A Topeka man is the latest to receive from the John McCain campaign an unsolicited absentee ballot application, a curious mailing similar to one that has perplexed voters in numerous states.
It was delivered to Jared Starkey at the Topeka residence where he has been registered to vote since February. But it included an application for a Missouri absentee ballot and a return envelope to be sent to Christian County, Mo., where Starkey used to live and where, unbeknownst to him, he is still registered.

Our cooperating attorney Marian K. Schneider has submitted this written testimony on behalf of Voter Action before the hearing.
View Our Statement Here

Results were received by the Secretary of State from all 87 counties before Friday at 3 p.m.
The state canvassing board will be asked to certify the candidacy of Deborah Hedlund on Sunday, Sept. 21 to face candidate Lorie Gildea in the Nov. 4 general election race for associate justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Ritchie reported that no challenged ballots have been reported throughout the entire state in the recount. Preliminary results indicate that Hedlund received 1,341 votes more than the third place candidate Jill Clark.

A nonpartisan race on Aug. 26 for a county court judgeship remains unresolved. One candidate held a small lead when ballots were tabulated on election night; then, officials declared his opponent the victor when he appeared to seize the lead by 60 votes after a Labor Day weekend recount.

After a cumbersome resorting and recounting of ballots from the Aug. 26 election, investigators produced two new troubling findings Friday.

First, auditors have discovered electronic evidence that 110 ballots from voters at a Delray Beach precinct weren't included in election night results. Those votes also weren't included in totals from a recount.

In a narrow interpretation of Ohio law, Democratic Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner says many of the McCain forms have not been completed properly. If the box stating the person is an eligible elector -- or qualified voter – is not checked, Brunner said, the application is no good.
Even though the box is unneeded, by not checking it voters are essentially admitting they’re not eligible, Brunner said.

The groups said this week they are pressing state officials to ensure that poll workers are trained to hand out emergency paper ballots while the machines get fixed.
They want the paper ballots to be distributed when at least half of a polling station's machines malfunction.
The groups, including Common Cause, Voter Action and the Advancement Project, say there were dozens of reports of inoperable machines in the April primary, but paper ballots were not always available.

DENVER -- Denver elections officials are pulling the plug on electronic voting machines. They are going back to paper ballots.
They are also going back to 190 precinct polling locations, instead of the 55 voting centers used in 2006.
Those voting centers were designed for convenience, allowing residents to vote anywhere, not just in their neighborhood. But many argue those voting centers just made things a mess, causing long lines and chaos. 
So this year you'll vote like you used to, near your home.

The term "paper trail", in my opinion, is an unfortunate one. When I first got seriously involved in this issue in 2003, many of us advocated paper trails as a solution to paperless DREs. The thinking was that if every vote is recorded on a piece of paper and that paper was audited by the voter, then a correct tally could be produced by counting the papers. This could be used to audit the machines, or as the definitive ballots. In theory, this seems reasonable, but it doesn't work in practice, and the theory is a bit flawed as well.

Tosto, 59, said she assumed the delegates listed beneath Sen. Barack Obama's name were his supporters, and the delegates beneath Sen. Hillary Clinton's name were hers.  That's not the case, she reports after voting at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church.