Presidential Commission on Elections Adminstration

[Statistikhengst]

On November 7th, 2012 at about 01:30 EDT, after Mitt Romney (R) conceded defeat, President Obama, in his re-election victory speech, noted that problems with the election itself needed to be fixed:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kov3nW8T2fk]President Obama Re-Election Victory Speech (November 6, 2012) [1/3] - YouTube[/ame]

(4:40-5:03)


And in his 2013 SOTU:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvK-o6u82tI]Watch President Obama Deliver the 2013 State of the Union Address - YouTube[/ame]


President Obama announced that a NON-partisan commission would be put together to study some of the problems from the 2012 election and fix them.

That Commission was appointed on May 21, 2013:

President Obama Announces His Intent to Appoint Individuals to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration | The White House

Well, today, the President met with the Commission and the Commission released it's findings:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu6AjtUIvJ4]President Obama Meets with the Presidential Commission on Election Administration - YouTube[/ame]


You might be interested to know that President Obama asked his top attorney (Bob Bauer) AND Mitt Romney's top attorney (Ben Ginsberg) to get together on this project as co-chairs.

The Commission has made some recommendations, one of the top of which is:

1.) no citizen should have to wait more than 1/2 hour to vote.

Most of the recommendations go to the state and local jurisdictions.

The report is out, you can download it here:

Support The Voter | Improving the election experience for all voters

.pdf link, direct:

https://www.supportthevoter.gov/files/2014/01/Amer-Voting-Exper-final-draft-01-09-14-508.pdf

I am reading through the entire report and make some additional postings here. But what I have read until now seems pretty common-sense, meaning, "why haven't we been doing this already?" - common sense.


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[Statistikhengst]

So, some of the main recommendations:

1.) Online registration.
2.) Interstate exchange of voter lists - to keep duplicate registrations from happening.
3.) Expansion of early voting.
4.) Using schools for voting and making election day an in-service day for teachers (day off for kids).
5.) More voting machines at more locations, replacement of the 10 year old voting machines.

There is lots more than this, but that is the start.

 

[JoeB131]

I think an easier fix would be to move election days to Saturday instead of Tuesday. On Tuesday, you gget a mad rush of people running in to vote before or after work, then a whole day of election workers sitting about with nothing to do. (I've been a poll watcher, I've seen it.)

Another reform would be to keep the rolls up to date. When I worked on the Duckworth campaign in 2012, we got these voter lists that were full of people who were all in their 80s and 90's with disconnected phone numbers. These folks went to the big voting booth in the sky, and no one took them off the rolls.

 

[Statistikhengst]

I think an easier fix would be to move election days to Saturday instead of Tuesday. On Tuesday, you gget a mad rush of people running in to vote before or after work, then a whole day of election workers sitting about with nothing to do. (I've been a poll watcher, I've seen it.)

Another reform would be to keep the rolls up to date. When I worked on the Duckworth campaign in 2012, we got these voter lists that were full of people who were all in their 80s and 90's with disconnected phone numbers. These folks went to the big voting booth in the sky, and no one took them off the rolls.

On my Electioneering thread, I recommended Sunday, something similar.