Oh, the Humanity!

Last week, the North Dakota State Canvass Board certified the results of the June 14 statewide election.

As a point of order, each county certified its results on June 27.  The state canvass certifies the roll-up of the 53 counties.

It’s typical to assume that November general elections are more complicated than the primaries because of the turnout and national awareness, but I think most election administrators find the primaries more exhausting—they usually are more complicated in terms of voting laws and involve more unique ballot styles.

One trending observation I’ve had, not just with North Dakota but nationwide:

In 2016, when Russian involvement was the election topic of the day, it was common to stress that elections were ran individually by more than 3,000 jurisdictions, creating a unique quilt of security.  The fact that the elections were ran separately provided a natural firewall against the ability for widespread outside interference.

That’s true, but it’s also true, for instance during my time in Kansas, that our voters in Johnson County had different experiences than those in Douglas or Sedgwick Counties.  We used different equipment and had different early voting options, for example.

In fact, a Congressional district crossed into Douglas County.  Douglas County was predominantly a Democratic county; Johnson was predominantly Republican.  We were allowed to provide early voting outside of our office (satellite locations). Douglas did not have this legislative authority.

I felt, and expressed at the time, that this legal disparity could favor a Republican candidate.  Over time, the law changed to allow more counties to have satellite advance voting.

That’s an example of a growing trend to do more to standardize the voter experience.  We aren’t McDonalds, but a polling place in, say, Cass County, should run the same as in Burleigh County—at least as much as possible.

The disparity also comes because elections represent a human business.

That’s been lost lately.  There may be no thing as a perfect election, as the election administrator cliche goes, because humans are involved.  That's not to say, however, we don't strive for perfection--zero defects was the phrase I stressed to our election workers when serving as a local election official.  Election administrators are always chasing the dream of a perfect election.

But, people make mistakes, and there were some anecdotally reported one-offs across the state in this election.  In fact, while we hear the refrain of getting rid of machines and hand-counting ballots, none of the issues reported in North Dakota involved voting machines.

That latest revelation and proof point, once again, that voting machines performed properly isn't what some activists want to hear or believe.  It leads me to believe—and hear me out, Dear Reader—that I think I’ve identified the ultimate win-win for those who want humans, rather than machines, counting votes. 

Machines have proven to have fewer mistakes than humans, yet some people steadfastly maintain they want hand-counting of ballots.

So, how about the voting equipment manufacturers create androids or robots that hand count the ballots?  Or, maybe, just turn the rollers on scanners into automated hands….

The bigger point is that calls for hand-counts, no machines, and other changes are really calls for election reform.  I’m not sure, exactly, what election reform truly means, but it has been a buzz phrase since the Help America Vote Act of 2002 was passed.

(It's hard to believe, as an interlude, that the battle cry related to elections at that time was that we needed voting machines for accuracy).

I do know the root of the need for election reform then—it was the 2000 presidential election, not decided on election night, leaving many to have reduced confidence in the election.

That confidence continues to erode.   It’s the old adage of, “Lose the game, blame the referee,” and the cycle has led to election law changes.

The feelings related to voter confidence, thanks to a myriad of social issues, social media, and federal government overreach, are real.  I submit that if there were no such thing as voter fraud—or concerns of election fraud—there would not be so many state and federal statutes related to the conduct of the elections.  

Thus, likely, the call for election reform, based on the number of  existing election laws, is a tale as old as time.  I can even hear Angela Lansbury singing the song in the background as I type, although most election administrators would appreciate a little more Beauty these days after the Beasts the elections of the last few years have represented.

Changes to election laws generally require some type of bipartisan support to get passed.  Even in statehouses where one party has overall control, factions within the party still often result in compromises and more moderate changes to the laws.

And here we are in 2022, where election reformers call themselves patriots looking out for election integrity, but they do as much, if not more, to erode voter confidence than the harm presumably caused by the issues to which they complain.  Personally, I think some of the concerns these individuals raise have validity, but back to Cliché Town, surely they know it’s easier to catch flies with honey than vinegar...

Shouldn’t we all step back and focus on the ultimate goal?  Don’t we all want predictable election processes, rooted in law?  Don’t we all have a responsibility to leave the elections process better than it was before us?  Doesn’t it seem that if there is a time for state governments to fund the necessary resources to make this happen, it’s now?

The narrative needle must move from chest-pumping election integrity phrases to meaningful election reform--true election administration modernization achieved by working together.  In my view, we could benefit from a “statute audit,” a comb through the statutes and a report to all stakeholders that shows areas of inconsistency or concern that could be addressed, thoughtfully, by the legislature to raise voter confidence.  Probably, all states could benefit from that, as well as the federal government.  That seems non-controversial.

Borrowing a phrase from a president before the 2000 presidential election, and turning it to apply here, “There's nothing wrong with election administration that can’t be fixed with what is right with election administration.”

Elections are ran by humans.  Humans pass laws.  Humans, as much as humanly possible, follow them.

It’s time to realize we have human—not machine—issues, and we must all address the human issues by being, well, human.

The Lehman Proposal

Typically, I don't use many names in my blog posts.

Today, I will, just for the context of the post and also to laud the owner of the centerpiece of this post.

First, readers of this blog and election geeks everywhere know that voting systems in the United States are aging, with often no identifiable funding mechanisms to fund the replacements.

I've written about that extensively here regarding Johnson County.

In fact, we've painted ourselves into a corner in Johnson County.  Our office has been promised the funding for a new system when that system is defined.  Alternatively, money was being socked away annually to prepare for the system but that process stopped in 2011.

We're defining the system, planning for a 2017 rollout, promises remain, but the county's financial position to back up that promise is suspect at best.

I've been continuing to advocate that the cost of elections be itemized on residents' property tax bills and be funded through a separate mill levy.

That isn't some nutty idea--it's in Kansas law, a separate mill levy for elections, and Wyandotte County, for instance, does it.  I'm not pushing for a tax increase, although that could be a vehicle county commissioners have to link actual costs against dollars raised.

It's the ultimate in public transparency.  Residents would know exactly how much (how little, in fact) elections are costing them and when callers ask for more advance voting options or newer equipment, for instance, they'd know what the impact would be to their pocketbook.

Personally, I think an itemized tax statement would drive more government accountability, so I can't see how it's a bad thing.

Another reason supporting this change, I believe, is a new law passed this year that soon will require governing bodies to receive public approval through a (costly) election if mill levy rates are increased above the rate of inflation.  Special elections are funded by the jurisdictions calling for them and not the election office.  However, in the board of county commissioner's case, county tax dollars will have to pay for such an election.

Being proactive now by utilizing this elections mill levy and pulling out election costs from the general fund would help them later, I'm convinced.

I'm the only one convinced at this point, though.

I guess I should just pause and the take the win from another legislative item I'd pushed for years--schools being out of session on election day.  Coupled with moving spring elections to the fall, this essentially has happened with the elections law that passed this year.  Schools don't have to out of session, but are required to be available.

That win took 10 years.

I'm into about year four of the elections mill levy advocacy.

But, back to the equipment.

Conventional wisdom says the county will issue long-term debt as the method to find the funding for the voting system.  Problem is, long-term debt has an annual price tag.

Debt retires.  Annual price tags drop as a result.  Smart governing bodies (Shawnee Mission School District, especially) ensure that new debt follows the old and the amount being paid annually doesn't drop off.

A drop off would be good in the short-term for taxpayers, but then the sticker shock for new debt might keep new projects from being started and soon, a school district (for instance, not the one mentioned) would need to make operational spending cuts or request a tax increase to operate the same way it had 10 years ago.

So, in Johnson County, if the amount of annual debt added exceeds the amount retiring, that money is going to have to come from the operating budget--the same one that for 2016 already exceeds the existing mill levy.

The amount of annual debt service payments required for a voting system will exceed the retiring debt service payments.  (There is some fuzzy math that might say otherwise, but if you dig deep enough, you'll find this to be true).

Down the road, our voting equipment will be a tax increase in the making because we haven't planned and now, ironically, it would take a costly election to approve the funding.

This, by the way, is what happened in the late 1960s that led to Johnson County taxpayers voting to approve the purchase of voting machines (and the legislative creation of the mill levy tax for elections that some counties utilize).

Fact is, though, the mill levy in those counties is paying for operating expenses, not debt on capital.

So, while I try to push on that item, funding for voting systems needs a similar press with the legislature.

One Johnson County commissioner, John Toplikar, wondered if there was a way to create a technology fee within the Kansas legislature to pay for new equipment.

I'm not a fan of fees--he isn't either, I think--because they are hidden taxes.  Tipping fees for landfills, for instance, are built back into the cost of service for trash haulers and passed on to residents.

But if there was a fee that didn't impact taxpayers?

My peer in Sedgwick County, Tabitha Lehman, has suggested a portion of political contributions be funneled back to the state for new voting equipment.

(Quick interlude--Tabitha represents one member of a cadre of election administration superstars in Kansas; I travel and meet with my colleagues across the country, and Kansas election administrators show very well.  They fall behind the shadow of a loudmouth know-it-all with a blog, and are among the country's best-kept election administration secrets).

Back to Tabitha's idea.  It's akin, I guess, to a portion of money raised by college athletics to be put back into the campus infrastructure--parking fees, reduced ticket prices for students, and campus security.

I'm not sure of the dollars--it's worth building a case based on actual contributions from 2012 and 2014.  What if, for instance, candidates who raised more than $2,000 or $5,000 in a race had to contribute, say, five percent back to the state for the administration of an election technology fee?

There are probably ways to exempt loans and contributions from the candidate (it would seem unfair to self-fund a campaign and pay, essentially, a penalty for not taking contributions).  It's possible that 5 percent wouldn't even make a dent, unless, of course this became federal legislation.

In fact, I know there are several immediate reasons why this wouldn't work.  "Dark money," for instance--how would that be captured?

But the fact is we are about to see an outrageous amount of political spending, heading into 2016.  These candidates will expect voting systems of the same sophistication as their campaigns.

Major league players deserve major league stadiums.

One thing is clear to me--communities will get new election systems when these expire.  We're not going to collectively raise our hands to vote and the Internet appears, for now, off limits as an idea (I mean, come on, when the IRS is hacked....)

It's time to drive the discussion and find a funding solution before it's funding out of crisis.  Frankly, I think we're heading into funding out of crisis in Johnson County despite my barking.

But we're on the leading edge of this issue--Johnson County's voting system fleet is among the oldest in the nation.  Many communities implemented new systems about three years after we did, with funding from the Help America Vote Act, and we're just the leading indicator of pain ahead.

So, I proudly will begin pushing the Lehman Proposal.  Or the Tabitha Tabulation Solution.

My experience has been that the best way to push for ideas is come up with one that, worst case, can be criticized and drive debate.  If there are reasons why this won't work, let's discuss them and determine what will work.

Otherwise, many of us in Kansas may eventually be conducting special elections on outdated equipment to determine if taxpayers are willing for a tax increase to pay for a new voting system.

Maybe that's the logical outcome of all of this, but being proactive now may avoid it.

Roeland Park, Part Two

Although it's been terribly long between posts, have pity, please--we started another election yesterday.

It's a special election in Roeland Park, second time this year, and comes in the most intense election period in Johnson County history.  With the November election just ending, we have this election a month later, and, on January 7, we will be mailing about 350,000 ballots for special school elections.

That election day will be about a week after the filing deadline for the spring elections.  Come April, nearly every voter in Johnson County will have had 3 elections in five months and some may have five elections in five months if we have a spring primary.

(Was that as crazy to read as it was to type?  One of our ballot envelope colors should be camouflage, to recognize ballot fatigue.)

Amidst all of this, we have some major budget deadlines ahead.  These are important because it may be 2014, but the 2016 budget gains form by March.  As mentioned in the last post, we have a lot of work to do to prepare for 2016, and the costs for that election will be much higher than in 2014.

Further, we must work on preparing our voting system request for proposal.  We were chagrined recently to learn that Sedgwick County has $4.5 million set aside for a new system.  (Actually, I'm chagrined for us but happy for them).

Douglas County had the wisdom to hire a county management leader from Johnson County a few years ago, but she took with her, apparently, the resolve to plan ahead.  Douglas County began setting aside money each year for voting systems at the same time our county manager stopped our annual set-aside amount and also pulled funding based on a quote we received, provided several times in the budget process.  We had $10 million at one time in the capital budget, but he pulled it.

Shawnee County, also, has set aside a large portion of money for its next system.

So, it's frustrating to say the least when my predecessor had the wisdom to push for and implement a plan to pay for a future system, but we are behind the other large counties in preparation years later.

This will have a major point of reckoning because even when the county issues debt to pay for the new system, it will have either a tax impact or a major cost cutting impact.  That cost cutting won't come in elections, because as we ramp up polling places and staff advance voting to 2016 levels, I estimate those additional costs to be more than $1 million from 2014.

Plus, because we will have to finance our new system, this issue also likely prevents the county from setting aside money for its next, next system.  This has created a perpetual election funding crisis.

And that's if things stay the way they are now.  Our voting machines tabulate perfectly, but reports of a vote flipping from one candidate to another--something the system has had since it was implemented in 2002--does wear us down.  Particularly, social media can turn one report into a viral epidemic.

I often talked to three or four people about the same report, and we just don't have the staff size to talk about these issues adequately, let alone address them.   It's worth considering if we need to purchase an interim solution for 2016 while we select a longer-term solution.

All of this reminds me of how, when I first came to the office 10 years ago, how the industry quaked of reports on the Black Box Voting.  There was a book of the same name.  10 years ago, that's what viral meant.

Those were the days.

Still, we're presented with an opportunity, really.  Many voters want paper, others want better touch screens, and I want a system that is easier to maintain.  Age is a relentless beast, for humans and machines, and the clock is ticking on the useful life of our system.

Legislators know this.  I just spoke at a conference of staffers put on by the National Council of State Legislators.  Two of those staffers were from Kansas, and they are coordinating an a task force of legislators looking at combining spring and fall elections.

I'm attending the meeting tomorrow, and speaking next month.  My patter is familiar--spring elections in odd years move to fall in odd years, leaving each year with August and November elections.  In conjunction with this, require that all schools be closed on election day in November and available as polling places.

One thing that has struck me, since the Black Box Voting days, is that, well, viral campaigns reach a lot of people.  We all vote, and many of us have opinions on the best way to vote (paper, machine, Internet, you name it).

There isn't much consensus on the best method, today or tomorrow.  Add in layers of policy makers, who have their own opinions and their own cost and social drivers and restrainers, and the chance of a common approach in the country, or even in a state, seems unlikely.

I'm still a believer that there will be a big bang, a disruptive moment in the industry--perhaps a single state legislature will pass a little bill requiring Internet Voting, or emailing of ballots.  All the work of standards, scientists' theories, and activist interests will go out the window.

Likewise, the opinions of election administrators will matter little in such a scenario.  Somewhere, we have to find a way to make the realities of today merge to lead to a solution.  My little presentation included here is hard to follow unless you were at the meeting this week (and even then....), but I'd be glad to explain it further if you email or comment.

For now, back to the elections.

Voting Equipment Considerations from briandnewby

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.

Lather, Select Vendor, Budget That In, Rinse, Repeat

Tomorrow is our budget presentation day, and I'll be reacting live to the county manager statement in the budget kick-off meeting three weeks ago in regard to our voting machine replacement request not being mentioned (let alone being included) in the 2015 budget book.

We have long submitted a narrative and even vendor quotes.  The machines were once in the budget years ago but not included in the Capital Improvement Process (CIP) budget since 2011.

I'm no county budget Einstein but I'm pretty sure in going through the CIP schedules and the debt service schedules of today and past years, any purchase of $12 million in voting machines will cause a tax increase unless there are corresponding cuts.  The county can't absorb a $12 million hit and, I don't think, even a $2 or $3 million annual increase in debt service without a revenue increase.

The specific comment, though, was this, "We're still waiting with great anticipation about what the next generation is going to be advocated for by the Election Commissioner and then we will be able to go ahead and budget that in."

So, apparently, the CIP approach was never the path for us to take.  We simply need to select a system (using a process for which we've outlined) and the funds will be there.

The plan I will explain tomorrow will be to begin pursuing a consultant to manage the proposal process, with the objective of issuing a request for proposal in 2015 for a new system implemented in 2017.

I'm not sure how "budget that in," is going to happen.  It seems easier, to me anyway, to plan for a $12 million expense than to immediately figure out how to pay for it.

I would think vendors, also, would like to know we actually have money budgeted before investing in the time to prepare a proposal.  We now have a five-year-old quote that got the machines in the budget for two years before the county manager took them out.

Earlier this week, I was at an MIT/CalTech Future of the Polling Process conference with many of the industry's brightest minds.  Johnson County was fortunate to have a seat at the table among such prestigious practitioners, academics, and industry thought-leaders.  There are a handful of communities going through the process of determining a next-generation system, and much work needs to be done before such a system is live.

My objectives from the constant pounding of the budget issues right now are simple:

1. Ensure our voters' needs are protected and future-proofed.
2. Provide more than adequate planning time for the Board of County Commissioners to prepare to pay for this system.
3. Keep Johnson County at the innovative forefront that our voters, taxpayers, and community leaders expect and deserve when it comes to elections.

I kind of think I'm just doing my job here.  If I don't fight for these things, who will?

I know, to a degree, I've become a bit of a one-trick pony on the blog right now regarding the budget and voting machines, but this is a major part of our annual fight for resources and a very time-consuming process at that.  The purpose of the blog is to highlight things behind the scenes and this is one scene, if shortened or put to bed, would by itself free up resources at our office.

Here's hoping tomorrow goes well.

Boring Is What We're After

A significant paradox of this site comes as we near a busy election time.

This blog was created to provide you, dear reader, with some of the geeky and boring aspects of administering elections.

The more boring the better, I say! (To which, you likely would say, "no kidding.")

There is comfort in boring.  Boring is the opposite of not boring, or any other word or phrase you can identify that effectively means crazy, haywire, or nutty.

Boring's true nemesis is darkness.  That's the point of the blog, to be transparent, so when a week goes by without a post, I have itchy typing fingers.

Darkness here, though, always means we're swamped--not bad swamped, just swamped.

Then, in the rush to create a meaningful post, so many things are happening it's hard to hit them all.

Geese were lining up outside this week while we
were getting our ducks in a row inside.

So, here's what's happening right now--we are setting up the election, and that means trial and error in many ways and a lot of reading and proofing.

We have an election management system that was built in the mid-1990s.  We call it ESM, which I never understood, other than that as a county government, we already have an EMS.

Anyway, this system is where we set up our election--candidates, races, jurisdictions, supplies, election workers, and polling places, for starters.

This isn't Microsoft Project with many tabs.  In fact, we use an extract of the election to feed into our tabulation system to set up the ballots and candidate rotation on the ballots.

We have about 1,500 different ballot types for this election and hundreds of races.  This setup takes days to manually enter.

I've pasted at the bottom of this post some examples of the output we get from this system.  The samples here are about 10 pages from 50 pages of reports that, literally, took four hours to print.

I wanted the forms as examples when we went into our county's capital budget process to again ask for funding to replace this 20-year-old system that isn't supported and, if it crashed today, we'd have no sure way of rebuilding.  In Johnson County, not investing in elections for years and years will eventually come to roost, and we stress each election as we set this up.

There was a hot minute where the statewide voter registration system, known as ELVIS after a semi-forced acronym to make it sound cool, was going to be an evolution of our ESM.  At the time, it was provided by Accenture and the state of Kansas selected Accenture for ELVIS.

My second day on the Election Commissioner job, I was greeted with the news that things were back to the drawing board for the statewide voter registration system.  I don't know what occurred, other than that the state and Accenture came to an "understanding."

But, this meant, in order to have a system up and going and in compliance with the Help America Vote Act, this new procurement had great urgency.  As such, when implemented, some of the initially envisioned features (those in our ESM) were not part of the project.  Some have come since, but this is why we run with two systems--ELVIS and our, um, ELVIS impersonator.

Our Deputy Election Commissioner and a very weary employee have been proofing printouts from an equally weary employee who set up the election and comparing that output with two other employees--rapidly approach weary--in the tabulation room.

From there, we create an audio ballot for each of the 1,500 we have (for those who are blind and cast a ballot on their own) and we will have a group of part-time employees listen to each of the ballot to proof the accuracy.

We have to get this proofing done so we can send our ballot order for the paper ballots to be printed.  We can print military and overseas ballots at our office to get them out on time, but the big load of ballots are printed out of state.

Machines in a row here, no ducks.

We're also gearing up to try printing all advance-by-mail ballots at our office.  That will be about 10,000 ballots and require that we purchase a solution we've been eyeballing for quite a while and many others--particularly those in Florida--have utilized successfully.  The benefit is that we print only the ballots we use (rather than large overages as we estimate demand) and the net cost, because we don't pay for unused ballots we destroy, should be less.

Meanwhile, another group of part-timers have invaded the warehouse, beginning manual diagnostics on each voting machine.  The typical  automated machine diagnostics are comparable to what your computer goes through when it boots up.  We don't think that's good enough.

Doing the diagnostics manually, instead, is laborious, but it ensures that nothing nefarious has sneaked into our machines.  It's a best practice created by Johnson County and emulated nationwide, in fact.

There you go--boring.  Boring, Busy, Ballot work--the Three B's.

We're entering that "no time for laundry" period, in fact, and soon will be ready for Bleach, Borax, and Brightener, and not just for our clothes.

Moment of Clarity

Sometimes "behind the scenes," is on video, and for that I'm grateful.

Today, during the county's initial budget presentation, the capital overview included a list of large items not included in the budget.  Fair enough, but there was no mention of voting machines, a submission I've been making now, literally, for five years.

That's okay, too, if the decision is transparent that the machines aren't being funded.  But such a list on a slide could lead passersby to believe that the machines somehow were in the five-year forecast.

The request for nearly $13 million, but was the only project requested above $3 million listed on the "large items not funded" list.

I sent an email to the Board of County Commissioners to alert them to this.  My intention simply was to have a trail if, say, in 2017 our current old machines were quickly failing, we were in a crisis mode and I was asked in a public meeting why I'd never requested voting machine funding before.

I was surprised today when the county manager spoke to the email, announcing he was in great anticipation of the Election Commissioner advocating a system, at which time he would "be able to budget that in."

Below is the submission I made this year, very similar to previous submissions over the years.

I've taken out the vendor quotes that were stamped confidential by the vendor, but these were the same quotes used by an earlier Board to place funds in the 5-year forecast in 2010.  Still, the submission is several pages long and details the scope of the project.

Reducing the budgeted amount in 2011 and removing it altogether in 2012, and then pinning the absence of voting machines in the budget today on a lack of clarity from the election commissioner conjures the need here for several adjectives.  For now, "unfair" will do.

A major impediment to serving our voters has been the current county manager.  A blog that demonstrates what we go through in preparing for elections that doesn't bring this to light would be equally unfair to voters.

If machines were put into next year's five-year forecast, we'd be looking at new voting machines in 2021, 18 years after the current machines were put into service.  Previous replacements (twice) have come at 15-year intervals.

Of course, it's no gimmee that anything will be put into the next year's five-year forecast.  It's probably evident by now, though, to you, dear reader, that I consider this year's budget process to be a crucible for our voters.   My commitment to the Year of the Voter requires such a thing.

In today's world of baseball's instant replay, we see fewer arguments by managers after umpire calls.  Those arguments are really for the "next call;" this call is over.  I see that for 2015, but we need the machines in next year's five-year forecast.

We can't wait any longer.  We have to move to a plan that prepares for the replacement of these machines. 

They will be replaced of course.  We can't have 400,000 voters raising their hands to vote.  This forced conversation is simply to ensure that there isn't a tax increase at the time to pay for them, blamed on the Election Commissioner.

There will be more budget posts--our presentation and discussion with the Board is at the end of this month.

Here is what was submitted in March during the county manager's CIP process.  (It's probably worth, also, pointing out that I volunteered to serve on the prioritization committee after a vacancy on his committee occurred last year, but I never got a response on that, either).

Pay (For) It Forward

Two unrelated events this week demonstrate the hurdles Johnson County voters and taxpayers face in looking at a new voting system.



Thanks to Colorado's Judd Choate for this photo.  NPR's
Pam Fessler moderated a panel among super-smart
election administrators Dana Debeauvoir, Dean Logan,
and Matt Masterson.  They let me on the stage, too.

The first was Monday, when I shared the stage with incredibly bright colleagues at a University of Chicago symposium on the future of elections.

The theme of the conference, as you can see from the photo, was implementation, or, as I quoted the "8-Ball Deluxe" pinball game I often stood by as I played Asteroids in college, it is time to "stop talking and start chalking."

The panel discussed next-generation voting systems and my big message related to funding.  More on that later (and this will be a very long post, but stick with it, please).

The second event happened Thursday at a Board of County Commissioner meeting.  The Commission voted to take $250,000 out of reserves to pay for a new request by the Enterprise Center of Johnson County.  The Enterprise Center is an admirable initiative facing funding challenges.

Now, this post has nothing to do, really, with any opinions of the Enterprise Center.  Its mission is to help incubate new businesses in Johnson County that, theoretically, will impact the long-term viability of the area. 

But I contend that this money, ostensibly taken from reserves, actually represents money that will be borrowed in the future on the back of the election office.

To make the point, let's start with an analogy.

Suppose you buy and finance a new car.

But, you don't really like the idea of financing the car and decide that the next time you buy a car, you'd love to be in a position to pay cash.  Maybe, you think, if you could sock away extra money each year you'll have enough to do that very thing.

It hurts, but you put away more than $2,000 each year, on top of your debt payments. You start to realize that even at this rate, you won't be able to pay cash for your next car, but if you drive your current car long enough, you'll have a pretty good chunk you can pay as a down payment.

A few years into this plan, your car is paid off but you've increased your borrowing for other things--necessary things, like a home--and you're still putting away $2,000 each year for your future car.

Then you hit a rough couple of years.  You have more expenses than you can afford.  Believing that the $2,000 per year won't be enough to pay for a new car anyway, you repurpose that savings.  You pay these expenses from your savings because that's better than charging things on your credit card and paying interest.

Times get better but your older car needs improvements and you take money out of your "new car fund" to pay for them.

You consider beginning to again pay into the car fund, but it's been a while since you've spent money on anything, really, and you could benefit from upgrading other items--your wardrobe, things for your home, and other expenses that, while optional, would improve your standard of living.

Soon, your savings has whittled down, your car is old, and now you face a much higher monthly payment if you buy a new car.  Worse, there is some question whether you can even get financed because you've borrowed so much elsewhere.  At the very least, you won't qualify for the best interest rate.

If only you had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved.  Instead, you face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable monthly car payment.

So, let's connect the Monday-Thursday dots with a list of events related to our voting system:

1. Johnson County's election commissioner, Connie Schmidt, with the support of county manager Gene Denton purchased touch-screen voting machines in 2001.   This purchase was funded by bonds, issued by the county.
2. At the same time, the Board of County Commissioners began to set aside $443,508 as an equipment replacement fund for the eventual time a new system is needed.
3. In 2008 and again in 2012, more machines were purchased, against this fund, to be prepared for presidential election years.  These purchases were the last needed until a new system is acquired.
4. In 2010, as the county faces budget issues, the new county manager elects to stop funding the equipment replacement fund.  One of the arguments is that this amount, set aside each year, would not be enough to meet the expense related to replacing the fleet of machines.  The other argument is that the project did not have a "clear goal," even though two previous county managers and various members of the Board over the years obviously thought it must have because the fund was established and fed without any idea of what voting systems would look like 15 years later.  Still, the move was considered temporary and funding would begin again in 2012.
5. Incongruently, perhaps, that same year, the county's approved budget included funding of the election office's $13 million request for new voting machines in the 2015 capital budget.
6. In 2012's budget cycle, that 2015 budgeted amount was changed by the county manager to $5 million.  Also, the 2012 budget did not represent the voting equipment replacement fund reinstating as earlier planned.
7. All capital money for voting machines is removed in the budgets presented for 2013, for 2014, and, I expect, 2015.
8. One argument, now, is simply that $13 million is a lot of money, and we have been asked if there are ways that amount could be split over a period of time.  Operationally, that would be terrible, but financially, one way to have split the cost, of course, would have been to use the equipment replacement fund as a "down payment," making the total more reachable.

Now, realize that the county manager faces tremendous pressure to present a budget that doesn't result in a mill levy increase, and also understand that the budget includes potential future financed projects, and that financing impacts reserves and, eventually, the mill levy as well.

But, unless something changes, voting machines will not be purchased in Johnson County without a tax increase.  (And, scanners, if paper ballots were used, coincidentally represent a cost of about $5 million to the county because we don't have scanners today.  Beyond that, Johnson County voters elected to use voting machines over paper in the late 1960s and it's likely that paper ballots would go against the proverbial will of the people).

In any event, here we are: 

On Monday, I'm professing issues with funding.

On Thursday, money is pulled from reserves to pay for a new need.  It's fair to question if this money would have been available if the elections equipment replacement fund had continued.

One thing I said Monday is that I'm convinced we will get funding for a new voting system.  It's inconceivable to think otherwise.

But how will that be paid for?  By a tax increase?  Is the voting system the trigger for such a thing, or, really, is it other spending?  Are there other voting machine-like issues in the county, representing large future expenditures that aren't anywhere in the budget book?

Kansas statute 19-3534a allows for the Board of County Commissioners to have a separate tax levy for elections.  I've long advocated this to our county manager--not as a tax increase, but as a called-out separate line item so that people see exactly how much elections are costing.  I think this is the ultimate in government transparency.

This line item is utilized in two of the three other counties in Kansas with election commissioners.  Further, I think there is value in creatively considering a scenario where the county purchases equipment, capital improvements, and supplies and leases these items to the election office.  We then could bill the county on a per-voter basis but, more importantly, do the same with jurisdictions that have special elections.

For the county, this initially would be a wash.  For the jurisdictions, costs would go up to fully capture the cost to provide elections on their behalf.  In turn, this would shift some costs from the total Johnson County taxpayer to the taxpayer of the jurisdiction that created the cost.

(I get that, for instance, a Shawnee taxpayer also is a Johnson County taxpayer, but such a scenario could reduce costs to the Johnson County taxpayers as a whole and only be represented by those in the jurisdictions that create special elections.  It's a "cost-causer is the cost-payer" model.)

But, to the point of the voting machine costs--as it is, the $400,000-plus ongoing run rate from 2001 that stopped in 2010 has been repurposed to fund other county activities.    I wouldn't disagree that these activities are important--just like the Enterprise Center funding--but when they are funded and, later, the county must borrow money or take tax action to pay for voting systems, this has to be considered.  

It's not necessarily the voting machines that are causing the impact.  At the very least, a couple of million dollars that eventually gets financed or is part of the tax increase is a bit of an innocent bystander.  $13 million might have be $10 million if the fund continued.

(That said, I'd argue strongly that there isn't a more important tax dollar spent than on elections because that's kind of where government starts).

Like the car analogy:

If only we had kept putting aside the money, or at the very least, began putting the money into the fund again as times improved.  Instead, we face an insurmountable and possibly unaffordable voting systems payment.

Black Cloud Voting

In keeping with recent posts, this will be a yarn again referencing a woman I've never met and a Morrissey song title.

This time, the context is voting equipment.  Or, better said, non-voting equipment used for voting.

It's been two years since I laid claim on this site to a concept I'd been talking about for a while even then:  Bring Your Own Voting Machine (BYOVM).

It's a concept that has taken hold, with many vendors working some solution related to it.

During a meeting with members of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration this past July, I was talking to co-chair Ben Ginsberg about voting equipment.  I began cranking up the first few notes of my BYOVM yarn.

"What if voters could use their smartphones to call up a sample ballot, complete it, and take it in to the polling place to vote," he postulated.

"Well, that's exactly the point of my---," I began before the Commission's senior researcher Nate Persily jumped in.

"They can do that already!" he said.

At that moment, I felt all yarn engines clicking, ready to shout, "Wait, that was my idea!  Let me bore you with why."  

Nate was so wide-eyed and cheery, though, I realized that such a claim would be futile.

It conjured a time when a good friend of mine explained how he came up with the idea of Beanie Babies before Beanie Babies were, well, Beanie Babies.  I believe him.  No one else would.

Likewise, after watching our toddler son drop many pacifiers years and years ago, my wife and I conceived of the Dinky Dunker, some sort of belt contraption with sanitizing liquid that parents could carry, push down the grubby pacifier into it (much like giving a golf ball a wash at the tee), and--pop!--back to the baby's mouth the pacifier would go.  

If someone invents that, ala the Beanie Babies story, remember you read that here first.

(As a secondary yarn, my favorite book of all time, "Competing for the Future," speaks to this a bit, particularly as a reason for not asking customers to define what they want.  Customers will always talk in today's terms, not in terms of a solution to the problem.  You know you've hit on something when it quickly moves from a future idea to a pedestrian yawner like BYOVM is becoming).

So, Thursday we had a vendor come with a demonstration of different voting systems.  Another came Friday.

All of the national talk and recent coverage about nothing being available for the next generation of voting systems may be true but it won't be true much longer.  Voting systems may represent the next innovation explosion.

And, I do believe they all will allow for the incorporation of smart devices.  

I remember years ago how any network connection was taboo in the voting system world. It pretty much still is, but the network is all around us.  Many of these new systems anticipate tentacles into the network.

We live in a connected world and it's unlikely election administration will stay fenced away.  This is a big change coming with the next-generation voting systems.  Network-centric applications in use on election day are inevitable.

I'm not talking online voting, but online administration using systems, for instance, that can report back through the network exactly how many people have voted at any polling place at any given time of the day.  Other metrics can come back, too.  We'll probably have the ability to know how many people have voted in a specific race at any minute.

If a line is mounting somewhere--we will be able to dispatch a field supervisor to check it out before the supervising judge realizes the place is swamped.  It would be the equivalent of a second checker coming up to help before the first looked up to notice the pile-up that everyone in line had been feeling for a few minutes as their ice cream melted.

When the media asks in a few years how things are going out there, we'll be able to call up a dashboard of activity around the county and answer with precision.

Perhaps a new issue won't be that we won't know how many people will have voted when we get that call, but rather what happens when that information is released.  Would that stir or stifle turnout?

Yogi Berra's "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded," could be an unintended consequence of saying with confidence that voting has been heavy.  Explaining that only 10 people have voted in the first hour may take the zest out of others to go vote.  Too much information could become our new problem.

The Internet may not be used to vote, but it's presence will be all around the administration of the election.

That would be scary stuff to Bev Harris, (the woman I haven't met that is the subject of this lead and author of "Black Box Voting.")

It's scary enough to me, too--at least enough to continue in my "Think Like the Jetsons, Live Like the Flintstones" election administration approach.  After all, Johnson County initially modemed election results back from the polls in April 2002, but that concept either wasn't ready for prime time or just wasn't ready.

Either way, it didn't work that well, and any community that hand-transports election results back on election night, like we do, can thank that episode as the reason.

There aren't many royalty-free
options for "black cloud," but
I'm sure you get the idea

So, thinking of that, and for whatever reason continuing to think about Morrissey songs since "Now I Am A Was" rattled through my brain with my post 10 days ago, I realized that the future is less "Black Box Voting,"  and more "Black Cloud Voting."

I don't envision elections as dark and scary, neither Black Box-ey nor Black, uh, Cloudy.

But if activists were concerned with a black box sitting between the voter and results, "To The Cloud," isn't a phrase that will give them comfort.  More and more, networks and data servers of some type will be between the voter and the election office.

I think that's a good thing, at least in the context that we'll have more data, faster, and can provide better service to the voter.

But, jeez, here comes a paradigm shift, lady.

It isn't the underpaid, overworked, and understaffed election offices you'll need to worry about.  It's not the big, bad voting machine companies that could create chaos.  One of them, someday, would like to make a sale.  They might want to sell to more than one customer, in fact, and any kind of network vulnerability is the last thing they'll want.

The new round of vulnerabilities will be what we face daily elsewhere in our lives.  They won't even be tied to voting systems, as much as deceptive tactics or even just fear-factor headlines.

(And, sorry, but let's get real, that's what many of the black-box voting headlines were in the first place.)

For instance, we haven't seen credible cases of iPhone malware, but "mobile hacking threats" has been a topic long enough now that it's actually become tired.

As we move from the simple systems we have today, 1990s technology, to the robust systems of the future, we have to realize that there is a whole large group of ne'er do wells who will see opportunities to disrupt our lives in general and elections, specifically.

They will be able to disrupt simply with claims, the equivalent of technology bomb-threats.  They will disrupt with fake attempts to make people, outside of our systems, think they are voting when they aren't.

All this comes with the move to newer technology that we all know is on the horizon.

This phenomena can't be new.  In its own way, technology changes in each cycle led to similar but more primitive worries.

In fact, "Black Box Voting" gives us a good feel for reactions the last time voting systems amped up.  Many of us were not in election administration then, but we know we'll need to be wide-eyed on all fronts as we introduce new technology.

Yes, this yarn has a point--several of them, in fact:

• Election systems (not just voting systems) are about to see their moment of innovation.
• We've seen pile-on innovation in other industries, and I really believe that if you're an IT developer, elections is going to be a fun place to be over the next few years.
• Election offices are going to be more IT-centric.  We're already seeing this, and I predict more than half of election office staff members will be IT-oriented within 5 years.
• We will need to give a growing amount of mindshare to blocking out new threats.  Election administrators are good at creating security procedures, but we will be spending more time going down what we hope will be blind alleys just to demonstrate that there is no vulnerability.
• That's because we are about to emerge into a world that simply can't ignore the connected world.  At some point, election administrators will be chastised for not connecting systems, as opposed to today's world where that practice is applauded.

It circles back to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration and their report.  This is the first of two posts related to the voting system recommendations.  

This post is more to acknowledge that we're not just facing the need for a new voting system in Johnson County.  That system will be the catalyst for a whole new way of operating, in ways we can't yet foresee but will be expected to foresee before we spend any money.

The second post will focus on the financial side.  So, that's my blogging homework assignment, to tap out part two.

And that brings a whole 'nother definition of "Black Cloud."  More soon.

Future Exploration

If there's one area of agreement among election insiders, it's that the industry model is broken.

"Election insiders," in this geeky non-political blog, by the way, simply means anyone who has a stake in the day-to-day administration of elections--local election officials like me, state election officials, election integrity activists, academics, vendors, disability stakeholders, and the loads of smart people who somehow woke up and found themselves professionals in the election administration space.

One such smart person is David Becker at Pew's Center for the States.  I've generally been hesitant to use names in my blog, but there's really no way around it in this post.  David is the head of the elections practice at Pew and is a strategic thought-leader in election administration.

As a further aside, I always thought he was smart but I learned this week that he had been a contestant years ago on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire."  Not to sound like Dianne Wiest in the movie Parenthood when she encounters someone who also attended Woodstock ("I THOUGHT you looked familiar!"), but I am certain I saw his run on the show.

So, David pulled together a small group of insider-ey types to help answer the million-dollar election question we're all facing.  Specifically, voting systems that were once shiny are nearing the end of their lives with no plan, no money, or no solution for replacement in many cases.

Consider what I typed when submitting a capital budget request last year in Johnson County:

"Election systems must be a) federally certified, b) compliant with the Election Administration Commission's Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines, and c) Kansas state-certified.   Currently, no systems exist that meet this criteria."

We aren't alone.  Thankfully, Los Angeles County is about 18 months ahead of us in the process of looking at a new solution.  The biggest challenge is putting definition around the drivers and restrainers in the election industry in order to frame the problem, identify solutions, and make recommendations.

This isn't really hard work, but it requires time.  I spent years in strategic planning at Sprint doing this very thing.  But it is impossible to do when you're always in election mode, as we've been with nearly 50 elections in my 7 1/2 years at the county.

I feel good that I've kept up with all the reading in the 150 different arms and legs that impact the industry, and my thoughts are pretty well organized.  But I haven't really had the time to put all this into a document.

This blog, in fact, is designed to capture some of these things.  An election industry assessment, in the business world, would be a million-dollar study by Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, or some other group of smart people.

Without this, discussions regarding the future of elections in our county often get derailed because of the myriad of uncertainty we face.  The uncertainty can be an excuse not to take any action, turning the can we kick down the street into a 100-gallon barrel.

So, smart-guy David did something that was monumental but also likely very normal-sounding to those outside of the industry.  He pulled some people in with various perspectives and put them in one room to discuss the issues we are facing.

It was a breakthrough because most election meetings are conducted with people who have the same point of view, or at least the same orientation.  We talk to ourselves a lot in this industry.  Activists who are certain they know a better way talk to themselves, too.  Rarely do opposing viewpoints--or perceived opposing viewpoints as is usually more likely--meet.

I believe this stems from Black Box Voting, a book, website, and HBO special pushed by activist Bev Harris (oops, another name) years ago.  Speaking of names, Bev Harris had no problem publishing in her book the names of election officials and, fairly or unfairly, called them out at times.

Election administrators work very hard to NOT be the news, so this was a hurtful new thing to many, especially to the friends and professional colleagues of those mentioned.  This new election activism felt very personal and set up a divisive culture that seems rather silly as more time passes.

If you start with the notion that we all want the same thing--perfect elections--disagreements on the path to get there aren't bad at all.  The only way to confront obstacles is to actually know what they are.

The meeting allowed us to identify and hash through some of those obstacles.  No pies were thrown and, in fact, I think we agreed on many things. 

We even named some potential solutions and approaches.  David's focus now is to determine if Pew has a role in helping frame the industry's roadmap.

I hope so.  All I've had time to do is obtain the domain electionroadmap, which just redirects to this site for now.  We had a part-time employee in 2008 focused on the roadmap, but he left to join Wyandotte County as a full-timer and we had to give up his position to budget cuts and couldn't backfill.

There's a long lead time in government budgeting and it's not realistic to hope a placeholder of several million dollars is put into a budget as we hash through the solution.  Likewise, if we wait until the ideal solution is developed, our current system could be kaput before we've even begun crafting a way to pay for the new system.

I'm still a proponent of my concept of Bring Your Own Voting Machine,  posted in February, and if implemented, that could save our county millions of dollars.

It's still only a gleam in the eye right now, although articulating any vision feels a little closer after the meetings this week.

Machine Preparation

Today, Verified Voting released a study in conjunction with Common Cause and Rutgers School of Law regarding what they term Voting Technology Preparedness.

(Note to self: I think this means that it's officially too late to get back with Verified Voting on their survey this go-round.  Thankfully, our state election director did respond to them and nothing has really changed since our last response).

A reporter from a local radio station called me this afternoon about the study and a couple of its conclusions and implications for Johnson County.

One of the study's conclusions, overall, is that Internet voting is a risk for military and overseas voters.  We aren't using Internet voting for these voters in 2012, so I explained that wasn't an issue in Kansas.

(Second note to self:  I think voters expect Internet voting to be something they can do very soon.  Of course, it's not ready for late-night, let alone Prime Time.  I have raised many objections to Internet voting myself, but, gee, hasn't anybody read, "Getting to Yes"?  Surely we can crack this code if we work together.)

I also explained a centerpiece of the Verified Voting study with relation to Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trails (VVPATs).  Verified Voting wants them and our machines were put into service before VVPATs were invented.  Thus, we'll never score well in this department until our fleet retires and we have a new solution around 2017.

Our current machines are fourth-generation electronic voting machines in Johnson County.  We've had electronic voting machines of some sort or another since Lyndon Johnson was running for president.

That doesn't mean we're paperless, though.  We printed about $100,000 worth of ballots in this election alone for ballots by mail, potential provisional ballots, and to be able to have paper at the polls for anyone upon request.

We were the first electronic voting machine county in the nation to do such as thing as far as I can tell, by the way.  We have a special process for these voters, in fact.

We call them Gold Voters so they don't feel like second-class citizens asking to vote on paper.  Their ballot goes in a special envelope to distinguish it from a provisional ballot.  It's a Manila envelope, but "Manila Voter" doesn't sound very prestigious, so "Gold" won as the name.

I then explained our various security measures with our machines.  Besides physical security procedures, one thing we do is a manual logic and accuracy test, which is kryptonite to many of the supposed viruses that others claim could infiltrate voting machines over a period of years.  This spread of a virus to control a future election is speculation at best, but the manual test would catch such a thing if it really existed.

We do this for every machine before every election.  We had one of our election workers do a simulation of our machine diagnostics in the video below.  In real life, we use the actual ballot with actual votes placed at random and then compared to the tally, which is an expected outcome.  We chose the simulation here so that even our random votes would not in any way be construed as endorsement of an actual candidate.

Still, you get the idea, and imagine doing this for a full ballot on 2,000 machines before each election.  Then, we prepare for the Public Test, for which we will have rehearsal tomorrow.  I'll plan to post some photos of next week's public test.  We also do post-election audits to compare results from the machine printouts to the machine totals and also to what was uploaded to the tabulation server.

For now, a simulation only of the logic and accuracy test:

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

Fired Up, Ready to Blow

It's not all fun and games here at the Election Office.

Every once in a while, we just have a day where we feel ran over.  (That would be physically ran over; we have plenty of days where we feel emotionally ran over).

Today was one of those days.

Amid the backdrop of the legislature's lack of a redistricting plan, we're pondering election scenarios and questions that simply don't have answers.  

Already, we've seen the filing deadline for candidates move in some races from June 1 to June 11, but June 1 had many other areas of significance for us.

June 1, for instance, was the drop-dead date to get our warehouse rearranged with customized tables to support our growth of 400 new voting machines.

When looking at voter registration numbers and the existing life of our fleet three years ago, I embarked on a mission to purchase 400 reconditioned voting machines at a significantly reduced rate from ES&S. 

We had money in reserves to cover the purchase and with the purchase, I felt we would be able to ride out our fleet through 2017.

We scheduled an agenda item with the Board of County Commissioners after it was determined that we did not need Board approval for the machines.  The agenda item was simply a way to have public record of our intent.

This was in 2010 and, unfortunately, during the meeting the agenda item was closed with someone telling the Board that they would see this item again as a formal resolution.

That was not the plan, but it suddenly became the plan.

So, off we went, formalizing a contract that took much more time than it should and arranging for a vendor to build new tables and another to lay in electrical wiring for the new machines.

We finally got Board approval in June 2011 and the machines were delivered in July.  The tables were expected at the same time.

The table delivery date drifted and drifted, first September and then January.  The absolute line in the sand was June 1 and we were assured we'd have the tables delivered before we were in full election mode for the August primary.

We're 15 days out from that and have only a smattering of tables.

But, in the meantime, we were able to get the new electrical work done.

Cleared out space for the new tables and....

Today, we moved machines on the new tables, plugged them in, turned on power to the plugs, and had an immediate power surge of popping and exploding.

We've tested one of the machines and its power supply is fried.  We'll test more tomorrow, or, better said, when our power situation in the warehouse is stable.  Right now, we're without air conditioning.  Apparently, we need a new transformer now in our building or at the curb.

You might remember that we had a power outage at the curb earlier this year.

...the tables in place, waiting for machines
to be connected.

It's possible this is related or, otherwise, the electrical work was completed improperly.

In any event, as I sweated out all of the things that could go wrong with the tables, I never thought the project could go so wrong it would destroy the machines I spent two years obtaining and that they would be fried less than six months before the presidential election.  

The machines are insured, but we're told the deductible is $100,000.  I imagine we'd need Board approval to replace the machines.  

That would be the third go-round for this project and each trip to the Board includes a Board meeting, an agenda review meeting, a staff pre-meeting, a staff pre-pre-meeting, a meeting with budget, and a meeting with the county manager.  If we do go after more machines for the presidential election, we'll get them in 2013.

The good news is that it took our minds off the fact that we don't really know when the August election will be.  That's worthy of an update.  

Okay, "worthy of an update," is different than an actual blog update.  We're waiting for an update, too, but I plan to blog the latest on that by Friday.

Oh, That Wasn't Us

This has been a week of, "Oh, that's not us."

First, we weren't involved in Super Tuesday and second, the caucus yesterday in Kansas was a party thing, not an election office thing.

But we have been busy.  For grist, I turn you to our warehouse, which we are in the process of rewiring. 

Our voting machines are always plugged in but cycle so the batteries run down and then recharge.

Some rows charge on Sunday, some on Monday, Tuesday, and so on.  The batteries will only last a couple of hours, in case of a temporary loss of power at the polling place, but we want to make sure they are, indeed, ready if called upon.

We purchased 400 machines last year to accommodate growth but our warehouse has no room for them.  We're exchanging tables to squeeze more machines per table.

Or, at least we hope we are exchanging tables.  The new tables have been on order for more than a year with assurance they will all be delivered by June 1.  We'll see.

In the meantime, our facilities group has enlisted a moving company to shift tables around for the electricians and we have been very frustrated that we had to provide extra insurance for them to make these moves.

This is a moving company, after all, in the business to, yup, move things.  Apparently, "Butterfingers McGee Moving" couldn't accept this job without our county paying extra for the insurance for all 2,500 machines.

Really. 

Tables of voting machines, moving 5 feet either way.
The tarp covers them in case the fire sprinklers go off.

Suitcases of supplies that
will be squeezed to make
way for new tables and machines

Oh, and we have a deductible.  Break two machines and that's acceptable, apparently--the first two are on us. 

Of course, they won't break or drop any.  But it was a clever way for the company to get about $21,000 extra from our county, and we have been helpless in pointing this out.  Our Risk Management department had no problem negotiating our money (yours, if you are in Johnson County).

The option would be to leave the new machines standing in the aisles, and that's not acceptable.

I think if the movers thought they would drop all 2,500 machines we probably needed different movers.  All they are doing is lifting each table a foot and moving it over by 5  feet.

Anyway, this is the first time I've popped some pictures of our operation into the blog.  The photos don't do things justice, but I thought it would give you sense of what's happening.  I'll show more when we get closer to our next full-county election in the summer.

New electrical wiring awaiting the
final move (suitcases did
not have to be insured).