UF-sponsored elections forum will explore voting reforms

February 10, 2015

Experts from Florida and across the country will discuss streamlining elections to ensure greater voting integrity – and lower costs – at a public forum Friday, Feb. 20 at the Florida State Conference Center in Tallahassee.

Hosted by the University of Florida Department of Political Science and the Florida State Association of Supervisors of Elections, the forum “Conducting Florida Elections” covers online voter registration, cross-state voter list matching and mail balloting.

“We’ll be talking about improving the voting process, both from the supervisors of elections’ perspective as well as from the voters’ perspective,” said UF associate professor of political science Michael P. McDonald, who organized the forum. “Our ultimate goal is to assist voting officials while making the experience better for voters.”

Speakers will include Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler, former Florida Elections Director Donald Palmer, Pasco County Supervisor of Elections Brian Corley and Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark. John Lindback, executive director of the Electronic Registration Information Center, and election scholars from the University of Florida, the University of Wisconsin, and Reed College in Portland, Ore., also will be featured.

Panel moderators are David Becker, director of elections initiatives for the Pew Charitable Trusts and Adam Ambrogi, Democracy Fund.

The forum, which is free and open to the public, will be held in Room 103 of the conference center, 555 W Pensacola St., from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. To RSVP and view the agenda, visit http://www.electproject.org/florida_forum. 

Michael P. McDonald, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has worked for the national exit poll organization, consulted to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and the Pew Center for the States, and has served on state legislative campaign staffs in California and Virginia. Frequently quoted regarding United States elections, he has worked as a media consultant to ABC and NBC and his opinions have appeared in the Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the American Prospect and Roll Call.