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II. Election News This Week
- Everyone has some type of skeleton in their closet. Unfortunately for the city of Anchorage, the skeleton it recently discovered in a closet was black bags containing 141 more uncounted ballots from the disastrous April primary. “It’s 141 ballots. It’s not going to change the outcome of any election. But the fact of the matter is, I’m gonna tell you I’m having enough trouble living with the fact that we had a messed up election. I’m not going to live with the fact that maybe somebody’s vote didn’t get counted that made the effort to come out and do it. Whatever we have to do to make sure that all 141 of those are accounted for, we’re going to do it,” Anchorage Assembly Chair Ernie Hall told Alaska Public Radio. According to APR, next week the election commission will meet to check the ballots and information about which precincts the ballots came from will be released in a report. Because of the discovery of the additional ballots, the election will need to be re-certified Hall says, likely in early August.
- Following hundreds of calls from concerned and annoyed voters, this week Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler and registrars from across The Pelican State are warning citizens about a voter registration mailing from the Voter Participation Center. Complaints about the registration forms include pre-filled applications with nicknames, residents who thought someone was trying to change their name and deceased applicants’ names on mailings. "We do not believe that VPC performed proper due diligence in purchasing the list used for the mailing," Schedler told KATC. "If the mailing had included current information, we would not have had the numerous complaints that were filed with our office. Not only did the list contain dead people, but it also contained minors and felons which opens the door to voter fraud."
- In an effort to fix issues that resulted in election night reporting problems, the Waukesha County Board has agreed to request $256,300 from the county’s contingency fund. According to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the additional spending request includes $237,300 for Command Central LLC, an election software vendor, to program voting machines for the May and June recall elections and for the August primary. It also includes $4,000 to send two employees in the clerk's office and an information technology specialist to the firm's headquarters for training so others are capable of programming the equipment for the November election. It would cost $67,000 more to have Command Central do it. And $15,000 more was spent on an analysis of problems and recommendations by SysLogic Inc., a consultant in business processes.
- Personnel News: John Boyers has joined the Sumner County, Tenn. election commission as the new Democrat appointee. Alysoun McLaughlin has left her position with the D.C. Board of Elections, but she hasn’t gone too far. McLaughlin is now the deputy director of elections in Montgomery County, Md.