Calm After the Storm: New Kansas SoS Seeks to Lower the Volume, Focus on “Nuts and Bolts”

Kansas’ new Secretary of State is pledging to reduce the spotlight on his office and focus instead on working with local election officials to improve the state’s voting process. After seemingly endless litigation over the state’s election laws for years, I can only imagine how much state and local officials are looking forward to getting back to basics in the Sunflower State and enjoying a chance to savor what will almost certainly be a period of relative calm after the storm.

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Deja Vu: Justin Levitt on “Reliving the 2000 Election — and Learning the Wrong Lessons”

Loyola Law’s Justin Levitt has a great piece at the Harvard Law Review blog suggesting a certain sense of deja vu with regard to the 2018 election – which, he notes, in many ways looked a lot like the 2000 election. His piece is a useful reminder that despite the progress that’s been made on addressing the biggest challenges facing the election process, the underlying problems still remain – and still require our attention.

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NPR on Struggles with Signature Verification

In the wake of numerous signature-related controversies during the 2018 election, National Public Radio takes a look at the challenges signature requirements pose – and how election offices are adapting. It seems that the new trend is to address signature challenges with time for verification rather than search for alternatives – and as more and more voters’ ballots rely upon a signature to be counted, that attention to process will assume added importance.

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NH SoS Gardner Faces Fierce Challenge for Re-Election in State Legislature

Longtime New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner is facing a strong challenge to his re-election in the state legislature after House Democrats overwhelmingly voted to endorse a former gubernatorial candidate who has been campaigning for the job – inflaming partisan tensions and promising an eventful final push before the state’s Organization Day on December 5.

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See Saw: Close Arizona SoS Race Swings, Election Night “Loser” Winning … For Now

Reinforcing the notion that “counting takes time”, the razor-thin race for Arizona Secretary of State has swung in recent days to the candidate who trailed by tens of thousands of votes on Election Night – but it’s still not over. Arizona’s count – which has proceeded without the kind of fireworks we’re seeing in Florida – is a reminder that close elections aren’t always a recipe for controversy.

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New Federal Law Would Create Agency-Level DHS Cybersecurity Unit

With everything else happening in the last week, you would be forgiven if you missed a major story that will likely have a significant impact on American elections: passage of a bill that would elevate the Department of Homeland Security’s cybersecurity division to the agency level. Once the bill receives the President’s signature, it will allow the new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to step up its presence in many sectors, including elections, where the need for information-sharing and coordination between election officials and players in the public and private sector grows every day.

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Counting Takes Time. Slow the F___ Down.

A week ago, I said that anyone expecting (or hoping?) for post-election controversies should “prepare to be underwhelmed.” [That didn’t age well.] Now, as controversies rage about the tabulation process and the impact on countless razor-thin races across the country, I’m frustrated at the push to treat Election Night leaders as the presumed winners and anything to the contrary as suspicious. There are lots of reasons (good and bad) why counting takes time – and as a result everyone needs to slow the f___ down.

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electionlineWeekly’s Quick Election Roundup: That Was The (Election) Week That Was

Election Day 2018 is past (if still far from over) and electionlineWeekly’s Mindy Moretti has a quick initial roundup of how the day went. There are many stories to discuss in the weeks and months ahead (recounts, new faces, new movement on old issues in Washington DC) but for now election officials almost everywhere can start finishing up and winding down Election 2018 and start thinking about what’s next … including the 2020 Presidential election, which is a little more than 100 weeks away.

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Not Over Yet: SoS Runoffs in Georgia, Louisiana

Election Day 2018 is behind us in most of the country, but in two states – Georgia and Louisiana – the race for Secretary of State requires one more round of voting. The winners of both runoffs will have big jobs ahead of them, as Georgia faces scrutiny over its election policies and aging touchscreen voting technology and Louisiana wrestles with a contentious procurement process to upgrade its voting machines. Unfortunately, those runoffs aren’t likely to see Tuesday’s stratospheric turnout, even though they will shape elections in those states for the foreseeable future.

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