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No Problems Expected For Hawaii's New Vote-By-Mail System For The Nov. 3 Election

Blaze Lovell

September 21, 2020 |

Honolulu Civil Beat |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Hawaii

Election officials in Hawaii made adjustments to their election regulations for the August 2020 primary that resulted in the highest voter turnout for a primary in two decades. The state offered multiple ways to return ballots and created a new system to help voters with special needs. They also implemented security measures, including unique bar codes and signature verification, to deter fraud. The state earned an “A” in the Brookings Institution’s ranking of states’ preparedness to vote during a pandemic and will use insights from the primary to increase access even more during the general election.

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Voting from Jail Is a Right, and Now a Reality in Chicago

Pamela Kirkland

September 21, 2020 |

70 Million |

Podcast |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

Chicago's Cook County Jail became the first jail in the nation in March to open a polling place behind bars, resulting in about 1,800 voters casting ballots, a sharp increase in voting by eligible voters in the jail. The polling place, combined with expanded voter-registration efforts, resulted from a new Illinois law requiring all counties to expand voting access. Outside of Chicago that means voting by mail. The Chicago experience provides a window into efforts nationwide to expand voting access to people incarcerated in jails and prisons, or with criminal records.

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Hi, There. Want to Triple Voter Turnout?

Tina Rosenberg

September 19, 2020 |

The New York Times |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Vote Tripling is a get-out-the-vote strategy where volunteers set up outside of polling places, a safer pandemic option, and ask voters to text three friends with a reminder to vote. A randomized trial showed turnout was nearly 8 percentage points higher among people receiving texts. The message to vote holds more weight coming from a friend and it empowers those doing the texting, who also receive an election day reminder to send the texts. To be most effective, the technique requires a busy polling place where proximity to the polling place is legally allowed.

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Mail-ballot security in Montana: Verification, tracking, secrecy and counting

Mike Dennison

September 17, 2020 |

Missoula Current |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Montana

The majority of Montana voters have voted by mail for the past several elections without issues. Officials use several precautions that have successfully prevented fraud in the state. Each voter receives a postage-paid envelope with a unique bar code, and the ballot is placed in a “secrecy envelope” that is returned in the larger envelope, which is signed by the voter. Officials, who are trained in signature-matching, check each envelope and if there is a problem with the signature they reach out to voters, who are given a chance to fix the problem. Because of this, less than 1% of all ballots are rejected.

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How to Save Ballot Drop Boxes

Eric Cortellessa

September 16, 2020 |

Washington Monthly |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Voting by mail will increase dramatically due to Covid-19 and drop boxes are one way to collect these ballots. Although fears of fraud have been unfounded, the GOP initiated lawsuits to block or limit drop boxes if they are not monitored so some states and districts place the boxes in government buildings and other places, such as libraries, that are staffed. While this slightly limits the hours that voters can drop off their ballots, it uses existing resources to provide supervision and increases voter confidence that their ballots will be received, especially among ongoing issues with the postal service.

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How young poll workers may save Americans from Election Day chaos

Isaiah Murtaugh

September 16, 2020 |

USA Today |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Organizations ran campaigns to recruit young people to work as poll workers, addressing shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of high school and college students, as well as recent graduates, signed up to fill the gaps. Social media provided an effective recruitment tool, and the diverse coalition called Power to the Polls, that includes MTV, Uber, Starbucks, and others, got 400,000 people to sign up. Some coalition partners offer paid time off to their employees for working at polls and states, such as Georgia, offer poll worker compensation, which was a draw for young people.

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Are You Liberal? Are You Sure?

Will Doig

September 15, 2020 |

Reasons to be Cheerful |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

“Deep Canvassing” is an approach to political organizing based on the idea that our political beliefs may be more flexible than we think. Canvassers go door-to-door but instead of rallying identified supporters to go to the polls, they approach people who hold opposing viewpoints for meaningful conversations, including substantial active listening. Even though people start out attached to their own opinions, these meaningful connections have shown that people are usually willing to adjust their beliefs towards the center in a quest to find common ground.

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Why Pennsylvania is ground zero for mail-in voting debate

Christa Case Bryant

September 04, 2020 |

The Christian Science Monitor |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Pennsylvania

Learning from the failures of the 2020 Pennsylvania primary, where a sharp increase in mail-in voting led to a 2-week delay in certifying election results and many ballots being invalidated, officials introduced a bill to address those problems. Anticipating 3 million mail-in presidential election ballots, the bill would allow mailed in ballots to be opened before election day, which is currently prohibited. The bill would also notify voters and allow them to prove their identity in the case of signature mismatches. While officials are optimistic, there is not much time left to pass and implement the bill.

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Wisconsin voters should request ballots now for mail-in voting

Max Witynski

September 02, 2020 |

Wisconsin Watch |

Text |

Over 3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Wisconsin

In the 2020 Wisconsin primary, increased mail-in voting overwhelmed the system and last-minute decisions to vote by mail led to voter confusion. This increased ballot rejections, which can systematically disenfranchise some populations. Learning from these failures, officials will send absentee voting guidelines and applications to 2.6 million voters and use barcodes to track ballots. Due to mail delivery issues, officials also publicly urged voters to request and submit ballots well before the deadline. Critics believe the state could do much more to make voting safe and easy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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More People With Felony Convictions Can Vote, but Roadblocks Remain

Lindsey Van Ness

August 31, 2020 |

Stateline |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

A longstanding campaign to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions led nine states since the 2016 presidential election to create or expand such rights, benefiting hundreds of thousands of potential voters. As of 2016, an estimated 6.1 million people were unable to vote because of a felony conviction. As that number has dropped, advocates have faced another obstacle: getting newly enfranchised people to register and vote. Nationwide, a number of advocacy and public-interest groups are racing to register the formerly incarcerated as the 2020 election approaches.

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