Spring Backward, Fall Forward

Election irony met elections of the future in Kansas yesterday.

The Kansas legislature, by one more vote than necessary, passed a measure to move spring elections to the fall of odd years.

I have been a very vocal advocate of this move, demonstrating how the highest April election turnout in the last five years was still lower than the lowest turnout of special elections conducted in any other month.

Also, we're more likely to have schools available as polling places.  This was a major factor in my support of this move.

But passing by one vote?

That's classic.

(Editor's Note--more irony since I'm my own editor--thanks to the League of Women Voters for pointing out it passed by one MORE vote than needed.  I want to represent that accurately and have inserted this little parenthetical addition).

Does your vote matter?  It did here.

Whether or not you agree now, or will agree or disagree later after implementation, the bill technically passed the House by one vote.  It would have been more ironic if one of the votes for was elected by one vote, but such a realization, if that were the case, would cause even me to skip a heartbeat.

I would imagine, though, that at least one representative started as being appointed by precinct committee members to fill a vacancy and then later was elected.

Precinct committee members frequently are elected by a handful of votes and, in Johnson County, we have averaged 2 coin toss decisions for precinct committee ties for the five August primary elections since I've been election commissioner.

We often hear that elections have consequences, and this blog isn't the place to talk about the politics of any consequence from legislation.



I'll wear this
spiffy outfit
to election
worker training
if 5 people
become new
election workers
based on this post.

But there is real consequential value to administrators.

The value to me, non-political, is the use of schools as polling places.  This legislation should make election administration in Johnson County easier and polling places more stable for voters.

Plus, perhaps even greater, the bill allows us to have more high-school student election workers.  We were limited to one per polling place and turned away hundreds in presidential years. 

Now, 1/3 of our workers at the polls can be high-school students.

(Note to you, dear reader, if you aren't an election worker--that means 30 percent of our workers aren't even old enough to vote and these youngsters, who can't vote, are making sure you do.  Any pangs of guilt, thinking about being an election worker--please?--contact our office).

But, this is a great example of the value of what one vote looks like, and what better example than in an election bill.

The practicality of executing the bill will be discussed here if and after the governor signs the bill into law.  

The bill is more than 80 pages, so there are plenty of details to scour, and even the potential for unintended consequences, so I'll be reading it more thoroughly and reporting back.

Election Marathon

I ran a half-marathon on Sunday.

Half-Marathon Finisher Medal

I ran it because I could, a great release from what has been a grueling marathon of an election.  I hadn't trained, but I was okay with my time of 1:55 and finishing it was the win, anyway.

That real marathon ends today, with the board of canvassers reconvening at 1:30.  With about 3,000 provisional ballots to count and many having to be hand-counted partials, the special board worked 12 hours yesterday to finalize results.

That's a marathon in its own right.  These are some of our office's most dedicated part-timers, working for nearly nothing, pushing paper.

Even years bring with them many things, including a very long ballot, two-sided, 8 1/2 by 17 inches, with approximately 30 items to select.  With 190,000 voters, that's nearly 6 million voting transactions.

Even years also bring a long October, one which doesn't allow for training for such things as real marathons.  I ran my only marathon in 2013.  I'm not sure I'll run another, but I knew I wouldn't run one in 2014. Besides, we had election worker training the day of the Kansas City Marathon.

Election Results, Halfway From Finishing, on CNN

We had our own virtual marathon at the office, though.  In fact, all of Kansas City had the World Series run for the Royals that was exhausting, and we didn't even play the games.  The post-season ran the entire month of October and held the city captive.  Who knew October baseball really now lasts all of October?

It hasn't always been that way.

Baseball great Reggie Jackson referred to himself as Mr. October and as a kid, I thought that was a silly nickname because the World Series ended halfway through the month.  I ran a half-marathon, but I'm not Mr. Marathon.  Why wasn't he Mr. Half-October?  Or, Mr. Late Summer?  Or, Mr. 30-Days-Some-In-September-Some-In-October?

Anyway, there definitely was a Royals factor to the whole election.  In training, I began giving the milestones in Royals dates--registration ended as the Royals won game 3 of the division series, advance by mail began the day they clinched that series and--oops--Supervising Judges pick up supplies the day of the victory parade (my guess on the date).

We saw advance voting in person trail off in the afternoon of game days and explode after the World Series ended.  Voters were giddy.  People were dressed in blue but if their voting experience was blue, we didn't know it.

After the Series, those things we typically see when voting is going on for two weeks began emerging.  Voters selected candidate A on a machine, for instance, but candidate B came up.  They changed it, voted accurately, but worried about all of the others who may not be as observant as them.

This has gone on since the machines were purchased, 2002--before my time, and as much as I'd like to use this as THE excuse for needing a new voting system (oh, it's an excuse, believe me), it usually happens because of pilot error.  The machines are not your father's iPads, which then just tells you how old the technology is if your father didn't even use it.

To provide some context there, the scroll bars on the review screen on the voting machines are on the LEFT.  Look at your web browser.  Note the scrolls are on the right--always have been.  Yep, we're voting with pre-Internet design.

In any event, we record whenever these anomalies are reported, and in this election it seemed to happen, as it usually does in an election, on just once race.  We had a couple of reports for governor and Secretary of State, and one on a judge, but the other 25 were on the US Senate race.

Again, I have absolutely no incentive to defend the machines, other than that I can demonstrate our testing that assures they tabulate perfectly.  I didn't select the machines, I want a new system, and I have no problem throwing the machines under the bus, except that the machines would probably cause the bus to crash, and while unlikely around here, someone might be on a bus and be hurt.  That would be bad.

But if it was a simple case of bad calibration, many of the races would have this issue.  At the very least, the races in the same place on the screen, as voters advance, would experience the same thing, on screen two, screen three, and screen four.  30 reports out of nearly 6 million transactions don't lead to a widespread diagnosis of poor calibration.

The reports and calls suggest we equally were favoring candidates, not only suggesting that we were trying to engineer the election but also that those Palm Pilot devices had the capability of guessing who the voter wanted in a race and then forcing the other candidate's name to be selected.

I heard about these reports, often the same report from different sources, through many poll agents and lawyers.  I talked to only two angry voters on election day, mostly because I was on the phone with other stakeholders the rest of the day.  We had media throughout the day, and with a position that had gone a year to fill not yet filled until yesterday (woo hoo!) and the sad loss of our assistant election commissioner over election workers and polling places, being understaffed took its toll in terms of my availability on election day.

I was so excited to talk to these actual voters that they probably wondered if they were being punk'd.

We had some key learnings in this election:

1. We have consolidated polling places for the last time.  We had the fewest, 182, we've had in a November election and in 2016, we'll need at least 75 more.
2. We won't get to 250 polling places, let alone 284 that we had in 2008.  They just won't be available.
3. We will need more advance sites.
4. We won't get those either, with the economy improving and storefronts filling, without paying excessive rent.
5. My reaction to these issues is, "So?"  These are elections.  These are real cost issues, including staffing needs and election worker pay increases that are needed.  My job is to administer the elections and the county's role, very harshly, is to fund it.  I expect the 2016 cost to be at least $1 million more than it was this year, at least.  This is not my problem.  It is a problem, for sure, only to get worse with the funding of our voting system.  But there is a huge expense ahead to be adequately prepared for 2016.

And, finally, we had the learning of the poll agents--about 400 deployed in this election.

Imagine, instead, if just half of them had been election workers.  We'd have had one more worker per polling place and then some.

Now, back to running the half-marathon.  I like running races and I pay for that.  Similarly, I played indoor soccer for years.  I like participating in competitive events.

As a competitor, I've had my share of times that I felt, for instance, that the soccer referees could have been better.  But the idea of becoming a referee myself--no thank you.  Just, I thought, I wish that they would hire better referees.

Likewise, I think voters deserve to carry expectations that their participation in competitive government events (elections) are handled professionally.  Voters pay entry fees (taxes) to have voting convenient, and never would I suggest to a voter who is unhappy that if the voter really cared, the voter should get more involved in the process, to be one of our referees.

But I would make such an appeal to poll agents.  In fact, I plan to do that very thing.  One area we will target, for new workers, will be the poll agents.

If someone has made the leap to assist with a campaign or candidate, and had time on election day to monitor the process, the best way they could help the process is to be part of it, as an election worker.

We're fortunate that these 400 were engaged.  Now, we hope to engage them further for the marathon ahead in 2016.

The Week The Lights Came On In Georgia

It's been about two weeks since I've posted and much has happened.

First, outside of elections, I did finish my first marathon, although I didn't hit the time I hoped.  I'll dwell on that later, but my focus pivoted quickly to preparing to leave 48 hours later to observe the presidential election in Georgia, where I spent about 10 days.

I planned to report here on the observation mission primarily to share things I learned and can transfer to Johnson County.  In doing so, there are a few angles to consider.

First, there's the overall experience.  Most of the persons observing had tremendous backgrounds but, seldom, dedicated election administration experience.  I think many of the regular readers of this site should consider pursuing an election observation assignment and for that I want to paint a picture of how apply and what to expect.

There's the international aspect, particularly the cultural differences.  Also, there are things related to election administration that I want to call out as learnings or just interesting to those of us who administer elections in the United States.

Finally, there's the social and political aspect.  Just as with my other posts, I won't really get into this unless it brushes with the administration of the election.

My attention was on the process, particularly comparing it to our own here.   I went to sleep at 5 a.m. the morning after the election knowing the results from my observation region but not knowing the outcome nationwide.  Just as with an election I would conduct in Kansas, my interests began and ended with the logistics of conducting the election.

English and Georgian version of my credentials.

So, with that set-up, let's jump straight to some of the learnings and observations.

I'll do a second post in a few days with the process of the mission.  That will be more lively.  What follows is for the most geeky of you.

Georgia is a country with about 3.5 million voters.  In this election, there were approximately 3,600 voting locations (so, one for every 1,000 registered voters on average) and each polling location was staffed with exactly 13 workers.

By contrast, using the same formula, Johnson County should have about 380 polling locations (we have 250ish, but 380 is very reasonable without advance voting).  In a presidential election, we average
7 workers per location.

The Georgia election was conducted on paper, and by paper I mean one little piece of paper that was the same everywhere.  In our presidential election in 2012, we had more than 500 versions of the ballot, but the ballot also was jammed full front and back with other races.

The Georgia ballots were hand-counted at the polling location, with results taken to a central area location for tabulation.  That tabulation was completed, in the region I observed, around 3 a.m., and then those results were rolled up with other regions to a countrywide level.  I'm not sure when that was completed, but I believe the country's election website was updated by 5 a.m. (I didn't have Internet access in my area and, actually, didn't know there was such a website until days later).

The hand-counting was relatively easy because there was only one race and, on average with a 50 percent turnout, each polling place team had to only count 500 votes.

Visitors to this polling place first had to get past turkeys.
It was very common to see farm animals near polling
places in my area of observation.

During our debriefing before the election, we discussed polling place accessibility for persons with disabilities and were told that if a person was expected in a wheelchair, then election administrators would arrange for a temporary ramp would be installed at the polling site.

I never saw a ramp, but I did ask if for our purposes "a ramp was a ramp was a ramp"--in the United States, there are strict requirements about how steep the ramp accelerates, and the ramp must meet distances from the floor.

No, in Georgia apparently, a ramp was all that mattered and, in some of the locations I visited, there were a couple flights of 10 stairs that even with a ramp would have challenged Popeye if he was in a wheelchair.

Wheelchairs aren't that common in Georgia, though.  I never saw a person anywhere in a wheelchair and persons homebound were allowed to have a ballot brought to them.  So, while the sites weren't accessible for those with disabilities, the country had a plan to reach those voters.

Voting Booth

Speaking of reaching voters, the voters were each provided an invitation, in person, to vote.  That was the method of communicating voters' polling locations.  In the region where I was dispatched, few homes had Internet access and I wondered how voters got the word on their polling place--valet service, as it turned out.

My observation area was very rural, and polling places often were in what appeared to be abandoned buildings or schools, although sometimes the school sites looked like former schools.  Each polling place had one voting booth for every 500 registered voters (so most had one, some had two).

The polls were open 8 to 8 ( compared to 7 to 7 in Johnson County) and workers arrived an hour early to prepare just as they do here.

When we observers watched the workers' training video during our preparation, the deputy head of the mission laughed when the video explained that, "although the set-up is a lot of work, good organization and teamwork should allow workers to relax with a cup of coffee or tea before the location opens."

Johnson County election workers will appreciate that
the registration book was split in Georgia, too,
for separate lines based on the first letter of
voters' last names.

This was especially funny to me because I say the exact same thing--or close to it--during our training.  I always tell our workers that if they are organized, they should be popping open their thermos or opening up their first of five 5-Hour Energy drinks, relaxing, and swapping election worker stories with their coworkers.

Indeed, in the polling place opening I observed, they did share coffee at 7:45.

I liked the idea of the training video--we have online training for our election workers but a video can be shared with poll agents (our version of observers) to give them a sense of what they should be observing.

I often tell our election workers to treating poll agents as family--"slaughter the calf, give them a ring and your best robe!" I say.  The video idea falls in line with that, I think, in that it would help the poll agents know exactly what should be happening in the polling place.

A friend of mine went on an earlier, similar mission and told me how he thought such a thing should be mandatory for election administrators, if for no other reason than to see what it's like for our poll agents and observers at home.  I agree with him.

With that segue, I'll follow up with a second post that explains my take on the process of applying and deployment.  I learned a lot, I think I added value to the process, I made many new friends and, as expected, came home totally exhausted.

But it was a good kind of tired.

More soon.

Fast Food Protests

Today in Kansas City, and I imagine throughout the United States, there will be protests by fast-food employees related to minimum wage.

I'm personally not a proponent of minimum wages because they are arbitrary figures, much like the $15 an hour wage those protesting today will be advocating.  I do, however, want everyone to make as much money as they can, wish everyone could have complete happiness, and would love a world without tears.

If they can get raises to $15/hour, more power to them.

Recently, though "Business Week" produced a graphic of the impact of $15 an hour wages in different industries.

I've written on this blog before about election workers, who, if minimum wage was raised to $9, would be making less than minimum wage.

And, again, I have no quarrel with the crusade for $15 an hour.

But it's worth pointing out what jobs don't pay that much and then stressing that we actually have staff members who don't make $15 an hour.  Those are full-time staff members, not  temporaries, who do most of the heavy lifting at the election office and are our unsung heroes.  They are paid comparable to baristas at Starbucks.

One of the great things in election geekdom over the past few years is the emphasis of election administration among college degrees.  Auburn University and the University of Minnesota, I believe, now have election administration tracks in their Master's of Public Administration programs.

But elections administrations nationwide consistently make considerably less than their government peers.  There are a few factors that are the causes, including the fact that elections historically have been led by women and women, further, historically have been paid less than men for comparable jobs.

Our election workers make $110 for about a 14-hour day ($7.85 an hour) and another $15 for three hours of training.  We split that for administrative reasons, though, so, really, they make $125 for 17 hours ($7.35 an hour, 10 cents more per hour than today's minimum wage).

The real point of this brief post is just to put in context how society values elections compared to other industries.  I'm actually not sure society "values" elections in that most people haven't consciously put a number to it; most of us probably haven't thought about what hotel desk clerks make, either.

But still, elections, which are the foundation of our free society, are put on at nearly minimum wage.  There may have even been a day when being an election worker was easier than working fast-food, but I'm not so sure anymore.  I definitely think it's more stressful to be an election worker than a fast-food employee.

Lest I am insulting a fast-food worker reading this, I worked in fast-food at Captain D's in high school and college for basically the same amount of time as I've been in elections.  I have a pretty good basis of comparison, and I still hope to find time to write the eventual best-seller, "Everything I Learned in Life I Learned at Captain D's."  

I will give fast-food workers the fact that my clothes don't smell greasy when coming home from a polling place, so there's that.

Still, it's interesting the jobs we conjure when thinking of minimum wage and very few would think of election workers.  I often say they are paid just enough to feel guilty for not showing up, which might be the point of the fast-food protests today.

Let's Put on a Show!

As a kid, I watched my share of The Little Rascals.

I watched your share, too.  And then some.

Somewhere along the way, the gang usually ran into problems that could be solved by the phrase, "Let's Put on a Show!"

These shows would raise a few pennies and save the day.  There never was much money involved with those kids.

I've often written here how elections are pieced together with very little money.  Sure, it's taxpayer money, so prudence is good, but election workers are paid near minimum wage, polling places are usually secured for free, and often we barely have two coins to scrape together before tossing them to decide winners in tied races.

So, at times, I feel like we're working a script from Our Gang.

This past week of election worker training definitely felt like that.

We utilize a church for what we call refresher training--training for those who have worked an election.  Usually, this training brings in about 300 workers, auditorium style, and we cover key things related to the election and brush up on procedures.

The church is a polling place and has been an outstanding partner.  The people there are terrific.

But, the venue can be hit or miss, and it missed twice last week.

Our training a week ago Saturday came a day after the nicest day of the year--an 80 degree Friday.  Saturday, it was back to reality, with a high of about 45 degrees, with a wind chill much colder.

Halfway through the training, though, I'd clearly lost the audience.

Usually, it takes a little longer for me to bore everyone, but in this case, I was losing them because the temperature felt like it was 45 degrees inside as well.

People started covering themselves with coats blanket-style.  Husbands and wives began cuddling.

It was cold.

The only thing on their minds concerning training was the thought that it might possibly end, allowing them to go outside and warm up.

This has happened at the church before, actually, so it was very frustrating to experience it again.

That wasn't nearly as frustrating as last Thursday's training, where no microphone could produce sufficient volume.  They were all charged, but after moving from a lavaliere to a handheld microphone, I had to press my lips and teeth against the metal with my hand cupped, hoping for a small echo that would allow people to hear me.

I felt like an election rapper.  Training was compromised again.  With the microphone in one hand and the PowerPoint remote in the other, it was nearly impossible to hold up different envelope and form examples.  I had to hold the microphone upside down, at a 45-degree angle, looking like a very confused gerbil.  I also pity the clergy member who used the microphone next.

As I did my best Slim Shady, all I could think about was the disaster this would have been if the echo went away and we had gathered 300 workers for training, yet we were unable to get them to hear us.  I'm still not sure those in the back did hear me, actually.

We need contingency plans for so many things in elections, but we shouldn't have to have contingency plans for something WE plan.  Yet, we can't go through this again.

Our county needs a training facility, something I've been advocating for years.  We would be a primary user of this facility, but with so many financial needs, it is unlikely to be built.

But we have to punt this Little Rascal routine.  There's a level of professionalism that we're missing with this set-up.  Plus, our success is reliant on our election workers.  The training is vital.

Today we looked into pricing for a place called The Ritz Charles, an odd place in Johnson County that can best be described as a hotel without any hotel rooms.  It's as though the ballroom was built securely but Dorothy and all of the other guests in the Tower blew away.

The Ritz Charles is a meeting and banquet facility.  That's all they do.  We looked into it today and I was surprised that the pricing for a full day is only a couple of thousand dollars more than what we pay the church.  The cost of the church has risen steadily over the last few years.

We're not sure we will use the facility for all of our 2014 training needs, but we reserved a couple of days for next October.

Hopefully, that means my rapping days are over.  That's a show even the Little Rascals wouldn't have have put on with pride.

Election News, At a Minimum

President Obama made big election news Tuesday night during his State of the Union speech.

Oh, yeah, he mentioned something about a bipartisan commission related to the voter experience, but that wasn't the election news of the night.

He proposed raising the minimum wage to $9.00 an hour.

If you've followed this blog, you know the blog isn't political.  My reaction to the minimum wage issue is not intended to provoke debates on federal vs. state sovereignty or whether we need a minimum wage at all.

The minimum wage statement was impactful to us in elections because our elections ride the backs of persons who make less than that $9 rate.

I'm not just talking about election workers, who at $110 for a 14-hour day would need to be raised $16 for the day ($25 in presidential elections) just to be at this new minimum wage.  We already pay workers just $15 for three-hours of training, so I'm not sure that minimum wage laws actually apply to election workers.  Our election workers haven't had a raise in seven years so we'll be pushing for it, regardless.

But in an office where we have the same number of full-time staff that was here more than 20 years ago--despite more than twice as many voters and precincts, as well a compendium of new laws, technology, and increased expectations--the dirty secret of elections in Johnson County, and elsewhere, is that much of the heavy lifting is done by people who can make more doing just about anything else.

Our top temporaries--those who process registrations in busy times, process advance voting applications, check signatures on the applications, check in and scan mail ballots, mail out the thousands of ballots we have, and check and program our voting machines--typically make $8.75 an hour.

Generally, they are election workers who have signed up for more duty in our office.  In the busiest of times, just before the presidential election for instance, we have to bring in additional temporary-agency employees who are less skilled than our workers and are paid at least $3 more per hour.

On one hand, election administration creates situations where, instead of five temporary employees for 10 hours, we need 10 for five hours--to test and proof the ballot layout on our voting machines, for instance.

But the temporaries often are plugged in to avoid the reality that we are understaffed. 

And, our temporary employees care.  They are uber-devoted.  They inspire us all.  Often on the front lines,they surprise me at what they put up with for $8.75 an hour.

Freedom isn't free, but in the elections world, it's nearly free, particularly when considering the small speck elections comprise out of a county's overall budget and the very fact that if there were no elections, there wouldn't be a county government in the first place. 

Elections are expensive, but that's a result of the number of people we serve more than anything.  Events for 400,000 people cost more than events for 40.

The sad thing is that if the minimum wage increase occurs, the financial impact to our county in a presidential year could approach $100,000 from the increase alone.  Missing the forest for the trees, we will find ourselves defending if we really need this many people (yes, by the way) instead of the obvious question--we run our democratic process with people paid minimum wage?

Gushiness For Our Workers

I've compared before that elections are like having a newborn baby, where as time passes from the sleepless nights, only the more pleasant memories remain.

Yesterday's election worker training--the first for February and the first since November's election--reminded me of this.

Each of the 75 in attendance worked in November and while I still remember some of the pain--them, not so much.

We had a couple of polling places, for instance, that didn't utilize signs the way we cover in training.  This seemed monumental to me on election day, when I was at the pinnacle of my over-functioning self.

Standing in the front of the room, pointing out the correct sign placement, this seemed much more minor to me yesterday.

I asked about their opinion on the need for two poll books at all locations and didn't get a reaction.  I saw shrugs of shoulders and heads softly nodding no, not some sort of pent-up rage that I somehow expected.  I was anticipating the raising of pitchforks and a scream of "Hell's Yeah!" 

That didn't happen.

Listening to myself during training, I realized there were moments to point out what a good job they did in November:

1. In general, they managed the largest test of the new photo ID law very well.
2. They did an excellent job understanding provisional ballot situations.  We have a process where persons who request to vote on paper vote in a streamlined way, non-provisional.  If the worker makes a mistake, though, and the ballot should have been provisional, we don't collect enough information to be able to count the ballot.  That's bad and something we emphasize.  We call paper-ballot requestors "Gold Voters," so they don't feel intimidated by asking for paper, but we also stress to our workers that if there is confusion on their part, it's always better to have the ballot provisional, so we know it will count, vs. assuming it's a Gold Voter and be wrong.  Gold Voters must be in the poll book.  Our workers handled these situations exceptionally in November.
3. Further, and on some level this is glorifying what should be the ordinary but it is a big deal, I have never had a voter call me with an issue attempting to vote where the voter wasn't, at a minimum, offered the opportunity to cast a provisional ballot.  That's how it should be, of course, but many things "should be" and I'm thankful this is "is" as well.
4. Voter complaints, as we realized during our post-mortem review, were limited primarily to two polling places that were our two with lines most of the morning.  Those two had lines under control by 11 a.m.
5. Our election workers received compliments from poll agents.  Poll agents (observers) often are called into duty at the 11th hour, but they also often are influentials--elected officials and former candidates.  We instruct our workers to treat them likely family, embrace them, give them their best robe and sandals, slaughter the fattest calf, and make them feel welcome.  I'm not sure our workers always went that far, but they did a good job working with poll agents.
6. Our workers handled more voters at the polls than any other election in Johnson County history.  Because of our consolidation of polling places, traffic at each polling place was 50 percent higher than 2008's presidential election (and that election had a record 78 percent turnout).

I'm not a person who remembers to gush appreciation.  Further, election administrators, by their nature, tend to focus on what didn't work as opposed to what went right.  Eection administrators are typically the ones who might get a "99" on a test and instead of celebrating, dwell on the 1 problem missed.

I feel the need to be gushy today.  Johnson County is very fortunate to have hundreds of persons who give 14 hours for roughly $100.  The February 26 election may be an exercise in dealing with boredom, but last November was a test under pressure, and they performed terrifically.

More training is scheduled for Saturday.  Gushiness is also on the agenda.

Training Video Premier

This week in Dodge City, the clerks and election commissioners in Kansas discussed creative ways we are all getting the word out regarding Photo ID, now necessary when voting by mail or in person in Kansas (unless a voter is on the permanent sick and disabled list where the voter is automatically issued a ballot by mail).

There's considerable energy and creativity, times 105 (the number of counties), going on in the field.

As mentioned earlier in ElectionDiary, I've directed our meager funds toward election worker training.

I've done this for a few reasons:

1. In general, I don't think the need to bring ID will be news to voters.  Most will come in with a driver's license.  There are other IDs that are allowed, but trying to reach individuals who might try to use one of those would be a considerable guessing game and very inefficient.
2. It ties to my "key connector" approach on outreach.  I want to hit 10 hubs that spoke out to thousands rather than groups of 20 at a time looking to fill a weekly meeting agenda.  2,000 election workers include high-school students and high achievers in their first, second, or current professional act.  Many are wired within several social groups.
3. Our big message will continue to be encouragement for voters to cast ballots in advance.  In fact, we likely will have 10 percent fewer polling places than we had in 2008.
4. Ultimately, when we're aiming for excellent execution, properly arming election workers with tools and understanding to help voters will pay off most on election day.

The three elections at the polls thus far have validated this view.  At our training in July, we will show a video that we created as an ice-breaker to smooth any apprehension about the difficulty of administering Photo ID.

I showed this video to an audience for the first time in Dodge City.  I felt like a real movie producer, relieved that the group laughed at the right moments and thought it was effective.

Then, after the showing the video, I'll pull up screen shots of the characters' personas and provide key points for addressing that situation.

The video features several characters, all played by the same person, Paul Wagner.  We used actual election workers in the video and they were amazing.

Paul has posted the video on YouTube.  I'm putting the link here knowing that some of our election workers will have seen it by the time we roll into July and, in fact, the second character in the video is one we are taking out of our July training.

Our personas include someone who intentionally doesn't come with ID, someone who comes with the wrong ID, someone who doesn't look like his photo, someone who comes in only with the voter registration card, someone who wants to discuss the new law with an election worker, someone who believes his ID is valid and doesn't want to come back and wait in line, a familiar face who is surprised he still is asked for ID, and a voter who goes by several names.  Paul plays himself briefly just for context and the bit is hosted by a British hipster.

I hope you like it.  Comedy is subjective and as I mentioned before, this was a risk, but I'm feeling better and better about our training plan this fall, and this is one reason why.

I'm working with Paul on another training project that I hope to highlight here in a month or so.

Doughnuts and Swag Bags

Doug Chapin's blog post yesterday regarding a doughnut controversy in Appleton, Wisconsin hit home because we've gone through the same thing.

In Fairway, the city's police chief for years has personally delivered doughnuts to election workers (two polling places) during the city's April elections.  In 2009, though, this practice received considerable attention because some voters thought it was a clever way to encourage voters to re-elect the mayor.

I haven't ever been able to figure out how seeing an election worker with doughnut-glazed lips would influence my vote, but others were certain it was a ploy.

Thankfully, electioneering isn't an issue in Johnson County.  I often say during training that no one wins if we have an issue at the polls, so primary methods A, B, and C that we utilize when encountering someone advocating a position within 250 feet of the polling place involve hope.

That, and hope's companion, wish.  We just wish it won't happen, or hope they'll be agreeable to covering the offending item or hope that if they aren't agreeable, no one else will come in while that person is voting so we can avoid confrontation.

Our voters are pretty cool about this issue, actually.  Some of our supervising judges bring a jacket to the polls just for voters to use if they've come with a shirt supporting a candidate or position on the ballot.

In the case of the Fairway doughnuts, that wasn't electioneering, but in fairness to the law, persons bringing something to the polling place really aren't allowed.  Only voters, workers, and authorized poll agents are allowed at the polling place.

When I ran for the Shawnee City Council in 2002, I had this fun publicity idea that I would "run" for office--literally run from one polling place to another of the six in my ward.  The distance was within what I regularly ran each day, but I wussed out because I was afraid that it could be icy.

Little did I know then that I wouldn't have been allowed at the polling places because I wouldn't have had my authorized poll agent credentials.  Even if I did, by the third stop, they would have been rather sweaty.

Beyond electioneering, it is also against Kansas law to impede someone as they are coming into vote.  We're just a few months away, in fact, from many organizations hoping to have bake sales or other fundraisers for the persons coming to the polls to vote in the presidential election.   This is not allowed.

In fact, in 2008, Starbucks called to say they wanted to offer free coffee to voters waiting in line at our polling places before the polls opened at 6 a.m.  I explained that this was against the law, but that our election workers would very much appreciate hot coffee at 5:50 a.m.

Then, as they say, "crickets."

Even beyond the laws, we have some cities that won't allow their city halls to be used at polling places because, indeed, candidates running for re-election have managed to turn the parking lot into a trophy room, getting the Fire Chief, for instance, to display the new pumper secured by the incumbent.

We send cookies to our workers, and those are generally devoured by the high-school students working.  That's followed  Krispy Kreme, which coordinated a doughnut giveaway to all of our workers in 2004, but we got the doughnuts before election day.  By the time the workers opened the boxes on election day, they were anything but the warm delight you'd get on drive-through.

In 2008, we even tried to coordinate the creation of a swag bag of samples and coupons from area businesses to give our workers.  Maybe that will come together in 2012.

We'll begin our usual strategy of wishing and hoping for such a thing.  In lean times this year, that strategy will be used frequently.

March Madness Begins

And, we're back!

Back, that is, in major election mode after a whole 9 days since the spring primary canvass.

Today, we mailed out about 1,700 advance ballots for the April 3 election.  For all of these elections, we bill the jurisdictions the incremental costs and we're not only in the midst of our fifth election of the year already, we haven't even received all of our vendor invoices from the others so we can prepare our own invoice and get reimbursement.

We're essentially four elections in the hole.  We're a living practice case for a high-school accounting class at this point.

It's madness--regular madness, not March Madness, although this is the time of year that makes for a good analogy as well.

Tuesday will be our first new election worker training of the year.  Much like college basketball coaches, we're always recruiting when it comes to election workers.  We have enough seasoned workers to cover this election but we want to sprinkle in some rookies to keep feeding the worker pipeline.

We've also had several supervising judges hang up their poll books after last year, so we're looking for workers to step up and take on more responsibility.  We'll be utilizing a supervising judge buddy program, where we have supervisors serve as mentors to rising stars.

The number of supervising judges retiring after 2011 speaks, I think, to how hard it is becoming to be an election worker.  Running a polling places involves working through a series of exceptions.  The 95 percent who are what we call perfect voters (meaning they were in the poll book, voted non-provisional) take up about 20 percent of the mindshare of our workers.

The exceptions--the five percent--are the training brain-teasers.  The majority of our training time is involved with these one-offs.  Accumulating too many one-offs can be a turn-off, and I think that's what some of our workers have experienced.

We plan to overstaff slightly in April so we can get some new workers seasoned before working a second time in August so they will be full-fledged veterans in November.  We'll have a bevy of new election workers--high-school students--in November but most of our new workers will come in these next few months.

We'll finish new election worker training in early October, before advance voting and about the time we start to get calls from people who've heard there is a presidential election coming up and would like to get involved as a worker.

If by chance you're thinking about working in November, or setting up your organization to adopt a polling place as a fundraiser, now is the time to raise your hand.  

It's Super Tuesday!

Well, not in Johnson County, actually, but it is Tuesday and a good time for the topical kind of posts that I've said I'll do occasionally on Tuesdays.

With it being Super Tuesday, there's no shortage of media coverage related to elections, including the obligatory jabs at e-voting:  a write-up of an Internet hack from two years ago (I'm sure I'll get into the white paper that's included in a future post) and one forwarded to me today by my favorite former election office employee who lives in Ohio.

Expect a full onslaught, by the way, of new voting machine articles at the end of September.  That's when these articles tend to harvest.

More importantly, there were also a couple of articles today related to social media.

The first was in USA Today, an article that reminded me of callers in 2005 and 2006 who were certain that exit polls were 100 percent reliable and, thus, determined that the Ohio presidential results and the 2004 election were stolen by the same voting machine company we use.

We'll get into polling later this year, when I describe how it's done in Johnson County, and I'm sure you will conclude that such polling is 100 percent UNreliable.

But the big article today was in the Wall Street Journal and didn't mention elections.  It was a story about Twitter use by members of juries.

Our election workers at the polling place share one thing with members of a jury.  We want our workers sequestered, immune to the media coverage of the day.  But here in 2012, we also have to worry that they could contribute to the media coverage of the day.

As sure as today is Super, you can count on a specific question being asked during election worker training:

What do we do about people with cell phones?

Well, who doesn't have a cell phone and, for that matter, who actually talks on the phone anymore?  We don't ban cell phones but we do ban disruptions, so if Billy Bluetooth comes in while on a conference call, we'll ask him to hop off the call and he almost always does.

We have high-school students working as election workers and we don't let them keep their ear pods from their phones in while they work because it looks like they'd just rather be any place other than at the polls.

But we don't fight their texting.  We don't ban texting, but we do ask that they dial it down, limiting the texts to things like, "Mom, can you bring me a jacket?"

But last Saturday, when I discussed our short-code polling place lookup by cell phone, half of our supervising judges immediately pulled out iPhones to try the lookup.  All of our supervising judges have cell phones without exception, and most are smartphones.

This demographic that supposedly isn't computer savvy is savvy, and they are being followed by a group of middle-aged election workers who are used to checking their email on the minute.  We can't fight that, so the "dial it down," message now extends to all election workers.

But our workers come to us without background checks or without any history.  Most volunteer for the right reasons but some have agendas.

They might want to ensure laws are followed at the polls, for instance, and that's an activism we embrace.  They may want to know how secure our election is.  Swell, again.

But we don't need any worker tweeting about the day, or, worse, describing the voters or what they think is happening at the polls.

Photos from within the polling place tweeted out--why that's a loss of control at the polling place that would make an election administrator break out into a cold sweat.  A Facebook status update by an election worker seems almost a certainty.

We've spent the last few years thinking about the technology our voters might bring into the polling place.  This election will be the first where we lay down specific rules about the use of social media on election day by our workers.

I'm a big critic of organizations that develop social media policies because usually they aren't forward-thinking policies on how social media will be used, but rather employee policies that restrict who can access social media.  There isn't enough thought devoted to how the employees can be harnessed as social media evangelists of the organization.

I've mentioned before that our election workers are influentials and we want them spreading the word in any appropriate way possible to help promote voter participation.

In this case, though, a social media acceptable use policy is shaping up as a must for workers while at the polls on election day in 2012.

Jumping the Shark, Election Style

On the surface, you probably don't want election administrators taking risks.

Fonzie's famous 'Jumping the Shark'
moment on 'Happy Days.'

As an election official, playing it safe is Value Number One.  We think through Plans B, C, and D.

As a manager, playing it safe is a path that can lead to long-term failure, missing what seem like obvious moments, in hindsight, to change.

So, in the case of the coincidentally named SAFE Act (Secure and Fair Elections Act, passed by the Kansas legislature and in effective January 1), I have very limited resources to get the word out to voters about the role of Voter ID in upcoming elections.

Even though the majority of voters in Johnson County, in my opinion, support Voter ID, the nuts and bolts of it will lead to an uptick in provisional ballots in 2012.  We knew this.  We saw the same thing happen in 2004, after the Help America Vote Act led to a Kansas requirement for first-time voters to show ID.

Provisional ballots are issued when there is a question about a voter's eligibility.  The voter casts the vote and we sort out the eligibility between election day and the day the election is certified at a canvass meeting the following Monday. 

"Provisional ballots" is one of those phrases that can elicit different emotions based on the context of the conversation.  Provisional ballots can sound like a fail-safe voter-rights kind of thing, which they are.  Or, because provisional ballots that can be counted come in after the election night results, close races can flip, causing reactions that these ballots are somehow shady.

With no outreach budget and the same staff size we've had for 20 years (despite a myriad of legal and technology changes and more than a doubling of voters), I can't take a carpet-bomb outreach approach.  I'll take a rifle rather than shotgun approach to outreach, depending a lot on social media (yes, by reading this, you are now in an art-imitating-life moment related to my outreach efforts).

I do have a more intense commitment, in terms of time, with our audience of election workers.  I conduct all training and we will have about 2,000 workers in 2012.  We have great workers in Johnson County.  Many communities think they may have the best workers, but they are wrong.  We do.

These election workers are influentials often in their circles.  They represent an outreach channel.  Likewise, candidates and campaign managers are akin to distribution agents of outreach. 

So, our rifle-focus will be in these areas.  This will be much more effective than speaking to 20 people at a time at Rotary and Optimist Clubs, although I will do that as much as possible, too.

My theory with election workers is that the more they are comfortable with the new law, the better prepared they will be for objections and issues at the polls (such as, "I left my ID in the car").  Hopefully, we can reduce the number of provisional ballots through operational preparedness at the polls.

To that end, and to my post headline, we're putting more production into our training.  We've enlisted a comedian who will be creating a video of various potential situations at the polls--portrayed over the top--to lighten the mood during training.  Then, we'll go through each scenario and cover the training.

The video will either be a home run or strikeout.  Comedy is fickle.  I've worked with this guy before, when I was at Sprint, more than 10 years ago, and I had the same feeling then.  The result was a home run, no question. 

We had a call with him yesterday to work on the script and he's coming to our office next week to shoot the video.  I'll plan to post some photos from the shoot.