The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "State Board of Elections" ...
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The Perfect Pension Fund
Florida's public pension system is not as perfect as it seems. The investigation finds a pattern of misleading statements and oversight failures by the agency that manages the pension funds, State Board of Administration. It also shows that the three elected officials who oversaw the agency, including Florida's former governor, ignored personal conflicts of interest and misled the public on the poor condition of the pension fund.
Tags: pension; public pension; conflict of interest; oversight; State Board of Administration
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Ethics Revealed
After finding that 12 local politicians owed money to the state, The Times examined the state ethics board's fining system. It showed that "the ethics board may have selectively enforced fines, had allowed delinquent candidates to run for office despite a state law forbidding them from doing so, and conducted the majority of its business in secret."
Tags: politicians; money; fines; elections; ethics board; unpaid
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Will Your Vote Count?
Problems with electronic voting machines during Maryland's primary election in September prompted top state officials to urge voters to cast absentee ballots in the November general election. However, there were serious problems with absentee ballot applications and processing. Among the findings: 40% of the people who requested absentee ballots in Baltimore County received them too late for their votes to be counted. The application said the ballots needed to be sent back to the election board a week in advance of the election day; however, the Baltimore election board director said that ballots needed to be returned three weeks ahead of time.
Tags: voting; electronic voting; absentee voting; Baltimore; Maryland; elections; election law
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Small-Town Election, Big-Time Trouble
The stories chronicled election fraud in two small communities. In the first community, one candidate's mother headed up the registrar's office, while in the other community, Gate City, the mayor manipulated the absentee voting system to his advantage, sometimes filling the forms of elderly absentee voters himself.
Tags: election fraud; absentee voting; voter registration; Roanoke; Scott County; Gate City; Willie Mae Kilgore; Charles Dougherty; Jerry Kilgore; Terry Kilgore; State Board of Elections; campaign donations; Republican Party
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Close Connections
The Asbury Park Press' investigations of municipal officials found that politically powerful attorneys had almost free reign to double bill and over bill the agencies they were supposed to serve. An investigation of the township attorney, who is the top elected Republican in the state, found that he double billed the city by more than $8,000. He initially said the double-billing was not his responsibility, but later admitted it was an accident. The Press found that the project in which the double-billing occurred was part of an unfinished seven-year effort to rewrite the city's ordinances. The senator charged more than $100,000 for the incomplete work, although similar projects cost a quarter as much and can take months, not years, to finish. Close examination of these billing records for the ordinance re-writing project showed his bills included rewrites of ordinances that don't exist, and repeated rewrites of ordinances that were little more than a paragraph or two long.
Tags: Marlboro Township-New Jersey; Council Members; Mayor Matthew V. Scannapieco; developers; Anthony Spalliero; Senator John O. Bennett III; political contributions; double-billing; town budget; ordinances; legal invoice; Monmouth County; campaign contributions; Center for Responsive Politics Marlboro Cultural and Improvement Fund; Keansburg Board of Education; New Jersey State Commission of Investigation; reform bill; elected officials
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Some donors get new posts
The investigation found that people who contributed to Gov. Jeb Bush's campaign and major donors to the Republican Party of Florida were far more likely to get plum appointments to the state's powerful boards and commissions during the Bush tenure than those who contributed t the Florida Democratic Party of Bush's opponents.
Tags: Governor Jeb Bush; Republican Party of Florida; Florida Democratic Party; appointees; elected officials; Commission on Ethics; Division of Elections; Common Cause of Florida; Florida Prepaid College Board; Judicial Qualifications Commission; Land Acquisition and Facilities Advisory Board; Miami-Dade County School Board District; Governor's Mansion Foundation; Overseas Private Investment Corporation; Prison Rehabilitative Industries; Diversified Enterprises Board
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Caucuses: Secret Campaign Machines
A Wisconsin State Journal investigation reveals that "four state government agencies costing taxpayers $3.9 million a year were operating as extensive and possibly illegal campaign machines on behalf of lawmakers and candidates selected by the legislative leaders." The series also finds that a political group used a taxpayer-funded office to prepare "smear campaigns" against Democratic politicians; Democratic lawmakers and legislative employees have used their taxpayer-funded jobs to prepare election campaigns and solicit contributions; that a top Republican leader hired a staff member whose only job was to raise money and coordinate donations. The state Ethics Board has failed to stop and punish the ongoing political corruption, the State Journal reports.
Tags: FOI; public records requests; contributions; money and politics; legislature; elections; voters; electorate; Democrats; Republicans
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Incomes, discarded votes may be linked
"Voters in Florida's poorer counties were more than twice as likely as those in a more affluent ones to have their votes for president disregarded," according to a Tallahassee Democrat analysis of the 2000 election... The correlation between discarded ballots and income was stronger than the link between the type of balloting machine used and disregarded ballots. The fact that lower-income counties are likely to have more elderly and new minority voters may also predispose those counties to have more votes disregarded. More first-time and inexperienced minority voters may have gone to the polls after a statewide get-out-the-vote campaign initiated by the state Democratic party and labor and civil rights groups. In counties using optical-scanner ballots, presidential votes were not counted 3.4 percent of the time, compared to 4.7 for those counties using punch-card ballots. However, counties using punch-card balloting had higher average incomes than those using optical-scanner balloting: $24, 849 for punch cars and $21, 464 for optical scanners."
Tags: elections; elderly voters; board of elections; error rates; income levels; presidential election 2000; Bush; Gore; discarded votes; Florida recount
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"Examining School Construction"
For this three-part series examining school construction, reporters conducted hundreds of interviews and sifted through "thousands of pages of school and court records" on procurement, contracts, state laws, and the backgrounds of the officials in the school construction business. The report that uncovered a virtual monopoly in area contracts helped make school construction one of the top issues in upcoming school board elections.
Tags: Tarrant; TPM; asbestos; audit; Hurst; construction; building flaws
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No title (id: 13791)
The public agencies that run elections on Long Island are riddled with seldom-show jobs and other abuses and problems that in some cases have affected the integrity of elections. Newsday investigates how Nassau County officials allowed their board of elections to deteriorate into one of the state's most backward, while treating their high-salaried jobs as part-time perks. Suffolk County election officials also held seldom-show jobs with high pay, falsified time records and used the agency's expensive car fleet for personal travel, violating county rules. (Oct. 13, 15, 1996)
Tags: Donovan Harris Peddie Laikin CAR The high price of voting Contest entry Fraud FOIA 37 pgs.