A Latino view of the electoral process

According to the U.S. Spanish Newswire Services (EFE EEUU), Florida’s electoral process accommodated the record turnout smoothly and without major problems. They collected the opinion of several Latino voters who in turn though that: voting was not complicated but needs to be better organized; that she was amazed at how easy it was to operate the voting system, the lack of waiting lines and thought authorities were right in allowing a 14-day early voting period; and finally another voter thought that voting was “easy” and the ballot simpler than in previous elections. However, not everyone felt the same way, one voter thought that voting did not take much tame but she preferred the method used in previous elections which was more “computerized.”

Another EFE story reports that the National Association of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO) received over a thousand calls related to the electoral process. Some people called to get election information concerning issues such as registration, while others called to place complaints about broken voting machines, candidates whose names did not appear on the ballot, or denials of the right to vote. NALEO has been trying to teach Latino voters to discuss voting problems with election officials but never leave the polling place without casting a ballot. Also, the association created a legal branch called “Justicia Latina” to file suits arising from voting irregularities. Differently from the types of complaints we’ve been discussing up to the moment, the NALEO director informed that they are currently investigating two discrimination complaints. In doing so, the employ Spanish speaking lawyers who can communicate to Spanish-speaking Latino voters.

Inés and Janell

Polls Close, A Long Night Still Ahead

You would think electronic ballots could be quickly tallied.  That is not always so, and here’s why. First machines  have to be “decommissioned.”  Pollworkers have to take each machine’s memory card, wrap it in the paper printout, put it in a bag and lock it…. After the memory cards are secure, they are driven to the elections counting office[,]…walked up to the counting area where [they are] unlocked, and the card is manually inserted into a digital reader, which counts the votes.” Thus, although the actual counting then happens immediately, it takes a while to do this for all of the thousands of machines.

So don’t expect final tallies anytime soon, regardless of electronic counting.  Pollworkers still have a long night ahead of them!

Inés and Janell

Mixed News

• California (San Diego): In one polling place, “the touch-screen voting machine for disabled voters was not functioning properly. No disabled voters ended up needing it, and all voters were handed paper ballots and pens, with completed ballots being placed inside a locked box.” Also, voters complained about campaigning in support of Proposition 8 taking place closer than 100 feet from polling places. Other voters were “angry” because they were asked to show an ID, which is not required in California. In addition, similar to other places around the country, voters complained about being forced to fill provisional ballots “because they never received the mail-in ballots they requested from the county weeks ago.” In general, we noted that voters are not very confident about provisional ballots being counted at all. For instance, a San Diego voter said:

“I don’t know what the policy is for provisional ballots. I heard they just get tossed.”

He said he was handed a provisional ballot this morning when he showed up at his neighborhood precinct, but he has doubts about whether his vote will be counted.

“I’m not very confident,” Taylor said.

• Florida (Sarasota and Manatee): “Election officials replaced eight optical scanners this morning after the machines broke down and did not record votes in Sarasota and Manatee counties. The ballots were set aside and would be counted after the polls closed, election officials say.”
• New Jersey: “Between 8,000 and 10,000 of the New Jersey voters who registered just before the deadline had to use paper ballots instead of voting machines by 6 p.m. today because election officials could not keep up with the crush of new registrations. Other voters endured long lines and broken machines at polling places, and some sought relief in court for the right to vote.” However, officials said that problems were not significant. Also, the voting irregularities hotline received very few complaints –most “garden variety problems (…) about campaign volunteers and police officers standing too close to polling sites.” In addition, similar to what happened in Louisiana and South Carolina with DMV registrations, there were problems with those voters who registered to vote at the Motor Vehicle Commission.
• Wisconsin (Madison and Dane): “The problems in Madison included hundreds of students whose names weren’t on the poll books even though they were registered, long lines and confusion at a new polling site, and wards with incorrect ballots.” In Dane County “police evacuated Middleton High School shortly after 3 p.m. after receiving a bomb threat and moved the school’s polling place to a nearby fire station.”

Inés and Janell

The human factor

Most of the poll worker stories which popped up in the news, are positive. We found very few stories about problems with poll workers. This is a list of some of them:

• Florida: A poll watcher said that due to breakdowns with voting machines, poll workers started issuing paper ballots and placing the votes in locked boxes. However, when they ran out of boxes, “poll workers started storing ballots in duffel bags or in piles on the floor.”
• Virginia (Richmond): A polling place opened late because a poll worker overslept.
• Indiana (Indianapolis): Two poll workers, a challenger and a clerk, were removed from a precinct. The first poll worker was challenging voters in an apparently unreasonable and partisan way. According to the WTHR’s story, “An election board spokesperson says because they signed affidavits under penalty of perjury this will be investigated by a grand jury.”
• North Carolina (Raleigh): Voting was delayed in one precinct because “the chief judge forgot to take the ballots out of her grandson’s truck when being dropped off this morning. The elections director says the truck drove away, and thejudge wasn’t able to track down her grandson.”
• Oklahoma (Pottawatomie): voters complained about a poll worker giving partisan advice. According to the secretary of the county election board, he was telling voters to “look under the eagle to find the straight-party areas” –the eagle denotes Republican candidates in the Oklahoma ballot.

Probably, the type of story which appeard more frequently is about voters complaining about poll workers making them fill provisional ballots for dubious reasons or by mistake — For example, this was the case in some polling places in Florida, Ohio and Washington.

The following story is about how some imagination can help solve problems:

• Indiana:  When lines got long due to only two booths available for filling out paper ballots, poll workers decided to improvise.  They built three more booths out of card tables, chalkboards and cardboard boxes-and soon the line was gone!

Inés and Janell

More on ballot design: ovals vs. arrows

In this link, you can find a voter account about the experience of filling arrows relative to filling ovals in her paper ballot. In her opinion, ovals are easier to fill than arrows, and this should lead to less invalid votes. Check out the story for the pictures.

Inés and Janell

The Biggest Surprise

Despite the efforts of the media to create headlines, and despite the alarms of watchdog groups, this election seems to be going remarkably smooth…

• Connecticut (Hartford): Despite record turnout, nothing more than one machine problem here, a paper jam there…
• Georgia (South Fulton County): Power was out all morning, so all 15 machines could not be used-and were replaced with paper ballots.  One precinct ran out of all paper ballots and provisional ballots.  Another precinct was illegally denying provisional ballots to voters without IDs.
• Florida: people had difficulty feeding ballots through optical scanners, preventing voters from being able to verify that their vote counted.  Although it appears to be well contained,  some still fear it may prove to be a “statewide problem.”  About two dozen polling places are also reporting broken scanners, which means voters are not able to verify that their vote has been cast.
• Florida (Fort Meyers): no lines, no problems…
• Mississippi: Reports of isolated vote switching, improper requests for ID, and poorly trained poll workers.

But all in all…the biggest surprise is that there aren’t any surprises.

Inés and Janell

“You can use it if you want to vote for him”

We were going to post this in a “collected issues” post, but as Mike said about the voting-machine-lands-in-driveway story, “this was too good to pass up”!

In the same NPR story, you can find the following comment about voting in one Ohio precinct:

In one Ohio polling place, a touch-screen voting machine would only cast ballots for independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. According to the Columbus Dispatch, a poll worker told voters, “You can use it if you want to vote for him.”

Inés and Janell

Problem with ballot design in Ohio

Have a look at the following NPR story:

NPR’s Andrea Seabrook reports that first-time voters are causing a snag known as the “double bubble.” This is when a voter marks the circle next to a candidate’s name and also writes the candidate’s name in the section that says, “Write in Candidates.”

Some machines recognize this problem and allow election officials to manually determine voter intent. But in other instances, the voting machine negates the vote without notifying election officials. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has instructed election officials to count “double bubble” ballots by hand after unofficial results are announced Tuesday night.

Apparently, ballot design will also be an issue on this election.

Inés and Janell

Registration Issues

• Louisiana (Orleans Parish): Citizens registered at the DMV don’t show up as registered. However the source points out that most of the cases were resolved in the last few days.
• Maryland (Baltimore): A YPR listener complained about a bottleneck created by too few registration books. He argued that even though his precinct had 16 machines, 6 were idle because there was a bottleneck at the desk. While the Chief Election Judge had asked for 6 registration books, the request was denied and the precinct counted with only 4 registration books to serve all voters.
• Massachusetts (Middlesex): A statewide computer glitch caused “incomplete registration rolls.”
• Minnesota: Same-day registration is helping solve problems with citizens who show up to vote but are told that they are not registered even though they voted before.
• Missouri (Kansas City): Earlier we posted about a problem with voters registration lists in Kansas City. Now, CNN reports that the registration books problem was resolved and that “the county dispatched additional pollworkers to help with the backlog of voters and long lines.”
• New Hampshire (Manchester): Republican observers filed a suit against the state to complain about limited access to same-day registration tables. For more about this issue check out this link.
• South Carolina: Citizens registered at the DMV don’t show up as registered. Voters with this problem are told to “contact their county voter registration office first. If that doesn’t help, they should contact the DMV and the DMV can send their information to the polling place showing that they are registered.”
• Ohio (Cincinnati): CNN reports that judges were issuing provisional ballots by mistake because “because they were confused about whether state drivers’ licenses with outdated addresses could be used as proof of identification”, even though Ohio law “mandates that drivers’ licenses can be used as proof of identification and address, even if the address does not match the voter’s current address.”
• Ohio (Delaware): Approximately 200 students were disenfranchised due to a “voter registration drive”, which though dated in early September, arrived to the registration office past the Oct 6 deadline.
• Virginia: Radford university students who registered at Radford with their college address do not fulfill Virginia registration requirements, because they should have used their permanent address. Students claim they were misinformed. Apparently, these students will be able to cast provisional ballots, but “there is no guarantee that those votes will be counted.”

Inés and Janell

Charles Stewart posted a few sites below that offer continuing coverage of voting problems.  One of these, Our Vote Live, has a color-coded map that gives the number of reported problems in each state.  If you click on each state you can get a break down by county, and you can look at the number and types of problems for each state and county.  They have NY reporting the most problems (4,085.), with CA coming in next (2,973).  In both states registration problems are the most common types of problem reported, as opposed to ID, absentee voting, voter intimidation, poll workers, etc.  Obviously these are highly populated states, whereas North and South Dakota both have less than 10 reported problems.  Although this is self-reported data that is subject to error and bias, it still provides a very interesting break down of what is going on across the nation.

Inés and Janell