In Focus This Week
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Florida Preview: The end of an error?
Most voters in 14 counties to say farewell to touch-screens
By Dan Seligson
electionline.org
Three years ago, Conny McCormack, then Los Angeles County clerk/recorder, held a tongue-in-cheek “goodbye chad” event to commemorate the state-ordered mandate to rid the nation’s most populous voting jurisdiction of punch-card machines.
“We had a big party and a lot of publicity,” McCormack said. “I dressed as a punch card. One of my other staff dressed as a sheet with 312 punch positions. In the back it said ‘punch me out.’”
Next Tuesday, 14 Florida counties will bid farewell to touch-screen or direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting for most voters – the end of a brief and tumultuous era of post-2000 elections in the state’s presidential preference primary.
After the vote, optical-scan machines will replace the touch-screen systems, save for one per precinct for voters who require accessible voting systems.
While there was no shortage of touch-screen voting machine costumes, at least those used in protest, there aren’t any planned parties in South Florida or anywhere else around the state on January 29.
The systems will be rolled out for the final time for general population voting in large counties including Broward and Miami-Dade. By August, the date of Florida’s primary for all of the other offices on the ballot, optical scanners will become the statewide system, even if some might disagree whether the change was necessary at all.
“I don’t think there was anything wrong with those machines,” said Sarasota County Supervisor Kathy Dent. “But if it gives the voters more confidence, then it’s the change we’re going to make.”
Ironically, Sarasota was already on the road to making that change at the same time that 18,000 votes in the 13th Congressional district race were going unrecorded on the county’s DRE voting machines in the November 2006 election.
Fifty-five percent of county voters favored a charter amendment to move Sarasota to optical-scan machines. The county had completed the switch in time for a county-wide race in late 2007, Dent said.
The Sarasota under-votes, along with problems with DREs in previous primaries and unrecorded votes in a number of races, including a special election and the race for attorney general in 2006, led to the bipartisan decision to scrap DREs for general voting. The suspicion of machine problems pre-dated 2006, however.
As early as 2004, two years after their introduction, a newspaper analysis conducted by The Sun Sentinel found that DRE machines produced by ES&S – the type used in Sarasota, Broward and Miami-Dade counties – were eight times more likely than optical-scan machines to fail to record votes.
Sandy Wayland, president of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said that the end of touch-screen voting in next week’s race is not yet cause for celebration.
“We’re not going to have a party yet until we see how they’re going to implement this transition,” she said. “We don’t have really good audits here. If you have paper to count and you don’t count them, there’s no point to having them. In general, are we happy? Yes. With reservations. It’s going to be a big changeover. Had they done this a year ago, we would have been so much better prepared.”
Wayland and others have expressed concerns with the state’s new “ballot-on-demand” system, by which voters can go to early voting centers and have their specific optical-scan ballot printed. The DRE system with programmed ballot activator cards made the process much simpler since machines could display large numbers of ballot styles and languages.
The ballot-on-demand requires printers at each polling station, and lots and lots of paper.
“If ballot on demand doesn’t work, or let’s say it works but it takes four minutes to print out a ballot…it becomes an administrative nightmare,” Wayland said. “There’s a chain-of-custody issue, speed and accuracy issues or else they’ll have to have trucks full of ballots to make sure each early voting site then they’ll need the three-ring circus there to figure out who gets what ballot.”
Those problems will wait – at least until August.
For now, many Floridians will prepare to take their last touch.
Dent said the switch-over from one system to another was less complicated because of the relatively low turnout local election pre-dating this week’s primary. The transition took about 11 weeks, she said, and “was a lot of work and a lot of pressure.”
But the transition was inevitable in a state where paperless, DRE voting will soon have its final touch.
“When the voters ask for something,” Dent said, “we have to give it to them.”
Whether the voters’ choices matter is entirely another story. Because Florida decided to hold a January primary in violation of party rules, the Democratic Party will not recognize the 241 delegates that would have been granted. The Republican Party, while not acting as severely, has said it would take half. (For more information, click on Congressional Quarterly’s analysis here.)
While news articles have referred to the Democratic primary as a “beauty contest,” there are signs that some candidates might consider the state’s figurative sash, tiara and bouquet more important than previously thought.
For the Republican candidates, Florida is the next major battleground, regardless of the national party’s position on the earlier date. A property tax amendment on ballots throughout the state could also add to the draw.
In Focus This Week Pt. 2
Voting well underway in Sunshine State
Active Democrats apparently unmoved by lack of campaigning
By Paul Gronke
Special to electionline.org
While many pundits look ahead to next Tuesday’s primary in Florida, polls opening will actually mark the end of an extended election that began on January 14 and ends Saturday.
The state instituted in-person early voting in 2004 in response to the controversies surrounding the 2000 election. In-person early voting starts 15 days before the election and ends two days before election day. Citizens can cast their ballots at county offices and public libraries. Florida introduced no-excuse absentee balloting at the same time.
Early voting could perhaps be considered a victim of its own success, at least in the last presidential election. In November 2004, many counties weren’t ready for the crush. A number of counties reported problems with machines, while news reports from the time noted long lines in Jacksonville, Miami, Broward and elsewhere around the state.
No such problems have been reported in 2008 in the much lower-turnout primary. Still, according to some county supervisors, more than half of the ballots will be cast before election day.
The first 10 days of in-person early voting reveals some noteworthy trends. During the first week of balloting, the highest number of voters cast an in-person ballot on Tuesday (January 15th), although only slightly higher than on the first day. Turnout trended downward all week, rising slightly on Friday (January 18th) and then plummeted over the weekend. Only 13 of 67 counties allowed early voting on Sunday, and often with reduced hours.
Turnout rose slightly on Monday, the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, to a level comparable to the previous Saturday. The real jump in turnout occurred on January 22, when nearly 60,000 ballots were cast, as many on that day as on the previous three days. Overall as of press time, 286,852 early votes have been cast by partisan registrants (as well as 38,788 unaffiliated and third party voters), and the state reports nearly the same number of absentee ballots.
In-person voting doesn’t appear to be benefitting one political party over the other. Both Democrats and Republicans are voting early at the same rate. As of January 22, 146,139 Democrats, 3.5 percent of total party registrants, and 140,713 Republicans, 3.7 percent of registrants, have voted early in-person.
The figures will be updated on a daily basis at http://earlyvoting.net
Election Reform News This Week
South Carolina Democrats will head to the polls on Saturday and officials are working to ensure that there will not be a repeat of the issues faced during last week’s GOP primary. During the January 20 Republican primary about 80 percent of the voting machines in Horry County did not function and vote counts in Horry and Florence counties were delayed because machines were not programmed properly. Election officials tested voting machines this week and the State Election Commission issued letters to all county election directors telling them to plan for worst-case scenarios. The state agency also sent workers to assist the Horry County Election Commission. “Every election is a learning experience,” South Carolina Election Commission spokesman Chris Whitmire told The State. “We identified the errors that were made in the Republican primary and we’ve taken steps to address those errors.”
County officials in Montgomery County, Ala. said this week that they support restoring an inmate’s right to vote as long as the inmate wants that right. Members of the “Let My People Vote” campaign visited the jails this and dropped off restoration of rights and voter registration forms. Montgomery Sheriff D.T. Marshall told the Montgomery Advertiser that inmates in the county jail are allowed to vote absentee, but it’s up to the inmates to complete the required forms. Voting rights of many felons were restored by a 2006 Circuit Court ruling. Adell Sankey, member of the Montgomery Board of Registrars, said inmates convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude are not allowed to vote. Those voting rights can be restored later if the inmates meet certain requirements — such as payment of fines and restitution and completion of probation. In 2007 more than 10,000 felons had their voting rights restored in Alabama.
Efforts to expand Instant-runoff voting (IRV) in California hit a snag this week when the San Leandro City Council stuck with a previous recommendation to forgo the use of IRV for the 2008 election cycle. On Tuesday, Councilman Jim Prola told The Daily Review he still had hope that instant-runoff voting could become a reality in the city. “I do think IRV (instant-runoff voting) saves the city money, having one election instead of two,” he said. “And I think eventually we will have IRV in San Leandro.” But he conceded that candidates should be elected with a majority, not a minority, of the votes. So for right now, he said, it is better for the city to keep the current election system. Officials in Oakland are expected to take up the issue of whether or not to use IRV at a meeting scheduled for February 5 and an official with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters office told the Berkeley Daily Planet that IRV is still possible for Berkeley’s November elections.
The U.S. Election Assistance Commission released its annual report this week.
Opinions This Week
National: New Holt bill, II; Voter ID, II
California: Primary reform; Poll workers; Merced County
Colorado: Election integrity; Voting system; Election plan
Florida: Vote-by-mail; Primary reform; Voter registration; Early voting sites
Georgia: Voter ID; Habersham County
Indiana: Electronic voting
Maryland: Approval voting
Michigan: Voter ID
Mississippi: Voter ID
Montana: Voting machines
New Hampshire: Recount
New York: Vote count; Voting machines; Voter ID
Ohio: Voting system, II
Pennsylvania: Voter ID; Online voting
Wisconsin: Voter ID
Some sites require registration
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
Election Deputy Director II — Carroll County, Md. Supervisory or managerial level of work assisting an Election Director in conducting elections in local jurisdictions within the State. Employees supervise office support staff, which may include subordinate supervisors. Employees receive general supervision from an Election Director. Employees may be required to work evenings and weekends. The work may require travel throughout the State to exchange information regarding the election process and promote voter registration. Qualifications: Graduation from an accredited high school or possession of a high school equivalency certificate; four years of experience applying federal, state and local election laws and regulations applicable to conducting elections. Salary: $35,568 – $60,222. Application: May be obtained by visiting our website at: www.dbm.maryland.gov; by writing to DBM, OPSB, Recruitment & Examination Division, 301 W. Preston Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201; or by calling 410-767-4850, toll-free: 800-705-3493; TTY users call Maryland Relay Service, 800-735-2258. Deadline: February 1.
Election Information System Specialist — Baltimore City. Full performance level of work providing information technology support to staff members of a local election board. Employees in this classification coordinate maintenance and troubleshooting of election information systems and work in conjunction with State Board of Elections information technology staff, local government information technology staff, software vendors and contractors to resolve microcomputer hardware and software problems. Employees in this classification do not supervise. Employees receive general supervision from an Election Director or Election Deputy Director of a local election board. Employees may receive assignments and technical direction from the Chief Information Officer of the State Board of Elections. Employees may be required to work evenings, weekends and holidays and to travel to polling sites during Election Day. Employees in this classification are assigned to work in one or more local election board offices. Employees assigned to work in more than one local election board office will be required to travel between offices. Qualifications: Two years of experience in computer programming; implementing, troubleshooting or supporting local or wide area networks; installing and troubleshooting personal computers or evaluating, implementing or maintaining microcomputer hardware and software; 18 credit hours in computer information technology, programming or networking from an accredited college or university may be substituted for up to one year of the required experience; completion of a certification program in computer programming for personal computers, local or wide area networks or troubleshooting such as Microsoft Certified Professional or an equivalent program may be substituted for one year of the required experience; additional experience in computer programming; implementing, troubleshooting or supporting local or wide area networks; installing and troubleshooting personal computers or evaluating, implementing or maintaining personal computer hardware and software may be substituted for the required education on a year-for-year basis. Salary: $35,568 – $60,222. Application: May be obtained by visiting our Web site at: www.dbm.maryland.gov; by writing to DBM, OPSB, Recruitment & Examination Division, 301 W. Preston Street Baltimore, Maryland 21201; or by calling 410-767-4850, toll-free: 800-705-3493; TTY users call Maryland Relay Service, 800-735-2258. Deadline:February 1.
Election Technician — Minneapolis, Minn. Assist the Elections Director with administration of voting system operations and technology and planning and logistics for election warehouse operations. Uses specialized knowledge of general election law, computer programs and systems, and best practices in the field of elections. Requirements: a Bachelor’s degree or equivalent. Qualifications: Must have experience designing, creating and working with database programs as well as advanced experience with Microsoft Office Suite programs including, Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint, and Visio. Experience using Geographic Information Systems a must. Election experience preferred. Application: Apply online at www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us. Deadline: February 4.