All Things Elections
Episodes
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In this episode of All Things Elections podcast, we speak to Tammy Patrick, Senior Advisor of Elections at the Democracy Project and former Federal Compliance Officer for Maricopa County (AZ) Elections, and Linda Lindberg, General Registrar of Arlington County (VA) Elections, about how the vote counting process works from Election Day through the certification of results. We cover absentee and provisional ballots and help to debunk some persistent myths about how backend of elections are conducted.
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Americans are a very mobile society with millions of citizens moving each year both within states and to other states. Until recently, states had few formal options to compare their voter registration lists with one another and almost no mechanism to reach out to eligible but unregistered voters in their jurisdictions. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), created in 2012 with just seven states, now boasts 25 states including DC sharing data to create more accurate and complete voter registration lists across the country. State usage of programs like ERIC is a recommendation BPC supports.
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The contours of the American electorate are constantly changing. Trends in birthrate, educational attainment, and group support for particular parties are measurable and projectable in the short- and long-term. How these factors play out at the individual state and county levels will have huge implications for both Republicans and Democrats as the country heads toward the 2018 and 2020 elections and beyond.
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Suspected meddling during the 2016 presidential election led to a controversial Department of Homeland Security designation of elections as critical infrastructure. This federal foray into election security met with initial criticism and concerns about the appropriate role between local, state, and federal government officials in keeping the electoral process secure. In just about a year and a half since that announcement was made, DHS and its affiliates have made a lot of progress.
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This month’s All Things Elections podcast features Dr. Eitan Hersh, associate professor of political science at Tufts University, interviewed by Democracy Project director, Dr. John Fortier. Hersh, author of Hacking the Electorate, recently testified before Congress about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. He breaks down for us the landscape of how campaigns use data, media platforms, and why we should be skeptical about the power and potential of data analytics for persuasion.
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This month we talk about the voting experience at the polls and the BPC/MIT Election Lines Program. Our guest this month is a co-author on the just-released report, Improving the Voting Experience: Reducing Polling Place Wait Times by Measuring Lines and Managing Polling Place Resources. Dr. Charles Stewart is the director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.
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In our first episode, we talk to Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft about voter registration modernization in his state and why complete and accurate voter rolls improve Americans’ voting experience.