Download or read book To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process written by Jimmy Carter and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-26 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2000 the American electoral system was tested by a political ordeal unlike any in living memory. Not since 1876-77 has the outcome of a national election remained so unsettled for so long. The past election¡¯s recount conundrum shook the nation¡¯s faith in the mechanisms that support the democratic process. Led by former Presidents Ford and Carter, the National Commission on Federal Election Reform undertook a study of the American electoral system. The resulting report describes where and what went wrong during the 2000 election, and makes clear and specific recommendations for reform, directed at state government, Congress, news organizations, and others. This volume also includes the full text of the Task Force Reports from the Commission.
Download or read book Voter Registration and Election Reform written by Daniel P. Tokaji and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Voter registration matters. Political candidates, parties, and advocacy groups have always understood this, devoting a great deal of time and resources to ensuring that their supporters are registered. Less nobly, there have been frequent attempts by political operatives to impede participation through the adoption and uneven application of registration rules. Examples include the exclusion of urban immigrants, ethnic minorities, and laborers during the nineteenth century, the mass disfranchisement of southern blacks through most of the twentieth century, and the aggressive purging and caging practices of recent years. Voter registration has also attracted the attention of election reformers over the years. Key portions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ("VRA"), the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 ("NVRA"), and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 ("HAVA") are designed to reduce registration barriers. Litigators have increasingly focused on voter registration as well, with disputes over the laws and procedures governing voter registration forming an important part of the growing election law docket. Though voting technology and voter identification issues have typically attracted the lion's share of public attention in the area of election administration, the set of legal issues surrounding voter registration have become even more significant. In fact, voter registration became the big issue of the 2008 election season, just as were voting machines in 2000 and provisional ballots in 2004. And yet, for all this activity, legal scholars have paid relatively little attention to voter registration. There has been some research on federal registration laws, but relatively little scholarly analysis of the many registration issues that have found their way to the courts or of the possibilities for future legislative reform. Even within the generally underexamined election law sub-field of election administration, voter registration is an especially underexamined topic. The purpose of this article is to help fill that breach. It examines legislation and litigation surrounding the voter registration process, including the requirements with which voters must comply to register, the public and private entities that assist voters in registering, and the systems used to maintain registration rolls. Part I looks backward, providing historical background on the uses and abuses of registration, while Part II describes the patchwork of state and federal statutes governing registration today. Part III discusses recent litigation over voter registration, including the maintenance of registration lists, state agency registration, registration drives, and proof of eligibility. Part IV looks forward, considering the possibilities for future registration reform. It argues that the reforms should focus on expanding the electorate and discusses reform proposals that might lead to a more representative electorate.
Download or read book The Administration of Voter Registration written by Thessalia Merivaki and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the dynamics behind shifts in voter registration rates across the states and adopts a framework of collaborative governance with election administration at its center. The book starts by introducing readers to the “voter registration gap,” an aggregate measure of variance in voter registration, and demonstrates how it fluctuates between federal elections. To explain why this variance exists, the author examines the relationship between federal reforms, such as the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and the Help America Vote Act; and state-level reforms, such as Online Voter Registration. Thessalia Merivaki argues that the weak relationship between the two is not surprising, since it hides dramatic variations in administrative practices at the local level, which take place in shorter intervals than the most frequently used two-year estimates. In closing, she shows that challenges to successfully registering to vote persist, largely because of how, when, and where eligible citizens have to register.
Download or read book Election Reform written by Daniel J. Palazzolo and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Election Reform: Politics and Policy is the definitive work on the manner in which policymakers responded to the crisis that emerged from the 2000 presidential election. Editors Daniel Palazzolo and James Ceaser address two fundamental questions: How did the states and Congress respond to the problems in election law and administration that became apparent in the 2000 election? What factors explain the variety of ways in which different states responded? Anyone interested in election crisis of 2000 and in the lessons learned from a major transformation of our electoral institutions will find this book essential reading.
Download or read book Election Reform written by William O. Jenkins, Jr. and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2006-09 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Discount Voting written by Michael J. Hanmer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-17 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that the effect of registration laws is not as profound as either reformers would hope or previous studies suggest.
Download or read book Election Reform written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America Votes written by Benjamin E. Griffith and published by American Bar Association. This book was released on 2008 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a snapshot of America's voting and electoral practices, problems, and most current issues. The book addresses a variety of fundamental areas concerning election law from a federal perspective such as the Help America Vote Act, lessons learned from the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, voter identification, and demographic and statistical experts in election litigation, and more. It is a useful guide for lawyers as well as law school professors, election officials, state and local government personnel, and election workers.
Download or read book Election Reform and Local Election Officials written by Eric A. Fischer and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Local election officials (LEOs) are critical to the administration of federal elections and the implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA,P.L. 107-252). Two surveys of LEOs were performed, in 2004 and 2006, by Texas A&M University; the surveys were sponsored and coordinated by the authors. Although care needs to be taken in interpreting the results, they may have implications for several policy issues, such as how election officials are chosen and trained, the best ways to ensure that voting systems and election procedures are sufficiently effective, secure, and voter-friendly, and whether adjustments should be made to HAVA requirements. Major results include the following: The demographic characteristics of LEOs differ from those of other government officials. Almost three-quarters are women, and 5% are minorities. Most do not have a college degree, and most were elected. Some results suggest areas of potential improvement such as in training and participation in professional associations. LEOs believed that the federal government has too great an influence on the acquisition of voting systems, and that local elected officials have too little. Their concerns increased from 2004 to 2006 about the influence of the media, political parties, advocacy groups, and vendors. LEOs were highly satisfied with whatever voting system they used but were less supportive of other kinds. However, their satisfaction declined from 2004 to 2006 for all systems except lever machines. They also rated their primary voting systems as very accurate, secure, reliable, and voter- and pollworker-friendly, no matter what system they used. However, the most common incident reported by respondents in the 2006 election was malfunction of a direct recording (DRE) or optical scan (OS) electronic voting system. The incidence of long lines at polling places was highest in jurisdictions using DREs. Most DRE users did not believe that voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPAT) should be required, but nonusers believed they should be. However, the percentage of DRE users who supported VVPAT increased in 2006, and most VVPAT users were satisfied with them. On average, LEOs mildly supported requiring photo identification for all voters, even though they strongly believed that it will negatively affect turnout and did not believe that voter fraud is a problem in their jurisdictions. LEOs believed that HAVA is making moderate improvements in the electoral process, but the level of support declined from 2004 to 2006. They reported that HAVA has increased the accessibility of voting but has made elections more complicated and has increased their cost. LEOs spent much more time preparing for the election in 2006 than in 2004. They also believed that the increased complexity of elections is hindering recruitment of pollworkers. Most found the activities of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) that HAVA created only moderately beneficial to them. They were neutral on average about the impacts of the requirement for a statewide voter-registration database.
Download or read book The Voter Registration Act and Related Legislation written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on House Administration. Subcommittee on Elections and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Unrigging American Elections written by Dari Sylvester Tran and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical and systematic analysis of election reforms post-HAVA (Help America Vote Act of 2002) offers a detailed look ahead at the significant challenges that remain in the context of a new presidential administration. Employing a mixed methodological approach, this book analyzes the biggest election challenges faced by voters and election administrators in the areas of voter registration, polling place and non-polling place voting, election administration personnel, and voting technology. Within the framework of the competing values of integrity and access, this book fills a crucial gap in the existing literature by analyzing the impact of election reform wins and losses. The book concludes with a promising agenda for the future of election reform and the political considerations that will be brought to bear on that agenda.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior written by Jan E. Leighley and published by Oxford University Press (UK). This book was released on 2012-02-16 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbooks of American Politics are the essential guide to the study of American political life in the 21st Century. With engaging contributions from the major figures in the field The Oxford Handbook of American Elections and Political Behavior provides the key point of reference for anyone working in American Politics today
Download or read book Democracy in the States written by Bruce E. Cain and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy in the States offers a 21st century agenda for election reform in America based on lessons learned in the fifty states. Combining accessibility and rigor, leading scholars of U.S. politics and elections examine the impact of reforms intended to increase the integrity, fairness, and responsiveness of the electoral system. While some of these reforms focus on election administration, which has been the subject of much controversy since the 2000 presidential election, others seek more broadly to increase political participation and improve representation. For example, Paul Gronke (Reed College) and his colleagues study the relationship between early voting and turnout. Barry Burden (University of Wisconsin–Madison) examines the hurdles that third-party candidates must clear to get on the ballot in different states. Michael McDonald (George Mason University) analyzes the leading strategies for redistricting reform. And Todd Donovan (Western Washington University) focuses on how the spread of "safe" legislative seats affects both representation and participation. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously observed that "a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." Nowhere is this function more essential than in the sphere of election reform, as this important book shows.
Download or read book Helping America Vote written by Martha Kropf and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helping America Vote is focused on the conflict between values of access and integrity in U.S. election administration, examining both what was included in the Help America Vote Act, and what was not. Widespread agreement that voting equipment was a problem made technology the centerpiece of the legislation, but, there is still reason to be concerned about key aspects of electronic voting, ballot design, and the politics of partisan administrators.
Download or read book Building Consensus on Election Reform written by Constitution Project (Georgetown Public Policy Institute). Forum on Election Reform and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Public Hearing in the Matter Regarding Voter Registration and Election Reform written by New York (State). Legislature. Senate. Standing Committee on Elections and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Accessible Elections written by Michael Ritter and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-17 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed widespread changes in state voting and registration laws. These include same day registration, automatic voter registration, early voting, mail voting, and no-excuse absentee voting where people mail in their ballots. Most research on these voting reforms has downplayed their effects, showing that they generally benefit educated, older, and more affluent people. This book shows the positive effects that these reforms have on overall voter turnout, and among voters of disadvantaged groups. Specifically, it emphasizes the ways that state governments are making it easier to participate in elections in an effort to strengthen democratic government. In Accessible Elections, Michael Ritter and Caroline J. Tolbert explore the wide variation from state to state in convenience voting methods and provide new empirical analysis of the beneficial effects of these policies, not only in boosting participation rates overall, but in increasing voter turnout for disadvantaged groups. The authors measure both convenience methods and implementation of the laws, and explore how elections are conducted across the fifty states, where average turnout has varied more than 25 percentage points over the past four decades. The authors also draw on national voter files with millions of cases and vote histories of the same individuals over time in order to show the real effects of election reform and to make a case for how state governments can modernize their electoral practices, increase voter turnout, and make the experience of voting more accessible and equitable. Ritter and Tolbert assert that in the wake of covid-19 and efforts to maintain social distancing, early voting and absentee/mail voting are of particular importance to avoid election-day crowds and ensure equitable elections in states with large populations. With important implications for the 2020 general election and beyond, Accessible Elections underscores how state governments can modernize their electoral procedures to increase voter turnout, address inequalities, and influence campaign and party mobilization strategies.
