Category Archive

Election Academy:  There have been lots of stories in the news – and on this blog – recently about election officials’ concerns about how the U.S. Postal Service handles and delivers voting materials and ballots. With 2016 just around the corner, the Election Assistance Commission and the Federal Voting Assistance Program have decided to be proactive and see if there’s any way to get the USPS and election offices on the same page in this crucial election year. Here’s the text of a letter they sent earlier this week: The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program … Read More

This week’s electionlineWeekly focuses on a new report recommending the U.S. Postal Service do more to encourage vote-by-mail and the USPS’ response. As always, Mindy Moretti has the story: The U.S. Postal Service is the largest self-funded agency of the U.S. government and is supported entirely by revenue from postage and products. Because of that, unlike most federal agencies that are always looking for ways to cut costs, the Postal Service is also always looking for ways to boost revenue. Therefore, with the increasing popularity of vote-by-mail, the Office of the Inspector General of the USPS (USPSOIG) set out to evaluate voting methods to identify … Read More

PEW Trusts: The way Americans vote is changing, with more and more of them receiving and casting their ballots by mail. The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that 10 percent of all ballots cast in the 2000 presidential election were cast by mail. By 2012, the practice had nearly doubled, to 19 percent of voters. In last year’s midterms, data from the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) found that around a quarter of all voters voted by mail. But not all voters who receive their ballots in the mail return them that way. The SPAE estimates that in 2014 around 1 out of every 5 mail … Read More