[EL] VA Ballot and absentee ballots

[Rob Richie]

The MOVE act is obviously well-intentioned, but forcing early ballot access
decisions is one of those unintended consequences that should be examined.
I'm also not thrilled with forcing states to change the date of their
traditional post-Labor Day primaries to earlier in the summer. And one of
our findings from examining turnout in all federal runoffs from 1994 to
2010 was that extending the time between runoffs, as many states have done
because of the MOVE Act, seems to have a negative impact on turnout of
in-person voters in the runoff. See:
http://www.fairvote.org/federal-primary-runoff-elections-and-voter-turnout-declines-1994-201<http://www.fairvote.org/federal-primary-runoff-elections-and-voter-turnout-declines-1994-201#.Tvpo_DV8Cuk>

Relating to Paul's point about overseas voters in these contests getting
ballots that will have candidates who will have dropped out by the time of
their primary, one suggestion we've been making is to make use of the
ranked ballot in the same way that states like Arkansas, Louisiana and
South Carolina have done to help overseas voters cast an effective vote in
runoff elections. They send out a ranked choice ballot with their regular
ballot, and then open that ranked choice ballot in the event of runoffs and
count it for whichever candidate in the runoff is ranked higher -- see
information at www.includeeveryvoter.org. In these presidential races, any
candidate officially suspending their campaign could be treated like an
eliminated candidate, and that overseas voter's ballot could count for the
next choice ranked on the ballot.

Rob

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Paul Gronke <paul.gronke at gmail.com> wrote:

> Because of the MOVE Act, domestic (and overseas) absentee ballots have
> already been mailed out and were probably printed a few weeks ago.
>
> As I've pointed out in the past, and you can read in a recent article in
> ELJ (http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/elj.2010.0088, content
> ungated), if any candidates withdraw prior to election day, it can really
> make things complicated since voters will be voting on different sets of
> candidates.
>
> This might impact Perry and Gingrich.
>
> ---
> Paul Gronke                Ph:  503-517-7393
>                                       Fax: 734-661-0801
>
> Professor, Reed College
> Director, Early Voting Information Center 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.
> Portland OR 97202
>
> EVIC: http://earlyvoting.net
>
>
>
>
>
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