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..."