Saturday, April 13, 2013

Muni Handcount Results Still Being Calculated

People were ready to count at 8am.  Things got underway for sure by 9.

There's been a lot of friendly work going on.  The Hall and Moe attorneys are helping each other out and cooperating closely.  In fact, the Hall attorney, Scott Kendall, argued Lisa Murkowski's case in Miller v. Treadwell so he's very familiar with all the details of the law on this.

From left to right - Moe attorney Patrick Munson, Muni Clerk Barb Jones, Hall Attorney Scott Kendall and Municipal Attorney Dennis Wheeler.


There's really no way I can tell you what the outcome might be.  I do know there are a lot of ballots that were written in Moe but the oval wasn't marked.

The break is over.  Back to work.

4:35  The election workers have gone home and now the Municipal Clerk and Scott Kendall, attorney for Ernie Hall, and Patrick Munson, attorney for Nick Moe are working together to read through and count the facsimile ballots.  These are questioned ballots.  They are people who live in District 3, but voted in another precinct - which is why they were questioned.  They are looking for people who wrote in Moe.  The Election office is not going to count these, but they are keeping them in the record so that if there is a court challenge, they will be able to retrieve them.

Now they are doing the same with absentee by mail - there is only one in this category that is a District 3 voter facsimile.

This is pretty esoteric now - really it seems to me that the main reason is to keep these on the record in case there is a court challenge.  They are now looking at absentee ballots that were faxed in.  They are now just looking at the ballots to see if there are any write-ins at all.  If not, it will be moot.

From left to right:  Kendall, Muni Attorney Dennis Wheeler, Muni Clerk Barbara Jones.  The guy on the right is from the Moe campaign.  

I've seen precincts that were ahead for Moe and others ahead for Hall and others that were dead even.  My anecdotal sense was the absentee-mail in favored Hall, but I really didn't see them all and most were not very big numbers. 

It turns out there were six Nick Moes written in in this batch of about 60 faxed in ballots.

I think they are relatively close to going back and counting out the totals for each of the different categories they've done today, but I don't know if I'll still be here when they do.  There aren't may people left here.  About 15, mostly from campaigns watching.


I can say that within the room where voting was counted things were as transparent as could be.  Everything was explained - I didn't always completely understand, but that was probably my failing powers of concentration as the day went on.   Also there was really no animosity at all between the representatives of the two candidates.  It was all very cordial and cooperative.  When there were questions about what to do next - the Municipal Clerk conferred with the two opposing candidates' attorneys.  The Municipal Clerk was around for consultation too.

[UPDATE:  I'm home now.  If you want to check on the results, you can go to the Municipal elections results page.  When they have the final count, they said they'd post it there.  I'm not sure if they will amend it to the results from April 2 or just make a new link for the recount totals.  I'd vote for the latter.  Enjoy Saturday night and remember, it's supposed to be a good aurora night, so look up. 

Under The Hood Of Democracy - Counting Absentee Votes UPDATE

[UPDATE 7:00am:   I couldn't find an update on the Muni website when I was getting ready for bed last night so I sent an email to the Municipal Clerk if I was looking in the wrong place.  This morning when I got up I found this response:  
No, sorry.  We finally decided to call it quits.  We got through the absentee, but didn’t finished the questioned, so no results tonight.  We’ll start the hand count at 8:30 and then get restarted on the rest at 10. 

Barbara A. Jones]

Sorting and Counting Absentee Ballots
I stopped by City Hall about 4pm this afternoon to see how the absentee ballot counting was going.  Basically, they were separating the form on the outside of the absentee ballot envelopes and then they would go to the voting machine.

They were not going to announce the results until it was complete and there were different estimates about when that would be.

Glossary:

Absentee ballot - One sent to you and mailed back.

Absentee-in-person - When you vote at one of the voting places open before the election.  I've been calling this 'early voting' but in the election office they're 'absentee-in-person.'

Things were pretty cordial and in the video below you'll see and hear a staffer for Nick Moe and a staffer for Ernie Hall.  The Clerk was going to order pizza for the election workers and the Moe and Hall staffers were planning to eat together.  Really, a very pleasant thing to see in modern politics.


) If you listened to the end of the video, you'll have learned a little info about your blogger.  The election office called this week to say they needed another election worker to to help with the hand recount of District 3 on Saturday.  I did point out that I was blogging and they said they knew.  Working on election day certainly gave me insights I couldn't have gotten any other way.  This is a new world of journalism.  So, I'm not sure whether I'll have time to give any updates tomorrow.  My election worker job takes precedence over the blog.  Perhaps they believe that by letting me into the center of things they are telling the world they believe in transparency.  I have to be at City Hall at 8am.  Ugh.  Come by and take a look.  It's open to the public.  Bring your kids so they can see under the hood of democracy.  We'll be doing a hand count, as I understand it, of District 3, the race between Assembly Chair Ernie Hall and write-in challenger Nick Moe.  (Staff members from both camps are on the video above.)  This is the race that was 93 votes apart when the votes were counted right after the election.  So now they have to look at all the ballots to see who all those "write-in" votes had written in and to add the questioned ballots.  The results from the absentee ballots they counted today should be known before we start.

Observers watching how the ballots are handled

Perhaps they've already announced them, but I couldn't find anything online.   KTUU does say there should be active aurora tonight and tomorrow night and it's clear so I'll go outside and look. 










[UPDATE March 12, 2014:  Viddler video replaced with YouTube]

Friday, April 12, 2013

Poll Worker Error Causes Questioned Ballots To Be Rejected

Sorry folks, I didn't go downtown last night to watch the Muni go through the rejected questioned ballots.  But Daysha Eaton of KSKA did and here's part of her report:

Cresap was one of 11 voters whose ballots were rejected not because of any mistake of their own, but because an election official failed to sign off on them. The election commission voted unanimously to throw all 11 ballots out, arguing that they had sworn to follow municipal code, which states that votes may not be counted if election officials fail to sign off on them. That doesn’t sit well with Cresap.
“I’ve been voting here for 48 years and I voted the same way I’ve always voted. There was nothing irregular. I didn’t do anything wrong, like voting twice or anything like that. My vote has always been counted before.”
Cresap said that he felt the Election Commission should have made an exception and counted the 11 ballots without the election officials signatures. In addition, he said that the clerk’s office should better train their election workers insure they sign off on the ballots that they’re responsible for. Furthermore, Cresap said the municipal code needs to be changed so that no other voters have his experience.
This is a long post and I would normally hold it a day or two to try to make it shorter and easier to read.  But this one contains lots of detail - some which I learned as an election worker this year - that helps put this question into better context.   But this is timely to post right now.  I've tried to put in some headings to help you.


Overview: 
The basic questions:

Should election worker error invalidate a ballot?
How do you know it's election worker error rather than a voter sneaking in a ballot?  
Getting to the answers:

The post details should help the reader understand the factors that would help someone untangle it all.

Plus, we don't know if it even will affect any of the outcomes of the race.  But even if it doesn't, it's a call to make sure if this happens next time, there are good back-up ways to determine what happened. 
[I use poll worker and election worker synonymously]




Post Continues Here

I've also been waiting until this was over to write up an overview and recommendation post.  But let me give you a preview.  One of the lessons that was very clear to me at 9:30pm waiting to hand in our precincts ballots and voting paraphernalia on election night was this:

Election Lesson:  People who start work at 6:15am should not be in charge of checking all the details (such as matching votes on register to number of ballots used and voting machine totals) at 8:15pm when the polls close.  We were pretty loopy by then and the chance for errors was much higher than it should have been.


When we finally made it into the room at City Hall on election night where people received our polling stuff and checked that we were turning in everything correctly, it was after 10pm.  Someone in there said that about half the precincts had something wrong.  Another person looked at them and said, only half?

A lot of the election workers are senior citizens, some more senior than others. It makes sense.  Retired folks have time to work one day like this.   I qualify for that label and I keep pretty active.  So I'm not saying us old folks can't be fit.  But that doesn't mean all of us are.  And I was very tired at the end of the day.  Hell, I was tired at 6:15 am, but that's way early for me.

The big question raised by Daysha's piece is this:  Should voters (and candidates) be penalized for election officials' mistakes?  

I'm guessing here that the reason that the election worker is supposed to sign the questioned ballot envelope is to prevent voter fraud, to prevent someone from sneaking an envelope and ballot and putting them into the ballot box.  That's a valid reason.  But let's look at the procedure for questioned ballots to see if there isn't a way to balance that need with the democratic interest that a voter's right to vote is paramount.

First, here's what the questioned ballot envelope looks like.  I've marked in blue the section that the election worker is supposed to fill out. I saved it as a big file so you can see it clearly if you click on it to enlarge it.

You can click on the image to enlarge it

Here's what the Election Manual tells the poll worker to do about questioned ballots:

First, there are ten reason a voter may need a Questioned Ballot.  I have those listed in my previous post on questioned ballots so I won't repeat it.  Just go to the link.


Second is a section called "How to Issue a Questioned Ballot."  (The red highlight I added, the bold is in the original.)
  • The voter must sign the Questioned Register.
  • The voter must complete the Questioned Envelope before being issued a ballot.  The Election Worker must sign as a witness and write the date. 
  • Fold the ballot gently into thirds (do not crease).  Folding prevents questioned ballots from being able to be inserted into Accuvote machine. 
  • Give the voter the ballot and secrecy sleeve.
  • Ask voter to place the voted ballot inside the Questioned Ballot secrecy sleeve before leaving the voting booth.
  • Ask voter to return the Questioned Ballot and envelope to the Questioned Ballot Worker.
  • Observe the voter insert the Questioned Ballot into the Questioned Envelope using the secrecy sleeve;  the voter must seal envelope.
  • The Questioned Ballot envelopes must be placed into the Blue Municipal Tote.
(Do not scan Questioned Ballots through the Accu-Vote Machine.)
 Did you catch all that?  OK, you aren't an election worker with the responsibility to carry out all these steps.  I'm sure the election workers who handled questioned ballots  all read it carefully.  I know I did.  But still, it's easy in a busy polling place to forget a step. Especially if you only got a few voters needing  questioned ballots over the 13 hour period the polls were open.  Our polling place only had about 10 or 11 questioned ballots all day.  But election day wasn't busy most of the time, though there were a few times.

In Cresap's case, he says he voted at the Chugiak Senior Center.  That was one of three special voting sites where you could get a ballot from any precinct, so I would expect they had more questioned ballots than the average precinct. 


Now, in our polling place, voters were directed to the register.  Some knew they needed a questioned ballot because they were voting outside their precinct.  Others needed to vote questioned for other reasons.  The ones I did were all "voter's name is not in the Precinct Register" and "Voter is voting out of precinct."  (I really wasn't sure if I was supposed to mark both of those since they were both true.  I mostly marked both.)

If the voter was required to vote a questioned ballot,

  • the voter was given a ballot and directed to the next table.  I did this part in the afternoon.  
  • I had the voter sign a yellow sign up (register) sheet for questioned ballot voters.  =
  • The voter filled out the form attached to the questioned ballot envelope and 
  • I checked their ID to see if the name and address matched what they wrote.  Next
  • I gave them the secrecy sleeve (an open sided envelop, almost like a small file folder with one end open) and explained about not folding the ballot and bringing the whole thing back to me.  Then,
  • I filled out my part of the form on the questioned ballot envelope including signing it. (See picture above)
  • The voter returned from the voting booth.  I opened the envelope and they put the ballot, inside the sleeve, into the questioned ballot envelope. (There was some debate in our precinct if the sleeve was supposed to go into the envelope, but we decided to do it that way.)
  • I held the envelope while the voter sealed it.  Finally
  • the voter put the envelope into the blue Municipal tote bag/box.
I'm going through all this detail so you know all the steps and checks along the way for when I talk, below, about whether it should be counted or not.

Here's what the Municipal Code says about counting a questioned ballot or not:
(I've included the absentee ballot rules too because they are in the same section and may also be of interest before this is over.)

28.80.040 - Ballot review standards. (I can't link to the exact citation - scroll down to Title 28.)
A.  A questioned ballot may not be counted if:
  1. The voter failed to properly execute the certificate.
  2. An election official failed to execute the certificate.
B.An absentee ballot may not be counted if:
  1. The voter failed to properly execute the certificate;
  2. The official or witnesses authorized by law to attest the voter's certificate failed to execute the certificate;
  3. The voter's certificate is not attested on or before the date of the election;
  4. The ballot, if mailed, is not postmarked on or before the date of the election;
  5. The ballot is not received before the public session of the canvass; or
  6. The ballot envelope has no postmark and is received after election day.


So, should the voter's ballot be thrown out if the election worker failed to sign the questioned ballot form on the questioned ballot envelope?

The presumption in the law, I'm guessing, is that if the election worker didn't sign the form, it's because the vote isn't legitimate.  It's good to know the Assembly was concerned about election fraud.

But what if it really is just a mistake by the election worker?

Are there back up systems to track what happened and insure that the voter was valid and wasn't sneaking in an extra vote?  Sort of.

I think everyone will have to make their own conclusions.

First, will it even matter?

In every race, the margin of victory was high enough, that it's unlikely that the uncounted votes will make a difference.  Except one:  the Assembly District 3, Seat D - the race between Assembly Chair Ernie Hall and write-in candidate Nick Moe.  Here are some considerations:

  • If people lived in District 3 
    • and voted out of their district, they won't have a ballot that allows them to write-in the Seat D race.  
    • and they do vote in their district, but another precinct, or didn't have their id or some other reason for getting a questioned ballot, then they would get the ballot with the Seat D race and could vote in that race.
  • If they don't live in that District, but voted in that District, they would have been able to vote in that race.  But since they don't live in that District, the vote in that race won't count. 
  • If they voted in one of the all-ballot locations - the Chugiak Senior Center, Loussac Library, or UAA - they could get their home precinct ballot.  If they live in District 3, they'd get that ballot and could vote in that race.  
Mr. Cresap voted at the Chugiak Senior Center, so he would have gotten his home ballot.  If he lived in District 3, it would include the Hall-Moe race.  But it appears that he lives in Eagle River. Google searches suggest that and Daysha's story says he came "all the way from Eagle River." If that's the case, he would NOT have been eligible to vote in the District 3 race.  

I don't know anything about the home precincts of  the other voters who were rejected because of poll-worker errors.  So, we can ask these questions without knowing if they have any chance at all of affecting the election.


What's the Conflict?

Prevention of fraud versus Counting All Valid Votes

What's missing on these rejected forms is the election worker's signature.  There are two possible explanations I can think of (leaving out options like disappearing ink):

1.  Everything was legit except that the election worker failed to sign the form.
2.  The voter snuck in the ballot, questioned ballot envelope, voted, and left without being detected.

For option 2 - what other evidence might there be to show this was legit or fraud?

1.  The voter wouldn't sign the main regular register, so there would be nothing there.
2.  The voter would need to get a ballot.  In our precinct, when the voter was identified as a questioned ballot voter, the election worker at the register gave the ballot to the person staffing the questioned ballots.
2.  The voter would then sign the questioned ballot register.  If the name is not on this register, that would raise suspicions, but the voter wouldn't necessarily know he was supposed to sign this.  The worker would have to tell him.  It would be hard to sign the register without the election worker's knowledge. I don't believe there are any time or order indicators (ie numbers on the ballots, time marked on the form) that would enable us to know if the name was out of order on the register.
3.  The voter would need to fill out the form on the questioned ballot and get a secrecy sleeve.  As I said above, when I did this I kept the questioned ballot form (and envelope it was attached to) until the voter finished voting and returned.
4.  The voter puts the ballot, in the secrecy sleeve, into the yellow questioned ballot envelope that the election worker is holding, and then seals the envelope.
5.  The voter puts the envelope with the ballot inside into the blue Municipal tote.

So, to double check on this we could:
1.  check if the voter is signed on the questioned ballot register
2.  check the precinct final tallies to see that the number of people who signed the main register plus the number of people who signed the questioned ballot register equals the number of ballots used.  And this should match the number of votes the voting machine  minus the number of questioned ballots (which aren't counted by the machine.)

There are lots of other reasons that the ballot count might not match up.  They might have thrown out a ballot that was marked wrong and the given the voter a second ballot.  Someone might have taken a ballot, but not actually voted.  In our precinct a worker highlighted the wrong name and then fixed it, so I counted one extra voter, until someone figured out the problem. So if the count's off it isn't necessarily because of this voter.

Also, if anything unusual happens, the election workers are supposed to write notes.  So a voter would have to be very smooth to get through all these steps without causing someone to write down an unusual event.

The election worker might even remember the voter and be able to confirm he was legit and the worker must have just forgotten to sign.

Conclusions

There is no way you're going to eliminate all election worker errors.  This is a job with lots of rules, on the job training, and you have to figure it out in just one long day
Then it doesn't happen again for another year, when some of the rules might change.

But worker error shouldn't cause voters not to have their ballot count.  But before approving a questioned ballot without an election worker signature, one would have to check that all the other issues were recorded correctly and that the worker error is the most likely explanation.

Is it worth all that extra work if the vote isn't going to matter anyway (because the vote count won't affect the outcome of any races)?  Probably not.

But if it would affect a race it's not fair to the voter not to count it.  It's not fair to the person he voted for.  But it's also not fair to the person he didn't vote for if there is any doubt.

The best solution is:

1.  To have better trained workers.
2.  To have shorter shifts for workers so they don't get exhausted, especially in the late afternoon when the biggest voting surge tends to happen.
3.  To have lots of double checks so one mistake doesn't cancel a voter's ballot. 

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Everything Is OK


Now here's a video that people on the left and on the right, you would think, would all approve of.  Like Tea Party folks, he raises questions about government authority and interference into people's lives.  Like people on the left, he questions our cultural imperative to consume things we don't need.

Yet, I think that there is something about what he's doing that makes everyone a little uncomfortable.  People who speak truth in public, people who make us think about what we are doing and why, always make us uncomfortable.






He makes us, for a moment at least, confront the gap between what we believe and what we do.


April Snow Plays With Us - How Many Aprils Had More Snow?

Normally - at least as my memory reconstructs normal - April snow is fat and wet and the air is close to 30˚.  


I'd finished a downtown meeting and decided to take advantage of the April sun and walk home. 

The depth and texture of the snow screamed January or February. 

But the light said April.  Look at that tree's shadow.  In January the sun is just a few fingers above the horizon and stretches the shadows way, way out. 

This sun actually felt warm, even though it was low 20s. 




I went straight down E and got on the Chester Creek trail at Valley of the Moon Park.   The Weather Service says it's colder than normal and we've had a lot more April snow than normal.  (This is for April 10.)

WEATHER ITEM   OBSERVED RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST            
                VALUE   VALUE       VALUE  FROM      YEAR            
                                           NORMAL                    
...........................................................
TEMPERATURE (F)                                                     
 YESTERDAY                                                           
  MAXIMUM         25     55    1938  42    -17       42               
  MINIMUM         14      4    1949  27    -13       22               
  AVERAGE         20                 34    -14       32             
                                                                     
PRECIPITATION (IN)                                                   
  YESTERDAY        0.02   0.47 1963   0.02   0.00                    
  MONTH TO DATE    0.72               0.14   0.58                    
  SINCE MAR 1      2.09               0.74   1.35                    
  SINCE JAN 1      4.54               2.19   2.35                    
                                                                     
SNOWFALL (IN)                                                        
  YESTERDAY        0.8    7.8  1963   0.1    0.7                     
  MONTH TO DATE   13.2                1.7   11.5                     
  SINCE MAR 1     33.8               11.6   22.2                     
  SINCE JUL 1     89.9               71.9   18.0                     
  SNOW DEPTH      21                        



 
 
Mostly, I had the trail to myself. 

So we've had 13.2 inches of snow the first ten days this month (mostly in two days).  Last year when we had the all time snowiest year in Anchorage, only 5 inches fell in April according to Western Regional Climate Center.  Their records show 
  • 30 inches April 2008
  • 27 inches April 1963
  • 18.7 inches in 1955,
  • 16.1 inches in 1975
  • 14 inches 1977
  • 14.1 inches 2010
Most of the 1990's had no April snow.  


There were a few people just hanging out, a few more pedestrians and a guy on his fat tire bike. 

And, of course, this trail through the heart of Anchorage, follows along Chester Creek. 



And some cross-country skiers with their dog.  The snow had been packed down but it was like walking on a sandy beach - a lot of work.  It felt like I'd shed a 30 pound pack when I got off the trail and on to pavement again.  




Wednesday, April 10, 2013

When Is A Conspiracy Not A Conspiracy?

It's easy for people to take a few facts and jump to conclusions.   On election day, a man came into our polling place and exited the voting booth and asked why there wasn't an Assembly race on the ballot.  We hadn't notice that and at first were concerned.  But then we realized not every Assembly seat is up for reelection this year.

But he said that his wife, who has the same address, voted early at Loussac and she'd voted for an Assembly candidate.  We couldn't explain what happened at Loussac, but we checked and found out that he lives in Patrick Flynn's district and Flynn wasn't up for reelection.

But in checking things, I found a link on the Municipal Elections webpage that got me to all the different Sample Ballots (there were about 48 different ballots to take care of all the Local Road Service Area elections) and a list of each polling place which said which ballot was to be used at each polling place.

And as I looked at the sample ballots I saw the candidates for the Assembly races and School Board races.  As you can see, the School Board races are all city wide seats, so they all show up on every ballot.  Some of the Assembly races had only one candidate. (For the sake of space I left out JOHNSON, Jennifer)


ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 5 - SEAT H 

HONEMAN, Paul
Write-in
SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A

SMITH, Don
DAVIS, Bettye
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB

NEES, David W.
CROFT, Eric
CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie
Write-in

ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D

HALL, Ernie
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A

SMITH, Don
DAVIS, Bettye
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB

NEES, David W.
CROFT, Eric
CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie
Write-in
ASSEMBLY- DISTRICT 2 - SEAT A 

MULCAHY, Pete
DEMBOSKI, Amy
LUPO,

SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A

SMITH, Don
DAVIS, Bettye
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB

NEES, David W.
CROFT, Eric
CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie
Write-in
ASSEMBLY - DISTRICT 4 -SEAT F
CLARY,Andy
TRAINI,Dick
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEAT A

SMITH, Don
DAVIS, Bettye
Write-in

SCHOOL BOARD - SEATB

NEES, David W.
CROFT, Eric
CORNWELL-GEORGE, Stephanie
 Write-in



As I looked at the contested races, the candidate order on the ballot  seemed to favor Mayor Sullivan's candidates.

Don Smith was first in his race with Bettye Davis.
Nees was first in his race against Croft.
Mulcahy was first in his race.  (All seemed to be Conservatives and I wasn't sure who was endorsed by the Mayor, but Mulcahy had been appointed to the Planning and Zoning Commission by the Mayor so that seemed a safe bet.)
Clary was first in his race with Traini.

Whoa! I thought.  I knew that the first position on the ballot gets an advantage at the polls, because a certain number of people, if they aren't familiar with the candidates in the race, will just vote for the first one.  The best way to deal with that is to rotate the order on different ballots.  Then each candidate is first on an equal number of ballots.
Not only were the ballots not rotated, but the Mayor's preferred candidate seemed to be on top in each race.

This had conspiracy written all over it.   But first, some of the research on positional advantage on ballots.


From Northwestern University's Kellogg School

"Specialists in the mechanics of voting have long recognized that the order in which candidates’ names appear on a ballot influences voters’ decisions. Typically, candidates listed at the top of a ballot earn a greater share of the vote than they would receive in any other position, regardless of their policies and personalities. Now research on voting patterns in local state elections coauthored by a Kellogg School researcher has taken the issue a stage further. It concludes that the first listing on the ballot also increases a candidate’s chances of actually winning office—by almost five percentage points."

Stanford Professor Jon A. Krosnick describes the positional effect and how they've demonstrated it:
"How do we know this? Well, consider this: In California’s 80 Assembly districts, candidate name order is randomly assigned. In 1996, Bill Clinton’s vote tally was 4 percentage points higher in the Assembly districts where he was listed first than in the ones where he was listed last — a difference that persisted even after we took into account pre-existing Democratic registration levels in the districts.
In 2000, George W. Bush’s vote tally was 9 percentage points higher in the districts where he was listed first than in the districts where he was listed last — again, persisting with registration taken into account."
He adds this note which suggests the magnitude of the impact:
"In Florida, for instance, candidates from the governor’s party get top billing, which is why in 2000 and 2004 George W. Bush was listed first on every ballot. (His brother, Jeb, was governor.) "


Other states, he adds, order their ballots in different ways.  Some require rotated positions, some require the previous winning party to be listed first, Minnesota requires the party with the least votes in the previous election to be on top.  Some do alphabetical by party, some alphabetical by candidate's last name. Some random. 


I looked up the state law:
"(6) The names of the candidates for each office shall be set out in the same order on ballots printed for use in each house district. The director shall randomly determine the order of the names of the candidates for state representative for each house district. The director shall rotate the order of placement of the names of candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, United States senator, United States representative, and state senator on the ballot for each house district."
But this gets complicated.  There was a Supreme Court decision in 1998 where a candidate sued the Division of  Elections because he was disadvantaged by having a lower place on the ballot. [If the link doesn't work, start here at the Supreme Court site, link Alaska Case Law Service, then click "By Party Name" and write in "Sonneman"] The case said that the State had switched from rotation to random order with a 1998 amendment.  From the Court's decision:
The amendment was recommended by the Lieutenant Governor's Election Policy Transition Team. Its report stated that the amendment would save “between $150,000 and $250,000 per election cycle.” However, the actual cost of ballot rotation in the 1994 primary and general elections was $64,024. The amendment was also intended to eliminate the confusion of voters who relied on single-order sample ballots and were confused when they found a different rotation of candidates' names on their actual ballots. The team also concluded that “[r]esearch indicates that the order of candidates' names on American ballots does not significantly influence voters.”
Sonneman lost his case.  The Court decided that since the order was random, everyone had an equal chance for the coveted first spot.  I couldn't tell if it had been changed back since and that was why it said rotational in the statute I found.  I was going to see if I could call up Sonneman to see if he knew, but I got his obituary.  I don't have the app that lets me call the departed. 

So I called the Municipal Clerk's office to find out how it was done in Anchorage.  She was ready for that call.

Later, I videoed Deputy Clerk for Elections Amanda Moser explaining how the order is determined so you can listen to hear and/or read below.




Names are placed on the ballot in random order.  They have a written procedure and, in fact, the Clerk, Barb Jones, and her staff, and the Municipal Ombudsman were there as witnesses.  Here's  the procedure:

Procedure for Letter Drawing
Anchorage Municipal Code 28.40.010  Form
C.    The names of all candidates for the same office shall be on one ballot with spaces for write-ins equal to the number of offices to be filled. For each municipal election, the clerk shall determine the random alphabetical order in which the candidates' last names are placed on the ballot, regardless of the office sought, by conducting a chance selection of each letter of the alphabet. The sequence in which letters of the alphabet are drawn shall be the sequence of letters utilized in establishing the order in which the candidates' last names appear on the ballot.

1. Ensure that all 26 letters are present
2. One person will draw a letter from provided container.
3. A second person will read aloud the letter drawn.
4. A third person will record the letter drawn.
5. The fourth person is an observer.
4. Continue until all the letters are drawn.
5. After all letters are drawn the Clerk and other observers will sign sheet provided.
6. The Deputy Clerk will post on the Municipal Website.
And here's a copy of the list they made when they did the drawing.  Note, the date was January 24, 2013.  That's before people filed to run for office.




So, for each race, once they had candidate names, they went through this list.  Any Q's?  No?  M's?  etc.  In one case they had two candidates running for the same School Board seat whose names began with C - Croft and Cornwell-George.  Which should come first?  O comes before R in the alphabet, but they had to use this chart instead of the alphabet.  If you check the list, R is number 20 and O is number 24.  So Croft came first.

And when I looked further into this, I found out that in Eagle River, Demoboski, not Mulcahy was the Mayor's favorite.  And on the ballots with Ernie Hall's race, there were actually two Assembly races because Harriot Drummond had resigned to take her seat in the State House.  In that race, when I checked, Tim Steele's name was before the Mayor's candidate Cheryl Frasca.


So, you ask, if nothing was wrong, why write this post?  A reasonable question.  Here are some reasons:
1.  Don't jump to conclusions. It's always good to be reminded that one should do one's homework and get all the facts before jumping to conclusions, especially negative conclusions.  It reminds us that we see what we are looking for instead of what's actually there.  This is a good example of that and finding out there was no conspiracy, even though, at first glance, my evidence pointed in that direction.  

2.  We should write about good things as well as bad.  When the media only report things that go wrong, we get an unbalanced sense of how the world is.  The Clerk's office had thought through how they were going to do this, wrote up a procedure, and did the order randomly before they even knew who the candidates were.  And when a blogger called them up to check on what they did, they were prepared for me.  Their foresight on this should be recognized.

3.  I had all this information.  I didn't want it to go to waste.  A lame reason, but I'm trying to be honest here.


Final Thoughts

If the bump in votes due to position on the ballot is as big as the research says, then that's a pretty good argument for rotating the names.  But I think the research also needs to tell us if there is a population threshold when it rotating the ballots makes sense.  In my polling place we used less than 20% of the ballots.  Even if the names had been rotated, would we have used enough ballots to get to a different name order?  Should different parts of town get a different order for the School Board races - since they show up on all the ballots?

And I still have to find out what the current state law is - random or rotational? 

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Just Let The Kids Do Their Thing, And We'll Be Fine







Every year the Museum hosts an art exhibit from the Anchorage School District.  I managed to get there on the last day.  When you look at the work these kids do, you know that we're in good hands in the future.  There were so many worthy works. Here are just a few.

I'm not sure what Heaven was thinking here, but this definitely says she's feeling and thinking about big issues. 






[Click on any image to enlarge it.]






The piece in the exhibit is just the right face of this box, but I knew that the detail wouldn't show up so I added some close-ups of the details. It is really quite amazing.











Here I've meshed three together - Ellie's frog (close-up, not the whole thing), Kynsey's octopus, and Cache's wolf and caribou.










Here's another one where I'd love to talk to the artist and ask how this portrait was conceived and what it all means.  It took me a bit before I saw the musical notes.  A really interesting piece.
Tristan Burgess Grade 10 - Zebra









A beautifully executed and interesting work.  Who are these men?  How did the artist come up with this?


















I'm afraid I didn't do Katie's piece justice here.  The whole picture is in the lower right, then I've zoomed in on reflections in what we guessed were drops of water on the table.  Interesting piece.





There was just something about this large poster that spoke to me.


Hazel Marucut Grade 10 - Sirens of the Deep

I don't know why.  I guess it's the complicated simplicity of this piece and the slightly racy innocence. 



I know why I liked this one - I used to make similar doodles in class when I was bored.





They weren't quite together like this in the exhibit, but it seemed the right thing to do.  The tiger fish is by Brey Anna.  The rest you can see if you enlarge it.













Sarah Birdsall Grade 11 - Textured Hand
 And this one speaks for itself. 


My 14 year old companion at the exhibit saw one picture by a classmate.  We both agreed that in most cases, it was pretty easy to tell which ones were done by boys and which by girls.  But not all. 

Monday, April 08, 2013

Voter Intent - The Coming Battle Over Write-In Votes In Municipal Election Hand Count

Nick Moe started a write in campaign for Assembly Chair Ernie Hall's seat two weeks before the election. That's not much time to get the word out.  He said he was motivated by Hall's cutting off debate over the Mayor's sudden and, some say, draconian labor ordinance.

Moe totally surprised everyone but, maybe, himself.  The write-in candidate was only 93 votes behind Hall.  When Lisa Murkowski did her write-in campaign after losing the primary to Joe Miller in 2008, she had months and millions to get her message across.

 But while many Anchorage residents assume that Nick Moe is trailing by 93 votes, that isn't exactly clear.  Actually, the Municipal Elections Board has not given any votes to Nick Moe yet.  The official results only list "Write-In."  From the election results page:

       ASSEMBLY DISTRICT 3 - SEAT D



Total
          Number of Precincts
26
          Precincts Reporting
24 92.3%
          Times Counted
8031/37964 21.2%
          Total Votes
7163


         HALL, Ernie
3628 50.65%
         Write-in Votes
3535 49.35%


 
The scanners on the voting machines have identified them as votes for a write-in candidate, but the write-in votes have NOT actually been looked at to see if they are all for Nick Moe.  Presumably, most of those votes are for Nick Moe, though a certain number could be for other candidates, like Mickey Mouse. 

According to Deputy Election Clerk Amanda Moser, on Thursday at 6 pm in City Hall, the election officials will announce which absentee and questioned votes will and will not be counted. Those disqualified will be notified and given a chance to appeal between the end of the qualification review and Thursday night.  (Actually, they may already have begun this, I forgot to ask if they'd finished the verification.)

Friday, at 8 am, they will begin to count them.  If, and only if, the number of votes for the write-in candidate exceeds the number of votes for Ernie Hall, will they then look to see the names of the write-in candidates.  Of course, if it is anywhere close, I suspect the Moe campaign will want a hand count.

When I saw Moe last Thursday at the "It's Our Oil" rally, I asked him what lay ahead.  Basically he said he needs to now raise money for attorneys to make sure he gets every write-in vote.  He says he's worried about people who might have written in his name, but not filled in the oval next to it.  You can hear him in this short video tape.




When I asked the Municipal Clerk on Friday about what would and wouldn't count I was told they have to follow the law.

The Election Handbook says:
Write in votes are only allowed during Regular and Special Municipal Elections, and are not allowed during a Run-off Election.
So far so good, this was a regular election, not a run-off election.
To be a valid write-in vote, the oval next to the candidate's name must be filled in and the candidate's name marked in the area of the ballot that has a blank space provided for this purpose.
The Municipal Code says (I've bolded the most pertinent parts):
28.70.030 - Rules for manually counting ballots.
A.   The election board shall manually count ballots according to the following rules:
1.   Ballots marked by the use of cross-marks, "X" marks, diagonal, horizontal or vertical marks, solid marks, stars, circles, asterisks, checks or plus signs that clearly indicate the oval or the square the voter desires.
2.  A failure to properly mark a ballot as to one or more candidates or propositions does not itself invalidate the entire ballot.
3.  If a voter marks fewer names than there are persons to be elected to the office, a vote shall be counted for each candidate properly marked.
4.  If a voter marks more names than there are persons to be elected to the office, the votes for candidates for that office shall not be counted.
5.  The mark specified in 1. of this subsection shall be counted only if it is substantially inside the oval or square provided, or touching the oval or square so as to indicate clearly that the voter intended the particular oval or square to be designated.
6.  Improper marks on the ballot shall not be counted and shall not invalidate marks for candidates or propositions properly made.
7.  An erasure or correction invalidates only that section of the ballot in which it appears.
8.  In order to vote for a write-in candidate, the voter must:
a.  Write in the candidate's name in the space provided;
b.  Mark the oval or square opposite the candidate's name in accordance with subsection A.1 of this section; and
c.   Not have marked ovals or squares in excess of the number of offices available.
9.  A write-in vote for a candidate whose name is also printed on the ballot may be counted only if the oval or square preceding the written name is filled-in, the oval or square preceding the printed name is not filled-in, and the number of filled-in ovals or squares does not exceed the number of offices available.
10.  A write-in vote shall not be counted in a runoff election.
11.  A sticker bearing a candidate's name may not be used on the ballot.
B.   The rules set out in this section are mandatory and there shall be no exceptions to them. A ballot shall not be counted unless marked in compliance with these rules. 
The rules say that the oval must be marked.  There's a lot of leeway - X, diagonal, asterisks, checks, etc. - but something has to be in the oval.  B says that it's mandatory and no exceptions.

The Murkowski Write-In Court Case- The Primacy of Voter Intent

The 2008 election questions about how to decide which write-in votes would count ended in the Alaska Supreme Court, a case called Miller v. Treadwell.  Miller was arguing, among other things, that if people mispelled Murkowski's name, the votes shouldn't count.


The basic principle articulated by the Court was the primacy of voter intent and thus minor spelling errors didn't matter:

"Voter Intent Is Paramount, And Any Misspelling, Abbreviation, Or Other Minor Variation In The Form Of The Candidate's Name On A Write–In Ballot Does Not Invalidate A Ballot So Long As The Intention Of The Voter Can Be Ascertained."

There are several clear, more specific, statements about spelling in the decision.  Here's one, for example:
Our interpretation of AS 15.15.360 permitting abbreviations, misspellings, or other minor variations in the form of the name of a write-in candidate so long as the intention of the voter can be ascertained is also consistent with the federally mandated standard for counting the write-in votes of those voters living or serving in uniform overseas. The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act provides that in counting the ballot of a uniformed services voter or other voter who is overseas, “[a]ny abbreviation, misspelling, or other minor variation in the form of the name of a candidate or a political party shall be disregarded in determining the validity of the ballot, if the intention of the voter can be ascertained.” FN15 The Alaska Administrative Code incorporates this requirement into state law. FN16 Miller's proposed construction of the statute would require us to impose a different, and more rigorous, voting standard on domestic Alaskans than on those who are serving in the military or living abroad. Our construction of AS 15.15.360 treats overseas and domestic Alaskan voters equally, ensures that each write-in vote is treated equally and counted in the same manner, and avoids valuing one person's vote over that of another. FN17
Even though Nick Moe's name is much easier to spell, it's possible someone might misspell it.  If they do, and it's clear they meant Nick Moe, the guidance from this decision is that it should count for Nick Moe.  But, I suspect, if someone writes in Micky Mouse, Moe would have a hard time claiming they meant Nicky Mo(us)e. 

When it came to filling in the ovals - or at least marking them somehow - the Court ruled that blank ovals, even with Murkowski's name next to it, should not be counted.

In part the misspelling rule was based on the argument that the law didn't explicitly say the name had to be spelled correctly, but the state law clearly said the ovals had to be marked.  The Municipal law follows the state law closely.  You can see above that it clearly says the ovals have to be marked (A1 says the oval has to be marked.)  It's 'mandatory' (B says the rules above are mandatory.)


What It Means
  • Misppellings, as long as voter intent is clear, should be counted for the write-in candidate.
  • Along with the name written in, the oval must be marked.  It doesn't have to be filled in completely, but there has to be some mark in the oval.

How does this relate to the Court's "Voter Intent" principle?

"Voter Intent Is Paramount. . .  So Long As The Intention Of The Voter Can Be Ascertained."

I think there are two different things to consider here:
  1. The mechanics of the voting machines and determining the voter's intent among two or more candidates whose names are printed on the ballot
  2. Determining the voter's intent if they write in a name
Let me explain.  Marking the ovals is necessary for two reasons:
1.  To identify one's preference among the candidate names printed on the ballot
2.  For the voting machines to scan the winners, the oval has to be substantially filled in.

However, if the voter writes in a name, but doesn't mark any oval for that race, one has a likely presumption that the voter's intention is the candidate whose name is written in.

One could ask why it would be necessary to fill in the oval as well.  The Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Treadwell says, when discussing spelling, that mistakes shouldn't disenfranchise people.  For example, the decision says:
Alaskan voters arrive at their polling places with a vast array of backgrounds and capabilities. Some Alaskans were not raised with English as their first language. Some Alaskans who speak English do not write it as well. Some Alaskans have physical or learning disabilities that hinder their ability to write clearly or spell correctly. Yet none of these issues should take away a voter's right to decide which candidate to elect to govern. We must construe the statute's language in light of the purpose of preserving a voter's choice rather than ignoring it. As we have consistently ruled, we remain “reluctant to permit a wholesale disfranchisement of qualified electors through no fault of their own, and ‘[w]here any reasonable construction of the statute can be found which will avoid such a result, [we] should and will favor it.’ ” FN14

So, the Court has said to allow for errors and mistakes.  What about the error of thinking that if you write in the name, you don't have to fill in the oval?  The voter intent is clear and the Court doesn't want technical errors (where the intent is still clear) to prevent someone's vote from counting. So it would seem to meet their idea of Voter Intent.

Moe's attorney's could argue that this reasoning should be applied to ballots where Moe's name is written in, but the voter has not marked the oval.  That when the names are printed, an oval has to be marked to distinguish which one was selected.  But if there is a write-in, a marked oval isn't necessary.  This assumes, of course, none of the other ovals in that race are marked.

The Court recognized in Miller v. Treadwell, that reading the ballots by the machine isn't absolutely necessary.  In 2008 they found, over Miller's objection, that votes for Murkowski that didn't show up in the machine count (because the oval wasn't marked enough for the scanner to read it) could be counted if the handcount found a mark that touched the oval.

This discussion (Section IV in the Court's decision) gets a little detailed.  Basically Miller argued that the hand count shouldn't look at any ballots that the scanner didn't count as a write-in vote.  The court concluded that since the scanners don't segregate or sort the ballots and since there were enough write-in ballots to win, the Division of Elections had to go through the ballots to see if there were enough of the write-in votes for one candidate to win.  And when they did this, they might find ovals that were marked enough to tell voter intent, but not enough to have registered on the scanner.  The hand counters did find more write-in votes for Murkowski than the scanner did.  So, the extra write-in votes that the hand counters found (above what the scanner counted) were valid. 

On the other hand, they rejected Murkowski's argument that ballots that had her name written in, but hadn't marked the oval at all, should be counted.  This seems to be, at least partly, based on the fact that the law very explicitly says that the ovals have to be marked for the vote to count.

Could Moe's attorneys persuade the court that the principle of intent should invalidate that part of the law because if someone writes in a candidate's name, they clearly have intent to vote for them?  That it's inconsistent with the Voter Intent principle? It would seem they rejected that argument in Miller v. Treadwell, but I haven't read all the briefs so I don't know for sure that the argument was made.  A cautious court would leave that for lawmakers to change. 

Another potential issue that Moe could conceivably argue is that if people from his district voted questioned ballots on ballots that didn't have his race on them, but they wrote in his name on the ballot, the vote should be counted because
  1. they were eligible to vote for him, and
  2. they showed intent to vote for him
I suspect this would be a hard case to win.  First, I don't know if there even are any such marked questioned ballots.  Second, the instructions for questioned ballots say that if the ballot is different from their district's ballot, they may not be able to vote for all the offices.  (See this post for a picture of the orange  "Notice To Questioned Ballot Voters.") Though, I have to say, as a poll worker who gave voters questioned ballots this election, I suspect this piece of paper was not given to every person voting a questioned ballot.  Either the poll worker didn't know they were there or just forgot to give them out with every questioned ballot.

Moe's comments in the video make it clear that he plans to push for every ballot that has his name on it and some mark in the oval to count.  And it would seem that the Miller v Treadwell decision supports him.

If he were to take it further than that and argue those ballots with his name written in that do NOT have the oval marked should count, I think it will be a harder sell. He can argue it's consistent with the Court's principle of favoring Voter Intent.  But the opposing side will argue that the statute very clearly says the ovals must be marked.  They'll also argue that voters who want to vote every item in their district race can vote in their home precinct, can vote in one of three centers that have all the ballots, or can vote early or absentee.  If they choose not to take one of those options, it's the voters choice.

Besides, there is no place on the ballot to clearly add a write-in for a race that doesn't appear on the ballot.

What adds to the significance of each ballot is the fact that Ernie Hall has been a regular supporter of Mayor Fink [Sullivan, the younger] on many, if not most, important votes.  If Moe were to win this seat, it would put those who generally oppose the Mayor in the majority in the Assembly.  So we can bet that every vote will be fought over.