Leaving My iHeart in San Francisco

It's been a good day at the Election Center conference in San Francisco, and it's not because of this view from the hotel room.

That's nice, though, and the weather outside is 30 degrees cooler than in Kansas City, so preparing for the Head for the Cure 5k this weekend has been a little easier here than there.

It's also not been a good day just because the Johnson County Election Office received a Best Practices Award.

That was nice, too, though. The award is the Minute Man Award, given for something that can be executed swiftly and cheaply that is repeatable or provides sustained savings.

In our case, this relates to an initiative supporting the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. We provide the League (and other third-party registering groups now) with a secure iPad that they check out and return with proof of citizenship documentation for those they register.

This has been a big deal at naturalization ceremonies and is about as big of a "feel good" story as there can be. More than 600 new citizens have been registered using this iRegister application.

Anything that begins with a lower case "i" is so clever these days, and we have an election worker who came up with "iRegister."

I suggested she trademark it quickly. I think she thought I was kidding, so at least there is a date stamp here with the blog and the award that shows when she first used it. So, intellectual property trolls beware, or she might iSue you.

Our office has been awarded four Best Practice awards by the Election Center in my tenure, equaled only, I believe, by the Los Angeles County Election Office. This one, related to registration, is most special to me because it's truly aligned with an election administration function. Our other awards were for outreach of one type or another--text messaging, a Jo-Co-Po-Lo campaign to direct voters to the proper voting location, and, in life-imitating-art fashion, this very blog.

Even coming from a long Sprint career, I couldn't have anticipated back then how much phones and mobile devices would play a role in my job at the Election Office.

Today, though, I remembered something an advisor told me when we met as I pondered closing that 20-year chapter of my life and exploring something new.

"You'll find, Brian," he said, "that things you've done and learned at Sprint will serve you well."

"He" was Matt Anthony, CEO at the time of VML and now the head of its parent advertising conglomerate. Matt and I knew each other from Sprint, where he worked before going VML, which became our agency of record for the wholesale division. We actually first met before that, when he worked for the Kansas City Comets and I was a pup reporter covering the soccer team for UPI.

Matt also now leads the annual Head for the Cure 5k event (this weekend in Kansas City but not there are several in other communities). He started this event after losing his brother to brain cancer.

The race is now personal for me as well because my daughter had a brain tumor removed and was temporarily unable to move her legs just 6 months before running in the Head for the Cure three years ago. Plus, one of our "A" list election office temporaries also had a brain tumor and has a large team of runners at the event. This will be the fifth race for me (counting one in Lawrence) since my daughter's surgery.

As I ran outside at lunch time along the scenery you've now, um, seen, I was thinking of Saturday's race and drifted off towhat Matt said years ago. I then realized I had one of those "serve you well" moments this morning.

The actual series of events will be in another post, soon (and maybe two or three because of the complexities, all coming within a week), but at a high-level I talked today with a ballot scanning and tabulation company we will be evaluating for several school mail-ballot elections we will have in January.

It was sort of a speed-dating type of meeting. We're going to lay out specs for a scanner and procure one within a month. The company we choose should have some familiarity advantage with us, I would think, as we evaluate next-generation voting systems.

That's the big story in the voting system equipment world--the pending need for new equipment, and the question many of us face is, "what will that system be?"

As I talked today (maybe I should have listened more, but I did listen to myself), I realized that jurisdictions may not replace a system with another system.

What if we had more than one system?

Remember, my time with Matt was when I was over marketing for Sprint Wholesale, a division that sold to other brands. I'm a brand expert, actually, more so than an election expert even.

What if we had, essentially, different brands for different elections? Brands can be vendors or sizes of systems in this case, or just call them models. What if we had small, big, and bigger systems to choose from, based on the election?

We wouldn't have one vendor for everything. I asked if that's ever been done--a jurisdiction having more than election system, for different uses based on the election.

The vendor I was with at that moment suggested that's how things were evolving because of the types of hardware that was being used, less proprietary, more over the counter. I know of all that, of course, but I never saw until today how integrated the election administration industry is about to become.

Mind blown.

THAT'S what made it a good day. There's a new paradigm coming in election administration.

iSaw it and iRegistered it.

The Election of Things

As is the case every January, the beginning of the year hits fast.

The Election Center's legislative kick-off in Washington, D.C., pulls in legislative staffers as the session begins so election administrators can focus on bills and other activity impacting elections.  I just came back from that meeting and it was nice, for a change, not to be begging legislators to slow their roll.

The meetings historically have provided economic returns.

In fact, this conference and the related relationships built with other attendees literally saved our county $2 million in 2008.  

Back then, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs) were all the rage.  Legislation requiring them was a near certainty.

VVPATs are paper printouts of voters' selections.  The printout stays on a roll with the machine but theoretically is available for post-election audits.  That's if the printer doesn't jam or have any other mechanical issues, and the first generation of these VVPAT devices had issues a'plenty.

Our voting machines were built before VVPATs were invented, and legislation requiring VVPATs, introduced by U.S. Representative Rush Holt, had great steam in Congress back then. To retrofit our machines with this technology, our county would have experienced a cost of about $1,000 per machine.

We had no philosophical issue with VVPATs, other than the mechanical bugs, but this was the proverbial unfunded mandate.  We can't even get $100,000 to replace a 20-year-old election management system, so a mandatory $2-million expense would have put our elections office forever in the budget pokey.

A key player then at NACO and now lighting it up as an election administrator in Maryland, Alysoun McLaughlin, was a big ally then.  She bridged discussions, organized meetings, and worked with me to engage our local Kansas congressional representative, Dennis Moore, at the time.

Frankly, I'm not sure he fully saw the economic hurt that was about to be placed upon us, but one of his staffers, Glen Sears, took this on as a mission.  Glen was the real financial (and unsung) hero to our voters.

In fact, in my Sprint days, we used to say that our lobbyists did more for our profitability than anyone in the company.  And, no one knew! (Well, except those of us that used to say that, of course, which was pretty much me and the occasional person who came into my office).

Similarly, this was one of the greatest budget saving-feats of my election commissioner tenure, well known among my peeps in the industry but not so much outside of that circle.

Such victories won't come out of this year's conference, or even be needed, but it was still good to connect with colleagues on potential issues.  

This year was one of only two I can remember since 2005 where there wasn't a legislative fire.  There are some things brewing, particularly around a bill that more formalizes Department of Justice procedures with military voting.  

Further, we're all lining up to get the report prepared by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, expected before the end of the month.  There's some belief that it may trigger legislative activity, federally and in states, that might raise in urgency by this time next year.

With no Washington crisis,  my mind wandered during my plane trips to where it often goes during the same week each year--Las Vegas.

I'm not much of a Vegas guy, but at Sprint, the first week of January marked the Consumer Electronics Show.  That was the thing for us in those days.  Now, my thing in early January is this legislative conference.

I wondered, though, if more things this year were happening at the show in Las Vegas that will impact elections than activity in Washington.  

(That sentence, by the way, felt very odd to type, more so than it may have been to read.  Elections, by its nature, is a legislative arena.)

I'm convinced that smartphones and tablets will have a role in voting, maybe even as conduits to online voting.  Wearable devices--today's version of what Twitter was a few years ago (laughed at then, now vital at times)--might have a place, too.  

And what of 3D printing?  Could some election supplies actually be manufactured by us?

The Internet of Things--smart devices, connected automobiles, remote control of security, and connected televisions--may seem like it has little to do with elections today, but it might very soon.  Heck, people someday may vote through their television, connected in some secure way to a server (I know that's stinkin' thinkin', but possible).

Beyond the cool factor of these and other products announced last week, my interest is in the risk they might provide to election officials.  In order to look out for the voter, we must take a jaundiced eye at new technologies, reversing the conventional saying to, "You see an opportunity, I see a problem."

For instance, I've spent considerable energy socializing the idea of "Bring Your Own Voting Machine," where users could vote on their own smartphones and other devices at the polls.  Going down such a path could be torpedoed by a new technology.

Such a new technology might be iBeacon, which Apple uses in its stores to track where visitors go, sending them an offer, as an example, when they walk up to the display of phone cases.  Creepy and cool, this technology could be malicious, perhaps, in a polling place.

In fact, I started thinking of all the unfounded objections we've addressed over the years with touch-screen voting machines:  that they are controlled by a manufacturer in Ohio, that they can flip votes, or that they can be hacked wirelessly (when there is no wireless connectivity included).

New technology will invite a new series of objections.  I can already expect that there would be concerns that others can identify how someone voted, if they voted with a smart device, because some rogue signal could capture what was on the phone.

Face it, as Americans, we're not exactly in an environment right now where we're certain of our privacy, so any concerns, even if unfounded, are rational.

Beyond the growth in new products and technologies, the number of companies to watch grows.

Google, Microsoft, and Apple don't even present at this show, anymore, and it's still a huge deal.  Yahoo and Samsung benefited by getting more mindshare, as did cellular companies.  

Voters, as consumers, intersect their relationships with these companies and devices with every other aspect of their lives.  As technology is adopted in their car, at home, or at work, their perception of technology when voting has to be impacted as well.  Our voting machines look like the old Fisher Price toy telephones compared to what voters use in other worlds.

Further, it's not like government is a technology laggard.  In Johnson County, residents can queue up their place in line to get new automobile tags online, getting a text message when it's time to bop down to the office.  Parking meters often don't take money anymore and some use Near Field Communications for payment by cellphone.  Police deliver parking tickets with handheld devices that print the ticket, much like Hertz uses when checking in a rental car.

You don't see that same innovation in election offices.  It's not for trying; it's a budget priority thing.  Election modernization is way behind other parts of government.

This isn't news.  The 2000 presidential election was made famous by punch card ballots.  Was there even another industry or part of government that used punch cards for anything then?  The last time I used a punch card was to pick my selections for the 1972 Major League Baseball All-Star game.

And, with all the talk of next generation voting systems, not one community has made a decision on what that next system will be.  Not one.  

Complexity and uncertainty are two big reasons why, but available funding is another.

There are many communities marching down a process (we're one) with a defined philosophical view of what that next system might be, but I'm struggling more and more to fight off the notion to use our Tinker Toy voting machines until the bitter end.  There are many of them still available to purchase, and they work.

One thing we've learned over the years with our current system is that there's no glory in being the first.  Often, as the first to have touch-screen voting machines at polling places and the first to have new software versions, we ran into issues that were unknown, even to the vendor.  

In 2008, for instance, a new version of the tabulation software required that we manually go through and check the uploading of results, machine-by-machine, after tabulation to ensure that some votes weren't retained in a bucket called "challenged" ballots (the machines are capable of processing provisional ballots, something we do on paper instead).  

Every once in a while, when encoding the ballot card, an election worker accidentally grazes a finger by this new "challenged" box, putting the vote in a different place.  That cross-check process adds about 10 minutes now to our election night tabulation, but the first time we encountered that change, the time seemed like 100 minutes.  I received two calls during the cross-checks from our Board of County Commissioner chair at the time asking if it was soup yet.

Point is, my view when considering threats to voting is that I want to know if there is a vulnerability before some smart professor or group of graduate students find one.  This crazy Internet of Things prism, and all the promise and problems that come with it, likely will eventually lead to new first-mover discoveries.  And they won't all be good.

Some day, I expect that we will see a likely-to-pass bill tee'd up while at the Election Center legislative conference that addresses consumer technology, positively or negatively, upon elections.  It's inevitable, really.

Also inevitable, I think, is some sort of election technology meltdown in the 2020 presidential election.  By then, some communities will be using new technology for the first time in a presidential election.

Others will be trying to crank up the old Chevy for one more election.  The potential for unknown and known problems seems high.  

You may not find odds of this occurring at Vegas, but the products unveiled this year may be involved.

I'm a Real Boy

In our little election administration world, we have a certification process.

To be a Certified Election/Registration Administrator means something.

Primarily, it means I've taken 12 12-hour courses, mostly delivered by faculty members at Auburn University.

It means following the footsteps of my predecessor, who practically invented the certification and administers the program.

It means I'm one of the cool kids.  Well, maybe.  It might be a sign I'm uncool.

CERA binders awaiting their innards in Auburn.

Regardless, it means I can now have the initials CERA after my name in election circles.

Graduation from the program was this week, although I couldn't attend in person at the Election Center's conference in Boston.  Another member of our office, Jeanie Nichols, also graduated and we joined Debbie Tyrrel in our office, who graduated two years ago.

When I was offered the position of Election Commissioner on the last day of 2004, our office had three CERA graduates.

Our CERA grads retired over the next few years, so it's nice for the office to have graduates of the program again.  We're trying to build new tiers of leaders in our office, so our objective moves to getting more of our employees involved in the program at various levels so that we are constantly a couple years away from another person becoming certified.

Courses include the history of elections, ethics, technology, leadership, and several others.  I've built many friendships during the 7 years of the courses, with peers and faculty members.  Congratulations to all in the class of 2012!

I took my last required class at Auburn in May.

Return of the Blue Bear

Yesterday at noon was the spring candidate filing deadline and we're in a mad dash to prepare for the Feb. 28 primary.  

We hope to send a ballot order to our ballot printer in Washington state by Friday, getting ballots back by late next week.  That's the best-case scenario, but one we push for so we have time to sort the ballots before sending out those for advance voting 20 days before the election (the 8th would be the first day we can do that).

To develop a ballot order, we first need to determine the turnout, which usually is different precinct-by-precinct, polling place-by-polling place, year-by-year.  We have a mayoral primary in Shawnee, so we expect a higher turnout there than some of the individual council race primaries we have elsewhere.

While I make the call on turnout for planning purposes (and we want to guess high so we have plenty of paper ballots), we have an internal poll taken in our office to see who can, in true "The Price is Right" style, come closest to the actual turnout without going over.

The prize for the staff member who comes
closest to correctly forecasting turnout.

The winner gets the little Blue Bear traveling trophy.  The Blue Bear lives in the winner's office until the next election. 

Once, the Bear lived with me for a year and later with another staff member for two years.  I haven't been a Blue Bear winner in a few years, actually, and that's a good thing.

The point of this is just to get everyone engaged in the numbers of elections.  We want to build future leaders of our office who understand all aspects of our business.  Accurately understanding and predicting turnout runs akin to tracking costs.  We don't want to prepare for a 30 percent turnout if the turnout is 15 percent, or vice versa.

The Blue Bear was a registration giveaway I received at an Election Center conference in 2006.  In a couple weeks, we'll gather everyone's estimates.  For now, we've estimated 15 percent, which is high for a primary.  But that number is used for planning, and I like to plan for about a 5 percent higher turnout than I think we'll have.

One thing that's unique about the spring elections is candidate rotation, so that every candidate has, as much as possible, equal time at the top of the ballot.  I'll explain that more in the coming days.

Dateline Washington--Legislative Conference

Each January, election industry organization The Election Center (also known as the National Association of Election Officials) holds a legislative conference in Washington with election officials.  I’m at that event right now.

There aren’t too many national legislative election issues right now, but the biggest one involves the fate of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC).  The EAC was created when the Help America Vote Act passed in 2001 and is basically a defacto regulatory body for elections.  One of the roles of the EAC is to certify voting equipment, and the process has become so expensive and convoluted that very few communities actually use equipment that has been certified by the EAC, despite the fact that this organization has existed for 10 years and any new equipment deployed must be EAC-certified (well, sort of--future post on that one).

The EAC has four commissioners, two Republican and two Democractic, appointed by the President and confirmed by the United States Senate.  Only thing, right now, there are no commissioners and no executive director.  The United States House of Representatives has passed a bill to eliminate the EAC but it hasn’t been brought up in the Senate.

(By the way, when evaluating the potential for this blog, I wondered what I might write about during a “slow news day.”  Then, I thought of the EAC.  There is so much to type and talk about here, particularly the answer to the question, “Why don’t we vote on the Internet?”   In due time, dear reader.  In due time).

For now, this post is just to let you know of this event.  About 100 election officials from around the country are here, and we’ve heard from the U.S. Post Office, the EAC, the Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP) for military and overseas voters, national organizations such as the National Association of Secretaries of State and National Conference of State Legislatures (the NCSL), and congressional staffers.  Beyond the EAC, there’s so much here to sprinkle in over the next few weeks, including the movement to eliminate the Electoral College before the 2012 presidential election (I really don’t see that happening, but some here see it as possible, if not likely).

I had high hopes for the postal service discussion because last year, it was announced that the U.S. Postal Service was very close to rolling out a special election-mail classification that would be treated as first-class mail at less-than-first-class rates.  This is huge because after election workers, our biggest cost drivers in elections are anything tied to natural resources and fuel--postage, delivery of equipment to polling places, and the printing and delivery of paper ballots. 

What sounded promising a year ago was killed within the first 15 minutes of yesterday's meeting.  The chief marketing officer of the postal service then went on to explain that despite that and despite all of the concerns with the post office's financial troubles, mail will continue to be delivered and the post office is here to stay.  It sounded a lot like the many newspaper and magazine letters from the editor I've read over the last couple of years which said that despite cutbacks in production, the publication was thriving.  I've watched many of those publications cease and if our local paper gets any lighter on Mondays, the carrier will have to include some pebbles in the newspaper bag to keep it from blowing off my driveway.

The biggest near-term issue from the post office will be the delay in first-class delivery, from 1-2 days to 2-3 days.  By Kansas law, we have to send an advance ballot to anyone who requests a ballot by 5 p.m. on the Friday before a Tuesday election.  We get them out Friday, usually, or Saturday, worst case, so they are delivered by Monday.  Now, voters may not get the ballot in time and they certainly won't have time to mail the ballot back (those not delivered by 7 p.m. can't be counted).  This is going to be a huge issue later in the year nationwide.

The NCSL presentation was interesting because it showed the quick adoption of photo ID legislation throughout the country.  I’ve obtained the presentation to show some maps during election worker training (our first in 2012 is just in a couple of weeks and our first 2012 election at the polls is Valentine’s Day).  If I get permission, I’ll post it.