Advance Prep for Advance Voting

This week, I received a call from someone who was interested in helping our office secure advance voting sites.

Maybe he can help.  We'd like to go from four to six sites in 2014 but our ability to do that is dependent upon several things falling our way.

He asked about some of that.

The number one thing is that our office has to identify and negotiate property leases.  We don't have an advance voting procurement division so this is a linear effort (we chase one lead down until it dries and go after another) on the part of an assistant election commissioner and me.

That empty storefront that's been vacant for three years?  Don't even suggest to the leasing agent that it might be vacant a year from now, let alone July through November of 2014.

We can't begin to pursue sites until January and, historically, we're scrambling in April to close the deals, even as we conduct our April election.  So, we have may have grand plans to have advance locations strategically located throughout the county, but by March we'll be on a site land grab.

I equate this effort to that of a college basketball coach.  We're always recruiting.  In our case, we're always recruiting workers and locations.

If we have a chance to snag a blue chipper, even if we were after a center but get a strong shooting guard to commit, we'll pounce and recast our team and our needs going forward.  If we want a site at 135th and State Line but we get the Great Mall in Olathe, we'll build a new plan around that.

Expectations for advance voting locations have escalated--voters want the sites close and they don't want to wait to vote.  Hence, our desire to increase to six sites.

If we had bigger sites, though, we could put more machines at the locations.  Metcalf South, our signature site, can hold about 25 machines.  We tried for a bigger store at the mall in 2012 but were unable to get it, and it's always iffy if we'll ever be able to return at the location, anyway.  Someday, the mall will be demolished.

It's a landmark location, so we'd love to have it forever.  The rent we've paid there is "nearly free," compared to the $25,000 we've had to pay in Shawnee.

Again, the Shawnee location is a good site, but it could be bigger and it also demonstrates that each site brings at least this much in rent expense.  That storefront has been vacant now for six years, so depending on your perspective, we're working on borrowed time there, too, or we shouldn't be worried at all for 2014.

(As we discuss locations, this is about the time someone at the county asks, "Have you ever thought about ......?"  Thank you--yes, whatever comes in place of the ellipses, yes, we have looked into that.)

Some of our advance voting election workers, at our office
just before we opened during the presidential election
cycle last year.  They were still zippy at the end.

We need several carts of paper ballots at each location, resulting not only in increased printing costs, but storage space at our warehouse.  In August, we have more than 1,500 unique ballots.

(Yes, thank you, we HAVE looked into ballot on demand printing, but it's not practical in these cases.  It might be, with about a $60,000 investment per site and we will have to try that if we move to six sites.  We don't have the physical space to bring in 30 more file cabinets into our warehouse).

We have learned that we need to retain the sites for the period from mid-July to mid-November. This reduces short-term moving of some items (like tables, chairs, and break supplies), but increases the cost of the facility. 

(Why, yes, imaginary question-asker, we have considered the county facility on ABC Boulevard....and every library in the county).

Our extended-period needs knock out any potential for a county facility but, actually, just the fact that we need the location for more than one day already dealt that blow.  Any facility being used is, well, to type the obvious, being used.

Finally, the big issue is that we need more staff members to pull it off.  During advance voting, most of our staff works 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Saturday.  Two additional staff members would help keep them, literally, alive, and allow for some rotation of a light day where one or two employees work just 12-hour days.

There is thought that advance voting as percentage of total vote has peaked, between 40 and 50 percent of the total.  Perhaps, but as we face fewer options for election day, the drive for 6 sites is more vital.  Complaints of lines are never good, but they are much better if they are related to advance locations than election-day locations.

And right now, speaking of lines, neither type of facility is lining up to be amply available in 2014 and 2016.

Future = Present

I'm so mad at my mother.

Or, so goes the beginning of a joke on the "Let's Get Small" album by Steve Martin.

"I don't know," he says, "she calls me up the other day.  She wants to borrow ten dollars for some food!  Can you believe that?  I said, 'Hey! I work for a living.'"

I thought of that in part because yesterday was Mother's Day but mostly because that sentiment sums up how I felt when leading a panel on The Future of Elections at the Kansas Clerks conference in Manhattan this past week.

I'm so mad at The Future of Elections....

Better said, I'm tired of the Future of Elections.

I feel like we've collectively dilly-dallied talking about the future for a few years now and, gee, the future is here.

The Future Is Now!

That's not really an inspirational message.  It's a signal of a crisis.

This is the front of the t-shirts our
high-school election workers wore
in 2012.

Those voting machines that we think will need to be retired after 2016's presidential election?  In some circles, politically at least, the 2016 election is "on."  2016 is essentially here.

Heck, in the budget world, the 2014 budget is nearly locked in Johnson County.  The next budget for discussion really is the 2015 budget.  We found out about a $30,000 cost surprise last week at the conference for 2014, so we're already in the hole next year.

The future is encircling us.  I've seen the future in this case and it looks a lot like the present, only with even fewer resources.

Every year when we talk about the daunting issues surrounding certification of new voting systems, the complexity leads the capital budget team to consider not doing anything until things appear more certain.

A year later, and a year closer to the future present, the budget boulder becomes bigger.  We've advocated for a couple of years to at least put into the budget a replacement system just like what we have now (and if that doesn't spell the future is now, what does?), hoping we'll push the needle on our "Bring Your Own Voting Machine" concept I explained here more than a year ago.  If so, the financial need will be much less but, if not, we're covered financially.

We're closely following Los Angeles County's process to look at a new voting system and plan to emulate the community input and ideation process.  That's easier typed than done, though, because we barely have the headcount at our office to conduct the current elections, let alone think about the future ones.

And that's the rub.  In our case, "Dilly-dallied," is a harsh descriptor because we simply don't have the resources we need to operate.  The 2012 election emphasized that we are one untimely illness or staff member departure from failure.  We requested the replacement of two positions cut during our budget downturn in 2010 and money to replace our 1990s-based election management system that hasn't been supported since 2005.

We're likely to get neither request funded.  Without elections, there is no government, but government budget priorities don't always align with core and essential services.

One clear thing is that the future of elections will be much, much more expensive.  From postage to rent to training to facilities to simple increases in election worker pay (ours haven't had an increase in 8 years), the cost increase will be as dramatic as moving from a fully-depreciated 20-year-old Suburu to to a modest new Prius.  Any car payment, when one hasn't been paid for 20 years, will seem like sticker shock.

I think election administrators often have stayed silent about these realities.  That's not happening in the industry now, although little seems to be changing.

I wasn't around pre-2000, but I wonder if one of the root causes that led to a national financial upgrade on voting systems was that loyal government employees didn't stress the need for investment back then.     Or, and more likely, they were ignored.  Under-funded was business as usual.

It's possible that part of the future of elections is that all the 2000s will have done is raise expectations for elections without an equal increase in investment.  I often hear in this industry that sufficient funding never finds its way to the front lines until something goes wrong.

What a way to live--akin to one of my favorite song titles ever, by Panic at the Disco:  "The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage."

Make it happen with unreasonably few resources or fail and we'll give the resources to your replacement.  Many of our predecessors in the election administration industry lived that life for years and that's our future unless we accept and proclaim the urgency of the present.

Another favorite quote of mine is from Stephen Covey:  "Nothing fails like success."  The key to the future is accepting that we face a crisis in election administration unless a myriad of things are addressed.  This will become a major theme of this blog over the next few months as our staff begins to tactically address the future, er, the present of elections.

Google Me This: Ballots and Pallets

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.

I've often thought "Ballots and Pallets" would be an
interesting (to me) reality TV show.

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:

Google Glass

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.

That's a Bright Idea!

Our office received some validation last month with our use of iPads.

Specifically, Harvard University's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation has awarded our iPad solution at the polls (now branded the Election Worker Electronic Resource Guide) a 2013 "Bright Idea."

Our employees conceived of the innovative and cost-saving use of technology after we deployed iPads in our office last year.

We received word of the award last month but were asked not to announce it yet.  However, I saw today that the 13 winners were announced last week.

So, beans spilled :-)

The link below simply goes to the Harvard site and the list of national award winners.

I'll plan to follow up here with the entry info and description in the coming days.

http://www.ash.harvard.edu/Home/Programs/Innovations-in-Government/Awards/2013-Bright-Ideas

The brief summary on the site reads:

Johnson County has matched election worker needs with technology by using electronic aides in election day administration. This initiative evolved from training election workers online to the deployment of an Election Worker Electronic Resource Guide, which includes training presentations, opening and closing checklists, countywide precinct maps, a keyword-searchable soft copy version of the training manual, examples of photo IDs that are acceptable for voting, and a street index guide that is used to direct voters to their correct voting locations.

On the Clock

Here in Kansas City, it's NFL draft day and that's larger news than normal because the Chiefs currently own the number one pick in the draft.

The draft has become so theatrical that only the first round is conducted the first day.  Tomorrow, it's rounds 2 and 3.

So, assuming the Chiefs select a player in the first 15 minutes of the draft, the Chiefs are done for the night.  Scouts and player personnel staff can go home and even sleep in because the Chiefs, at the moment, don't even have a 2nd-round pick.

Of course, that's crazy thinking.  Even after making a selection, the team will be working hard, monitoring the selections of other teams and strategizing what might happen if the Chiefs did pull off a trade for a 2nd-rounder, or, worse-case, planning for round 3.

In fact, I'm sure the front office staff will be up tonight as late as the team that makes the final pick of the first round.

I bring up this example because it correlates to my last post.  Election day is not the end of work, but often it is assumed to be.  It's no more quittin' time than it will be for the Chiefs after the first selection is made.

Our April election, though, was officially wrapped up yesterday, when we met (as we always do as a staff) to conduct a post-mortem and review the good and bad, from an administration perspective, of the election.

Actually, we don't "always" do that--we did, for the first time, skip one--the February blizzard election. We had enough of that atrocity.  We didn't want to relive it further.  We will be walking through that in our nightmares for a while.

Our post-mortems are over lunch and give everyone a chance to reflect on things away from draft day.  I imagine the Chiefs will have such a meeting as well.

In the meantime, we're on the clock for another election.  Military and overseas ballots for the Olathe School District go out tomorrow!

Election Pile-Up or 52 Pick-Up

One of the biggest misnomers in elections is that when an election ends, so does the work.

In fact, with news today of another mail-ballot election coming this year, that will put us at two planned elections and three special elections (at least) in 2013.  My running total of elections administered will now be a full deck, 52 in less than nine years.

52 seems like a lot to me. Before I became an election guy, I had no idea there were so many elections.

We're averaging nearly one election every two months since I've been here, and that's been a pretty steady moving average.  With mail-ballot elections planned for the Olathe School District, Overland Park, and Olathe, the majority of our county's voters will have another, unplanned election in 2013.

Meanwhile, not only did the April election still have fragments that needed gussying for two weeks or so (we're doing some post-election audits now, in fact), the April election ended a 14-month frenzy of elections at the polls.

The February primary came upon us after November's election faster than the November election came from August.  Leading into August was a crunch-mode redistricting effort that consumed us from the end of the April 2012 election into the filing deadline days of June.

2012 kicked off with the implementation of the Secure and Fair Elections Act (primarily voter ID legislation) and our first polls election on Feb. 14.  Beyond the census, the obvious push of the presidential election was top of mind (and top of body) as we muscled ahead.

So now, everything that could have been discussed, pushed, or otherwise worked since December 2011 is on the docket.  My "to do" list is 821 items right now, and only one of them is my Walmart shopping list.

We only have a few months to make hay, personally and at the office.  Most staff members are max'd out on vacation accruals, have home repairs to address, and children events to make up after being invisible.  Sadly, one reason we wear our "Vote" apparel is that we don't have time to buy real clothes.

At the office, we have a massive fire alarm upgrade that started last week and has turned into the city of Olathe pulling large heavy construction vehicles here this morning.  They literally have torn up Kansas City Road in front of our building in a quest to understand our water maze.

A 5-year-old's dream observation moment:  several
yellow trucks doing serious excavating.  This is a small
part of the job, as the city looked for main water line
connection (which was under Kansas City Road).

We have a building security upgrade approved in either the 2011, 2010, or maybe 2009 budget that has been pushed out, with hopes of starting this summer.

Most importantly, we need to begin addressing every strategic issue facing us before we're into the 2014 cycle.  We're kicking off that process on July 2, when we thought we'd be done with elections for the year (ha).  I'll be reporting on that process here.

Meanwhile, the outside world assumes we're in down time.  Every meeting that could have been scheduled over the last 18 months is getting scheduled and our calendars are more overloaded than ever.

It makes sense, though--maybe conventional wisdom is right:  when the election ends,  maybe the work really is over.  We'll find out someday, maybe, when there isn't an election in process.

It's Not Rocket Science

Election administration may not be rocket science, but it does have one thing in common with the airline industry.

Specifically, that commonality exists with airline security.  In both cases, it seems like we're always focused on the last problem.

We take our shoes off and check our liquids at airports because of incidents that happened.

We train election workers and create processes for election day to address one-offs from the past.

Voters have concerns about voting machines?  Create a streamlined way to allow them to request a paper ballot at the polls.

Voters realize that touch-screen technology in place since the late 1990s can be temperamental?  Create a sign at the registration table to remind them that they aren't voting on modern Android or Apple devices and to review selections before hitting cast ballot.

Election worker fat-fingered the selection of a specific ballot on an encoder?  Send out a finger stylus that likely won't be used but try to create a simple 1-2-3 mental picture of how to check to make sure the proper ballot is encoded.

And so it goes.  A good half of our training time covers things that likely will never happen, but with 200 polling places and 1,000 workers, they will happen to one of them.

Much of the training is, "1 out of every 100 times," "2 out 10," "If you draw the short straw and this happens to you," etc.

April elections are the mostly likely ones where election workers might encounter a locked door when arriving at 6 a.m.  This happens once or twice in an election, and happened once this past week.

That's just a 5 percent of our polling places if you are scoring at home, affecting 0.5 percent of all of our workers.  If we knew where that would happen, training would be more efficient.  Without knowing that, everyone gets the rundown of what to do.

I'm a strong believer than in any industry, the technology is the easiest thing to learn.  Our election workers don't have any problems with voting machine technology or the iPad technology (for our electronic manual, for instance).  It's the procedures, the one-offs, the mental work that is the toughest.

When the mental work intersects with technology, technology looks like it's to blame.  One worker from Tuesday's election suggested that we give out the manual electronically.  We know the iPad was never pulled out of the supply bag at that location.

One of our more alarming pieces of feedback from this election was the suggestion that we separate new election worker training from those who have worked before.  Um, we do that, and even have a bit of a preamble at each training about the type of training they are attending.

In our refresher training, workers will ask questions that often are on others' minds (or should be).  Occasionally, someone goes to an absurd place: "so a dog comes with a photo ID that an owner got as a joke...." (no, not really, that was an absurd example to protect the genuine absurds).

It's common to hear moans when questions are asked.  I have relatively good moaner radar and make mental notes of the moaners.  Generally, the know-it-alls know it less than think they do.

We have lots of things we want to do to modify our training and had hoped to make hay with it and other planning this summer and fall.

Less than 24 hours after Tuesday's election, we found out we will have another special election, a mail-ballot in Overland Park.  Combined with a mail-ballot election in the Olathe School District, the majority of Johnson County voters will be voting again this year.


The special elections and the turnout this year highlight this year's model of "The Last Problem."

With turnout in this election at 8 percent and two summer special elections scheduled, the push to move spring elections to November has legs.

(That's right, by the way--turnout in a full county election on a sunny day in April was in the single digits and not even twice what it was during a February blizzard election that had a 4.5 percent turnout).

I'm not sure if moving these elections to November will increase turnout, but I do think a case can made that it will, just from the predictability factor of November elections.  People are transient, coming from other cities, and most of us just assume that there is an election each November.

Proponents of the move will point no further than to the turnout this year, and we could very well be conducting election worker training in the summer of 2015, explaining the election-day move as the latest "last thing" impacting our training.