Election Updates

Here are some of our photographs from the early voting site located at the Monterey Park City Hall, in Los Angeles County, California. I wrote on Thursday about our observations from Monterey Park, and Melissa will write sometime after the holiday weekend about exactly the issue that Paul wrote about in his most recent posting: how early voting centers need to be located along convenient routes where voters work, shop, go to school, eat and play.

The first photo shows the City Hall parking structure. Note the sagging early voting sign, and that there are directional arrows along the sidewalk. The entrance to the early voting site is right underneath the walkway marked "City Hall Police Facility." When we pulled in, there was not any available parking in the structure, though we did park right across the street where I took the photo from.

Next, this is a closeup of the walkway to the early voting site, and the directional sign. Here (requires rotation) is the entrance to the early voting site, through the blue doorway. This picture (also requires rotation) shows a close-up of the doorway showing the informational signs on the doorway.

The next set of photos shows the interior of the early voting site. Here is the first interior shot. The entrance is on the far left. A voter would check-in with the woman at the desk next to the door, and the poll workers sitting behind the laptops would authenticate each voter, check that they hadn't voted already, and the women behind the laptop on the left would format the voter's activation card. I'm taking the photo from the area where waiting voters would sit, looking right at the tv/dvd voter education video.

This next shot pans to the right, showing some of the Diebold voting devices. Third, we have a photo showing more of the devices, spanning the two photos above. Fourth, here is the device for disabled voters, which was located on the far left of the early voting place (left relative to the other photos.)

Last, here is a main entrance to the City Hall. If you look closely, you'll see a directional arrow point to the right. I took this picture because I found this directional arrow a bit confusing, as the early voting site was indeed located to the left --- but not inside the City Hall (recall it was located in a walkway next to the parking structure). Not a big deal, as the City Hall isn't very big. But it was a tad confusing.

I don't know if I point this out in my last post, but early voting turnout in the two locations I've been to so far has been virtually non-existant. There isn't a lot of interest in this primary election, and early voting turnout is really pathetic so far.

More on early voting in Los Angeles County later; it will be going on for most of the next week and I hope to visit many more of the early voting sites.

Bob Stein of Rice University has been conducting research on early voting centers.

In a recent presentation at the AEI/Brookings conference on election reform, Stein suggested that voting needs to be thought of as a rivalrous good. Essentially, voting has to compete with other aspects of a busy life, including commuting to and from work, taking children to school, and shopping at the mall or grocery store.

Therefore, Stein argues, election officials should establish early voting centers at locations that are not close to individual's homes (as in traditional polling place voting), but along convenient transportation paths.

Stein will like this story in the Orange County Register. The two most popular voting sites in Orange County are John Wayne Airport (established to be used by business travelers) and The Shops at Mission Viejo (presumably a large local shopping mall).

Trains, planes, automobiles, and voting. If Stein is right, we'll consider these all together in the future.

Rick Hasen blogs on a stunningly misinformed column by George Will, where he argues against multilingual ballots.

I'll add just a few comments to Hasen's excellent posting.

First, Will cannot have voted in states such as Oregon, California, or Washington, where the ballot contains long and elaborate initiatives and referenda that are difficult to understand even in English. The requirements for citizenship are to: "demonstrate an understanding of the English language, including an ability to read, write, and speak words in ordinary usage in the English language." Do any Californians out there want to argue that was often constitutes the ballot reflects "ordinary usage"?

Relatedly, Will cannot have seen the voters pamphlets in Oregon or California. These documents are often hundreds of pages long, and also do not constitute "ordinary" English language usage.

In both cases, requiring English only materials will shut off innumerable legal voters from the ballot box.

But let's take Will at his word: he wants to restrict the franchise to those who can demonstrate "...ability to understand the nation's civic conversation" and who "can comprehend the political discourse that precedes the casting of ballots."

Will seems to be suggesting a political knowledge test as a requirement for voting. Will must be aware that well over half of Americans cannot recall the name of the member of Congress; that over three-quarters don't know the job of Chief Justice John Roberts; and that less than one-fifth have a good sense of the meaning of "liberal" or "conservative."

Sounds like a call for philosopher kings to me!

This morning we went to another early voting location, at the Monterey Park City Hall. This is an early voting location that I have visited in the past, and it was quite interesting to visit it again this morning.

Melissa Slemin went along this morning, her first election observation visit, and hopefully she'll have a chance before the holiday weekend to write about her observations. One of the key things we did this morning was to try to proceed as if we were typical voters, trying to find an early voting location from scratch. Melissa has some observations on exactly how difficult that may be.

We were at the location for an hour, from 9:45am until about 10:45am. Turnout was very, very light --- when we arrived, there were two voters finishing up, and during the next hour there were only two other voters who came and cast ballots.

The only real difference in this early voting location, relative to my past visits here, regarded the demonstration video I noted in my essay yesterday. The Monterey Park site also had a tv/dvd player, and it had the demonstration video running constantly, over and over. The tv/dvd were set up next to the workstations used by the pollworkers, and facing the tv/dvd were three rows of pretty uncomfortable chairs. The idea was that voters would sit and watch the video while waiting to be authenticated and to receive their activation card, though given the light flow of voters during our visit we didn't really have much of an opportunity to observe many voters interaction with the demonstration video.

We did note, though, that whenever there was the slighted amount of sustained background noise (for example, a pollworker talking to a voter), it was virtually impossible to hear the soundtrack of the video. And it was not clear that the two voters really paid much attention to the video, and they were really not well instructed by the pollworkers to watch the video. So the utility of the video in such a setting might be limited.

In the past, in this early voting location I thought the pollworkers were highly effective in their efforts to demonstrate to voters how to use the electronic voting devices. In the past, they had a demonstration voting machine inside the entrance to the early voting location, and a pollworker would literally stand there and walk voters through the use of the device while they waited in line to be authenticated.

More tomorrow, including photos.

Today was the first day for early voting associated with the upcoming June 6, 2006 primary elections in Los Angeles County. I selected one of the seventeen early voting sites throughout LA County for today's observation efforts: the early voting location at the East Los Angeles County Regional Library, at 4837 E. Third Street. This early voting site opened for voting at 11am this morning; I was on hand at about 9:45am.

Turns out that finding the early voting site was no easy task. The early voting site is at a location just south of the 60 ("Pomona") Freeway in LA County; the easiest way to get to it from the vicinity of downtown Los Angeles (were I was coming from this morning) was to be on the eastbound 60, and to exit on South Atlantic Blvd. (which I did). However, it turns out that the street that the early voting location is on (E. Third Street), while listed by google maps as intersecting Atlantic, actually does not --- at that point, "Pomona Blvd" intersects Atlantic, as you can clearly see in this photo. But I finally figured I should just head west on Pomona, and eventually it seemed to turn into E. Third, because on my right I saw the library complex.

But immediately another problem arose. Take a look: construction! Quite a problem; the construction had closed the entrance to the library! How was a voter to get to the early voting location? Not clear, so I just drove to the next intersection, where there were no signs indicating where I should go to vote! I turned right, and then took another right, and ended up in what I assumed was a library parking lot. I had to wait a few minutes for a space in the lot to open up, and then was able to park.

Here is a picture of the parking lot, which seemed to service the library, a courts building and a police station. Not much available parking. Here's a picture of the library (on the left) from the parking lot sidewalk. The only noticeable sign is way over near the construction zone, next to the orange netting, a very small "VOTE" sign with an arrow. There was nothing in the parking lot I could see to tell anyone where to go to vote. In this close-up photo, you can see the "VOTE" sign next to the construction zone and a tree, but there was no comparable sign next to the parking lot.

As I approached the library entrance, some of the pollworkers were already there, including the inspector. She told me that the library was not even open yet, but we talked about the lack of signs. She was clearly concerned, but didn't have any means to get additional signs or put them up. [As an aside, I emailed the Registrar/Recorder's office about this situation this morning when I got back to my office; hopefully when I have some time later in the early voting period I'll go back down to this early voting site to see if they have put up signs.]

Just before 10am, a library official opened the doors and let us all in; the inspector invited me to come as well. They opened up the room that housed the early voting site, and again invited me to observe. I do have to say at this point that I was very impressed by the openness and willingness of these pollworkers, and especially the inspector, to let me watch the process of setting up their early voting site on the first day of operation. It's not easy to set up a polling place with electronic voting machines and the computer technology they use to access the electronic voter registration records; to do it with an observer present (and to remain friendly the entire time) is really a remarkable feat!

Here's the entrance to the room housing the early voting location. [Note the clock --- it didn't work, which was a bit confusing to us all!] One of the pollworkers was standing there at the time; just behind here is the voting machine set up for disabled voting. To her immediate left was the table where voters would check in. This picture is taken from right inside the door, while pans slightly to the left, and this third picture pans all the way back to the left and almost shows the doorway.

Here's a verbal description of the room. As you walk in, on your immediate right was the disabled voting machine, and behind it was the large black box where voters could deposit their paper absentee ballots. Behind that, along the far wall, were the seven other electronic voting devices (note that all the voting machines in this early voting location were equipped with "voter-verified paper audit trails" (VVPAT)). Looking further to the left was the large table where pollworkers used computer terminals hooked up to an electronic network to look up voter registration and polling place information; these computers also formatted the voter cards that were used to activate the electronic voting devices. At the near left, next to the door, was the check-in table, and behind that was one of the important innovations in this election: a nice flat-screen television/dvd player that had a demonstration dvd in it for voters to watch an informational video on how to use the Diebold voting devices. In the center of the room was a table that I believe could be used for voters to fill out their early voting application materials.

Here are some close-up photos of the Diebold device; this first one shows two of the security tags, the second shows the same machine even closer up (though the photo should be rotated for best viewing).

The procedure used to open the early voting site on the first day of voting was pretty straightforward. First, the workers turned on and booted up the voter registration computers. Then they waited until the technician arrived with "the key" for the voting machines; after he arrived, they opened up each of the electronic voting devices, checked the VVPAT devices, ran the "zero-tapes", signed the "zero-tables", and then sealed the machines back up for use. Here are a series of photos showing the set-up procedure:

• The first picture shows the polling place workers gathered around the first machine they opened and inspected; the man with the red hat was the one with "the key". What was interesting here was that when they were inspecting either the VVPAT device or were trying to run the "zero-tape" (I could not tell from my vantage point what they were doing) the machine made a loud grinding noise --- and they all rushed to get the various procudure and "owner" manuals to see how to fix it. Eventually they appeared to get it running.
  
• Here we see two of the machines running their "zero-tape", note that the tapes are really long and they spool out onto the floor. When done, the polling place workers rolled them up, bound them with a rubber band, and signed them underneath a short affadavit.
  
• This picture (might rotate it left for better viewing) shows the open Diebold device, after the "zero-tape" has been run. The "zero-tape" is sitting on the top of the left-side of the device, the cover containing the printer units is open on the right.
  
• Last, here are the workers sealing up the voting devices and signing off on the log sheet who had accessed the voting device.
  

Other than observing the set-up procedure, which was very interesting (and noting the difficulties associated with finding this early voting location), the one remaining important thing I wanted to write about: the voter education video.

They had the television/dvd set up behind the check-in station, in front of a row of chairs. When the first voter came in to vote, shortly after 11AM (he was elderly, perhaps 70 years old, and had been waiting patiently to vote since about 10:15AM), they sat him down and (with a little help from me) turned the dvd player on. The video was a pretty typical one, showing the operation of the Diebold device and the VVPAT, perhaps running 3 or 4 minutes (I'll try to time it precisely tomorrow). Here's the rub, though --- as best as we could tell, the education video was only in English, and as it turned out, the first voter was fluent in Spanish. So the inspector stood there and translated the video for him, while I manned the remote control, pausing it when she instructed me!

As I saw it, the voter education video could serve a few purposes. It could really help voters learn how to use the device; in the past LA County simply had a demo in each early voting site, and as I saw in earlier elections, sometimes it was used, sometimes not. The video also could free up a polling place worker; rather than man the demo, the workers could be more effectively deployed to other tasks.

But in this situation, the video just wasn't effective, leaving me (and some of the polling place workers) to wonder why the video presentation wasn't in the other required languages. I asked this question to the Registrar/Recorder's Office, and I'll report back on the answer.

Last, the other interesting innovation in this early voting location was the distribution of a FAQ on touchscreen early voting, covering a variety of questions the pollworkers said were commonly asked the last time they did early voting. That's a good idea, though it wasn't clear to me that they had many of them (I took one, and if I can get it in electronic form, I'll pass it along).

That's it for the basics today. I'll be back out at some of the other early voting locations in the next few days, including some visits on Memorial Day (when all of the early voting locations are supposed to be open, though some of them are in public buildings (like this library) that are closed on Memorial Day as this sign indicated.). More in the coming days!

I am sitting in the Standards Board and the Board of Advisors lunch and decided to blog the speeches. Here are summaries of the EAC commission member talks that occurred over lunch.

Paul DeGregorio Comments

Commissioner DeGregorio noted the key issues that have happened during the EAC’s recent history. He noted that since the last Standards Board and the Board of Advisors meetings, all appropriated HAVA funds have been distributed to the states, and they have hired an inspector general. The IG is working with states to help them with the accounting of HAVA funds. The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines are complete and are active and the certification process for voting systems is the EAC’s highest priority right now for 2006 and they are working to develop the best program possible as they take over. The EAC has provided assistance and guidance to states on the implementation of state voter registration databases and in disability access. The EAC also has several ongoing research projects and also has issued several reports. For example, they issued the 2004 Election Day Survey report, the 2004 UOCAVA survey, and the 2005 EAC annual report.

An estimated one-third of voters will use new voting machines in 2006. Visited Chicago and watched the transitioned to the mixed system and it was a very difficult process there and in the surrounding counties. Visited Carteriet County, NC and as the polls opened, the chief election official noted that there was a problem; there were 44 votes on the machine.

As it turned out, election officials had failed to zero out the logic and accuracy test data and do a zero print out. This happened in four of the 34 precincts in the county. The other counties did not have similar problems but once again it reminded people that every detail matters, especially when you transition to a new voting system. In Allegany County, PA, everyone thought there would potentially be a meltdown, but everything worked great and they had official results five hours after the election. Finally, he noted that he watched Katrina voters cast early voting ballots in Louisiana.

Paul closed by noting that local and state election officials need to allow international observers to come and observe. The U.S. is party to conventions that promote international observation and we need to facilitate this at the state and local level.

Ray Martinez

He has been honored to serve with all of the EAC members. The chairman’s synopsis shows the progress in elections over the past 23 months. There are both positive and negative views of the EAC and the role they can play in facilitating improvement state and local elections. The Standards Board and Advisory Committee are key players in providing advice and guidance to the EAC on a daily basis. This is especially true of the executive committee members. This dialogue helps to make the EAC a valuable player in elections, because they have good relations and interactions with key stakeholders. He will miss his role in the EAC. There needs to be a dialogue on what the next phase should be in the role of the EAC in elections as the EAC has completed its basic roles under HAVA that centered on providing funding to states. Having a clear discussion with stakeholders in Congress, with election officials, and with the academic community about this future role should begin so the EAC can move forward.

Gracia Hilman

The key question at the start of the EAC was what it would feel like to be in 2006. She thinks history will be kind to the EAC and its roles in elections. They were asked through HAVA to fix a problem AND to pave the way for better elections into the future. The solutions to fix immediate problems do not necessarily set the best framework for a long-term solution. We need to work to balance these and the public needs to know the resource and treasure that are election officials in states and localities. Voting is the single most important thing and who enables this: election officials. Through the process and dialogue of experience, we can see past the negative and we will see what it takes to preserve democracy. Congress, legislatures, county commissions make this job difficult by changing things every year.

HAVA made significant changes to elections, the most since the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Getting to know election officials and spending time seeing the US through the experiences of election officials is very much appreciated.

Donnetta Davidson

She introduced members of the Technical Guidelines Development Committee. NIST and the EAC both appreciate the input and guidance they receive from the members. She then turned the meeting over to a representative of NIST, John Wack. John noted that he very much enjoys learning from election officials. Elections are a mix of technology, sociology, and politics and everything that can happen will happen. Everyone involved in it seems to be dedicated to it.

He stated that NIST is to assist the EAC to develop standards for electronic voting equipment. NIST did a briefing last year in Denver and developed a public review process and they came out in December. There are many issues in voting and some were not completely addressed. It would be great if we had near-term solutions for this. NIST is structured in three groups: Human Factors, Testing, and Security. They are doing more to reach out to vendors because they are not represented in the process formally.

There is a 2007 version of the standards that is being developed. Each requirement in 2007 will be linked to a specific test that can be conducted. The standards will be written to resemble an IEEE standard, but with a clear effort to make the writing clear and usable for public readers. There is a final tradeoff between security, usability, and system cost. Systems have to be affordable but also secure and usable. They are also doing assessments of potential test labs for voting systems. The EAC will receive recommendations from NIST about potential labs that could do voting system testing.

The VVPAT work has been interesting and frustrating. The systems were developed pre-standards and had to write requirements after the fact. They key issue is usability of the VVPAT. The voter has to be able to use it AND it has to be usable for auditing the election post-election. NIST has done work on addressing both of these issues. The current standards for using VVPAT with DREs and it occurred to NIST that you could broaden the requirement. For example, an electronic ballot marking device that is scanned by an optical scanner could also be a VVPAT and NIST is trying to be sensitive to not being technologically limited to the DRE plus printer model.

The TGDC holds several teleconferences for their work and they now plan to do more outreach. He closed by asking for help. In talking with the EAC, he would like to get better feedback in order to make more rapid progress. He would like the Standards Board and Advisory Committee’s to create a committee to work with NIST to ensure its work is real and accurate.

I took a break today from the EAC meeting to go over to the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Mike and I have wrote our report on interoperability in voter registration systems for them and they are a handy resource for reports on a variety of topics, including e-government, human capital management, collaboration, organizational transformation, and performance measurement. Although our report is the only one specifically on elections, the other reports often address similar organizational challenges and dilemmas.

For example, I was reading “Public Deliberation: A Manager’s Guide to Citizen Participation,” which is an obvious topic of interest to election officials and to academic organizations involved in election who want to consider various ways in which to involve the public in their work. The report presents a public involvement spectrum, which can run the gamut from more passive activities—such as providing information to citizens—to more active participation—such as empowering citizens by placing decision making authority in their hands. In between, organizations can also involve citizens through consultation, direct engagement, and collaboration.

The report is very valuable because it helps articulate how to think about citizen engagement in its various forms. It provides seven principles for deliberative engagement and identifies key barriers to agency engagement. The authors then provide some basic guidance for how to put citizen engagement into practice at four levels of involvement:

1. communication,
2. consultation,
3. engagement, and
4. collaboration.

The report also considers the various forums in which this can be done—including online participation activities—and closes with a set of formal recommendations about how to promote engagement. This includes considering six internal organizational reforms and seven external strategies for creating an infrastructure for engagement.

I've been meaning to write a quick note about the paper that Walter Mebane (Cornell University) presented at the recent Midwest Political Science Association conference, "Detecting Attempted Election Theft: Vote Counts, Voting Machines and Benford's Law". Turns out that Walter's paper has been pretty well summarized on the "Social Science Statistics Blog", so I won't write much more about it now, other than to say that Walter is going to present this line of research at the election fraud workshop that Thad and I are organizing for late September. More on that workshop later ...

However, I will point out that Walter is one of the most prolific social scientists studying election fraud, anomalies and problems since the 2000 presidential election. Take a look at Walter's website, where he has archived his working and published papers.

I've voted by mail a number of times, and always wonder after I drop the ballot off in the mail --- did my election official get my ballot? Was my absentee ballot challenged, and were my votes counted? Typically for most absentee voters, there just isn't any easy way to know if their election official received their ballot and whether their ballot was counted.

Up in San Mateo County, California, they have developed (yet another) great interactive feature on their website; a tool to allow absentee voters to enter the number of their residential address, their zip, and their birthdate --- and to from there learn about the status of their absentee ballot request, and whether their returned ballot was received. Here is a link to the tool (don't try it, though, unless you are a registered voter in San Mateo County who has requested an absentee ballot)!

This is a great idea, and other election officials would be well served to implement similar services for their voters, especially election officials in places where voting by mail is common.

This week is going to be a busy one for the Election Assistance Commission. They are having a series of meetings this week in which the initial public reports from many of the ongoing and upcoming research projects will be made. The precise agendas for each of the meetings is available from the EAC's website.

In particular, on Tuesday afternoon there will be presentations made of the provisional voting study commissioned by the EAC, and the poll worker recruitment best practice study. Wednesday promises to be even more provocative, with reports on the voter fraud/intimidation project, voter identification, and the vote counting/recounting best practices project. On Wednesday, the draft Election Day survey instrument is also to be unveiled, something that Thad nad I have written about extensively in earlier essays (and produced a report regarding).

Thad will be in Washington to make a presentation on our vote counting/recounting project, and hopefully he'll be able to report back to us some of the results of this initial wave of EAC research.

This is just a quick note on the New Orleans runoff election, which has not achieved anything near the same media attention as did the primary election a few weeks ago. The VTP's own Ted Selker was on the ground in New Orleans the past few days, and reports that he had very good access to all aspects of the election process. In a few short emails that Ted dashed off yesterday, the noted that there was from his perspective unprecedented levels of city and state monitoring of the election this weekend, which might partly explain why things seem to have gone relatively well in the runoff election. Ted also noted that the relative smoothness of the election might also be due to some innovations, like the use of electronic pollbooks in precincts, as well as widespread use of early and absentee voting (initial data indicates that perhaps one-fifth of ballots cast were from early or absentee voters).

Ted promises lots of photos and a complete report soon on his experiences, observations, and evaluation of the New Orleans runoff election. As soon as those are available, I'll share those in a later essay.

The NPR show Justice Talking has an interview with President Carter on election reform. I have not listened to the show yet but it no doubt will have some interesting tidbit about the issue.

Yesterday, Weekend Edition Saturday did two stories on voting in Philadelphia. One dealt with voting in a deli in Philly, the other examined the Diebold machine controversy. The deli story is actually quite revealing about the places where we hold elections (much like Paul's great post about the early voting issues in Maryland!)