Let's Play Two!

We're sitting on the eve of our first day-night doubleheader in Johnson County elections.

At noon, a special mail-ballot election in Fairway will close and we hope to have results out by early afternoon.

Meanwhile, polls (or a poll) open(s) at 7 a.m. in Roeland Park for a special election to select a council member for a vacated seat.

That election closes at 7 p.m.  Some in our office will come early, some will stay late, and a few of us will be there wire-to-wire.

Roeland Park is the only jurisdiction in Johnson County that fills vacated seats by election.  The rest of the cities appoint replacements, either for the remainder of the term or until the next city election.

Personally, I'm a "will of the people" kind of guy.  I think it's cool that the citizens pick their representatives.

It is, though, the fourth election of this type that Roeland Park has had in my nine years here and sixth since 2000.  Roeland Park also had a special mail-ballot election earlier this year.

A fair conclusion you may be drawing, or at least posing as a question, is why couldn't the Roeland Park elections be mail-ballots?

Simply, in Kansas, mail-ballot elections are for issues, not people.

That inefficiency is illuminated a bit with the statutory requirement that we have advance voting for every polls election of at least one week.

I've only been following the number anecdotally--for reals tomorrow--but I think we had 7 in-person advance voters over that week.

Such turnout numbers are factors for looking, again, at the potential for mail-ballot elections in Kansas.  The Kansas clerks association has created a task force--and named me co-chair (that's what I get for being out of the room).

I'm not an advocate of all-mail elections.  Mostly, I have just heard enough opinions from a cross-section of our voters to know that many (at least 7 in Roeland Park, for instance) prefer to vote in-person.

I do think it's worth looking at all-mail elections as an option for counties or jurisdictions in special elections.  For small elections, mail-ballot elections end up less costly (still about $4 per registered voter, though).

But, in the world of costly elections or, in this case, NOT COSTLY elections--I bring you the city of Shawnee:

See, the city was on the even-year election cycle, where elections were not countywide.  This meant that the city paid for elections that otherwise would be free if held in odd years.

I saw this expense immediately upon coming to the election office from Shawnee's city council and began telling anyone who cared about these unnecessary expenditures.

The city changed the cycle and, in 2013, held its first odd-year city election under the new cycle.  So, as 2014's spring invoices are being prepared, nothing for Shawnee!

Let's see:
2012 Shawnee Primary and General Election Expense:  $112,729.30
2014 Shawnee Primary and General Election Expense:  $0

To quote an obnoxious car dealer here in Olathe, "That's real money, folks."

And, Shawnee was one of five cities in the spring of even years when I came and the only one of the five to move to the odd years so far.  Maybe this real-life savings will inspire the others to hop to the land of the free (elections).

So, let's hear it for the home team!  (At least, that's MY home team).

As for tomorrow, I'm not sure who the home team is in the doubleheader, but, here's hoping the turnout in Roeland Park's election represents plenty of......wait for it......Visitors.

The Blue Bear is Mine

I've posted before about how the person in our office who comes closest to predicting turnout without going over wins the traveling trophy of the little blue stuffed bear.

We play Price is Right rules and how handy for me.  I guessed 5.4 percent and the turnout was more than twice that at 11.1 percent.  Another staff member guessed closer, 12 percent, but the Blue Bear is cozying up into my office, thanks to the interpretation of the rules.

We're only two weeks from the next election, so it may be a short visit.

This one--our first with Photo ID--will be remembered more for the return of the trophy than anything unusual.  Reports from the ground showed no issues with photo ID and only one provisional ballot, issued because of a name change and not because of the ID.

We had a great group of election workers at the polling location, including a fill-in for a cancellation.  The fill-in typically is a supervising judge, so we had lots of leadership at the polling location, and the four set a high-standard.

To my earlier post mentioning, "There is no such thing as a perfect election," I think for this one, at least, we've said, "Au contraire!"

Getting Ready for the Afterlife

We just completed our first training session for a voter ID election.

We have an election tomorrow, Roeland Park, and another on Feb. 28 in a few cities.  We combined training today, marking the first time we've ever conducted training for two elections at the same time.  I led the training for about 50 workers.  We have another training on Saturday.

This has been a year of firsts and none really because of Photo ID.  Four elections in five weeks has made for a crazy beginning to the year.

It's worth noting that In Roeland Park, during in-person advance voting, we didn't have a single issue associated with Photo ID.

We also didn't have a single voter.

Yes, five days of advance voting and no voters.  There are three candidates in this race, and I have a feeling we will be looking tomorrow night at something like 16 votes for A, 15 for B, and 14 for C with 10 provisionals.

Roeland Park is the only city in our county that fills council vacancies with a special election.  That's either great government or bad government, depending on your point of view.  From a cost perspective, it's definitely bad, but letting voters decide (versus a governing body appointing) is always good.

We had our first snow of the winter today, around two inches, but tomorrow should be fair and about 45 degrees.  So, I doubt turnout will be impacted by the weather.   I plan to visit the polling location tomorrow afternoon and I think the Secretary of State will as well.

There is plenty of media attention for the Roeland Park election, though, because it's the first in the county with the Voter ID requirement.  There are 1,000 voters in the ward, but many are apartment dwellers and the conventional wisdom is turnout will be low.

Roeland Park has done this twice since I've been here--in a different ward--and the average turnout was 23 percent.  Yet, I'm putting my Blue Bear prediction at 5.4 percent.  Much lower, and we'll probably have more media members covering the election than voters in the election.

Regardless of the turnout, preparing for this election this early has been beneficial because we've been able to smoke out operational changes and training issues.  We still likely don't know what we don't know, but we'll have a pretty good feel for it all after February.   Our next election is in April.

It makes me think of the Glenn Close line in one of my favorite movies, The Natural:

I believe we have two lives--the life we learn with and the life we live with after that. 

I think after April, we will be done with the Photo ID elections we learn with, and we'll be ready to live come August.

Was Monday MLK Day or Labor Day?

We've had an active election every day in my seven years at the Johnson County Election Office.

That means that as we've come in to work each day, there has been an election in the works, one we specifically are working on, as opposed to just knowing we've got one down the road.  Part of that is because elections go on for a couple of weeks after election day as we process provisional ballots and do post-election audits.

Coincidentally, Doug Chapin just posted about that yesterday: "When is an Election Over?"

For those who have been at the office longer than me, that streak goes back to 2003, so nine years with an active election.  It's the reason why, although I'm the 5th most tenured out of the eight election commissioners the county has had, I will have administered more elections than any other commissioner after our February elections.

Right now, we're working on elections 41, 42, 43, and 44 in my time, and I've been here seven years and one week.  My predecessor, Connie Schmidt, was the previous "champ" with 43 in nine years.

Yesterday, a member of our staff came in to my office today and said, "I don't know what it is, I just can't seem to get focused right now."  I told her we were all feeling that way, that it just seems busier than normal for January.  (January is busy enough, because the spring filing deadline for candidates is next week).

Reality is, we ARE busier than normal.  We've never had four elections in a 5-week period before.  The two mail-ballot elections we have cross county lines and we're the "home" county, so that adds to the prism of complexity.

Oh, and looking at the tags of my posts, I'm surprised that the most common tag is the post office, but postage changes will add to our zaniness.

Jurisdictions pay for the actual costs of administering the elections.  Midway through these mail-ballots, this weekend, we have a postage rate increase.  In mail-ballot elections, voters return the ballots postage-paid.  In tracking the costs now, we'll have some returned at one rate and others returned at a different rate.

We also mail postcards out to voters to let them know of an upcoming election.  We just got our cards printed for the small election in Roeland Park and planned to mail them next week, but we rushed Friday afternoon to the post office to beat the price increase.

It saved the city $9, to which you might say, "Eh?"  And, if this truly was Labor Day week and not Martin Luther King Day week, our stepped-up workload might have led us to the same thought.

But just guessing at the city's sales tax rate, it would take about $300 in sales at Walmart to generate $9, so $9 is at least a little more significant than it sounds.