* *** COMMENTS_2017-11-07_ELECTION_DOCUMENTS TXT - 3 Sep 2017 13:00:26 - JKNAUTH You incorporated in the published 2017 election documents almost all the comments I had made on the draft versions. Thank you for that. Below are the most important of those that did not get included. Hopefully they will be addressed next time. 2017 Municipal Elections Manual (8/2/17) ---- --------- --------- ------ Page 37: The NC SBOE "Lists of Acceptable IDs" chart still is unclear about expiration dates, e.g., for an NC driver license. Considering all the voter ID loopholes we were trained on in 2015 and 2016, precinct officials might still consider, for example, an "expired only three months ago" driver license as valid. Your 8/4/17 email makes clear that the license cannot be expired. The SBOE really needs to fix this chart or the manual needs to explain it. (Have you bugged them on this?) The "What Is a Current Document" section at the bottom of the chart makes the driver license issue even more confusing. Page 61: The current wording about disturbed/undisturbed abandoned ballots does not cover the middle (probably most likely) case of "We cannot definitely determine if the ballot HAS NOT or HAS been disturbed." I proposed changing the first sentence of the fourth paragraph from "If the determination is that the ballot HAS been disturbed," to just "Otherwise," I was told that no change could be made because of legal requirements. To support leaving the text as is, the BOE sent me a copy of 08 NCAC 10B.0104. However part (f) of that (see below) seems exactly in line with what I had proposed and thus covers all cases, not just the two covered by the current text in the Manual and Voter Assistance Quick Guide. Am I misreading this? Is there some other legal justification for the current, incomplete wording in the Manual and VA QG? "(f) If a voter leaves ... ..., the chief judge or judges of election may find, by unanimous vote, that the votes marked by the voter had not been disturbed by any other person and may execute the ballot for the voter who has vacated the voting enclosure. If the Chief Judge and Judges of election cannot unanimously confirm that the ballot marked by the voter has not been disturbed, the ballot must be marked as spoiled ..." The final sentence in (f) above corresponds to my proposed edit to "Otherwise," in the Manual's text, thus covering the case in which the officials cannot unanimously confirm that the ballot HAS NOT been disturbed as well as covering the case in which they unanimously confirm that it HAS been disturbed. Voter Assistance Quick Guide (7/31/17) ----- ---------- ----- ----- [Because of the duplication problem noted below, I had not tried to carefully review the prior draft of this QG.] "Abandoned Ballots" See Manual page 61 comment above. Also, almost all this duplicate text is applicable just to the Chief Judge and Judges, not to the people probably doing VA. Since the details for handling this situation are in the Manual, why have them in the VA QG as well (and likely to get out of sync)? Only the first paragraph (notify the CJ) seems needed in the VA QG and would be fine to include. "Common Tabulator Messages and Resolutions" On left side under Causes: Lost two bullets about stray marks; see "duplicate" text on Manual page 57. On right side under top Solution: Text under second bullet is not exactly the same as on Manual page 57, although the meaning is the same. "Voter Assistance Rules", second page Second page of rules: Manual page 55 has a Q/A (the last one) for "Do the voter assistance requirements apply to Curbside Voters?" This Q/A is not in the VA QG although the text for all the other Q/As seems to be identical between the Manual and the VA QG. See many earlier comments by me over the years about avoiding unnecessary "duplicate" text which easily gets out of sync. I suggest not having all this text in both the Manual and the VA QG. Get it right once and have it in only one place. Don't all class attendees receive both the Manual and the QG? I was happy that no attempt was made to copy the Manual page 56 "Service Animal Policy" Wake County Resolution into the VA QG along with everything else. However it would be good to have in the QG just the heading and one line: "Service animals must be permitted to enter the polling place with a voter." Anyone wanting details could then look in the Manual for the Resolution text. Chief Judge Pocket Guide (8/1/17) ----- ----- ------ ----- Page 2: Chief Judge Supply Bag -> Chief Judge Binder Placing the CJ PG in the Binder is stated in three other places in the CJ PG. [The next three items were copied (with page numbers updated and one term extended) from my 7/26/17 comments.] Page 6: First sentence seems too constraining - using just a cellphone to access the website. What about a PC, or tablet, or smart refrigerator, or Alexa, ... who knows what people use nowadays? Anyway, I found that section somewhat confusing about the timing involved, etc. I think most CJs would wait until they got home to have a PC and printer to print multiple copies of the list (multiple hardcopies are required), and probably also mark the pollbooks while they were at it. At least that's what I do. I suggest instead: If I can access www.WakePrecinctOfficials.com after 7pm, I will go to the Last-Minute Absentee Voter List and record the names and VRNs of the last-minute voters listed for my precinct. If I cannot get to the website, the Board of Elections will call Tuesday morning and provide this voter information. See Last-Minute Absentee Voters on page 8 for what to do with it. Page 11: Bottom section: Add back the emphasized "Not the Tabulator" that you removed. This is to help harried CJs at the end of the day turn off the AutoMark, *NOT* the tabulator, while zipping thru this section. I personally know of at least one CJ who needed such a clue and had the previous CJ PG author include that warning after having accidentally once turned off the tabulator. Duh! Page 11: Under Emergency Bin: The "if it was used during the day" phrase got mistakenly moved. Where it got placed seems to make opening the emergency bin optional. It isn't; the bin must ALWAYS be opened. Then the "If it was used..." (i.e., bin is not empty) test is applied to see whether the following steps should be taken. The "If it was used..." should be put back where it was in the 2016 edition. Provisional Envelope (undated) ----------- -------- [The two items below are were just copied from my 7/24/17 comments.] 2) In some past elections it was documented (in the manual) that multiple reasons should be checked on the provisional envelope if appropriate. The envelope never said that explicitly, as I recall, although I had pointed out that missing directive. That directive no longer appears in the manual (and still is not on the envelope). In contrast, both seem to stress checking "the" reason. However multiple reason checking still might be appropriate, given the current envelope wording. For example, "Unreported Move" on the envelope allows the voter to have unreportedly moved to ANOTHER precinct other than ours; whereas the manual's idea of an unreported move is for someone to have moved from another precinct to OURS more than 30 days ago, but didn't notify the BOE. If an unreportedly-moved-to-not-OUR-precinct voter wants to vote in our precinct, then both reasons 1 and 2 seem appropriate. Or does the BOE have a preference if only one of these should be checked? Of course there are other cases where multiple reasons could be checked. Just how much info does the BOE want to collect if a voter shows up with multiple things wrong? Checking multiple reasons seems consistent with the idea of collecting as much useful information as possible, which is stressed elsewhere for filling out the provisional envelope. 3) In the upper right corner of the envelope is "Will you be at least 18 years of age on or before Election Day?" Several times I have noted that I think this should be "General Election Day", not just "Election Day". Is that wrong? You can still be 17 and vote on (e.g.) a Primary Election Day, but only if you will be 18 by the next General Election Day, not just any old next Election Day, which might just be a primary runoff election. Laptop Quick Guide (8/19/17) ------ ----- ----- [I had not been sent a copy of this document to review.] Page 2: "Use the Tab key on the keyboard instead of the mouse to move from field to field." Is this really a requirement? The same "instead of the mouse" statement had been in the QG for the old SOSA program and it did not really seem true there. Is it true for VAST? If so, why? I had raised the question often in my SOSA comments, but never got an answer. Page 3: Third paragraph: enter -> Enter for consistency with use in the rest of the document. Page 4: "click the Go to Voter Search button at the bottom of the Street Search screen " and Page 5: "Look at the top of the Voter Search screen. Click on the Go To Street Search button." Are these top/bottom words accurate. I don't have a VAST laptop to check, but the inconsistency seems questionable and also the words may not match the picture on page 4. Help Table Quick Guide (8/1/17) ---- ----- ----- ----- FC #2: After a phone discussion with Mary I tried in my 8/5/17 comments to do an analysis of not checking the Last-Minute Absentee Voter List in Flow Chart #2. The 8/1/17 HT QG draft no longer included such a check. I got no feedback on that analysis, or on the suggestion about reducing the Tuesday morning calls, or on whether the BOE has a feel for how CJs have been getting the Last-Minute Absentee Voter data. I have repeated that 8/5/17 text below. Personally I liked having the check explicitly done in block 3, but if that is seen as slowing things down and the HT classes do cover when the check should be done, it seems OK to no longer include the check in the flowchart. =============== Below is copied from my 8/5/17 comments ============= Assumption: All voters on the Last-Minute Absentee Voter List (called "the last-minute list" below) should eventually be marked with pink As in the pollbooks. Preferably this should be done Monday night. Less preferably do it Tuesday morning before the polls open. Even less preferably, if not by "polls open" then do it right after an early call from the BOE, but definitely not after 10 AM on Tuesday. Unfortunately many people will have voted by mid-morning. Suggestion: If making a lot of these calls Tuesday morning is a problem for the BOE (I don't know if it is) and that causes a delay in dispersing the lists, have some way for the CJs who have already gotten the information from the website to update a file (a la the Monday Setup Times file) on the website so the BOE would not have to call them Tuesday. Then the BOE could focus on those precincts that really needed the calls. Of course this might leave open a way for some bad guy to enter bad data into such a file if this is a non-secured file. I'm curious if you have a good feel for how many CJs use a cell phone Monday night to get their Last-Minute Absentee Voter List data (the current CJ PG implication) and then handwrite the lists vs. how many use their home PCs and printers vs. how many require the Tuesday morning call and handwrite the lists while keeping the BOE on the phone. That would seem to be important information. I would certainly push the PC/printer technique for speed, accuracy, and minimizing tying up BOE resources on Tuesday. ---------------------------- Here we go! ---------------------------- Let's call someone a FRAUD voter who is on the last-minute list (so has already voted) and then tries to sneak into a precinct to vote a second time. If he somehow ends up at the HT without an ATV (FC #2), you now would now check only the laptop (no longer also the last-minute list) and see he has NOT been marked "ALREADY VOTED", even though he has voted. A) If the FRAUD voter IS NOT registered in your precinct per the laptop and insists on voting anyway, he must vote provisionally. Then the post-election checks will find he is a FRAUD: tried to vote twice. The Sheriff will call. The DA will thank the FRAUD for documenting his crime so carefully. Jail. Etc. Since that out-of-precinct voter would not be on this precinct's last-minute list, checking it wouldn't have helped catch the crime any earlier. That one was easy. B) If the FRAUD voter IS registered in your precinct per the laptop and shows up at the HT without an ATV, it means likely the RT people goofed and missed finding the entry in the pollbook. (Or the printer goofed -- I saw that happen for two voters a couple of elections ago.) Since the laptop said the voter was registered in this precinct, the HT then sends the voter and CJ back to the RT. Note that checking the last-minute list would have indicated an upcoming problem, since the voter has in fact voted already, but that discovery is now deferred, maybe now long deferred. Back at the RT, if the voter's ATV still cannot be found, call the Help Line. They will detect the FRAUD since they have the integrated voting status, including last-minute absentees. It's now their problem to decide how to proceed. If the ATV is found at the RT, 1) If the now-found ATV has a pink A, go back to the HT. Now the HT should check the last-minute list. a) If the voter is not on the last-minute list, the pink-A marker goofed and this voter in fact is NOT a FRAUD. The CJ should be notified, the ATV unpinked, and the voter allowed to proceed normally as if the pink A had not been marked in error. Of course the RT needs to then check if there were other problems for that voter. Also the CJ and RT need to review all the pink A markings to see if there were other errors. Probably there is an ATV that should have a pink A, but doesn't because its pink A was put on the wrong ATV; maybe there are other problems, too. Note if the HT had not checked the last-minute list in 1) above to catch the erroneous pink A and had just called the Help Line, presumably the Help people would have seen the error (voter has NOT voted) and told the HT to "Look at your last-minute list and then have your CJ fix the buggy pink As! Call back if there is still a problem." b) If the voter is on the last-minute list, the pink A was correct and the FRAUD voter has been detected (or there was actually a BOE database problem). Call the Help Line. It's now their problem to decide how to proceed. 2) If the now-found ATV does not have a pink A for the FRAUD voter, either the pink A marker has goofed or the marking was not done on time. Note that FRAUDs are probably willing to get up at dawn and try to vote early, beating the BOE call or any late pollbook marking by POs. That's why I much prefer that CJs mark the pollbooks Monday night using the website file. So the RT will allow this FRAUD voter to vote, but the FRAUD should be detected and handled later per the process in the assumption below. This hopefully rare case was caused by a combination of bad/late pink Aing and the HT not early checking the last-minute absentee list (which maybe doesn't exist yet) way up at the first paragraph. Of course in the case of bad/late pink Aing, the FRAUD voter could have gone directly to the RT, gotten a clean ATV, and voted. There would be no lack of HT last-minute absentee list checking at fault since the HT was never involved with such a voter. Needless to say, timely and accurate pink A marking is very important to curtail FRAUD voting. Assumption: The BOE can always eventually detect a FRAUD voter and cancel the absentee ballot, even without any HT checking of the list. So, at worst, the FRAUD voter actually votes only once, then goes to jail, if this was not some BOE database error. Since the last-minute list checking has been removed from FC #2 and the Manual (last draft I saw) does not cover the above use of the list, the HT class could say something, but I believe HT people will likely end up completely ignoring the last-minute absentee list if it isn't clearly and simply stressed when it should be used. There may be be more Help Line calls for the non-normal appearing situations, or there may be more FRAUD voters who slip thru, but who will be caught by the post-election checks and handled appropriately. If the above flow is accurate, the tradeoff seems to be between detecting some FRAUDs earlier by always checking the list at the HT in FC #2 vs. having HT people possibly ignore the list completely and detecting the FRAUDs later in the BOE post-election checks and/or causing more Help Line calls. I can see pros/cons for either early checking (FC #2) or not. I didn't think the FC #2 checking was very time consuming, but Mary said she had seen some precincts where it was. My problem was always more with reminding HT people to do the check since it kept being included and then dropped from the flowchart without explanation. Jeff Knauth