"Election ruling may allow third-party attack ads"

The Miami Herald offers this report, with the subhead: "The Florida Division of Elections has ruled that third-party groups are not affected by most campaign finance limits. The ruling means they can fund ads that do not explicitly endorse a candidate."

EAC Releases Major Survey on Election Administration

You can find links to the report, and some perspective on it, in posts here and here on Election Updates (Alvarez and Hall).

Andrew Gumbel on Cathy Cox, Diebold, and Georgia's Election Process

See this very interesting post at the Huffington Post.

"Officials: Recount law is obsolete"

See this report from California, which begins: "Elections officials across California are waging 11th-hour opposition to using paper records for verifying electronic ballots, partly arguing that the printouts — as well as the electronic voting machines themselves — are vulnerable to fraudulent programming. Writing to the governor recently, the California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials suggested that fully computerized, touchscreen voting machines, known as Direct Electronic Recording devices or DREs, should not be checked by recounts, the method used for all other voting technologies in the state."

Rose Institute Report on California Redistricting Initiative

You can find it here.

"Are Your Elections Free and Fair?"

Robbin Stewart pointed me to this BBC News report, about The Gallup International Voice of the People Poll 2005. One of the questions asked around the world is "Are your elections free and fair?" The article reported that 55% of North Americans (U.S. and Canada) answered yes to this question, but the published poll results did not break down the U.S. and Canada numbers.

I have had Loyola's librarians contact the Gallup International organization, and I have obtained permission to post their country by country results for this question. You can find these results of the Gallup International
Voice of the People 2005 survey here. On page 27, you will see that 66% of Canadians answered the free and fair question affirmatively, compared to 54% of USA residents. I had expected an even larger gap, but I believe that some respondents might have interpreted the question to be not about election administration, but about the level of competition in elections. Canada has excellent election administration, but not as competitive an election system as in the U.S. Thanks again to the Gallup Organization for letting me post this material

"Phantom Constituents in the Census"

The NY Times offers this editorial, which begins:

longstanding quirk in census rules counts incarcerated people as "residents" of the prisons where most are held for only a short time, instead of counting them in the towns and cities where they actually live. This practice was scarcely noticeable 30 years ago, when the prison population was insignificant. But with 1.4 million people in prison today, this padding of electoral districts' population figures shifts political power from the densely populated urban areas where most inmates live to the less populated rural districts where prisons are often built.

UPDATE: See also this post on the ACSBlog.

More Carter-Baker

UPDATE: You can find the Foley oped without a subscription here.

-- 
Rick Hasen
William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law
Loyola Law School
919 Albany Street
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rick.hasen@lls.edu
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http://electionlawblog.org