Tuesday, July 27, 2010:

The New Organizing Institute has an eight-page report summarizing findings of other studies about “Lost Voters, Lost Votes.” For example, 1.9 million voters did not cast a ballot in the 2008 election for “one simple and solvable reason: they did not know where to go.” Voting in the wrong precinct also blocked an additional 90,000 ballots from being counted nationwide. (North Carolina allows provisional ballots cast in the right county but wrong precinct to be counted.) The lack of good information about polling sites especially affects young voters and people of color. More public information is needed in multiple media about how to vote and where. In a relatively low-visibility election like 2010, voters especially need information about the candidates. The Pew Center funded a much larger study of the attitudes of citizens about their voting experience in 2008.