Redistricting: Where No News is No News

In the "It's Election Day, Somewhere," mode, I'm leaving a quick post during an unexpectedly non-hectic moment.

We haven't seen any white smoke coming from the courthouse to indicate that the three-judge panel considering new statewide districts have reached any resolution.

In fact, as I've been reading the electronic tea leaves (Twitter, mostly), it feels like nothing will be decided until next week at the earliest.  If that's the case, the Monday filing deadline will move a week back and our office's immediate focus will be the Secretary of State's Town Hall visit in Johnson County on June 14.  I'll be the overly attentive one in the front row, hoping to use that day as a chance to sync up and make sure we are like-minded in our election planning.

Particularly, we're continuing to watch the possibility of having two elections in August and the craziness that could be happening with a voter coming in to cast two separate advance ballots for two different elections at the same time.

Meanwhile, we're building the election in our systems, fully mindful that it may not all hold as revisions are made.  Typically, after the filing deadline, we'd be preparing our paper ballot order but that's a futile task at this point.

August of even years presents the most complicated ballot printing scenario.  We print enough paper ballots for advance by mail voters, anticipated provisional voters, and for persons who request paper ballots.  We expect about 75,000 voters in August and only a portion of those voters will cast paper ballots.

But with nearly 500 precincts and unique ballots for Democratic, Republican, and Unaffiliated voters, we'll have more than 1,000 ballot styles.  Then, we'll order 25 of one, 50 of another, 30 of a third, and so on.  It's a very complex process and to be prepared, we have to over-print and end up literally throwing away thousands of dollars worth of unused ballots after every election.

We're going to take a stab at printing paper ballots on demand at our advance voting sites, but we thought that was better as a 2014 initiative.  At this rate, though, we may be combining the 2012 and 2014 elections.

For now, our office is starting to feel like a Fire Station.  We're polishing and testing our equipment, washing the truck, laying out our uniforms, and waiting for the next alarm.

Hurry Up and Wait, Then Wait and Hurry Up

The election story of the year in Kansas is redistricting.

Of course, there are election stories regarding candidates and issues, but that's not the focus here.  There are candidate impacts from redistricting, though, and, in particular, potential candidates sitting on the sidelines trying to determine if this is the year they should run.

A principled candidate may want to run if he or she feels a void of those principles exist in leadership of a particular district.  But that same potential candidate may not want to run if there is another candidate already running who shares his or her values.

If candidates are on the sidelines at this late date for an August 7 election, voters will have little time to be captivated.  Military ballots need to be mailed in three weeks and advance voting starts about a month later.

The August election, usually with a turnout of about a third of the November presidential election, is looking like it will have a stark turnout.

Yesterday was the filing deadline for candidates except for those races impacted by redistricting, currently in the hands of a federal court.

We had our usual flurry of filings until the noon deadline and then a few precinct committee filers who thought the deadline was 5 p.m., only to have those filings rejected.

Our office had been madly proofing candidate names and pushing to get information updated on our website.  Usually at this point we would begin creating the election in our election management system, build the races, set the rotation (candidate names in many races have to be rotated by law so each candidate gets equal time at the top of the ballot), and create the ballots.

But this filing deadline was only Part A.  The second act is scheduled for June 11.  That's assuming the federal court is able to resolve the redistricting next week.

Drawing of boundary maps is not easy and although the court has plenty of people offering help in the forms of maps drawn, the court is trying to do something in two weeks that the legislature couldn't do in more than two months (really, five months, but I wanted to use "two" twice there).

Drawing the boundaries is complicated by the need to have comparable numbers of voters in each district (the deviation in the four U.S. congressional boundaries has to be incredibly low, less than 10 voters).  Even if there were no political factors at play, this is not an easy task.

There's still the potential of two elections in August, still the unresolved issue of whether or not the voter registration system can have the same voter in two elections at the same time, and the major issue that we don't have polling places or election workers secured for the second floating potential election day.

We have buttoned down advance voting sites for August and November and we could try to turn those sites into mega-polling places for August's second election day, if that happened.  It would be the vote center concept mentioned on the site before.

Such an idea may be pure genius or crazy talk (or both) but we plan to hash through the drivers and restrainers of such a focus early next week.  I will create a post related to that if it looks like maps won't be approved next week.

Redistricting, Unresolved

When it comes to predicting turnout, I'm especially good at nailing the number the day after the election.

Until then, of course, it's a guess.  I'm usually not that far off, though.

Since the day after the 2008 presidential election, I've been preparing for a drop in Johnson County turnout in 2012, from 78 percent to 75 percent.  I just think the 2008 election had an energy level that I didn't think would be repeated in 2012.

If I'm right, though, the story line in the newspapers will be that Photo ID suppressed turnout.  Not in effect in 2008, the new Photo ID law will be listed as the reason turnout dropped. 

Again, IF I'm right (and we all win if I'm wrong and the turnout is higher), I'll be pointing people back to this post.

Likewise, I point you now  to something I've said many places in the past 18 months: "For me photo ID isn’t even in the top 10 issues for 2012."

My post on Monday provides a sense of an item on my top 10 list.  We're up to about 75 machines that have power supplies "certified fried," by the way.  We're still evaluating.

Another worry came with the census and this one may impact turnout negatively and drop my 75 percent prediction.

We have no idea what state races we will have in the August primary.  By, "no idea," I mean, we don't know the legislative districts involved, the boundaries, or the candidates. 

We don't completely know the election date, even.  We thought the August 7 date could be moved by legislative action, but that idea seems to have died. 

That puts us a little more than a month away from the last date we can send ballots to military and overseas voters, and we got nothin'.

The filing deadline of June 1 has moved to June 11 for some races because the legislature has not approved plans for redistricting.  The new drawings aren't supposed to do this, but rumor has it they will split some precincts, which means some precinct committee candidates who file by June 1 likely will find out they aren't running after all because their precinct changed after the June 1 filing deadline.

New candidates have an uphill battle, I think, running against incumbents, so some people are likely sitting on the sidelines waiting to file but wanting assurance they aren't running against a Juggernaut.  Many will have a tiny window, or a knothole, to make the decision and get filed.

The issue seems destined to be settled by the courts, maybe by the end of May, maybe by June 4, or maybe later.  With many potential candidates hanging loose, there probably will be some uncontested races, and that's the ultimate turnout-killer.

Of course, voters will come out to vote for president, but there are some voters who only come to vote for their neighbor or friend in a local race. 

So, we're still riding the storm. 

I absolutely, absolutely hate the overused "Perfect Storm" phrase.   As Americans, it seems we encounter a Perfect Storm somewhere every day. 

Besides, it seems a compliment to call what we're going through a Perfect Storm.  There's plenty of imperfection at play. 

But, it's a storm, and rapidly becoming a Twister.

Throw Elections From the Train

If our elections were a 1920s silent movie, our April 3rd election would represent the valiant moment where we narrowly untied the beautiful girl from the railroad tracks and saved her from an oncoming train.

That was, remember, our fifth election of the year.

So, whew, the girl is saved!  Yay, us!

Oh, there's an election in four months, August 7, but that's not for, well, four months from now.

That's more than a season.  The Royals could lose 100 games in that span.  Four months is a long time.

Then, instead of five elections in nine weeks, we'll have had six elections in 25 weeks.  That's a lot, but much less dramatic-sounding.

What's to worry?

This movie is starting to sound like a love story.

But this isn't a 1920s silent movie.  August is coming at us like a Hitchcock or Spielberg thriller.

As background, note that Kansas is the only state that hasn't resolved its redistricting following the census.

I just learned that yesterday.

I've made a point of not paying attention to the redistricting effort, but I feel like I've Rip-Van-Winkled it at this point.  The only state:  well, we gotta stand for something.

Last week, a bill was introduced to move the August 7 primary election to August 28 if the redistricting isn't complete soon.

That would be bad from an election administration standpoint.  We have polling places lined up for August 7, election workers committed, training sites reserved, and training scheduled.

Then, yesterday, as he said he would do nearly a year ago when he met with election commissioners and county clerks, the Secretary of State faced a date with a big "X" on his calendar indicating it was time for him to have the press conference he hoped he wouldn't have.

The purpose of the conference was to stress that the August 28 date may not be consistent with the Kansas constitution and that having the election on August 7 would be the way to go.

I remember the Secretary saying last May 5 that if we got into the third week of April without redistricting approved, he would do all he could as Secretary of State to move the process.

So, there we were:  an August 7 election or an August 28 election.  Preference given, by legal minds, to August 7.

But wait--curveball:  if August 28 isn't constitutional and August 7 isn't possible, a new option was introduced by the media as "no election."  I'm not sure how that would fly, but from everything I've read, it seems like a possibility.

So, now:  August 7, August 28, or not at all.

But wait, round 2--Johnson County government has a unique charter that requires its primaries to be conducted the first Tuesday in August.  We already have a commissioner race that requires a primary.

The new list of choices, then:  August 7 and/or August 28, or August 7 for the county but no state races.

Really?

We just saved the girl, hopped onto the next set of tracks, shared an embrace, and turned around to see this charging at us?

In pure homage to silent movies, I'm pretending I can't hear all the concerns rattling around in my mind.  In thriller mode, I'm just assuming it will all work out.

Next week, clerks and election commissioners meet in Dodge City and this will likely be topic number one.

Dodge City is rarely the theme for thrillers.  Western movies end with the good guys heading happily into the sunset.

Here's hoping for a change in genre, as well as the obvious hope to be validated--that election administrators are, indeed, the good guys.