Successful companies often talk about compressing the product delivery cycle, shaving off days from concept to market.
Here, on October 1, 35 days from the election and just 14 days from the time our advance ballots by mail go out, we're living the reduced go-to-market life.
It's some sort of crazy complete circle to the info you see on the sidebar here--"Many people think election officials only work a couple days a year—I guess that’s sort of the point of this blog, to explain what we do on the other days."
This year may make the "what do you do the other 364 days?" a relevant question.
At the very least, I think we should get some sort of Six Sigma award for taking weeks out of the election preparation cycle.
How'd we do it? We've spend almost a month awaiting a final candidate list following the last-second withdrawal of a candidate, a Kansas Supreme Court case, and district court case that may be resolved today.
It brings up, though, a question we've been asked frequently--how much time do you need to print ballots?
Now, I'm not sure that anyone has actually made decisions that sync with our answer, but it brings up more a need for a brief primer on what "print ballots" means.
First, ballots are customized to a voter's specific candidates and those candidate lists in various races are rotated. We have nearly 500 precincts in Johnson County and about twice as many ballot styles in this election.
There isn't one ballot for all voters.
That seems like common sense, but with questions last week about why we sent overseas ballots when we did, the answer begins and ends with "time to prepare the ballot," not time to print.
Those ballots, by the way, look like ballots. They have hashtags on the sides and all, but they can't be scanned. They will have to be hand-counted. On the overseas and military side (by the way, military gets the attention but about 90 percent of our overseas ballots are non-military), it's as though we created an entirely separate election, with unique ballots, that coincidentally have the same races as our real election.
Those overseas ballots were four pages long. Our "real" ballots will be 8 1/2 by 18 inches, front and back. We broke up the overseas ballots in case they were faxed back. Our fax machine could handle the longer paper, but we don't know for sure that the overseas voters' can.
Plus, fax machines don't send back ballots in a duplex manner. If we only got a partial ballot back, it's possible that we'd never be able to contact the voter to let him or her know.
Those ballots, often emailed, included other attachments customized to the voter. Emailing our ballots was literally a full-day effort and we like to leave ourselves some cushion (at least a day) to ensure we met deadlines in case there were any technical issues. Murphy's Law has come into play several times on election day, knocking out Internet service, for instance.
Anyway, back to the "real" ballots.
Printing ballots implies that an election has been set up and a ballot is created. I've explained what it will look like on paper, but it has to have the same programming on our touch-screen voting machines.
We will have 1,400 of those in this election and can't begin to create the cards for each machine until the ballot is finalized. Then, we have to manually test each machine's logic and accuracy by going through a laborious voting routine and comparing the results against an expected outcome.
The downloading process usually takes at least two days and the testing--with 20 people--about 3 weeks.
This is a bigger deal than printing ballots, although that's no gimmee. But we begin delivering voting machines and equipment to our advance voting sites next week.
On the paper side, we are frantically entering advance-by-mail applications and likely will be sending out about 20,000 ballots on Oct. 15.
Our ballots are so complex that after a competitive bid process, the only local printer that could meet our requirements (the largest in Kansas City) pulled out after one attempt. I've never seen a company of that size, in any industry, say business was too hard, but I do respect that they told us before they let us down later.
So, all of our ballots are actually printed out-of-state, and our ballot orders usually are placed in early September. Earlier this year, we made the decision to print our own advance-by-mail ballots and provisional ballots at our advance voting sites with ballot-on-demand printers. So, we're only ordering our provisional ballots for the polls out-of-state.
Of course, those haven't been ordered yet and we're competing with many other offices for runtime in a November cycle, so we likely won't get the ballots back until the week before the election. That leaves no margin for error in proofing or delivery.
In fact, the whole process leaves no margin for error. Strike that--it invites errors, going over the margins. The fact that election administrators here are moving along with Plan S at this point is a testament to resolve.
Speaking of errors, we have to proof all of these various ballots and the audio that goes for each with ballots for those who are blind. We're busily proofing everything, waiting for the final word.
When we do print advance ballots, we'll print the envelopes at the same time, with a different printer. We'll apply postage at that time--or hopefully, anyway.
Our biggest obstacle right now--as it often is--isn't these formidable outside forces, but the internal processes at our county. We weren't adequately funded for this election, as evidenced by the fact that our postage needs at the front-end here have already "failed funds," which is our county's way of saying "out of budget."
Maybe someone knew we wouldn't be spending in September.
In any event, we hope today to get some word on "printing" ballots (as in, starting the entire work of the election), and our attention will quickly turn to mailing them.
Showing posts with label Paper Ballots. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paper Ballots. Show all posts
We have mailed out about 13,000 ballots for the August 5 election thus far and there is a major difference between 2014 and previous years.
We printed the ballots ourselves.
That probably brings about a yawn from some in the election administration world but our foray into ballot on demand printing is now real.
Our thought process started as we evaluated, again, the need to take carts and carts of paper ballots to our satellite advance voting sites. We have to do this to have quantities of the nearly 1,500 ballot types in August in case there is a need to issue a provisional ballot.
We don't even have 1,500 provisional ballots from our four in-person advance locations, let alone from one of them and, of course, we have no idea which ballots would be needed, so each satellite site has a fair quantity of each of these 1,500 types.
Then, most of these ballots go unused and, after election day, are destroyed. The ballot carts come back to our office and sit, taking up space, until the next election.
We started 2014, then, with the crazy idea that we would not send the carts to two locations--the Northeast Johnson County office and the Great Mall of the Great Plains. Instead, we would equip ballot-on-demand printers and technology to print necessary ballots there.
Our theory, if this was a major fail, was that voters could drive the five miles or so to the next closest advance site, equipped with the carts, if the printer didn't work. We knew the technology had been used reliably elsewhere, but power failures before because of August thunderstorms seemed like the biggest risk.
So far, more than so good! This plan allowed us to send more voting machines to the smaller Northeast facility, kicking out 10 carts and putting in 3 more machines.
Then, armed with the printer order, our overzealous staff decided to jump the shark and print all of our advance by mail ballots on demand.
(Random yarn--"jump the shark" actually is the most searched phrase that leads to this blog. Who knew?)
We've had a few growing pains. Some of the pages stuck together in one batch, leading to 4 ballots being sent with no back printed, but those voters have new ballots and our printing team has new proofing procedures.
We used the ballot on demand printers for our public test process so we'd be sure we didn't send out thousands of ballots that wouldn't scan. We also used the technology as a trial in April and with our recent Roeland Park election. We printed all the paper ballots for Roeland Park in-house, although that was a very small number.
In the end, the printer project became much bigger than we first envisioned but as a result, there is an overall ball of stress that has traditionally joined us for each election and is noticeably absent.
That's a tribute to the forward-thinking and hard-working individuals who have been part of this project.
By my back of the ballot envelope figuring, we've avoided about $15,000 of unnecessary printing in this election. These two 2014 elections (August and November) should return at least half of the upfront expense, and we expect the life of the system to extend well beyond "break even."
But when the dust settles, we'll also compare labor costs to 2012's ballot-labor costs. Intuitively, based on number of individuals in the back this year vs. then (and the ballot distribution has been almost identical), we likely have saved considerable temporary labor expense as well.
In the end, though, there is an efficiency element that is most important. Never is the cliche, "employees are our greatest assets," more appropriate than during an election.
First, sadly, we feel like we are "assets," owned by the process. Today is the first day I haven't been to the office since July 4. Any time any of us can eek out on a weekend by not being in the office feels like a long summer vacation.
Second, as I've reported here often, I've watched how the number of hours during election cycles take their toll physically on our staff. If we are to be successful, it will be on the backs of our full-time staff.
We've implemented a few new processes that have, in different ways, led to a few extra hours of free time for our ballot team.
Plus, those who balance our advance voting totals have been been going home by 9 each night rather than midnight as in years past. That ends up resulting in weeks of 14-hour days rather than 16-hour days, and that difference is huge.
We aren't yet totally sleep-deprived heading into our final week of advance voting. Initial election worker training has been completed. I've survived 3-hour sessions on 6 different days and my voice doesn't yet sound like Barry White's.
There's always this weekend--four supervising judge sessions and a chance to close the final training of this election with a heartfelt, "Beautiful!"
We printed the ballots ourselves.
That probably brings about a yawn from some in the election administration world but our foray into ballot on demand printing is now real.
Our thought process started as we evaluated, again, the need to take carts and carts of paper ballots to our satellite advance voting sites. We have to do this to have quantities of the nearly 1,500 ballot types in August in case there is a need to issue a provisional ballot.
We don't even have 1,500 provisional ballots from our four in-person advance locations, let alone from one of them and, of course, we have no idea which ballots would be needed, so each satellite site has a fair quantity of each of these 1,500 types.
Then, most of these ballots go unused and, after election day, are destroyed. The ballot carts come back to our office and sit, taking up space, until the next election.
We started 2014, then, with the crazy idea that we would not send the carts to two locations--the Northeast Johnson County office and the Great Mall of the Great Plains. Instead, we would equip ballot-on-demand printers and technology to print necessary ballots there.
Our theory, if this was a major fail, was that voters could drive the five miles or so to the next closest advance site, equipped with the carts, if the printer didn't work. We knew the technology had been used reliably elsewhere, but power failures before because of August thunderstorms seemed like the biggest risk.
So far, more than so good! This plan allowed us to send more voting machines to the smaller Northeast facility, kicking out 10 carts and putting in 3 more machines.
Then, armed with the printer order, our overzealous staff decided to jump the shark and print all of our advance by mail ballots on demand.
(Random yarn--"jump the shark" actually is the most searched phrase that leads to this blog. Who knew?)
We've had a few growing pains. Some of the pages stuck together in one batch, leading to 4 ballots being sent with no back printed, but those voters have new ballots and our printing team has new proofing procedures.
We used the ballot on demand printers for our public test process so we'd be sure we didn't send out thousands of ballots that wouldn't scan. We also used the technology as a trial in April and with our recent Roeland Park election. We printed all the paper ballots for Roeland Park in-house, although that was a very small number.
In the end, the printer project became much bigger than we first envisioned but as a result, there is an overall ball of stress that has traditionally joined us for each election and is noticeably absent.
That's a tribute to the forward-thinking and hard-working individuals who have been part of this project.
By my back of the ballot envelope figuring, we've avoided about $15,000 of unnecessary printing in this election. These two 2014 elections (August and November) should return at least half of the upfront expense, and we expect the life of the system to extend well beyond "break even."
But when the dust settles, we'll also compare labor costs to 2012's ballot-labor costs. Intuitively, based on number of individuals in the back this year vs. then (and the ballot distribution has been almost identical), we likely have saved considerable temporary labor expense as well.
In the end, though, there is an efficiency element that is most important. Never is the cliche, "employees are our greatest assets," more appropriate than during an election.
First, sadly, we feel like we are "assets," owned by the process. Today is the first day I haven't been to the office since July 4. Any time any of us can eek out on a weekend by not being in the office feels like a long summer vacation.
Second, as I've reported here often, I've watched how the number of hours during election cycles take their toll physically on our staff. If we are to be successful, it will be on the backs of our full-time staff.
We've implemented a few new processes that have, in different ways, led to a few extra hours of free time for our ballot team.
 |
| The first day of advance voting led to one staff member bringing in necessary provisions. The box was not consumed in one day, but few crème pies remain for week 2. |
We aren't yet totally sleep-deprived heading into our final week of advance voting. Initial election worker training has been completed. I've survived 3-hour sessions on 6 different days and my voice doesn't yet sound like Barry White's.
There's always this weekend--four supervising judge sessions and a chance to close the final training of this election with a heartfelt, "Beautiful!"
Something that catches my eye frequently, now that I'm a blogger and all, are others' posts and tips on how to come up with blogging content.
I don't see how that's a problem. Ideas haven't dried up here at least and it seems counter intuitive that anyone would create a blog and then have difficulty coming up with content (ergo, no content = end the blog).
(2013 To Do Item: Use "ergo" in a blog post before June 1--check!).
Focus is more my blogging issue. (Did you just see that demonstrated above?).
Sometimes there are some thoughts floating that are not broad enough for a blog post and a couple of them will be loosely tied here.
In elections, we cross many points of view, particularly about technology. One man's secure system is another's gateway to fraud, for instance.
Take paper ballots.
They are touted as the only way to go by many, but recognized as fraught with problems regarding voter intent by others. Add in the component of ballots by mail and worries escalate.
My worry is that the post office won't deliver the voters' ballot. If the voter doesn't get the ballot, the voter can call us and we can issue another. If we don't get the voted ballot, we really don't know we should have been expecting it in the first place.
Others, though, worry that ballots by mail could be cast by someone other than to whom they are issued. The Kansas Secure and Fair Elections Act of 2010 added some language and signature requirements to envelopes as an assurance that ballots were cast properly.
For some reason, this assurance didn't apply to mail-ballot elections. In Kansas, these elections can only be for questions, not people, but we will have three large ones in 2013.
Nearly as many voters--possibly a smidge more, even--will be issued ballots in 2013 than in the presidential year of 2012 in Johnson County because of these mail-ballot elections.
One fraud concern raised by a local paper a few years ago was that these single question ballots allowed for the persons opening the envelopes to see how a voter cast a vote. The ballot does have to be removed from the envelope and unless the special board members wear blindfolds during the process, this is a risk.
Members of this board are sworn to not to disclose how someone has voted, but in these situations it is still unlikely that the votes are even noticed. Ballots come folded and are unfolded in a separate process after the envelope has been removed from the table.
We have other odd rules about that room, by the way, including no dark-ink pens allowed (red only) and no trash cans.
We spend considerable time, and most of it wasted energy thankfully, trying to think of any potential security hole. My overall view is that if there is a potential fraud area in any part of our voting system, I want it identified and addressed well before some smart scientist thinks he or she has discovered it.
We've therefore become manic about new technology, first to understand how we can benefit (such as the Harvard iPad award) but also to see the risks.
Thus, the closing of this post is really an illustration of the loss of focus I mentioned before and, journalism students, an example where the lead was buried:
I am becoming growingly worried about what I don't know regarding Google Glass, the new wearable device by Google. I've emailed a contact at Google, but I'd love to try a pair out, even if it's on loan (developers pay for a pair, which I'm fine with, too).
I'll admit that I always like to be the first kid on the block to try a gadget, but these devices can take photos by winking, for instance. Forget our special board opening each ballot (although, I guess, that's a risk, but I've never seen any of our board of grandmothers wink), what about voters and workers at the polls?
One of my concerns, for instance, in large general elections is that we might have a new election worker, signing up for November as the first election, with an activist cause. We can sniff that out a bit, but we've had to discuss more and more that the use of social media while the polls are open is prohibited.
I never want anyone to think we stirred the results of the election. A social media post of "few voters here today" or "lines all day!" could impact turnout, for instance. I cringe at the possibility of "first voter at our polling place," sent out on Twitter.
By the November election in 2014, I expect Google Glass will be out there. When the CEO of Google already is talking about ethical guidelines for the use of the devices, my guard is up.
Then, of course, comes the other side of this--could we use these devices for voting (not sure how, but I wonder) or even voter check-in?
38 months ago, iPads were not yet released. Now, they are a central part of our culture. It's possible that Google Glass will have similar prominence by the 2016 presidential election and, if so, I want to know what that means to election administration.
I don't see how that's a problem. Ideas haven't dried up here at least and it seems counter intuitive that anyone would create a blog and then have difficulty coming up with content (ergo, no content = end the blog).
(2013 To Do Item: Use "ergo" in a blog post before June 1--check!).
Focus is more my blogging issue. (Did you just see that demonstrated above?).
Sometimes there are some thoughts floating that are not broad enough for a blog post and a couple of them will be loosely tied here.
 |
| I've often thought "Ballots and Pallets" would be an interesting (to me) reality TV show. |
Take paper ballots.
They are touted as the only way to go by many, but recognized as fraught with problems regarding voter intent by others. Add in the component of ballots by mail and worries escalate.
My worry is that the post office won't deliver the voters' ballot. If the voter doesn't get the ballot, the voter can call us and we can issue another. If we don't get the voted ballot, we really don't know we should have been expecting it in the first place.
Others, though, worry that ballots by mail could be cast by someone other than to whom they are issued. The Kansas Secure and Fair Elections Act of 2010 added some language and signature requirements to envelopes as an assurance that ballots were cast properly.
For some reason, this assurance didn't apply to mail-ballot elections. In Kansas, these elections can only be for questions, not people, but we will have three large ones in 2013.
Nearly as many voters--possibly a smidge more, even--will be issued ballots in 2013 than in the presidential year of 2012 in Johnson County because of these mail-ballot elections.
One fraud concern raised by a local paper a few years ago was that these single question ballots allowed for the persons opening the envelopes to see how a voter cast a vote. The ballot does have to be removed from the envelope and unless the special board members wear blindfolds during the process, this is a risk.
Members of this board are sworn to not to disclose how someone has voted, but in these situations it is still unlikely that the votes are even noticed. Ballots come folded and are unfolded in a separate process after the envelope has been removed from the table.
We have other odd rules about that room, by the way, including no dark-ink pens allowed (red only) and no trash cans.
We spend considerable time, and most of it wasted energy thankfully, trying to think of any potential security hole. My overall view is that if there is a potential fraud area in any part of our voting system, I want it identified and addressed well before some smart scientist thinks he or she has discovered it.
We've therefore become manic about new technology, first to understand how we can benefit (such as the Harvard iPad award) but also to see the risks.
Thus, the closing of this post is really an illustration of the loss of focus I mentioned before and, journalism students, an example where the lead was buried:
 |
| Google Glass |
I'll admit that I always like to be the first kid on the block to try a gadget, but these devices can take photos by winking, for instance. Forget our special board opening each ballot (although, I guess, that's a risk, but I've never seen any of our board of grandmothers wink), what about voters and workers at the polls?
One of my concerns, for instance, in large general elections is that we might have a new election worker, signing up for November as the first election, with an activist cause. We can sniff that out a bit, but we've had to discuss more and more that the use of social media while the polls are open is prohibited.
I never want anyone to think we stirred the results of the election. A social media post of "few voters here today" or "lines all day!" could impact turnout, for instance. I cringe at the possibility of "first voter at our polling place," sent out on Twitter.
By the November election in 2014, I expect Google Glass will be out there. When the CEO of Google already is talking about ethical guidelines for the use of the devices, my guard is up.
Then, of course, comes the other side of this--could we use these devices for voting (not sure how, but I wonder) or even voter check-in?
38 months ago, iPads were not yet released. Now, they are a central part of our culture. It's possible that Google Glass will have similar prominence by the 2016 presidential election and, if so, I want to know what that means to election administration.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Paper Ballots,
Voter Registration
0
comments
National Voter Registration Day
42 Days to Election Day
Perhaps to the surprise of no one and as proof that there is a day for everything, today is National Voter Registration Day.
I registered to vote in 1980 and haven't changed my registration for at least 15 years, so I'm not sure how to participate individually. Professionally, it's a little hard to do too much today, either, other than ring a bell whenever anyone comes into our office.
My license plate on my car says, "VOTE," and I'd argue that voting day is more important than registration day, but it is quite the bummer to go to vote, only to find you aren't registered, so I'm down with the concept.
Still, "REGISTER TO VOTE" won't fit on a plate and thank goodness I was able to get "VOTE" (our state has moved to one vanity phrase among all counties), because "REG2VOTE" wouldn't feel cool at all. My family doesn't exactly feel cool with "VOTE," but I believe that actually shows how uncool they are.
But, here at the office, our big excitement recently was a visit yesterday from Elisabeth MacNamara, the national president of the League of Women Voters. She toured our office and warehouse and given that the League conducts voter registration drives, there was a geeky connection to National Voter Registration Day.
Still, given that about 25 percent of those registered in Johnson County won't vote on November 6, I'm going to hold onto the thought that a National Vote Day could be played up a little more.
We're getting ready. Our paper ballots for advance voting by mail came yesterday as well, topped with little safety cones to ensure safe handling. The pallets look like cars heading for maintenance at a dealership's service center.
We have them back earlier than normal. I can't remember an election where our ballots came under such calm conditions. We were due for something like that--hopefully it continues!
Perhaps to the surprise of no one and as proof that there is a day for everything, today is National Voter Registration Day.
I registered to vote in 1980 and haven't changed my registration for at least 15 years, so I'm not sure how to participate individually. Professionally, it's a little hard to do too much today, either, other than ring a bell whenever anyone comes into our office.
My license plate on my car says, "VOTE," and I'd argue that voting day is more important than registration day, but it is quite the bummer to go to vote, only to find you aren't registered, so I'm down with the concept.
Still, "REGISTER TO VOTE" won't fit on a plate and thank goodness I was able to get "VOTE" (our state has moved to one vanity phrase among all counties), because "REG2VOTE" wouldn't feel cool at all. My family doesn't exactly feel cool with "VOTE," but I believe that actually shows how uncool they are.
But, here at the office, our big excitement recently was a visit yesterday from Elisabeth MacNamara, the national president of the League of Women Voters. She toured our office and warehouse and given that the League conducts voter registration drives, there was a geeky connection to National Voter Registration Day.
Still, given that about 25 percent of those registered in Johnson County won't vote on November 6, I'm going to hold onto the thought that a National Vote Day could be played up a little more.
We have them back earlier than normal. I can't remember an election where our ballots came under such calm conditions. We were due for something like that--hopefully it continues!
60 Days From Election Day
A hot topic, and an overall good idea I'd add, is ballot design.
Make the ballot easier to read, more appealing to the eye, maybe have a scratch n' sniff peppermint area, and voters will enjoy voting so much that they cross off the days on their calendars until the next election.
Voter participation will improve and more races will be fully voted with better ballot design.
In our county, we have plenty of under-voted races, especially as you go down the ballot. Occasionally, we'll get asked about that and we have to deliver the news to candidates that they apparently have never heard--"People just didn't care about your race."
Now, poor ballot design is an issue, and keep in mind that ballots are prepared in three formats: paper, voting machine, and paper for military/overseas voters.
The most famous paper ballot design controversy came from Florida during the 2000 presidential election but there was also a Florida congressional race in 2006 that literally hid from voters on the voting machines--eyes were drawn to the center of the screen, missing the race at the top of the screen.
Arguing the benefits of good ballot design is a little like arguing that gravity exists. It's hard to make a credible argument against it.
But a dose of reality hit us as we began preparing the ballot for November. Our ballot order was due to the printer yesterday and we began the week chasing down the final candidate list, certified by the state election board Friday, and the constitutional amendment on watercraft taxation that we'd heard about.
The amendment changes one date and adds one word to the statute, but we have to publish the entire notice that first took a full page of an 8 1/2 by 18-inch ballot. That resulted in a three-page ballot and four for two cities with a second question. Either way, it moved us to two sheets of paper.
We're ordering about 200,000 paper ballots, so doubling that at roughly 50 cents a page makes the impact $100,000. Then add in extra postage to mail ballots, questions voters would have about the postage to return the ballot, and the cost we incur when ballots come back with insufficient postage.
It adds up to about a $150,000 impact. Then, of course, there's the double scanning time, issues that arise when voters only return one page or when husband sends one page and wife sends three pages, or a myriad of other one-offs we began coming up with.
I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is confronted with a high price and a salesman says, "Surely you can't put a price on your family's lives?"
"I wouldn't have thought so, either," Homer said. "But, here we are."
And so, we are left to contemplate a cost for ballot design. It would have helped if we only had to print the items that changed. But, here we are.
With much tinkering, font-size changing, and column spacing adjustments, we got the ballot down to one page, front and back.
We won't need to issue a magnifying glass with each ballot, either. It looks fine, actually, but, regrettably, no peppermint scratch and sniff.
But tears of joy are in order for taxpayers, in my opinion. That's $150,000 saved!
Those are real dollars, saved by the ingenuity and persistence of some members of our staff.
Oh, and our relief of not having to deal with the operational issues, that's priceless.
A hot topic, and an overall good idea I'd add, is ballot design.
Make the ballot easier to read, more appealing to the eye, maybe have a scratch n' sniff peppermint area, and voters will enjoy voting so much that they cross off the days on their calendars until the next election.
Voter participation will improve and more races will be fully voted with better ballot design.
In our county, we have plenty of under-voted races, especially as you go down the ballot. Occasionally, we'll get asked about that and we have to deliver the news to candidates that they apparently have never heard--"People just didn't care about your race."
Now, poor ballot design is an issue, and keep in mind that ballots are prepared in three formats: paper, voting machine, and paper for military/overseas voters.
The most famous paper ballot design controversy came from Florida during the 2000 presidential election but there was also a Florida congressional race in 2006 that literally hid from voters on the voting machines--eyes were drawn to the center of the screen, missing the race at the top of the screen.
Arguing the benefits of good ballot design is a little like arguing that gravity exists. It's hard to make a credible argument against it.
But a dose of reality hit us as we began preparing the ballot for November. Our ballot order was due to the printer yesterday and we began the week chasing down the final candidate list, certified by the state election board Friday, and the constitutional amendment on watercraft taxation that we'd heard about.
The amendment changes one date and adds one word to the statute, but we have to publish the entire notice that first took a full page of an 8 1/2 by 18-inch ballot. That resulted in a three-page ballot and four for two cities with a second question. Either way, it moved us to two sheets of paper.
We're ordering about 200,000 paper ballots, so doubling that at roughly 50 cents a page makes the impact $100,000. Then add in extra postage to mail ballots, questions voters would have about the postage to return the ballot, and the cost we incur when ballots come back with insufficient postage.
It adds up to about a $150,000 impact. Then, of course, there's the double scanning time, issues that arise when voters only return one page or when husband sends one page and wife sends three pages, or a myriad of other one-offs we began coming up with.
I'm reminded of an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is confronted with a high price and a salesman says, "Surely you can't put a price on your family's lives?"
"I wouldn't have thought so, either," Homer said. "But, here we are."
And so, we are left to contemplate a cost for ballot design. It would have helped if we only had to print the items that changed. But, here we are.
With much tinkering, font-size changing, and column spacing adjustments, we got the ballot down to one page, front and back.
We won't need to issue a magnifying glass with each ballot, either. It looks fine, actually, but, regrettably, no peppermint scratch and sniff.
But tears of joy are in order for taxpayers, in my opinion. That's $150,000 saved!
Those are real dollars, saved by the ingenuity and persistence of some members of our staff.
Oh, and our relief of not having to deal with the operational issues, that's priceless.
 |
| The back side of the ballot, with room still for a city question in Mission and Roeland Park. The ballot is 8 1/2 by 18 inches, which is a special size requiring a unique paper tray in a printer that prints edge-to-edge. We can print ballots at our office if we run out of a style, but most of our ballots are printed in Washington (state). |
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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. |
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). |
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 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 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. |
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. |
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Mapping,
Paper Ballots,
Redistricting,
Voting Machines
0
comments
Six Bites of the Election
This has been such a crazy week that I'm left to update in a way I've been trying to avoid: the hodgepodge collection.
Being a Diary, after all, I've tried for more frequent updates and when then things were happening rapidly this week, I realized I missed some opportunities for video.
I'm dialed in now, though, looking especially for some video to bring to life the preparations in these next two weeks.
First, this week:
Being a Diary, after all, I've tried for more frequent updates and when then things were happening rapidly this week, I realized I missed some opportunities for video.
I'm dialed in now, though, looking especially for some video to bring to life the preparations in these next two weeks.
First, this week:
- We have final maps from redistricting. We've reconciled those against our maps and are making a couple of minor changes, planning to post "official final" early next week. We have about a gazillion maps to print for candidates and for our election, so we'll begin knocking them out. Maps take quite a while to print, however.
- And, speaking of printers, we have a lot at our office. Trees R'nt Us. Or, maybe they are because we consume so many. With about 2,000 different ballot styles for this upcoming election, that's a lot of printing and proofing. We're fortunate to have such dedicated employees proofing the draft ballots. They worked as 12-hour day Friday on the heels of about 50 hours put in last week before Friday. We're hoping to be in ballot-printing production mode before July 4.
- All of our voting machines are tested manually before each election by a dedicated group of retirees and election workers. They've done preliminary testing but will be testing them in depth in about 10 days and I'll plan to capture that on video.
- Likewise, I'll plan some video and photos of our training, which starts in 2 weeks. Training is exhausting. I have no idea how Broadway actors can perform as they do because I'm achy and sore after leading a 3-hour training and I don't sing and dance. I'm still hobbling a smidge following ankle surgery (but I'm beginning to run on my zippered ankle) and I swear I'm shorter since my surgery. I'm hoping to be physically ready for training and at least the same height as I was in 2010 by then.
- Speaking of that, I have such empathy for all candidates walking door-to-door in constant 100-degree heat. I say it often--it's incredibly hard to be a candidate. I think the winning candidates should push a measure, for their sake, to have all elections only in 70 degree temperatures.
- Candidates should get their updated voter list orders starting Monday. We're proofing all the changes, but we're done with the changes.
We have so much ahead of us. This election especially, we're looking at the most immediate couple of steps. We're taking a baseball approach to this mid-summer election classic, one day at a time. We have the whole timeline mapped out, but this is an election that is better taken in bites.
I'll have some images to share with the bites that come after the 4th.
Monday, January 9, 2012
Paper Ballots,
U.S. Post Office
0
comments
Downside of Paper Ballots, Chapter One
Election integrity activists have a romance with paper ballots. Their point of view likely would be different if they worked with paper ballots.
Paper ballots are a stressmaker. If the ballots represented a romantic character, he'd be the mysterious one with an eye patch.
We have two mail-ballot elections on January 31 and the ballots will be mailed out Wednesday. We're a mid-sized county (365,000 registered voters) but there is no one locally in Kansas City that can handle our ballot printing needs. We put out a Request for Proposal a few years ago and had really only one local option, the largest printer in Kansas City.
That printer is well-regarded and we selected them on a trial basis. After the first election, they politely said, "Uncle." You see, in a large election, we wouldn't print 365,000 of one ballot style. Instead, we have as many as 1,500 variations. So, we print 30 of one style, 100 of another, 75 of a third, etc. In a polls election, it takes a staff member about a week to prepare the ballot order and a full weekend when ballots arrive for a crew to unpack all the ballots and sort them in a secure room to prepare for mailing. More to come throughout the year on this.
So, all of our ballots are printed in Seattle by ES&S, which is the best ballot printshop in my opinion and handles a lot of jurisdictions. Those shipments of ballots always lead to adventure, though. Elections are often conducted over the winter where weather has diverted our shipments to Kentucky or Ohio, for instance. And when we take the ballots to the post office (open for "business" business noon to 4 p.m. only each day, until the local office closes later this year--remember the optimism I heard just last week from the Post Office's Chief Marketing Officer), we have to have postage checks cut, per zip code, to the penny.
This is an example of how the pallets came on Friday, so we'll be spending Monday re-palleting, re-wrapping the pallets, and scrambling to guess how much each pallet weighs with fingers crossed that the postage checks we've planned align. It sets up a crazy and stressful 48 hours for our staff. We're actually a day ahead of where we might be normally because we had them printed over the holidays, so getting them on Friday was a bonus.
Paper ballots are a stressmaker. If the ballots represented a romantic character, he'd be the mysterious one with an eye patch.
 |
| Pallets of more than 100,000 ballots, in addressed envelopes, ready for our two mail-ballot elections on January 31. |
That printer is well-regarded and we selected them on a trial basis. After the first election, they politely said, "Uncle." You see, in a large election, we wouldn't print 365,000 of one ballot style. Instead, we have as many as 1,500 variations. So, we print 30 of one style, 100 of another, 75 of a third, etc. In a polls election, it takes a staff member about a week to prepare the ballot order and a full weekend when ballots arrive for a crew to unpack all the ballots and sort them in a secure room to prepare for mailing. More to come throughout the year on this.
So, all of our ballots are printed in Seattle by ES&S, which is the best ballot printshop in my opinion and handles a lot of jurisdictions. Those shipments of ballots always lead to adventure, though. Elections are often conducted over the winter where weather has diverted our shipments to Kentucky or Ohio, for instance. And when we take the ballots to the post office (open for "business" business noon to 4 p.m. only each day, until the local office closes later this year--remember the optimism I heard just last week from the Post Office's Chief Marketing Officer), we have to have postage checks cut, per zip code, to the penny.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
- Follow Me on Twitter!
- "Like on Facebook!
- Join Me on Linkedin!
Contact