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Lost Votes, Problem Ballots, Long Waits? Flaws Are Widespread, Study Finds
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: February 19th, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/06/us/politics/us-voting-flaw...
The flaws in the American election system are deep and widespread, extending beyond isolated voting issues in a few locations and flaring up in states rich and poor, according to a major new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The group ranked all 50 states based on more than 15 criteria, including wait times, lost votes and problems with absentee and provisional ballots, and the order often confounds the conventional wisdom. In 2010, for instance, Mississippi ranked last over all. But it was preceded by two surprises: New York and California. Poor Southern states perform well, and they perform badly, said Heather K. Gerken, a law professor at Yale and a Pew adviser. Rich New England states perform well and badly mostly badly. A main goal of the exercise, which grew out of Professors Gerkens 2009 book, The Democracy Index, was to shame poor performers into doing better, she said. Some states ... lost very few votes because of shortcomings in voting technology and voter confusion, with the best 10 reporting failure rates of 0.5 percent or less in 2008. In West Virginia, by contrast, the rate was 3.2 percent. The Pew study focused on the 2008 and 2010 elections, the most recent ones for which comprehensive data were available. The study also found wide variation in how easy registering to vote can be. North Dakota does not even require it, and Alabama and Kansas reported rejecting less than 0.05 percent of registration applications in 2008. But Pennsylvania and Indiana each rejected more than half of the registration applications they received in 2010.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on major inadequacies in US electoral procedures, click here.
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