[EL] Fwd: ELB News and Commentary 6/17/20

Thu Jun 18 12:32:27 PDT 2020

States do prepare ballots for those who are only eligible to vote for
federal races, per NVRA requirements. There are also circumstances where a
voter may be eligible to vote solely for President and Vice President but I
believe this would most likely be for absentee voting. See 52 U.S.C. §
10502.

Every election has stories about how poll workers are unable to get the
electronic pollbooks operating properly by the time polls open. This is a
serious line causer. I think having back up paper pollbooks is sound
policy, even if those voters would still be required to vote a provisional
ballot.

J Justin Riemer
772-559-1567
JJustinRiemer at gmail.com

On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 12:36 PM Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
wrote:

> Thank you, as your question triggered a realization of a mistake in my
> earlier message: vote centers *cannot* give voters provisional ballots if
> the e-registration system stalls. To give a provisional ballot, the vote
> center needs to know what precinct the voter lives in (so the provisional
> ballot has the correct election contests on it). Which means the vote
> center *must* look up the voter in the e-registration books.
>
> So provisional ballots would not be a backup. The only option for voting
> when the e-registration books fail would be what I call  a "universal"
> ballot (which I believe is currently only used for some military members),
> which lists only national, state and countywide offices. Voters using that
> ballot would lose the ability to vote for state legislative, county
> supervisorial, and all local offices.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 6:56 AM Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu> wrote:
>
>> Can the fallback be an emergency or provisional ballot, which the state
>> later checks against voter registration records to insure that the voter
>> voted the correct ballot?
>>
>>
>>
>> *From: *Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> on
>> behalf of Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
>> *Date: *Wednesday, June 17, 2020 at 9:16 PM
>> *To: *Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
>> *Subject: *[EL] Fwd: ELB News and Commentary 6/17/20
>>
>>
>>
>> It sounds nice, but I believe "paper copies of e-registration books" are
>> not a real solution in counties (like Los Angeles) that have implemented
>> 'open voting' (where voters are not restricted to only voting in their
>> 'home' precinct). E-Registration books are needed in jurisdictions (such as
>> Los Angeles County) where voters can go to any polling place (voters are
>> not limited to only voting in their assigned precinct). It's simply
>> impossible for every polling place to have a printout listing the County's
>> more than 4 million registered voters (especially if we allow voters to
>> register right up to election day).
>>
>>
>>
>> E-Registration books work, or the whole thing falls apart.  (And my own
>> personal experience in the March primary -- when I was the only voter in
>> the precinct voting more than a week before election day, yet it still took
>> nearly 10 minutes to find me in the registration books, testify to how
>> early the problems with LA's system were evident.)
>>
>>
>>
>> The only fallback I can imagine would be to send away all voters who are
>> not in their "home" precinct (or give them all provisional ballots), and
>> then have paper copies of the registration book for that "home" precinct.
>> But that's a really poor fallback.
>>
>>
>>
>> - Doug
>>
>>
>> Douglas Johnson
>> National Demographics Corporation
>> djohnson at NDCresearch.com
>> phone 310-200-2058
>> fax 818-254-1221
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> So It May Be Those ePollBooks (at Least Partially) to Blame for Long
>> Lines in Los Angeles and Parts of Georgia (and Why We Need Paper Backups of
>> Registration Records, as Recommended in “Fair Elections During a Crisis”
>> Report) <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112333>
>>
>> Posted on June 17, 2020 7:56 am <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=112333>
>>  by *Rick Hasen* <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3>
>>
>> Kim Zetter
>> <https://news.yahoo.com/la-county-report-blames-voter-083006015.html>:
>>
>> *The hourslong wait times that snarled the March 3 primary in Los Angeles
>> County stemmed from malfunctions in the electronic tablets used to check in
>> voters at the polls, according to an unpublicized county report that adds
>> to questions about the nation’s readiness for November.*
>>
>> *The report concludes that these devices — known as electronic poll books
>> — and not the county’s new $300 million voting machines were the source of
>> those delays. Although the voting machines also had problems, the report
>> faults inadequate planning, testing and programming of the poll books that
>> workers used to check in voters and verify that they’re registered —
>> technology that has also been implicated in this month’s meltdown at the
>> polls in Georgia’s primary
>> <https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/10/jon-ossoff-georgia-election-chaos-310429>.*
>>
>> *Electronic poll books store a copy of the county’s voter registration
>> list and automatically update that list as each voter checks in. Because
>> Los Angeles County did not have backup paper copies of the voter list, poll
>> workers were not able to check in voters when the devices failed, leading
>> to long lines.*
>>
>> *The findings about the March primary, which Los Angeles County
>> quietly posted to its website recently
>> <https://lavote.net/docs/rrcc/board-correspondence/VSAP-Board-Report.pdf?v=2>,
>> have not previously been reported.*
>>
>> See Recommendation 12 from our Fair Elections During a Crisis
>> <https://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/2020ElectionReport.pdf>
>>  report:
>>
>> Recommendation 12: Election administrators should create a resilient
>> election infrastructure to deal with the unexpected, including
>> complications related to COVID-19. Resiliency measures include having
>> enough ballots on hand to accommodate high voter turnout, redundant
>> election machinery, *and paper copies of e-pollbook voter registration
>> records.*
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> - Doug
>
> Douglas Johnson
> National Demographics Corporation
> djohnson at NDCresearch.com
> phone 310-200-2058
> fax 818-254-1221
> _______________________________________________
> Law-election mailing list
> Law-election at department-lists.uci.edu
> https://department-lists.uci.edu/mailman/listinfo/law-election
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20200618/d73f06e8/attachment.html>