[EL] Counting By-Mail ballots is hard

Mon Mar 23 13:57:00 PDT 2020

Especially if it changes the election-night leader. It’s one of the many, many problems with National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (though I’d argue it doesn’t crack the top-20, and a less-conspiracy-theory-prone electorate would erase the problem, but I don’t see that developing any time soon). Imagine if Donald Trump had “won” the popular vote on election night by 2 million votes (i.e., he received 2.2 million more popular votes than he actually did – maybe that Access Hollywood tape doesn’t happen and therefore doesn’t depress his support?) and the votes counted after that were pretty much as they actually happened. Anybody want to guess what’s going to happen in late November when Clinton takes the lead and builds it over the next few weeks, mostly on the basis of late-counted ballots in California and New York? Hoo boy.

Sean Parnell

From: Law-election <law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu> On Behalf Of Mark Scarberry
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2020 4:34 PM
To: Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com>
Cc: Election Law Listserv <law-election at uci.edu>
Subject: Re: [EL] Counting By-Mail ballots is hard

The longer it takes to finish the counting, the greater the likelihood that the result that some people will question the result. I think that's a real problem.

Mark

  <https://www.pepperdine.edu/_resources/images/email/pepperdine.png> 

Caruso School of Law

Mark S. Scarberry

Professor of Law
mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu <mailto:mark.scarberry at pepperdine.edu> 

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 11:14 AM Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com <mailto:djohnson at ndcresearch.com> > wrote:

Thank you for that update - that’s great to hear. Sounds like the problem is simply poor communication between the Secretary of State and the County, which is problematic but much easier to fix than ballot counting problems!

- Doug

On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 10:53 AM Pedro Hernandez <pedro at fairvote.org <mailto:pedro at fairvote.org> > wrote:

For clarification:

I've been following SF's canvass pretty closely (as I am a voter in the City and County). San Francisco's last ballot count was on March 13th (see prelim report 13) <https://sfelections.sfgov.org/march-3-2020-election-results-detailed-reports> . On March March 12th there were less than 500 <https://sfelections.sfgov.org/article/preliminary-election-results-report-12-and-ballot-processing-update-san-francisco-department>  ballots remaining to be counted, and nearly all remaining ballots were counted on the 13th <https://sfelections.sfgov.org/article/preliminary-election-results-report-13-and-ballot-processing-update-san-francisco-department> . The SF DOE stated that it received approximately 34,000 provisional ballots <https://sfelections.sfgov.org/article/preliminary-election-results-report-12-and-ballot-processing-update-san-francisco-department> . I suspect any remaining ballots will be counted when workers can get back to work. 

On March 12th, the County began the process of selecting it's ballots for the 1% manual tally. No update yet, but given the shelter in place notice, it's not clear when the SF will complete it's canvass. Although counties have until the 30th day after the election to complete their canvass. 

This is not to take away from concerns over VBM implementation. With any large scale move to VBM, best practices should be adopted. 

Pedro

Pedro Hernandez

Pronouns: He/Him/His

Senior Policy Coordinator, Voting Rights & Ranked Choice Voting

http://fairvote.org

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 9:04 PM Douglas Johnson <djohnson at ndcresearch.com <mailto:djohnson at ndcresearch.com> > wrote:

To reinforce the Detroit and other stories' ideas that managing large-scale by-mail ballots is hard:

Today is March 19th, sixteen days after California's primary election. Yet San Francisco has yet to count over 25% of the ballots cast in the county. While the time required to process provisional ballots is understandable, 88,000 of the remaining 110,000 ballots left to count in San Francisco are by-mail ballots. Granted, San Francisco is using new voting equipment this election -- and I suspect the learning curve with the new equipment is why the counting delays there are more there than in other California counties (disclaimer: I am guessing about that as I have no inside knowledge into SF's operations) -- but what is proposed in this debate is new voting equipment on a massive, almost national, scale.

California is a state that has had no-excuse by-mail voting for many, many years, and the state has experience processing 25%, 33% and even 50% of all ballots cast coming in by mail. The state's election officials are among the most-experienced and most-expert with by-mail voting in the country. Yet this undertaking remains a difficult logistical challenge.

I support the massive expansion of by-mail voting for this November election. But we should not under-estimate how hard that will be to implement -- and how long it will take to count those votes.

- Doug

Douglas Johnson

Rose Institute of State and Local Government at Claremont McKenna College

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 8:28 PM Rick Hasen <rhasen at law.uci.edu <mailto:rhasen at law.uci.edu> > wrote:

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110125> “Voting by Mail Is the Hot New Idea. Is There Time to Make It Work?”

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110125> March 19, 2020 8:18 pm by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

 <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/us/politics/voting-by-mail-coronavirus.html> NYT reports.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D110125&title=%E2%80%9CVoting%20by%20Mail%20Is%20the%20Hot%20New%20Idea.%20Is%20There%20Time%20to%20Make%20It%20Work%3F%E2%80%9D> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53> absentee ballots,  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> election administration

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110119> Must-read from Nate Persily and Charles Stewart: “Ten Recommendations to Ensure a Healthy and Trustworthy 2020 Election”

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110119> March 19, 2020 2:14 pm by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

 <https://www.lawfareblog.com/ten-recommendations-ensure-healthy-and-trustworthy-2020-election> Over at Lawfare:

This past week has provided ample evidence that states are in need of reliable plans to carry out elections without interruption in the face of the unfolding medical crisis. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine caused alarm when he  <https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/03/ohio-polls-remain-closed-following-overnight-ruling-from-ohio-supreme-court.html> decided to postpone the presidential primary the day before it was scheduled to occur. DeWine’s action may have been justified on public health grounds, but it illustrated the confusion that can arise when states are caught between opening polling places and endangering the health of citizens. Meanwhile, the governor of Arizona and the director of elections for Maricopa County  <https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2020/03/13/court-stops-county-recorder-from-sending-ballots-to-all-voters-for-tuesday-election/> fought over whether the county could send out mail-in ballots even to voters who have not requested them. Their battle illustrates that without a definitive statewide plan, state and local election officials can be locked in litigation when they should be cooperating to face serious challenges to the continuity of elections.

Despite the challenge presented by COVID-19, the 2020 elections must go forward. The elections to be held on Nov. 3 are not optional. They cannot be postponed, even if dangers to public health remain as great as they are likely to get over the next few weeks. The nation must act now to ensure that there will be no doubt, regardless of the spread of infection, that the elections will be conducted on schedule and that they will be free and fair.

Doing so requires an effort in election resilience that is unprecedented in American history. However, there are some clear paths toward achieving the desired result. We offer 10 steps in that direction.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D110119&title=Must-read%20from%20Nate%20Persily%20and%20Charles%20Stewart%3A%20%E2%80%9CTen%20Recommendations%20to%20Ensure%20a%20Healthy%20and%20Trustworthy%202020%20Election%E2%80%9D> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1> Uncategorized

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110117> “Coronavirus threatens the November election, can vote by mail save it?”

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110117> March 19, 2020 12:20 pm by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

 <https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-03-19/calls-mount-making-november-mail-in-ballot> Evan Halper for the LAT.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D110117&title=%E2%80%9CCoronavirus%20threatens%20the%20November%20election%2C%20can%20vote%20by%20mail%20save%20it%3F%E2%80%9D> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=1> Uncategorized

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110105> National Vote at Home Issues Its Report on Scaling Up Absentee Balloting for November in Light of COVID-19

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110105> March 19, 2020 7:09 am by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

You can read the report  <https://www.voteathome.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/VAHScale_StrategyPlan.pdf> here.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D110105&title=National%20Vote%20at%20Home%20Issues%20Its%20Report%20on%20Scaling%20Up%20Absentee%20Balloting%20for%20November%20in%20Light%20of%20COVID-19> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> election administration

 <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110101> Steven Rosenfeld Looks Under the Hood at Detroit’s Absentee Ballot Processing, and It is Not Pretty

Posted on  <https://electionlawblog.org/?p=110101> March 19, 2020 7:04 am by  <https://electionlawblog.org/?author=3> Rick Hasen

For those like me who want and expect expanded absentee balloting in November,  <https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/why-nationwide-voting-by-mail-isnt-a-silver-bullet-in-a-pandemic/> a reminder that there’s a lot of work to do.

 <https://www.addtoany.com/share#url=https%3A%2F%2Felectionlawblog.org%2F%3Fp%3D110101&title=Steven%20Rosenfeld%20Looks%20Under%20the%20Hood%20at%20Detroit%E2%80%99s%20Absentee%20Ballot%20Processing%2C%20and%20It%20is%20Not%20Pretty> 

Posted in  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=53> absentee ballots,  <https://electionlawblog.org/?cat=18> election administration

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UC Irvine School of Law

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- Doug

Douglas Johnson
National Demographics Corporation
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- Doug

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National Demographics Corporation
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phone 310-200-2058
fax 818-254-1221

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