Ignorance is anything but blissful

Last year, NOI created the Organizer’s Guide to Election Administration, a tool that provides organizers state-by-state information on the rules and laws they need to know to register voters, conduct absentee ballot programs and ensure their people can vote on Election Day. But as you have probably heard, these laws are constantly changing – especially during this past year. Legislatures around the country have passed laws curtailing Americans’ right to vote and making every step of the process harder. So it’s more important than ever for you to know the rules.

I’ve spent the past month reading laws, and now we've updated the Organizer’s Guide to Election Administration to reflect all of those changes that have been made in states with upcoming 2011 elections (i.e., statewide, referendum and major-city mayoral elections). Want to know if you can return a voter’s absentee ballot application for them? When early voting ends? What type of ID a voter needs to vote (and if they need one)? We’ve got all these questions, and a ton more, answered. (And for those of you not working on 2011 elections, every other state will have its information updated by mid-November.)

To take the headache out of navigating all these rules, we’ve distilled them down into simple, straight-forward questions and answers. And in this round of updates, we’ve also added a couple additional fields of information – like emergency absentee ballot provisions for hospitalized voters, if voters have a right to time off work to vote and if student IDs meet the state’s ID requirement.

To learn about the guide’s features, how to use it and let us know how to make it a better resource for you, please join us on a web tour Monday, October 17 at 3 PM EST. Hope you can join us.

Rosemarie Clouston is Election Administration Research Fellow at NOI