* *** COMMENTS_2007-10-09 TXT - 11 Oct 2007 02:11:49 - JKNAUTH You continue to improve the Precinct Officials' Manual. Your efforts definitely show. It is a very helpful document. I raised some of the following questions in the recent classes I attended. Others are just editorial comments. Comments on 2007 Manual -------- -- ---- ------ Page 1: The wrong "Precinct Officials' special number" was listed. It should be 856-5955, not 856-6255. Page 2: If power has gone off for the M100 and/or AutoMark for a short while, but then returns, is any special action required? Two cases need to be covered: (1) when the key has not been turned to "Off" and (2) when the key has been turned to "Off". Presumably whoever gets called at the BOE (per the instructions) would know the answers to these questions. Page 24: There was no special pack of provisional ballots. Page 36: Note that the returned absentee ballot should not be included in any of the counts on the Ballot Reconciliation and Balance Form. In particular, this ballot which is marked "spoiled" should not go into the spoiled bag. It must stay separate in the ECM case. Is it appropriate to have Registration Table officials handling the ECM contents? Shouldn't it be one of the judges? Page 39: This runner/observer stuff continues to be confusing. In several places "schedule" is mentioned. It is always in a quoted phrase. My bet is that the statute language is confusing to the BOE people as well, and that is why they use quotes in the manual. I don't really know what "schedule" means, am glad we won't have to deal with it for this election, and hope we don't have to in the future. All the name copying by various people sounds like it will really make the Ballot Table official's job much harder, particularly during a busy election. Who will get blamed if the ATVs are messed up? Not the observer/runner. Page 39: Only the spindle is mentioned, not the ringed ATVs. Page 44: In the first check bullet, it would be good to mention that the Precinct Official must also sign the Curbside Affidavit. Page 44: In several of the classes it was stated by either the instructor or one of the students (and not rebutted by the instructor) that there would now be fewer trips required to process a curbside vote. In fact the same number of trips is required as in previous years, just one less piece of paper. It is good to now have section D on the ATV and save some trees, but no shoe leather is saved. FYI, our coordinator, Bill Gilkeson, requested I e-mail him a sketch of a flow I had written in my manual. Here it is in HTML form: http://www.nbtha.org/WakeBOE/curbside.htm. Note that Internet Explorer 6.0 has a bug and displays arrows as rectangles; Firefox and Internet Explorer 7.0 displays the file correctly. Page 44, 48, 50: There is no good space to put a secrecy shield by the AutoMark -- the table is too small. We kept both at the ballot table. Page 59: Nothing was said in the classes or in the manual about Voter Identification cards vs. proving your ID for "ID Required". In past years, Voter ID cards were not considered valid IDs (even though they are government issued documents containing the voter's address). I'm assuming the old rules still apply since no change was mentioned. However, since it is so counter-intuitive, this exception to being an "Other Government Document" should be explicitly called out in the manual if it still applies. Is the idea that an "ID required" person isn't yet fully registered and therefore cannot have a valid Voter ID card? Page 61: Check that a signature is present. Normally it is in section A; it will be in section B if that section has been used for a name or address change. Pages 66, 67: The way the first bullet is worded under "If the voter lives in your precinct", it would be possible to mark *both* check boxes (for same precinct but different municipality). Should it be: If the precinct is the same and the municipality is the same, mark the first box. If the precinct is the same and the municipality is different, mark the second box. Pages 72, 73: List the required fields. Page 72: FYI, here is an instruction sheet I wrote for our Help Table: http://www.nbtha.org/WakeBOE/provisional_instructions_2007-10-09.txt As it turned out, we had no provisional ballots this election. Page 74: There is a precinct field in the upper right corner of the bottom form of the provisional envelope. This is not shown and is not discussed on page 74. Which precinct should be used: the voter's precinct, or the precinct at which the envelope is issued, or leave it blank? I am assuming the issuing precinct. Page 76: Bullets B and D have no corresponding entries in the Punishment column. There are only A and C entries there. Page 79: People lined up at the Help Table at poll closing are also in line and should be allowed to vote. The current wording (third circle bullet) implicitly does not allow them to vote. Where they get put on the "Voters in Line" sheet is not defined and could get pretty confusing if there are a lot of people in several poll book lines inside the polling place. Page 81: There should be a bullet before the last one to say the judges should sign the first tape. This is covered on the next page, but there it is an afterthought. Page 82: It would be helpful to say at the bottom of this page that the red key can now be turned to the Off position and removed, and the M100 can now be taken down as described later (page 89). This is implicitly recognized because on the next pages (83ff) you have to open the bins with the blue key, so the red key (on the same lanyard) must have been taken out. I think that can't be done if the key is still turned to Open/Close Polls. Right? Page 84: A better picture is needed to show the seal covering the tape. For the type of boxes we received, this picture didn't match well and the tape wasn't covered. See also the later comments on checklists. Page 85: Say the Provisional Certification Form is put into the Provisional Ballot Case. Page 85: If the seal was meant to cover the white plastic bag edge, the text should say so. See also the later comments on checklists. Page 88: Add "and locked" to item 2 for the ballot box. Page 88: Say the AutoMark serial number should be recorded. I'll bet a lot of precincts will have this machine all packed up before they get to the Reconciliation checklist and realize they need to unpack the machine again to see what the serial number is. Page 88: There were no Braille instructions in the AutoMark case. Page 100: In the PTO class I wish they had handed out a real provisional envelope, or an accurate copy of the current one. The sample in the book is hard to read. Also, it is inconsistent with earlier parts of the manual. Compare the page 74 clip, which has no PRECINCT field in the upper right, vs. the sample on page 100, which has a PRECINCT field. I like to get a current envelope so I can mark up a copy for the Help Table to color highlight the fields that must be filled in by the voter and by the PTO (different color). With such a complicated form, it is easy to overlook required fields. Page 100: I still think this form would be clarified if the word "general" were added before "election day" in the upper left box to match item 2 in the lower right box of the top form. Page ??: There was no sample Provisional Certification Form included in the manual. Editorial --------- Page 13: Change "3:00pm" to "3:00 P.M." for consistency with the rest of the manual. Page 26: You need a better picture for the Key Access Panel. The current one is a little out of focus and has some glare that makes the text hard to read. Page 42: Put parentheses around "except for an employer, officer ... agent of either one" and remove the comma after "chooses". Third bullet. Page 67: Add some "the's": "to verify that the ballot style listed on the label is correct." Second bullet under check bullet. Page 71: Add "and": "to receive the correct ballot style and not have to vote provisionally." Third bullet from bottom. Page 73: Add "issued" before "ballot style" in the fifth and seventh check bullets. Maybe highlight the "issued" to really drive it home. It's too bad the Provisional Poll Book column heading doesn't also say "ISSUED BALLOT STYLE". Page 89: You need a period and a space after "location" in the third item 2. Although the tabs in the new manual make finding certain sections easier, they make thumbing thru the manual harder because they occupy the whole edge of the book. I ended up cutting off the tabs and using a marker to edge highlight the sections I was interested in getting to quickly. Maybe the tabs could be restricted to only part of the edge to make thumbing easier. Problems with "Ballot Table Important Reminders" Sheet -------- ---- ------- ----- --------- ---------- ----- The instructions specify "the signature line", as if there is only one signature line. There are two such lines; one or the other must be filled in. Either is OK, assuming the rest of that section is completed appropriately. In the poll books this year, no address is put on INACTIVE labels. Therefore the voter cannot write "same as above". Catching Provisional Ballots Inserted into the M100 -------- ----------- ------- -------- ---- --- ---- Assuming the Instant Runoff Voting experiment works in Cary and all the M100s have to be reprogrammed to handle IRV, I certainly hope you will use that opportunity to program them to catch provisional ballots mistakenly entered into an M100. It should be trivial to have the scanner check the ballot at a specific location, e.g., in some corner. If a mark is detected there, the ballot should be rejected by the M100. The mark could be preprinted, if special provisional ballots are printed; otherwise the Help Table official could place the mark there. In fact, the required handwritten precinct number on a provisional ballot is probably already sufficient for this. In the meantime, our precinct will prefold provisional ballots before giving them to voters. That lessens the possibility that the voter will try to insert the ballot into the M100. Of course if some voter wanted to use the AutoMark to mark a provisional ballot, we couldn't prefold that ballot. However we don't have many AutoMark users; in fact we have had a total of 0 AutoMark users since we started using that device. If a provisional ballot could be detected and rejected by the M100, the voter could be sent back to the Help Table immediately. Then the ballot could be handled properly right away instead of requiring the BOE to sort out all this later by fishing thru all the ballots from the M100. If provisional ballots are not distinguishable by color, this sorting becomes even harder. Hardware Workarounds -------- ----------- 1) We taped an index card over the M100 exposed tape to prevent voters from attempting to tear off "their paper voting receipt", a problem reported by a number of precincts. We removed the card prior to closing the polls. 2) We taped a large sign on the front of the ballot box, just below the top. See http://www.nbtha.org/WakeBOE/Insert_Ballot_Here_Sign.htm. 3) Every ballot box we have received so far has been unstable with one (non-adjustable) wheel slightly off the floor. (Either that or the floor is uneven.) To fix this we place a folded washcloth under the short wheel to stop the box from rocking. 4) The ink cartridge we received was not sealed -- no cellophane inner bag (just the plastic bag) and also no tape over the electric contacts. We inserted the old cartridge; it seemed to work OK in that the AutoMark started correctly. The AutoMark was not asked to print anything all day, so we really don't know if the cartridge would have really worked. 5) When we closed the polls on the M100, the tape did not feed out properly. It printed, but the tape collected inside the M100. We had to pull out the tape to get it to work as expected. Fortunately it didn't jam before we did this and everything printed OK. 6) The modem didn't connect immediately (we strongly suspected the line was busy). We let it keep trying. It connected on the 11th or 12th retry -- 5 to 10 minutes after it started. Page 81 says we should have called the BOE immediately if we didn't see the "Modem Operation Completed" message. Since the error messages said the M100 was retrying, we decided to let it keep trying for a while. Finally it succeeded. This was also our experience in past years. The manual should give some guidance in this area. Note that calling the BOE immediately might have been a problem; there is only one land line from that facility and I don't know if there was an available cell phone. We might have had to abort the M100 retries to make the BOE help call on the one land line. Procedures ---------- The checklists were good, but may have lead to some mistakes. (I don't have the chief judge's checklists now to verify the following.) The chief judge read the checklists and we followed those instructions, not looking at the manual. As a result we didn't place the seals over the tape on the ballot boxes and over the edge seam of the white plastic bag. We just put the seal on top of the boxes and on the front of the bag. Does the checklist say anything about seal placement? We also missed removing the M100 from the ballot box until after the keys were sealed in the ECM bag. So the ballot box remained unlocked for shipment back to the BOE; we did tape the doors shut. Fortunately we had previously turned off the M100, and unlocked the locks, just not removed the M100 from the ballot box. There may be something missing from the flow in the chief judge's checklist to prevent these errors. In prior years we had followed the manual and not missed these steps. In looking at the blue "Closing the Polls" checklist handed out at one of the classes, I see that if you did the steps in order 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., it couldn't work. Step 3 seals the keys in the ECM bag and then step 4 requires you to use the keys to close down and disassemble the M100 and AutoMark. Maybe the chief judge's checklist had the same problem as the class handouts. Fortunately we had already used the red key to turn off both devices. Probably sealing the ECM case (with the keys inside) should not be specified in the written checklists until much later in the flow. It's obvious now, but not so good when you are religiously following the checklists as we were told to do. Then you turn the page and say OOPS! Jeff Knauth jknauth@nc.rr.com 919-872-8663