With a razor thin margin in the Republican Governor’s race I’m already looking at a potential election contest in light of our new election equipment and new election law.

Currently in Illinois, by my count, there are 4 different voting systems in use, plus a hybrid system that makes 5.  The M-100 system used in Champaign County is the only completely optical scan system.   The Sequoia system in Cook County and the AccuVote systems in counties like DuPage and McHenry use paper ballots for most voters, but for voters using early voting centers and for those who need accommodations, they use a touch screen DRE system where votes are directly cast into  a computer.  Kane and Peoria counties use touch screens for every vote cast.

Where this gets interesting is with judge’s initials which are a mandatory provision of the election code for paper ballots but which are obviously not possible with DRE machines.  What that means is that if you cast a vote on paper in the state of Illinois, your ballot being counted is based in large part on whether the judge remembers to initial the ballot.  In almost every instance, the judges do their job correctly.  But there is little doubt that somewhere in the state there will be some unitialed ballots.  These are a legendary part of election contests.

If you voted in Kane County you have no worry though.  No initialing means that when you cast your vote you know it counted.

This situation of different voting systems with different error possibilities existed in the past when the notorious lever machines were being used at the same time as hand counted paper ballots and punch card ballots.  The main difference today is Bush v. Gore.

That famous decision had a big impact on the Minnesota Senate race and could also have a big impact in Illinois.   Here is one important sentence from the opinion.

Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another.

I haven’t had a chance to review the Minnesota case to see how these issues of different voting systems were applied there, but you can bet that in a full blown election contest this question is going to be raised.

An additional angle on this might be found in a case that came out of Champaign County.  In Reynolds v. McGinty, the Appellate Court ruled that the page numbering provisions of the election code were  mandatory, but that the finding of the electoral board that no fraud was perpetrated meant that substantial compliance had been met.  The decision was a little odd to me at the time, because it suggested that the Electoral Board had done more fact finding than in fact we had.  Here is a critical point in the opinion.

However, given the limited number of pages involved, the fact that the two pages at issue are easily identified by the name of the individuals who circulated them, and the lack of any claim of possible voter confusion, tampering, or fraud by the plaintiff lead to the conclusion that the evidence before the Board was sufficient to sustain its finding that the defendant substantially complied with the requirements of the statute.

This opinion may have raised the bar for  objectors and,  in this case, election contestors.  What the Reynolds case says is that while a provision of the election code is crafted to prevent fraud and is thus mandatory, at the same time, in the absence of any demonstration of fraud, the provision becomes a mere technicality.

The number of uninitialed ballots is likely be under a hundred, and perhaps irrelevant.  But if it does become relevant, we could see a whole new way of looking at the issue.

A number of people have asked about the costs of doing a discovery recount.  The answer for Champaign County, as well as any other county, is well…it depends.

A petitioner for a discovery recount can ask to examine up to 29 precincts in Champaign County at a cost of $290.  In a Republican contest, that would allow them to examine up to 7,602 ballots cast for Governor.  If the only thing they do is look at each ballot cast, we’d about break even.

But they’re entitled to do much more.  If they want us to test each vote tabulator, add about $300.  If they want us to run each of those ballots through the machines again, add about $500.  If they want to just look at the applications for those 7,602 voters, add another $300.  Then looking at other miscellaneous items, maybe another $100.

So my guess it costs anywhere from $300 (break even for our county) to $1500 ($1200 for our county).  That is based on a single staff person assisting me and me working for “free”.  If you actually counted my salary in there, those costs would about triple.   Under that scenario, Champaign County’s costs would be anywhere from $600 to $4200.

Champaign County had about 2% of the vote in this primary election.  Extrapolating that over the entire state gives a VERY rough estimate of the statewide costs.

Important note!  This is just discovery, not the costs for an election contest.  I don’t even want to go there yet.

With the Illinois primary election now over (more or less) I will have a little more time to catch up with the various attempts out there to radically change our voter registration system.  A recent one is from Demos. It continues to put forth misinformation about various registration systems and suggests that they are the same as the radical proposals put forth by groups such as the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration.

For example, the Demos project has this paragraph.

In the U.S., some states are beginning to experiment with automatic voter registration systems. Delaware is one state in the forefront of reform. As of 2009, data on individuals served by the state Department of Motor Vehicles are transmitted electronically to county election officials for voter registration and updating of voter records.

A casual reader, unfamiliar with the facts, might think that Delaware automatically registers people to vote.  They don’t.  Every voter in Delaware has the responsibility to affirmatively inform the voter registration agency that they want to be registered.  Yes, in some instances when they do that, it is automated, but it is no way automatic.

The Demos report also contains this nugget.

Forty of the 41 states interviewed reported that citizenship status was a required field in their database for at least some of their public assistance programs.

The phrasing of this is remarkable.  What it clearly says is that some number of these states have databases for public assistance programs that do not have a record of citizenship, and Demos is suggesting that those people be “automatically” registered to vote.

Just once, from Pew, or the Committee to Modernize, or any of the other groups asking for reform I’d like them to say.  “We will never allow a database to be used for automatic registration if that database does not track citizenship.”  They never have to my knowledge.  If they have, I’d appreciate the citation.  Instead, we get assurances that somehow it will all be worked out.  Just trust them.

I would support more automation in the registration process as I’ve written about before.  But an automatic process will be more costly, more prone to errors, and likely add millions of noncitizens to the voter registration rolls.

In Champaign County we’ve had 7 discovery recounts in the four years (9 elections) that we’ve had optical scan ballots.  Not a single vote has changed as a result.  Our examination of the November 2006 ballots shows that out of 270,000 votes cast for statewide constitutional officers, no more than 13 votes went uncounted because of an incorrect mark.

As remarkable as that is, I think that number will continue to drop.  As I participated in the examination of ballots for write in votes yesterday, I saw just a single ballot out of about 1000 with X’s instead of filled in ovals and in that instance I know the vote for Governor counted because there were no undervotes for Governor in that precinct.

I can’t speak to what happens in other counties regarding irregular markings.  Our fill in the oval propaganda is ubiquitous in the polling place, appearing on signs in the general area, on the ballot itself, on the ballot privacy cover, on the sign in the polling booth, and even on the pen we provide voters.

If voters in the rest of the state are as thorough in their ballot markings as in Champaign County, citizens can be confident of the results they will see when the final canvasses come in later this month.

We received a 47 absentees in the mail today.  3 were postmarked after the deadline so won’t be counted.  Of the others we have 23 Democratic and 21 Republican ballots in.  One of the Democratic ballots is a Federal only ballot so it won’t affect the Governor’s race.

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the chances of affirmatively requested absentees being returned is much higher than the automatic absentees.  That’s bearing out here as 19 out of the 21 Republican ballots were from voters who made a request specifically for this election.  Two were from military people.

Two additions to my post yesterday.  First, we may receive even fewer late overseas ballots because we were able to get them out a little earlier than in some previous years.  Second, I believe it’s five of those outstanding absentee voters actually showed up and voted on election day.

I’ve talked with a few people about how many absentees will be returned in time to be counted in the February 16 canvass of votes.  I looked at the 2008 primary for some basis.  In the 2008 primary we had 86 absentee ballots that were counted after election day.  That was out of 209 absentees that were outstanding.

But further breaking that down demonstrates how important it is to know what types of absentees are outstanding.  Absentee ballots automatically sent to the military and overseas voters were returned at a 59% rate that election and just 23% of those outstanding on the day of the election ended up showing up in time to be counted.

Ballots that were affirmatively requested by voters were returned at an overall rate of 91% and 60% of those outstanding on election day were returned in time to be counted.

Dividing the absentees that way and applying those rates of return, we can anticipate about 47 absentee ballots being returned and counted on the 16th.  I have no idea about the number of provisional ballots.

With the Republican’s Governor’s race hanging by a few hundred votes, and other races that are close, many people are asking about when to expect the final results in Champaign County and how they could change.

We will begin our final canvass process here at the Brookens Center on February 16, 2010 at 10:00 am.  It will begin by having judges validate absentee ballots and then feeding those ballots and the validated provisional ballots into tabulators.  After all the absentee ballots have been tabulated, we will add those results into the election day results and release them.

Currently in Champaign County there are 139 Republican absentee ballots and 337 Democratic ballots  that have been mailed but not returned.  There are 14 Republican provisional ballots and 9 Democratic provisional ballots.  How many of the provisional ballots will be counted is yet to be decided.  These numbers might be a little misleading because they include all automatically sent ballots to military and overseas voters, some of whom may have had no intention to vote.

The count of outstanding ballots that have been sent to voters who affirmatively requested a ballot for this election is 35 Democratic and 40 Republican.  I would estimate that the return rate on those ballots will be high.

We will be picking up ballots at the post office on Thursday of this week, Monday of next week, and Tuesday the day of the canvass.  I will release the count of ballots received by our office on the Thursday and Monday to give people an idea of how many of those ballots have been returned.

Please let us know any thoughts you have on how election day went for you.  Also, any comments about the preprinted voter applications and undervote would be appreciated as well.

I’ve posted twice about the new eVoter website which is getting substantial play in Illinois news and is looking to make a bigger splash across the country.  Here’s an article in the Springfield Journal Register. While I’ve had some substantial criticisms, I have to give a lot of credit to their responsiveness to the concerns we have pointed out.

I remain concerned about this venture, if for no other reason than its sheer size and intricacy.  On top of the technical issues that will have to be continually overcome, there is the issue of just where this leads us in the future.

I met with one of the principals of the company today.  I’ve no doubt of the integrity of eVoter.  They’re looking to establish themselves in a bipartisan way, and any hint of impropriety will not serve their business model.

Additionally, the company is poised to provide some tools for voters in some counties that don’t have access to some of the features of our website.  So overall, eVoter itself is a positive step forward for the voting public.

So I’ll downgrade my previous “peril” rating and just advise caution, which is pretty much the best rating possible for anything you read on line, and probably more positive than the rating my blog deserves. 

Update:  I’ve posted more about eVoter has responded to these issues here.

I’ve been a little busy to give my latest reviews of eVoter.  So my apologies for anyone who’s had a poor experience.  My advice remains the same as it did before.  Use eVoter at your own peril.

Here are some points worth noting.  Some are glaring errors.  Others are merely stylistic.  All can be avoided by getting a true specimen from your official election authority.

On the Democratic Party specimen ballot, eVoter shows Mark Doyle running for Treasurer when he actually has withdrawn as a candidate.

On the Republican Party specimen, nothing is shown that indicates that there is a write in candidate for the 52nd State Senate District.

None of the referenda show up on the specimens

Dennis Cook shows up twice as a candidate for Lieutenant Governor.

A stylistic point that I don’t care for is  the listing of candidates in first name order, instead of the actual order on the ballot, except when someone pays eVoter, in which case the candidate gets the first spot on the ballot.