Over the last week, our office has conducted an extensive analysis of the undervotes from the November 2006 General Election. Our analysis focused on the races for the five statewide constitutional officers (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Comptroller, and Treasurer) that are the subject of the new law requiring notification of undervotes.

First, and of greatest importance to Champaign County voters, we learned that our machines are doing an extraordinary job of counting votes, even if voters are not properly marking their ballots.  As most voters are aware, an optical scan ballot in Champaign County should be voted by filling in the oval next to the person you want to vote for.  That particular instruction is given to voters by the election judges when they receive their ballot.  The instruction appears on the ballot itself.  It appears in the voting booth.  It appears on the privacy cover given to each voter when they vote.  It even appears on the pen that is given to voters to mark their ballot.  Unfortunately, a small percentage of voters do not follow those instructions.  Nevertheless, we found that almost all votes that are cast with an X or check mark still properly counted.

Second, regarding voter notification of undervotes on the above noted races, we found that notification would have almost no impact in preventing uncounted votes.

Our method was to examine each ballot and find those where there was an undervote.  We then compared the counts of the undervoted ballots from our examination with the undervote numbers from the final canvass.

In Champaign County, there were 53,869 ballots cast.  Of those, 3,749 (7%) had undervotes for one or more of the statewide constitutional officers.  The total number of undervotes was 6,729.  Our analysis shows that 6,716 of those undervotes were intentional, meaning the computers correctly determined voter intent in all but 13 circumstances, a rate of 99.81% certainty when taken against all the identified undervotes.  When taken against all ballots, the certainty is 99.9952%.

You can see the precinct by precinct results including the intentionally undervoted ballots here.

Precinct by Precinct results.

Put another way, if the notification of undervotes had been in effect in 2006 General Election, 3,749 people would have received a message on the vote tabulator that they had undervoted in a race for which they had no intention of casting a vote.  As discussed before, it’s all but certain that a high percentage of those people would have the secrecy of their ballot compromised.

No more than 13 people would have received an error message that would have allowed them to correct their ballot to make sure that their vote counted correctly.

Perhaps most important, there were 46 undervoted ballots cast using the Automark Voter Assistance Terminal.  For each of these ballots, the voter received a notification during the Automark voting process each time they decided to leave a race blank as well as a summary notification at the end of their Automark voting process.  Once their ballot printed out, they then inserted the ballot into the vote tabulator.  Each of these people would have received a visual message notifying them of their undervote.  In the case of those who are visually impaired or unable to manipulate the buttons on the machine due to a disability, they by necessity lose their right to a secret ballot.  Interestingly, the undervote rate on the voter assistance terminal was higher than the rate for all voters. (46 out of 483 identified Automark ballots.)

You can review the Automark Voter Assistance Terminal ballots here.

In addition to undervotes, we also looked at overvotes.  Except for those people who vote absentee through mail, overvotes result in a notification to the voter and a chance to correct the ballot.  There were 58 overvotes that we found where the voter decided not to correct the error. In 34 of those, voter intent could be clearly determined.  In 24 of those ballots, no clearly discernible voter intent could be determined.

In our examination we ran across a number of other interesting items.  In most precincts we were able to easily identify the undervotes.  By deduction we were then able to determine that the ballots in those precincts with X’s or check marks had been counted by the machine.  We also found eight ballots where voters overvoted because they wrote in the same name that they filled in the oval for.  We also found a number of ballots where it appears that the voter filled in the oval after making check marks or X’s to start with.  Some of these voters may have received an unreadable mark or blank ballot message from the vote tabulator.

X’s and Check Marks That Were Fully Counted
Voted and Wrote-in the Same
Filled in Oval after Using X’s

But this ballot is the poster child for the absurdity of this new law.  After leaving all but the advisory referenda blank, the voter wrote:

Today, Tuesday, November 7, 2006 I am exercising my right to vote by not voting for anyone.
Personally, I am appalled as all the candidates should be ashamed, at how childish they have all been acting.  I don’t want any on this ballot representing me or the State of Illinois.

In 2007, the State of Illinois passed legislation that will require notification to voters when they do not cast a vote for any one or more of the state constitutional officers (Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Comptroller, Treasurer).  I blogged about this in November 2007.

This year, the Illinois Association of County Clerks and Recorders put the elimination of this provision high on their legislative priorities.  I helped craft a one page summary of arguments for removing this provision.  Unfortunately, the legislative leadership in Springfield doesn’t see this provision as a problem.

I am now putting together the information necessary to demonstrate that this provision violates U.S. law, the Illinois Constitution, and Illinois law.  One piece of that information is the law regarding notification of undervotes in each of the other 49 states. This summary demonstrates that the legal requirement to notify voters of an undervoted optical scan ballot exists in only one other state, New York.  Like Illinois, New York has yet to conduct an election using this undervote provision.

Our right to a secret ballot is fundamental to a democratic process that is open and free from coercion.  I’ll continue to post information as it is gathered and we now have a page on the website devoted to this issue.

Today, the County’s General Corp fund has a balance of $35,000.  To put that in perspective, next week’s payroll will be about $750,000.  That doesn’t include paying the various bills that come up each week.  That measly fund balance is possible only because we’ve actually borrowed $3.3 million from other County funds.

In the good news/bad news category, the County sent out their property tax bills today.  So expect it in your mailbox tomorrow or Monday.  The revenue for the County General Corp fund from property taxes is about $6.8 million.   That will allow the County to essentially tread water for the next few months.

Champaign County is one of the few counties in the state to get their tax bills out on time.  It’s a combined and highly cooperative effort between township assessors, the Supervisor of Assessments, our office, the County Treasurer, and the County’s IT department that makes that happen.

With the caveats below applying today, the redundant recount of 4395 ballots in the Unit 4 school district race showed no change in results.  We did find two blank and unitialed ballots mixed in with the election day ballots that we presume were stuck to the back of a properly cast ballot.  It caused the hand count of ballots cast to be off by one in Champaign 7 and in City of Champaign 15 but had no impact of course on the number of votes for each candidate.   We’ll put an extra reminder in for judges in future training about making sure that doesn’t happen.

As the Election Authority, I supervise the discovery recount.  In that capacity, I faciliate the review of ballots and other election materials for the person requesting the discovery recount.  We also conduct a redundant hand count of ballots.  Nevertheless, my observations are just that; observations.  What I say here in no way is binding upon a candidate or a court and is not dispositive.

With those caveats, I can tell you that my observation is that the hand count of ballots in Bondville was the same as the computer count reflected in the final canvass.  WDWS was here and interviewed Karl Kennicker.  You can listen to them to find out what he is going to do from here.

A discovery recount (10 ILCS 5/22-9.1) is a provision of Illinois election law that allows a loser in an election who comes within 5% of the winner to review the ballots, applications, and other documents for up to 25% of the precincts of the jurisdiction in which they were a candidate. The candidate requesting the discovery recount selects the precincts.  As part of the discovery process, a redundant recount is generally conducted which involves a hand count of the ballots for the selected precincts.

Champaign County will have two discovery recounts this year.  One is for the Bondville Village President’s race (April 30 at 1:00) which was decided by a single vote.   The other is for the Champaign School Board race (May 1 at 8:30) which was decided by two votes.   We have had a number of discovery recounts since I’ve been County Clerk.  None has revealed any discrepancies between the hand count and machine count of ballots.  Two of those discovery recounts occurred since we implemented the new optical scan voting equipment.

Any results of the discovery recount will not change the results of the election.  Rather, the discovery recount is just a gathering of information that a candidate can bring to a judge to request an election contest be conducted.  An election contest, if granted by a judge, would normally result in a full recount of all ballots in the race.

Our retabulation of votes showed just two ballots where voters used an “X” or other mark instead of filling in the oval.  That is an error rate of under .2%.  Even then, there is a significant chance that the machine will count those ballots that a voter marks incorrectly.  While the error rate is small, it obviously could have an impact in either of these contests.

Personally, I would like Illinois law to mandate a redundant recount in races this close.  I know the machines count accurately and I know that almost all voters mark their ballots correctly.  But in races this close, it would be good to examine each ballot to make sure that the actual will of the voters has been expressed in the final result.

After each election, state statute requires each county to “retabulate” 5% of the precincts.  The retabulation doesn’t really accomplish much.  However, in Champaign County we have extended that process by conducting a hand count of select races in each of the 6 randomly selected precincts selected by the State Board of Elections for our County.  You can see the results of the retabulation here.

The Green and Republican Parties did not send representatives to the retabulation.  As such, members of my staff selected the races to be hand counted for them.

The results came out largely the same, except for a single vote discrepancy in Champaign 5.  You can see the two ballots in that precinct that were oddly marked.

As in the past, the hand count of ballots demonstrates that our voting machines are counting accurately.

And an examination of the ballots shows that voters are doing a great job of following the instructions and filling in the oval.    Out of 1,108 ballots cast in these precincts, just two marked their ballots with an X or check mark.

Please let me know of any problems, questions, concerns or suggestions.  Things look like their going pretty well, but I’d love some feedback.

After a long day, staff is starting to go home.  A few judges remain and are feeding the last of the remade ballots into the absentee boxes.

Early and absentee voting will commence as normal tomorrow (complete with error detection for your ballot) and I have every confidence that the election will proceed without a hitch.

The City of Champaign Township also failed to hold a lottery and will be conducting one tomorrow at 8:30.  As with the City of Urbana, we will suspend early voting with the guidelines as stated below.