* *** 2011_ELECTION_MANUAL_2011-08-28 TXT - 28 Aug 2011 16:22:03 - JKNAUTH The August 2011 Election Manual is very clean and well organized. Good job! It's really a pleasure to deal with people who take pride in their work and are willing to put in the elbow grease to produce a quality product. Below are some comments for the next revision, as well as some other input from me. However, for the 2011 election I would like to get an answer now to those underlined with $$$$$$$. The comments marked with +++++++ are also important, although not for this election. Page 5: For material that must be evacuated in an emergency, shouldn't the Curbside Affidavits be listed as well? They should be right with the ATV forms anyway. Page 6: It was recently decided to include pink highlighters in the Chief Judge supply bag as well as in the gray supply bin. Page 6: You say "Curbside voting procedures have not changed." Yet they have, e.g., handling the new form and a change of when the ATV is taken to the curb. Page 7: What do you have against September 24th!? Your image for September appears to be calendrically challenged. I stumbled on this when I was trying to figure out the "30 days or earlier" date and kept getting 9/11/11 with my calendar, but 9/10/11 with yours. Page 15: In a couple of places you say "Do not mark over the barcodes." I guess this text preceded the introduction of the pink highlighters. In class we were told it was now OK to mark over the barcodes with the new highlighters. (Personally, I still think it would be good to tell people NOT to do this, just to avoid introducing bad habits.) As an aside, the class handout said explicitly not to mark over the barcodes and then a few inches to the right of that statement in the "ID Required" example it showed a supposedly correct marking which went right over the barcode in heavy red. Page 17: The new ATV is much improved. I really like seeing the form now partitioned to make it clearer which precinct official does what. However, there will still be a problem in primaries for curbside UNA voters; this is my old comment made often in years past. See the Page 45 comment below for details. Page 19: In the image, show the marking of the ballot style on the label. You showed all the other required markings mentioned in the text. Page 24: The Ballot Table processing of a yellow ATV will also have some curbside peculiarities. You mentioned a caveat for only the white ATV. Page 24: Lost a "the". "Be sure to point out *the* location..." Page 25: Can we really trust this statement: "Sealed packs contain 100 Page 67 ballots"? It's fine to make that assumption for the $$$$$$$ still-sealed packs when reconciling. However in some previous years (see my past postmortems) we found many instances where a just-opened pack DID NOT contain exactly 100 ballots. We found this by very carefully counting the ballots in each pack as soon as it was opened. We had been warned in class to watch out for this problem and had been asked to check. This checking saved us a lot of grief at reconciliation time, not having to figure out then the reason for a mysterious missing or extra ballot or two -- a problem not caused by us, but by the printer. In contrast, last year all our opened packs DID have exactly 100 ballots; hopefully the old printing problem has now been corrected. I still plan to have my Ballot Table people count the ballots in each pack immediately when opened and record the results so we can properly reconcile at the end of the day. Of course, packs that remain sealed will be assumed to contain exactly 100 ballots. Page 28: There are a number of places where you say the voter must sign $$$$$$$ Section A of the ATV even though he has filled out (and signed) Section B. In past years we were told the Section A signature was not needed if Section B was completed. Has this changed? Since the Section A signature is right by the certification text (a felony to certify incorrectly), this recent change may well be intentional, given current legal events. If so, I think the change needs to be stressed in the classes -- everyone must sign Section A, no matter where else they might have signed. Personally, I have always felt that signing Section A was the right thing to do since that put a signature right by the certification text, but I and others were told it was not necessary if Section B was signed. I had raised the question several times in my past years' comments, both in classes and on the manual. Page 28: In block 6 please refer to page 32 or else explicitly mention writing "PROVISIONAL" on the ATV and paper-clipping it to the provisional envelope. People are going to rely on following the flowchart religiously (that's a good thing), so if something important is not mentioned on the flowchart, it won't be done. Page 28: As an aside, keep in mind that multiple moves are not well handled by the documented procedures. Someone might have registered long ago and then moved multiple times since then, but not told the BOE about those moves. If he has lived in his current residence less than 30 days, then per the procedures, the "old" address used will be the really old (never updated) address still recorded at the BOE, not the much more recent address he lived at (maybe for years) just prior to his current move to the "less than 30 days" residence. I don't know if ignoring this in the documentation is intentional. Probably so, since it would be a mess to try to spell out all the possibilities. However it is certainly something that could happen, especially for someone who does not vote often, but does move a lot. It's probably the sort of thing that would require a call to the BOE if detected at the Help Table. Page 37: The second bullet in Step 2 is incorrect. It implies the $$$$$$$ ballot style to be written on the envelope is the style found on the laptop for the voter's residence address. Instead it should be the ballot style actually issued, as shown in the image right below the text. If this is incorrect, the image (and provisional envelopes) are wrong. I had commented on this in last year's manual. Page 38: The first bullet in Step 3 must be clarified. The ballot $$$$$$$ style written on the Provisional Poll Book page must be the ballot style issued, not the style for the voter's residence address. At least that is the way it used to be. Let me know if that is incorrect. Last year's manual also had a problem in this area and I had commented on it. Page 40: Update for the above ballot style comments made for pages 37 $$$$$$$ and 38. I still prefer my more detailed chart since it puts all this sort of stuff in one place: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/provisional-2011.htm, which applies to the 2010 provisional envelope. I haven't yet seen the provisional envelope to be used in 2011. I assume those will be given out in the Monday Help Table class and I will update my web page and comments if appropriate. Page 45: Between steps 5 and 6, in a primary the curbside official +++++++ should ask the voter if he is UNA and, if so, what party's ballot is desired. (Otherwise the official will not know what ballot to bring back.) Probably the Curbside Affidavit for primary elections should include a choice the UNA voter could mark. I have pointed out many times that the documented curbside flow is deficient in this area. As a result we always have to tell our curbside officials for primary elections the extra question they need to ask which the BOE documentation doesn't mention. The old ATV didn't handle it; the new ATV and Curbside Affidavit do not either. Since the October/November elections aren't primaries, it won't be a problem now, but this definitely needs to be fixed by May. Page 45: Add to step 12, since the ballot is about to be irrevocably $$$$$$$ cast, the Chief Judge or Judge needs to do the white ATV verification work that the Ballot Table official normally would do in the flow before providing the ballot: label present, ballot style marked, voter has signed everywhere, and precinct official has initialed. Similarly if it is a yellow ATV. Page 48: I don't really know how I would enforce some of the listed +++++++ computer and wireless edicts, given the current technology advances, much less what is to come. And I have been professional in the area for 45 years. If someone wanted to hide some component from precinct officials, they could do so pretty easily. If it is important to restrict such capabilities, I hope the appropriate signoffs and penalties are in place to punish someone if they try to cheat. Page 51: I have never liked the wording of this page. Wherever it says $$$$$$$ "30 days or fewer" shouldn't it be "29 days or fewer". That would be the complement of "30 days or more". Notice the current wording, which has long been there, seems to be in conflict with the notes Gary sent us last year. Page 54: I think it would be a major problem to delay doing the poll book marking until Monday setup, especially for a big election. That job can take hours if there are hundreds of marks to do; it especially requires great care to get all marks done correctly from the Saturday pickup white sheets. I would hate to have a bunch of potentially new precinct officials try to do that marking at Monday setup, particularly when they are anxious to get home. I got the impression at the class that other Chief Judges felt the same way. Instead, I'll do the markups myself over the weekend, maybe with the help of a Judge or two. I'll then have the Monday setup people do a careful doublecheck of that work, ensure proper page numbering, etc., to participate and get early hands-on experience with the books. This approach seems even more important given the current legal affairs. We need to make sure the highlighted "A"s are 100% highly visible and accurate. Page 65: Bullet 3: This should also list being in line at the Help Table. Page 65: Bullet 6: What about the error message that indicates an $$$$$$$ unreadable mark? I thought there was a way to force that ballot to be read, ignoring the poorly marked section. The voter is no longer around to remark the ballot. Page 66: Add after step 14: "Turn off the M100." That allows other things to proceed, e.g., using the red key to turn off the AutoMARK, etc. I know turning off the M100 shows up later in another checklist (page 71), but it would be good to make it explicit here. The question always comes up when we do this particular checklist; we then have to scramble around to find the answer: Yes, you can turn off the M100 now and proceed with other things that require the keys. Page 80: Handle ballots with unreadable marks. See Page 65 comment. $$$$$$$ Page 84: I assume enough empty boxes will be provided. We ran short a couple of years ago when we were told to empty the bin after every 200 ballots; we had to keep reopening sealed boxes to store the latest batch of 200 removed from the bin. This change to emptying after 600-700 ballots should help a lot. Since 2011 is a short ballot, vs. the long one that caused so many jam problems, we should be OK. Page 95: Capitalize "Internet". Page 104: Early Voting: Add "Such voters are flagged with an "A" in the poll book, the same as voters who had mailed in an absentee ballot." I'm confused. Is the terminology being used consistently in the manual? The Glossary seems to restrict "absentee" to just the voters who vote via mail-in ballots. But elsewhere in the manual, "A" and "absentee" definitely include the people who vote at the early voting sites. The BOE web site also seems to merge absentee and early voting. The additional text I proposed above is just a patch. Jeff Knauth