* *** POSTMORTEM_2014-05-06.DRAFT TXT - 9 May 2014 23:06:33 - JKNAUTH Here is the 5/6/14-election postmortem report for Precinct 19-09, Rolesville Elementary School polling place. Election Day Problems and Unusual Situations -------- --- -------- --- ------- ---------- 1) A number of UNA voters changed their minds at the Ballot Table about the ballot choice they had specified at the Registration Table. This resulted in some ATV fields having to be marked "ERROR" to reflect the requested change, even though these were not errors made by any Precinct Official. Instead it showed a lack of election preparation by those voters. Of course sample ballots had been posted on the path to the Registration Table, so the voters could have seen the ballots at the polling place before getting to the Registration and Ballot Tables even if they had not seen them elsewhere, e.g., on the NCBOE website. Maybe some different text instead of "ERROR" would be better for this situation, possibly "VOTER CHG". 2) In the Chief Judge ATV reviews, one ATV was found with no voter signature, long after the voter had left. The voter was known by one of the Judges, but was not reachable by phone before we packed up. We flagged the missing signature on the ATV using a red marker and included a description on the ATV about what had happened. 3) There were a number of other errors found in the CJ ATV reviews, particularly in the late afternoon, e.g., boxes not marked properly, wrong ballot styles marked as issued, or ATVs misnumbered. We were able to correct all those and everything reconciled exactly at the end of the day. 4) For some reason one of the Ballot Table people thought she was supposed to mark an ATV number on ballots. That is certainly not what the flow chart and other documentation specify and is not what she had done in prior elections. This procedure error was discovered pretty quickly and stopped. 5) The Town of Rolesville changed a street name without notifying the BOE. This caused a problem for one voter, whose old address was still listed in the pollbooks and on the laptop. She had lived in the same house for many years and had not moved; they just changed the street name of her address. With a lot of assistance from the Help Table and many people on the BOE Help line, the voter used Section B of the ATV to document the change as best we could (it didn't exactly fit any of the cases). The Help Table people put more documentation about this in the blue plastic bag. There are probably many other voters with a similar situation, expecting that the various government pieces would have coordinated on the street name change. Other voters might have sent the BOE a change of address notification, even though they hadn't moved; presumably they would now be OK in the pollbooks/laptop. Hopefully the BOE will have this all fixed by the next election. 6) We had eight curbside voters this time; that is more than normal. We had only three provisional voters, which seemed fairly small, given the law changes, e.g., replacing yellow ATVs with provisional envelopes. 7) We had no people sign the "No Photo ID Acknowledgement" form. These primary voters seemed to be aware of the 2016 requirement (probably almost all already had a driver license in this large and fairly rural precinct). Also, we had put up many copies of the coral form on the path to the Registration Table, so the voters should have known what was coming by the time they got to that table. 8) We opened eight ballot packs. One had 103 ballots instead of 100; the rest had the correct number of 100. For details see http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2014-05-06.htm We counted each pack when it was opened, a practice I continue to STRONGLY recommend. That let us reconcile exactly at the end of the day with a good deal of confidence. It also gave us a base to work backwards from to solve several ATV problems. Without knowing exactly how many ballots we had started with, we couldn't have been certain in our problem solving. 9) One of our Registration Table workers has indicated she thought the pollbooks were too heavy. For this election we ended up with a larger number of books than usual (nine) and the two officials at that table had to juggle them around quite a lot during the day. If the next election has a similar situation (Early Voting hasn't trimmed the number of books), we will probably set up an extra table so the officials can spread out more and not have to keep restacking the books. 10) By far the most frequent question asked by voters happens when they are looking to insert a ballot into the M100: "Does it matter which direction the ballot faces?" The most frequent error is that the ballot is not inserted hard enough, so the M100 starts beeping (VERY quietly) and we have to tell the voter to pull out the ballot slightly, wait for the beeping to stop, and push the ballot in again. but harder this time. I am going to work on some M100 signs about proper insertion of a ballot. Voter Attitudes ----- --------- Almost all the voters were very friendly and expressed thanks for the volunteer work being done by the Precinct Officials. We had only a very few who seemed unhappy for one reason or another and did not want to cooperate as the other voters did. Polling Place ------- ----- As with previous elections, we had excellent cooperation from the Rolesville Elementary School personnel. Our main problems with that site are unchanged: 1) When all the buses show up, we have to take down curbside parking and accessibility areas. This is especially bad in the afternoon when the buses or their replacements stay parked for close to an hour. One of our precinct officials (who normally would have been at the Help Table) had to be outside watching for potential curbside voters and directing them to a far corner of the lot where the buses could not park. That of course also lengthened all the required trips back and forth to process curbside ballots. She also had to keep chasing cars with non-curbside voters out of the lot so they wouldn't get trapped when the rest of the buses rolled in. Unfortunately, many of the curbside voters waited to show up until the afternoon bus arrival time started. Hopefully there will be some solution to this before the large November election (best would be to have a school holiday!) 2) The HVAC system in the gym is very loud. This makes it difficult for people, especially Registration Table workers, to hear voters. Topyx and SOSA ----- --- ---- 1) Again this year Topyx had problems e-mailing some people, apparently because of Topyx problems dealing with the ISPs of those people. 2) When the SOSA tutorial/test was played, a green window could "randomly" appear replacing the video. The tutorial had to be stopped/started to get back to the normal video display. Unfortunately, following proposed fix suggestions by changing Adobe software settings did not correct the problem. 3) The new SOSA layout is not well suited for polling place operation. Just buttons to access Voter Search or Street Search, and then Search and Clear for each of these, should be made easily available. These are the functions needed by the Help Table people at the election day polling place. Instead, currently buttons/tabs for many additional operations are displayed -- things needed by Early Voting work and which would cause problems if accidentally hit by a polling place worker. All that Early Voting stuff should be hidden on the SOSA program used at election day polling places. The Voter Search and Street Search buttons should be made easily available at the top level, with no requirement to go to a Tools tab. It should be made easy to switch between these two subprograms and data should not be lost in the switch. Also, hiding the superfluous buttons/tabs would have greatly simplified the SOSA tutorial video. 4) Text is needed by the icon for ID REQUIRED and probably also by the green check mark icon. It's not good to display tiny mystery icons. Provisional Envelope ----------- -------- The new envelope is very good. Thanks for making that happen. Some fixes still needed: 1) Section A: Previous Address -> Previous Residential Address 2) Section B, step 2: Write name *and address* on Provisional Pollbook 3) Many places: Poll Book -> Pollbook (if that is the future documentation direction) 4) Section C, bullet 11: Mention writing "VOID" on any attached ATV. I think we forgot to do that on the one ATV our Help Table people attached to a provisional envelope because this requirement was not listed on the envelope. It's mentioned in the Help Table Quick Guide provisional envelope procedure, which is now ignored since the new envelope is self-documenting (well, almost -- need to fix that). 5) Somewhere: Mention the extra address processing needed for a move outside the 30-day limit -- just say "see the manual for details", which usually involves calling the BOE Help line for guidance. Material Distributed at Supply Pickup -------- ----------- -- ------ ------ 1) CJ binder: It would help to rearrange some of the contents, which I always do anyway to ease the end-of-day processing: * Folder 1: The things needed for the blue plastic bag and other end-of-day work: oath sheet, pay sheet, reconciliation form, list of persons in line at polls close, purple envelope, voted/unvoted ballot stickers * Folder 2: Coordinator contact sheet, list of pollworkers, yellow polling place sheet, remote collection site sheets, challenge envelopes (if any were used, they would go in the blue plastic bag, but they are never used) * Folder 3: All the plastic bags * Everything else goes on binder rings or in the binder mesh pocket, as currently placed 2) White plastic bag label re "Acknowledgement of No Photo ID" forms: Add "include any such forms from Help Table" 3) CJ packing list sheet: * Last item: delete mention of yellow ATVs * Last item: add mention of "Acknowledgement of No Photo ID" forms * Indicate Write-ins plastic bag is not present (at least for this election) 4) Incident report instructions -- writeup is inconsistent/confusing: Says precinct officials must place reports in envelope and deliver to county BOE, yet Precinct Officials have no forms. Also the instructions say the BOE people are to fill out the forms. 5) Light blue media sheet does not match more recent instructions * Light blue sheet says "... media may be briefly inside the voting enclosure to take a panoramic photograph..." vs. page 60 of the 2014 Manual & Workbook, which says media must stay outside. * Since all the blue sheet points are covered by other (presumably more accurate) Precinct Officials documentation now, why is the old, inaccurate blue sheet still included in the CJ material? The documentation direction should be to eliminate as much of the documentation as possible and have what remains be accurate and clear. Other Documentation ----- ------------- On my website http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/WakeBOE_TOC.htm see the documentation comments I made prior to the election. Here are some post-election comments: 1) 2014 Primary Election Manual & Workbook P 45: Step 3: Use of barcode scanner to replace a spoiled ballot It seems silly to require the voter's ATV to be retrieved for scanning to replace a spoiled ballot with another ballot of exactly the same style. More mistakes and other problems would probably result during that retrieval than just visually making sure the spoiled and replacement ballot styles are identical. Of course if the voter says he was given the wrong ballot style (not just that he made a marking mistake), that's a different matter and results in a much different procedure. If privacy is a concern for an identical style replacement, the voter can hide his oval marks while allowing the Official to see just the ballot style required. (And the Official can close his eyes while folding the spoiled ballot, marking SPOILED on it, and putting it in the bag. However that also gets silly given that the ballot could later be viewed in the spoiled bag if the Official was untrustworthy or was just doing his job by later inserting other material in the bag and happened to see the marked back of a folded two-sided ballot.) 2) CJ Quick Guide P 1: Reorder items under "Polling Place Set-up Checklist" P 1: Bullet 10: List all checklists; use text on pages 2 and 7 P 1: Last paragraph: "Voters in this list will NOT be in your poll books." change to "Voters in this list will NOT be in your pollbooks and will be marked as VOTED on the laptop." P 7: Add step to put all reviewed checklists in the CJ binder P 8: Add "no Printer Cartridge" problem/solution 3) RT Quick Guide P 1: Under "Polling Place Set-up", add ring for "No Photo ID" forms 4) All Precinct Officials Checklist P2: Under "Packing Up Checklist: Group the items into categories via spacing/headings. The order is already good, except for the need to swap bullets 1 and 2. Proposed groups: AutoMARK, Voting Booths, Signs, M100 and Ballot Box, Misc (a clearer grouping can help in making end-of-day assignments) 5) Absentee list packed with pollbooks In other correspondence I had proposed that the second copy of the absentee list, the one printed for the Help Table, was not used at that table and was unneeded. I thought money could be saved by not printing the second copy. For this (primary) election that list was very small at our precinct; in prior (general) elections I have seen lists that ran many pages because of the many people (sometimes more than 50%) who voted early. If the extraneous hardcopy of the absentee list will no longer be put at the Help Table, that affects several places in the documentation, e.g., pages 1 and 2 of the CJ QG (probably many other places). Monday Pollbooks Pickup ------ --------- ------ 1) Changing the time from 4:00 to 4:30 worked great to avoid the "mommy line" problem encountered in the previous two elections. There were no problems this time. Saturday Supply Pickup -------- ------ ------ 1) The supply people miscounted ballots the first time. They had to reopen the sealed boxes to do a recount. 2) The CJ should be required to participate more directly in ballot box contents checking. Currently the CJ is kept out of the way and the supply people count (or miscount) the contents of the ballot boxes, then write down on a sheet what they counted, and have the CJ sign that sheet for chain of custody documentation. 3) After contents counting, the supply people should mark the end of each box with the counted contents, e.g., "200 Dem, 400 Rep" or 2 packs Dem, 4 packs Rep". 4) Box label stickers are not very secure. They often come loose during box moves into/out of a car trunk, to/from home storage, etc. Changes of Precinct Officials ------- -- -------- --------- 1) We had many changes of precinct officials for precinct 19-09 after the original list was sent in March. Some people appear to be chronic dropouts (dropping out sooner or later every time chosen) and should be removed from the list of eligible POs, or at least be called upon as replacements rather than being in the list first sent. Frequent personnel replacements require much extra CJ and BOE work. 2) On several occasions the CJ was not notified promptly (or at all) or was notified erroneously when a change was made. Often the dropout POs do not notify the CJ directly that they now won't be working the election (they just tell the BOE they are now unavailable) -- this despite being requested by the CJ to notify the CJ ASAP if they become unavailable. As a result, without a prompt update from the BOE, the CJ has no idea that a change has occurred, that a new person has to be contacted, that work reassignments may be needed, etc. Monday set-up day at 2 PM is definitely not a good time to learn that a change had occurred two or three days earlier and also that no replacement has been named. Absentee Ballot -------- ------ 1) The second paragraph of Step 1 on the envelope precludes use of a notary by not mentioning that option in the certification, although the later steps show it is an option. Using a notary does work despite the Step 1 error. I signed Step 1 (believing I knew what the form writers really meant despite what they said) in front of a notary without two witnesses (unless you want to count the notary and me and the other customers waiting in line). My absentee ballot was accepted by the BOE. Note that the yellow instruction sheet sent with the absentee ballot DOES have the correct instructions in its Step 1. I assume everyone else who used a notary had to do the same thing, reading between the lines of Step 1 and signing a false statement. If the BOE intent (undoubtedly not the case) for Step 1 was that everyone MUST have two (unidentifed) witnesses for Step 1, but can have just a notary for Step 3, this really needs to be clarified. If instead this was just an error in the envelope's Step 1 text, it should be corrected. It is also confusing that the Step numbering on the envelope differs from that on the yellow instruction sheet. 2) The included documentation for submitting the absentee ballot should clearly specify the exact type of postage required to mail the ballot -- two FULL first-class (now 49 cents) stamps. A 49-cent stamp plus a 21-cent stamp does not work even though the envelope plus contents weighs under two ounces. This envelope is considered a "flat" by USPS, not just a somewhat overweight or oversized envelope, and requires even more postage. USPS will reject an absentee envelope mailed with less than the required postage. [I can attest to that from last year's experience, when I thought one full plus one extra weight/size stamp (20 cents back then) was correct.] A rejected envelope would then have to be remailed with the right postage and might arrive at the BOE too late. To avoid this, the documentation should specify the postage requirement. Jeff Knauth Chief Judge for Precinct 19-09