Sunday voting – Sandy Rosenberg

Sunday voting may not be too close anymore

February 15, 2022 | by delsandy | Uncategorized | No Comments

This is not the first time I’ve introduced a bill requiring early voting on Sunday – two days before Election Day.

The objection that killed my legislation – the voter registration books [pollbooks] for hundreds of precincts can’t be updated in the 36 hours between the closing of the polls on Sunday and reopening them on Tuesday.

Technology and perhaps politics may have changed.

This is what key witnesses said at today’s bill hearing.

A representative for the Maryland Association of Election Officials stated, “[As for] the number of days, we will do whatever the General Assembly wants. Our concern is just that technical component of how the electronic pollbooks function between Election Day and early voting. I would defer that technical component to the State Board of Elections, because we follow their procedures.”

The representative for the State Board responded, “I would say that, yes, if the days shift we would make sure that the voters were aware of this….I don’t know if there are any technical concerns that we need to address with the new pollbooks or not due to this legislation, but I can find out and check with you on that.”

Now it’s up to me to follow up with the key legislators.

I’ve already begun to do that.

A new justification

I never heard this one before.

I had testified on my bill to extend early voting to the Sunday before Election Day.

“This is the next logical step in the expansion of the right to vote,” I said. “We no longer limit the franchise to white males who own property; we should no longer limit voting to 13 hours on a Tuesday.”

I was followed by Rabbi Ariel Sadwin, who said that observant Jews cannot vote on their Sabbath (Saturday), and Rev. Al Hathaway, pastor of Union Baptist Church, who spoke of the tradition of urging people from the pulpit to get out and vote.

“I’m concerned that too much pressure is being put on people to vote early,” complained a Republican delegate. “Sunday voting would worsen that.”

The GOP has gone to great lengths to suppress minority voting sometimes subtly, sometimes by force of law.

This justification was new to me. And equally unworthy.

Downloading data – technology and chance

January 27, 2014 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Some things depend upon technology.

The major obstacle to extending early voting to the Sunday before Election Day are the 36 hours needed to download data between 7 pm on Sunday and 7 am on Tuesday.

In Baltimore City, for example, there are five early voting centers for the week of early voting but hundreds of polling places on Election Day. To avoid fraud, the data on who voted early must be downloaded to thousands of electronic voting books.

That’s a very time consuming and costly process, according to a study of early voting conducted by the University of Baltimore’s Schaefer Center, in response to the Sunday voting legislation that I introduced last year.

To get a second opinion, I wrote a friend in the information technology field, “I welcome your thoughts on this analysis and the extent to which these concerns are likely to be addressed by the 2016 Presidential election.”

Some things happen by chance.

Walking to the post office on Church Circle, I saw the lobbyist for the newspaper industry.

She told me that they hope to have a national expert to testify next week on my legislation that would extend Maryland’s reporter’s shield law to bloggers who are not employed by a media company.

That was on my list of things to do. My staff won’t have to conduct that search now.

What a difference a day makes?

January 23, 2014 | by delsandy | featured, Sandy's 2014 Legislative Diary | No Comments

Our election laws should maximize turnout, with sanctions for those who commit fraudulent acts or seek to prevent others from voting.

Inspired by the long lines of people voting early during the Obama-Romney election, I introduced a bill last year to authorize voting on the Sunday before Election Day.

The State Board of Elections, however, was concerned that there would be too little time between Sunday evening and 7 a.m. on Tuesday to download the data on who had already voted to the electronic poll books used at each precinct.

My proposal did not pass, but another bill was amended to require a study of the impact of Sunday voting on voter turnout and the technical changes required to implement this reform.

The University of Baltimore published its study this week.

I found out yesterday that the hearing date for House Bill 263, my Sunday voting legislation, will be February 6.

I told my staff this morning that I will have to respond to the concerns raised in the UB study.

I later learned that when Attorney General Gansler officially filed his candidacy for governor today, he announced that he supported early voting on Saturday but not Sunday.

The hearing on my bill may be the first time this session that the politics of the Democratic primary becomes part of the legislative process.

It won’t be the last.