Iowa in red. Red states have fallen behind in the open elections department. Verified Voting's map used to concern itself with whether states had paper trails for their balloting. Now they have moved on to asking whether states with paper trails are conducting audits to see if the machine count actually reflects the real count on the paper ballots. States in red (danger!) on the new map have neither an audit nor even a paper trail. Woe is Iowa.

Labels: voting

The Republicans have basically two arguments they are using against it - We shouldn't pander to uninformed voters, and it will increase the possibility of fraud. Both of these reasons are stupid. The idea that voters unregistered in their current precinct are uninformed voters is obnoxious and insulting. It assumes a perfect correlation between understanding election law minutia and important decisions, when people who feel very strongly about issues might not know that moving across the state requires them to reregister. ... The Republican argument of fraud is getting kind of stale, seeing as how they have trotted out for every attempt they make to restrict voting, from cutting poll hours, reducing access to absentee ballots, to forcing every voter to bring a photo ID to the polls. We haven't done any of those things, and we haven't had any voter fraud in Iowa.

Labels: voting

The bill to permit voter registration on election day passed the House state government committee yesterday 12-8, but not before opponents argued the case against it. I heard two arguments against the bill on radio news coverage. Neither one said there would be chaos in the polling place or that auditors couldn't handle the change due to administrative constraints. So why oppose the bill? Opponents pointed at undesirable voters. ... The case for a law much like Minnesota and Wisconsin already have is too strong for the silliness I heard coming from opponents yesterday.

Labels: voting