An Election Like No Other

Today is an election day.

And, not just any election day.

(Interlude--is there any such thing as "just any election day"?)

It's a recall election in the De Soto School District, approximately 20,000 registered voters, and a great opportunity to test new technology at the polls in advance of our big year in 2016.

We're trialing electronic poll books. 

If you're not close to elections, the idea of trialing an electronic listing of participants, signing up on an iPad likely seems so 2010 to you. (That's when iPads rolled out, by the way).

Even if you are in elections, you might be doing the cartoon double-take swag of your head right now, surprised Johnson County hasn't already rolled out electronic poll books.

There are a few reasons for that--one is the cost, at least a half-million dollars to roll out next year, and probably closer to a million.

Another is the operational impact.  While fairly straightforward, using iPads as poll books presents operational, training, and logistical issues. 

(Interlude 2:  "issues" was intentionally used instead of "challenges"--I'm not a fan of "challenges."  I also call "problems" problems and not "opportunities."  I get the self-help thinking, but life moves fast, says Ferris Bueller, too fast to not call a problem a problem).

(Interlude 3:  I just realized that I may be the only person who has heard of the directness at Amazon.com in the New York Times and said, "That sounds like a great place to work...."  That's probably extreme, but election administration requires confronting operational impacts directly).

So, 14 polling places, 28 electronic pollbooks, 28 printers, 14 wireless hot-spots, and a support to polling place ratio of about 3:1.

As of 9:11, as I'm typing, no emergencies.  No problems.  In fact, it's been a quiet election morning.

That support focus is a big reason.  Many from the Shawnee County Election Office have spent the night to help us.  One of the snazziest election whiz-kids in Kansas, from the Wyandotte County Election Office, has come to help us for a couple of days.  Vendor representatives, including the former Kansas State Election Director, have been here to help us.

All of that is huge.  In fact, more and more, the largest counties--the ones with Election Commissioners--are uniting on issues, sharing learnings and resources, seeking equipment solutions together, and overall just working hand-in-hand in a very powerful way.  This is to the credit of my peers more than me, honestly, but a couple of my key staff members here have elbowed into the party when I can't be there. 

This cooperation, a side point to this post, can't be understated as all of us look to 2016.  If you are a voter in Kansas, this is good news.  You will hear more about this in the months ahead.

Back to the immediate news--we're learning how to train the use of equipment. 

We've ran into that some with iPads and smartphones already, but these relatively simple devices show us the training issues ahead when we roll out a new voting system.  Our county has gone through this before, but it's been 12 years, and most of our staff has turned over since then.

Beyond the training, we're seeing some of the operational benefits.

One of the advantages is simply not having to have a crew work several hours the Saturday night before the election printing, proofing, and preparing poll books.  (For this election, though, we printed the poll books, sealed them in an envelope, and hid them in the supplies in case there was an emergency and we needed to go retro).



Election Worker Training (above) and
Dashboard Examples (below)

(Interlude 4:  Yes, we sent out so many items to the polls that we can effectively hide a poll book in the supplies).



We're also seeing the dashboard capabilities of the electronic poll books.  We can see, at any moment, how many people have voted, who has voted and when, and our overall real-time turnout.

So, that's cool.

It's probably more than cool.  It will help us know of issues (aka "problems") faster.

There are some operational time-savers on the back-end, too.  We can close out the election in the voter registration system much faster, as opposed to going through all of the poll books, page-by-page, to scan the bar codes of the voters who voted.

For this election, we used equipment provided by KnowInk in St. Louis.  Fun fact, St. Louis is the Silicon Valley of electronic poll books.  Election Administrators, another highly regarded electronic poll book company, also is located there.

From here, our evaluation will lead to us issuing a Request for Proposal for electronic poll books.  We expect those two companies to respond, as well as a couple larger full-system providers, such as ES&S.

I've attached some of the screens shots of the command center for fun.

(Final Interlude:  Yes, if you've read this far, you likely would agree that this is "for fun.")

The King and I

Last Thursday, members of the Board of County Commissioners effectively slow-rolled and maybe stopped the restoration of the "King Louie" facility.

The site is a former bowling alley and ice rink, purchased at what appears to a be below-market price, for relocation of the Johnson County Museum and potential creation of a special suburbia museum. 

As the project gained potential traction, other uses for the facility were identified.  It is, after all, a huge complex with plenty of parking.  ABC used to broadcast "Wide World of Sports" Bowling Championships from this site back when ABC, "Wide World of Sports," and bowling all were things people cared about.

Advance voting was added to the list of potential uses.  Actually, I barked a bit about that initially because I didn't think enough was being done to truly address our advance voting needs if, indeed, it were to be used this way.

The county's facility department met with me and we spent considerable time conceptualizing what would be a very workable but modest advance voting site (comparable to what we do at Metcalf South, across the street and used in even years since 2006--however, we never know when our last election there will be our last and the shopping center will be demolished).

From the election office standpoint, I was fine with the plan.  Separately, I saw the arguments on all sides of this purchase. It wasn't my role to have a position on that.

Just before last Thursday's meeting ended, one commissioner suggested a task force be formed of the various building stakeholders to consider the fate of this property.  That suggestion didn't make it to a vote, but one might come up in a regular commission meeting.

I've toured the facility.  I see the warts and I see the potential.  No one asked me, and even if they do it might be a pity postulate request, but here's what I would do.

1. I'd move the election office there.  It's centrally located to the population in the county today, and for the foreseeable future.  It's large enough to accommodate the growth we need in our building for storage, a need nearly every commissioner and many county staff persons have concurred that we have.
   
   Doing this allows for us to consider a mega advance voting site, not one that has 25 voting machines and processes 35,000 voters over two weeks, but rather 100 voting machines processing 100,000 voters or more in a presidential election. 
   
   We can do it; I've done the math, and given all of the polling place and advance voting constraints we have, it's the kind of game changer that might allow us to operate with, say, 100 polling places in the county on election day.
   
   (Incidentally, if you look at strip malls and empty storefronts as I do, you'll notice there are fewer than we saw, say, in 2007.  Advance voting possibilities are hardly ample).
2. As part of the renovation, build an auditorium-type of training facility for 400, allowing us to conduct refresher election worker training at a county facility.  The building structure is conducive to this kind of idea, I think.
   
   Right now, we have to utilize churches and other facilities, and the rent for those is going up.  We're subject to limited availability and options.
   
   There is a need, I believe, within the county government structure for such a training facility beyond elections, so it would be available for other county uses as well.  We would simply have first dibs.  Further, it could be leased out to other organizations. 
3. Move the museum (which must find a home) to our current building.  The county owns the facility and it has plenty of parking for visitors in the numbers they have.  There is even the old "rectory" site adjacent to our property that the county purchased in 2012.  It could be used for better access/egress into this site.
4. Some of the other uses for the King Louie building could still be achieved.  As the Election Office, the site would be a terrific place for a transit station because it would make advance voting much more accessible.  The Enterprise Center--the county's incubator for new businesses--could still possibly have a home there and would be able to benefit from the training facility.  Who knows, we might be able to leverage some innovation into our operations as a result of that.

Of course, this all requires money, money which was expressly not pushed forward last week.  If there isn't a financing plan to use the site, though, it is my understanding that a note will come due requiring $3 million from the general fund in 2015.

So, it looks like some significant money will be spent, one way or another.

As I often say, I'm an idea guy.  Now it's just a small matter of implementation.  First, our leaders would need to buy in and, again, no one asked me.

I remind all that I am here to neither praise, nor bury, King Louie.  If the King can be part of an elections solution, though, it seems like it's worth, at least, a vote by the county's governing body.  At the very least, maybe these thoughts will be a good kickstarter for the task force suggested.

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.

It's Not Rocket Science

Election administration may not be rocket science, but it does have one thing in common with the airline industry.

Specifically, that commonality exists with airline security.  In both cases, it seems like we're always focused on the last problem.

We take our shoes off and check our liquids at airports because of incidents that happened.

We train election workers and create processes for election day to address one-offs from the past.

Voters have concerns about voting machines?  Create a streamlined way to allow them to request a paper ballot at the polls.

Voters realize that touch-screen technology in place since the late 1990s can be temperamental?  Create a sign at the registration table to remind them that they aren't voting on modern Android or Apple devices and to review selections before hitting cast ballot.

Election worker fat-fingered the selection of a specific ballot on an encoder?  Send out a finger stylus that likely won't be used but try to create a simple 1-2-3 mental picture of how to check to make sure the proper ballot is encoded.

And so it goes.  A good half of our training time covers things that likely will never happen, but with 200 polling places and 1,000 workers, they will happen to one of them.

Much of the training is, "1 out of every 100 times," "2 out 10," "If you draw the short straw and this happens to you," etc.

April elections are the mostly likely ones where election workers might encounter a locked door when arriving at 6 a.m.  This happens once or twice in an election, and happened once this past week.

That's just a 5 percent of our polling places if you are scoring at home, affecting 0.5 percent of all of our workers.  If we knew where that would happen, training would be more efficient.  Without knowing that, everyone gets the rundown of what to do.

I'm a strong believer than in any industry, the technology is the easiest thing to learn.  Our election workers don't have any problems with voting machine technology or the iPad technology (for our electronic manual, for instance).  It's the procedures, the one-offs, the mental work that is the toughest.

When the mental work intersects with technology, technology looks like it's to blame.  One worker from Tuesday's election suggested that we give out the manual electronically.  We know the iPad was never pulled out of the supply bag at that location.

One of our more alarming pieces of feedback from this election was the suggestion that we separate new election worker training from those who have worked before.  Um, we do that, and even have a bit of a preamble at each training about the type of training they are attending.

In our refresher training, workers will ask questions that often are on others' minds (or should be).  Occasionally, someone goes to an absurd place: "so a dog comes with a photo ID that an owner got as a joke...." (no, not really, that was an absurd example to protect the genuine absurds).

It's common to hear moans when questions are asked.  I have relatively good moaner radar and make mental notes of the moaners.  Generally, the know-it-alls know it less than think they do.

We have lots of things we want to do to modify our training and had hoped to make hay with it and other planning this summer and fall.

Less than 24 hours after Tuesday's election, we found out we will have another special election, a mail-ballot in Overland Park.  Combined with a mail-ballot election in the Olathe School District, the majority of Johnson County voters will be voting again this year.


The special elections and the turnout this year highlight this year's model of "The Last Problem."

With turnout in this election at 8 percent and two summer special elections scheduled, the push to move spring elections to November has legs.

(That's right, by the way--turnout in a full county election on a sunny day in April was in the single digits and not even twice what it was during a February blizzard election that had a 4.5 percent turnout).

I'm not sure if moving these elections to November will increase turnout, but I do think a case can made that it will, just from the predictability factor of November elections.  People are transient, coming from other cities, and most of us just assume that there is an election each November.

Proponents of the move will point no further than to the turnout this year, and we could very well be conducting election worker training in the summer of 2015, explaining the election-day move as the latest "last thing" impacting our training.

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.

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.

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):

Bocc Committee Of The Whole March 26, 2009 from briandnewby

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.

All Dogs Go To Heaven

It's been a busy week of training and I'll have a real post that's more administrator-ey in a couple of days, but I've come to the conclusion that if all dogs don't go to heaven, at the very least, everyone eventually becomes an election worker.

My latest reminder came Monday with a flashback to my college days.

Back then, I had learned of this musical group of guys my age from Ireland called U2.  They had odd names, like Bono and the Edge and the strangely normal Larry Mullen, Jr.

I bought their album, "Boy," and I listened to it in its entirety at least twice a day.  Most of my friends laughed at me (maybe it wasn't because of U2, come to think of it...) and everyone I knew disliked their music.

They came to concert in Kansas City and I was the first person to buy a ticket, for $1.  Actually, it was $1.02, sponsored as a "Catch a Rising Star" concert by radio station KY-102.  I bought 4 tickets.  I convinced two of my friends to go; my girlfriend and now wife passed.

We had to sit in the balcony because we weren't 21.  Floor seats were 21 and older.  Bono joked that night that the band members weren't 21 so they shouldn't be allowed downstairs, also, as he sprayed a bottle of champagne onto the crowd during the encore.

The band had so few songs they played some of them twice.  My two friends who went became U2 fans for life.  And, if it was possible to be any more OCD about the group's music, I continually lamented that no radio station would play U2's songs.

In particular, I thought KY-102 should play U2.  They sponsored the concert.

So I called and requested, "I Will Follow."  I called anytime I had a free minute, always being told it would be right on.  I stayed tuned it and, of course, never heard it.

It was devotion I gave to help this struggling group out--this group that later has made several gazillion dollars.  At one point, as I drove to school my senior year, the station played "Pride," and I was giddy.

Well, actually, I was annoyed that it took so long and wished it was another, earlier song playing, but U2 on KY-102 nonetheless.  But after the song, one of the morning DJs groaned and said, "I hate U2."

Wow.  For me, it was an unforgettable moment from a song from the album, "The Unforgettable Fire."

Fast-forward more than 25 years later and that DJ was 10 feet away from me in election worker training, saving democracy.  Despite the U2 memory, here he was, a piece of my youth, and I thought it was so amazing that he was now with me and our office working the election.

Just a month ago, I stood at the Kansas City Plaza waiting for a 10k race to start as the album, "The Unforgettable Fire," was being played and I was thinking of those days when no one would play U2.  My day had come, I thought, and then I sadly realized that I never actually had a day--but they did.

And now, seeing this DJ, I wanted to go up to him and thank him for being an election worker and tell him this entire boring story that would likely make him wonder if he did the right thing by signing up to be an election worker for this crazy guy who can't let go.  Having OCD tendencies is admirable when tending to a detail-oriented thing like an election, but when speaking about a rock group, not so much.

Another Time, Another Place, I guess.

Oh, that's a U2 song reference.  For now, back to focusing on The Unforgettable Fire that is the 2012 presidential election.

Ticket Stubs From the First and Second Concerts U2 had in Kansas City.

x

Perfect Elections

We've gone to great lengths to amp up our training in 2012.

I've already posted about gussying up our training room's technology so we can step into the 21st century with multimedia training.  One thing we purchased in 2011 but haven't yet put our heads around is the ability to have our workers take interactive quizzes in our training room.  That's a goal for this fall.

And, we also noticed the need to compress more information into our training time.  We block off three hours for training and pay our workers a whopping $15 to attend training.  I personally deliver the training, so it's an intense period right now.

When I attened the ITIF Accessible Elections Design Workshop earlier this year, I was impressed when they brought in artists to help facilitate the discussion.  It inspired me to be on the lookout for an application for similar creativity.

With our training needs, I started pondering the value of a whiteboard "lecture" kind of presentation that would be jammed with information and be innovative.  We've created such a thing, but it became, perhaps, too jammed with information.  I wanted it for new election workers and a test run a couple of weeks was a bit overwhelming.

We refined it and I think the perfect place for this video is with our supervising judge training.  The supervising judges attend refresher training and then come back for a second training on what is involved as a supervising judge.  These election workers are essentially our A list of workers and are expected to be experts.  This video reminds them of key things.

Further, it captures my philosophy about election administration.  I think it would be good for candidates to watch as well to gain a better understanding of provisional ballots.

I'm obviously proud of this video and would be interested in your comments.  I hope you find it informative.

Training Intermission

On the eve of advance voting in person, we have completed 18 hours of election worker training.

Each class has taken the fully scheduled three hours.  We could have gone for five hours and still left items on the floor.  Elections have become that involved.

Really, being an election worker means learning the exceptions.  With 95 percent of voters processed the same way, the other five percent become the focal point.  The one out of a hundred, five out of five hundred, and one out of a thousand type of scenarios pile up for the workers.

Workers prepare for one of our 3-hour refresher trainings
on Saturday.  More than 300 attended this session.

Add to that the unique voting options for unaffiliated voters in this election and you have a 150-page manual and much to master.

One thing I've mentioned here is that there also is an outreach dimension to our election workers.  We want them to know as much as possible not just because of the election but because these workers are influentials in their own circles.  They become their own vehicles, in their personal lives, to ensure election day goes smoothly.

These trainings over the past week have been distinguished by their engagement.  They've almost been too engaged, jumping to questions about modules before they are presented.  I try very hard to make the sessions interactive, but at times I've had to explain that we'll get to their question with material ahead.

So now, we have a couple days away from training, with the focus on the beginning of advance voting at four locations tomorrow.  We have six hours of training on Saturday, ensuring that I will be achy Saturday night.  All of us, in fact, are wearing down (not unexpected, these are physically draining periods).  I expect that advance voting will spark some energy tomorrow as we start to see the results of all of our work come together.

Our advance voting location at the Great Mall of
the Great Plains, one of four locations opening
tomorrow.

Perfectly Busy

In every corner of our building, and in every corner of every corner, things are bustling.

Our office is a bit like a hotel--not just because it seems like we are spending a lot of nights there, but also because we are constantly re-purposing the space we have.  We're essentially turning our ballroom into separate meeting rooms and a gathering space into a private event area this week.

In fact, our parking lot is the first space with multiple uses.  It will be more than maxed out with spaces tomorrow while we begin election worker training, so around noon our staff will methodically double, triple and quadruple park near the dock area so all of our new election workers can find a space when coming for training. We have some classes scheduled this week and need to complete all new election worker training before advance voting in person begins next Tuesday.

We're wrapping up a video for new election
workers and supervising judges that sums up
key things related to handling exceptions.  I will post it
when it is finalized.

We'll also be training our advance voting staff this week and we'll have refresher training for about 900 workers the next two weekends at a nearby church.  Our supervising judge training will be in yet another building the weekend before the election.

This afternoon, I prepared our training room, getting all of our audio-visual connections and gadgets operable, or nearly operable.

As posted here, we've had two power surges/events in our building in 2012 and I was chagrined to find today that our new speaker setup, urgently purchased this spring to replace the speaker system that blew this winter, was a casualty of the latest surge.

My backup speaker isn't loud enough with the microphone we're using, so we're on to a backup-backup idea for Monday while we assess options. The speaker and microphone setup is necessary because our makeshift training room doesn't have a ceiling and sits in the middle of our warehouse.

Tomorrow, we'll be sending out equipment to one of our advance voting sites, continuing to test voting machines, loading up ballot carts, and preparing polling place supplies.  The warehouse will be quite noisy.

Our training room has come into the 21st century, at least, over the last few years. Training is so important, yet when I arrived in 2005, our room consisted literally of chairs and a whiteboard. We did have a great set-up called "The Perfect Polling Place" and we continue to use that in our training.

Our training room is getting
more and more professional, with
more capabilities.   It has everything
but a ceiling (below).

A big step-up for us, of all things, were tables in the training room to make it more like a classroom.

We began utilizing a big-screen television in 2008 and installed two more in 2009.  We have the ability to now stream video to these televisions and be able to walk through screen shots that the workers might encounter, although we are our own A/V staff and it takes us this time before each election to get reacquainted with all the workings.

The training room gets converted into a check-out area for supervising judge equipment the day before the election and then becomes a room where we begin our work on provisional ballots the day after the election.

The Perfect Polling place will be scrunched rather imperfectly against a wall to allow for the return of equipment after the election.

Our Perfect Polling Place
helps workers connect the dots.

The equipment going out to each advance voting sites is the equivalent of mini-offices, with chairs, tables, and break supplies, as well as laptop computers to check in voters and prepare voter cards, voting machines, and carts and carts and carts of paper ballots.  In an August election, we have about 2,000 variations of our ballots.

The laptops have to be specially loaded to work with our election system, so preparing them has been a month-long ordeal.

A row of equipment
and supplies staged for
The Great Mall, a new
site this year.

We're also preparing ballots to be mailed on Wednesday (and as of Friday at 5, we'd entered 7,895, so I think my swag of 8,000 that I used here last week was pretty good).

Also, we are in the process of organizing our secure file room with each ballot for mailings during the remaining time.

This is one of those times that I'm hoping to capture with this blog to help answer what we do on days when we don't have elections.  Hopefully, this gives you a flavor.  We'll have more this week.

Boxes are ready to
store the many variations
of our ballots.

Personas Personified

Almost a year ago to the day, I had the honor of being part of an online roundtable produced by the Election Assistance Commission.

The roundtable was on social media and was the second of a successful series of roundtables the EAC had conducted over the last 15 months.  Another one is being conducted today.

I made many new friends that day, one of my Top 10 best days of 2011.  One new friend, Dana Chisnell, was featured this week in a post by Doug Chapin.  He's got some more details coming, he says, but Dana is representative of a wave of smart people who are transferring their skills to the election administration profession.

She's become defined as the usability lady.  Oh, that calls for an interlude:

In my 20 years at Sprint, I learned a key survivability trait.  Namely, get known for something, have it etched on your forehead, be known as that person, and then devote your life to shaking that identity and  building a new one.

At Sprint I went from the PR guy to the relay services guy to the wholesale guy.  Now, I'm an elections geek.  I guess here, my identity is evolving in elections to the blogging guy.  It carries over into other industries, too--our Photo ID campaign was developed by the "Pork, the Other White Meat" guy.

So, for Dana to build this identity is impressive.  Equally impressive is what she advocated in Doug's post--personas.

The first election website to use personas?  Why, that would be the Johnson County Election Office in its website redux in 2006.

Instead of organizing our website by topics that only our website administrator would know, we customized content by visitor, with tabs, such as "For Voters," "For Candidates," and "For Election Workers."


I'm a big believer in using personas.  In fact, the "Persona Guys," Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg have a great book about it, "Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?"

In 2005, I got a call from a college student looking to intern.  The summer of 2005 was not an election-intensive period, so I put her on the case of creating our web personas.  Not what she expected from elections, she quit after a couple of weeks, but she actually did a pretty good job at defining what was then a pretty airy concept.

We used this concept most recently for training, creating personas of the types of persons who may come in related to Photo ID.  I've attached what we submitted as an entry for the Election Center's Best Practices program as background into how the personas can be used:

Training with personas

View more documents from briandnewby

We are about to undertake a process for defining our next generation voting system.  As we do that, we will create personas for various voters, particularly those who are disabled, so that we can build a system that meets those needs.

Personas can go a lot farther than websites, a cause I'm sure Dana will be championing.  And, personas can go a lot farther in government than elections.  Elections are becoming an innovation engine in public administration, and the use of personas is a small example of why.

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.

Get Into Dodge

I've been in this job long enough that I've lost track of a couple of things about the annual May conference I'm attending right now.

First, it's a conference of all 105 county clerks and the four election commissioners in Kansas.  Election commissioners are appointed by the Secretary of State in the four largest counties and the elected county clerk pulls double-duty in the other 101 counties.

The conference includes annual training required by law in association with the Help America Vote Act.  The "lost track" part comes from where it is required, in federal or state law.  I've lost interest in looking up that (I think it's state law) because the training is non-optional.

It's good, also.  The Secretary of State's office has a small elections staff and each member is incredibly bright, competent, and even-keel.  They are great role models.

The training provides a good time to understand legal and process changes and I always have a running list of topics I'd like to catch one one or more of them on and here they provide me a fish-in-a-barrel opportunity.

I've also lost track of where we were in a particular year.  The conference rotates and has been in Salina, Great Bend, Topeka, Manhattan, and Hutcheson (I was reminded of that yesterday).

I remember 2010 being in Topeka just because that year our office planned to rent a car for four of us to go and when I arrived at Enterprise, our Chevy Blazer, instead, was a Hummer.

Earlier that year, the Republican Secretary of State who had appointed me to my first term in 2005, Ron Thornburgh, unexpectadly resigned to take a great job at NIC and the Governor had just appointed Democrat Chris Biggs to fill the term.   I strive to be apolitcal in my job and I didn't want his first impression of me honking and waving as I entered the parking lot driving a Hummer with gas at $4 a gallon.

So, we squeezed into my Kia. 

Loaded up, and the reason
(below)

This year, the meeting is in Dodge City, about a 6-hour drive from Johnson County.  It probably seems incongruous to my Hummer story (and it's not because the current Secretary of State is a Republican) but this time we took a chartered bus.

I knew I wouldn't be able to drive following ankle surgery and I wasn't too keen on asking any of my staff to drive.  Right or wrong, I think it's incredulous to ask subordinates to haul around their boss and carry his things.  I'd have no problem driving them, but I think it's an unfair exercise of power to expect them to drive me.  I also, as an example, don't get my shoes shined at airport stands.

Plus, any car would be impossibly cramped with four of us going and there really wouldn't be any room for my gimp toys--scooter, crutches, and such. 

We knew we'd have to rent a vehicle (a van at least) and we rented a shuttle bus with a driver, the smallest bus available, and offered to pick up others on the way. 

We stopped at Shawnee County and picked up my peer there (election commissioner and current IACREOT president Libby Ensley).

The bus that came was much bigger than what we ordered and paid for.  Our driver, as it turns out, has been an election worker in Johnson County.  He has been terrific.  We're all refreshed, ready to learn.  We saw everyone last night at a reception hosted by Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

  

I'll take some photos and post them later.  For now, I've posted photos from our first day.

The bus driven by Garry, below, a former Johnson
County election worker.  He's been terrific.

Photos of Shawnee County's election office.
It's very small and, just like our office, is, um,
kind of doggy for such an important
government function.

Think Like the Jetsons, Live Like the Flintstones

We've wrapped up our flurry of five elections in 10 weeks and soon hope to have a moment to soak in things we've learned for adjustments heading into the August primary. trolling

We're still not done with this one, though.  We have one city council race separated by 9 votes with 13 provisional ballots to recommend being counted on Monday.

It would be very unlikely that the 13 flip the outcome (that would have to number 13-0, 12-1, or 11-2; anything else would result in a delta of 8 or fewer).  But the race could tighten to the point that a recount is requested.  If there was a tie, the winner is decided by coin toss, and that has happened several times in my seven years here.

In Kansas, there is no automatic recount provision.  In November state races, a recount, if requested, would be free to the losing candidate if the difference is .5 percent or smaller.

In this case, a recount could be requested and the person requesting puts up the cost of the recount, which is refunded if the actual outcome changes and the once losing candidate becomes the winner (or there is a tie, to be decided by coin toss).

Since Tuesday, I believe I have talked with every stakeholder in this race.  My approach in elections that are close heading into the canvass is that I tell each candidate everything, of course, including any discussions I've had with the other candidate.

Having been a candidate for office before, I have a sense for how hard they've worked and what it's like to have your life in front of the public for all to see and comment.  Many people talk about running for office but few do, and those who do are very brave.  Most have entered politics for all the right reasons and I admire them.

But, all that activity has kept me from at least giving an update here, making this post primarily a, "No, I haven't stopped blogging," piece.

On the key learning front, I've learned that we have to change the structure of our training.  There is just too much to cover now in three hours.  Adding to the length of training creates a couple of issues, primarily financial (we'd have to pay more and we don't have that budgeted) and administrative--I'm not sure I have another 10 hours to give in July and again in October by increasing each class by an hour.

Instead, we need to change the structure.  I've got some ideas, but primarily we need more visuals and less talking in the lecture portion to compress the time and maintain knowledge retention on the part of our new workers.  More on that soon.

The pace of the last week has kept me from taking photos of the logistics of our operation around the election, and I wanted to give you a flavor of some of that before we head into August.  I've taken photos and pasted them below, but they really reflect the slower volume of this election, which covered just one-fourth of our 365,000 voters.

In August, I'll paste similar photos that give you more of a sense of the magnitude.   For now, I've inserted just a few random thoughts and notes, including an explanation of the blog headline.

Suitcases of supplies are sent out with voting machines
before election day.  Here, the suitcases are staged,
awaiting pickup.

Johnson County is fortunate in that most polling place
locations are already fully compliant with the
Americans with Disabilities Act.  Only a few places
in the older parts of the county require a ramp or something
to prop a door open for a wheelchair.  Previously, we've
relied on the county's mowing crew to deliver these
separately, but they were spread too thin to commit
to us this election, so we sent the ramps out with the
supplies, using a moving company.  We've used
the same moving company (below) for the entire
7 years I've been here.  They've been selected by
competitive bid three times and do a good job for us.

Different high-school organizations work
election nights as fund-raisers.  This time, the Olathe
North National Honor Society sent workers to
check in voting results and supplies.  We bring back
all results to our office (we don't modem or network).
This approach is the culprit if you are awaiting results
and are frustrated that they aren't up yet.  Physical
delivery (Sneakernet) ensures that our results cannot
be electronically intercepted.  Our tabulator is not connected
to an Internet or Intranet and the results we put on our website
are burned to a compact disc (instead of using a flash drive)
for 100-percent assurance that nothing from the outside
world could be uploaded to the tabulator.  "Think Like the
Jetsons, Live Like the Flintstones," is our motto
when it comes to election integrity and security.
I try very hard to stay atop IT and security trends
and issues, but we believe one way to
protect the integrity of our elections
is to keep the process as reasonably
low-tech as possible.  Biblical monks, for instance,
 were never hacked (although they were poisoned,
but that's one thing we really don't worry about).
 We don't go total Flintstone, but we do have the
proverbial walled garden when
it comes to our IT.

Results come back first, then other supplies.