Most states require that all electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the most votes in that state. After state election officials certify the popular vote of each state, the winning slate of electors meet in the state capital and cast two ballots—one for Vice President and one for President. Electors cannot vote for a Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate who both hail from an elector's home state. For instance, if both candidates come from New York, New York's electors may vote for one of the candidates, but not both. In this hypothetical scenario, however, Delaware's electors may vote for both New York candidates.
This requirement is a holdover from early American history when one of the country's major political fault lines divided big states from small states. The founders hoped this rule would prevent the largest states from dominating presidential elections. Mail-in/absentee ballot request forms typically require applicants to sign the form and affirm their eligibility to cast a mail-in/absentee ballot under penalty of law.
Upon receipt of a mail-in/absentee ballot request form, election officials implement varying procedures to verify the identity and eligibility of the applicant prior to sending the applicant a mail-in/absentee ballot. Such procedures include checking the signature and information submitted on the form against the corresponding voter registration record, as well as ensuring that multiple mail-in/absentee ballots are not sent in response to applications using the same voter's information. Retention elections held under merit selection systems are an effective and appropriate means of holding judges accountable to the people. In addition to being subject to removal and other sanctions available for misbehavior by the Commission on Judicial Conduct, all merit system judges are regularly subject to removal from office by popular vote.
By contrast, elected judges in other states can be removed by popular vote only if they are opposed in the general election. Since judges are frequently unopposed, the people often have less "control" over elected judges. Retention elections also allow the general public, bar associations and the media to focus on problems with a particular judge's performance, rather than on campaign rhetoric and hyperbole often heard in contested election campaigns. The Judicial Performance Review Commission assesses whether or not judges meet judicial performance standards through the collection of data and reports its findings to voters in the Secretary of State's Voter Information Pamphlet.
The voters decide whether to retain the judges in office. On April 24, 2017 North Dakota enacted HB 1369, putting it once again into the strict non-photo ID category. The law permits those who do not bring ID to the polls to cast a ballot that is "set aside" until the voter presents valid ID.
Valid ID must be presented before the Canvass, six days after the election. The bill also allows voters to present alternative documents, such as utility bills or bank statements, if the ID presented does not contain all required information. And, voters in special categories such as voters who live in long-term care facilities, voters with disabilities, and military voters may provide alternative forms of identification. In September 2018, the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals put the district court order on hold. Supreme Court declined to intervene in a challenge to the North Dakota voter identification law. The 2017 strict non-photo ID requirement is in place for the 2018 midterm election.
For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party's national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump's crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject.
They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters. Per federal law, all ballots, applications, and registrations related to elections for federal offices, such as those for President and Vice President, Members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives, must be retained and preserved for 22 months from the date of the election.
In addition, many states also require specific state and local security protocols for stored ballots, such as storage in a secure vault featuring double lock systems that can only be opened when authorized representatives from both political parties are present. This requirement is intended to ensure all ballots and relevant records, such as voter registrations, cannot be discarded, but are available in case they are needed for recounts or audits to resolve any potential issues. At that time, Arizonans voted to discontinue the popular election of appellate judges, Supreme Court justices, and trial court judges in the most populous counties. Four judicial nominating commissions have since been created to screen judicial candidates for nomination to the Governor for appointment . Unlike the federal system, merit selection in Arizona is not a system that grants lifetime judgeships. Once Arizona judges are appointed, they must periodically stand for retention election, when voters decide whether to keep or remove them.
Performance review is a way of evaluating the judges who seek to remain on the bench. A commission reviews the judges' job performances to determine if they are meeting judicial performance standards. The public uses the information provided from the performance reviews at the retention election to decide if the judges should remain in office. While a number of states use some form of performance review to evaluate their judges, Arizona also requires its judges to undergo a self-evaluation process. Voter ID laws deprive many voters of their right to vote, reduce participation, and stand in direct opposition to our country's trend of including more Americans in the democratic process. Many Americans do not have one of the forms of identification states acceptable for voting.
These voters are disproportionately low-income, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and people with disabilities. Such voters more frequently have difficulty obtaining ID, because they cannot afford or cannot obtain the underlying documents that are a prerequisite to obtaining government-issued photo ID card. Voter identification laws are a part of an ongoing strategy to roll back decades of progress on voting rights. Thirty-four states have identification requirements at the polls.
Seven states have strict photo ID laws, under which voters must present one of a limited set of forms of government-issued photo ID in order to cast a regular ballot – no exceptions. Every state also has laws and processes to verify vote tallies before results are officially certified. State processes include robust chain-of-custody procedures, auditable logs, and canvass processes. These canvass and certification procedures are also generally conducted in the public eye, as political party representatives and other observers are typically allowed to be present, to add an additional layer of verification. This means voting system software is not a single point of failure and such systems are subject to multiple audits to ensure accuracy and reliability.
For example, some counties conduct multiple audits, including a post-election logic and accuracy test of the voting system, and a bipartisan hand count of paper ballots. State policies vary on how to handle an in-person voter who is listed in the poll book as having been sent a mail-in/absentee ballot. In most states, the voter would be required to cast a provisional ballot that could be later reviewed by election officials. In others, the voter may cast a regular ballot and any corresponding mail-in/absentee ballot returned in the name of that voter would be rejected. In all such cases, instances of potential double voting or voter impersonation could be directed to appropriate authorities for investigation.
In addition to the laws governing what identification all voters must show at the polls, first time voters may face additional requirements. The federal Help America Vote Act (section 15483) mandates that all states require identification from first-time voters who register to vote by mail and have not provided verification of their identification at the time of registration. The act lists a "current and valid photo identification" or "a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter" as acceptable forms of ID. In addition to photo IDs, a voter registration card is also permitted. If no ID is not presented, the voter votes on a provisional ballot and election officials verify the information provided. See also the Factsheets on Free and fair European elections and on Protecting Europeans' personal data in elections.
What Does Set For Status Mean In Court The JPR Commission uses the public input to decide whether each judge subject to retention election "Meets" or "Does Not Meet" judicial performance standards. The Commission reports its decision and the information collected from the surveys in the Secretary of State Voter Information Pamphlet and on this website. Voters can use the JPR Commission's findings and data reports to decide how they will vote on each judge on the retention ballot. Judges under the merit selection and retention system appear on the ballot as nonpartisan candidates; therefore, a judge's political affiliation is not considered or included in the Commission's report of in the Voter Information Pamphlet. Voters who want to cast ballots on Nov. 2 have to make sure they're registered by Oct. 18. They can request a mail-in or absentee ballot until Oct. 26, and must get it back to their county election office by 8 p.m.
If there isn't enough time to mail the ballot, voters can drop it off in person at their county elections office, or submit it at a drop box or satellite office if their county has one. North Dakota enacted a voter ID law in 2013 and amended this law in 2015, then once again in 2017. The 2015 law was challenged in 2016 and the federal judge issued a temporary order that some sort of "fail-safe," like an affidavit, be an option until such time as the court makes an official ruling on the challenge.
This temporary order changed North Dakota to a non-strict state in 2016. In 2017, HB 1369 was enacted allowing voters who do not present an ID at the polls to cast a ballot that is set aside until the voter presents valid identification. This moved North Dakota once again into the strict non-photo ID category. There are some alternative options for voters without identification in special categories, though. By 1927, 12 states selected judges in nonpartisan elections.
Critics claimed that as long as judges had to campaign for office, politics would still play a role. Other critics questioned whether citizens would be able to cast informed ballots in nonpartisan judicial elections, offering the assumption being that party affiliation communicates a candidate's values in an easy shorthand. Three states that had experimented with nonpartisan elections switched back to partisan ones by 1927. Consider, for example, Donald J. Trump for President v. Boockvar, the case for which Giuliani made his disastrous court appearance. The Trump campaign claimed that some Pennsylvania counties told voters who cast defective ballots how to fix them, while other counties did not. They also accused election officials of not giving the Trump campaign's poll watchers sufficient access to the ballot-counting process.
Mis- and disinformation can undermine public confidence in the electoral process, as well as in our democracy. Elections are administered by state and local officials who implement numerous safeguards to protect the security of your vote pursuant to various state and federal laws and processes. This resource is designed to debunk common misinformation and disinformation narratives and themes that relate broadly to the security of election infrastructure and related processes.
It is not intended to address jurisdiction-specific claims. Instead, this resource addresses election security rumors by describing common and generally applicable protective processes, security measures, and legal requirements designed to protect against or detect large-scale security issues related to election infrastructure and processes. Supreme Court in which that court reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of ballots cast in the U.S. presidential election of 2000. The ruling effectively awarded Florida's 25 votes in the electoral college—and thus the election itself—to Republican candidate George W. Bush. It will become a state jail felony for local election officials to send unsolicited applications to request a mail-in ballot.
That same punishment applies to officials who approve the use of public funds "to facilitate" the unsolicited distribution of applications by third-parties, which would keep counties from providing applications to local groups helping get out the vote. Political parties would still be able to send out unsolicited applications on their own dime. In 1992 Arizona voters amended the state constitution to create a process for evaluating the performance of judges appointed through merit selection. The constitution requires that the performance evaluation process include input from the public and that judicial performance reports be given to the voters before the state's general election. Complete separation of a judge from extrajudicial activities is neither possible nor wise; a judge should not become isolated from the society in which the judge lives. As a judicial officer and a person specially learned in the law, a judge is in a unique position to contribute to the law, the legal system, and the administration of justice, including revising substantive and procedural law and improving criminal and juvenile justice.
To the extent that the judge's time permits and impartiality is not compromised, the judge is encouraged to do so, either independently or through a bar association, judicial conference, or other organization dedicated to the law. Subject to the same limitations, judges may also engage in a wide range of non-law-related activities. A voter without one of the acceptable forms of photo identification can vote on a provisional ballot. He or she will have up to three days after the election to present appropriate photo identification at the county registrar's office in order for the provisional ballot to be counted. A voter who did not present a required document or identification card may cast a provisional ballot.
The ballot will be counted only if the voter presents acceptable identification to the county clerk or election board by noon the Monday following the election. After a criminal or civil case is tried, it may be appealed to a higher court — a federal court of appeals or state appellate court. A litigant who files an appeal, known as an "appellant," must show that the trial court or administrative agency made a legal error that affected the outcome of the case.
An appellate court makes its decision based on the record of the case established by the trial court or agency — it does not receive additional evidence or hear witnesses. You cannot re-elect to be tried in the provincial court after you have elected to be tried in the Court of Queen's Bench without the written consent of the crown. Likewise, if you elected to be tried in the Court of Queen's Bench without a preliminary inquiry, or the offence that you are charged with does not entitle you to a preliminary inquiry, you can re-elect to be tried by judge alone or with a jury up to 60 days before your trial date.
A federal lawsuit, filed by national voting rights groups, takes aim specifically at the ban on out-of-state groups mailing absentee ballot applications to voters, saying it unfairly limits their efforts. The embrace of the independent state legislature doctrine by four members of the Court may have profound implications for future elections if Barrett provides the fifth vote to enshrine this doctrine in law. Could the Court's conservative majority use the doctrine to eliminate state governors' power to veto election laws?
Or eliminate state courts' ability to enforce their state constitution's voting rights protections? If that happens, that means that in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which have Republican legislatures and Democratic governors, the governor could lose their power to veto voter suppression laws or gerrymandered congressional maps. The second part of the process happens during the general election.
When the voters in each State cast votes for the Presidential candidate of their choice they are voting to select their State's electors. The potential electors' names may or may not appear on the ballot below the name of the Presidential candidates, depending on election procedures and ballot formats in each State. Choosing each State's electors is a two-part process.
First, the political parties in each State choose slates of potential electors sometime before the general election. Second, during the general election, the voters in each State select their State's electors by casting their ballots. While ballot choices are secret in almost all circumstances, a voter's party affiliation and history of voting generally are not. Information contained in voter registration records, such as name, address, phone number, and political party affiliation (in states with party-based voter registration), is generally available to political parties and others. This data also regularly contains information on whether a voter voted in a particular election, but not their ballot choices. Election officials further implement varying procedures to verify the identity and eligibility of those who submit mail-in/absentee ballots.
Those who submit mail-in/absentee ballots are required to sign the mail-in/absentee ballot envelope. In some states, a notarized signature, the signature of a witness or witnesses, and/or a copy of valid identification is also required. Upon receipt of a mail-in/absentee ballot, election officials verify the signature on the mail-in/absentee ballot envelope and/or that the mail-in/absentee ballot has been otherwise properly submitted prior to retrieving the ballot from its envelope and submitting it for counting. Some states notify the voter if there is a discrepancy or missing signature, affording the voter an opportunity to correct the issue. Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court's decision that manual recounts of ballots should continue in some counties, holding that the various methods and standards of the recount process violated the equal protection clause of the U.S.
Sometimes judges are required to make unpopular decisions in order to uphold the law. It is the job of the courts to make sure that the limits of power placed on each branch of government are observed. Judges who must depend on winning re-election to keep their jobs may be unable to remain impartial as they could be penalized by the voters for making one or two unpopular decisions. Merit selection judges are chosen from a large pool of applicants on the basis of their qualifications rather than on political signs and slogans.
