I wrote a few weeks ago about the Illinois under vote law and noted that the only other state to require this by statute was New York.  I just received a call today from a Commissioner in one of the New York counties telling me that the New York State Board of Elections has passed an emergency rule rescinding their undervote notification requirement.

That leaves Illinois as the only state with this in their law.  You can see the Notice of Emergency Adoption here, laying out their reasons.   Interestingly, their argument cites the fact that we are the only state with this requirement in the law.

The election cycle for Illinois seems to be neverending.  Next Tuesday is actually the first day to circulate petitions to be on the ballot for the February 2, 2010 Primary Election in anticipation of the November 2, 2010 General Election.  I think this 15 month election cycle is the longest in the country.

We’ve made substantial improvements in the filing process over time to make it easier for candidates and volunteers to correctly file their nomination papers.  In Champaign County we actually create our own forms that I believe are clearer than the state forms.  We also have an extensive filing requirements document that explains some of the more confusing parts of the process and gives some helpful tips.

This circulation period is only for the established political parties which currently are the Green, Democratic, and Republican Parties.  Independent and new political parties will file next June.

This page on our website gives you links to various candidate filing information.  On Tuesday, we will post the forms.

In the November 2000 election millions of people in the country voted without having a choice for president counted.  Some people didn’t vote for president (an intentional undervote),  some did not have their choice counted (an unintentional undervote), and some voted for more than one candidate (an overvote).  Estimates vary on the number of voter choices not counted, but all were in agreement that too many votes went uncounted.  The reasons for this problem included poor equipment, poor administration, poor ballot design, and voter error.  In 2001, researchers at MIT and CalTech coined the term residual vote to describe the sum of the under and over votes in any given race.

Most people consider all overvotes to be unintentional, although I imagine there is an extremely small percentage of the population who casts an overvote as a symbolic gesture.  The percentage of undervotes that are unintentional is certainly up to debate, although everyone wants to eliminate or reduce the chances of unintentional undervotes.

After the 2000 election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act.  That law required states to take steps to reduce voter errors.  Two options were given to the states.  One was to purchase equipment that notifies voters of errors on their ballot prior to the casting of their vote.  The other was to engage in voter education campaigns that provide voters with information about how to vote and how to correct errors in their ballot.  Most voters in America operate under the first option and are using equipment that notifies them when they cast too many votes.  As I noted in an earlier post, only New York has a statutory provision similar to the Illinois provision of notifying voters of undervotes.

Because new election equipment has changed the dynamics of casting a vote, a one size fits all analysis of residual votes just isn’t sound.  In her book, the Democracy Index, Heather Gerken applauds the residual vote rate for its “elegant simplicity”.  This is a simplistic appraisal that I don’t think can be supported in the post punch card era.  Thereafter she states “we’d expect the number of people who don’t vote for a presidential candidate to be roughly constant.”  Our research in Champaign County and my intuition from decades of political activity suggest the opposite.  For example, to learn that the undervote for Governor in 2006 in Champaign County was highest in Penfield makes perfect sense based on the demographics in that precinct.  In examining the ballots it is apparent that the undervotes for the Governor’s race were generally Democrats who voted for their party candidates down the ticket, but
refused to cast a vote for the Democratic Governor who was later to be indicted and impeached.  Under the “roughly constant” standard set out in the Democracy Index, we’d be examining our voter education efforts in Penfield and examining the equipment.
So does the residual vote rate have any value?  I believe it does, but its value is far less than it was in examining a punch card system.

For optical scan systems, the value is minimal.  There is scant evidence that a voter looking at a typical optical scan ballot will have difficulty in determining what races he or she is to vote on.

In fact, relying too much on the residual vote rate may mask real problems or at the very least, give election officials a crutch to avoid positive changes.  For example, in the Better Ballots analysis from the Brennan Center, they make the argument that Douglas County, Illinois’s optical scan ballots are better than Franklin County, Illinois’s optical scan ballots based on the residual vote rates for the Attorney General and Secretary of State races in 2002.  Those rates were 3.6% vs. 3.1% for the Attorney General race and 4.0% vs. 3.0% for the Secretary of State race.  In Champaign County, our residual vote for the Secretary of State race was just 2.6% using punch card.  Would the suggestion then be that punch cards are better than optical scan ballots?  As proud as I am of the work of our office in getting reliable, accurate, and complete counts of punch card ballots, even I wouldn’t suggest that.  Clearly other factors lead to the differences in residual vote rates and the rates themselves are of more interest to political scientists analyzing voting trends than to election administrators analyzing the efficacy of their equipment and ballot design.

Of course, as I noted in another post, we have incorporated many of the Better Ballot recommendations in our ballot design, not because our residual vote numbers were too high, but because our experience and intuition convinced us that the changes were positive.   Similarly, we have incorporated changes in our ballots based on voter suggestions and complaints.  Even with an excellent residual vote rate in the last election of under .5% for President, we have at least one change we are planning to incorporate for the ballots next year.

I am less familiar with touch screen systems.  My impression is that the residual vote rates here also have less value than might be implied in some of the research.  The “roughly constant” standard is just not valid in any jurisdiction.  At the same time, Better Ballots points out common sense changes that intuitively look positive and which probably need to be implemented.  Additionally, if residual vote rates can demonstrate that machines are not properly calibrated, that would be good.

Finally, for jurisdictions that rely on voter education for reducing voter errors, the residual vote rates probably need further examination.  Many of these jurisdictions are using hand counted paper ballots where they can ascertain voter intent, or they have optical scan ballots and actually have mandatory hand counts of ballots that are under or over voted.  Whether residual vote rates are of value to those jurisdictions I’ll leave to people with more experience.

The residual vote rate was a wonderful tool to point out the flaws of outdated election equipment and the need to have ballots that are clear and understandable.  But its purpose has largely been served and using it to analyze the work of election officials is unfair and unsound.

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.