In Focus This Week
Ranked-Choice Voting and Flawed Ballots Tax San Francisco’s Election
Rules requiring hand-inspection, confusion over ranking could delay results for weeks
By Kat Zambon
electionline.org
SAN FRANCISCO, Ca.–-Rules requiring manual checks of every ballot before counting stemming from concerns over vote counting systems were expected to make this city’s municipal elections more complicated than usual. Maybe not quite this complicated, though.
Because of high numbers of ballots needing to be remade before they can be tabulated, getting official results in this week’s vote could take weeks.
John Arntz, the city’s election director, said at a press conference this week that officials have had to remake 94 percent of absentee ballots cast before they can be counted, because of casting errors, confusion about ranked-choice voting, incorrect pencil or ink and other problems. An informal survey of poll workers indicated that ballots cast on election day at precincts could be similarly flawed.
When a ballot needs to be remade, election officials pull it aside and one election official fills in a new ballot while another official watches. Those two election officials then give the old ballot and the remade ballot to a different pair of election officials who ensure that the new ballot reflects the voter’s intentions and code the new ballot so it can be traced back to the original.
While the task of remaking ballots is not unusual, some questioned whether the ranked-choice system, which requires voters to put the names of three candidates on the ballot, made sense in this particular election.
Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said she wasn’t surprised that so many ballots have needed remaking, noting that there were three places on the ballot to rank candidate choices for the sheriff’s race, in which only two candidates were running and the district attorney race in which Kamala Harris ran unopposed.
“I did not understand that,” she said. “I was confused looking at the ballot in San Francisco and I imagine a lot of voters would be too.”
Poll workers deployed around the city noticed the same thing.
Nick Andraide, a poll worker from Noe Valley at Eureka Playground in the Castro said that as many as a third of ballots cast were initially rejected by the ballot counter because the voter failed to rank three choices. When poll workers explained to the voter why the ballot was rejected, every voter either asked the poll worker to override the counter and let them cast their ballot the way they marked it or they marked the same candidate for all three choices.
Jay Bordeleau, an election inspector at Notre Dame Des Victoires in Union Square concurred.
“There are a lot of people who only mark one [candidate] or the same person three times,” he said.
The ballot remaking comes at the direction of Secretary of State Debra Bowen (D) who has expressed concerns that San Francisco’s ranked-choice voting (RCV) system by ES&S may not be able to read all ballots cast by voters. Ballots that don’t have three choices marked for the mayor’s race or are marked with an instrument other than a number 2 pencil or a pen with black or dark blue ink need to be remade.
Remaking ballots is already an accepted practice in some California counties that use the AutoMark ballot marker, said John Gideon, co-director of VotersUnite.
“I think that somewhere along the line, election administrators have to be trusted to do the right things and I think this is one of those cases,” he said.
Since election officials aren’t allowed to count ballots until they inspect the ballots and remake them if necessary, unofficial election results released Tuesday night only included the estimated 44,000 absentee ballots received before election day.
Steven Hill, director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation, said he also wasn’t surprised by the high percentage of remade ballots. Hill worked on a study to estimate how many ballots would have to be remade in San Francisco by examining an election with similar characteristics and found that more than 60 percent of the ballots would have had to be remade in the election he studied. Hill predicted that about 70 percent of ballots cast at the polls will have to be remade.
While perhaps the most challenging and time consuming, remaking ballots is not the only challenge facing the elections department as they work in 24 hours a day to count the vote.
While San Francisco voters have used RCV before, confusion remains. “People get confused when their ballot comes back, [they ask] ‘what do I do?'” Bordeleau said.
Geraldine Lum, a poll worker at Maria Manors in downtown San Francisco was careful not to tell voters how to vote.
“They know what they want, if they want to vote they’ll vote but we can’t tell them what to do,” she said.
Voters also questioned the value of ranked-choice voting. Andraide said that when he told the voters ranked-choice voting was useful because it eliminated the need for a runoff election, voters told him there wouldn’t be a runoff. “
“I guess it’s useful when there’s a lot of candidates,” Wendy Lee, a voter from the Mission said after turning in her absentee ballot at City Hall, but “I don’t want to vote for a second one, I want this one.”
While he ranked three choices in the mayor’s race, Allan Rosenberg, a photographer voting on Russian Hill said, “I don’t find it satisfying that I have to make a second choice.”
“Would you accept a second choice photograph? Why would I accept a second choice candidate?” he asked.
As confused as the vote has been, it could have been worse.
Poll workers around the city described turnout as low, which may be partly attributed to a decrease in registered voters.
“This is what constitutes a big rush,” said Mary Dolan, a poll worker from the Tenderloin, “three people at once.”
Election Reform News This Week
- Although 2007 is considered an off-year election in most states, there were some significant votes held in a few states. Voters headed to the polls (or mailboxes) for local and statewide races in more than a dozen states and localities including Michigan, where voter ID laws were in place for the first time; Connecticut, where many voters were greeted by optical-scan machines for the first time; and Montana where the state’s move to vote-by-mail for local elections saw increased turnout.
- In Kentucky, Secretary of State Tray Grayson (R) was re-elected to a second term and in Mississippi, newcomer Delbert Hosemann (R) has become the new Secretary of State-elect.
- Although some reports indicated a fairly smooth election day nationwide there were scattered problems throughout the country. In Maryland, after the State Board of Elections sent the wrong voter database to one locality, initially voters with certain addresses were unable to cast a ballot. The problem was quickly fixed with a manual override. In Ohio, Cuyahoga County again had problems with an election. Officials had problems getting some electronic machines up and running when polls opened and counting was delayed by a server problem. In Indiana, none of the problems that occurred during the May primary seemed to resurface; and in King County, Wash., some poll workers sadly worked their last election.
- She was born before women had the right to vote so nothing — not even new optical-scan machines — was going to stop Gertrude Noone from casting her ballot on Tuesday and becoming Connecticut’s oldest active voter at 108. Noone, who was greeted by the media and Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz (D) when she went to cast her ballot seemed to take it all in stride, except for the new voting machines. “It’s complicated, it just took longer to vote,” she told the Connecticut Post. “If you don’t have good eyesight, it’s hard to see where to put the dots….On the other one, you just flipped the lever and opened the curtain.”
- U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. introduced legislation last week that would ban the requirement of photo identification in federal elections. A local television station reported that Ellison said requiring a photo ID for elections disenfranchises the young, elderly and poor. “In Minnesota, we go to great lengths to make voting as inclusive as possible,” Ellison said at the introduction of the bill. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said that requiring a voter ID helps preserve the integrity of the voting process.
- When the 2008 Idaho Legislative session begins, county clerks from across the state will once again push for adoption of rules permitting all vote-by-mail elections only this year, they’ll be taking a different approach. After an initiative failed to gain footing in the 2007 session, the clerks decided to push forward with new legislation in 2008 that would limit vote-by-mail elections to non-candidate elections, such as tax referendums and bond issues. “This is just a step to try and show the citizens how convenient it is to have vote-by-mail, so we thought if we tried it with non-candidates, it might work,” Twin Falls County Clerk Kristina Glascock told the Idaho Press Tribune. “This is baby steps, I guess, to get people used to the process.”
- The National Journal wrote this week about the efforts of the Overseas Vote Foundation and Pew’s Center on the States on behalf of military and overseas voters. In addition, the article discussed the efforts of Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y. and Henry Waxman, D-Calif. who faulted the Department of Defense’s overseas voting programs as inconsistent and confusing for voters.
Opinions This Week
National: John Tanner, II, Paper ballots, Voting rights
Alabama: John Tanner; Military voting
Colorado: Denver elections, II, III
Connecticut: Voting technology, II, III, IV, V
Florida: Sarasota County, Voter registration
Georgia: Voter ID
Illinois: Recall elections
Indiana: Vote centers, II
Mississippi: Voter ID
Montana: New election procedures, vote-by-mail
New Jersey: Voter’s rights
New York: Vote fraud, Accessible voting
North Carolina: Voter turnout
Ohio: Secret ballots, Cuyahoga County elections
Pennsylvania: Voting counting
South Carolina: Poll workers
Tennessee: Rutherford County
Utah: Alcohol on election day
Virginia: Voter apathy
Washington: Vote-by-mail, Local elections, Voting at the polls
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Job Postings This Week
All job listings must be received by 12 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday for publication in our Thursday newsletter. Job listings are free but may be edited for length. Whenever possible, include Internet information. Please email job postings to mmoretti@electionline.org
Division Director — Florida Department of State, Division of Elections. The Director of the Division of Elections serves at the pleasure of the Secretary of State who is the Chief Elections Officer for the State of Florida and an appointed agency head within the Executive Branch. Some of the duties and responsibilities of the Director of the Division of Elections are as follows: directs, manages and coordinates all administrative, programmatic and operational activities of the division; oversees the management of the HAVA Section, Bureau of Voting Systems Certification, Bureau of Election Records and the Bureau of Voter Registration Services; oversees the development, implementation, and coordination of rules and administrative directives of the division as well as legislative proposals affecting election laws; reports directly to the Deputy Secretary for State Records. Qualifications: Applicants should have at least five years of election administration experience at a managerial level in either state or local government. Salary: $95,000 with excellent benefits. Application: Interested parties should send their resume with references to Dawn Kimmel Roberts, Assistant Secretary of State & Chief of Staff, Florida Department of State, Suite 118, R.A. Gray Building, 500 S. Bronough Street, Tallahassee, Florida 32399-0250; by fax to (850) 245-6125; or e-mail to dkroberts@dos.state.fl.us. Deadline: November 30, 2007. Web site: http://election.dos.state.fl.us.
Election Director — Orange County, N.C. Reporting to the Orange County Board of Elections, this position provides administrative, technical, and managerial support to the Board and directs the registration, voting and election activities for the County. The Director of Elections is appointed by the Orange County Board of Elections and approved by the State. The successful candidate will supervise a staff of three permanent employees and will direct and supervise precinct office operations to ensure compliance with all related laws and procedures. The position oversees pre-election activities and ensures that the elections are conducted efficiently and in compliance with federal, state, and local laws and regulations. Representative duties include: Preparing legal notices for publication in newspapers, television, radio and web pages; maintaining the timetable for board members’ duties established by the State Board of Elections; preparing and maintaining the calendar of required board meetings and training for board members and staff; serving as secretary to the Board of Elections; prepares resolutions, bond ballots, and other board-related legal matters, in consultation with attorneys; and prepares ballots for all elections, including overseeing printing and production and ensuring that all supplies, materials and equipment are available for voting on election days. Qualifications: Requires any combination of education and experience equivalent to graduation from an accredited college or university with a Bachelor’s degree in public administration, business administration or related field and at least five years progressively responsible experience in state or local government elections. One year of supervisory experience is preferred. Requires excellent computer skills. Prefer knowledge of election system software, including United Software. Excellent communications skills and demonstrated ability to effectively interact with the citizens, elected officials and candidates, and the Board are required. Possession of or the ability to obtain a North Carolina State Board of Elections certification within one year of hire is necessary. Salary: $65,014 – $84,473. Application: Send resume and county application to: Orange County Personnel Dept.; 208 South Cameron Street, Post Office Box 8181; Hillsborough, North Carolina 27278; Telephone: (919) 245-2550, Facsimile: (919) 644-3009; online at www.co.orange.nc.us Deadline: Nov. 19, 2007.