Election Advisory Committee monthly meeting. Standing is Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold, who came to Marin from the Elections Department of Alameda County. She has served on several committees under the California Secretary of State's office. On her left is former Registrar Michael Smith, who is also County Clerk/Treasurer/Tax Collector. All written materials for voters are reviewed by this nonpartisan citizens committee, among many other election-related issues that the committee considers. http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/rv/Main/Dept_Home/Advisory_Committee/index.cfm
Voters are gradually coming to understand that they can vote early, that is 29 days before election day. Interest was so high with the November 2008 election that the Elections Department needed eight booths outside their office, in addition to the two booths inside.
It's five minutes before the polls close and these voters have just made it. Look how helpful and alert the election staff look, even though they've been on the job since about 6:00 am. I've just arrived for my assignment as one of the official observers of the process in the Elections Department after the polls close.
On election night, former Registrar Michael Smith is explaining to three observers some of the safety features that protect the integrity of elections. Their special interest in this election is Prop 8, to ban same sex marriage in California. They were impressed by the safety features and by the fact that they were welcome to observe behind the scenes.
Jerry Kay, a local media personality, is reporting on the closing of the polls, using his laptop's camera in one of the voting booths. He has been helping the Marin County League of Women Voters refine its election materials for the internet.
Colleen supervises the nearly-800 poll workers needed for this election. She hires them, trains them, fields the questions they phone in, and pays them $100, $125, or $150, depending on their level of authority and responsibility.
These members of the Civil Grand Jury were assigned to the Logic & Accuracy Board that will test the main tabulator before the election. Under state law, all counties must conduct L&A tests. Ballots that are premarked are run through the main tabulator and the results are compared to what we know the premarked ballots said. Two of us from the League were also on the L&A Board. We signed the ballots after checking them, and they were then sealed in a bag and stored in a vault.
In the week before the election, the department holds about ten training classes for poll workers. Chief inspectors and their deputies are required to take a class. They can further study election basics using training CDs and other online materials.
On Election Day, these inspectors, who are being sworn in, will administer the oath of office to their two clerks and deputy inspector. Inspecters and clerks will all sign the seals that are put on the bags containing the ballots and voter rosters. After the polls close, two of them will deliver the bags to the sheriff's deputies, who are waiting for them at central locations around the county. The other two will finish closing the polling place.
These voter information boards are in each the polling place. In the aftermath of the 2000 election, voters have been provided with much more information about election procedures and their rights as voters. It has greatly reduced errors that voters make, and it has also increased turnout because voters understand what they must do to protect their eligibility. Our Registrar, Elaine Ginnold, shows all written materials for voters first to her Election Advisory Committee for their comments, including the sample ballots that all voters receive before election day.
Poll Worker Training session is over. Ballots in the red cases, scanners in the black. The wheels on the bags are a welcome addition because the packets of 14-inch card stock ballots are HEAVY, and the average age of poll workers is 77. (No kidding!) It is somewhat controversial that the ballots and scanners do "sleep overs" at the homes of the inspectors between their training class and election day, about five days.
The federal law, HAVA, gives disabled voters the right to vote at the polls "unassisted." These men are vendors of voting machines to meet that mandate. The owner of this company, with the dark glasses, is blind.
The AutoMark made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) won the contract. Note the earphones, used by blind voters to tell them what's on the screen and what action they have taken. The county had to buy one $5,000 machine for each polling place, about 130 in all, but fewer than twenty voters have ever used them on an election day. Most disabled voters vote by mail, assisted by families and friends.
It's 8:00 pm on election day. The department's IT guy and the Registrar are about to print out the first results. For two weeks, mailed ballots have been processed and tabulated, but the results have not been printed out. At 8:00 pm, the first results are made public. The rest of the results on election night will come from the memory cards in the scanners that were used at the polls. Note the warnings posted on the door of the "glass room," and the alarm to the left of it. Only four key cards to this room are distributed.
Those 13 modems to the right of IT guy Tony, used to start blinking at around 8:30 pm as poll workers sent the results over phone lines from the polling places to the Civic Center, using the scanners' modems. But on the advice of her crack team of computer scientists, the Secretray of State Debra Bowen banned the use of modems to transmit results. Now the results cannot be made public until the scanners with their memory cards are delivered to the Civic Center.
Sheriff's deputies deliver the red bags to the Civic Center. They contain the voted ballots and the rosters that voters must sign before voting.
The scanners are in the black bags. The scanners contain rechargable batteries in case there's a power failure at the polling place.
The bags are checked in here. It looks like a warehouse down there in the basement of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building, because that's pretty much what it is, storing all the election department's stuff.
The tall black box in the left edge of the photo is the container into which the scanners whoosh the ballots. On the day before elections, they are delivered to the polling places by drayage companies, along with the voting booths. That same afternoon, the chief inspectors check that everything arrived safely at their polling places and is in good working order.
My fellow election night League observer Sandy is listening as Roy, the Deputy County Clerk, explains the process to her while Jane unpacks a scanner. This amount of transparency and openness seems remarkable, perhaps the benefit of a small county. It seems less likely that it would be possible in big counties like San Francisco and Los Angeles.
This brand of seal to secure the scanners' memory card was not robust enough. Some scanners arrived back at the Civic Center with the seal over the card slot broken. Not good.
County Clerk Michael Smith is calling a polling place's chief inspector to see if he can explain why the memory card slot seal on the scanner was broken. No answer. The final conclusion was that the seals were too flimsy.
Election officials have decided that the ballots from one polling place have to be recounted because of the broken seal over the memory card slot. IT guy Tony has burned a new memory card with the same ballot items for the polling place with the broken seal. This scanner is printing a "zero tape." A results tape is being run to show that no votes have been cast on that new card. See all the zeros on the right edge of the tape? That new card has registered no votes cast.
Roy, Deputy County Clerk & Melvin, Deputy Registrar, feed ballots through a scanner, casting the very same ballots that were cast by voters at that polling place during the day. But they are using the new, unvoted memory card. They will compare the results of this run with those run at the polling place after the polls closed, but before the ballots and scanner returned to the Civic Center.
The new results tape on the left shows the same results as the tape that was run at the polling place when the polls closed at 8:00 pm, and was signed by the poll workers. Phew! This is strong evidence of the value of paper ballots in ensuring an election's integrity. It couldn't happen with a touch screen voting machine.
Melvin and Roy sign the new results tape and seals.
The ballots are sealed again. The county will store ballots for twenty-two months before destroying them.
Elections are always a work in progress. These new, stronger seals won't break by accident.
With the new seals, Deputy Registrar Melvin has to use wire cutters to get at the memory card.
Staffers Jane and Chris remove scanners from their bags while Lynn prepares a small red bag in which the memory cards will be taken upstairs to the "glass room."
These card couriers are an example of "the rule of two." One worker carries the bag with the memory card upstairs; the other watches her carry it. The rule of two is in effect at many stages of the election process. The card runners are about to hand the bag to Tony in the Glass Room.
Ballots and other sensitive items are stored in a vault that is equipped with an alarm.
The latest safety features are cameras activated by motion detectors. Most funding for such technology modernization comes from the federal Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.
About a week after election day, the mandatory 1% hand count begins. The first step is to select at random which precincts to count. In Marin, each precinct has a number from 1-180 (approx) These are the dice that will be used for the random selection.
Bonnie, a UC Berkeley researcher, takes a turn throwing the three ten-sided dice used to select precincts at random for the hand recount. Bonnie's field of research is poll worker training: How do you train poll workers so they understand their assignment and the details of supervising a polling place. She's also on the Registrar's Citizen Advisory Committee.
This UC Berkeley Computer Science grad student recommended the 10-sided dice system for randomly selecting which precincts to handcount. He came over the bridge to watch the process at work. A UCB statistics professor is further refining the recount process to predict in which precincts could a handcount that corrects small errors actually change the outcome of an election.
Logistics Clerk Vinnie delivers the ballots that are selected for hand-counting. He oversees the department's basement area, where the voting equipment and other supplies are stored.
The hand count begins. Observing behind Elaine, the Registrar, is Linda, a fellow member of the Registrar's Citizens Advisory Committee. She's an activist with Election Protection and wants ballots to be hand counted at the polling place BEFORE they leave for the Civic Center. Other advisory committee members have teased her about it because she's never worked a 16-hour day at a polling place. Some of these workers are retired department employees who come back just for elections.
During coffee break time, the ballots that are being hand counted are locked away securely, an example of the careful attention to detail that we see everywhere.
This is Secretary of State Debra Bowen speaking at a meeting in Marin. A former Assemblymember, she is unusual in being well-grounded in technical issues. She convened a top-to-bottom study of voting technology with a hot-shot team of computer science specialists. The study's final report has been tremendously influential outside of California. http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm
Secretary of State Debra Bowen receiving from Caroline Kennedy a Profiles in Courage Award at the Kennedy Library & Museum in Boston. It was a sweet outcome for those who supported Bowen's top-to-bottom study of voting technology and process.
The Election Assistance Commission is an independent, bipartisan federal commission charged with developing guidance and best management practices to meet Help America Vote Act requirements. They have adopted voluntary voting system guidelines, serving as a national clearinghouse of information about election administration. The EAC also accredits testing laboratories, certifies voting systems, and audits the use of HAVA funds. http://www.eac.gov/about
Registrar of Voters website: A wealth of election information and links to other information sources. http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/RV/Main/index.cfm
SmartVoter, the election website of the League of Women Voters of California. Visitors enter their street address and zip code to see their ballot. Candidates are invited, at no cost, to place their election information on SmartVoter.org., and elections from June 1998 are archived here. http://www.smartvoter.org/ca/mrn/
