Working Thread: How to Get Your County To Hand Count Paper Ballots

[GuvWurld]

For a while now I've been considering what would make a more effective approach to my County Supervisors who seem unwilling or unable to acknowledge the threats of continued use of our Diebold OS machines. Despite the mountains of evidence, they have a stated intention, pending the certification granted on Friday, to purchase Diebold TSX machines, one per polling place, in a policy of "minimal compliance" with HAVA.

I suspect that one of the shortcomings of the resistance to Diebold effort thus far is that the Supes don't feel there is an alternative. So I want to augment our approach by presenting a proposal that outlines the steps necessary to immediately switch our implementation plan such that we are approaching the June primary preparing to use hand counted paper ballots (hcpb) rather than Diebold. The idea is that we need to show how feasible it is logistically, how sound it is fiscally, and how much more secure it is for producing accurate results. In sum, we need to make it as easy as possible for them to say yes.

I have been struggling to get this project moving and time is now obviously very short. However, the work to be done in this thread will apply everywhere, not just in my remote corner of northern CA. A new DUer named JimDandy has done an incredible job of detailing the steps involved with creating such a proposal. It was originally posted here, buried in another thread. Since JimDandy does not yet have the privilege of starting new threads, I am reposting this with permission of the author.

This thread is meant to be a working thread in that we have to flesh this out together, even more, and share our progress. This is something that can be approached simultaneously in many communities and we can each benefit from the work occurring elsewhere. This sort of collaboration is truly DU at its best.

GuvWurld

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The following is the start of a very general "How To" for developing an "HCPB Voting System Implementation Plan." It's written so that a beginner elections activist could follow it. I didn't go into much detail, in case this was not what you're looking for. If it's not, feel free to steer me in the right direction and I'll try again.

JD
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Develop an "HCPB Voting System Implementation Plan"
This is my understanding of what you want: "...the goal is (to develop) an outline (to deliver to my county supervisors) of the steps we'd have to take between now and June in terms of logistics and costs..." to move from a Diebold Op Scan system to a Hand-Counted Paper Ballot system.

It sounds like you want to quickly develop what's called a 'voting system implementation plan' for HCPBs. You deserve a commendation for attempting such a task in the short time you have. Let's see if we DUers (I'm new, but I'm definitely DU!) can help get you there!

Because you will need to address ballot printing in your plan anyway, in my "How To..." below I've used that as the running example to get my points across.

Identify Your County's Current Major Commitments
First of all, you'll need to find out where your county is in their election's process. It is especially important to determine if they have signed any contracts already. For instance, has your county already contracted with a printer to produce the paper ballots for the op scans? (Last year they contracted with Sequoia Voting Systems' Pro Document Solutions printing facility in Porterville.) If so, the county is stuck. In that case, use those op scan ballots for your HCPB system. In your plan, present that solution to your county elections office as a viable segway to implementing an HCPB voting system.

If not, I'd suggest you continue to use their ballot printing company. They will be familiar with the county's election process and should be very motivated to retain their ballot printing revenue -- you would have a ready-made ally. The advantage, to the printing company, of having an HCPB system is that they retain most of the revenue they would have had from the op scan system, while eliminating most of the hassles of that system: i.e. programming the ballot templates for the op scan machines, scanner alignment problems and scanner reading problems. This lessens their exposure to blame for election problems, too. (There's lots of finger-pointing in elections when it becomes blame time for election errors or failures. For op scan errors, the equipment manufacturers nearly always put the blame on the election workers and the county, in turn, will often look to the printer when faced with a ballot counting problem.)

Find the Name of Your County's Ballot Printing Company
You've said you're already running into problems obtaining information and records from your elections offices (You're in good company with the rest of us activists.) There are ways around them for your current needs, though. If the Elections Department won't tell you who their printer is, call County Purchasing -- they should have the printing contract on file. Running into resistance with them, too? Call the County's I.T. Department. If your county is large enough, the I.T. Dept will be involved in the op scan programming process and would then undoubtedly know the name of the printer. Referred back to elections department because it's an 'elections matter'? Ask the County Assessors Office to see the 'line-item budget' for the Elections Department. Payments made to the printing company should be there along with their name. Budget not broken down that finely? Search your county's online Board of Supervisors meeting minutes. They have to approve the ballot printing contract. The county contract number should be in the minutes, even if the name of the printer is not. Take that number to the County Purchasing Office and insist on viewing the contract. Contract not mentioned in the minutes? Call each of the ballot manufacturing companies and ask them if they are the contractor for your county. CA Elections Code Section 20220 states that ballot printing vendors must be certified by CA's SoS. The SoS has certified only five, so far.

The point is to never get discouraged when you encounter stumbling blocks while developing your plan; there will probably be several ways to get around every one of them.

Study Your County's Most Recent 'Voting System Implementation Plan'
After your county awarded it's voting equipment contract to Diebold for their OS system, they should have developed a detailed 'new voting system implementation plan.' Their plan will have addressed many of the same items you will need to address in your plan -- Items such as: total cost of conversion to the new system over a certain period of years, impact of that cost on the county budget; supplies needed; employee and poll worker training; system security and programming; delivery of voting equipment and supplies to polling places and their return; accumulation and tabulation of vote counts; and procedures for canvassing, auditing, recounting and certifying the vote counts. Their plan will also have had to take into account California election laws, administrative election rules and county election ordinances.

Studying their plan will help you identify, among other things:
1. the items your county elections department and county supervisors are most concerned about. Those will probably be the items they focused on the most in their plan.
2. those laws, rules and ordinances you also will need to address in your plan.

Tips for Writing Your Plan
1. Pattern your plan after theirs, using the same format and parallel constructions. This should make it easier for you to explain your plan to the county, because they already will be familiar with its layout.
2. It will also help you ensure that, when comparing the two plans, you compared apples to apples and oranges to orange. This is especially important when it comes to cost comparisons. For example, your county is required to print ballots for at least 80% of its registered voters. Lets say the ballot printing cost stated in the county's plan was based on that 80% figure. Knowing that, you should base your ballot printing cost on that same percentage, instead of listing what it would cost to print ballots for every registered voter.

My County Doesn't Have a Voting System Implementation Plan. Now what?
What if your county is so small that they never had money in their budget to write a formal voting system implementation plan? See if you can't locate another county in your state that has one. It's important that the plan come from a county in your state, because they have to at least follow the same state laws as your county does. It would also be ideal if they used the same voting system as your county does. Other counties in California that have the same voting system (Diebold OS and no early voting) as your county does are: Fresno, Kern, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Siskiyou and Tulare. Of those that developed a plan, choose a county that most closely resembles yours in number of registered voters, size of county budget, geographical size etc. This will enable you to make the most accurate comparison possible.

Etcetera, Etcetera

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There are many other issues, details and intervening steps that I left out of this "How To..."

[kster]

1. Thanks Guvwurld and JimDandy Kick-n-Recommended..nt

[thecrow]

2. Thanks for posting this! eom

[kster]

3. Kick.nt

[Wordie]

4. K&R An impressive analysis. Thanks for posting this. eom

[Melissa G]

5. KnR! n/t

[nicknameless]

6. K&R

What a welcome addition to DU!

[Wilms]

7. Costs may be a way to reach them, too.

First, if Yoloians can use Vote-PAD for HAVA accessibility requirements, why can't Humboldters?

What would it cost to run a HCPB election? Compared to...

What are they spending now to run the election, to store, maintain, and replace equipment? How much does training cost? Never mind the HAVA $ that's making eyes bulge. What will be done to finance this junk when they no longer hava HAVA $? Huh?

Do they contract out the programing? If so, are they insured against any potential liability should the programmers do something fraudful?

Are the OpScan ballots more expensive than HCPB?

Stuff like that.

[GuvWurld]

8. I agree

It is daunting to need to acquire so much info, especially the $ part. But ultimately I will speak to costs and I will also speak to the sense of responsibility that should deem Diebold an unworthy business partner, both for being untrustworthy and for the liability risk, both of which ultimately come back around to dollars and cents.

Humboldt is looking at Vote-PAD. I understand someone other than Ellen is going to be doing a presentation on 3/2.

[GuvWurld]

9. Progress Report

I started my work on the hcpb proposal this week by calling our county elections manager. He said there was no current voting system implementation plan. Instead he sent me documents from another county. These were not "implementation plans" but rather pertained to voting modernization. I only looked at them quickly but did not see relevant content. Another team member also reviewed and saw nothing useful. A few e-mails back and forth with the elections manager and I was having a hard time telling if he was purposely avoiding helping me or if there really was nothing that matched what I wanted. I searched online and still didn't find anything specifically called a "voting system implementation plan." One nice thing, though, is that he twice asked me about potential lawsuits. I think he may be a little nervous (and I'm starting to wonder who he's really working for). I ignored both queries.

I also spoke with our registrar. I was more straight forward with her about creating this proposal, which of course would be presented for her review. I don't think she is presently in favor of switching, but it does seem like she realizes it can only help to have more options, especially if she doesn't have to do much work to develop one of the choices. She encouraged me not to get too hung up on finding the implementation plan, or even trying to conform so much to its format. Instead, she said, just try to deal with a fiscal analysis in terms of time, staff, and $$, including the source of funding. She said I should discuss the recommendation of hcpb in relative terms to other alternatives. This can be done in text of course, but I also have a visual idea on this below.

One useful thing I got from the elections manager is the number of voters per precinct. This of course tell us the total registered voters, from which we can extrapolate a projected number of actual voters. To estimate time needed for counting, I asked the elections manager about the pace for doing the 1% manual audit. I didn't quite believe his numbers so I'm asking some people who participated in recent counts and I'm going to figure out an average. This will allow me to figure out a range, from smallest precincts to largest, of how long it should take to count the number of votes projected to be cast there. This projection would also be based on an assignment of some amount of manpower so that will determine cost in terms of paying the counters. I would like to recommend that counters be different people from the tired and weary poll workers who have been on the job all day.

As for printing ballots, typical lead time is 2.5 months, though elections manager said he tries to provide as much time as possible. I infer that it can be done in much less time if necessary. Diebold has printed our ballots for years, with the exception of last November when Sequoia did it. Elections manager criticized Sequoia and said we're going back to Diebold. He said there would be at least 10 and possibly 11 or 12 ballot types for the June primary. Should I be concerned about Diebold printing the ballots, even if we're doing hcpb?

My next steps are to get the count time estimates and to meet with one of the Arcata Councilmembers who has agreed to work with me on the proposal. I don't know how much he's really willing to do but I suppose I'll find that out when we meet Monday afternoon. I'm going straight from that meeting to the ACLU meeting where I will be given the chance to ask for help with the injunction against continued use of the Diebold OS machines. I also have another lawyer interested who I'll meet on Thursday.

Here is the visual idea mentioned above:

Single sheet, one-side if possible, two-sides if necessary.

First show a sequence displaying the path a vote takes in being cast, recorded, counted, etc. through the process using Diebold OS.

It could be like a flow chart but I'm thinking it would be better with some graphics or icons.

At each step where the guarantee of a conclusive result is not assured, we place a question mark.

We do the same thing with the hand counted paper ballots process.

Some explanatory text would have to accompany the question marks but we have the overall layout of the full page to consider how best to explain the point here. That point is, of course, no basis for confidence as demonstrated through kindergarten level depictions of a process that ensures inconclusive outcomes.

The hcpb contrast will be compelling and help to frame discussion of what makes a voting system appropriate. This could in turn be a component in presenting the three attributes of Democracy identified in Blueprint For Peaceful Revolution (conclusive, basis, Consent). Collectively this could have a lot of value, not least of which might be to promote the Voter Confidence Resolution, but also as collateral for other hcpb initiatives and simply for general education. (This idea is meant for general propaganda, not just for this proposal or even restricted to my county so imagine a few versions each showing a different voting system).

So I'd like to ask for help with this visual. I need someone to identify the steps and draft text. I have someone who can do the art if I deliver content, or I would be happy to accept that additional degree of assistance from any other volunteer.

I'm sorry this is so long. Everyone is welcome to comment on any and every aspect. I need even more help now than a week ago! Plus this is going to be a big week for other announcements. More to come at the GuvWurld Blog.

[Wilms]

10. How is a hand-count done?

Is that the essence of the questions needing answers in order to make the diagram?

Have you considered contacting BoE's who have done or still do hand counts?


And, BTW, that was very mean. The Election Manager twice asks about lawsuits and you offer silence. How cold! :evilgrin:

But, I'm sure you noticed the Registrar was also on the same wave-length by recommending you that you highlight the economics.

It's all about "the Benjamins".


Well fine, then. Guv, consider a "business plan" model as you piece this together.

A good business plan is actually EXTREMELY educational to work on, let alone to receive.

[GuvWurld]

11. The Essence

The essence of the visual piece I described would be the finest possible distillation of steps involved in both hand counting paper ballots and an electronic voting system. I suppose it could be this:

--casting the vote
--storing cast votes
--accessing stored cast votes
--counting cast votes
--aggregating local vote counts
--storing ballots of record

Perhaps someone could distill it further or better, or might choose different words. That's all good for discussion. Frankly, I don't want to debate the finer points of this. I want someone with some art skills to run with it. How would each of these steps be depicted under the contrasted systems? With HCPB I believe the illustration should demonstrate transparency and security and verifiability. With e-voting, there will be one or more points at which secrecy will be introduced - this is where the question marks go, and then where the text is connected. We are showing the difference between no basis for confidence and a rational basis for confidence; conditions guaranteed to produce an inconclusive outcome and inherent uncertainty vs. a permanent record that will repeatedly yield the same results. Who will volunteer to help create this?

Incidentally, I have a second idea that builds off the first. It isn't as detailed in my mind's eye but the concept is to use the same e-vote images and maybe just a finger pressing the button to cast the vote. The tag is "the magic of voting."

OK, back to the proposal. About the only thing concrete I've been able to determine is that the numbers appear feasible, in terms of getting enough people to count a reasonable number of projected votes in a rather short time. I haven't yet figured out how to depict this sensibly in a table or chart but it at least serves me personally as a feasibility test.

For how much I've been talking about this project, the progress is insufficient. I'm also starting to feel a little pressed for time given, not so much the date, but other things that are happening here. I'm going to sign off here so I can blog about all that other stuff and get everyone caught up. Any and all assistance welcomed on this hcpb proposal. Thanks in advance.

[Wilms]

14. I'm not sure where to post it,

but you may want to ask for a graphic/conceptual artist.

I don't think what you ask is a big deal.

[GuvWurld]

15. Actually, I have a graphic artist

I'm looking for one or more people who can put together the sequence, either as I outlined or in some similar manner, plus create wording for the brief explanations that accompany each step, particularly the ones where the question marks go.

[3ringcircus]

12. hand counted votes

Hey, thanks for posting this. I contacted our county elections atty. and of course he is concerned about the integrity of the vote. We are moving from diebold opti-scan of paper ballots to diebold touchscreen. when I called atty he said I was the only complaint!!! He has asked me to get together info for him to look over and would I be willing to present to county commissioners and election commissioners! I am way over my head here and would appreciate some input. I did go to solarbus and order a packet to get me started and have been making copies from Bradblog..our previous elections supervisor (a democrat) quit her position after getting new diebold computer counters hooked up for us, left the demo party,joined repugs and went to work for diebold ! she has since left that. I am going to go for the whole ball of wax and try to hand count the paper ballots we already have since the bottom -line concern always seems to be the money. atty told me feds were only giving money out for the touchscreens. Help!

[GuvWurld]

13. Welcome to DU, 3ringcircus

:hi:

It will help us all to help you if we know what county and state you are in.

[3ringcircus]

19. been under the weather---

so slowed down more than usually. I am in hamilton co. tn. have reached some other people who actually have petitioned our dem gov. to no avail and they have a lot of info for me. Looks like there is no shortage of evidence. Now I am just trying to organize and will try to arrange a meet with the atty. Will keep you informed. Thanks.

[GuvWurld]

16. kick (eom)

[kster]

17. Switzerland: Old-fashioned direct democracy

Switzerland: Old-fashioned direct democracy


Snip.....Though I was born and raised in Germany, I have been a voting Swiss citizen for 23 years. Seeing how the American voting process has become so unaccountable with electronic balloting, I wondered how the Swiss voting process works behind the scenes. What I found was a simple system that many will judge as old-fashioned and far behind our hightech-electronic times


snip...When this is done, policemen bring the results and all the voting papers to the central office of the town where the results of the town's polling stations are combined.



snip....As the cost of implementation is not even mentioned, I suppose that there is no tangible advantage in electronic voting.

snip...On the other hand the risks definately point to a loss of democracy. Maybe, in some systems such as voting, it is better to be old-fashioned.

http://proliberty.com/observer/20031109.htm




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=403993#403993

[kster]

18. Swiss voting system?

http://www.swissvs.org/

[3ringcircus]

20. wow!

I am impressed! course I just don't count- along with my vote ! looks like it is totally hand countable comparing to your voting records. How long till you know the outcome? Everyone here is in such a hurry!

[Wilms]

21. Did you know that Alpine County Hand Counted the 2005 Special Election?

http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/ss05_systemsinuse_v1.1.pdf

They had a 76% turnout.
http://www.mammothtimes.com/articles/2005/11/17/front/electionrecap.txt

Cost $6205. (smallest population in state. I think it was mail in, don't know who pays postage.)
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20051009/news_1m9election.html

And untill a couple of years ago, had an election advocate living there.

"Wilma L. Rule, Adjunct Professor, University of Nevada, Reno died on January 15, 2004 at her home in Alpine County, California of a massive stroke. She was a dedicated scholar whose focus was gender and politics with particular interest in electoral systems. Wilma's work is highly respected by specialists in electoral reform. She served as a long-time-Secretary-Treasurer of the Section on Representation and Electoral Systems of the American Political Science Association. "

http://www.fairvote.org/about_us/rule.htm


Web Site for the clerk didn't say much.

Barbara K. Jones, County Clerk
[e-mail]
99 Water (Federal Express Only)
P O Box 158
Markleeville, CA 96120
[phone]
[phone] Fax
Hours 8:30am - 12:00pm / 1:00pm - 5:00pm

http://www.alpinecountyca.com/departments/county_clerk


BTW. Have you seen the kind of money spent on e-voting?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=415189&mesg_id=415210