Typically, I don't use many names in my blog posts.
Today, I will, just for the context of the post and also to laud the owner of the centerpiece of this post.
First, readers of this blog and election geeks everywhere know that voting systems in the United States are aging, with often no identifiable funding mechanisms to fund the replacements.
I've written about that extensively here regarding Johnson County.
In fact, we've painted ourselves into a corner in Johnson County. Our office has been promised the funding for a new system when that system is defined. Alternatively, money was being socked away annually to prepare for the system but that process stopped in 2011.
We're defining the system, planning for a 2017 rollout, promises remain, but the county's financial position to back up that promise is suspect at best.
I've been continuing to advocate that the cost of elections be itemized on residents' property tax bills and be funded through a separate mill levy.
That isn't some nutty idea--it's in Kansas law, a separate mill levy for elections, and Wyandotte County, for instance, does it. I'm not pushing for a tax increase, although that could be a vehicle county commissioners have to link actual costs against dollars raised.
It's the ultimate in public transparency. Residents would know exactly how much (how little, in fact) elections are costing them and when callers ask for more advance voting options or newer equipment, for instance, they'd know what the impact would be to their pocketbook.
Personally, I think an itemized tax statement would drive more government accountability, so I can't see how it's a bad thing.
Another reason supporting this change, I believe, is a new law passed this year that soon will require governing bodies to receive public approval through a (costly) election if mill levy rates are increased above the rate of inflation. Special elections are funded by the jurisdictions calling for them and not the election office. However, in the board of county commissioner's case, county tax dollars will have to pay for such an election.
Being proactive now by utilizing this elections mill levy and pulling out election costs from the general fund would help them later, I'm convinced.
I'm the only one convinced at this point, though.
I guess I should just pause and the take the win from another legislative item I'd pushed for years--schools being out of session on election day. Coupled with moving spring elections to the fall, this essentially has happened with the elections law that passed this year. Schools don't have to out of session, but are required to be available.
That win took 10 years.
I'm into about year four of the elections mill levy advocacy.
But, back to the equipment.
Conventional wisdom says the county will issue long-term debt as the method to find the funding for the voting system. Problem is, long-term debt has an annual price tag.
Debt retires. Annual price tags drop as a result. Smart governing bodies (Shawnee Mission School District, especially) ensure that new debt follows the old and the amount being paid annually doesn't drop off.
A drop off would be good in the short-term for taxpayers, but then the sticker shock for new debt might keep new projects from being started and soon, a school district (for instance, not the one mentioned) would need to make operational spending cuts or request a tax increase to operate the same way it had 10 years ago.
So, in Johnson County, if the amount of annual debt added exceeds the amount retiring, that money is going to have to come from the operating budget--the same one that for 2016 already exceeds the existing mill levy.
The amount of annual debt service payments required for a voting system will exceed the retiring debt service payments. (There is some fuzzy math that might say otherwise, but if you dig deep enough, you'll find this to be true).
Down the road, our voting equipment will be a tax increase in the making because we haven't planned and now, ironically, it would take a costly election to approve the funding.
This, by the way, is what happened in the late 1960s that led to Johnson County taxpayers voting to approve the purchase of voting machines (and the legislative creation of the mill levy tax for elections that some counties utilize).
Fact is, though, the mill levy in those counties is paying for operating expenses, not debt on capital.
So, while I try to push on that item, funding for voting systems needs a similar press with the legislature.
One Johnson County commissioner, John Toplikar, wondered if there was a way to create a technology fee within the Kansas legislature to pay for new equipment.
I'm not a fan of fees--he isn't either, I think--because they are hidden taxes. Tipping fees for landfills, for instance, are built back into the cost of service for trash haulers and passed on to residents.
But if there was a fee that didn't impact taxpayers?
My peer in Sedgwick County, Tabitha Lehman, has suggested a portion of political contributions be funneled back to the state for new voting equipment.
(Quick interlude--Tabitha represents one member of a cadre of election administration superstars in Kansas; I travel and meet with my colleagues across the country, and Kansas election administrators show very well. They fall behind the shadow of a loudmouth know-it-all with a blog, and are among the country's best-kept election administration secrets).
Back to Tabitha's idea. It's akin, I guess, to a portion of money raised by college athletics to be put back into the campus infrastructure--parking fees, reduced ticket prices for students, and campus security.
I'm not sure of the dollars--it's worth building a case based on actual contributions from 2012 and 2014. What if, for instance, candidates who raised more than $2,000 or $5,000 in a race had to contribute, say, five percent back to the state for the administration of an election technology fee?
There are probably ways to exempt loans and contributions from the candidate (it would seem unfair to self-fund a campaign and pay, essentially, a penalty for not taking contributions). It's possible that 5 percent wouldn't even make a dent, unless, of course this became federal legislation.
In fact, I know there are several immediate reasons why this wouldn't work. "Dark money," for instance--how would that be captured?
But the fact is we are about to see an outrageous amount of political spending, heading into 2016. These candidates will expect voting systems of the same sophistication as their campaigns.
Major league players deserve major league stadiums.
One thing is clear to me--communities will get new election systems when these expire. We're not going to collectively raise our hands to vote and the Internet appears, for now, off limits as an idea (I mean, come on, when the IRS is hacked....)
It's time to drive the discussion and find a funding solution before it's funding out of crisis. Frankly, I think we're heading into funding out of crisis in Johnson County despite my barking.
But we're on the leading edge of this issue--Johnson County's voting system fleet is among the oldest in the nation. Many communities implemented new systems about three years after we did, with funding from the Help America Vote Act, and we're just the leading indicator of pain ahead.
So, I proudly will begin pushing the Lehman Proposal. Or the Tabitha Tabulation Solution.
My experience has been that the best way to push for ideas is come up with one that, worst case, can be criticized and drive debate. If there are reasons why this won't work, let's discuss them and determine what will work.
Otherwise, many of us in Kansas may eventually be conducting special elections on outdated equipment to determine if taxpayers are willing for a tax increase to pay for a new voting system.
Maybe that's the logical outcome of all of this, but being proactive now may avoid it.
Showing posts with label Budget. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget. Show all posts
Thursday, November 20, 2014
Black Box Voting,
Budget,
mail-ballot,
Voting Machines
0
comments
Roeland Park, Part Two
Although it's been terribly long between posts, have pity, please--we started another election yesterday.
It's a special election in Roeland Park, second time this year, and comes in the most intense election period in Johnson County history. With the November election just ending, we have this election a month later, and, on January 7, we will be mailing about 350,000 ballots for special school elections.
That election day will be about a week after the filing deadline for the spring elections. Come April, nearly every voter in Johnson County will have had 3 elections in five months and some may have five elections in five months if we have a spring primary.
(Was that as crazy to read as it was to type? One of our ballot envelope colors should be camouflage, to recognize ballot fatigue.)
Amidst all of this, we have some major budget deadlines ahead. These are important because it may be 2014, but the 2016 budget gains form by March. As mentioned in the last post, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for 2016, and the costs for that election will be much higher than in 2014.
Further, we must work on preparing our voting system request for proposal. We were chagrined recently to learn that Sedgwick County has $4.5 million set aside for a new system. (Actually, I'm chagrined for us but happy for them).
Douglas County had the wisdom to hire a county management leader from Johnson County a few years ago, but she took with her, apparently, the resolve to plan ahead. Douglas County began setting aside money each year for voting systems at the same time our county manager stopped our annual set-aside amount and also pulled funding based on a quote we received, provided several times in the budget process. We had $10 million at one time in the capital budget, but he pulled it.
Shawnee County, also, has set aside a large portion of money for its next system.
So, it's frustrating to say the least when my predecessor had the wisdom to push for and implement a plan to pay for a future system, but we are behind the other large counties in preparation years later.
This will have a major point of reckoning because even when the county issues debt to pay for the new system, it will have either a tax impact or a major cost cutting impact. That cost cutting won't come in elections, because as we ramp up polling places and staff advance voting to 2016 levels, I estimate those additional costs to be more than $1 million from 2014.
Plus, because we will have to finance our new system, this issue also likely prevents the county from setting aside money for its next, next system. This has created a perpetual election funding crisis.
And that's if things stay the way they are now. Our voting machines tabulate perfectly, but reports of a vote flipping from one candidate to another--something the system has had since it was implemented in 2002--does wear us down. Particularly, social media can turn one report into a viral epidemic.
I often talked to three or four people about the same report, and we just don't have the staff size to talk about these issues adequately, let alone address them. It's worth considering if we need to purchase an interim solution for 2016 while we select a longer-term solution.
All of this reminds me of how, when I first came to the office 10 years ago, how the industry quaked of reports on the Black Box Voting. There was a book of the same name. 10 years ago, that's what viral meant.
Those were the days.
Still, we're presented with an opportunity, really. Many voters want paper, others want better touch screens, and I want a system that is easier to maintain. Age is a relentless beast, for humans and machines, and the clock is ticking on the useful life of our system.
Legislators know this. I just spoke at a conference of staffers put on by the National Council of State Legislators. Two of those staffers were from Kansas, and they are coordinating an a task force of legislators looking at combining spring and fall elections.
I'm attending the meeting tomorrow, and speaking next month. My patter is familiar--spring elections in odd years move to fall in odd years, leaving each year with August and November elections. In conjunction with this, require that all schools be closed on election day in November and available as polling places.
One thing that has struck me, since the Black Box Voting days, is that, well, viral campaigns reach a lot of people. We all vote, and many of us have opinions on the best way to vote (paper, machine, Internet, you name it).
There isn't much consensus on the best method, today or tomorrow. Add in layers of policy makers, who have their own opinions and their own cost and social drivers and restrainers, and the chance of a common approach in the country, or even in a state, seems unlikely.
I'm still a believer that there will be a big bang, a disruptive moment in the industry--perhaps a single state legislature will pass a little bill requiring Internet Voting, or emailing of ballots. All the work of standards, scientists' theories, and activist interests will go out the window.
Likewise, the opinions of election administrators will matter little in such a scenario. Somewhere, we have to find a way to make the realities of today merge to lead to a solution. My little presentation included here is hard to follow unless you were at the meeting this week (and even then....), but I'd be glad to explain it further if you email or comment.
For now, back to the elections.
It's a special election in Roeland Park, second time this year, and comes in the most intense election period in Johnson County history. With the November election just ending, we have this election a month later, and, on January 7, we will be mailing about 350,000 ballots for special school elections.
That election day will be about a week after the filing deadline for the spring elections. Come April, nearly every voter in Johnson County will have had 3 elections in five months and some may have five elections in five months if we have a spring primary.
(Was that as crazy to read as it was to type? One of our ballot envelope colors should be camouflage, to recognize ballot fatigue.)
Amidst all of this, we have some major budget deadlines ahead. These are important because it may be 2014, but the 2016 budget gains form by March. As mentioned in the last post, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for 2016, and the costs for that election will be much higher than in 2014.
Further, we must work on preparing our voting system request for proposal. We were chagrined recently to learn that Sedgwick County has $4.5 million set aside for a new system. (Actually, I'm chagrined for us but happy for them).
Douglas County had the wisdom to hire a county management leader from Johnson County a few years ago, but she took with her, apparently, the resolve to plan ahead. Douglas County began setting aside money each year for voting systems at the same time our county manager stopped our annual set-aside amount and also pulled funding based on a quote we received, provided several times in the budget process. We had $10 million at one time in the capital budget, but he pulled it.
Shawnee County, also, has set aside a large portion of money for its next system.
So, it's frustrating to say the least when my predecessor had the wisdom to push for and implement a plan to pay for a future system, but we are behind the other large counties in preparation years later.
This will have a major point of reckoning because even when the county issues debt to pay for the new system, it will have either a tax impact or a major cost cutting impact. That cost cutting won't come in elections, because as we ramp up polling places and staff advance voting to 2016 levels, I estimate those additional costs to be more than $1 million from 2014.
Plus, because we will have to finance our new system, this issue also likely prevents the county from setting aside money for its next, next system. This has created a perpetual election funding crisis.
And that's if things stay the way they are now. Our voting machines tabulate perfectly, but reports of a vote flipping from one candidate to another--something the system has had since it was implemented in 2002--does wear us down. Particularly, social media can turn one report into a viral epidemic. I often talked to three or four people about the same report, and we just don't have the staff size to talk about these issues adequately, let alone address them. It's worth considering if we need to purchase an interim solution for 2016 while we select a longer-term solution.
All of this reminds me of how, when I first came to the office 10 years ago, how the industry quaked of reports on the Black Box Voting. There was a book of the same name. 10 years ago, that's what viral meant.
Those were the days.
Still, we're presented with an opportunity, really. Many voters want paper, others want better touch screens, and I want a system that is easier to maintain. Age is a relentless beast, for humans and machines, and the clock is ticking on the useful life of our system.
Legislators know this. I just spoke at a conference of staffers put on by the National Council of State Legislators. Two of those staffers were from Kansas, and they are coordinating an a task force of legislators looking at combining spring and fall elections.
I'm attending the meeting tomorrow, and speaking next month. My patter is familiar--spring elections in odd years move to fall in odd years, leaving each year with August and November elections. In conjunction with this, require that all schools be closed on election day in November and available as polling places.
One thing that has struck me, since the Black Box Voting days, is that, well, viral campaigns reach a lot of people. We all vote, and many of us have opinions on the best way to vote (paper, machine, Internet, you name it).
There isn't much consensus on the best method, today or tomorrow. Add in layers of policy makers, who have their own opinions and their own cost and social drivers and restrainers, and the chance of a common approach in the country, or even in a state, seems unlikely.
I'm still a believer that there will be a big bang, a disruptive moment in the industry--perhaps a single state legislature will pass a little bill requiring Internet Voting, or emailing of ballots. All the work of standards, scientists' theories, and activist interests will go out the window.
Likewise, the opinions of election administrators will matter little in such a scenario. Somewhere, we have to find a way to make the realities of today merge to lead to a solution. My little presentation included here is hard to follow unless you were at the meeting this week (and even then....), but I'd be glad to explain it further if you email or comment.
For now, back to the elections.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Budget,
Next Generation Voting System,
Personalized Voting
0
comments
The Leftovers
It would be nice if our next-generation voting system plans could be bundled into a tidy blog post.
Our system will be at least 15 years old before something new is put to use, and the emphasis is on "at least."
Quotes for replacement fall between $8.5 and $13 million. That's before a competitive bid process but also assumes today's number of voters, polling locations, and advance voting sites. We expect a significant cost to dispose of our existing system as well; training, for us and for our workers, will come at an extra price.
There's also the small matter that nothing out there today rocks our world. Federal and state certification are required for any voting system, although we plan to consider systems that aren't certified, yet potentially capable of being certified.
There--I suppose that what you've just read actually could be the tidy blog post that explains our plans, or at least an assessment of our situation. What follows is a bit of a free-for-all consciousness stream that begins to address what we're doing.
It's the first of a series.
However, much like the episodes of HBO's "The Leftovers," the author of this episode has put absolutely no thought into what might transpire in the next episode.
Well, that's extreme. Let's just say that this post will focus on money and the process. The next post will continue with the process and speak to what we might actually do. (There may be a post in between that's unrelated because we are in the middle of an election, after all).
Let's start with funding:
My predecessor pushed for the creation of a voting equipment replacement fund. It was a great idea and one successfully emulated in Douglas County and in a few other communities.
The concept was (expensive but) simple--sock away about $400,000 a year into that fund and 15 years later, we'd be $6 million closer to a new system. That's real money.
I think we could indeed buy a system for $6 million.
For that matter, I think we could buy a system for any amount we wanted to pay, including nothing. With no money set aside for purchases, many communities will be looking to lease systems or sign huge term and supply agreements in order to pay for the system.
It will be like walking the beaches of Mexico, hearing from vendors that something is "Nearly Free," but nearly free will be nearly unaffordable on an ongoing basis.
In essence, anything other than paying for the system up-front involves borrowing, whether in the form of the bonds or in the form of debt servicing through a vendor. Leases and the "fax machine model" I just described (equipment is cheap, toner is not) are nothing more than adding finance charges to a purchase.
Oh. That introduces a project value. I'm fond of project values, those things by which we will measure our ultimate success against. Here is our first project value.
I hate to pay interest in my personal life, so why would I want the county to do so? At the very least, I think financing through a vendor would be a sneaky way of looking heroic on the front end, not so much later. Surely, we can plan to avoid such a pricing model.
On the other hand, there is no way the county will be able to purchase equipment without issuing debt or raising taxes (considerably). Budget cuts theoretically could be made, but the number is really too large to make that feasible.
Even issuing debt, which the county did with the current system, will result in a tax increase or major cuts. Dividing the cost so that even just a million dollars is added to the annual debt level (by dividing the cost over a period of useful life years) would result in a tax increase.
Doubters need look no further than the county's 2015 budget proceedings to see how steadfast the Board of County Commissioners are against raising the mill levy and how even a half-million dollar expense would cause the mill levy to increase.
No matter you, say, because we have that equipment replacement fund!
That equipment replacement fund? It's at around $800,000.
We've purchased new voting machines to augment the current fleet with that funding and shelves to store the machines in the warehouse. Some money was also used to revamp the electrical work in the warehouse to power the machines.
Oh, and the county stopped putting the money aside, stashing that $400,000 for the last time in 2011. The argument was that the fund wouldn't be enough to fully pay for a new system, anyway. Besides, we were told, because we definitively couldn't specify in 2011 the system we'd buy years later, what's the point of saving?
That's blog water under the bridge at this point.
During our budget presentation, videotaped for God and the three people who might actually later watch it to see, I pushed for action on the voting system. The drift had to stop.
The Board of County Commissioners agreed and instructed me to come back with a system selected and they would fund it.
Pick a system, and we'll fund it. That's actually consistent with the Kansas statutes, so I like that, but I didn't just fall off the Touchscreen Truck yesterday. Where's that money coming from?
While others ask, "Why," some ask, "Why not?" In this case, I asked, "How?"
Not to worry, I was told. The money will be there.
So, I won't worry.
I don't think the money will be there, but I'm not worried about it.
I guess that's a win.
When we have to buy a system, as in "when our touchscreens stop responding to touch" and the reality that we only have four little scanners back at the ranch sinks in, the money will be there. That's when it would be a crisis, when taxes would have to be raised, and when I will be showing videos of all of the times I raised warning signs to God and those same three people who watched the initial video.
We obviously will have a voting method for as long as the county exists. The method will be taxpayer funded (or sponsored, I guess, but that would be odd). So, technically, the money WILL be there.
Will it be in 2017 when I'm proposing we pull off the switcheroo, before machine failure but just as the fleet is undergoing the equivalent of angioplasty? For now, I'm told yes.
I explained that I would like to fund a process consultant from a portion of the voting equipment replacement fund to begin pushing a roadmap I've developed. That roadmap (Project Ted) will create requirements against which vendors will propose. The solutions can be certified, non-certified, and "anything out there" solutions, such as my "Bring Your Own Voting Machine" concept.
We'll build in adequate time for proposals to be developed and to be reviewed. If we like one that isn't certified, we'll take it at that point to the Secretary of State. If the Secretary of State would certify such a solution if we purchased it, we'll go down that path.
If not, it's off the list.
In government, this is akin to changing local zoning. For instance, let's say an area is zoned rural but a department store applies to locate in that area. But, it's already zoned rural, you say.
Yes, but that zoning was based on specific factors. Now, rather than hypothetically wondering if it should be rural, there is a concrete proposal (literally) in hand to evaluate. The zoning board and city council can reflect on the potential change with a real-life example.
It's not hypothetical at that point, and the ruling may be different based on the application.
That's what we'd do here. We can talk about conceptual systems and the potential for those systems to be certified. Instead, here, we'll wait until we have a very specific proposal before evaluating the benefits of certification.
This way, we'll wonder if system ABC should be or could be certified, as opposed to some "Riddle me this..." approach.
All of this process is expected to take nearly two years, or "plenty of time for everyone to forget what we agreed upon."
Thank you, again, hardly watched video of the meeting.
Also, though, such a timeline begs for us to look at the solution in phases, creating bites towards conversion. That's where our process will go, framing what we plan to do in chunks, with small but relatively expensive milestones that take us to the finished system.
Phase One will be the development of a new election management system and the rollout of electronic poll books. These items will provide the foundation of interface with Phase Two, the new voting system.
In a perfect world, if we have money, the existing machines will roll out for a countywide election in April 2017 and never return. The warehouse will be gussied, and a new system will be utilized in the spring of 2018.
There may be no such thing as a perfect election and, thus, a perfect world is equally elusive, but that's the plan, with the process further defined in the next post.
In the meantime, I'm going to a meeting early next week to talk with smart people who are undertaking a similar path, a bit ahead of us (LA County and Travis County) and others, such as PEW Charitable Trusts' Election Initiatives group.
I bring them up, further, because they have a couple of job postings and in those postings I read something I hadn't before. Maybe they've been staring at me in different documents and I missed them, but they generally reflect some of the discussions election administrators have been discussing.
They reflect the discussions so much, in fact, that I've decided to embrace them (steal them) as my own, adding to my project values for this overall project. They are simple statements, really, but very profound:
Our system will be at least 15 years old before something new is put to use, and the emphasis is on "at least."
Quotes for replacement fall between $8.5 and $13 million. That's before a competitive bid process but also assumes today's number of voters, polling locations, and advance voting sites. We expect a significant cost to dispose of our existing system as well; training, for us and for our workers, will come at an extra price.
There's also the small matter that nothing out there today rocks our world. Federal and state certification are required for any voting system, although we plan to consider systems that aren't certified, yet potentially capable of being certified.
There--I suppose that what you've just read actually could be the tidy blog post that explains our plans, or at least an assessment of our situation. What follows is a bit of a free-for-all consciousness stream that begins to address what we're doing.
It's the first of a series.
However, much like the episodes of HBO's "The Leftovers," the author of this episode has put absolutely no thought into what might transpire in the next episode.
Well, that's extreme. Let's just say that this post will focus on money and the process. The next post will continue with the process and speak to what we might actually do. (There may be a post in between that's unrelated because we are in the middle of an election, after all).
Let's start with funding:
My predecessor pushed for the creation of a voting equipment replacement fund. It was a great idea and one successfully emulated in Douglas County and in a few other communities.
The concept was (expensive but) simple--sock away about $400,000 a year into that fund and 15 years later, we'd be $6 million closer to a new system. That's real money.
I think we could indeed buy a system for $6 million.
For that matter, I think we could buy a system for any amount we wanted to pay, including nothing. With no money set aside for purchases, many communities will be looking to lease systems or sign huge term and supply agreements in order to pay for the system.
It will be like walking the beaches of Mexico, hearing from vendors that something is "Nearly Free," but nearly free will be nearly unaffordable on an ongoing basis.
In essence, anything other than paying for the system up-front involves borrowing, whether in the form of the bonds or in the form of debt servicing through a vendor. Leases and the "fax machine model" I just described (equipment is cheap, toner is not) are nothing more than adding finance charges to a purchase.
Oh. That introduces a project value. I'm fond of project values, those things by which we will measure our ultimate success against. Here is our first project value.
I hate to pay interest in my personal life, so why would I want the county to do so? At the very least, I think financing through a vendor would be a sneaky way of looking heroic on the front end, not so much later. Surely, we can plan to avoid such a pricing model.
On the other hand, there is no way the county will be able to purchase equipment without issuing debt or raising taxes (considerably). Budget cuts theoretically could be made, but the number is really too large to make that feasible.
Even issuing debt, which the county did with the current system, will result in a tax increase or major cuts. Dividing the cost so that even just a million dollars is added to the annual debt level (by dividing the cost over a period of useful life years) would result in a tax increase.
Doubters need look no further than the county's 2015 budget proceedings to see how steadfast the Board of County Commissioners are against raising the mill levy and how even a half-million dollar expense would cause the mill levy to increase.
No matter you, say, because we have that equipment replacement fund!
That equipment replacement fund? It's at around $800,000.
We've purchased new voting machines to augment the current fleet with that funding and shelves to store the machines in the warehouse. Some money was also used to revamp the electrical work in the warehouse to power the machines.
Oh, and the county stopped putting the money aside, stashing that $400,000 for the last time in 2011. The argument was that the fund wouldn't be enough to fully pay for a new system, anyway. Besides, we were told, because we definitively couldn't specify in 2011 the system we'd buy years later, what's the point of saving?
That's blog water under the bridge at this point.
During our budget presentation, videotaped for God and the three people who might actually later watch it to see, I pushed for action on the voting system. The drift had to stop.
The Board of County Commissioners agreed and instructed me to come back with a system selected and they would fund it.
Pick a system, and we'll fund it. That's actually consistent with the Kansas statutes, so I like that, but I didn't just fall off the Touchscreen Truck yesterday. Where's that money coming from?
While others ask, "Why," some ask, "Why not?" In this case, I asked, "How?"
Not to worry, I was told. The money will be there.
So, I won't worry.
I don't think the money will be there, but I'm not worried about it.
I guess that's a win.
When we have to buy a system, as in "when our touchscreens stop responding to touch" and the reality that we only have four little scanners back at the ranch sinks in, the money will be there. That's when it would be a crisis, when taxes would have to be raised, and when I will be showing videos of all of the times I raised warning signs to God and those same three people who watched the initial video.
We obviously will have a voting method for as long as the county exists. The method will be taxpayer funded (or sponsored, I guess, but that would be odd). So, technically, the money WILL be there.
Will it be in 2017 when I'm proposing we pull off the switcheroo, before machine failure but just as the fleet is undergoing the equivalent of angioplasty? For now, I'm told yes.
I explained that I would like to fund a process consultant from a portion of the voting equipment replacement fund to begin pushing a roadmap I've developed. That roadmap (Project Ted) will create requirements against which vendors will propose. The solutions can be certified, non-certified, and "anything out there" solutions, such as my "Bring Your Own Voting Machine" concept.
We'll build in adequate time for proposals to be developed and to be reviewed. If we like one that isn't certified, we'll take it at that point to the Secretary of State. If the Secretary of State would certify such a solution if we purchased it, we'll go down that path.
If not, it's off the list.
In government, this is akin to changing local zoning. For instance, let's say an area is zoned rural but a department store applies to locate in that area. But, it's already zoned rural, you say.
Yes, but that zoning was based on specific factors. Now, rather than hypothetically wondering if it should be rural, there is a concrete proposal (literally) in hand to evaluate. The zoning board and city council can reflect on the potential change with a real-life example.
It's not hypothetical at that point, and the ruling may be different based on the application.
That's what we'd do here. We can talk about conceptual systems and the potential for those systems to be certified. Instead, here, we'll wait until we have a very specific proposal before evaluating the benefits of certification.
This way, we'll wonder if system ABC should be or could be certified, as opposed to some "Riddle me this..." approach.
All of this process is expected to take nearly two years, or "plenty of time for everyone to forget what we agreed upon."
Thank you, again, hardly watched video of the meeting.
Also, though, such a timeline begs for us to look at the solution in phases, creating bites towards conversion. That's where our process will go, framing what we plan to do in chunks, with small but relatively expensive milestones that take us to the finished system.
Phase One will be the development of a new election management system and the rollout of electronic poll books. These items will provide the foundation of interface with Phase Two, the new voting system.
In a perfect world, if we have money, the existing machines will roll out for a countywide election in April 2017 and never return. The warehouse will be gussied, and a new system will be utilized in the spring of 2018.
There may be no such thing as a perfect election and, thus, a perfect world is equally elusive, but that's the plan, with the process further defined in the next post.
In the meantime, I'm going to a meeting early next week to talk with smart people who are undertaking a similar path, a bit ahead of us (LA County and Travis County) and others, such as PEW Charitable Trusts' Election Initiatives group.
I bring them up, further, because they have a couple of job postings and in those postings I read something I hadn't before. Maybe they've been staring at me in different documents and I missed them, but they generally reflect some of the discussions election administrators have been discussing.
They reflect the discussions so much, in fact, that I've decided to embrace them (steal them) as my own, adding to my project values for this overall project. They are simple statements, really, but very profound:
- Building an election system that reflects the way people live.
- Putting voters in charge of their own voter experience.
By the time we roll out our new system, I will have convinced myself that I came up with these two statements.
Sadly, that darn permanent record gives and it takes. These are great values, though, and ones addressed in the next post.
We have emerged from the budget process with much news and I will have a post soon on the summary of that.
We had tremendous support from the Board of County Commissioners on our path towards a new voting system and also with regards to funding our first new headcount in 20 years.
My primary objective with the budget process was to simply agree upon a plan that would lead us to the funding of a new voting system.
We did that. And, we did it at a perfect time, amidst some meetings I've been at with academics and industry supporters who will be able to provide us assistance through the process.
Secondarily, we needed some guidance as to what it would take to add headcount to fulfill our growing needs. Our last approved headcount goes back to the time Bill Clinton was president.
The election world changed greatly with the George Bush/Al Gore election and the subsequent Help America Vote Act of 2002, let alone state legislation impacting operations in Kansas. From a headcount perspective, our office has been stuck in the 1990s.
During the first budget cycle after I came to the county, in 2005, we requested three positions--one for registration, one for planning, and one for outreach. It's hard to argue, in retrospect, that they weren't needed, but we didn't get support from the county manager's office at the time and, in fact, we've never had the county manager, in my time here, support any request for headcount at the election office.
It may not have felt like it then, but, economically, 2005 represented the "good times," and in 2008, all county departments began taking one for the team to deal with the budget crisis.
In fact, we all took another, and another, and another, and all county departments had some pretty lean days during that time.
That process showed me how government budgets are a bit of an economic lagging indicator--because much of government funding is based on tax dollars and because tax dollars generally are a byproduct of income and real estate value, government is often the last to take the hit from a slow economy and the last to see the upswing as the economy improves.
All to say, we hit a period of higher expectations at a time when resources, understandably, were at their scarcest.
Elections, though, are the most basic service of government. Arguably, elections are the most important thing government does because without elections, there is no government.
And, from a headcount perspective, we have hit a wall. So, I was gratified that that Board, actually, led the charge to support our request this year.
Locally, the large school districts should benefit from this as well because the timing of this position--if we can get the person on board January 1--allows us to support their needs to have a mail-ballot election in January, rather than June.
The approved position is for a modest level, the most common level at the county, and one that sounds more expensive from a budget perspective than its actual pay because the budget dollars are fully loaded to cover benefits.
The final approval and discussion, however, wasn't without a Scooby Doo "Whaa?" moment or two, particularly when the county manager suggested removing funding for two vacant positions that have taken forever to fill because of the county process and using those two positions to fund the one we were requesting.
That would leave us, of course, down one position and not increase our staff.
I'm still puzzled with that one. If this blog were a video or if the event were live television, rather than a typed account, you would have seen me turning around to face the camera with a deadpanned blank stare after that recommendation.
A big reason for the delay in filling the open positions is the process we've had to undergo to have the position descriptions evaluated. There simply hasn't been a shared sense of urgency in filling those with our county's human resource department, which reports to the county manager.
I've posted the video here when this one-for-two idea was proposed. Go to 2:40 for the "we can eliminate two positions we've slowly taken through the process so they can have this new position" solution.
Thankfully, Commissioner Ed Eilert and other members of the Board saw through the fuzzy math.
Commissioner Eilert's argument was that because we hadn't been able to fill the positions we have open yet--not by our choice, by the way--we will save, in 2014, at least the cost of the position for 2015, making this a 2016 problem. The budget process doesn't allow for such a clean swap, but the logic was clean and he stuck with it, to the benefit of our voters.
As we try to fill the positions that are currently open, a common piece of frustration is being told that what we need out of positions isn't appropriate, that we don't need the skill sets or levels I think we need to run the election office. It's a case, really, of the support function in the county--which exists to help those on the front line--overstepping.
Problem is, these organizations aren't accountable to our voters. We are.
Essentially, this is another example of the county manager attempting to have authority without accountability over us, and with these positions vacant for all of 2014, it's been killing us. We're virtually assured of not having these positions filled for eight months, until after the August election.
This week, as I had a meeting with our human resources contact (they use the title "partner"), I advocated unsuccessfully why I believe these positions should require a bachelor's degree. I literally have fought this issue, to no avail, for five years.
In other communities, this baseline education requirement, with experience that can be substituted, is common. In other parts of the county (such as the county manager's office and human resources), this is a requirement. When it comes to other parts of the county, though, I was told they were "different kinds of positions" that required more skills.
One of my arguments is that our office deals with a diverse group of voters, party chairs, candidates, and stakeholders who often have college degrees. They expect to be greeted by those of comparable capabilities.
I was told this was condescending. Never mind, of course, that it feels condescending to be told by a support organization that they know our business better than I do.
I explained that we are all about building future leaders of our office and that eventually, those we hire, hopefully, will be candidates for our senior positions in our office and that I would not expect someone at that level to not have at least a bachelor's degree. Why would we hire someone who we didn't foresee could move along that path?
We left it that I would provide contacts for election offices that have position descriptions that required such degrees, so this post is a bit of a siren call asking for colleagues to please send me anything you have (to email@briannewby.com, please). I will be contacting some offices as well.
A few hours later, I did see that night, on Craigslist, a post for an entry-level job at the election office in nearby Kansas City, Missouri, for a voter outreach and communications specialist. The position pays $15,000 less than our positions, but requires a college degree.
More to the point, as I left the meeting and went back to my office, I saw an article in the Kansas City Star related to a post that named Overland Park as one of the smartest cities in the United States.
I guess because our office is in Olathe, that's irrelevant?
More to the point, though, the dumb-down factor is eliminated when driving two miles to the south to the administration building, where a bachelor's degree frequently is a requirement.
This really highlights two key issues:
First, as the election commissioner in the largest county in the state and tenured longer than 80 percent of elections commissioners in the history of the state, as a former director of strategic planning for a $10 billion division of a Fortune 50 company, and as an instructor in the area's largest MBA program and a member of Baker's Faculty Senate, I think I know a smidge about the talent acquisition strategy we need at our office.
To be told otherwise by part of the county manager's staff is incredulous.
Further, blocking my request that the positions require a specific education level is a violation of Kansas law, specifically KSA 19-3434, that takes from county and other local officers "all power and authority now exercised by them in relations to the supervision, conduct and control of elections within each county to which this act applies, and it is hereby made the duty of all public officials to cooperate fully with the election commissioner in response to any written request made to them by said election commissioner..."
Second, more broadly, it points to the perception that many of us in elections have discussed regarding the professionalism and certification needs for all of our employees. Election Center certification has value, but it's unlikely a new recruit would have such a certification. There has to be some global way that election positions are valued comparably to other positions in government.
I have some thoughts on that. After the election, and after some upcoming posts on provisional ballots, the budget summary, polling place tools, I'll get to that.
Coming up next, though, will be a provisional ballot discussion.
That's about as geeky of an election administrator teaser as there is. It will take some time to construct the post, but hopefully it will be up by mid-week.
 |
| Dinner at local restaurant, Chen's, and an appropriate message the night following our budget presentation. |
My primary objective with the budget process was to simply agree upon a plan that would lead us to the funding of a new voting system.
We did that. And, we did it at a perfect time, amidst some meetings I've been at with academics and industry supporters who will be able to provide us assistance through the process.
Secondarily, we needed some guidance as to what it would take to add headcount to fulfill our growing needs. Our last approved headcount goes back to the time Bill Clinton was president.
The election world changed greatly with the George Bush/Al Gore election and the subsequent Help America Vote Act of 2002, let alone state legislation impacting operations in Kansas. From a headcount perspective, our office has been stuck in the 1990s.
During the first budget cycle after I came to the county, in 2005, we requested three positions--one for registration, one for planning, and one for outreach. It's hard to argue, in retrospect, that they weren't needed, but we didn't get support from the county manager's office at the time and, in fact, we've never had the county manager, in my time here, support any request for headcount at the election office.
It may not have felt like it then, but, economically, 2005 represented the "good times," and in 2008, all county departments began taking one for the team to deal with the budget crisis.
In fact, we all took another, and another, and another, and all county departments had some pretty lean days during that time.
That process showed me how government budgets are a bit of an economic lagging indicator--because much of government funding is based on tax dollars and because tax dollars generally are a byproduct of income and real estate value, government is often the last to take the hit from a slow economy and the last to see the upswing as the economy improves.
All to say, we hit a period of higher expectations at a time when resources, understandably, were at their scarcest.
Elections, though, are the most basic service of government. Arguably, elections are the most important thing government does because without elections, there is no government.
And, from a headcount perspective, we have hit a wall. So, I was gratified that that Board, actually, led the charge to support our request this year.
Locally, the large school districts should benefit from this as well because the timing of this position--if we can get the person on board January 1--allows us to support their needs to have a mail-ballot election in January, rather than June.
The approved position is for a modest level, the most common level at the county, and one that sounds more expensive from a budget perspective than its actual pay because the budget dollars are fully loaded to cover benefits.
The final approval and discussion, however, wasn't without a Scooby Doo "Whaa?" moment or two, particularly when the county manager suggested removing funding for two vacant positions that have taken forever to fill because of the county process and using those two positions to fund the one we were requesting.
That would leave us, of course, down one position and not increase our staff.
I'm still puzzled with that one. If this blog were a video or if the event were live television, rather than a typed account, you would have seen me turning around to face the camera with a deadpanned blank stare after that recommendation.
A big reason for the delay in filling the open positions is the process we've had to undergo to have the position descriptions evaluated. There simply hasn't been a shared sense of urgency in filling those with our county's human resource department, which reports to the county manager.
I've posted the video here when this one-for-two idea was proposed. Go to 2:40 for the "we can eliminate two positions we've slowly taken through the process so they can have this new position" solution.
Thankfully, Commissioner Ed Eilert and other members of the Board saw through the fuzzy math.
Commissioner Eilert's argument was that because we hadn't been able to fill the positions we have open yet--not by our choice, by the way--we will save, in 2014, at least the cost of the position for 2015, making this a 2016 problem. The budget process doesn't allow for such a clean swap, but the logic was clean and he stuck with it, to the benefit of our voters.
As we try to fill the positions that are currently open, a common piece of frustration is being told that what we need out of positions isn't appropriate, that we don't need the skill sets or levels I think we need to run the election office. It's a case, really, of the support function in the county--which exists to help those on the front line--overstepping.
Problem is, these organizations aren't accountable to our voters. We are.
Essentially, this is another example of the county manager attempting to have authority without accountability over us, and with these positions vacant for all of 2014, it's been killing us. We're virtually assured of not having these positions filled for eight months, until after the August election.
This week, as I had a meeting with our human resources contact (they use the title "partner"), I advocated unsuccessfully why I believe these positions should require a bachelor's degree. I literally have fought this issue, to no avail, for five years.
In other communities, this baseline education requirement, with experience that can be substituted, is common. In other parts of the county (such as the county manager's office and human resources), this is a requirement. When it comes to other parts of the county, though, I was told they were "different kinds of positions" that required more skills.
One of my arguments is that our office deals with a diverse group of voters, party chairs, candidates, and stakeholders who often have college degrees. They expect to be greeted by those of comparable capabilities.
I was told this was condescending. Never mind, of course, that it feels condescending to be told by a support organization that they know our business better than I do.
I explained that we are all about building future leaders of our office and that eventually, those we hire, hopefully, will be candidates for our senior positions in our office and that I would not expect someone at that level to not have at least a bachelor's degree. Why would we hire someone who we didn't foresee could move along that path?
We left it that I would provide contacts for election offices that have position descriptions that required such degrees, so this post is a bit of a siren call asking for colleagues to please send me anything you have (to email@briannewby.com, please). I will be contacting some offices as well.
A few hours later, I did see that night, on Craigslist, a post for an entry-level job at the election office in nearby Kansas City, Missouri, for a voter outreach and communications specialist. The position pays $15,000 less than our positions, but requires a college degree.
More to the point, as I left the meeting and went back to my office, I saw an article in the Kansas City Star related to a post that named Overland Park as one of the smartest cities in the United States.
I guess because our office is in Olathe, that's irrelevant?
More to the point, though, the dumb-down factor is eliminated when driving two miles to the south to the administration building, where a bachelor's degree frequently is a requirement.
This really highlights two key issues:
First, as the election commissioner in the largest county in the state and tenured longer than 80 percent of elections commissioners in the history of the state, as a former director of strategic planning for a $10 billion division of a Fortune 50 company, and as an instructor in the area's largest MBA program and a member of Baker's Faculty Senate, I think I know a smidge about the talent acquisition strategy we need at our office.
To be told otherwise by part of the county manager's staff is incredulous.
Further, blocking my request that the positions require a specific education level is a violation of Kansas law, specifically KSA 19-3434, that takes from county and other local officers "all power and authority now exercised by them in relations to the supervision, conduct and control of elections within each county to which this act applies, and it is hereby made the duty of all public officials to cooperate fully with the election commissioner in response to any written request made to them by said election commissioner..."
Second, more broadly, it points to the perception that many of us in elections have discussed regarding the professionalism and certification needs for all of our employees. Election Center certification has value, but it's unlikely a new recruit would have such a certification. There has to be some global way that election positions are valued comparably to other positions in government.
I have some thoughts on that. After the election, and after some upcoming posts on provisional ballots, the budget summary, polling place tools, I'll get to that.
Coming up next, though, will be a provisional ballot discussion.
That's about as geeky of an election administrator teaser as there is. It will take some time to construct the post, but hopefully it will be up by mid-week.
Before coming to the Johnson County Election Office, I pondered greatly about what it would be like to replace someone I often now refer to as Miss Election USA.
Connie Schmidt, my predecessor, was recognized nationally as a leader in the election administration community. There are plenty of books about leading a turnaround but few analyze taking the baton from someone well-regarded and keeping the momentum, particularly if you didn't know the person handing you the baton.
As an elected city council member in Shawnee in April 2002, I didn't know anything about Connie's national reputation. But, I knew about her locally and saw her operation first-hand when running for office.
I toured the election office shortly after filing for office. I met her two assistant election commissioners--both very impressive. I handed them my candidate web bio and it was live on the jocoelection site before my brief tour was over.
Part of the tour included an introduction to a little runt of a computer that was proudly introduced to me as our soon-to-come "new" voting machines.
Wow. This was 2001, but these looked like the 286 computer issued to me in 1990 at Sprint.
Moreover, there was genuine giddiness in the office about these devices.
I learned these machines were state-of-the-art in the voting machine world, but they were essentially large Palm Pilots. Our diagnostics today include using a stylus to touch the center of the screen and all four corners, for instance--when's the last time you did that setting up an iPhone?
Still, I saw the footprint of the old machines and how much more economical these were from a space perspective, and I saw why the staff was pleased to make the change.
On election night, I was happy to find I was victorious but later that week became aware of a need for a recount after tabulation concerns once results were modemed back on election night. (This, by the way, is why results to this day are hand-delivered back to the election office and why this practice is emulated by others nationwide. You're welcome.)
Anyway, I came in on a Saturday to watch the recount, and it was absolutely the most boring, yet extremely professional, thing I've ever observed. The outcomes didn't change, but little did I know I'd be working here years later, and I learned so much about being an election commissioner just from watching that office during that week.
In fact, my path to the election office started in 2004, when I was checking the election office website a couple of days after the presidential election. I was surprised to see an announcement on the site that Connie was retiring.
I applied for the position and eventually was offered the appointment by the Kansas Secretary of State.
Soon after being appointed as election commissioner and after meeting with Connie, I saw a pattern that I hoped would change. Many of the administrative and budget issues I have documented here over the last few weeks are long-term things, part of the culture really, and things Connie fought for nine years as well.
It was almost on schedule--my year two-issues tended to be her year-two issues, for instance. Now, I've been here longer than Connie and have lost that historical touchpoint.
Acknowledging these struggles, it's worth pointing out that I'm also not into being a victim.
I'm a believer that in any large organization, many can make a case that they are the overlooked or under-appreciated department or individual. I've been in departments at Sprint where we felt oppressed, only to hear others tell us how lucky we were. Often, it's all about perspective.
But the lack of investment in the election office and our voters is pretty evident, right down to the team photos we've taken annually over the last 20 years, showing the same number of individuals in the same non-ADA accessible building, and standing or sitting in the same room with the same carpet.
On a personal level, though, it can't be denied that the election commissioner compensation has lagged department heads in the county's administration building. While there are around 30 departments and agencies at the county, the election commissioner isn't among the top 100 paid county employees, perhaps a good point for tax hawks but bad for those in this position or election administration overall. The commissioner position, in fact, isn't rated at the same level as most department heads.
By statute, the election commissioner is to have a monthly car allowance, and during my initial meeting with Connie she told me the fight she had to have to it raised from $125 to $300, where it has been for more than 10 years. No department head eligible for a car allowance has one that low, but a few managers do, including a manger in the transit department. (So, yes, the car allowance is the same as it is for someone whose job it is to get persons to ride the bus.)
The compensation issues carry downstream where our staff positions have traditionally been rated lower than I believe they should be. We've made a bit of progress on that this year, but we use part-time $8.75-an-hour employees throughout our operation regularly. If you've called or visited our office, odds are one of these outstanding individuals has helped you.
Generally, Connie and I both have had great support from the Board of County Commissioners but out of respect for the process, we rarely have gone to them directly (this position is appointed by the Secretary of State but funded by the Board).
Fair to say, though, that while we both respected the process, we each have felt that the process didn't always respect us.
Budget issues aside, there are many cool things about this position--it's the closest thing to running a small business I think one can get in government. We get tremendous support from the community (likely, dear reader, you are such a supporter, so thank you).
Last night for instance, I spoke to the Gardner-Edgerton Republican Group, and it is very personally gratifying to hear influentials in our community speak well of our office.
I have learned a lot from my predecessors, even those I never met. I've read their notes, listened to those who worked with them, and drew conclusions about what worked and didn't work well.
Much of what we do in our office started under Connie's leadership. The biggest thing I learned in what it takes to replace a Star is that the Star carried values that must remain.
Connie left, but I truly think that the concept that the office and the voting process must be protected over individual interests is as strong or stronger now than it was in 2004.
Maybe, those values are what lead to our budget woes, actually. If so, we have no choice but to live in the budget environment we have because the values can't change.
I have my own views of what led to Connie retiring from a job she loved and was very good at, but I think it's best if you read it from her.
Next week, I'll be posting the first-ever guest post on ElectionDiary, from Connie, to give a different perspective of the budget issues especially. It's budget time, our meeting with the Board is next week, and we're making a push at trying to move the budgetary needle in favor of our voters.
In the meantime, posted below is a book Connie and her staff developed more than 10 years ago. It's the roadmap we will leverage again if and when we get budgetary approval to replace those Palm Pilotish machines.
Connie Schmidt, my predecessor, was recognized nationally as a leader in the election administration community. There are plenty of books about leading a turnaround but few analyze taking the baton from someone well-regarded and keeping the momentum, particularly if you didn't know the person handing you the baton.
As an elected city council member in Shawnee in April 2002, I didn't know anything about Connie's national reputation. But, I knew about her locally and saw her operation first-hand when running for office.
I toured the election office shortly after filing for office. I met her two assistant election commissioners--both very impressive. I handed them my candidate web bio and it was live on the jocoelection site before my brief tour was over.
Part of the tour included an introduction to a little runt of a computer that was proudly introduced to me as our soon-to-come "new" voting machines.
Wow. This was 2001, but these looked like the 286 computer issued to me in 1990 at Sprint.
Moreover, there was genuine giddiness in the office about these devices.
I learned these machines were state-of-the-art in the voting machine world, but they were essentially large Palm Pilots. Our diagnostics today include using a stylus to touch the center of the screen and all four corners, for instance--when's the last time you did that setting up an iPhone?
Still, I saw the footprint of the old machines and how much more economical these were from a space perspective, and I saw why the staff was pleased to make the change.
On election night, I was happy to find I was victorious but later that week became aware of a need for a recount after tabulation concerns once results were modemed back on election night. (This, by the way, is why results to this day are hand-delivered back to the election office and why this practice is emulated by others nationwide. You're welcome.)
Anyway, I came in on a Saturday to watch the recount, and it was absolutely the most boring, yet extremely professional, thing I've ever observed. The outcomes didn't change, but little did I know I'd be working here years later, and I learned so much about being an election commissioner just from watching that office during that week.
In fact, my path to the election office started in 2004, when I was checking the election office website a couple of days after the presidential election. I was surprised to see an announcement on the site that Connie was retiring.
I applied for the position and eventually was offered the appointment by the Kansas Secretary of State.
Soon after being appointed as election commissioner and after meeting with Connie, I saw a pattern that I hoped would change. Many of the administrative and budget issues I have documented here over the last few weeks are long-term things, part of the culture really, and things Connie fought for nine years as well.
It was almost on schedule--my year two-issues tended to be her year-two issues, for instance. Now, I've been here longer than Connie and have lost that historical touchpoint.
Acknowledging these struggles, it's worth pointing out that I'm also not into being a victim.
I'm a believer that in any large organization, many can make a case that they are the overlooked or under-appreciated department or individual. I've been in departments at Sprint where we felt oppressed, only to hear others tell us how lucky we were. Often, it's all about perspective.
But the lack of investment in the election office and our voters is pretty evident, right down to the team photos we've taken annually over the last 20 years, showing the same number of individuals in the same non-ADA accessible building, and standing or sitting in the same room with the same carpet.
On a personal level, though, it can't be denied that the election commissioner compensation has lagged department heads in the county's administration building. While there are around 30 departments and agencies at the county, the election commissioner isn't among the top 100 paid county employees, perhaps a good point for tax hawks but bad for those in this position or election administration overall. The commissioner position, in fact, isn't rated at the same level as most department heads.
By statute, the election commissioner is to have a monthly car allowance, and during my initial meeting with Connie she told me the fight she had to have to it raised from $125 to $300, where it has been for more than 10 years. No department head eligible for a car allowance has one that low, but a few managers do, including a manger in the transit department. (So, yes, the car allowance is the same as it is for someone whose job it is to get persons to ride the bus.)
The compensation issues carry downstream where our staff positions have traditionally been rated lower than I believe they should be. We've made a bit of progress on that this year, but we use part-time $8.75-an-hour employees throughout our operation regularly. If you've called or visited our office, odds are one of these outstanding individuals has helped you.
Generally, Connie and I both have had great support from the Board of County Commissioners but out of respect for the process, we rarely have gone to them directly (this position is appointed by the Secretary of State but funded by the Board).
Fair to say, though, that while we both respected the process, we each have felt that the process didn't always respect us.
Budget issues aside, there are many cool things about this position--it's the closest thing to running a small business I think one can get in government. We get tremendous support from the community (likely, dear reader, you are such a supporter, so thank you).
Last night for instance, I spoke to the Gardner-Edgerton Republican Group, and it is very personally gratifying to hear influentials in our community speak well of our office.
 |
| Last night's speaking tour stop was the new Perkins in Gardner. |
I have learned a lot from my predecessors, even those I never met. I've read their notes, listened to those who worked with them, and drew conclusions about what worked and didn't work well.
Much of what we do in our office started under Connie's leadership. The biggest thing I learned in what it takes to replace a Star is that the Star carried values that must remain.
Connie left, but I truly think that the concept that the office and the voting process must be protected over individual interests is as strong or stronger now than it was in 2004.
Maybe, those values are what lead to our budget woes, actually. If so, we have no choice but to live in the budget environment we have because the values can't change.
I have my own views of what led to Connie retiring from a job she loved and was very good at, but I think it's best if you read it from her.
Next week, I'll be posting the first-ever guest post on ElectionDiary, from Connie, to give a different perspective of the budget issues especially. It's budget time, our meeting with the Board is next week, and we're making a push at trying to move the budgetary needle in favor of our voters.
In the meantime, posted below is a book Connie and her staff developed more than 10 years ago. It's the roadmap we will leverage again if and when we get budgetary approval to replace those Palm Pilotish machines.
Two unrelated events this week demonstrate the hurdles Johnson County voters and taxpayers face in looking at a new voting system.
The first was Monday, when I shared the stage with incredibly bright colleagues at a University of Chicago symposium on the future of elections.
The theme of the conference, as you can see from the photo, was implementation, or, as I quoted the "8-Ball Deluxe" pinball game I often stood by as I played Asteroids in college, it is time to "stop talking and start chalking."
The panel discussed next-generation voting systems and my big message related to funding. More on that later (and this will be a very long post, but stick with it, please).
The second event happened Thursday at a Board of County Commissioner meeting. The Commission voted to take $250,000 out of reserves to pay for a new request by the Enterprise Center of Johnson County. The Enterprise Center is an admirable initiative facing funding challenges.
Now, this post has nothing to do, really, with any opinions of the Enterprise Center. Its mission is to help incubate new businesses in Johnson County that, theoretically, will impact the long-term viability of the area.
But I contend that this money, ostensibly taken from reserves, actually represents money that will be borrowed in the future on the back of the election office.
To make the point, let's start with an analogy.
Suppose you buy and finance a new car.
But, you don't really like the idea of financing the car and decide that the next time you buy a car, you'd love to be in a position to pay cash. Maybe, you think, if you could sock away extra money each year you'll have enough to do that very thing.
It hurts, but you put away more than $2,000 each year, on top of your debt payments. You start to realize that even at this rate, you won't be able to pay cash for your next car, but if you drive your current car long enough, you'll have a pretty good chunk you can pay as a down payment.
A few years into this plan, your car is paid off but you've increased your borrowing for other things--necessary things, like a home--and you're still putting away $2,000 each year for your future car.
Then you hit a rough couple of years. You have more expenses than you can afford. Believing that the $2,000 per year won't be enough to pay for a new car anyway, you repurpose that savings. You pay these expenses from your savings because that's better than charging things on your credit card and paying interest.
Times get better but your older car needs improvements and you take money out of your "new car fund" to pay for them.
You consider beginning to again pay into the car fund, but it's been a while since you've spent money on anything, really, and you could benefit from upgrading other items--your wardrobe, things for your home, and other expenses that, while optional, would improve your standard of living.
Soon, your savings has whittled down, your car is old, and now you face a much higher monthly payment if you buy a new car. Worse, there is some question whether you can even get financed because you've borrowed so much elsewhere. At the very least, you won't qualify for the best interest rate.
If only you had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved. Instead, you face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable monthly car payment.
So, let's connect the Monday-Thursday dots with a list of events related to our voting system:
Like the car analogy:
If only we had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved. Instead, we face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable voting systems payment.
 |
| Thanks to Colorado's Judd Choate for this photo. NPR's Pam Fessler moderated a panel among super-smart election administrators Dana Debeauvoir, Dean Logan, and Matt Masterson. They let me on the stage, too. |
The theme of the conference, as you can see from the photo, was implementation, or, as I quoted the "8-Ball Deluxe" pinball game I often stood by as I played Asteroids in college, it is time to "stop talking and start chalking."
The panel discussed next-generation voting systems and my big message related to funding. More on that later (and this will be a very long post, but stick with it, please).
The second event happened Thursday at a Board of County Commissioner meeting. The Commission voted to take $250,000 out of reserves to pay for a new request by the Enterprise Center of Johnson County. The Enterprise Center is an admirable initiative facing funding challenges.
Now, this post has nothing to do, really, with any opinions of the Enterprise Center. Its mission is to help incubate new businesses in Johnson County that, theoretically, will impact the long-term viability of the area.
But I contend that this money, ostensibly taken from reserves, actually represents money that will be borrowed in the future on the back of the election office.
To make the point, let's start with an analogy.
Suppose you buy and finance a new car.
But, you don't really like the idea of financing the car and decide that the next time you buy a car, you'd love to be in a position to pay cash. Maybe, you think, if you could sock away extra money each year you'll have enough to do that very thing.
It hurts, but you put away more than $2,000 each year, on top of your debt payments. You start to realize that even at this rate, you won't be able to pay cash for your next car, but if you drive your current car long enough, you'll have a pretty good chunk you can pay as a down payment.
A few years into this plan, your car is paid off but you've increased your borrowing for other things--necessary things, like a home--and you're still putting away $2,000 each year for your future car.
Then you hit a rough couple of years. You have more expenses than you can afford. Believing that the $2,000 per year won't be enough to pay for a new car anyway, you repurpose that savings. You pay these expenses from your savings because that's better than charging things on your credit card and paying interest.
Times get better but your older car needs improvements and you take money out of your "new car fund" to pay for them.
You consider beginning to again pay into the car fund, but it's been a while since you've spent money on anything, really, and you could benefit from upgrading other items--your wardrobe, things for your home, and other expenses that, while optional, would improve your standard of living.
Soon, your savings has whittled down, your car is old, and now you face a much higher monthly payment if you buy a new car. Worse, there is some question whether you can even get financed because you've borrowed so much elsewhere. At the very least, you won't qualify for the best interest rate.
If only you had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved. Instead, you face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable monthly car payment.
So, let's connect the Monday-Thursday dots with a list of events related to our voting system:
- Johnson County's election commissioner, Connie Schmidt, with the support of county manager Gene Denton purchased touch-screen voting machines in 2001. This purchase was funded by bonds, issued by the county.
- At the same time, the Board of County Commissioners began to set aside $443,508 as an equipment replacement fund for the eventual time a new system is needed.
- In 2008 and again in 2012, more machines were purchased, against this fund, to be prepared for presidential election years. These purchases were the last needed until a new system is acquired.
- In 2010, as the county faces budget issues, the new county manager elects to stop funding the equipment replacement fund. One of the arguments is that this amount, set aside each year, would not be enough to meet the expense related to replacing the fleet of machines. The other argument is that the project did not have a "clear goal," even though two previous county managers and various members of the Board over the years obviously thought it must have because the fund was established and fed without any idea of what voting systems would look like 15 years later. Still, the move was considered temporary and funding would begin again in 2012.
- Incongruently, perhaps, that same year, the county's approved budget included funding of the election office's $13 million request for new voting machines in the 2015 capital budget.
- In 2012's budget cycle, that 2015 budgeted amount was changed by the county manager to $5 million. Also, the 2012 budget did not represent the voting equipment replacement fund reinstating as earlier planned.
- All capital money for voting machines is removed in the budgets presented for 2013, for 2014, and, I expect, 2015.
- One argument, now, is simply that $13 million is a lot of money, and we have been asked if there are ways that amount could be split over a period of time. Operationally, that would be terrible, but financially, one way to have split the cost, of course, would have been to use the equipment replacement fund as a "down payment," making the total more reachable.
Now, realize that the county manager faces tremendous pressure to present a budget that doesn't result in a mill levy increase, and also understand that the budget includes potential future financed projects, and that financing impacts reserves and, eventually, the mill levy as well.
But, unless something changes, voting machines will not be purchased in Johnson County without a tax increase. (And, scanners, if paper ballots were used, coincidentally represent a cost of about $5 million to the county because we don't have scanners today. Beyond that, Johnson County voters elected to use voting machines over paper in the late 1960s and it's likely that paper ballots would go against the proverbial will of the people).
In any event, here we are:
On Monday, I'm professing issues with funding.
On Thursday, money is pulled from reserves to pay for a new need. It's fair to question if this money would have been available if the elections equipment replacement fund had continued.
One thing I said Monday is that I'm convinced we will get funding for a new voting system. It's inconceivable to think otherwise.
But how will that be paid for? By a tax increase? Is the voting system the trigger for such a thing, or, really, is it other spending? Are there other voting machine-like issues in the county, representing large future expenditures that aren't anywhere in the budget book?
Kansas statute 19-3534a allows for the Board of County Commissioners to have a separate tax levy for elections. I've long advocated this to our county manager--not as a tax increase, but as a called-out separate line item so that people see exactly how much elections are costing. I think this is the ultimate in government transparency.
This line item is utilized in two of the three other counties in Kansas with election commissioners. Further, I think there is value in creatively considering a scenario where the county purchases equipment, capital improvements, and supplies and leases these items to the election office. We then could bill the county on a per-voter basis but, more importantly, do the same with jurisdictions that have special elections.
For the county, this initially would be a wash. For the jurisdictions, costs would go up to fully capture the cost to provide elections on their behalf. In turn, this would shift some costs from the total Johnson County taxpayer to the taxpayer of the jurisdiction that created the cost.
(I get that, for instance, a Shawnee taxpayer also is a Johnson County taxpayer, but such a scenario could reduce costs to the Johnson County taxpayers as a whole and only be represented by those in the jurisdictions that create special elections. It's a "cost-causer is the cost-payer" model.)
But, to the point of the voting machine costs--as it is, the $400,000-plus ongoing run rate from 2001 that stopped in 2010 has been repurposed to fund other county activities. I wouldn't disagree that these activities are important--just like the Enterprise Center funding--but when they are funded and, later, the county must borrow money or take tax action to pay for voting systems, this has to be considered.
It's not necessarily the voting machines that are causing the impact. At the very least, a couple of million dollars that eventually gets financed or is part of the tax increase is a bit of an innocent bystander. $13 million might have be $10 million if the fund continued.
(That said, I'd argue strongly that there isn't a more important tax dollar spent than on elections because that's kind of where government starts).
Like the car analogy:
If only we had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved. Instead, we face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable voting systems payment.
Forget Cinco de Mayo, I've had a special uno and tres de Mayo.
First, May 1 is my mother's birthday. She died in May 1999, about three years before I was elected to the Shawnee City Council. Once elected, I tried very consciously to offer each day I was on the council as a prayer to my mother.
I think she would have been proud yesterday morning as I received the local League of Women Voters' "Making Democracy Work" award for the effort our office has undertaken to help acquire citizenship documents for new citizens when registering to vote.
The League attends naturalization ceremonies month and registers new citizens. The League now checks out an iPad from our office, photographs the naturalization certificates, bring us back the iPad, and we upload the documentation, attaching it to the voters' records.
We get about 60 new registrations a month in this manner, so the process isn't insignificant.
Still, I joked when being presented the award that an election administrator seems an obvious award winner, at some point, by an organization devoted to voting. I assume I was really the "safety net" and that there were no other ideas this year. The pressure is on next year, now that the safety net is gone.
Seriously, the event was very nice. County commissioners attended and said very nice things. Many in attendance were election workers, and any award we receive is as much a reflection of the fine work they do beyond anything we do in our office. Members of our office attended. The crowd applauded them.
I've never heard my name said so many times, leaving me rather misty.
One thing about this iPad thing--it's really a feel-good story for everyone.
As I mentioned there, I encounter voters unhappy with the new proof-of-citizenship law but I also encounter at least a similar amount who are happy with the law. Those persons generally are anti-illegal immigration and obviously want to applaud those who come to the country legally and follow the citizenship process.
It all puts us in one of these great places where everyone, regardless of political leanings, agrees.
And, speaking of feel-good, May 1 marked another milestone.
You see, I followed the great Connie Schmidt, Miss Election USA, as Election Commissioner, coming to the office in January 2005.
My biggest reservation before taking the job was that I followed someone who was well-regarded. It's easy to follow a failure. There aren't any books about following a star. (In fact, the Wall Street Journal agreed and did this column).
Don't look now, but I've been Election Commissioner longer than Connie was. May 1 marked that date. I'm the second most-tenured Election Commissioner.
Willard Cook--I'm on your tail!
With County Commissioners at the meeting and my comments during a League of Women Voters voting forum a week ago, I wanted to give a special nod to Connie at the meeting.
During that forum, I raised concerns about looming election funding needs (and after the meeting, someone reminded me how I explained two years ago at another forum that the election office suffered more budget cuts than any department--a blog post then and also validation that at least I remain on message).
I emphasized on Saturday that our budget needs weren't blocked at the commissioner level. We're fortunate that we have 7 (out of 7) commissioners supportive of our office.
We do have difficulty getting our story and needs bridged from the ground, through the middle of county management, to properly be seen by the commissioners. The filter is the problem, and it's been especially punishing to our office and our voters since 2011.
Further, we live on reputation.
If we don't invest in the election office--people and systems, requested for 18 years, plus, without any move of the needle--that reputation will exhaust.
Think of this:
Elgia Stephenson came before Connie and, as far as a I can tell, spit tobacco juice at anyone in the county who disagreed with her, but she made sure we moved from a tiny shack to a facility that was more than adequate in 1993 (but not in 2014).
Connie Schmidt made sure that we not only had new voting machines, but also an equipment replacement fund--a fund that was stopped by the current county manager in 2011.
During my time, I feel like we've been running on fumes. I feel very good about our processes but we're overextended on every level.
We need fuel, a point I'm raising everywhere. Without investment, we will fail in our mission to support our voters. We've lost considerable ground over the last three years.
Connie fought these same battles. In fact, often, I've seen parallels between points in time during Connie's tenure and my time. I could step back, say in year seven of my tenure, and note that Connie seemed to go through the exact same thing at the same time.
Problem is, now I'm in free-range territory. I don't have that Connie compass.
We do need to get much more assertive about our lack of funding. The county has funding issues but the true issue is that many departments have grown considerably, under the radar (not public safety, not mental health, and not public health, but in areas that aren't caught in traditional talking points and can only be seen by heavily scrutinizing the county budget books year-to-year). Maybe some dollars should shift from those groups to the front line.
Many of the things in the Presidential Commission on Election Administration's report remain "posts in waiting," but that's because I want to see how the budget plays out.
Next-generation voting machines, in the capital budget in 2011 but taken out since, appear to remain unfunded. A modest request for one additional headcount, again, appears to be unsupported by the county manager.
Quite possibly, we finally may be getting funding to replace our 1999 election management system, unsupported by the vendor, literally, since the first day I became Election Commissioner.
Budget hearings are in a month. The long-term fate of our voters (the majority of Johnson County citizens, by the way) waits.
First, May 1 is my mother's birthday. She died in May 1999, about three years before I was elected to the Shawnee City Council. Once elected, I tried very consciously to offer each day I was on the council as a prayer to my mother.
I think she would have been proud yesterday morning as I received the local League of Women Voters' "Making Democracy Work" award for the effort our office has undertaken to help acquire citizenship documents for new citizens when registering to vote. The League attends naturalization ceremonies month and registers new citizens. The League now checks out an iPad from our office, photographs the naturalization certificates, bring us back the iPad, and we upload the documentation, attaching it to the voters' records.
We get about 60 new registrations a month in this manner, so the process isn't insignificant.
Still, I joked when being presented the award that an election administrator seems an obvious award winner, at some point, by an organization devoted to voting. I assume I was really the "safety net" and that there were no other ideas this year. The pressure is on next year, now that the safety net is gone.
Seriously, the event was very nice. County commissioners attended and said very nice things. Many in attendance were election workers, and any award we receive is as much a reflection of the fine work they do beyond anything we do in our office. Members of our office attended. The crowd applauded them.
I've never heard my name said so many times, leaving me rather misty.
One thing about this iPad thing--it's really a feel-good story for everyone.
As I mentioned there, I encounter voters unhappy with the new proof-of-citizenship law but I also encounter at least a similar amount who are happy with the law. Those persons generally are anti-illegal immigration and obviously want to applaud those who come to the country legally and follow the citizenship process.
It all puts us in one of these great places where everyone, regardless of political leanings, agrees.
And, speaking of feel-good, May 1 marked another milestone.
You see, I followed the great Connie Schmidt, Miss Election USA, as Election Commissioner, coming to the office in January 2005.
My biggest reservation before taking the job was that I followed someone who was well-regarded. It's easy to follow a failure. There aren't any books about following a star. (In fact, the Wall Street Journal agreed and did this column).
 |
| I wasn't born when Willard Cook became Johnson County Election Commissioner. He was Election Commissioner from 1962-1974 and presided over the 1969 switch by voter approval to move to voting machines. |
Willard Cook--I'm on your tail!
With County Commissioners at the meeting and my comments during a League of Women Voters voting forum a week ago, I wanted to give a special nod to Connie at the meeting.
During that forum, I raised concerns about looming election funding needs (and after the meeting, someone reminded me how I explained two years ago at another forum that the election office suffered more budget cuts than any department--a blog post then and also validation that at least I remain on message).
I emphasized on Saturday that our budget needs weren't blocked at the commissioner level. We're fortunate that we have 7 (out of 7) commissioners supportive of our office.
We do have difficulty getting our story and needs bridged from the ground, through the middle of county management, to properly be seen by the commissioners. The filter is the problem, and it's been especially punishing to our office and our voters since 2011.
Further, we live on reputation.
If we don't invest in the election office--people and systems, requested for 18 years, plus, without any move of the needle--that reputation will exhaust.
Think of this:
Elgia Stephenson came before Connie and, as far as a I can tell, spit tobacco juice at anyone in the county who disagreed with her, but she made sure we moved from a tiny shack to a facility that was more than adequate in 1993 (but not in 2014).
Connie Schmidt made sure that we not only had new voting machines, but also an equipment replacement fund--a fund that was stopped by the current county manager in 2011.
During my time, I feel like we've been running on fumes. I feel very good about our processes but we're overextended on every level.
We need fuel, a point I'm raising everywhere. Without investment, we will fail in our mission to support our voters. We've lost considerable ground over the last three years.
Connie fought these same battles. In fact, often, I've seen parallels between points in time during Connie's tenure and my time. I could step back, say in year seven of my tenure, and note that Connie seemed to go through the exact same thing at the same time.
Problem is, now I'm in free-range territory. I don't have that Connie compass.
We do need to get much more assertive about our lack of funding. The county has funding issues but the true issue is that many departments have grown considerably, under the radar (not public safety, not mental health, and not public health, but in areas that aren't caught in traditional talking points and can only be seen by heavily scrutinizing the county budget books year-to-year). Maybe some dollars should shift from those groups to the front line.
Many of the things in the Presidential Commission on Election Administration's report remain "posts in waiting," but that's because I want to see how the budget plays out.
Next-generation voting machines, in the capital budget in 2011 but taken out since, appear to remain unfunded. A modest request for one additional headcount, again, appears to be unsupported by the county manager.
Quite possibly, we finally may be getting funding to replace our 1999 election management system, unsupported by the vendor, literally, since the first day I became Election Commissioner.
Budget hearings are in a month. The long-term fate of our voters (the majority of Johnson County citizens, by the way) waits.
Sunday, December 8, 2013
Bring Your Own Voting Machine,
Budget,
Election Assistance Commission
0
comments
Bowser the Elusive
Amidst all of the talk of a next-generation voting system and the possibility of my idea of "Bring Your Own Voting Machine," we at the Election Office recently have been having a rather contrarian thought.
What if we simply recommitted to using the voting machines we have for a long time?
"Long time" may not be until the the 12th of Never, but longer than four more years.
Our machines are running on late 1990s technology and many have been in service for 10 years. The touchscreen capability is four-wire resistive, much more primitive than the iPads and Android tablets of today.
We've provided specific cost estimates for the capital budget, for three years straight, for a scanner-based system and a voting machine system using what's certified today without being able to get them into the county capital budget plan (actually they were in and then taken out this past year). The cost for each system is comparable, in excess of $10 million.
The argument for taking the dollars out of the budget shifts. In general, the uncertainty of the Election Assistance Commission, certification in general, and the potential for the crazy new system I've raised seems to give enough cover for those who don't want to do anything to not do anything.
We're coming to the next capital budgeting process with a spiffy PowerPoint and a process that allows us to create a Request for Proposal with vendor input and analyze all solutions--including those not certified--before determining the right course. We know, however, that if we had to make a decision today that we would pick a system like the one we already have costed and provided to the county.
I fully expect that during that time we will be told the equivalent of, "Good process, Mario--but our princess is another castle!"
No matter. Kansas statutes direct the Election Commissioners to print the ballots (which includes voting machines and tabulation systems) and to annually provide a budget to conduct the election and that the county commissioners shall provide funding.
That's not really an optional thing (hence the word "shall") and one day, despite my requests for the last four years that the quotes I've provided be used for the budget, if the millions of dollars we will need are not baked into the budget, they still will need to be spent.
Bowser, eventually, will be defeated and the princess will be saved.
The big risk of delaying is that we've seen previous versions of voting machines have parts that fail, and fail quickly. Power supplies and printers are the usual suspects.
We also know, though, that being the new kid on the block to be the first to pressure-test a new system has significant risks (Johnson County lived this in 2002 when it became the first county to try to modem results from the polls).
We further know that two vendors have many new and slightly new voting machines in the same model we have (and the one quoted for the new system that we have frequently submitted for the capital budget).
We can get more of them. We also could got some that have been mothballed in other states, although I believe they have limited value. We once bid one cent for 500 voting machines in Cuyahoga County and were rejected.
I think that was a fair bid. We were willing to pay for the transportation, but the machines hadn't been used for a while. Eventually, that county will have to pay to dispose those machines, much the way I will have to pay to remove my once-cool large screen television from my basement, and having someone take them off their hands at no expense will look like an obvious good deal they passed up.
So "doing nothing" has some intrigue. We still have to push to get the new system budgeted, but the very idea to type this post likely will provide fodder to again not put our request in the budget. (Again, this continual ostrich strategy won't eliminate the eventual need).
But I know how new systems will be. Give a mouse a cookie--or a software developer a project--and just imagine the new ways new technology can slow things down.
Machines will take longer to boot. Ballots, with the ability to be rendered more user-friendly, will be in color, maybe with a cute splash screen and a logo.
We might see the candidates' photos. You might have the chance to watch yourself virtually walk up to the candidate and, for instance in a primary, make your selection by pinning the tail on the donkey or the trunk on the elephant of your choice.
Mark my words--it will take longer for a voter to cast a ballot on the systems under development than it does with the systems today.
And that's the beauty of the contrarian idea. Our machines are the equivalent of that first Nintendo system of the late 1980s.
The graphics are minimal by today's standards, but there was only an A and a B button back then. ("And that's the way we liked it!")
There was no R or L, X or Y, circle or square, and no gesture. Madden 2014 looks like the real football game, but it was more fun to rake up 10 sacks a game in Tecmo Bowl where the big graphical push was that the players' uniforms were the correct colors for the NFL teams.
The point of all of this is way back to an earlier post when I played up a great book, Crunch Mode. John Boddie's words of becoming comfortable working with a system that isn't developed apply to all things strategic.
We have different lanes we're managing, and truly strategic thinkers understand that monitoring several lanes to make the proper decision is necessary.
Not to be all Ferris Buehler here, but I've said it before and I'll say it again:
I've been saying that here for nearly two years. It's the equivalent of living today simultaneously like it's the last day of your life and with the thought that you'll live forever.
Bowser won't live forever. But, maybe, a slow pursuit gets us to the Bring Your Own Voting Machine castle that we never would have entered otherwise.
What if we simply recommitted to using the voting machines we have for a long time?
"Long time" may not be until the the 12th of Never, but longer than four more years.
Our machines are running on late 1990s technology and many have been in service for 10 years. The touchscreen capability is four-wire resistive, much more primitive than the iPads and Android tablets of today.
We've provided specific cost estimates for the capital budget, for three years straight, for a scanner-based system and a voting machine system using what's certified today without being able to get them into the county capital budget plan (actually they were in and then taken out this past year). The cost for each system is comparable, in excess of $10 million.
The argument for taking the dollars out of the budget shifts. In general, the uncertainty of the Election Assistance Commission, certification in general, and the potential for the crazy new system I've raised seems to give enough cover for those who don't want to do anything to not do anything.
We're coming to the next capital budgeting process with a spiffy PowerPoint and a process that allows us to create a Request for Proposal with vendor input and analyze all solutions--including those not certified--before determining the right course. We know, however, that if we had to make a decision today that we would pick a system like the one we already have costed and provided to the county.
I fully expect that during that time we will be told the equivalent of, "Good process, Mario--but our princess is another castle!"
No matter. Kansas statutes direct the Election Commissioners to print the ballots (which includes voting machines and tabulation systems) and to annually provide a budget to conduct the election and that the county commissioners shall provide funding. That's not really an optional thing (hence the word "shall") and one day, despite my requests for the last four years that the quotes I've provided be used for the budget, if the millions of dollars we will need are not baked into the budget, they still will need to be spent.
Bowser, eventually, will be defeated and the princess will be saved.
The big risk of delaying is that we've seen previous versions of voting machines have parts that fail, and fail quickly. Power supplies and printers are the usual suspects.
We also know, though, that being the new kid on the block to be the first to pressure-test a new system has significant risks (Johnson County lived this in 2002 when it became the first county to try to modem results from the polls).
We further know that two vendors have many new and slightly new voting machines in the same model we have (and the one quoted for the new system that we have frequently submitted for the capital budget).
We can get more of them. We also could got some that have been mothballed in other states, although I believe they have limited value. We once bid one cent for 500 voting machines in Cuyahoga County and were rejected.
I think that was a fair bid. We were willing to pay for the transportation, but the machines hadn't been used for a while. Eventually, that county will have to pay to dispose those machines, much the way I will have to pay to remove my once-cool large screen television from my basement, and having someone take them off their hands at no expense will look like an obvious good deal they passed up.
So "doing nothing" has some intrigue. We still have to push to get the new system budgeted, but the very idea to type this post likely will provide fodder to again not put our request in the budget. (Again, this continual ostrich strategy won't eliminate the eventual need).
But I know how new systems will be. Give a mouse a cookie--or a software developer a project--and just imagine the new ways new technology can slow things down.
Machines will take longer to boot. Ballots, with the ability to be rendered more user-friendly, will be in color, maybe with a cute splash screen and a logo.
We might see the candidates' photos. You might have the chance to watch yourself virtually walk up to the candidate and, for instance in a primary, make your selection by pinning the tail on the donkey or the trunk on the elephant of your choice.
Mark my words--it will take longer for a voter to cast a ballot on the systems under development than it does with the systems today.
And that's the beauty of the contrarian idea. Our machines are the equivalent of that first Nintendo system of the late 1980s.
The graphics are minimal by today's standards, but there was only an A and a B button back then. ("And that's the way we liked it!")
There was no R or L, X or Y, circle or square, and no gesture. Madden 2014 looks like the real football game, but it was more fun to rake up 10 sacks a game in Tecmo Bowl where the big graphical push was that the players' uniforms were the correct colors for the NFL teams.
The point of all of this is way back to an earlier post when I played up a great book, Crunch Mode. John Boddie's words of becoming comfortable working with a system that isn't developed apply to all things strategic.
We have different lanes we're managing, and truly strategic thinkers understand that monitoring several lanes to make the proper decision is necessary.
Not to be all Ferris Buehler here, but I've said it before and I'll say it again:
Voting system design is now a forever thing. If the cliche "success is a journey, not a destination," is true, the same can be said for voting systems design. It's a journey.
I've been saying that here for nearly two years. It's the equivalent of living today simultaneously like it's the last day of your life and with the thought that you'll live forever.
Bowser won't live forever. But, maybe, a slow pursuit gets us to the Bring Your Own Voting Machine castle that we never would have entered otherwise.
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Budget,
Polling Places,
Presidential Commission on Election Administration
1 comments
Where's the Beef?
Local events and my participation in a meeting in Washington D.C. this past week left me with a statement that will have shock value, but please stick with me.
Conversely, there's an autonomy of running my own show that's cool. This funding issue is just one of the downsides.
The composition of the President's Commission on Election Administration is wrong.
That's not because of the people. Many members of the Commission were at the meeting, hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Council.
The Commissioners all are incredibly accomplished. They ooze awesomeness. I was giddy to be in the same room with them. If you had a child marry one of them, as a parent, you'd think, "Score!"
The members of the committee are perfect.
It's just that the "we have to fix that" mantra of long lines gathered the wrong "we."
Election administrators embraced "we have to fix that." Sure, we discussed what "that" was, and exactly what it is that needed fixing, but, oh man, make no mistake, we were ON IT.
At an Election Center conference in January, we weren't sure what was going to be fixed, but we were certain we could fix it. Later, we were thrilled that election administrators were named to the Commission.
This week I realized that without county commissioners, state legislators, members of Congress, or someone from the White House on the Commission, we are destined to explain how we could "fix that" but when it comes to actually fixing it? Not likely.
Those who need to weigh in with the fixin' aren't engaged.
That's not to say that our store couldn't use some fixin' (apologies to "The Dead Milkmen"). With more than 4,000 election jurisdictions, election administrators have had some face-palming moments to be sure. I've had some.
But election administrators overall do a pretty good job. They are dedicated. They are an independent lot, often appointed or elected, and they internalize voting issues, taking them personally and being committed to voter satisfaction regardless of what's put in front of us.
Election administrators, though, usually don't fall under the management or direct control of the entity that funds the operations.
In Johnson County, my position is appointed by the Secretary of State, but is funded by the county. I've posted before, using a handout from the county's budget department, how the elections office faced more budget cuts than any other department during the economic downturn.
I don't report to the county manager. We're Facebook friends. He wishes me no harm. Our kids graduated from the same high school in the same year. He's happy when our office is successful. But I'm not one of his litter. Let's just say that I don't want to face a Sophie's Choice moment between me and a department that reports to him.
We've requested some of those early cuts our office took back, in the form of two full-time positions that we need to support any possibility of expanded advance voting. The positions are especially necessary because we've cut polling places and more will be cut with school security issues.
The general policy view we're facing, though, is that Johnson County voters are willing to wait longer in lines to vote. No election administrator would align himself or herself with that view. I certainly won't. Voting is a constitutional right.
There's even new evidence suggesting that lines themselves impact voter participation and turnout--where a voter sees a line, leaves, and doesn't come back to vote. The same county commissioner who supports the "waiting longer" view also believe that voter turnout should be a performance metric and, in Johnson County, turnout dropped in 2012 compared to 2008.
Needless to say, the positions weren't funded.
That's not a surprise. We have the same headcount at the Election Office that the office had 25 years ago. The Election Center's full-time staff member per registered voter metric of 1:6,000 is exceed in Johnson County four-fold to 1:28,000.
There's efficiency, and then there's the ridiculous. We're an untimed illness or staff vacancy from disaster.
These two positions requested were created without funding to replace temporary hours. So, they were essentially shell positions.
But, they were cut, with funding, before they could be back-filled. They were offered as cuts in lieu of layoffs or polling place cuts. Later, as budgets were tightened, we had to cut polling places anyway.
Now, the positions are considered medium priorities because they aren't deemed necessary for basic services, although the history demonstrated otherwise. These were hours spent in 2009 and the cuts have resulted in more temporary and overtime hours.
It's all frustrating, but the root cause is that no one in the county structure shares ownership with me on successful elections. Let's be clear: they will share ownership with me on unsuccessful elections. I just don't ever want to experience such a thing.
Conversely, there's an autonomy of running my own show that's cool. This funding issue is just one of the downsides.
So, this isn't a black and white thing. If the Johnson County Election Office had an individual Facebook page, the relationship status would be, "It's Complicated."
Still, this headcount issue was fresh on my mind as I sat in the meeting with members of the Commission and other election officials.
I stated that for the first presidential election ever, we had fewer polling places than we had in the previous election. I postulated that it was the same for others in the room.
Heads nodded yes.
(Whew! That was sort of a leap I was taking, actually. Bummer for me if they all responded, "No, you're just ineffective.")
But, here we are. We didn't all get together and look to reduce polling places. We're all facing the same budget constraints.
We'll face them again next year and when I'm told again that voters can wait in line longer, no one is going to care that a bunch of smart people appointed by the President don't agree. They didn't care this year that the President thought so. Why will the opinions of 10 others add more credence?
As I defended my view during our budget meeting, facing seven County Commissioners but with my back to about 75 persons in attendance, I could feel the collective yawn behind me as I said that lines were a national issue and that the President created a Commission to address this. I didn't need to turn around to see that I'd lost the room.
So it hit me--this President's Commission should be comprised of policy makers who control the budgets, not the operations at the polls.
My role at this point, I believe, to help "fix this" is to jump up and down to frantically point this out.
You, dear reader, are now part of an Art-Imitating-Life-Moment. That's what I'm doing here.
For a full interactive effect, if you are reading this on an iPad, momentarily tilt the device back and forth 180 degrees a couple of times.
We've spent so much time on Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, but I think the Commission should consider Involuntary Election Administration Targets.
Another word for Involuntary is "Mandatory," thus helping my desire for a forced acronym, "MEAT"--Mandatory Election Administration Targets.
Those who create budgets should ensure budgets are set to support the MEAT, such as election staff members per registered voter, polling places or advance locations per registered voter, and other cost metrics. These metrics should be delivered by the Commission and come with a strong wag of the finger from the President.
Otherwise, we're talking to ourselves.
Many of you reading this have pushed for initiatives such as this. Keith Cunningham, from Ohio, led a benchmarking task force for The Election Center. PEW has created an Elections Performance Index, for instance.
So, this isn't a new revelation. But our view of the target audience must change.
When I'm asked about comparisons in Johnson County, no one cares that Wyandotte County (rightly) has 14 full-time-equivalent positions for 1/4th the voters we support with 16 full-time-equivalent positions.
No one in Sedgwick County--three times the size of Wyandotte County--worried that the election commissioner there had four full-time equivalent positions until results were slow on an election night.
In government, we react to "unfunded mandates," but we basically live one in elections.
Because elections touch all citizens, the cumulative cost of elections in large jurisdictions reaches the millions of dollars, but is usually less than $3 per voter. Elections are expensive because citizens participate. That's what we want.
If we decrease funding, we decrease turnout, or at least suppress it to the point that a winning presidential candidate notices.
How we get those officials on the ground to notice is the meat of the issue. The news flash to me this week was that there are more stakeholders on the ground than just election officials.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Advance Voting,
Budget,
Polling Places
0
comments
Pinching Voters and Budgets
This week's election contained some irony.
The election involved the Olathe School District and a capital improvement plan that passed overwhelmingly.
The projects included a new high school and improved security at all schools.
I read today that the district plans "Pinch Points" at each school. I really like this new phrase linguistically but operationally, I think this points to further doom for us at the election office.
Pinch Points refers to the concept that visitors to a school have to come through a secure entrance, basically being buzzed in. This, of course, would be unworkable when using schools as polling places.
Hence the irony. An election conducted by our office for the district likely will result in the district not being able to support the election office.
I could be wrong, and, of course, this is becoming a tired message on this blog. Namely, schools' concerns with safety, voters' concerns with churches, reduced post office service levels, and increased voter expectations for advance voting locations form the largest restrainers we have to conducting elections.
Late this year, we will go through the process of assigning polling places for 2014 elections. That's when these points may start pinching.
This event coincides with our budget process and data related to the 2012 election. In 2012, the county conducted small focus groups and an online budget-cut simulation. One conclusion drawn was that people were willing to wait in line longer to vote. There was encouragement by the county manager and some members of the Board of County Commissioners to reduce polling places.
I was publicly skeptical of this conclusion. In fact, the online simulation that asked residents how they would balance the budget started with questions about the election office and the DMV. We know, of course, the impact of "top of the ballot," in elections (that's why we rotate candidate names). The design of the simulation likely created some false positives.
The same process said that waiting longer at the DMV was okay and thanks to a new computer system put in place in 2012, the DMV's "brand" has been severely damaged. Wait times there were measured in hours, not minutes.
Fact is, though, we were reducing polling places, anyway. It was the first time, presidential-election to presidential-election, that polling places decreased rather than increased. It was a signal of availability, not of my reaction to the focus groups.
I'm a pretty independent person and if I thought increasing polling places was the right thing to do, I would have, and then I would have dealt with the fall-out within the county. I said this during my budget presentation last June. In fairness, nobody "made me" reduce polling places. Further, I didn't quit some polling places--they quit us.
But, now we have new data, the outcome of the semi-annual resident survey conducted by the county. This survey has a nice trend line going since 2005 and asks residents about convenience of polling place and advance voting locations.
At my budget presentation with the Board of County Commissioners last year, I said I would use this survey data to assess if the reduction of polling places would have an impact. I felt it would and if I wasn't the only one in the room who felt that way, I can only say that they didn't pipe up and agree with me.
But now, comes the survey data.
For the statement "Polling places in the County are convenient," satisfaction dropped, down from 90 percent in 2011 to 86 percent. The company the county employs to do the survey defines a four-point drop as statistically significant.
The five-survey, eight-year trend goes like this:
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
90% 88% 90% 90% 86%
For the statement "The County has enough advanced voting locations," the trend is this:
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
79% 77% 77% 76% 76%
My belief is that voters' expectations of advance voting sites are increasing. Voters feel they shouldn't have to travel far to them and that the lines should be short.
I'm sure the push-back I would get from our county manager is that 86 percent doesn't seem that bad. He might even point to the 2007 number showing the drop from 90 to 88 percent. That, however, came after we experimented by reducing polling places in the 2006 election from 2004 levels.
Also, survey numbers for all items measured in the county have dropped since 2005 and that could be a sign of survey fatigue, overall economic issues impacting the frame of mind of the respondents, or specific budget cuts at the county.
But if 86 percent isn't bad, what is? We are talking about a constitutional right, after all, with convenience required by federal and state laws.
Is 85 percent bad, or 80 percent? Is 76 percent bad?
Ah, 76 percent--the response to the advanced voting location question. I think the answer to improving the answer to the first question comes by dealing with this question.
Point is, there likely is more than one way to address the polling place response. The obvious one is to increase polling places.
Another, if we had a reliable post office, would be to further push voting by mail.
A third, and most timely I feel, is to improve our advance voting locations. We either need more or larger sites. Either will require more staff at our office to secure, manage, and operate.
We requested two more positions (replacing those cut) and signaled that we really need more, but those two positions are being recommended by the county manager as not funded.
If we could move the 76 percent closer to 80 (and maintaining it at 76 may be a win given the greater expectations), fewer voters will go to the polls and those who do go to the polls, theoretically at least, will find them more convenient.
As it is right now, we're likely to have fewer polling places, 2014 compared to 2010. We have no satellite advance voting locations (they can't really be secured until early 2014, but it's no gimme that any of the previous locations will be available) and aren't going to get the resources to help with that.
There's nothing on the horizon, or in the proposed budget, that would suggest the survey numbers will go anywhere but down in 2015.
We might get lucky. Despite these restrainers, we might be able to secure larger advance voting locations. Metcalf South, always iffy if we can get it again, has other space available, although we tried to secure the larger storefront there in 2012, unsuccessfully.
Or, at least, if the numbers continue this trendline, the 2015 story will be pretty compelling (as if it isn't already) that major investment needs to be made in the county's election process, ahead of the 2016 presidential election budget process.
The election involved the Olathe School District and a capital improvement plan that passed overwhelmingly.
The projects included a new high school and improved security at all schools.
I read today that the district plans "Pinch Points" at each school. I really like this new phrase linguistically but operationally, I think this points to further doom for us at the election office.
Pinch Points refers to the concept that visitors to a school have to come through a secure entrance, basically being buzzed in. This, of course, would be unworkable when using schools as polling places.
Hence the irony. An election conducted by our office for the district likely will result in the district not being able to support the election office.
I could be wrong, and, of course, this is becoming a tired message on this blog. Namely, schools' concerns with safety, voters' concerns with churches, reduced post office service levels, and increased voter expectations for advance voting locations form the largest restrainers we have to conducting elections.
Late this year, we will go through the process of assigning polling places for 2014 elections. That's when these points may start pinching.
This event coincides with our budget process and data related to the 2012 election. In 2012, the county conducted small focus groups and an online budget-cut simulation. One conclusion drawn was that people were willing to wait in line longer to vote. There was encouragement by the county manager and some members of the Board of County Commissioners to reduce polling places.
I was publicly skeptical of this conclusion. In fact, the online simulation that asked residents how they would balance the budget started with questions about the election office and the DMV. We know, of course, the impact of "top of the ballot," in elections (that's why we rotate candidate names). The design of the simulation likely created some false positives.
The same process said that waiting longer at the DMV was okay and thanks to a new computer system put in place in 2012, the DMV's "brand" has been severely damaged. Wait times there were measured in hours, not minutes.
Fact is, though, we were reducing polling places, anyway. It was the first time, presidential-election to presidential-election, that polling places decreased rather than increased. It was a signal of availability, not of my reaction to the focus groups.
I'm a pretty independent person and if I thought increasing polling places was the right thing to do, I would have, and then I would have dealt with the fall-out within the county. I said this during my budget presentation last June. In fairness, nobody "made me" reduce polling places. Further, I didn't quit some polling places--they quit us.
But, now we have new data, the outcome of the semi-annual resident survey conducted by the county. This survey has a nice trend line going since 2005 and asks residents about convenience of polling place and advance voting locations.
At my budget presentation with the Board of County Commissioners last year, I said I would use this survey data to assess if the reduction of polling places would have an impact. I felt it would and if I wasn't the only one in the room who felt that way, I can only say that they didn't pipe up and agree with me.
But now, comes the survey data.
For the statement "Polling places in the County are convenient," satisfaction dropped, down from 90 percent in 2011 to 86 percent. The company the county employs to do the survey defines a four-point drop as statistically significant.
The five-survey, eight-year trend goes like this:
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
90% 88% 90% 90% 86%
This is bad news. Residents feel polling places are less convenient at a time when we are sure to have even fewer locations available as polling places.
For the statement "The County has enough advanced voting locations," the trend is this:
2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
79% 77% 77% 76% 76%
My belief is that voters' expectations of advance voting sites are increasing. Voters feel they shouldn't have to travel far to them and that the lines should be short.
I'm sure the push-back I would get from our county manager is that 86 percent doesn't seem that bad. He might even point to the 2007 number showing the drop from 90 to 88 percent. That, however, came after we experimented by reducing polling places in the 2006 election from 2004 levels.
Also, survey numbers for all items measured in the county have dropped since 2005 and that could be a sign of survey fatigue, overall economic issues impacting the frame of mind of the respondents, or specific budget cuts at the county.
But if 86 percent isn't bad, what is? We are talking about a constitutional right, after all, with convenience required by federal and state laws.
Is 85 percent bad, or 80 percent? Is 76 percent bad?
Ah, 76 percent--the response to the advanced voting location question. I think the answer to improving the answer to the first question comes by dealing with this question.
Point is, there likely is more than one way to address the polling place response. The obvious one is to increase polling places.
Another, if we had a reliable post office, would be to further push voting by mail.
A third, and most timely I feel, is to improve our advance voting locations. We either need more or larger sites. Either will require more staff at our office to secure, manage, and operate.
We requested two more positions (replacing those cut) and signaled that we really need more, but those two positions are being recommended by the county manager as not funded.
If we could move the 76 percent closer to 80 (and maintaining it at 76 may be a win given the greater expectations), fewer voters will go to the polls and those who do go to the polls, theoretically at least, will find them more convenient.
As it is right now, we're likely to have fewer polling places, 2014 compared to 2010. We have no satellite advance voting locations (they can't really be secured until early 2014, but it's no gimme that any of the previous locations will be available) and aren't going to get the resources to help with that.
There's nothing on the horizon, or in the proposed budget, that would suggest the survey numbers will go anywhere but down in 2015.
We might get lucky. Despite these restrainers, we might be able to secure larger advance voting locations. Metcalf South, always iffy if we can get it again, has other space available, although we tried to secure the larger storefront there in 2012, unsuccessfully.
Or, at least, if the numbers continue this trendline, the 2015 story will be pretty compelling (as if it isn't already) that major investment needs to be made in the county's election process, ahead of the 2016 presidential election budget process.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Budget,
Facilities,
Presidential,
Training
0
comments
Playoffs? Don't Talk To Me About Playoffs!
When George Brett heaved a wild throw in the first game of the 1976 American League Championship series, I first heard a phrase, often repeated, that has stuck with me.
"Everything is magnified in the playoffs," the announcer said.
Make no mistake, presidential elections are administrators' playoffs.
Playoffs in sports are the time the success paradigm changes. Instead of, "we can win if have this, this, and this," it becomes, "we would have won if only this."
Likewise, I often say that presidential elections expose the stress points in election administration. We prepare with contingency plans, but there's always a, "I think this would have gone better if we did this" discussion.
Good election administrators were the kids in school who got a 99 on a test and immediately obsessed with the one mistake.
Our stress points in 2008, for instance, were facility-related, leading us to taking steps to address major facility issues.
In one case, we saw our little mail slot at our door couldn't handle the onslaught of ballots being dropped off. The envelopes fell into a foyer and could have been soiled if the floor was wet. So, we've since converted a window into a drop box a bank would be proud of, dropping the envelopes into a secure, locked room.
This election exposed some process issues--nothing serious, but when scaled became unnecessary time-eaters, from some changes we need to make to our website to poll agent forms to training. There's never enough time to improve our training the way we want or to conduct the training the way we'd like, but we have some changes we will be making in this cycle.
"In this cycle" is an important phrase because this election isn't quite finished and we're already gearing up for the next. We have an April countywide election and a primary for that election in February.
In fact, we have less time to prepare for the February election, after November, than we did to prepare for November after August. The crunch mode continues through April.
All of us are asked frequently right now about how things must be slowing down and it's totally the opposite. We have payroll to complete, voter history to finalize, election worker training ahead, and polling places to secure for the spring, for instance. April's election brings new issues because election day is the Tuesday after Easter. Some polling places won't be available, so we'll have to move voters, and our training will be impacted because we typically conduct supervising judge training the Saturday and Sunday before the election.
Spring elections are the most complicated, also, because of candidate rotation schedules. Add to all of this the holidays, filing deadline in January, a new legislative session, and the fact that none of us have had a day off in months, or even have laundry caught up, and it is anything but slow.
Our staff will conduct a post-mortem of the election in early December to document all of the areas we want to address short-term or highlight as part of our strategic approach in 2013 and beyond. We'll prepare a presentation in the spring related to all of those issues and I'll post it here. This was the summary after 2008 (with a nod to Tammy Patrick of Maricopa County for a couple of stock photos):
One obvious area that must be addressed is our budget, particularly in staffing. We are seriously understaffed, have been pointing this out for a few years now, and we're near a breaking point. I'll have a post on that in a few days.
Another post soon will be related to the hot issue of the day--lines at polling places. I've got some interesting math on what occurred to us in 2012, but, short story, we expected an average of about 140 more voters at each polling place, compared to 2008, because of our reductions. We had 215.
The argument to reduce polling places was that advance voting has been so successful, yet even though overall turnout was 7 points lower in 2012 compared to 2008, we had the most persons ever vote at the polls in Johnson County history. This, after reducing polling places.
One thing to consider, that I'll get into with that post, is that all of this goes beyond simple capacity planning.
For now, this post is long enough--more soon.
"Everything is magnified in the playoffs," the announcer said.
Make no mistake, presidential elections are administrators' playoffs.
Playoffs in sports are the time the success paradigm changes. Instead of, "we can win if have this, this, and this," it becomes, "we would have won if only this."
Likewise, I often say that presidential elections expose the stress points in election administration. We prepare with contingency plans, but there's always a, "I think this would have gone better if we did this" discussion.
Good election administrators were the kids in school who got a 99 on a test and immediately obsessed with the one mistake.
Our stress points in 2008, for instance, were facility-related, leading us to taking steps to address major facility issues.
In one case, we saw our little mail slot at our door couldn't handle the onslaught of ballots being dropped off. The envelopes fell into a foyer and could have been soiled if the floor was wet. So, we've since converted a window into a drop box a bank would be proud of, dropping the envelopes into a secure, locked room.
This election exposed some process issues--nothing serious, but when scaled became unnecessary time-eaters, from some changes we need to make to our website to poll agent forms to training. There's never enough time to improve our training the way we want or to conduct the training the way we'd like, but we have some changes we will be making in this cycle.
"In this cycle" is an important phrase because this election isn't quite finished and we're already gearing up for the next. We have an April countywide election and a primary for that election in February.
In fact, we have less time to prepare for the February election, after November, than we did to prepare for November after August. The crunch mode continues through April.
All of us are asked frequently right now about how things must be slowing down and it's totally the opposite. We have payroll to complete, voter history to finalize, election worker training ahead, and polling places to secure for the spring, for instance. April's election brings new issues because election day is the Tuesday after Easter. Some polling places won't be available, so we'll have to move voters, and our training will be impacted because we typically conduct supervising judge training the Saturday and Sunday before the election.
Spring elections are the most complicated, also, because of candidate rotation schedules. Add to all of this the holidays, filing deadline in January, a new legislative session, and the fact that none of us have had a day off in months, or even have laundry caught up, and it is anything but slow.
Our staff will conduct a post-mortem of the election in early December to document all of the areas we want to address short-term or highlight as part of our strategic approach in 2013 and beyond. We'll prepare a presentation in the spring related to all of those issues and I'll post it here. This was the summary after 2008 (with a nod to Tammy Patrick of Maricopa County for a couple of stock photos):
One obvious area that must be addressed is our budget, particularly in staffing. We are seriously understaffed, have been pointing this out for a few years now, and we're near a breaking point. I'll have a post on that in a few days.
Another post soon will be related to the hot issue of the day--lines at polling places. I've got some interesting math on what occurred to us in 2012, but, short story, we expected an average of about 140 more voters at each polling place, compared to 2008, because of our reductions. We had 215.
The argument to reduce polling places was that advance voting has been so successful, yet even though overall turnout was 7 points lower in 2012 compared to 2008, we had the most persons ever vote at the polls in Johnson County history. This, after reducing polling places.
One thing to consider, that I'll get into with that post, is that all of this goes beyond simple capacity planning.
For now, this post is long enough--more soon.
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