Video on Trust in Elections

 From Pew:

Counting the Vote

John C. Fortier and Charles Stewart III have an AEI report titled Lessons learned from the 2020 election.  

From the overview:

The 2020 election witnessed a continuation oftrends established in recent elections, whereby vote counting has slowed and the votes counted are disproportionately Democratic the further away from Election Day the counting proceeds. These trends are due to certain types of ballots taking longer to count completely and large urban areas taking longer to complete the vote count. » Despite these national generalities, many states deviated from the national trend. » In 2020, most states counted nearly 100% of their final totals of ballots within 48 hours of polls closing on Election Day. Six states — Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Louisiana — counted nearly one hundred percent of their total ballots within four hours of polls closing. » Research that has looked at the speed with which states reported their votes has concluded that (1) states with more mail ballots are slower to report vote totals, (2) states that limit the pre-processing of mail ballots are slower, and (3) states that allow mail ballots to arrive after Election Day are slower. » The magnitude of the “blue shift,” the pattern whereby later-counted ballots are disproportionately Democratic, depends on when one starts the 4 comparison. Indeed, if one compares final election results with vote reports in the first three hours following polls closing, there was a national “red shift” in 2020. » Many states have certification deadlines that come very close to the “safe harbor” benchmark for certifying elections, thus perhaps giving insufficient time for careful consideration of recounts and challenges.

Election Adaptations During COVID

Kevin Kosar at AEI:

COVID-19 forced states to make myriad adjustments to their elections administration in order to ensure sufficient access to the ballot. Changes included expanding voter access to the use of absentee ballots, extending voter registration deadlines, and increasing the number of polling places, among others. How well did states do in adapting their elections administration?

To answer this question, I turned to Professor Zachary Courser and Professor Eric Helland. They co-direct Claremont McKenna College’s Policy Lab, an interdisciplinary policy research program that teaches students policy writing and research skills that prepare students for work in legislatures, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations. Zach, Eric, and their Policy Lab students spent the past year examining states’ emergency election statutes and election administration adaptations during the pandemic, and they have some interesting findings.

...

You and your students created a scorecard to measure states’ adaptations to make voting accessible during the pandemic. How did you create the scorecard, and which states scored highest?

Before the election, we evaluated state statutes dealing with elections emergencies to understand the legal framework for adaptation during an emergency, and then tracked all the adaptations that states took to ensure access to voting for the general election. We then analyzed which measures were most likely to have an effect on increasing access during the pandemic and assigned each a score accordingly. Adaptations clustered in four main categories: vote-by-mail, drop-off boxes, deadline adjustments, and polling place adjustments. We assigned measures for mail-in voting the highest point value, as we think they did the most to protect health and promote perceptions of safety during the pandemic. As a result, states that already had all-mail elections, or adapted by increasing access to absentee balloting, tended to score higher.

The average grade was a C, and as you can see from the map below, the highest scoring states clustered in the west. Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, and Utah all score A’s, with New Jersey scoring the highest in the nation. Southern states were laggards on access generally, scoring the lowest as a region — with most states rating a D or F. Missouri scored the lowest in the nation.

The 2020 Election

Nathaniel PersilyCharles Stewart III have an article at The Journal of Democracy titled " The Miracle and Tragedy of the 2020 U.S. Election."

The abstract:

The 2020 election was both a miracle and a tragedy. In the midst of a pandemic posing unprecedented challenges, local and state administrators pulled off a safe, secure, and professional election. This article discusses metrics of success in the adaptations that took place—record-high turnout, widespread voter satisfaction, a doubling of mail voting without a concomitant increase in problems often associated with absentee ballots, and the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of new poll workers. However, a competing narrative of a “stolen election” led to a historically deep chasm between partisans in their trust of the election process and outcome.

Retired Military Officers on Mail Ballots

Retired Admiral Bill Owens and retired General James Cartwright are both former vice chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of the bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity.  They write at USA Today:

As commissioned officers, we both swore an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. And today, given the circumstances surrounding this election, our continued sense of duty compels us to speak. We urge every American — regardless of their political affiliation — to trust the final results of this election: Democrat Joe Biden will be the next commander-in-chief.

... 

We wish to underscore our steadfast conviction that the vast majority of election officials are honest, hardworking public servants with the best interests of our nation at heart. And though no human endeavor is flawless, there are safeguards in place to protect the integrity of the process.

Every state maintains concrete steps to authenticate absentee ballots, and each has a deadline by which it will verify its results. The process this year has been carried out with the integrity we expect as Americans. To claim otherwise, without evidence, compromises the sanctity of our democracy.

Much has been made about the significant number of absentee ballots cast by mail because of COVID-19. The reality is that members of the armed forces have successfully voted by mail since the Civil War. During our time in the military, we cast ballots from nearly every corner of the world. Indeed, members of the U.S. military vote from every clime and place, including aboard the International Space Station and onboard submarines deployed worldwide. On every occasion, we and our fellow service members have complete confidence that our ballots will be received and counted.

To put it simply: If voting by mail is acceptable for the members of the military, then it should be acceptable for the rest of our population.

Ease of Voting 2020

From Pew:

A slim majority of voters (54%) say they voted in person this November, compared with 46% who voted by absentee or mail-in ballot. About one-quarter (27%) report having voted in person on Election Day, and an identical share say they voted in person before Election Day.

...

Among voters who voted in person in this election, 35% say they did not wait in line to vote at all. An additional 27% say they waited for less than 10 minutes. One-in-five waited for 10 to 30 minutes, 11% waited for 31 minutes to an hour, and 6% say they waited in line for more than an hour to vote.

Those who voted early waited longer than those who voted on Election Day: 21% of early in-person voters waited more than half an hour, compared with 14% of Election Day voters.

Black in-person voters also waited longer to vote than White or Hispanic in-person voters. Black voters are 5 percentage points slightly more likely than white voters to say they waited more than 30 minutes to vote and 9 points more likely than Hispanic voters to say this.

...

More than nine-in-ten voters (94%) say that voting in the election this November was either very easy (77%) or somewhat easy (17%), while just 6% say that voting was very or somewhat difficult.

Voting: Comparative Perspectives

 From Pew:

Though the exact policy varies from one place to another, 122 of the 226 countries and territories in the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network have some form of compulsory voter registration. In Argentina, Chile, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands and elsewhere, such registration is automatic, based on government records such as census counts. In other cases, qualified residents are required to register themselves. Failing to register is punishable by a fine in some places, including New Zealand, Tonga and the United Kingdom.

Another 90 countries and territories have no laws requiring all qualified residents to register to vote, though registration may be required in order to vote. In India – the world’s largest democracy – and Mongolia, voter rolls are compiled automatically through census data collection, though registration is not compulsory. In Austria, voter registration and voting itself were compulsory in at least one province until 2004; today, there is no requirement to register or to vote in Austrian elections. There is no compulsory voter registration in the U.S., though registration is necessary in order to vote in nearly all states and U.S. territories (North Dakota does not have voter registration)

Voting by the Dead (Seriously)

As of this morning, 89.6 million Americans had already voted.

 Wendy Underhill at NCSL:

What happens when an eligible voter casts an absentee ballot and then passes away before Election Day? This question comes up more and more, as absentee/mail voting, and even early in-person voting, gain in popularity.

Do these pre-Election Day votes count? Like everything else related to elections, the answer varies from state to state. By our count, statutes in at least 12 states (Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusets, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Tennessee) direct election officials to count these ballots.

Massachusetts has done so most recently, with the enactment of HB 4820 in July: “The absentee or early ballot of any voter who was eligible to vote at the time the ballot was cast shall not be deemed invalid solely because the voter became ineligible to vote by reason by death after casting the ballot.”

Again by our count, 15 states go the other way and are clear that these ballots are not to be counted: Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky (by an AG’s opinion, 77-667), Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Virginia (again by an AG’s opinion, 10-104) and Wisconsin.

Regardless of the law, it is hard to retrieve a ballot from someone who has died between casting it and Election Day. Once the absentee ballot has been verified and the ballot is removed from the envelope for counting, the ballot can’t be retraced to the voter—it’s a secret.

Numbers Good and Bad

Paul Davidson at USA Today:

The nation’s gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the U.S., increased at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 33.1% in the July-September period as consumer and business spending soared, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had forecast a 32% jump in GDP.

... 

But while business reopenings fueled a vigorous rebound, it doesn’t offset the prior loss because the economy was smaller after the big drop. The nation’s third-quarter GDP was still about 3.5% (non-annualized) below its pre-virus level in late 2019. GDP isn’t expected to return to its pre-pandemic level until late next year, according to economist Gus Faucher of PNC Financial Services Group.

The good: As of this morning, 78.2 million Americans had voted, a number equal to 56.7 percent of the 2016 total vote. 

The bad, from CBS: "The U.S. saw nearly 79,000 new virus cases on Wednesday – coming close to an all-time daily high reported last week – as more new cases were reported globally than ever before: more than 530,000, according to Johns Hopkins University."

Early Voting During the Pandemic

Many posts have discussed early voting, which is reaching unprecedented levels during the pandemic.

As of this morning, 31,677,305 have already voted. In states that register by party, Democrats outnumber Republicans among early voters 53.5% to 24.6% Four years ago at this point, only 5.9 million had voted. It is possible that Democrats are cannibalizing their Election Day vote and that it will tilt heavily Republican. Then again, the third wave of COVID could tamp down Election Day turnout.

Also as of this morning: 8.2 million cases and 220,134 deaths.

Youth Voter Participation in 2020

A release from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE):

Our polling data makes clear that a majority of young people are interested in the 2020 election and understand its importance. Whether they are ready to vote in an election shaped by restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic may be another story. Election processes are in flux and will likely vary from state to state. Young people’s access to, information about, and familiarity with online voter registration (OVR) and mail-in voting will be critical. In this regard, our poll reveals that there are reasons for concern that should be seen as a call to action.

We asked youth in our survey whether they could register to vote online in their state. (Online registration is widely available in 38 states and Washington, D.C.) A third of youth (32%) said they did not know. Among youth who answered yes or no, 25% were incorrect. Overall, just half (51%) of youth could correctly identify whether OVR is an option for them or not. Worryingly, among respondents from states where OVR is not available, only 14% correctly identified that was the case. This means a large segment of young people in these states may be relying on an option that isn’t available to them, thereby complicating or delaying their voter registration. Another potential stumbling block: 7.5% of young people—which translates to 3.5 million youth—say in our poll that they have not had good enough access to the Internet during the pandemic.

...

We have previously shared that, if mailing in ballots becomes the primary voting method in the 2020 elections, it will be an unfamiliar process for most youth. Indeed, only 24% of young people in our poll have previously voted by mail. There are major and troubling differences by race/ethnicity: 34.5% of Asian youth and 25% of White youth have had access to and experience with voting by mail, compared to 22% of Black youth and just 20% of Latino youth. However, greater availability of absentee voting in Western states (where all-mail voting is common) compared to Southern states (where excuses to vote absentee are often needed) means that access to this method of voting differs greatly, especially between Asian and Black youth because Asian American youth are concentrated in the Western States while Black youth are concentrated in the Southern States.

Approximately two-thirds of young people say they have seen information about absentee ballots this year, and the same percentage say that if their state’s voting occurs entirely by mail, they know where to get information about receiving their ballot. Of course, this means that a third of youth—more than 15 million—currently lack this critical information.

As the electoral landscape continues to evolve in many states across the country, one of the major challenges for our democracy will be ensuring that young people have access to timely information about the tools and processes that may determine whether they cast a vote in November. Our poll reveals that we are far from meeting that goal, and that it will be up to election administrators, educators, media, organizers, parents, and peers to act in concert to do so. It also highlights that these efforts must focus especially on youth of color in order to avoid perpetuating racial/ethnic inequities in political participation.

Early Voting, Mail Voting, and Coronavirus

Early voting does have disadvantages, especially in nomination contests where candidates may drop out between the printing of ballots and the casting of votes.  But it also has advantages.

Stephen Wolf at Daily Kos:

As shown on the map at the top of this post (see here for a larger version), Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, and Washington have already transitioned to universal voting by mail ahead of November's elections, and states such as California and Arizona have seen a majority of voters cast their ballots by mail in recent years. Furthermore, states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Virginia have made it considerably easier to vote absentee by mail since the last election. But a large number of states still don’t even allow absentee mail voting without an excuse, let alone mail every registered voter a ballot as the default voting method.

Adopting universal voting by mail is imperative as the coronavirus threatens to become a pandemic. As governments urge citizens to avoid crowded public spaces and to vigilantly wash their hands, having millions of people stand in lines on Election Day and use the same voting machines or even the same pens to fill out paper ballots threatens public health and could dampen voter turnout. Furthermore, because poll workers are very disproportionately the same elderly Americans who are most at risk in a flu pandemic, states and localities may have trouble finding enough poll workers, and those who do show up will be at greater risk of catching or spreading the disease.

These problems should be largely avoidable with universal voting by mail, since it almost entirely eliminates in-person voting and the public gatherings that go with it. Furthermore, vote-by-mail is a cost-saving measure that frees up resources for other things because governments have to operate far fewer in-person polling places. It also has a long track record of increasing voter turnout in the states that have adopted it thanks to the ease of voting that way, especially with prepaid postage negating the need for voters to go to the post office.

Dropouts: The Big Disadvantage of Early Voting

Molly Olmstead at Slate:

The Democratic presidential race has shifted in the days after South Carolina’s primary, as Tom Steyer, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar dropped out in quick succession. But the departures so close to Super Tuesday create a complication: The candidates’ names are still on the ballot, and many early voters have already cast meaningless votes for them.

California, for example, has 415 delegates on the line on Tuesday. It has also successfully encouraged people to vote by absentee ballot. In the 2018 primary election, 67 percent of all votes were cast outside of an in-person polling place, according to the Los Angeles Times. This year, officials have already received 20 percent of the mailed-out ballots, which is likely a hefty portion of the state’s votes. A number of those will be for Steyer, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar—as well as Andrew Yang, who dropped out after early voting began.

...
In most states, no. In some states, if you can beat your own absentee ballot to the polling place, you might be OK. Michigan, which votes next week, specifically allows you to come in and “spoil” your ballot, negating the earlier and requesting a new one. Minnesota allowed people to switch votes, but the deadline for that passed last week, before Buttigieg and Klobuchar had announced their decisions.

According to the Times, voters should be careful: If Californians cast a ballot at their polling place in hopes it will counteract their first ballot, they run the risk of violating state election law.

Alternative Voting

Jordan Misra at the Census Bureau:

The availability of alternative voting methods continues to change how voters vote. Alternative voting methods include any method other than voting in person on Election Day, such as early voting and voting by mail.

In 2018, 40 percent of voters used an alternative voting method. The percentage of voters that cast their ballot early or by mail usually declines slightly in midterm elections relative to the preceding presidential election. However, the rate in 2018 was not significantly different from the 2016 presidential election.

The use and availability of alternative voting methods varied by state. In the 2018 election, early voting was available in 39 states. Some states require that voters state a reason or excuse for mailing an absentee ballot, while others do not (no-excuse absentee voting). Three states (Washington, Oregon and Colorado) have all-mail voting systems.

The three states with the highest percentage point increases in alternative voting rates from 2014 were Utah, Texas and Georgia. Alternative voting increased by 36 percentage points in Utah, 25 points in Texas, and 21 points in Georgia.

This high increase in alternative voting in these states is likely the result of Utah’s ballot initiatives and expanded mail voting opportunities, and the high-profile elections in Texas and Georgia.

States without the option to vote early and those that require voters to provide an excuse for voting absentee, had some of the lowest alternative voting rates in the country.

Elections: The Rules of the Game

Types of Primaries:  The Special Case of California

Voting

Elections for the House of Representatives




Senate elections

Mechanics of the Electoral College

Strategy and the Electoral College

Federal contribution limits

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

More on Sandy and Turnout

As previous posts have noted, Hurricane Sandy may have some effect on voter turnout  in the New York metropolitan area. There is no chance that New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut will switch from Obama to Romney, but their overall vote totals may be down, which in turn could affect the president's national vote margin. There is some talk of invoking a New York law allowing for a second day of voting, but because a presidential election is taking place, there would be serious constitutional questions about such a move.

From NBC, an estimate of the vote drop that is less conservative than mine:

President Obama stands to lose as many as 340,000 votes as a result of Hurricane Sandy, not enough to affect the outcome in heavily Democratic Northeastern states, but something that could make a difference in the popular vote if the results of Tuesday’s presidential race are as close as polls indicate, a First Read analysis finds.

“Sandy has the potential to reduce Obama's national popular vote share by depressing turnout in highly Democratic areas along the Eastern Seaboard,” Dr. Michael McDonald of George Mason University, who studies turnout, told First Read. “The storm is unlikely to change the Electoral College outcome, as Obama is heavily favored to win the affected states. A turnout drop could be the difference in a close national election, and thus could shape the political discourse over important policy issues in a possible Obama second term.”

For example, assuming 2008 vote totals and a 15 percent reduction in turnout in the coastal counties most affected by Hurricane Sandy in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, Obama would lose a net of 340,000 votes, including 247,000 out of New York, 60,000 from New Jersey, 29,000 from Connecticut, and 3,600 from Rhode Island.

From The New York Daily News:

Voting will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 6, as scheduled, but scores of polling stations will likely be moved or operating off generators, election officials said. In New Jersey, paper ballots will be used and military trucks will serve as polling sites in some areas. New Yorkers are dealing with a “fluid” situation, said John Conklin, spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections.

“We are doing an assessment of power, safety, and the ability to get voting machines in and out of the facilities,” Conklin told the Daily News on Friday. “We will decide if and when to move a polling station once that is done,” he said.

In areas of Staten Island and Queens, flooding was so severe that some sites might not be accessible. The Staten Island Board of Elections office had to close. So too did the Manhattan office, which is now sharing space at the Borough's Voting Machine Facility.

There’s no set timeline as to when a polling station will be moved ahead of Tuesday, Conklin said. He stressed conditions are “constantly changing. It’s a fluid situation.”

From WCBS in New York:

Connecticut state officials from Gov. Dan Malloy on down are denying rumors that the election has been cancelled.

About 50 polling locations in Connecticut lack power and more than a dozen are so badly damaged that there is no way voting can take place there.

In Greenwich, Republican Registrar of Voters Fred DeCaro said there are blocked driveways and roads.

“Accessibility is still an issue for people to get out from their house,” he told WCBS 880 reporter Paul Murnane.

Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill was reluctant to move too many voting locations.

“Really, people get so confused and they’re already under all this stress. So, that, I think would help to depress turnout, I’m afraid,” she said. 

From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

With an untold number of residents displaced because of Hurricane Sandy and problems with power outages at polling places, some voters will face added challenges in exercising their basic right.

The Christie administration's answer: Vote early.

The state has ordered county election offices to remain open through the weekend so anyone with concerns about voting on Tuesday can cast a paper ballot in advance.

After receiving reports from the state's 21 counties, Gov. Christie said Friday that it appeared only 10 polling places statewide would be entirely inaccessible Tuesday.

Officials did not say how many other sites might be affected by other problems, such as loss of power.

In some cases, the governor said, voters will go to their usual polling locations to find trucks or trailers where they can vote "old school" by paper ballot.

"Everybody in New Jersey will have a way to vote," he said. "It will probably take us longer to count the votes, but it will be a late night anyway."

As for voters who have relocated far from their home counties and do not plan to return by Tuesday, they are out of luck, unless they have posted mail-in ballots

Voting from Overseas

Reuters reports:

With the U.S. presidential election too close to call, hundreds of thousands of Americans living in Europe have been posting their absentee ballots with a sense that they could truly make a difference on November 6.

From Berlin to Paris and London to Madrid, they have closely tracked the battle between Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, though the emotional temperature is several degrees lower than four years ago, when most expats rallied behind Obama after two terms of George W. Bush, whom many thought had tarnished the U.S. image abroad.

Both the Republicans and Democrats have courted the expat vote since 1988, when absentee ballots reversed the outcome of a Senate race in Florida, allowing Republican Connie Mack to pip Democrat Buddy MacKay, who had led when polling stations closed.

Absentee ballots also made the difference in another Senate race in 2008. Democrat Al Franken came from 215 votes behind to win with the help of absentee votes.

The tightness of the presidential race, with a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll showing a dead heat , has made the expat vote arguably more important than ever. Both Republicans Abroad and Democrats Abroad organisations have gone all out to get Americans registered and voting in their home states.

Some overseas voters are in uniform. Hope Hodge writes at Human Events:

While a number of battleground states have reported dismal numbers of military absentee ballot requests in early counts, the western swing state of Colorado announced Monday that its ballot request totals for military and overseas absentee voters have already surpassed 2008 totals, with eight days to go until the election.

After low recorded voter turnout in these demographics four years ago, Congress authorized $75 million for the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, which, among other provisions, established and staffed voting assistance offices at over 220 military bases. But early ballot request totals in a number of states showed an even more depressed military voting turnout than in 2008, and a bombshell report at the end of August from the Department of Defense Inspector General found that half of the new voting offices were unreachable by telephone or email.

Colorado is proving that low military voting does not have to be the status quo.

The office of Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced that 19,055 military and overseas ballot requests had been received, 2,804 more than in 2008. The 8,320 completed ballots the state has already received from these voters amounts to a return rate 80 percent higher than in the 2010 election.

The improvement in numbers is attributed to a statewide project launched in 2010 that allows overseas voters to receive next-day ballots via email and mail them back at their convenience. 

Some of these voters are students on study-abroad programs.  The Capital News Service reports:

In 2009, the federal government passed the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The legislation led 47 states, including Virginia, to pass similar laws increasing enfranchisement of overseas voters.

Under the legislation, voters are no longer required to have absentee ballots notarized. States are required to send absentee ballots to registered overseas voters at least 45 days prior to the election. Electronic absentee ballots and registration applications must be made available online by each state in case hard copies don’t arrive, the law states.

Currently, 13 states allow online voter registration, according to a spokesperson for the Pew Center on the States; Virginia is not one of them.

Overseas Vote Foundation (OVF) spearheaded the trend toward electronic registration in 2008. Nearly 5 million people accessed the OVF webpage in 2008, including nearly 2 million in the October before the election, according to a report by the Pew Center on the States.
Overseas Vote Foundation established an offshoot, Youth Vote Overseas (YVO), to target students going abroad. The organization does outreach with more than 450 colleges across the country, including more than 10 schools in Virginia.

The goal is to encourage students to register to vote before going abroad, explained Marina Mecl, Youth Vote Overseas outreach program director. As a result, much of YVO’s web traffic comes from within the U.S.

Contact with partner universities overseas helps YVO’s cause, Mecl said, especially in traditional hubs for exchange students.

Between July and October, the organization tallied its highest number of registrations abroad from the United Kingdom, Spain, Italy and France – four of the top five study abroad destinations from 2008 to 2010. About three out of four voters registering on the site are between 18 and 24.

Unanticipated Consequences

Well-intentioned public policies can have unanticipated consequences.  Here are some examples.

Efforts to promote nutritious meals in school can backfire if they taste bad and students throw them away.  The New York Times reports:

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.
...
“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”

Students organized lunch strikes in a suburb of Pittsburgh, where in late August the hashtag “brownbagginit” was trending on Twitter, and outside Milwaukee, where the Mukwonago High School principal, Shawn McNulty, said participation in the lunch program had fallen 70 percent.

“There is a reduction in nacho chips, there is a reduction in garlic bread, but there’s actually an increase in fruits and vegetables,” Mr. McNulty said. “That’s a tough sell for kids, and I would be grumbling, too, if I was 17 years old.”

Making it easier to vote by mail may increase participation...as well as uncounted ballots and fraud.  Also in The New York Times:

Election experts say the challenges created by mailed ballots could well affect outcomes this fall and beyond. If the contests next month are close enough to be within what election lawyers call the margin of litigation, the grounds on which they will be fought will not be hanging chads but ballots cast away from the voting booth.

In 2008, 18 percent of the votes in the nine states likely to decide this year’s presidential election were cast by mail. That number will almost certainly rise this year, and voters in two-thirds of the states have already begun casting absentee ballots. In four Western states, voting by mail is the exclusive or dominant way to cast a ballot.

The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.

In Florida, absentee-ballot scandals seem to arrive like clockwork around election time. Before this year’s primary, for example, a woman in Hialeah was charged with forging an elderly voter’s signature, a felony, and possessing 31 completed absentee ballots, 29 more than allowed under a local law.

California's recycling program is also spawning fraud, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Just over 8.5 billion recyclable cans were sold in California last year. The number redeemed for a nickel under California's recycling law: 8.3 billion.

That's a return rate of nearly 100%.

That kind of success isn't just impressive, it's unbelievable. But the recycling rate for certain plastic containers was even higher: 104%.

California's generous recycling redemption program has led to rampant fraud. Crafty entrepreneurs are driving semi-trailers full of cans from Nevada or Arizona, which don't have deposit laws, across the border and transforming their cargo into truckfuls of nickels. In addition, recyclers inside the state are claiming redemptions for the same containers several times over, or for containers that never existed.

The illicit trade is draining the state's $1.1-billion recycling fund. Government officials recently estimated the fraud at $40 million a year, and an industry expert said it could exceed $200 million. It's one reason the strapped fund paid out $100 million more in expenses last year than it took in from deposits and other sources.

The "truckful of nickels" maneuver should have been predictable:  in 1996,it was the subject of a Seinfeld episode. 

 

Elections and the Postal Service

Back in December, The New York Times reported:

The post office had bad news on Monday for all those who like to pop a check into the mail to pay a bill due the next day: don’t count on it.

The United States Postal Service said it planned to largely eliminate next-day delivery for first-class mail as part of its push to cut costs and reduce its budget deficit. Currently, more than 40 percent of first-class mail is delivered in one day.

The agency said the slower delivery would result from its decision to shut about half of its 487 mail processing centers nationwide. The move is expected to eliminate about 28,000 jobs and increase the distance that mail must travel between post offices and processing centers. It would be the first reduction in delivery standards for first-class mail in 40 years.

The change will have a significant impact on elections.  In 2010, 18.2 percent of votes came in by mail.  And many voters popped the ballot into the mailbox the day before the election, expecting it to arrive in time.

Timm Herdt writes in The Ventura County Star:

In the last statewide primary election two years ago, more than 12,500 mail-in ballots in Riverside County were nearly invalidated because of what postal officials described as "a change in process" that caused them to be delivered after Election Day.

They were ultimately counted, but only after a judge ordered it.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen now worries that an election nightmare on a much larger scale could be repeated this year unless the Postal Service delays its planned closure of 18 mail processing centers in California until after November's presidential election.

Bowen is appealing to postal officials and members of Congress to extend for six months a moratorium on the closures that is scheduled to expire May 15.

"This has the potential to leaves thousands and thousands of ballots uncounted," Bowen said Wednesday. "We need the post office not to do it. It would be a profound disservice to democracy."

Read more: http://www.vcstar.com/news/2012/feb/15/closing-of-postal-centers-could-cause-havoc-with/#ixzz1mYKoSl00
- vcstar.com 

Early Voting

Early voting has been on the rise. The Fairfax Times reports on efforts in Virginia to make early voting easier:

A substantial number of Virginia voters also cast ballots early in 2008 despite having to provide an excuse, said Michael McDonald, an associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University.

In Virginia, there have been past attempts to loosen up the early voting laws. But those efforts have generally failed, McDonald said.

Republican lawmakers in Virginia tend to think anything that grants easier access to the ballot will help Democrats, who tend to attract support from minorities, the poor and young people -- groups who are less likely to vote, McDonald said.

But he said easing early voting restrictions actually could help Republicans. Those who typically vote for Republican candidates tend to vote in every election. Early voters also tend to be regular voters, and early voting has not really attracted new voters, he said.

Easing limitations for mail-in absentee ballots also is not likely to increase turnout. People who regularly vote are likely to take advantage of voting by mail and could increase the cost to run an election, Michaelson and McDonald both said.

Election officers would need to hire people to count and examine the mailed ballots plus staff polling locations on Election Day, they said.

Other concerns cited by some lawmakers include worries about vote fraud and the loss of ballot secrecy, McDonald said.

Some states, such as Oregon, have eliminated polling sites and use only mail-in ballots, which has increased turnout for those states and actually decreased costs, he said.

"What are you willing to live with? Weigh these low instances [of fraud] versus making it more convenient for people to vote," McDonald said.