Share:
House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2023 - 2024
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | July 30, 2024 10:07 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Brad Roae |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Election Results Transparency on Department of State Website |
| The Department of State removed an election result transparency feature from their website about five years ago and I will soon introduce legislation to mandate its return. The election returns portion of the Department of State website previously showed how many voting precincts there were and how many precincts had been counted. It also showed what percent of the precincts had reported. The Department of State still gets this information, but they removed it from their website so that citizens can no longer see it. My legislation would mandate that it be included again on their election return website. It was very transparent and easy to see if results were just starting to come in or if most of the results were already in. Any citizen could easily evaluate if the outcome was still too early to tell since very few precincts were reported or if the candidate winning was likely to win since so few precincts remained to be counted. If a candidate has 2 million votes and another candidate has 2.1 million votes, it does not mean much if you don’t know how many more precincts have not yet reported. Is there just one precinct left to report or 1,000 precincts not yet reported? Is it a done deal and you can go to bed or is it too early to tell and the results could be different when you get up the next day? If you saw a score of a baseball game but they did not tell you what inning it was or if you were watching a football game but they did not tell you how much time was left, knowing the score would not give much of an indication of who the likely winner would be. There is no valid reason for removing this important piece of information from the Department of State website. If you would like your constituents to know how many polling sites have been reported and how many have not yet reported, please consider cosponsoring this legislation. |
Introduced as HB2542
Memo Updated: July 30, 2024 10:09 AM