Spring Backward, Fall Forward

Election irony met elections of the future in Kansas yesterday.

The Kansas legislature, by one more vote than necessary, passed a measure to move spring elections to the fall of odd years.

I have been a very vocal advocate of this move, demonstrating how the highest April election turnout in the last five years was still lower than the lowest turnout of special elections conducted in any other month.

Also, we're more likely to have schools available as polling places.  This was a major factor in my support of this move.

But passing by one vote?

That's classic.

(Editor's Note--more irony since I'm my own editor--thanks to the League of Women Voters for pointing out it passed by one MORE vote than needed.  I want to represent that accurately and have inserted this little parenthetical addition).

Does your vote matter?  It did here.

Whether or not you agree now, or will agree or disagree later after implementation, the bill technically passed the House by one vote.  It would have been more ironic if one of the votes for was elected by one vote, but such a realization, if that were the case, would cause even me to skip a heartbeat.

I would imagine, though, that at least one representative started as being appointed by precinct committee members to fill a vacancy and then later was elected.

Precinct committee members frequently are elected by a handful of votes and, in Johnson County, we have averaged 2 coin toss decisions for precinct committee ties for the five August primary elections since I've been election commissioner.

We often hear that elections have consequences, and this blog isn't the place to talk about the politics of any consequence from legislation.



I'll wear this
spiffy outfit
to election
worker training
if 5 people
become new
election workers
based on this post.

But there is real consequential value to administrators.

The value to me, non-political, is the use of schools as polling places.  This legislation should make election administration in Johnson County easier and polling places more stable for voters.

Plus, perhaps even greater, the bill allows us to have more high-school student election workers.  We were limited to one per polling place and turned away hundreds in presidential years. 

Now, 1/3 of our workers at the polls can be high-school students.

(Note to you, dear reader, if you aren't an election worker--that means 30 percent of our workers aren't even old enough to vote and these youngsters, who can't vote, are making sure you do.  Any pangs of guilt, thinking about being an election worker--please?--contact our office).

But, this is a great example of the value of what one vote looks like, and what better example than in an election bill.

The practicality of executing the bill will be discussed here if and after the governor signs the bill into law.  

The bill is more than 80 pages, so there are plenty of details to scour, and even the potential for unintended consequences, so I'll be reading it more thoroughly and reporting back.

No Lines Here!

This week, I received some LinkedIn notices of congratulations for my anniversary as an MBA faculty member at Baker University.

(Note to self--I've been doing that for eight years now; time to purchase an orange Baker Wildcats sweatshirt).

It got me thinking of the selection process years ago, and that led to some linkage with election events this week.

One of the components of the selection process was to deliver a short 10-minute presentation on any topic so that the evaluators could get a gauge of my presentation approach, style, and interaction with participants.

I'd been at the election office for about a year when I did this and rather than trove through my Sprint presentation collection, I decided to create a presentation on voter participation.

I'm not sure I had a grounded position on voter turnout and participation before I came to the election office.  It's a much more complex topic than it might seem on the surface.  The short presentation was just a summary of points others raise when discussing turnout.

Often, for instance, in spring elections particularly, turnout is very low.  Usually, turnout is less than 15 percent and, more likely, less than 10 percent.

Such turnout rates evoke criticism of our voters, and I'm not down with that.  I'm a believer that compelling races, compelling issues, and compelling candidates attract voters.

I once heard my smart colleague Dean Logan of Los Angeles County say that the number one objective for an election administrator is to increase voter turnout.

I see the logic of that.  He may be right.  I definitely think that's correct if turnout can be increased universally.

I'm more of the view that for those who are inclined to vote, my job is to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.  Blanketed messages to all voters, I think, is the role of our office, but, personally, I get uneasy concerning targeted approaches to improve voter participation.

There are the cliches in turnout--young people don't vote, for instance--that I think are often unvalidated or maybe self-perpetuated.  Any election office resource targeting one type of voter might eliminate resources to assist others, potentially excluding voters in the name of inclusion.

More importantly, if I were to target get out the vote messaging to a specific age group, or area of the county, I could be inadvertently stirring the outcome of an election and I don't want any part of that, Dewey!  I'm not smart enough to know what motivates our voters.

I'd rather leave the targeting to those who have a vested interest in the outcome and just make sure that our home has as many "Welcome" mats as possible for guests who decide to check in.

(As an aside, as a teaser to my eventual post related to voters with disabilities and the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, I've often pondered if the fact that older citizens are more likely to vote AND also more likely to be election workers are related.

Human nature, I believe, leads people to associate with others like them.  We feel more comfortable when we see people who look like us--economically, socially, the way we dress, for instance--and tend to frequent places accordingly.

In our elections, we see very few voters with disabilities.  They probably often vote by mail.  Maybe, though, they feel uncomfortable coming in to vote.  Accommodating voters AND workers with disabilities are both important to me.

At the very least, in a turnout view, I am extremely interested in having our cadre of election workers be representative of the voters they serve.  Otherwise, I worry that we could be stifling turnout by not being inclusive, leaving some voters feeling uncomfortable about voting.)

Anyway, I bring all of this up because we have advance voting underway for a Prairie Village city council primary.  Yesterday, a rare 60-degree Saturday in February, our office was open for advance voting from 9 to 3.

We didn't have a single voter.

There are more than 2,000 eligible voters in this primary and we've mailed out about 200 ballots.

Is it bad that we had no voters yesterday?

I suppose it is in that the city paid for 3 workers to be at the ready all day.

But you would have to been purposeful about voting in this race yesterday.  Our office is required to be open for the week before the election for advance voting, but it is about a 30-minute drive from the area of the primary.  Perhaps someone with travel plans next week may have come out, but the overall story of turnout likely will be told Tuesday.

Saturday's turnout was just one data point.  I have mixed feelings about it says--or the fact that we've had fewer than 10 in-person voters since Tuesday--but I do feel all chest-puffy if someone criticizes voters for not participating.

The turnout discussions are more relevant right now as Kansas lawmakers consider moving spring elections to the fall.

I'm cool with that move because I believe people like predictability, and one reason turnout may be low in the spring is the overall awareness that we have elections in the spring.  City candidates often go door-to-door to campaign and, having been a city candidate doing that long ago, I know many persons are unaware of spring elections.

I'd like to see elections every November--city races moved to the fall of odd (not even) years so that every November, there is an election.  Other things naturally will find their way to the November ballots (constitutional amendments and city or school questions) and over time--maybe a long time--the turnout needle would move.

The legislature is considering bills that would do this.  My concern about moving city elections to even years is that it will be much more costly, while moving to odd years is cost-neutral.

Moving city elections to the fall of even years combines our highest turnout election with our most complicated election (city candidate rotation and city/school boundaries result in myriad of ballot styles).  Plus, we'd surely have a two-page ballot, doubling our printing costs, increasing our postage costs, and even creating some tabulation issues because many persons may not return both pages of the ballot.

Further, as nutty as this seems, our election office building is full.  We have no space to securely store the large volume of new ballots we'd have to print.  It sounds crazy to say we would need a new building, but we would.  (Or, the land just next to us goes up for auction next month--maybe we could buy it and build an annex).

Still, a bill that moves elections to the fall (odd or even years, but odd, please) creates a terrific and timely opportunity to include language that schools be available as polling places and that the schools be closed on election day to students.  This would address the safety issues parents have been raising since the Sandy Hook shootings in 2012 and make polling places predictable for our voters.

Predictability is a key lever to improve overall turnout.

The schools are closed in August, when the primary would occur, and if closed on the election day in November--budda-bing, budda-boom, voting life just got much more predictable for our voters.

This school in-service day, or election holiday, was a recommendation of the Presidential Commission and one I advocated to be part of the recommendations.

It's a different kind of Wildcat than the Baker mascot.

But, the combination of spring elections moving to the fall and the November in-service day could be a game-changer that would make a no-voter day even more rare than a 60-degree Saturday in February.

The Blue Bear Faces the Devil

In-person advance voting for Tuesday's primary began this morning and our fourth voter has just entered the building.

In the Blue Bear world, I'm predicting a turnout of about 8.5 percent and, of course, I hope I'm outrageously under-projecting the turnout.  A similar election in 2009, though, had turnout of less than 10 percent.

Such talk is one of the drivers of a myriad of bills introduced in the Kansas legislature to move spring elections to November.  One is being reviewed by the Kansas House tomorrow.

At this point, I'm not planning on presenting testimony on the bill but conceptually I'm fine with it.  If it continues to move, I hope to testify as the bill is worked.  If the devil is in the details, I'd like to have input into the details so we can, um, exercise the bill efficiently.

There are aspects related to the move that aren't in my wheelhouse--particularly, any move to make elections partisan.  As an administrator, I can only say that such a move won't necessarily add complexities to the elections.  The political side is a debate for others.

The move to November will increase ballot styles and the overall effort to conduct fall elections.  Of course, there is the offsetting elimination of spring elections.

"Or is there?" asked the Detail Devil.

You see, the only scenario I oppose in this move is one where we now would have November city elections AND April city elections.  If cities are allowed to "charter out" of the November provisions, this would be a mess.

Right now, cities have charters that decide when their elections are, what constitutes the need for a primary, and how many candidates advance to the general election.  We have no uniformity, not even close, and the spring elections have become a carnival, with nearly each city and school district having a booth that offers something different.

Take that complexity and combine it with the election with the highest turnout, and we've got Devil's Food. 

Really, though, I'm sure we'll make it work.  We'll need some more full-time staff for proofing, printing, and overall management of things, but the offset of savings from spring elections will result in less costs in the odd years, so the blended increase (net increase divided over a two-year cycle) will be an increase, but less than $100,000. 

The trade-off would be turnout that is triple that of a spring election.

Plus, I like the idea more given the recent school safety concerns.  If our primary was in August and the schools had an off-day, or even a teacher in-service day, in November, we'd have access to the schools as polling places.  Parents wouldn't worry about a large volume of visitors in their school because of the election.

But if cities can excuse themselves from this November cycle, we will have added complexity and costs virtually for no reason.  Just enough cities would stay in November that our ballot would be pushed to two pieces of paper and this extra printing and postage is the biggest cost increase from moving elections.

Cities pay incremental expenses if the election isn't countywide, while countywide elections are free to cities.  So, this incremental expense of about $3 per registered voter becomes an unnecessary expense to their citizens if the cities are allowed to charter out.  Plus, there are plenty of sunk costs that impact county taxpayers that can't be passed on to the cities.

For instance, we send out supplies in suitcases--nice, durable suitcases.  The county paid for those about 10 years ago and one day soon, they'll need to be replaced.  At $500 each, 300 suitcases would cost $150,000, all borne by the county yet receiving wear and tear on each non-countywide election. 

We have many of those kinds of examples, and I have some cost-recovery ideas we've reviewed with a consultant hired by the county--the subject of another post on a slow news day.

Instead, today is simply a slow voting day.  And, slow-voting days make the discussion of moving to November elections relevant.

But, the move to November conjures one of the administrative concerns related to Internet voting.

If we had Internet voting, we likely still would have advance voting by mail, advance voting in person, and voting at the polls.  Rather than replace these methods, it would be added to the menu, at least in the short-term.

That might help ease the world into Internet voting, but it wouldn't make administering elections any easier.  It would be more complex, in fact.

We already have four cities that have charted out of the countywide spring elections, moving their elections to even years.  (And cheers to my city of Shawnee that just "un-chartered" out of that to get back with the herd).

It's hard to imagine the cities not taking varied paths unless the law specifically prevents that.  If the law doesn't prevent that, the move will simply result in more complexity and more cost. 

From my persepctive, it's the key detail to address if this bill moves forward.