War on Polling Places

It may not be as dramatic sounding as the media's phrase, "War on Christmas," or many of the other wars on societal issues, but as we prepare for more elections, we're reminded of the constant war on polling places.

Selecting polling places is a no-win endeavor.

For instance, in April 2005, the election featured a question on same-sex marriage.  I received several complaints from voters that some of our polling places were churches, potentially influencing the outcome of this vote.

Then, in September 2005, we had a special election for a sales tax that was directed to schools.  I received a similar number of complaints from voters that some of our polling places were schools, potentially influencing the outcome of this vote.

We used the same polling places for both elections.

Most of our polling places are donated space.  That's important because one thing I hear often from our county manager is how expensive elections are.

They are expensive.  But that expense is relevant if you are comparing the cost to zero.  Merely having an election is expensive because it's an event for, in our case, 360,000 people.

Consider that voting machines are a sunk cost, polling places are nearly free, election workers make minimum wage (if that) and that our most expensive part of the election is the bundle that comes as an advance ballot by mail (ballot printing, envelope printing, and postage).

Of the 284 Polling Places used
in the 2008 Presidential election,
we spent $5,000 in rent because
the majority of them were free.

Of course, fewer polling places with more election workers squeezes efficiencies.  Instead of having 500 polling places with 3 workers, we could have 300 with 5 workers--same number of workers, but less expense in transporting voting supplies, fewer overall supplies, and fewer machines needed.

We do that already.  Ideally, we'd match polling places to precincts and we have about 550 precincts.

Instead, we utilized 284 in 2008, down from 286 in 2004.  Incidentally, that's not two we lost--we lost 100 and found 98 new sites, for a net reduction of 2.

This year, we'll probably be at around 275.  We'd like to secure the same location for voters for a string of elections so they aren't moved frequently (another complaint).

Johnson County is fortunate that we have many newer churches and facilities that can be used as polling places, that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and have adequate parking.

Parking is vital.  Putting 2,000 voters into a polling place with 40 parking spaces causes problems (another complaint).

So, what if we went nutzoid, didn't "pin" a person to a particular polling place and had, essentially, the advance voting model on election day?  In other parts of the country, this has been tried and is often termed "vote centers."

We have a pretty good feel for the number of persons who would vote in a presidential election and how many would vote in advance, so, roughly, we would need to take care of about 200,000 voters on election day.

If we had 60 locations, that would average about 3,300 persons voting at each site.  That's more than we've had at any of our advance voting locations on any day, but it gives us a feel for the size of the facilities we would need.  Our advance voting locations have handled 2,500 voters before with about a 45-minute wait.

So, that's leap one, that 60 would be okay and that 45-minutes, on average, would be an acceptable wait to vote.

About those 60--they'll have to be networked together so we make sure someone doesn't vote at one place and bop on to another.    First, though, where exactly are these 60 places?

We might be able to secure some very large churches and community centers, but we'd probably have to rent facilities:  likely, hotels.  So, when we look at the network costs, although there may be some wireless options at times that are cheaper, we'll often have to go through the facility itself.

We have one person negotiate space with our polling places and our advance voting locations.  The polling places are relatively easy but when we get to the advance sites--with rent, contracts, insurance, etc.--it becomes extremely time consuming.  We have no resource, or support, to identify and negotiate with 100 potential locations to get us to 60 that work.

Assuming we could get through that knothole, though, this idea looks pretty good.  We'd still have about the same number of election workers, but we would gain efficiencies in machine use.

Our rent costs, though, would increase from about $5,000 for an election to a couple hundred thousand dollars.  Again, elections are expensive when compared to a cost of zero, but compared to real-world costs, elections are a bargain.  We'd hit the real world if we sign leases with hotels and other for-profit locations.

Results would take longer because it would take about an hour to close all of the machines (they'd have every race in the county loaded instead of just those at one polling place).  Of course, the line at 7 p.m. would be longer, too, so the machines may not be shut down until about 7:45 p.m.,  with cards leaving the facility at about 8:45, arriving at our location for uploading perhaps by 9, with uploading done by midnight.

We get skewered when our results for a presidential election aren't up by 10:30 now, even though we're traditionally the first in the area and the first large county in the state with final results.

Hmmm...this reminds me of a voting task force meeting I was in a couple of years ago when a professor from Washburn provoked, "If you thought about it, starting from scratch, would it make sense to design a voting system where you had hundreds of polling places where people could only vote where they were assigned?"

"Of course not!," I thought.  We were all nodding our heads in agreement with the wisdom this question brought.

But, as I sat and thought more about that question, and in pondering some of the details I just typed, I think my answer would be yes.  I almost think that successfully moving from that model would require something even more dramatic than vote centers and that would be a single voting location for the county on election day.

Of course, there are some who might say that a single location would be possible if that location was a website and we had Internet voting, but that's a whole 'nother discussion and blog post.

A single location is equal part crazy talk and genius, but it probably leans eventually to the crazy talk side.

For now, having opened up a topic without a clear solution, we're off to assigning voters for this fall to polling places.

The Postal Death Spiral (Continued)

It's no secret that I'm unhappy with the service our office gets from the post office.

It's heightened anytime we have a mail-ballot election. 

During one-such election last year, as ballots were coming back sawed in half, the postmaster in Olathe agreed to meet with me.

I'd tried for years to get some sort of communication going.  Finally, I had it.

Sadly, he's no longer there.

For a while, we had a local Kansas City contact "here for you," following a dustup made on our behalf by Tammy Patrick, who is on the Election Center Postal Task Force (and, congratulations to her--also on the new Presidential Voting Commission named this week).

But, he's gone dark as well.

This past Tuesday, we took our 80,000+ ballots to the post office during their "business business hours," noon to 4 (!), and left feeling lucky that the ballots would be mailed because we made the tremendous blunder of not numbering our trays.

Today, expecting returned ballots in the mail, we got none.  Not one.

How odd.  Many people turn them around the day they get them and they come back postage-paid.  Mailed Tuesday, people started calling us Wednesday with questions so we know they were delivered, but not back in the Friday mail.

We got a call in the early afternoon that about 3,000 were at the post office. 

Oh.

Joe Biden frequently gets mail at our office, but on
Friday, no ballots came.

So they were there, just not counted--now to be delivered a day later (in this case, with a holiday weekend, four days later) than they should have been.

Mail-ballots have to be returned by noon on election day.  In this case, election day is June 10.  If today were June 10, that means 3,000 voters' ballots would not have counted.

Count me as outraged.

On election day we call the post office to see if any ballots are there and we pick them up.  Who knows what they would have said today?  We would have called at the same time our delivery came.

We have some insight into what the answer would have been:

On our infamous blizzard election snow day in February, we called on election day, realizing mail would not be delivered, to see if there were ballots to go get.  We were told they didn't have any ballots.  I didn't believe them.

So, I contacted our "there for you," guy (no longer, it appears there for us) and about a half hour later, we got a call from the post office that they, indeed, had ballots.  Again, had we not escalated, and gotten lucky it appears, voters would had their ballots not counted.

It's another example of the War on Voting that we're facing.  The post office considers cancelling Saturday delivery, raises postage, and reduces service levels.  We'd like to encourage people to vote by mail but it's hard to do that with a straight face.

Compound that with schools as polling place issues and limited options for advance voting sites, and the environment is making it hard for voters.

Again, I'm not necessarily an advocate FOR Internet voting, but the mail and other external factors are doing a pretty good job of clearing the fog around the Internet voting possibility.  At some point, it likely will be an option that will look better and better just because traditional methods look worse and worse.

It's hard to fathom that the postal service doesn't see this.  The story line about the need to eliminate Saturday delivery is that fewer items are mailed because of the Internet.  Their own service levels likely are pushing a huge customer (voters are the customer, we are the conduit) to the Internet.

It's Just Like Deja Vu! It's Just Like Deja Vu!

Below is a submission from my predecessor, Connie Schmidt.

As I've typed, much of what I have experienced over the last 9 1/2 years felt like a redux of Connie's experiences.  She says as much below.

In fact, in reading her accounts, I never realized how good I have it today!

When I went to my first election industry meeting after becoming Election Commissioner, in 2005, I noticed the significant number of retirements taking place nationwide.  The fallout of the 2000 presidential election, new legislation, and a growing group of election activists who climbed over the backs and good names of some election integrity advocates forced many changes that for many industry veterans simply wasn't worth the stress.


Here is the Johnson County view from then, in Connie's words:

RETURN TO “Groundhog Day” BUDGET PROCESS

I read Brian Newby’s blog on a regular basis, and grin from time to time because he is actually putting down in writing some of the inside stories that have never been told (because I was afraid to tell them). 

Lately his blog posts have focused on the particular issue of budget needs for his office (and I might add for election offices nationwide).  That said, it is a known problem, one that has plagued the Johnson County election office for many, many years. 

I asked Brian if I could join the conversation on his blog, to share some war stories that have never been told, and to reinforce that some things never change – the budget process for the election office!  Brian and those staff members that remain from my tenure know that during my 9+ years as Election Commissioner, there are so many war stories that were never told….many led to my early retirement from a job that I loved and a team of staff that were, and still are, the best in the nation.

One budget war story began in spring 1998, during the preparation of the 1999 budget.  I want to step back for a moment to provide a brief history of where we were at in 1998.  In September 1995, I inherited what we referred to as the” Model A” first generation DRE machines (that is truly what they was called).  We were the first county nationwide to use them.  We had 700 Model A machines, and 160 of the newer model, which were added after the 1992 election because our County had very, very long lines in polling places. 

The actual voting machine, along with the tabulation software (from what I was told) was basically designed in our office.  There were no federal voting certification processes in place during the mid 1980’s.  So the system was what it was.  We had no choice but to use it and make it work – no matter how outdated and utterly ridiculous it was to prepare for each election. 

For example, we had to data enter by hand all election information into an old DOS system, type the same data separately in Word Perfect to print long ballot strips that were hung with tape between the buttons on the face of equipment (Hats off to former Asst. Election Commissioner Karen Browning who was the house expert at this job and she did it perfectly every time).  Imagine the wrong strips with candidates and/or issues being placed on machines on Election Day.   

This was not a system that was connected in any way.  Obviously, this required lots of duplicate proofing.  Then along came the need to develop a paper ballot system that would integrate with the DRE tabulation software.  I am told this happened in 1994.  

To tabulate the paper ballots, a new software was developed and something referred to as a “bridge” brought the paper ballots votes into the DOS tabulation software where all votes were tabulated – paper and DRE.   I might add that the actual paper ballots were developed using a different system, making a total of three separate systems created with the same information that must tabulate into one place on election night.  We held our breath every election night – no one knew anything about this process except the staff of the election office.

Back to the budget process in 1998.  We worked very hard to convince the BOCC of the need to replace this voting system, which was archaic, inefficient and over 12 years old.  With much delight we made it through that process, and money was allocated in the Capital Improvement Fund to purchase new equipment in 1999, in time to implement prior to the Presidential 2000.  Thank goodness! 

However, shortly before the final budget was adopted, our funding for new equipment was pulled!  Now, we knew that we would have to conduct the 2000 Presidential election using this same archaic equipment.  In Kansas, no excuse early voting was implemented for the first time in the 1996 Presidential election, followed by a new state law that approved the use of satellite early voting locations for the 2000 Presidential.  In our county that required the use of over 1,000 unique paper ballots distributed to 3 early voting locations – voters could choose any of these locations to vote – we never knew how many of which ballots to distribute to each location.  Just remembering this caused me to take a deep breath.

The 2000 Presidential was a near disaster in Johnson County!  Funny, we had no idea what was happening in Florida…..we were handling our own “mess”.  Again, no one knew about this horror story, except those internal staff who experienced extreme stress. 

In fact, even writing this down makes me nervous and it’s been over 13 years.  First of all, we issued the largest number of paper early voting ballots to date in Johnson County.  We were using outdated school-type test scoring scanners that were set up to store paper ballot votes on cassette tapes. 

I can’t remember the exact number of tapes that we ended up with, but I do remember that it took us over 8 hours to load these cassette tapes individually into the old DOS tabulation software during the afternoon of Election Day, November 2000.  Beginning in 1996, we started the policy of releasing the early votes as soon as possible after the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. 

Obviously, the media and the candidates expected that to happen in November 2000.  Internally, the DOS software first had to sort all of the paper ballots by precinct before it could tabulate the vote totals per candidate.  When we did the command to sort the ballot images by precinct for tabulation, the DOS based computer software crashed back to the DOS prompt.  Nothing happened – the tabulation software crashed! 

We got the vendor on the phone, but there was no solution provided.  After a huge panic attack, we released this statement to the public…..funny that I can still remember the exact words today.  “Due to the large number of paper ballots cast it is taking us longer than normal to tabulate them so we will be releasing the voting machine votes first, followed by the early voting totals, accumulated into the final unofficial results.”  No one asked why – the explanation was the truth, which was my mantra, but it truly was not the entire story.  That statement bought us some time to try to get this old software to work.

Finally with no other choice available, using a totally different software outside of the tabulation computer software, we were able to finally sort the paper ballot images in precinct order.  Those votes were then returned to the tabulation DOS software and all votes – DRE equipment and paper ballots were reported to the public.  No one ever knew about this almost catastrophic situation except the staff and me, who suffered from the unbelievable stress of that moment in time.

Fortunately, our funding for new equipment was once again approved and remained in the 2001 budget.  That funding, however, was only for the equipment – only for the exact number that we already had - 860 (the same number of machines since 1994, by the way).  No funding for tabulation computers, training, disposal of the old machines, reconfiguration of the warehouse, or any PR efforts to educate the voters on how to use the new equipment.  

The staff worked miracles on several of these issues and we managed to request an old Med-Act van that was on the County’s disposal list, items that are first offered to county departments prior to auction.  We got the van for about $1.00 and we had it painted in a VOTE design with our web address on each side.   That was part of our PR solution.  ((((Editor's note--we STILL use that van, which does not run, as our JO-CO-PO-LO Billboard outside of our office.))))

Another moment frozen in my memory was a discussion with the then County Manager to request more funding for the Election Office.  The staff and I were working 7 days a week for months on end, sometimes 10-12 hour days.  We were managing 3 early voting locations, using paper ballots – totaling over 1,000 unique ballot styles in an August election; plus recruiting and training poll workers and preparing to open polling places on Election Day (all with the same number of full time staff and voting machines that were in place prior to early voting).  

That discussion with the County Manager ended with him telling me, “Connie, you do such a good job, it won’t be possible to convince the BOCC that you need additional funding.”  I got up and left realizing that to get our needed funding would require failing at our job of conducting elections – that was NOT an option, so we continued down our path of working non-stop….me and the dream team of election staff.

I think my final straw relating to budget stories was in late 2004 – we were denied our request for additional funding to conduct the 2004 Presidential election.  Once again, we received the largest number of early voting paper ballots (and this time it was a 2 page ballot) – it was non-stop early voters to the extreme that it was impossible for staff to leave our building due to traffic congestion. 

One day in the middle of October and in the midst of that onslaught of early voters, I received a phone call asking me to prepare a report and come to the Board of County Commissioners meeting to explain why our office had depleted it’s funding already.  I do believe that moment was the defining moment for me. 

My perfect number of years of service and age for early retirement occurred in early December 2004.  I took it – I realize now that I was exhausted, burned out, and tired of the stress of making everything perfect with few resources – and with the same number of full time staff and voting machines that were there when I started.  

That is the ending of a collection of budget horror stories - there were many others!  I have noticed nationally that when there is a huge election failure, it is a huge media event, the person in charge loses their job, and the election office finally receives the necessary funding to correct the problems and make the improvements that had been needed and requested for a very long time. 

This indeed is a very bad way to manage any business.  Johnson County voters deserve better!

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.

This is Me, at 50

Amidst an election in a blizzard and a foot and half of snow last week came confirmation that we have another election, a June 11 mail-ballot election for the Olathe School District.

It's the 50th election I will have administered since coming in January 2005.  50 elections, yet only 26 were scheduled.

In fact, we've had an active election in the works my entire time here.  While three of my seven election commissioner predecessors have had longer tenures, I've administered more elections than any of them.

That's not really a point of pride because some of our staff members have been here under a couple regimes and have administered more than 100 elections.  They are the heroes.

It harkens, though, to the final habit in Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:  Sharpening the Saw.

In the book, he illustrates the person needing to cut a tree with an old saw.  When told the work may go better if the saw was sharper, the person explains that he doesn't have time to sharpen the saw.  He is too busy sawing.

Covey's point is that we must take time to sharpen the saw, actively setting aside time for renewal, preserving, enhancing, and such.  In the business world, our organizations and plans need that same reflection.

In our case, we have much sharpening to do.  There's the war on polling places, Saturday postal delivery issues (by the way, should I be comforted or terrified that the post office isn't concerned about the impact of losing Saturday delivery on elections?), aging equipment that will cost millions to replace, new technology, new potential of technology, more voters, more precincts, more unplanned elections, and more of everything, in fact, except for staff members.

We have the same number of staff we had more than 20 years ago.

We need time away from operations to strategically plan, to make sense of all of this, and set a long-term course for Johnson County's voters.  In our case, the tree we're cutting was starting to fall and we're holding it up with our left hand while sawing with our right hand.

Our county has embarked upon characteristics of a High Performance Organization, which essentially empowers employees to be leaders at all levels.  It was a popular government initiative in the late 1990s but it's being resurrected (a la sharpening the saw in art-imitating-life fashion) after several senior county leaders embarked on a similar program about 10 years ago.

Our staff is miles ahead in this regard though, as evidenced by the leadership our staff members took during our snowstorm election.  They will be pushed, however, in the second half of 2013 to take on more as we aggressively evaluate all of these drivers of our business.

That is, assuming we have a few months without an election.  That's a huge assumption.

In Covey's example, he's a bit like the YouTube video-recording bystander watching a disaster.  If he were waxing about sharpening the saw while I was cutting, I think I'd have asked him if he could stop yapping and go get me another saw.

Similarly, we're likely reaching a point where merely fine-tuning won't work.  We need a moment just to get a better saw.  At some point, and soon, we're going to need to grow our staff, not by one but by a few.  The 2012 presidential election showed us that.

Selfishly, we're hoping election 51 doesn't come until it's expected, in 2014, leaving us time to sharpen. It's probably overly dramatic to say the tree will fall otherwise, but I hope not to find out.