The Commission on Federal Election Reform, a twenty-one member commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, has released its report, Building Confidence in U.S. Elections.

The commission was organized by American University’s Center for Democracy and Election Management and hearings began on April 18, 2005 with the goal of putting forth a set of recommendations to raise confidence in the electoral system. The report, released on September 19, 2005, “recommends a modern electoral system built on five pillars: (1) a universal and up-to-date registration list, accessible to the public; (2) a uniform voter identification system that is implemented in a way that increases, not impedes, participation; (3) measures to enhance ballot integrity and voter access; (4) a voter-verifiable paper trail and improved security of voting systems; and (5) electoral institutions that are impartial, professional, and independent.

The document puts forward 87 specific recommendations; the top items are:

• The implementation of a universal voter registration system where states (instead of local jurisdictions such as county or township) are responsible for the accuracy and quality of voter lists. This recommendation includes the proposal of a distributed database in which the registration lists can be shared interstate.
• Creation of a uniform system of voter identification based on an identification card. This includes the recommendation that states issue free photo-id cards in an affirmative role to those without a driver’s license
• Addition of measures to increase voter participation by asking states to assume a greater responsibility to register citizens, make voting more convenient, offer more information on registration lists and voting, host civic education programs, and more.
• The inclusion of an auditable backup on paper for electronic voting systems in order to provide confidence that ballots cast using these machines are counted accurately.
• The strengthening and restructuring of the system by which elections have been administered in the country through a reconstitution of the EAC and state election agencies on a non-partisan basis.

In addition to the main points, there are many other specific recommendations, including:

• A proposal that the media improve coverage of election by providing longer candidate discourse - at least five minutes - each night in the month preceding the election
• Ask that media voluntarily refrain from projecting presidential election results until polls close in the 48 contiguous states
• States provide unrestricted access toll legitimate domestic and international election observers.
• Changing the Presidential Primary schedule by creating four regional primaries
• For states to certify their presidential election prior to the “safe harbor” date. In addition, for states to enact new statutes to ensure that its resolution of all election disputes are given conclusive effect by Congress under United States Code

Overall, the report has an extensive and relatively comprehensive list of very practical changes. Further entries will discuss some of these in more detail.

As the off-year general election approaches, I’ve added the 2001 Gubernatorial Election results to the special Gubernatorial section. Only two states hold elections for the top statewide executive office in the year after the Presidential Election (Virginia and New Jersey). Subsequent to the casting of ballots on November 8, 2005, the Atlas will add the two states’ returns for Governor. Pictured above right is the county-wide map of returns for Governor for the Commonwealth of Virginia in the 2001 Gubernatorial Election where Democrat Mark Warner defeated Republican Mark Earley 52% to 47%. (Democratic wins in Red, Republican in Blue)

In March of 2005, the Secretary of State of Mississippi signed an Amended Certification of the “whole number of votes given in each county for Presidential Electors for each candidate in the November 2, 2004, General Election for the offices of President and Vice-President of the United States of America”. This amended certification corrected the well-documented error in Lowndes County (the total shown on the County Recapitulation sheet for Bush truncated the final zero giving Bush 1,369 votes instead of actual sum of 13,690 votes). The amended certification also corrected a data shift error in the DeSoto Official Recapitulation sheet that occured in Bridgetown Precinct. This error gave 331 votes to Harris, 3 to Kerry, 1 to Nader and 0 to Peroutka. Shifting the data to the correct figures gives 0 to Harris, 331 to Kerry, 3 to Nader, and 1 to Peroutka. The state-wide totals are adjusted accordingly and may be seen on the Mississippi Summary Results for 2004.

The new Wiki in addition to the continued growth of the Atlas Forum had caused the server to bog down on occasion. This performance issue has been addressed today with a memory upgrade (1.5GB from 750MB). Please continue to enjoy the site!

The Atlas now has a Wiki! The community pages are intended as an area for contribution by interested parties in the area of Presidential Elections, History, US Politics, as well as repository for community interaction. I envision the wiki to include additional information related to elections - such as defining terms (examples include Fusion, Caucus, Primary, etc.), articles on historical election patterns, candidate biographies, political party information, interesting trivia, etc. Cross-linking between the main atlas database and the wiki helps to improve the educational aspect of the site. Please send me an email if you are interested in contributing to the Wiki.

The home page site counter has passed two million visitors. Thanks to all the visitors who have made this site such a great success!

The New York Time published a number of articles on the polital geography of the battleground states during the 2000 campaign and election cycle. The articles included county maps and past election data that cited the Atlas as the source. I have asked for and have been granted permission to republish the articles on this site. They can be found on the Election Information page.

The 2004 election spreadsheet data file has been released to version 1.0. The file includes vote data for the 2004 election at the National, State, County, and Township (New England States) levels. Also included are statistics, charts, voter turnout by state, candidates, and ballot status for each candidate. The file lacks the November 2004 voter registration figure for Maine (they do not have a scheduled release date for the data). The January 2004 datum is used in its place. The spreadsheet is available for purchase on the Store page (the file is available for free to those who have purchased the preliminary file.)

One of the most common questions received here at the atlas is whether there are data for U.S. President tabulated by Congressional District. Many of the inquiries are from visitors whom wish to perform an analysis on how the results of the Electoral College would be different using a district method (such as that currently in use by Maine or Nebraska). The Atlas currently has an incomplete (although growing) set of data for U.S. President compiled by Congressional District for the 2004 general election. The problems facing such a compilation are many.

As an example of the problems encountered, consider the state of Georgia. With thirteen congressional districts to be drawn across 159 counties, the state legislature saw fit (for some reason) to gerrymander the congressional districts such that the boundaries split 33 counties when the decennial redistricting took place following the 2000 census. To compile the results, the data from each of these counties must be obtained at the precinct level and cross-referenced with a key that describes to which district each precinct belongs. However, it turns out that many precincts do not belong to a single district - the CD boundaries actually split precincts. For example, Cobb County has 19 precincts split between districts (either between district 5 and 11 or district 6 and 11). These votes, unfortunately, can not be allocated to a congressional district. Furthermore, all counties in Georgia have a dedicated precinct that includes all absentee ballots cast in the county into a single precinct (this is different from other states, such as New York, where absentee ballots are counted with their individual precincts). In all 33 of the split counties, the absentee ballots can not be allocated to congressional districts. Typically, in 2004, the absentee ballots comprise 10 to 20 percent of the total votes cast in the county. Like absentee ballots, provisional ballots also have their own “precinct” and can not be allocated (although the number of votes in this category is signficantly smaller than absentees or split precincts).

Overall, in Georgia, about 490,000 votes can not be allocated to the correct congressional district (about 15% of total votes cast state-wide). This is a relatively significant figure that may impact the accuracy of the results for President by Congressional District. Its also quite unfortunate for those of us who prefer precicsion in their data.

I have updated corrected write-in figures for the state of New Hampshire in the General Election of 2004 for Presidential Candidates: Michael Badnarik, Michael Peroutka, and “Write-ins” (i.e. other write-ins) at the city/town and precinct level. Upon compiling the precinct-level data several weeks ago, I noticed that the data for individual write-in candidates posted on their web site under “Individual write-ins” did not reconcile with the total scattering vote at the precinct level (the figures did correlate at the county level). I emailed the New Hampshire Secretary of State Elections Division to ask about the discrepancy. Today, I received the following (very interesting) reply:

I received your email about the discrepancies in the write in votes for president. After having 3 different people work on these numbers, I decided to do it myself. Yes there were discrepancies. I went through each and every town and made corrections. I hope to have those corrections posted on our website in a couple of days. (maybe today..can’t promise) Thank you for calling this to my attention.

The new figures have been updated on the Atlas.