One bit of little-celebrated news from the election is that more publicly-funded candidates were elected to office in 2008 than ever before. Nearly 400 publicly-funded candidates won their races—an 85% increase from 2006. The large numbers are due in part to the success of the newly-minted public funding system in Connecticut, where 75% of candidates for state legislature ran in the inaugural program. When Connecticut's new General Assembly takes office next year, 81% will have been elected with public funds. The percentage is similar in Maine, where it is estimated that publicly funded candidates will hold a staggering 85% of the seats in the next legislative session.
In these voluntary public financing systems, candidates who choose to participate collect a certain amount of small contributions from constituents to qualify for a public grant. Once qualified, candidates agree to abide by strict expenditure limits and forego all private contributions. Public funding programs are currently available for legislative and executive candidates in Arizona, Maine and Connecticut, for judicial candidates in North Carolina, and for municipal candidates in several cities.
Sunlight in Alaska comes in overabundance during the summer, with daylight that lasts 21 hours, and is sorely lacking during the winter, when many parts of the state get just an hour of daylight. But this fall, Alaskans have had plenty of sunlight on two of its most famous politicians: Senator Ted Stevens and Governor Sarah Palin, regarding their disclosures of political expenditures and gifts.
Disclosure forms aren't the sexiest thing in politics. Yet this admittedly dry topic may land Stevens in jail and could be one of the factors that cost Palin a shot at being Vice President.
As the 2008 Election draws to a close, the stars are coming out to protetct voting rights. Last Friday, along with the Advancement Project, the Brennan Center produced several PSAs featuring Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Russell Simmons. I've posted them below. Here's some of the release announcing the campaign
Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Russell Simmons have teamed up with the Advancement Project and the Brennan Center for Justice on a voter education campaign in the key states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. The campaign kicked-off Saturday, with the release of Public Service Announcements, released to radio, which gave voters important information to bring ID and to contact 1-866-OUR-VOTE with any problems.
When voters show up at the polls and have their eligibility questioned, they may be asked to vote with "provisional ballots." Known as a fail-safe for voters who are being challenged or who are not on the rolls, provisional ballots should be treated skeptically.
Rules vary from state to state, but these ballots are often counted only if the voter appears in a voter registration database or if the voter can provide evidence of his eligibility in the days after the election. For this reason, many provisional ballots go uncounted. In the 2008 primaries, 40% of provisional ballots were ultimately rejected.
After weeks of some of the most intense voter battles in recent memory, attempts to block the vote have failed again and again. Recent court decisions and public outcry have deflated these efforts in Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, Georgia, and other key states.
Mayor Bloomberg has joined the chorus. Yesterday, the Mayor fumed over the New York City Board of Election's troubling disorganization, just six days before Election Day.
"We keep making suggestions, putting a sample ballot on the Web, they won't do it. What about recruiting poll workers . . . [who] have to have training ... they don't pay any attention to it. What about poll workers from good government groups rather than just political parties? You know, this is an outrage," exclaimed the Mayor.
Over the last couple of months, there have been countless media reports of officials and partisan operatives erecting barriers to voting—many of questionable legality. Less attention has been paid to the fact that multiple state and local officials have worked very hard to ensure that everybody who has the right to vote will be able to cast a ballot and have it count. Here's our list of some of these good moves so far:
- Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Governor Crist,in an effort to stem the long lines caused by record numbers of early voters, issued an emergency executive order extending voting hours from eight to twelve hours aday. Governor Crist's action came despite calls from fellow Republicans urging him not to expand access to the polls. As he explained, "It's not apolitical decision. It's a people'sdecision."
In recent days during early voting, we've seen a rashofreports from voters using touch-screen machines who say they pressed the name of one candidate and watched in horror as the screen lit up for another. This is known as "vote-flipping," and—for obvious reasons—can be very disconcerting to voters.
There are a few things about vote-flipping that voters should know. First, just because a vote "flipped" from Obama to McCain (or vice-versa) on one of these machines doesn't mean someone has taken over the machine and is stealing votes from one candidate to another (in fact, if someone was going to do this, they probably wouldn't give the voter a clue by showing them what was happening on the screen itself). Rather, in all likelihood, this is caused by what is referred to as a "calibration" problem. Touch screen machines are calibrated in advance so that when a voter presses on the screen, the machine can interpret it as a vote for a particular candidate. Particularly after a few hours of voting, the calibration on these machines can slip—or they may not have been properly calibrated in the first place.
Mayor Bloomberg has joined the chorus.
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