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electionline Weekly - April 13, 2006
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I. In Focus This Week

Database Troubles Arise in California, Elsewhere

By M. Mindy Moretti
electionline.org

While much of the recent election hand-wringing has focused on documented and potential problems with voting systems, recent troubles in several states have shifted some of the focus to another major election change - newly implemented statewide voter registration databases.

The voter lists, mandated by the Help America Vote Act with the aim to eliminate voter registration problems related to inaccurate or haphazard rolls, have raised concerns that list problems in some states could potentially disenfranchise large numbers of voters.

Thousands of registration applications rejected in California
Such is the case in California where, since January 1, nearly 25 percent of voter registration forms submitted for verification have been rejected by the statewide database. In Los Angeles County, 43 percent of voter registrations have been rejected.

In a letter to Secretary of State Bruce McPherson ®, Conny McCormack, L.A. County registrar-recorder/county clerk cited several examples of some of the thousands of applications rejected by the "CalVoter" system including forms being rejected because a last name has a space in it such as De Leon, or a last name that is actually two last names with no hyphen, such as Weaver Cardona, or even new residents to California being rejected because the DMV file the CalVoter system uses is only six months old.

"The challenge of setting up a statewide voter registration database that complies with HAVA requirements has been well-known to election administrators and activists for years," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. "This particular problem that California is experiencing is a result of the terms of an agreement made between the Secretary of State and the Department of Justice that is unique to California and a handful of other states. This form rejection problem itself is a surprise that I don't think anyone anticipated."

McCormack has had to hire 25 temporary staff to handle the calls and the mailings to contact rejected voters. To date, about 29 percent of the rejected forms have been cleared by phone calls and 10 to 15 percent through follow-up mailings. McCormack said although many of the contacted voters have responded nearly 1,000 have refused to provide the necessary information because of fears of identity theft.

Even though some of the examples of people being rejected by the CalVoter system are voters who were already registered but were simply changing their party affiliation, address or name, Alexander believes new voters will suffer the greatest impact from the verification problems.

"The problem will impact some, but not all voters," Alexander said. "Unfortunately, the voters who could be the most severely impacted are new voters who registered for the first time. If first-time voters don't receive a sample ballot in the mail, they won't have the information they need about the candidates and the measures on the ballot, and they won't be informed of their polling place location."

On March 31, McPherson announced plans to introduce legislation to improve current state law and provide some "common sense flexibility" for county elections officials when dealing with the voter verification process. The proposal would mean that if all other personal information provided by the voter matches a single DMV record, the voter will not need to be personally contacted and will become a registered voter.

The California Senate Elections Committee held hearings on the issue on April 6 and following the hearing, Senate President pro Tem Don Perata, D-East Bay, and Sen. Barbara Bowen, D-Redondo Beach, chair of the committee [who is challenging McPherson for office], called on McPherson to change voter verification regulations insisting that the fix lies within the regulations and not legislatively.

According to a spokesperson for McPherson, the secretary is working with the legislature to find a sponsor for the legislation. The spokesperson indicated that several legislators have expressed an interest in authoring the legislation.

"The story is still developing," McCormack said. "Is it a state law problem, is it a regulation problem? Everyone agrees it's a problem and I just hope some legislative council can help and get it out of this political realm. I just want the voter to be on file. How it happens isn't important to me. What matters is that it happens and happens quickly."

Nevada to use back up system
Because of problems with its vendor Covansys Inc., Nevada will be employing a similar system to California's whereby counties will send voter registration information to a state computer every 24 hours for comparisons to DMV and Social Security records.

In February, Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller ® suspended a contract with Covansys claiming there were too many problems with the system the company was creating for the state.

According to published reports, in addition to suspending the contract with Covansys, Heller requested that the company return more than $1 million the state paid for the creation of a new database as well as reimbursement of monies the state is now spending to implement the replacement system.

Heller told The Associated Press that the back up system is not ideal and that he prefers a top-down system, but with no vendor contract and an election just about four months away, the back up system is the only option for compliance with HAVA.

Problems arise during mock election in Indiana
Problems with Indiana's statewide voter registration database surfaced in mid-March when the system crashed during its first statewide test. Election workers were unable to access the new system for about two hours during the test - part of preparations for a statewide mock election.

According to Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita ® and Quest Information Systems, Inc., the database vendor, the problems were caused by an upgrade that was designed to make the system go faster. When the system was tested again two hours later that same day, the problems did not recur.

During the mock election a few days later, in which 84 of 92 counties participated, election officials looked up thousands of voter entries in the new system. Of the 9,394 searches conducted statewide only 16 of the searches proved problematic. The 16 failures were associated with one search type which was a broad-based and general "contains" search.

"We do these tests so that we can identify the little things that could cause potentially big problems prior to and on Election Day," Rokita said in a statement.

Some of the troubles the state and vendor were able to identify and correct through the mock election were issues with certain Web browsers and pop-up blockers that resulted in the delayed printing of poll books. Based on the mock election, the vendor is also creating new procedures for certain voter record searches because it was able to identify certain query parameters that resulted in some longer search times.

Even with the upgrade that caused the system to crash during testing, the speed of the system was a problem throughout the mock election. Rokita sent a memo to all county elections officials notifying them of additional upgrades to the system that were completed last week.

Although these upgrades won't be tested prior to Election Day as they were for the mock election and officials in some counties have expressed concerns about this, Rokita indicated that members of the state's Voter Registration System Steering Committee - including officials from small and large counties - unanimously recommended that the upgrades be installed.

Current Indiana law requires that paper backups of polling place rosters be available on May 16 in case any further issues with the database arise.

State Could Rekindle Strange Relationship with Full-Face Ballot Requirement

By Kat Zambon
electionline.org

Connecticut's on-again, off-again relationship with the full-face ballots has come full circle. The requirement, which turned out not to be a requirement at all, could now become state law, even though it seems few want it.

All of which requires some background.

In preparation for the Help America Vote Act's (HAVA) January 2006 deadline, Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz (D) issued a request for proposals (RFP) in February 2005. The state was seeking electronic voting machines that were both federally certified and would meet the state's full-face ballot requirement - in which voters can see every race in the state without changing screens or pages - outlined in sections 9-249 and 9-250 of Connecticut General Statutes.

The state's antiquated lever machines, which will be replaced, are mechanical and allow for a voter to see every office and candidate.

Nearly a year later, and after the deadline for HAVA had expired, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wrote in a letter that his office found "nothing in the current law, regulation or practice that requires the full face ballot interpretation to be applied to electronic voting machines."

What was done in practice - a full-face ballot displayed by a lever machine, was not, in fact, state law.

That led Bysiewicz - already past the HAVA deadline - to issue new RFP, sans full-face ballot requirements. Her action, however, prompted state lawmakers to propose legislation that would make full-face ballots a state requirement - even though everyone in the state thought it already was, up until January, that is.

S.B. 181, which would require electronic voting machines to display a full-face ballot, was introduced by the Government Administration and Elections Committee.

State Senator Don DeFronzo, a cosponsor of the bill, said using any other type of ballot would increase drop-off and under-voting. DeFronzo said that when Bysiewicz ran a pilot program using electronic systems, most voters preferred the machine that displayed the full-face ballot, though the machines posed challenges to people with some types of disabilities.

However, currently there is no federally certified voting machine that displays a full-face ballot and provides a voter-verified paper audit trail, which is required by state law. As a result, supporters of the full-face ballot "find ourselves in an interesting dilemma," DeFronzo said. Blumenthal's letter states that though there currently is no indication that the legislature intended the full-face ballot requirement be applied to electronic voting machines, the legislature "has the final authority to require such a ballot if it deems it advisable and feasible."

DeFronzo said that the major concerns about S.B. 181 would be resolved with a federally certified machine that displayed the full-face ballot. "If it were available, I think we'd have no problem passing the bill . Most of the ones [legislators] I've talked to are generally supportive of full-face ballots," he said.

The friction between the desires for full-face ballots, the limits of current technology and the deadlines imposed by HAVA have contributed to a situation that gets more precarious daily, DeFronzo said. "The bill is moving through the process . but as time passes, it becomes more futile of an effort," DeFronzo said.

A possible compromise, however, may involve putting one federally certified accessible voting machine in each polling place as HAVA requires for the mean time and then replacing all of the machines with full-face ballot electronic voting machines once they are developed.

However, the chance of losing funding for new voting machines is a definite concern. "Once the funding is gone, I think the possibility of buying new machines is less likely," DeFronzo said.

When asked whether the Department of Justice had indicated any opinion on the full-face ballot issue, Michael Kozik, managing attorney in the Secretary of State's Legislation and Elections Administration Division, said, "I don't think they've addressed this specifically . I don't think they care what our ballot looks like."

Kozik said the decision is in the hands of the legislature. "Whatever decision the legislature makes on full-face ballots will affect what we're able to buy . One never quite knows what's going to happen in the legislature," he said, though he added, "I did not hear any testimony in favor [of full-face ballots]."

The League of Women Voters of Connecticut has campaigned against S.B. 181. In an April 10 action alert, members were encouraged to contact their legislators in opposition to S.B. 181. "[electronic voting systems] which utilize full-faced ballots are confusing and not user friendly. Confusion may lead to voter error, loss of privacy and independence, or a failure to vote at all. Research suggests that the drop-off rates for full-faced DREs [direct recording electronic machines] may be greater than 'vote by office' [DREs]," the alert said.

The League's alert also noted that the Office of Fiscal Analysis reviewed S.B. 181 and concluded, "Currently, no federally certified voting machine exists that contains both a verified paper receipt, which is currently required by statute, and the proposed full-faced ballot . Since it is unknown how many machines will be purchased after the current RFP is fulfilled, the future cost is indeterminate, but may be significant."

"It was pretty alarming . that it was difficult to get a full-face ballot on an electronic voting machine," Christine Horrigan, Connecticut League of Women Voters director of government issues, said following a demonstration by the Secretary of State's office of the different voting machines. Horrigan said that the Connecticut League of Women Voters and Bysiewicz testified against the bill.

"The Secretary of State should be able to purchase the best machines and not have their hands tied" by a full-face ballot requirement, Horrigan said. "Let them pick the best technology."

A November 2005 memo from the Brennan Center for Justice states that, like Connecticut, New York has been applying a full-face ballot requirement that does not exist in state law. "Rather, a proper reading of the statute indicates that it requires only that the contents of the 'ballot' must be presented in such a way as to ensure that any given screen or page does not exceed the boundaries of the 'frame.' This requirement ensures, for example, that all candidates for a particular office appear together to the voter," the memo stated.

A Brennan Center press release identified several problems with New York's interpretation of the law regarding full face ballots. Research by Dr. David Kimball at the University of Missouri - St. Louis shows residual voting rates - or uncountable votes - in 2004 for full-face DREs were 1.2 percent, lower than the rates for punch cards, paper ballots, or centrally-counted optical-scan ballots, but higher than touch-screen DREs or precinct-counted optical-scan ballots.

On Tuesday, the senate referred the bill to the Planning and Development Committee, where another hearing will undoubtedly bring more criticism.

"We will continue to actively lobby against this [bill]," Horrigan said.

II. Election Reform News This Week

• A former U.S. Department of Justice attorney charged with determining whether to pre-clear Georgia's voter identification law penned a law review article advocating polling-place photo ID from all voters last spring, angering critics who say the staffer had made up his mind on the issue before reviewing it. The Washington Post reported that Hans Von Spakovsky, now at the Federal Election Commission, published the article under a pseudonym in a 2005 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics - before issuing the decision to Georgia - and later added a link to his page at the FEC. It has since been removed from the agency's site but is available here. (Click on past articles, Spring 2005 issue.) More coverage from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is available here.

• The top election official in one California county recommends that voters who have objections to either optical scan or touch-screen voting machines "make their choice now and not wait until election day," The Vallejo Times Herald reported. Napa County voters can choose between touch-screen machines equipped with voter-verified paper audit trails at polling places or cast optically-scanned paper ballots by mail. Poll workers "will not have time to accommodate individual voter concerns" about voting machines during the June primary, County Registrar John Tuteur said.

• While Pennsylvania's Secretary of State Pedro Cortes expressed optimism that the state will meet the May deadline for new machines throughout the state, locally, concerns are growing that machines cannot deployed in time, The Associated Press reported in a story published on PennLive.com. In several counties, vendors cannot guarantee delivery of the new equipment before the primary. Officials there waited to sign contracts with vendors until the state decided which systems should be certified and the state Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit asserting that counties could not switch systems without voter approval.

• Plans to deliver new equipment to Allegheny County, Pa. could become even more complicated. A group of voters along with People for the American Way filed a lawsuit against the county to stop the deployment of touch-screen voting machines in the upcoming primary, KDKA reported.