Out = Green, In = Yellow

Tuesday was an election day.

In fact, it was the biggest mail-ballot election in Johnson County's history.  The election involved a tax-issue in Overland Park and the turnout was pretty low, actually, at about 30 percent.

This was a renewal of a tax passed in 2008 and the turnout then was 35 percent.  Mail-ballot turnouts, in the 50s ten years ago, rarely reach that point anymore.  Most mail-ballot turnouts in Johnson County begin with a "4."

Sadly, some spring primary polls elections have had turnouts that began with a "4" and were specifically followed by the period above, as in 4 percent.  Our snow-primary last February had a 4.5 percent turnout, but a comparable primary in February 2011, with good weather, was at 5.4 percent.

Olathe ballots, queued, ready to travel from Washington
to Kansas City next week.

But, that's a different post!

Here, we're pushing on out the green envelopes, preparing for the canvass next Monday and then, one week later, on come the yellow envelopes of the Olathe mail-ballot election.

The election is for a similar tax issue and also very large--about 80,000 voters.

On the heels of that (or somewhere actually in the middle of the shoe) comes the Roeland Park mail-ballot election in December.  That's smaller, but overseas and military ballots will be going out in that election just as Olathe's ballots are hitting the traditional mail.

Things have improved, by the way, with the Olathe Post Office.  We've actually been getting separate ballot deliveries in the mornings now.

And, if there is any question that people other than election geeks read this blog, the leasing agent for Westbrooke Village, the subject of the last post, finally called us back.

The Dallas connection is gone.  That leasing group went bankrupt.  And what a shock it was to hear that!

Anyway, there is movement afoot to prepare the property for a sale so there is little interest in leasing to anyone for anything.  There may be a chance, though, and we'll be bird-dogging it.

For now, if it's Wednesday, we must be working on Olathe.

There Are Returned Ballots, and Then There Are "Returned" Ballots

Our Overland Park mail-ballot election--the biggest mail-ballot election in the county's history--is underway!

The process, utilizing Pitney Bowes in Kansas City and bypassing the Olathe Post Office to send the ballots, has been incredibly better than our experience the last time (2008) we had an Overland Park mail-ballot election.

I couldn't take photos at Pitney Bowes on Monday because of their own security, but here are some of the pallets awaiting shipment from Washington state, where we have them printed by ES&S.  Once arrived at Kansas City, they were sorted by zip code and prepared to be taken to the Kansas City Post Office Tuesday night, and voters began receiving their ballots Wednesday morning.

By law, the ballots couldn't begin being received by voters until Wednesday.

We have another large mail-ballot election, in Olathe, on the heels of this one, and beginning with that election, we'll have a tracking system in place so that we will know when ballots are at the Olathe Post Office, awaiting delivery to us.  That has been an issue, where we have been told by the Post Office that they had no ballots on a Tuesday morning, only to find that they actually had a few hundred but simply hadn't counted them yet.

Ballots were mailed Tuesday night, began being received Wednesday, and by Friday, we had 10,151 ballots returned.

However, of the those, 5,994 were returned by the voter as voted ballots.  4,157 were returned as undeliverable.

"Returned" ballots.  Green envelopes are
returned, voted ballots.  White envelopes
are returned as undeliverable.  Ballots
cannot be forwarded.

This means that of the 111,069 ballots issued, 3.7 percent represented voters who have moved just since March.

That's when we mailed postcards to each voter and began working those that came back undeliverable.  Those voters became "inactive," where they sit unless we get a good address and updated registration or until they haven't voted in both the 2014 or 2016 federal election.  At that point, if they are still inactive in December 2016, they can be removed.

Mail-ballot elections only send ballots to active voters in Kansas, so none of those returned were already in inactive status.

Using the 3.7 percent as a swag and recognizing that it's been only six month since the postcard, it's fair to think that at least 7 percent of voters move without updating their registration annually.  With 370,000 registered voters, beyond those we know are inactive, that's about another 26,000 who, theoretically, will have moved and not updated their registration in a 12-month period.

This is especially complicated for a county like Johnson County, which sits on a state line.  Many of these voters likely will have moved to Missouri.  In fact, that also complicates the issue of the voters in suspense status who have registered but not yet provided proof of citizenship.  Some of those voters, nine months into the implementation of the law, have likely by now moved out of state and will remain in that suspense status indefinitely.

There has to be a better way of managing the voter rolls.  In fact, there are better ways.

That sentence was intended to say that there HAS to be a better way, meaning implementing the better way may be one way out of that continuing War on the Voter that we fight as polling places are eliminated, advance voting sites are difficult to find, and the mail service--without the crafty end run we just did for Overland Park--continues to be a worry.

Both the PEW Center for the States and the Kansas Secretary of State testified on this issue Friday to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

What was done after the Help America Vote Act, to create statewide voter registration systems, should be amped up, in my opinion.  I sat next to one of the co-chairs of the Commission during a meeting in early July and he had a keen interest in the solutions implemented by PEW and the state of Kansas.

PEW's solution is a comprehensive voter registration system that incorporates several databases.  Kansas has agreements with nearly half of the states in the country to compare voter registration lists and remove duplicates.

I'm hoping that because this issue seemed to be burning since at least early July with the Commission, some tangible change may result, perhaps in the year or two after the recommendations are made (by December).

One nationwide voter registration system may be too much to undertake politically, but it would go a long way to keeping us from putting an asterisk after the definition of "returned ballots."  It may also be a gateway to more innovative voting methods, such as allowing voters to call up and cast their unique ballots anywhere in a state or even anywhere in the country.

For now, we'll take the short-term win.  For Overland Park, thanks to sweat on the backs of many at ES&S, Pitney Bowes, the U.S. Post Office (our guy on the case in Kansas City), and our own employees at the Election Office, this election has started off very smoothly.

Postal End-Run

I am a smidge worried, as the new-found election blogger and all, that I've drifted a bit from my mission.

I did say this blog will have a point of view, and it's had one lately, but the true purpose of the blog was to give insight into the day-to-day aspects of election administration.

So, this brief post comes back to that.  If you've been reading lately, it would be hard not to notice my disdain for our local post office, and this post happily points out that we may have an end-run around that.

First, let me reinforce that we found a guy in Kansas City who was our postal advocate.  He's been awesome, helped us out during the snowstorm election in February, and then, he vanished.

I was worried that he took another job.  I called him.  I sent him emails.  I lit candles at church.

All, to no avail.

He emerged about 6 weeks ago and, for whatever reason, hadn't received my S.O.S.  He was back in the game, though, he said, and he has definitely jumped in.

First, he talked with our old postmaster, now in Las Vegas.  He also talked with our current post minor (I'm not sure if he is the postmaster or just the guy in charge) at our post office.  This is the guy who told us that because we had an employee engaged to our old postal carrier (who retired 2 years ago) that we got better service than we should have.

Our advocate saw through this attitude, thankfully, and then after a strong wag of the finger to the post minor, called me to let me know he was on it.

At the same time, we began exploring ways to bypass the Olathe Post Office on the way out.  We have hooked up with Pitney Bowes in downtown Kansas City.  This operation is run by a former Sprint employee (as am I) and a Johnson County voter excited to be in the mix.

Wow, someone supporting our office excited to do so.  Wow, again.  Wow, again and again.

I bashfully asked if she, by chance, sure she didn't, just asking, hope she didn't mind, but just wondered--if she knew our advocate at the United States Postal Service.

She did!  They're buds.  And, they have a meeting this week to talk about the Overland Park mail ballot election that is forthcoming.

What a turn of events--there's even more to the positive news, and we're very optimistic.  I toured the facility and took pictures for the blog, but in my excitement the photos were too jumbly to post.

We still have to deal with the post office on the way back in, as ballots are delivered.  But this takes care of a huge ordeal sending them.

Still, what a turn, all the way to an end run.  We'll know soon how it works, but right now, the best way to be a satisfied customer is to be a non-customer.  The true winner, hopefully, will be Overland Park.