* *** POSTMORTEM_2017-11-07 TXT - 13 Nov 2017 21:50:36 - JKNAUTH Postmortem Report for Precinct 19-19 for 11/7/17 Election ---------- ------ --- -------- ----- --- ------- -------- We had a good turnout in precinct 19-19 for the 11/7/17 general election -- about 16.9% at the polling place and 0.9% via absentee voting (mail-in or one-stop) for a total of 17.8%. This was about average for a Wake County precinct for this election and was better than normal for a municipal election. The weather was not too good on election day: misty with some short periods of heavier rain, initially cool and then somewhat cold. That may have suppressed voter turnout. Voters also had to find their changed polling place for the new 19-19 voting precinct. We were prepared for the wet weather with a rain table, rugs, paper towels, an "umbrella stand" (wastebasket with a plastic bag), etc. However we didn't have any serious problems although curbside processing sometimes wasn't too pleasant. Some of the curbside paperwork came in a little limp because of the high humidity, but all ballots went into the tabulator on the first try. Statistics (voters registered by 11/1/17; voting numbers for 11/7/17) ========== Registered municipal voters: 5161 --> |-> 3482 Wake Forest |-> 1679 Rolesville Not eligible to vote in this election --> 643 Unincorporated ---- 5804 Total registered Tabulator vs. ATV counts: 872 vs. 872 Provisional ballots: 1 Spoiled ballots: 4 Emergency bin ballots: 0 Challenged ballots: 0 "White Paper" absentees: 41 Late mail-in absentees: 8 ---- Total absentees: 49 (872 + 49)/5161 = 17.8% = (Total voted)/(Registered municipals) Write-in ballots: 6 Curbside voters: 8 AutoMARK voters: 0 Observers: 0 Polling booths: 16 (including provisional and accessible) Total chairs at tables: 0 (at 0 large tables for booths overflow) Transfers out: 0 Transfers in: 2 At wrong polling place: many Ballot Count Reconciliation web page: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Ballot_Count_Reconciliation_2017-11-07.htm Sanford Creek Elementary School Polling Place ======= ===== ========== ====== ======= ===== This was the first time Sanford Creek Elementary School (SCES) was used as a polling place. It was excellent with great support from the people at the school. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/19-19.htm for details about some unique SCES considerations. Voting Enclosure ------ --------- The voting enclosure is the school's media center. It provides all the space and furniture we need. All the heavy pieces are on wheels, so we can reconfigure things for either small or large elections, or even easily change during the day if required. There is also a connected room we can use as a break area. It has a sink, a small refrigerator and microwave, and a restroom. The room has only one door that voters can use; the exit door is the same as the entry door. (The other door in the media center leads into the main school building; it can be used by voters only as an emergency exit.) That door limitation and the location of electrical and phone outlets puts constraints on our possible configurations. Some future work is needed to help voters better find their way from the entrance over to our tables, then to the voting booths, then back out to the tabulator and exit. Voters tended not to follow our signs or blue tape arrows on the floor. In one place we had to put up a barricade of chairs to force them to take the right path. Often our officials had to do a lot of arm waving and yelling to get voters moving in the right direction. The entry/exit door was very hard to open. Our Tabulator Monitor was stationed nearby and assisted opening it if a voter seem to be having a problem. I don't see any way to fix that. Parking and Curbside ------- --- -------- The school's main parking lot has 96 spaces. That may not be sufficient for a large election or for a voter who wants to avoid the possibility of being trapped by the "car pool" line. Fortunately there are two gravel parking lots near the school's lot. These are managed by the Rolesville Parks and Recreation Department as parking areas for the Main Street Park. Rolesville has given WCBOE permission to use those lots for election parking. Our most significant problem was curbside parking. That area was located at the front of the media center parallel to a main road of the parking lot. There is no other place curbside can be. Unfortunately the school's "car pool" line loops around the parking lot and goes right by that area. For those voters needing curbside parking, it is a challenge to know about the area, then get to it, and enter it pointing in the right direction, particularly if this is attempted at "car pool" times. More work is required in this area, particularly to develop signs that can be put at the right places and tell voters the right things. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Sanford_Creek_Elementary_Parking_Area_Traffic_Flow.pdf Our Tabulator/Door official said he found that some people coming in looked very infirm and seemed eligible for curbside processing. He talked with them and found they were not aware of the curbside capability (although they had just gone right by the area to enter the voting enclosure). Maybe the WCBOE needs to better publicize curbside availability. Public Awareness of the New 19-19 Polling Place ------ --------- -- --- --- ----- ------- ----- As expected, many people were unaware of the new polling place, having ignored the updated voter card mailed to them and overlooked various newspaper articles about the change. We heard that many 19-19 voters had incorrectly first gone to their old 19-10 (Jones Dairy Elementary School) polling place. Hopefully this will not be the case in the larger 2018 elections. Maybe before those elections the small local newspapers could provide more details about polling place locations, "car pool" conflict considerations, etc. Here are some local papers I know of: "Wake Forest Weekly" "Wake Forest Gazette" "Our Town" (bimonthly by Town of Wake Forest) "Rolesville Buzz" There are probably others. Also, the Wake Forest and Rolesville town websites could provide more information than just the precinct number and polling place address. Web Pages about the New 19-19 Polling Place --- ----- ----- --- --- ----- ------- ----- Long before election day and again a few days before it, I had posted an article on the Nextdoor community website with a link to a page on my website: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/2017_Precinct_Changes.htm. It tells how to determine your polling place and has maps and SCES considerations, e.g., about avoiding the "car pool" times. I filtered the Nextdoor coverage to include all the 19-19 and 19-18 neighborhoods. I later made a copy of that page and named it http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/19-19.htm. (The old page is still available as http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/2017_Precinct_Changes.htm.) I edited the 19-19.htm page to remove the 11/7/17 election orientation and plan to update it as appropriate for future elections. At the 11/7/17 election we gave out some paper slips with a link to the 19-19.htm page, but ran out of slips since I had printed only about 70. We did try to give one to every curbside voter and explicitly warned those people about the "car pool" concern. The objective of the new web page is to continue spreading the word about 19-19 considerations before the next election. The problem is getting people to know the information exists. Before the next election I will again use Nextdoor to provide a link to the 19-19.htm page. Staffing ======== All our officials for the 19-19 polling place were very experienced. A number had worked at 19-10 before. Everyone worked very well on Monday and Tuesday, both individually and as a team. One of our officials found out late that he could not get there by the Monday setup time because of employer constraints. I notified the WCBOE and got an OK for him to still participate. He helped at the end of setup and was a major asset on election day. We had only eight officials vs. the original plan of nine. That meant everyone had to be working almost continuously thruout the day. When possible we had three people at the RT, but had to drop to two when curbside work was required. We once had three curbside voters in process or lined up. We will certainly need more people for the 2018 elections. The Help Table was the least busy station at this election, although there were many times when some voter needed a laptop lookup to find which polling place to use. We had only one provisional ballot and only one "V" to handle (not the same voter). There were two transfer-ins and no transfer-outs. There were no "ID" voters processed by either the RT or the HT. In other words, it was almost entirely a busy but "Perfect Scenario" election. Campaigners =========== 1) The campaigners seemed to be very well-behaved (and in good spirits despite the bad weather). I did not hear any voter complaints about campaigners. This polling place has a good configuration for campaigning. They all stood (or sat on chairs) out on a grass median in the parking lot, well beyond the 50 foot limit. There they had access to voters walking in from the main lot, but were not anywhere near the heavy traffic, or curbside, or the area where kids were getting out of or into the "car pool" cars. It worked very well. They did leave some signs, however, which we collected and discarded. 2) We allowed voters to use the restroom in the break area. However sometimes we later determined that a "voter" was actually a campaigner. It isn't always easy to know the difference. Note that there is no other restroom nearby except inside the main school building and we don't want people to have access to that area. Is there any type of sign that can be posted to warn campaigners they cannot enter the voting enclosure to use the restroom? Have they been warned beforehand by the WCBOE? Of course for some locations, restrooms might be available in the polling place building without having to go thru the voting enclosure, but not in our case. Database Peculiarities ======== ============= Our Help Table official encountered one problem in the WCBOE database. See the associated provisional envelope for more details. A voter had lived in Raleigh for a long time and had been registered there. He then moved to Wake Forest and changed his address via the DMV. When he came to vote, he was not in our pollbooks. He was also not in the laptop database. The Help Line could not find him either. He no longer existed as far as WCBOE was concerned. As directed by the Help Line, he voted provisionally. Voter Complaints ===== ========== 1) A voter who had moved here from New Jersey some time ago was VERY angry. He came to our 19-19 polling place with his voter card showing he was assigned to 19-18 (as verified with the laptop). He said he had gotten a phone call, which he thought was from the WCBOE, saying his polling place had been changed and that he should vote at Sanford Creek Elementary School. As noted he was VERY angry and we could not find out exactly what he heard on the phone call. Was it some prankster? Had he just misinterpreted the call? Was it a poorly worded political robocall? Was it really an erroneous call from the WCBOE? Etc. He stalked out, leaving no doubt about his state of mind, saying he was going to check the caller ID for the phone call and then he would (redacted). Has the WCBOE heard of similar misleading phone calls? Nowadays there seem to be MANY bad phone calls (e.g., ignoring the "Do Not Call" database). 2) One voter insisted on showing his driver license when asked for his name and address at the RT. He was told it wasn't required, per the WCBOE directions. But he just wanted to keep on making his point that he thought an ID should be required. The RT did finally get his verbal information to let an ATV be completed and he went on to vote normally, muttering. 3) A curbside voter said she could not get the "Are You Registered" function of the WCBOE website to display her sample ballot. She said she had spent a long time trying to make it work and was very frustrated. She had entered her name, etc. and successfully passed the "I'm not a robot" test. Her correct information was displayed, but when she selected the button to display her sample ballot, the system just reverted to asking for her registration information. That has never happened to me and I have used this procedure many times for myself and for others. She also voiced the concern that sample ballots are no longer mailed to voters, but instead voters must have Internet access to see a sample ballot before they go to vote. Given the pervasiveness of PCs, smart phones, etc. nowadays, that is probably not a problem for a very large percentage of voters, but undoubtedly it is for some. Pollbooks ========= 1) The pollbook sticker labels seemed to work well. I am not aware that our Registration Table officials had any problems. They were warned about some pitfalls, e.g., of putting the sticker on the ATV too soon. 2) Unfortunately the pollbooks still had the letter splitting problem that election officials have often complained about. We had many pollbooks, with most starting and ending at weird spots. Supplies ======== 1) One of our curbside shields had an obsolete (8/1/16) instruction sheet in the back sleeve. We used my curbside flow sheet as a replacement: http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/curbside-2017-November.htm 2) A couple of the sign stands (e.g., for RT/BT/HT signs) had loose bases. The screws could not be tightened. We red tagged them. We may need more sign stands in future elections, e.g., for "Wait Until Called" and for hanging direction signs. If not provided, we could just use the RT/BT/HT stands, which tend to be superfluous. 3) There was only one roll of blue tape in the supply bag. In recent prior elections there were two, which was good since the tape is often needed in multiple places at the same time. We need a lot of tape for hanging signs, floor marking, and stringing as barriers. Fortunately I had brought a second roll. 4) The blue tape used for floor marking was not too visible on the dark carpet. Is white or yellow painters tape available? Maybe simple masking tape will work if it won't harm the carpet and stays in place. 5) I had asked for early delivery (Saturday pickup) of some standard and site-specific signs so I could put them out Monday morning on a long, winding road leading to our new polling place. The signs were provided as requested. That helped a great deal. 6) In prior years I had proposed that WCBOE put a file on the Precinct Officials website to list pictures and descriptions of the standard signs with some sort of unique ID for each sign. This would simplify CJ <--> WCBOE communications about signs. I created an example of such a sign "mugshot book" with a page full of pictures and descriptions of the signs I had just gotten for the current election. I sent this to Jacqueline Cameron to show to others in the WCBOE. I said I would be willing to take pictures and create the full file, given input from the Operations Center. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/BOE_Supplies.txt for my unresolved supplies comments from past elections. See http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/BOE_Wish_List.txt for my general wish list. Hardware ======== 1) The curbside doorbell worked well with the signal easily reaching inside the building and the bell easily heard over the noise of the voting enclosure (vs. an M100 alarm). It's MUCH better than the old unintelligible walkie talkie system. Some voters (new voters?) seemed to have problems recognizing the curbside stand and driving to where they could use the button. As noted elsewhere we need some additional signage directing people to curbside at this polling place. 2) We emptied the steel ballot box after 500 voters had entered ballots. The ballots had fallen to the bottom and some were a little crumpled, but no jam was imminent. We were still under 1000 when the polls closed. When we opened the bin, about the same situation existed as when we opened it at 500. We had joggled the steel ballot box several times. 3) When we tried to print the first closing-polls report, the tape did not eject properly; just a little came out but we could hear the printer still working. Eventually I decided I better tug on the tape. It resisted at first, but then a lot came out; it was crumpled. We didn't have similar problems with the remaining closing-polls prints (and did not have one with the opening-polls print). 4) There were no modem transmission problems. I think we got a "Modem Operation Completed" in under ten tries. Two people had volunteered for the emergency transport. 5) I planted many vinyl signs this election, e.g., along Granite Falls Blvd., and determined that a good part of that area is apparently a thin layer of soil over a gravel base. I found that a big rubber mallet helped convince the metal rods to go more than a few inches deep. Last year we had learned that if the rods aren't planted deeply for this type of vinyl sign, wind can easily blow down the signs. Since many of those signs must be remote for this polling place, there would be no way for our officials to set them up again during election day. It was indeed windy for part of election day, but none of the signs blew over, so I was happy about having used the mallet. I picked up the remote signs Wednesday morning. All were still present and in good shape -- no vandalism or blown away signs. I found another consideration for the Quick Stix signs. When you remove them, you need to be careful to pull up the metal rods. If you just pull the plastic bar, the rods can be detached, unnoticed, and stay in the ground. I had to make a return trip to pick up three of these upright rods. I'll be more careful next time. VAST ==== Again VAST was complimented on by our Help Table. Simple and fast is good. It is a big improvement over SOSA for election day work. Election Supply Pickups and Dropoff ======== ====== ======= === ======= 1) Saturday supply pickup went very well. I had a complicated set of supplies to get, but there were no problems. 2) The new Monday supply pickup procedure changed the start time from 4:30 to 4:00. That was a very good change for those of us who have to drive a long distance from pickup to the polling place and try to get there by the 5:00 Monday setup time. In the past that has been a challenge, especially if mail trucks or school buses are encountered on the narrow Forestville Rd. In fact traffic was very good going to the site and I got to the pickup site around 3:30. They were already completely set up and giving out supplies. Everything was very well organized. It took me less than five minutes from entry to the lot to exit. They get an A+ from me. 3) The Tuesday night dropoff at Knightdale also went well. They had everything well marked to get to the truck and quickly handled the material inventory and removal. Documentation ============= I had previously provided comments on the current documentation. The latest comments, some of which were not addressed, are in http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Comments_2017-11-07_Election_Documents.txt (9/3/17) and http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Comments_on_2017-09-21_FAQs.txt (9/23/17). Here are some additional comments: Chief Judge Pocket Guide (8/1/17) ----- ----- ------ ----- 1) On page 7, under Tabulator, before the "Turn the red key" bullet, say "Set up and plug in the Tabulator per..." (and reference the guide packed in the Tabulator case). Help Table Quick Guide (8/1/17) ---- ----- ----- ----- 1) In Flow Chart #2, in the block for "Check Absentee Status", only the laptop is checked. In past elections the Last-Minute Absentee list was also checked there. That list checking was removed for this election and I was told that the HT class would describe where the list would be checked. I asked my HT people if they had been told when to check the list. None remembered being told anything about this in their HT class. I had them add the check back to their HT QG Flow Chart #2 since trying to explain the replacement checking was too hard. See the end of http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/Comments_2017-11-07_Election_Documents.txt for what I think was being proposed for the new checking. Was anything about this taught in any HT class? Registration Table Quick Guide (8/1/17) ------------ ----- ----- ----- 1) Right side, second block. The Step 4 action is misplaced. It should be before Step 2. As pointed out in an FAQ, if the label is stuck on the ATV and THEN you learn the voter forgot their ID and needs to go home to get it, that's bad news. The ATV must be spoiled; the voter must vote provisionally; and then must make a trip to the Raleigh WCBOE office before canvass to present the ID. If the label had not been stuck on the ATV yet, the voter could just have gone to fetch the ID and gotten back in line at the RT to be processed normally -- no provisional voting or trip to Raleigh required. Laptop Quick Guide (8/19/17) ------ ----- ----- 1) I finally again had access to a VAST PC and verified my 9/3/17 comment about Page 5: "Look at the top of the Voter Search screen. Click on the Go To Street Search button." The "top" should be "bottom". Report written by Jeff Knauth, Chief Judge for 19-19 with input from the other officials for this precinct