Hay! Is That a Pumpkin?

Fall is the time for pumpkin spice lattes, pumpkin carving, pumpkin pies, and hayrides on trailers accessorized by, well, pumpkins.

And, it's time we make hay for 2016 before 2015 turns into a pumpkin and the presidential election is completely, "Game on!"

We have spring elections in 2016 (we think....) and at least two mail-ballot elections considered in early 2016.  There is even talk of a countywide mail-ballot election in May, just before the June filing deadline for August and November elections.

When January rolls around, we can get busy negotiating advance voting locations.  There are a couple of large, vacant storefronts that look like attractive sites, but landlords aren't willing to accept in October 2015 that the sites will be vacant in October 2016.

They won't magically believe us in January, but we can start the dance, with the hope of buttoning everything down by April.

We also will be sending our letters to the six school superintendents of our intent to use all schools as polling places in 2016.  The new legislation that moved spring elections to the fall also requires school districts to make any schools we request by January 1 of each year available for that year's elections. 

Winter is coming, and that's when numbers will get more serious, but here in the fall of 2015 we can spitball our expectation that we will have about 400,000 registered voters for the presidential elections, 80 percent of those voters will cast ballots, about half in advance at what we expect/hope to be four sites or by mail, and the rest will vote at one of approximately 250 polling locations.

We will need to button down those polling places.  We need a plan for that.

We will need to recruit about 1,000 new election workers.  We need a plan for that.

We will need to train about 2,500 workers.  We need a plan for that.

We will need new computers at our advance sites.  We need a plan for that.

We likely will undertake an intiative to utilize electronic poll books and, probably, new voting equipment at our advance sites.  Again, we need a plan for that.

Oh, we have a plan for that.  The four largest counties have issued a request for proposal for next-generation voting equipment.  Purchasing the equipment requires further planning, but the selection process is underway.

Likewise, we will be issuing a request for proposal for electronic poll books.  Our experience in the August 18 election, when trialing them, was satisfactory and we will be looking to scale them.

We're in the process of revamping our election worker training plans and, further, have an ambitious effort to provide more education for poll agents.  We'd also like to expand the capabilities of our website to allow for automated advance ballot applications, as well as more open data on the site to reduce the time we spend on candidate orders for information.

The theme in our office for the last few months, from me, has been, "Show me the plan."

Well, in fairness, the theme has been that I'll be saying that.  Now, with about 10 weeks before year-end, we'll be getting busy with those plans.

After that, it will be all about executing. 

We can't bail hay, but we do need to make it in these 10 weeks, or else we'll be bailing in 2016 in a different way from the oncoming election wave.

Thus, the blog theme for the next few weeks will be presidential election preparation.  Whatever activity and intensity level we are at for any given day, it will double the next. 

That means that whatever intensity we are at today, by January 1 it will be, um, a lot more. 

We're going to need a bigger boat.  We better double down on Pumpkin Spice Lattes.

(This cliché ridden post was partially brought to you by caffeine.  Imagine the clichés by January).