City of Boston: The Mary Eliza Project: Ward 11 Voter Records Now Available. “In Dorchester’s Ward 11, over 1500 women registered to vote between August 12 and October 13, 1920. We have finished transcribing the Ward 11 Women’s Voter Registers and the data is now available at Analyze Boston.”
Yorkshire Bylines: Musk’s reader suppression about voter suppression. “In the latest twist of logic for Elon Musk, his chaotic version of Twitter has now decided to flag Byline Times as an ‘unsafe’ site. Worse still, the article selected as ‘potentially spammy or unsafe’ is an article by Josiah Mortimer on voter suppression, entitled ‘VOTER ID “It’s Far Worse than Any US State”‘. Mortimer’s article examines the rushed roll out of mandatory voter ID for next May’s local elections, which have been widely condemned as voter suppression, particularly when it comes to young people.”
Washington Post: You can now track your ballot online in half of states. This is a “Gift Article” and you should be able to read it without paywall for the next week. “Want to make sure your vote counts in these high-stakes midterm elections? Track your ballot online like a UPS delivery. The technology to do that is now available to more than a quarter of all Americans, in part because of investments made for mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic.”
WTOP: Website launched by DC-area students helps voters pick candidates. “When you first log on to Voting Buddy, you fill out five questions about politics. After answering those questions and entering your ZIP code, Voting Buddy allows you to find like-minded candidates in your voting district based on those questions.” The headline makes it sound like it provides information only on DC-area candidates, but I think it’s nationwide. I tried it – the interface is a little awkward and at one point I was told I would have to sign up for a membership for $0. (At no point was I ever asked for payment data or anything like that.) Great data, a little clunky.
Mozilla Blog: Prep for the U.S. midterm elections with these online tools. “We’re not here to tell you who to vote for. But as an organization that advocates for a healthy internet, we consider online misinformation to be a huge barrier to seeing that better internet. Here are some nonpartisan, online resources to help us all do the responsible thing: Make informed choices and get ready to vote.”
BusinessWire: Vote Run Lead Launches New Tool Critical to Understanding Representation and the Importance of State Legislative Races (PRESS RELEASE). “Vote Run Lead, the nonprofit that trains women to run for political office and win, is launching a new data visualization tool called the State of My Democracy, that shows the state of democracy and women’s representation in America’s statehouses.”
Meredith College: New Website Aims to Make Voting Easier in North Carolina. “As Election Day 2022 fast approaches, a new tool has been launched to make the process easier for North Carolina voters. The site… was created by Meredith College Associate Professor of Political Science Whitney Ross Manzo and UNC-Chapel Hill Associate Professor of Public Policy Rebecca Kreitzer. According to Manzo and Kreitzer, between 35-60% of eligible American voters don’t vote in an average election. One of the reasons is that the process of voting is complicated and time-consuming. The new website is meant to take some of the confusion out of the process.”
CNET: Google Doodle Encourages All Eligible to Register to Vote. “One of the most important rights US citizens have is the right to vote. Voting is essential to maintaining a well-functioning democracy. To highlight the gravity of that fundamental right, Google on Tuesday dedicated its Doodle to National Voter Registration Day.”
Microsoft Blog: Because every vote counts: making elections more accessible. “Today, the Microsoft Accessibility and Democracy Forward teams also celebrate the launch of the Center for Civic Designs’ Disability Voting Index. This new tool offers a single, centralized location that makes it easy to quickly search and understand accessibility options in all 50 states so that more people with disabilities can participate in the electoral process.”
NiemanLab: Most local election offices still aren’t on social media, new research finds. “In our research as scholars of voter participation and electoral processes, we find that when local election officials not only have social media accounts but use them to distribute information about voting, voters of all ages — but particularly young voters — are more likely to register to vote, to cast ballots, and to have their ballots counted.”
University of Southern California: Midterm Elections: Data-Mapping Tool for Voting Locations Now Available in 14 States. “The Voting Location Siting Tool uses a web-based interactive data mapping system to identify areas within a half mile in diameter where vote centers and polling places would likely have the most success in serving voters…. Launched in California in 2018, the tool is now available in 14 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin. Over the coming months, CID will be conducting trainings for election officials and community advocacy groups on how to use the tool to identify accessible and equitably distributed polling locations in their communities. ”
13 News Now: Virginia launches website to help people stay informed about voting, elections process . “The Virginia Department of Elections launched a website to help people stay informed about voting and the elections process. The department said the ‘Vote with Confidence’ site has information about when and where people can vote, how Virginia conducts its elections, and key dates and deadlines.”
Ohio Senate: Ohio Redistricting Commission Launches Redistricting.Ohio.Gov. “In addition to providing details about dates and locations for the Commission’s upcoming regional public hearings, the website provides access to witness slips for Ohioans who are interested in testifying in-person or submitting written testimony to the Commission. The website also provides access to 2020 U.S. Census data, which members of the public can use to create map proposals of their own. Maps can be uploaded to the website as ZIP files.”
Washington State University: Open source tool can help identify gerrymandering in voting maps. “In an article in the Harvard Data Science Review, the researchers describe the improved mathematical methodology of an open source tool called GerryChain. The tool can help observers detect gerrymandering in a voting district plan by creating a pool, or ensemble, of alternate maps that also meet legal voting criteria. This map ensemble can show if the proposed plan is an extreme outlier—one that is very unusual from the norm of plans generated without bias, and therefore, likely to be drawn with partisan goals in mind.”
ABC News: Voter registration data for 113K Alaskans exposed in breach. “The breach affected about 113,000 Alaskans who had used the online voter registration system within the past five years to change some detail, such as an address or party affiliation, he said. That system went online in 2015.”
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