Charlottesville Election Official Training

Before each election, as in every other voting jurisdiction in Virginia, the Electoral Board and the staff of the Office of Voter Registration and Elections in Charlottesville take several hours to train the election officials (known generically as "pollworkers").

This generally includes going over procedures for Election Day, reviewing changes in election law since the last session of the General Assembly, and hands-on practice with voting equipment.

Because at the upcoming election Charlottesville will be a test site for an electronic poll book, this evening's training in the basement conference room at City Hall included a presentation from Datacard and BEC, the two companies that are providing the equipment for the test. Datacard has more than 35 years' experience in the ID business, and Richmond-based BEC numbers among its clients the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, the University of Richmond, and various hospitals, businesses, and government agencies around the Commonwealth.

The electronic poll books (or "EPBs") will streamline the check-in process for voters on Election Day. The entire voter registration list for the City of Charlottesville will be on the database.

When a voter checks in, he will either give his name to the worker behind the pollbook or -- and this is a new option -- he will be able to hand the pollworker his Virginia driver's license, which has a scannable bar code. Scanning the bar code will bring up that voter's registration information. If the voter is in the proper precinct and has not voted previously in this election (either by absentee ballot or earlier in the day), he will be given a slip of paper that will be automatically generated by a printer connected to the EPB. Two copies are generated: One is given to the voter, who takes it to the JBC, which will issue an access code. The other will be used by pollworkers to keep a paper record of who has voted in this election.

If it turns out a particular voter is in the wrong precinct, she will be told the address of the proper precinct. If a person's name is not on the registered voters' list but she insists that it should be there, pollworkers know the procedures for issuing a provisional ballot. Provisional ballots are reviewed by and counted by the Electoral Board during the canvass on the day after the election. Votes from valid provisional ballots are included in the official election results that are issued following the canvass.

In case there is an unlikely event such as a power failure or the EPBs otherwise go out of service, each precinct will have an alphabetical voter registration list that can be used as a back-up, so voting can continue uninterrupted.

New pollworkers will be trained on Saturday morning at City Hall. All pollworkers will gather on Monday evening for a final training session, which will include a break-out for each precinct so that Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs can work with their own staffs and answer relevant questions in anticipation of the November 7 election.

Here are some pictures from tonight's training of Chief Election Officers.

Charlottesville General Registrar Sheri Iachetta (rear center) instructs Chief Election Officials about recent changes in the Virginia Election Code.

Datacard representative Chris Wilson points out some of the features of the electronic poll book.

Chief Election Officers practice using the new electronic poll books.

Election workers check out a voter's identification page on the new electronic poll book.

A portable printer like this generates a slip of paper authorizing a voter to receive an access code to use the eSlate machine.

Paul Merrill has a report on the electronic poll books on Channel 29's 11:00 o'clock news.

Paper or Electronic?

Last week the Washington Times ran an article in the local news section that began:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson visited Maryland yesterday to support Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley's bid for governor, but said he agrees with Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s views on paper balloting's superiority to electronic voting.

"I believe that the best way is paper ballots, with optical scanners," Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, said during an event in Silver Spring. "We did that in New Mexico, and it should become nationwide."

The article, by Jon Ward, noted:

Mr. Ehrlich has threatened to call a special session of the General Assembly to discard the entire electronic voting system in favor of paper ballots.

I thought the article cried out for a response, so I wrote one. It appeared in today's letters to the editor column in the Times. (Somehow the editor got the section wrong in the reference to the original article.)

The governors of Maryland and New Mexico may belong to different political parties, but they agree that "the best way" to avoid problematic or fraudulent elections "is paper ballots" rather than electronic voting machines ("Democratic governor backs Ehrlich on balloting," Commentary, Wednesday).

Govs. Bill Richardson and Bob Ehrlich may have confidence in paper ballots but they may be sorely disappointed if they count on them to prevent fraud.

In order to disrupt an election or change its results when electronic voting machines are used, a potential perpetrator must have a sophisticated knowledge, not just of computer hardware and software in general, but of particular hardware and software, plus he must gain physical access to the machinery by overcoming simple and widely-practiced security procedures.

In order to disrupt an election or change its results when paper ballots are used, a potential perpetrator must have: a pen. Or a pencil. And nothing more.

Marking a second (or third) candidate in a "vote for one" race invalidates a ballot for that race, with nobody receiving a vote.

Stray marks made on an optical-scan ballot render that ballot unreadable by a machine, and therefore it must be set aside for hand-counting, when it becomes subject to human error.

All it takes is a pen or pencil to make these marks on paper ballots to change the results of an election.

Paper ballots can also be torn, folded, spindled and mutilated, making them unreadable by either machine or human eyes.

In his 2004 book, "Stealing Elections," Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund documents dozens of cases of electoral fraud involving paper (either voter registration forms or paper ballots) over the past two decades. At the same time, he notes in regard to electronic voting machines, that "in the twenty-plus years that these machines have been used, in many counties all across the country, there has never been a verified case of tampering."

There are many other problems involving paper ballots, but one thing is clear: They will not stop perceived or actual election fraud.

In the print edition, my letter was placed at the head of the letters column, just below the editorial cartoon by Bill Garner. Sadly, though -- despite the prominent placement -- I don't think this will put an end to the debate.

Chicken Little or Cassandra?

Last Tuesday's primary election mishaps in Maryland -- centered on Montgomery County but also including Prince Georges County and Baltimore -- have pricked up the ears of election watchers across the country, with increasing fears of disruptions in November because of faulty equipment and other factors.

The Washington Post reports today:

An overhaul in how states and localities record votes and administer elections since the Florida recount battle six years ago has created conditions that could trigger a repeat -- this time on a national scale -- of last week's Election Day debacle in the Maryland suburbs, election experts said.

In the Nov. 7 election, more than 80 percent of voters will use electronic voting machines, and a third of all precincts this year are using the technology for the first time. The changes are part of a national wave, prompted by the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 and numerous revisions of state laws, that led to the replacement of outdated voting machines with computer-based electronic machines, along with centralized databases of registered voters and other steps to refine the administration of elections.

The Post goes on to cite the concerns of various people that these changes may result in problems and perhaps challenged or contested elections.

I take issue with what one former governor says, in the second paragraph below:

"It's hard to put a factor on how ill-prepared we are," said former Ohio governor Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat who recently co-chaired a study of new machines with Republican Richard L. Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania, for the National Research Council. They advised local election officials to prepare backup plans for November.

"What we know is, these technologies require significant testing and debugging to make them work," added Celeste, now president of Colorado College. "Our concern -- particularly as we look to the November election, when there is a lot of pressure on -- is that election officials consider what kinds of fallbacks they can put in place."

Electronic voting machines, of various sorts, have been in use for more than 20 years. They are not only used in the United States, but in Latin America and other foreign lands.

These machines and their software and firmware have been tested and debugged and tested and debugged multiple times. New generations of voting machines are released every year, it seems, as improvements are implemented and defects are corrected. They are tested by independent testing labs, by state and local election officials, and by national standards boards.

In other words, by the time they are deployed, they are ready.

The only question is, are the people who use them ready?

There is a serious concern about the amount of training received by pollworkers across the country. An article in the August 2006 issue of Campaigns & Elections magazine (which is accessible online only by subscribers -- and I am not, though I should be) has an article entitled "The Neglected Threat," by Jeanne Zaino, which notes:

As we look toward midterms, the situation involving pollworkers remains problematic. Those working the more than 180,000 polling sites across the nation are aging; two years ago, the average poll worker in the United States was 72 years old. Most are temporary employees or volunteers who [are] asked to work long hours for little pay. In the 2004 election, poll workers in Indiana were paid $75 per day, while precinct leaders received $150. That same year poll workers in San Luis Obispo County received $97, plus $10 for attending a three-hour training course. Poll workers in New York City are paid more than most. In 2004, they got a $200 stipend that, after working the required shift of at least 16 hours, amounts to about $13 per hour after taxes.

In Washington state shifts run 15 hours or more with a one-hour break. As poll worker Genie Dickinson noted, "Most poll workers are seniors, and few are accustomed to even an eight-hour workday. When polls close, a portion of workers can't compute the arithmetic necessary to complete paperwork. Others feel too pooped to care."

I am pleased to report that in Charlottesville, we are and have been addressing these issues.

First, in concert with the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, the Office of Voter Registration and Elections is recruiting and training college students to perform the duties of election officials in Charlottesville, thereby lowering the average age of the pollworkers here. Last year's crop of college election officials was enthusiastic, hardworking, and almost uniformly said they would do the job again in coming years. In addition, Charlottesville has for several years -- from the time it became legal to do so -- recruited and deployed high school students, not yet eligible to vote and therefore not yet eligible to serve as an election officials, to be "pages" on election day, helping the precinct chiefs in whatever capacity they can, from running errands and making phone calls to handing out "I Voted!" stickers -- tasks that are not required to be done by properly appointed election officials.

In regard to long hours, Charlottesville was the first jurisdiction in Virginia to adopt "split shifts," in an effort to lessen the burden on senior citizens, parents, and others who want to contribute something to the community on election day but cannot devote a full 14, 15, or 16 hours to do so.

The way the split shift works is this: Some of our election officials work all day, including the chiefs and assistant chiefs in each precinct. Others work from 5:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (the morning shift) and the rest work from 12:00 noon to the close of polls at 7:00 p.m. (the afternoon shift). Some workers have to remain behind after the polls close to perform closing operations after the last voter has cast her ballot and the doors are locked shut.

There is no legal reason, in Virginia at least, for other cities and counties not to adopt the split shift format. In other states, their election law codes may prohibit pollworkers from entering or leaving the polling place during the course of the voting day, so those laws would have to be modified to allow it.

In her article, Zaino quotes Thad Hall, a professor at the University of Utah, who notes:

A voter's experience with their poll worker plays a key role in determining how satisfied they are in the election process and whether they have confidence that their vote was counted accurately.

Charlottesville's Electoral Board receives very few complaints from voters about surly, unhelpful, incompetent, or otherwise unacceptable election officials. (I won't exaggerate and say we receive no such complaints, but at each election they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.) We attribute this both to the high quality of the persons who volunteer to work as election officials twice (or more) each year, but also to our insistence on training each worker in the weeks leading up to election day. (Virginia state law requires a certain amount of training before each election, but Charlottesville generally goes beyond the minimum requirement.)

Training is vital. As Jeanne Zaino says in her C&E article:

Poorly trained workers can rob citizens of their vote and change an election's outcome. Since 2006 and 2008 promise to include a number of close and hotly contested races, it is more critical than ever to have enough well-trained workers manning the nations' polling sites.

A first-person account of Tuesday's Maryland elections in this morning's Washington Post adds some flavor and insight to Zaino's broader point. Karen Yudelson Sandler writes:

None of us election officials had assembled as a team before Monday night, when we set up the polls and went through a flurry of checklists. There were eight of us: four Republicans and four Democrats. That night, we spent most of our time hunting for things. Finding the little printers that go with the electronic poll books required a call to the Montgomery County Board of Elections. And then there was the big bag that was not to be opened until the next morning -- where the voting access cards were supposed to be found....

The complaint I heard most often from would-be voters was that they didn't believe the provisional ballot was confidential. However, my main concern was a result of what I learned during our brief training: that a provisional ballot is the lowest of the low when it comes to the caste system of ballots. Our trainer more than implied that such ballots might end up on a shelf somewhere and never be looked at by anyone. And long before we were informed by the Board of Elections late in the afternoon, we heard an announcement on the radio that the closing time would be extended until 9 p.m.

That trainer was just plain wrong -- now because of HAVA (the Help America Vote Act of 2002), every state, and for many years before that, in Virginia, provisional ballots are treated both with utmost confidentiality and with respect. A provisional vote is a real vote. If the voter who casts the ballot is a qualified voter, it is counted just as every other ballot is counted. It is not discarded or ignored.

No wonder Montgomery County turned into such a royal mess.

When I meet election officials from across the country (registrars, election administrators, and others who are in charge of their local operations), I am always impressed at their attention to detail, insistence on discipline, and dedication to serving their "customers" (that is, voters and candidates) with professionalism and political neutrality.

Of course, most of those I meet from outside Virginia are those who use the Hart Intercivic eSlate and BallotNow systems, so perhaps that group of users constitutes a special breed. Yet I don't think that narrow interpretation is warranted. I think it applies across the board, with a few bad apples (think Montgomery County, Maryland) strewn here and there.

Still, if I want to leave any message here, it is that whatever problems are encountered on November 7, those problems will be human problems, not technological problems. Don't blame the machine.

SNAFU, or Not SNAFU?

In a statement sure to rank alongside "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job!" in the book of misunderestimated quotations, Nancy Dacek, president of the elections board in Montgomery County, Maryland, told the Washington Post: "It wasn't a screw-up. It was a mistake."

It was a screw-up. Such a big screw-up, in fact, that a synonym for "screw" beginning with the letter "F" should be used to describe it. It was a screw-up of major proportions.

I have been in Roanoke for annual training of local electoral board members by the State Board of Elections, so it is rather ironic that I learned late about the horrible performance by election officials in Maryland. (I simply wasn't watching the TV news as I normally do, not paying attention while preoccupied elsewhere.)

For others coming late to the story, here it is in a nutshell:

Polling places in Montgomery County opened up for the primary election on Tuesday with all the equipment in place except for one vital item -- the access cards (sort of like ATM cards) that voters use to activate the voting machines. The access cards also include information about which ballot the voter sees on the machine. (If there are two party primaries on the same day, for instance, a Republican voter gets a card to activate a Republican ballot, while a Democratic voter gets a card that activates the Democratic ballot.)

The person in charge of packing the bags with equipment that precinct officials need to run their polls simply forgot to pack the cards. As David Montgomery reported in the Post Style section:

Here's what happened: Elections workers assembling packages for the polls somehow forgot to include the plastic ATM-like cards needed for each voter to use the electronic voting system. Workers had a checklist that was supposed to include the vital cards, so no one would forget: A low-tech redundancy against a botched election.

Instead, the cards remained at election headquarters, locked securely in a big blue cage on wheels, hiding in plain sight.

Nobody noticed until the morning of the election when election judges opened their poll packages.

Drivers rushed the cards to the precincts, but meanwhile 10,000 to 12,000 voters had to use paper provisional ballots over the course of the day. Many others reportedly left in frustration without voting, and the whole mess now is attached to that election hangover phrase, "under investigation."

This was a screw-up, plain and simple. It wasn't a mistake, it was malfeasance.

So it's no wonder that politicians and voters are asking for the county's top election officials' heads on a platter:

Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan called yesterday for the county's top two elections officials to be fired, saying they were responsible for the widespread voting problems that marred Tuesday's primary election.

Duncan's demand, joined by County Council President George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), came on a day of intense activity with the same basic intent: to find out what went wrong and who was to blame.

"I cannot recall a failure of local government like this," Leventhal said, adding that the county's Elections Board needs to be overhauled. "It is absolutely unacceptable and unconscionable."

Even though Dacek is an appointee of Maryland's Republican Governor, Bob Ehrlich, this should not be seen as a partisan issue. While election officials in Maryland and Virginia (and elsewhere in the country) are technically political appointees, in practice they take off their political hats for the running of elections and are essentially non-partisan. Their job is to serve the voters and candidates in as neutral and even-handed a fashion as possible. That is their mission and it should be their principle, too.

It is important to note that the electronic voting machines in Montgomery County did not fail. People failed. People failed to do the jobs they were charged with doing. As one expert told the Washington Post:

"The thing that gets lost in many current discussions of election reform is the degree to which elections are an intensely human affair," says Doug Chapin, director of Electiononline.org in Washington, a nonpartisan clearing house for election reform information. "In an election you've got millions of voters encountering thousands of poll workers at hundreds of polling locations, which creates an almost exponential opportunity for error."

The problems extended beyond just one county, too, and the problems were essentially human ones. In some jurisdictions, for instance, some polling places opened late because the precinct officials ("election judges," in Maryland's parlance) showed up late. In Baltimore there were reports that some of the election judges appeared to be "intoxicated."

Because of the delays and inability to use the voting equipment, paper ballots were issued, to be used provisionally after a judge ordered polls to be open for an extra hour. But some of the paper ballots were marked for the wrong precinct, and in other precincts, there were too few ballots, so voters were using scraps of paper to mark their choices. Some were using pencils to mark their ballots! (Pencil marks can be erased and rewritten; unless one is using an optical scan system that specifically calls for using a No. 2 Ticonderoga, a ballot should be marked in blue or black ink.)

Widespread use of paper ballots, especially in chaotic circumstances like this, is an invitation to fraud. Paper is easily lost, torn, marred, or re-marked. It lacks the surety and control that electronic balloting does (or, for that matter, that lever machines and, under most circumstances, punchcard machines, did). That is why paper ballots have to be kept even more secure than electronic machines are -- and, as I have written before (on more than one occasion), electronic voting equipment is, or should be, kept highly secure.

So the prize for gross incompetency again goes to Nancy Dacek. From David Montgomery's article in the Washington Post:

Andrea LaRue, a lawyer volunteering on behalf of U.S. Senate candidate Ben Cardin, steps up to the counter with a question for Dacek.

"Do you have a chain-of-custody plan for the provisional ballots?" LaRue asks.

"A who?" Dacek replies.

Who, indeed! And "who" should resign, rather than whine, is Nancy Dacek. Any election official with integrity who presides over an election as badly executed as the one in Maryland was on September 12 would do so, even before receiving a request from voters or elected officials. Taking responsibility is the right thing to do; passing the buck is not.