[EL] BI-partisanElection Administration

[dmason12 at gmail.com]

Thanks for the correction on #'s.
At least as to termination of registrars there is 4th Circuit authority prohibiting boards from firing registrars for partisan reasons.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

-----Original Message-----
From: David Levine <davidalanlevine at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2012 16:47:37 
To: David Mason<dmason12 at gmail.com>
Reply-To: david.alan.levine at gmail.com
Cc: Paul Lehto<lehto.paul at gmail.com>; Even, Jeff (ATG)<JeffE at atg.wa.gov>; law-election at department-lists.uci.edu<law-election at department-lists.uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] BI-partisanElection Administration

Mr. Mason,

Thanks for the email. Just a couple of quick corrections:
1) Virginia has 3 member local electoral boards, not five;
2) The Registrars are accountable to the electoral boards. Electoral
Boards can hire and fire Registrars, and evaluate them on a regular
basis. And even though Registrars are non-partisan, they are often
hired based on the "preferences" of the locality's electoral board.

Thanks,

David

On 11/9/12, David Mason <dmason12 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Virginia has a "mixed" system with 5-member local electoral boards
> appointed by judges from the recommendations of local party leaders. 3 from
> the Governor's party and two from the other.  In practice the judges are
> pretty deferential, but their role puts some break on unqualified partisan
> appointments.  Registrars and staff, on the other hand, are civil servants
> and are not really subject to detailed supervision by the part toime
> boards.  This gives partisans a say in policy (to the extent local boards
> have flexibility) and a full view of the process without having partisan
> appointees managing the mechanics.
>
> I suspect there are additional reasons that Virginia has enjoyed relatively
> uncontroversial election processes, but I suspect this mixed system
> contributes.
>
> I'd be interested in comparative research about what sort of governance of
> election administrators leads to good outsomes.
>
> Dave Mason
>
> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 12:16 PM, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Nonpartisan" election administration is tantamount to believing that the
>> truth will emerge from legal processes where ALL of those with standing
>> in
>> courtrooms (i.e. partisans) are eliminated from the election processes
>> purportedly designed to derive the truth in voting processes.  Because it
>> would appear "partisan" nonpartisans will not proffer a vigorous case for
>> one side or the other even though occasionally at least the partisans are
>> correct. Thus, eliminating partisans from election processes does not
>> further the cause of truth in elections unless one can show that
>> partisans
>> are never correct or mostly correct, which would be a false statement.
>>
>> My personal view is that the partisans are a critical part of the process
>> because distrust, and vigorous advocacy, is necessary to a process
>> designed
>> to arrive at the truth.  The best system would be one where all partisans
>> remain represented in the process but that unaligned people are also
>> present.  These unaligned people keep the process from being captured by
>> partisan interests without eliminating the values that partisans provide
>> by
>> (without themselves thinking of it this way) harnessing distrust in
>> service
>> of a trustable outcome.  Susan Lerner, below, is reacting to
>> partisan-controlled models such as "Boss Tweed" which is a straw man
>> argument I doubt anyone is really advocating for here.
>>
>> Just imagine "partisan" litigants being replaced by "nonpartisan"
>> officials who identify all concerns, make all arguments, and decide
>> doubtful cases, and one can see that a system that is simply
>> "nonpartisan"
>> mostly just substitutes lame advocacy from unmotivated people in service
>> of
>> the creation of an artificial confidence in election processes that will
>> just leave all partisans and advocates of any view dissatisfied.
>>
>> Paul Lehto, J.D.
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:52 PM, Susan Lerner
>> <slerner at commoncause.org>wrote:
>>
>>>  Having  worked monitored elections and worked for reform in both Los
>>> Angeles (civil service election administration) and New York City
>>> (patronage driven system), all I can say in response to this position is
>>> you must be kidding. Clearly you have not had to deal with any New York
>>> board of elections, which are arranged as you suggest, parallel
>>> appointments down to the clerical level. Result: gridlock, patronage
>>> no-show jobs, well -meaning relatives of politicians hired for who they
>>> know not what they know how to do, hostility to innovation, great
>>> concern
>>> for how any situation will affect the party and candidates, the few
>>> employees with the correct skill set impeded by their supervisors and
>>> having to do the work of 6, no one who advocates for the voter, and a
>>> general defensive and  “can’t do” attitude. Did I mention board of
>>> elections employees who visit the campaigns of favored party-supported
>>> candidates in hotly contested primaries right before the primary to
>>> inquire
>>> if everything is being handled to the liking of the favored candidate
>>> (see,
>>> Rangel-Espaillat primary)?  Another unfortunate effect which I
>>> experience
>>> firsthand every election is that the press disregards any accusations of
>>> election irregularities as mere party politics and an easy to disregard
>>> continuation of campaign animus, even when there is a real problem (see,
>>> Rangel-Espaillat primary for a recent example). As a result, the public
>>> believes that they shouldn't pay any attention to theses issues either.
>>>  Additionally, when the candidates are the guardians of the reliability
>>> of
>>> an election, they often choose not to pursue or to drop accusations of
>>> illegality, particularly in party primaries, because the long-term
>>> political consequences to the complainant are more important than the
>>> honest functioning of the election system.
>>>
>>>
>>>  I, for one, don’t believe that elections run for the convenience of the
>>> parties is the best we can do. Neither do NY voters, who, recognizing
>>> that
>>> they are considered irrelevant by election authorities, stay home in
>>> droves
>>> (ok, there are other factors as well, but poorly run elections
>>> indifferent
>>> to the voters’ experience don’t help).  When they do venture out, like
>>> this
>>> past Tuesday, the experience is so negative, many don’t bother to vote
>>> again for years.
>>>
>>>
>>>  Shall I continue on about the experience of being thwarted in trying to
>>> get public information released from various boards because the 2
>>> parties
>>> couldn’t agree on the appropriate format in which to release public
>>> information so the information is not provided? Or should we be talking
>>> about the fact that New York City’s board of elections has been without
>>> an
>>> executive director for TWO YEARS because the party bosses can’t agree on
>>> a
>>> candidate and won’t conduct a national search for someone with election
>>> administration experience ?
>>>
>>>
>>>  As to using retired judges, that presumes that the judges are not
>>> captured creatures of the parties.  But here in NY, the parties hand
>>> pick
>>> the trial judges (remember Lopez-Torres?), so you could end up with a
>>> panel
>>> as beholden to the party bosses as the directly appointed boards of
>>> elections.
>>>
>>>
>>>  Maybe it works differently in some other jurisdictions, but I am
>>> writing you from the jurisdiction where the ghost of Boss Tweed rules
>>> elections.  Give me an arrogant civil servant any day.  They at least
>>> can
>>> be shamed because their professional reputation will suffer if an
>>> election
>>> is run badly.
>>>
>>>
>>>  That’s enough ranting for now,
>>>
>>> Susan Lerner
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  ------------------------------
>>>  Susan Lerner
>>> Executive Director, Common Cause/NY
>>> 74 Trinity Place, Suite 901
>>> New York, NY 10006
>>> t:  212-691-6421
>>> m:917-670-5670
>>>   ------------------------------
>>> *From:* Paul Lehto [lehto.paul at gmail.com]
>>> *Sent:* Thursday, November 08, 2012 12:12 PM
>>> *To:* Roy Schotland
>>> *Cc:* larrylevine at earthlink.net; Even, Jeff (ATG); Susan Lerner;
>>> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] BI-partisanElection Administration
>>>
>>>  In the super-charged partisan environment, partisans tend very much to
>>> see anything that appears not to be in their interest to be an example
>>> of
>>> "liberal bias" or "right wing bias" and won't be satisfied until public
>>> policy is approximately equal to the positions in the ideological Pravda
>>> they prefer to read.
>>>
>>> Having election officials be "nonpartisan" or "centrist" hardly solves
>>> this "problem" of the distance between the views of partisans and the
>>> action or policy in question.  In fact, at times it will make this
>>> problem
>>> worse because there's nothing stopping an ideologically-inclined
>>> election
>>> official from hiding in nonpartisan garb and using the nonpartisan job
>>> description as cover for doing the same things they would do anyway,
>>> only
>>> more effectively because they are officially considered nonpartisan.
>>>
>>> The solution - to the extent one can exist - is in transparency and
>>> having multiple parties who don't necessarily trust each other watching
>>> each other like hawks.  Thus, counting votes over the supervision of
>>> such
>>> opposing parties is a form of genius because it converts a situation in
>>> which distrust prevails into a process-output that can be trusted.  This
>>> is
>>> why bank tellers counting cash in front of wary customers alert to catch
>>> errors is one of the most accurate methods for counting cash, even
>>> though
>>> individually each participant is a fallible human with divergent motives
>>> in
>>> the transaction at hand.
>>>
>>> Such arrangements of humans designed to check each other are still how
>>> the accuracy of counting machines are ultimately assessed, and is why
>>> this
>>> general format has been selected by most legislatures for over a century
>>> as
>>> the final and best recount determinant of election winners.
>>>
>>> Going instead with a single "nonpartisan" election official or even
>>> multiple nonpartisan officials that are structurally inclined to trust
>>> rather than distrust each other because of their claimed nonpartisanship
>>> is
>>> not a solution to election problems when it comes to vote counting at
>>> least
>>> because every voter - whether a ticket splitter or not - is effectively
>>> a
>>> "partisan" with various horses in the race and there's no real value in
>>> pretending they are not.
>>>
>>> Paul Lehto, J.D.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:07 AM, Roy Schotland <
>>> schotlan at law.georgetown.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>>  “Nonpartisan” election administration is most likely utopian
>>>> dreaming.  But back in 2001, Secys of State listed as one of the top
>>>> priorities for improving elections, having at least BI-partisan
>>>> officials
>>>> up and down the organization chart.  Only a minority of States had
>>>> anything
>>>> as fair as that, I expect that’s still true….  I’m always hawkish for
>>>> third
>>>> parties and independents, but I’d rather have bi-partisan election
>>>> administration than one-party control.****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> Roy A. Schotland****
>>>>
>>>> Professor Emeritus****
>>>>
>>>> Georgetown Law Center****
>>>>
>>>> 600 New Jersey Ave. N.W.****
>>>>
>>>> Washington, D.C. 20001****
>>>>
>>>> 202/662-9098****
>>>>
>>>>         fax: -9680****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:
>>>> law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] *On Behalf Of *Larry
>>>> Levine
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 8:07 PM
>>>> *To:* 'Even, Jeff (ATG)'; 'Susan Lerner';
>>>> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> I agree completely. Now, how do we make that happen in states where the
>>>> culture is different from what you describe? In this super-charged
>>>> partisan
>>>> environment, where some people think losing an election is equal to the
>>>> end
>>>> of the world, we see a parade of bad actors acting badly. They are no
>>>> means
>>>> a majority. But what they do is partially to blame for the public
>>>> disenchantment with the political process. If they cared about that
>>>> they
>>>> wouldn’t act badly in the first place. ****
>>>>
>>>> Larry****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Even, Jeff (ATG) [mailto:JeffE at ATG.WA.GOV <JeffE at ATG.WA.GOV>]
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:40 PM
>>>> *To:* larrylevine at earthlink.net; Susan Lerner;
>>>> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* RE: [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> Yes.  But a more serious answer to the question lies in instilling the
>>>> right culture.  My observation on that score is that leadership can do
>>>> a
>>>> lot.  If it’s clear that staff is rewarded for playing straight, and if
>>>> the
>>>> leaders in the organization are themselves rigorous about treating all
>>>> sides evenly, that culture can permeate the office.  Individuals will,
>>>> of
>>>> course, have their own opinions, but I witness a certain professional
>>>> pride
>>>> in our elections staff in turning that off during working hours.  I’ve
>>>> advised two Secretaries of State over the past 20 years, and while
>>>> individual employees come and go both have been successful in
>>>> instilling
>>>> and maintaining that culture.  ****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Larry Levine
>>>> [mailto:larrylevine at earthlink.net<larrylevine at earthlink.net>]
>>>>
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:34 PM
>>>> *To:* Even, Jeff (ATG); 'Susan Lerner';
>>>> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* RE: [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> Most of them are exactly that. It’s the ones who step out of line that
>>>> draw the attention.****
>>>>
>>>> Larry****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Even, Jeff (ATG) [mailto:JeffE at ATG.WA.GOV <JeffE at ATG.WA.GOV>]
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:28 PM
>>>> *To:* larrylevine at earthlink.net; Susan Lerner;
>>>> law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* RE: [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> They’re not bureaucrats.  They’re hard-working public servants.  But I
>>>> digress.****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [
>>>> mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>]
>>>> *On Behalf Of *Larry Levine
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:19 PM
>>>> *To:* 'Susan Lerner'; law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> How can you have a non-partisan election staff. I would guess many if
>>>> not all of them have strong partisan leanings. Just because they are
>>>> bureaucrats doesn’t make them non-partisan. ****
>>>>
>>>> Larry****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> *From:* law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [
>>>> mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu<law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu>]
>>>> *On Behalf Of *Susan Lerner
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, November 07, 2012 4:10 PM
>>>> *To:* law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> *Subject:* [EL] North Carolina Election Administration****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> It is my understanding that North carolina has a politically appointed
>>>> Board of Elections but professional non-partisan election staff.  This
>>>> contrasts mightily with the situation here in NY.  Is anyone aware of
>>>> any
>>>> articles that confirm my understanding or that discuss similar
>>>> arrangements
>>>> in other states (i.e., political Board, professional non0political
>>>> administration/management)? ****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,****
>>>>
>>>> Susan****
>>>>
>>>> ** **
>>>>   ------------------------------
>>>>
>>>> Susan Lerner ****
>>>>
>>>> Executive Director, Common Cause/NY****
>>>>
>>>> 74 Trinity Place, Suite 901****
>>>>
>>>> New York, NY 10006****
>>>>
>>>> t:  212-691-6421****
>>>>
>>>> m:917-670-5670****
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Law-election mailing list
>>>> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
>>>> http://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
>>> P.O. Box 1
>>> Ishpeming, MI  49849
>>> lehto.paul at gmail.com
>>> 906-204-4965 (cell)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
>> P.O. Box 1
>> Ishpeming, MI  49849
>> lehto.paul at gmail.com
>> 906-204-4965 (cell)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
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