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April 21, 2011

April 21, 2011

In Focus This Week

I. In Focus This Week

:Arial;”>Decennial redistricting adds work and costs for elections administratorsM. Mindy Moretti

Across the country, states are embroiled in the decennial process of redistricting that follows the release of the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. The process is often fraught with controversy and can drag on for months.

The impacts redistricting has on local elections officials varies from state to state. Redistricting is usually, but not exclusively, more taxing for an urban jurisdiction than a rural jurisdiction.  Quite often an entire rural county is included in a legislative district or a Congressional district so the amount of additional work can be minimal. 

“There is a huge burden placed on the office during redistricting because it all has to be accomplished in such a short time frame,” said Edgardo Cortés, General Registrar, Fairfax County Office of Elections.

According to Cortés, staff time is required to provide technical support and feedback during the process, including things like working with the GIS Department to produce maps of new district and precinct boundaries. The office is responsible for implementing all the changes in preparation for the next election. This includes working with the County Attorney’s Office to write the legal descriptions for precincts; working with Public Affairs in outreach to voters to inform them of changes; and recruiting election officers and acquiring voting equipment for new precincts.

The costs associated with redistrict vary, with the bulk of the additional money going to staff overtime. In Maricopa County, Ariz., Recorder Helen Purcell says that it costs her office an additional $10,000 to handle all the necessary costs associated with redistricting.

“Apart from the time costs associated with a few permanent staff who are involved in the redistricting process, there is the direct cost of the five temporary GIS technical staff (budgeted at $138,000 per year for two years), and some computer hardware costs,” explained Dean Logan, Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk. “In order to carry out the boundary line implementation, the GIS Section needed to update its computer hardware in order to utilize newer releases of the GIS software required for the effort, at a cost of $14,000.”

In Fairfax County, Cortes said each new precinct will cost approximately $8,000 to $10,000 to establish and a countywide mailing of new voter registration cards will cost $350,000.

Like costs, the amount of participation local elections officials have in the redistricting process varies, although the amount of participation is usually limited to the redrawing of precinct lines within the newly redistricted areas.

“My office is totally involved,” Purcell said. “We provide the maps electronically and on paper for the general public.  We hold the public hearings, take suggestions for change, develop all suggestions into maps for consideration by the Board of Supervisors.  Finally, we make the submission to the Department of Justice for pre-clearance.  This includes Board of Supervisors, Community College Board, Special Health Care Board, Justice of the Peace, Constables and Voting Precincts.”

It’s been 10 years since counties have had to go through Congressional redistricting — although some of them have done local redistricting in that time. A lot has changed in the last 10 years though, which most officials asked agreed would help speed up the process.

For Boone County, Mo. Clerk Wendy Noren, this will be her fourth redistricting. The first time around all voter records were still on paper and there was no computerized street file.

In Cook County, Ill., more districts will be involved in the redistricting process this year than in 2001. In addition to congressional, state senate and representative districts, the Cook County Board of Review districts, which were originally drawn in 1997, will be redrawn this year for the first time since then.

“In 2001 Illinois did not have early voting. Now that we do, redistricting will also require that we redefine our early voting regions and sites. We have many more GIS maps now than we had in 2001, all of which will be updated. We have a much greater web presence today than we did 10 years ago; our website will need to be updated and synchronized with our voter registration system,” explained David Orr, Cook County, Ill. clerk.

With a presidential election looming in 2012 and many states once again jockeying to move up their presidential primaries, counties are under immense pressure to get all the necessary work associated with redistricting done. The process can take months.

But before the counties can begin their work, the state legislature or redistricting commissions have to complete their work. Many elections officials anticipate the process ending up in the courts which can further exacerbate the time constraints for counties.

“2012 is a presidential election year.  If it is anything like the nightmare 2008 was, any delays in the redistricting process will negatively impact with our ability to prepare for that election,” said Larry Lomax, Clark County, Nev. registrar. “Like much of the country, our legislators are currently deadlocked as to how to deal with a huge budget deficit.   As a result, although they are responsible for most of the redistricting in the state, they have not yet addressed redistricting in any meaningful manner.  Thus, a delay is almost assured.  With 25 percent of the positions in this department now vacant due to a rapidly shrinking budget, a significant delay will be a significant problem.” 

Election News This Week

II. Election News This Week

  • In order to comply with the federal MOVE Act, officials in Oklahoma are considering eliminating the state’s runoff election process. Although there is a proposal to move the primary to July and then keep the runoff system, many legislators don’t like that system because it moves the filing deadline to April which is in the middle of the legislative session. As an alternative, Rep. Gary Banz, R-Midwest City, chairman of the House Rules Committee rewrote SB 602 and passed it through his committee last week. It would move the primary to August and eliminate the runoff. “I don’t know which is worse,” Banz told the Tulsa News. “Both are bad scenarios. I don’t know which way it will go.
  • Under a proposal by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson voters wouldn’t need an excuse — just a photo ID — to get an absentee ballot. The plan would open mail-in ballots to all voters, so long as they show the picture to their county clerks when they pick up their ballot. “Right now, there’s a complete loophole in our system for absentee voting,” Johnson told The Detroit News, noting people don’t have to show ID, opening up the possibility for fraud. Showing ID to the county clerk “makes it more secure … and also makes it more convenient for the voters,” she said. People over 60 years of age, disabled or legitimately out of town would be exempt from showing ID in person. Chris Thomas, director of elections for the Secretary of State’s Office, said about 20 percent of those who vote use absentee ballots, up from about 15 percent to 17 percent 10 years ago.
  • Wisconsin’s top election agency announced this week that it is satisfied that results certified by Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus for the April 5 election are consistent with totals reported by municipalities, though “a few anomalies” were found in a four-day investigation. According to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, those discrepancies involved only a handful of votes. “After completing the review of the election materials from Waukesha County, there were some discrepancies found in the Government Accountability Board’s evaluation of the Waukesha County election returns that could not be explained based upon the documentation reviewed,” the board staff said in a statement. “I am pleased that the Government Accountability Board has concluded that a correction of the canvass is not warranted due to the fact that they found no major discrepancies in our official canvass report,” Nickolaus said in an email response. Although all 72 counties, including Waukesha, certified their results last week, state elections staff reviewed Nickolaus’ records and interviewed Nickolaus. The investigation began after Nickolaus announced at a news conference two days after the election that she had erroneously given unofficial election night totals that did not include Brookfield’s 14,315 votes. She said she had failed to save the vote totals on her computer, so they weren’t tallied in an unofficial summary.

  • A bill in the Vermont House could end the long-honored tradition of counting ballots by hand in many of the states smaller towns. The bill would require towns with more than 1,000 voters to use tabulators for general elections, starting in 2014. “We came up with a bill to help correct and smooth out some of those things that possibly can take place and put in question our most sacred right as a member of this country and that is the vote and make sure that your vote is counted, every vote is counted correctly and that every vote does count in the manner that’s supposed to be,” Milton Rep. Ronald Hubert told Vermont Public Radio. Hubert says federal election funds will pay most of the cost of purchasing the optical scan machines. Charlotte Rep. Michael Yantachko tried to amend the bill to allow towns to opt out this requirement. Charlotte has roughly 2,700 registered voters and is the largest community in the state to count ballots by hand. He says the town likes it that way. The amendment failed. The measure is set to come for a final vote in the House this week but it is unclear if there is time for the Senate to consider it this session.

Research and Report Summaries

III. Research and Report Summaries

electionline provides brief summaries of recent research and reports in the field of election administration. Please e-mail links to research to sgreene@pewtrusts.org.

Bush v Gore, 10 Years Later: Election Administration in the United States – Conference hosted by the Center for the Study of Democracy, University of California, Irvine, and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, April 16-17. Papers presented at this conference cover topics including:

  • The impact of the Help America Vote Act
  • Ballot design
  • Absentee voting and early voting
  • Improving voter registration
  • Voted confidence

Opinions

IV. Opinions 

National: Wisconsin snafu

California: Sample ballots

Florida: Election reform

Georgia: Election changes

Hawaii: Instant-runoff voting

Indiana: Charlie White

Kansas: Elections

Minnesota: Voter ID

Missouri: Voter ID; Special election

Montana: Vote-by-mail

New Jersey: Early voting

New York: Found ballots

North Carolina: Voter ID, II, III, IV

Ohio: Voter ID

South Carolina: Voting machines; Voter ID

Tennessee: Voter ID, II; Ballot-box integrity

West Virginia: Audit; Vote-by-mail

Wisconsin: Election method; Waukesha County, II; 2012 preview

Job Openings

V. Job Openings

electionlineWeekly publishes election administration job postings each week as a free service to our readers. To have your job listed in the newsletter, please send a copy of the job description, including a web link to mmoretti@electionline.org. Job postings must be received by 5pm on Wednesday in order to appear in the Thursday newsletter. Listings will run for three weeks or till the deadline listed in the posting.

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