Mastodawn

Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

It’s democratic primary #election day in #virginia. Just 2 races on the ballot. Picking the Democratic Party candidate for lieutenant governor and attorney general. It’s sleepy. We do the full thing l: all the same procedures and all the full security, but for a fraction of the voters. Polls opened at 6am. At 7:45 we checked in our 7th voter. We finally have had more voters than election officers. I’ll do a thread here during the day about #elections and #electionsecurity and all the humdrum ordinary things of helping people vote.
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

My middle son is 19 and is an election officer this year for the first time. So I’m minting new officers too. 😀

He and I are texting back and forth. Once he revealed that he was a computer science major, he was instantly crowned “the tech guy” for the rest of the day.

So far the problems he has solved as “the tech guy” have been the iPad wasn’t charging because the switch on the power strip was off. And helping them cope with some devices charging on USB-C chargers and some charging on USB-A chargers.

Election officers, like voters, are just people. They come in all shapes, sizes, colours, ages, and persuasions. Some of us are technical, but most aren’t.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

The county sent out a text message to all Chiefs. There’s a new procedure for provisional ballots. We have a durable, zippered envelope that has a lock and tamper seal. (Security theatre if you ask me).

The county reminded us to be sure to pass the lock and the seal through the brass grommet on the bag.

5 minutes later they had to send another text message explaining what a “grommet” is. Like I said: officers are people and this is unfamiliar to some. I imagine a dozen chiefs calling the election office asking “what in the Sam Hell’s a ‘grommet’?”

Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Primaries are SLOW. It’s great practice for the November general election. Inexperienced officers can take their time and ask all the questions.

But all work and no play makes for a boring election day. We are stationed in a high school gymnasium. A very common polling setup. Lots of balls are wedged into funny places. See photos.

There’s a ledge behind the basketball hoops. Balls have gotten trapped up there (see the photo). We made a rube Goldberg contraption out of some of our supplies and managed to pull a couple balls down. Now we can shoot a few hoops on the back half when there are no #voters. I wanted to get photos of how we got them down, but I also didn’t want photographic evidence of how we got them down. So I’ll just leave it to your imagination. We probably spent 45 minutes improvising mechanisms. It involved broom handles, rope, rolls of tape, chairs, etc. Not one voter interrupted our work. 😆

I’m trying to find the reference to it in the Code of Virginia, but I’m pretty sure if a voter makes a shot from the 3-point line, they get a bonus ballot.
#election
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Remember my remark about “security theatre”? Let me explain a bit. I will start with the Law.

Section 24 of the Code of Virginia covers elections. We get a printed copy to reference at the polls. Just this one section of the law is 600 printed pages.

If you look at the opening page, you can see how many bits of the law were effected last year by the general assembly (Virginia’s legislature). It’s a lot! They keep tinkering with things. I didn’t count, but that list of changed sections of election law is easily 100 or more.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling

To show how this complicates our lives as election officers, look at how the changes in the law affect “same day registration.” If you have never voted in Virginia, and you are entitled to vote, you can walk into the right precinct, register to vote, and cast a ballot right then. (It’s a provisional ballot until your eligibility is verified by the Board of Elections).

However, if you were registered to vote before, and you want to vote in your new precinct, it’s complicated. Depending on where you moved from, where you moved to, and the DATE of your move, different rules apply! Here’s a handy flow chart to help.

3 different dates show up here:
On or before Nov 8, 2022
on or before Nov 5, 2024, and
on or after Nov 6, 2024:

As a computer scientist, it amuses me to see lawyers ALSO deal with boundary conditions and inequalities.
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Tons of things have changed in the last few years. Lots of new numbered, recorded, tamper-evident seals have been added. Some make a lot of sense. Electronic poll books contain a crap ton of personal information. They include names, addresses, and dates of birth of voters. We want to keep those under lock and key except when in use.

This provisional bag is #securitytheatre though. What are provisional ballots?

When we have uncertainty about your eligibility, we give you a ballot anyways, but we put it in a special sealed envelope with all your details on it. It’s called a provisional ballot and the board of elections receives these and systematically verifies each one. All votes that are eligible are counted. (In the 2024 election I think there were like 16000 of them and 90-something percent were deemed eligible and were counted)

Each is in its own, individually sealed envelope. In the past, we just collected these off to the side until the end of the day. Then we counted them, gathered them up, and turned them in. Now they want this mini ballot box contraption with a lock and seal.

In my typical precinct we have, say, 3200 eligible voters, and we will see 1000 on a busy November Tuesday. Of those maybe 20 are provisional. There just isn’t opportunity for meaningful fraud here. And there is definitely no evidence of meaningful fraud. But now we have this additional, silly procedure with chain-of-custody and a recording process. It prevents nothing because nothing has ever happened. And we have compensating controls everywhere. Every ballot is accounted for.

Security theatre makes people think this is necessary because there’s some threat. There isn’t.
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Oooh. Exciting times in #virginia #primary #elections. The county replaced our defective #securitytheatre bag. You may have seen my remark about people not knowing what a grommet is. Well, I know what one is, but our bag was defective and didn’t have one! Apparently we weren’t the only precinct like this. The county has been sending folks around to affected precincts with replacement bags.

Rest easy, America. This empty bag is sealed with a lock AND a numbered tamper evident seal. This is very secure air.

I’m not gonna stuff it full of fraudulent ballots until the Soros people get here with my check. If they don’t bring me the money, I’m not gonna put all my fake ballots in there.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Another thing about “election officers are people.” Everyone I have worked with takes elections seriously. They all “studiously endeavor” (a phrase from the officer oath) to do the right thing. But sometimes they get a little over eager.

Consider these directional arrows. They give us A LOT. I bet I have 20. Probably 10 in each direction. That makes sense because sometimes a polling place is a distance from the front door and you have to guide people. One of my officers today was trying to use ALL OF THEM. Again, from a desire to do the right thing, she thought we had to put up every sign that we were given. Some signs are required by law, others are just being helpful. If I hadn’t interrupted, she would have paved a yellow brick road with these things.
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

#Primary #elections are a surprise to some voters. They come in, they see a single party on the ballot and they’re like “what the heck is this!?” It’s not an election. It is one political party choosing who will be their candidate in November. Sometimes people don’t want to vote after they see the ballot. You don’t have to vote, but I have to account for Every. Single. Ballot.

If I check you in, hand you a ballot, and then you don’t want to vote, you make my paperwork harder. We’ve already had one of those today (out of only 22 voters). So now, when someone comes to the check in table, we show them the sample ballot before we check them in. “This is what’s on the ballot. It’s a Democratic Party primary. Do you want to vote?”

This is just me helping them and helping myself. I would prefer for them decide not to vote BEFORE I check them in, rather than after.

Virginia primaries are a little different from other states. I’ll talk about that next.
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Virginia does not, at the government level, track what party a voter belongs to (if any). The parties know their members, but the government does not. So we have what are called “open primaries.” Anyone registered voter can vote in any party’s primary. Sometimes both parties have a primary in June, and so we have to sort you at the check-in table and give you the right ballot. You must choose. You can only vote in one.

As I understand it, some states know your party affiliation and only let you vote in a primary if you are affiliated with that party. I like how the Virginia system doesn’t do that.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

I haven’t posted any #election stuff in a while. The lunch rush was 10 voters. Of the various ways to vote, absentee ballots seem to confuse people.

An absentee ballot mailed to you will not be going through the scanner today. It _could_; it’s the same paper exactly. But the only ones that go into the scanner are ones I give you here in the polling place. We have a lot of goofs with absentee ballots and I want to do a few short messages on how absentees go wrong, what happens, and how to avoid problems.

#elections #democraticparty #primary #absentee
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Some people register for an absentee and then change their mind and want to vote in person. This doesn’t play out how they expect. We will not knowingly let you have more than 1 ballot in your possession.

If you were issued an absentee ballot, we know. It comes up when we check you in. There are 3 ways this plays out:

1. You vote the one we sent you and you drop it in the collection box. It will get to the county as if you mailed it and will be counted when absentees are counted.
2. You show up holding the one we mailed you. You give it to us, and we give you a replacement and you vote in the precinct in person. (We mark it “surrendered absentee” and send it in at the end of the day)
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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Situation number 3 is the most frustrating for the voter. You are listed as an absentee voter but you don’t have a ballot with you. You can vote a provisional ballot. We don’t know whether you already mailed it in, or what. So we let you enter your ballot, we write all your details on the outside of the envelope, and it goes to the board of elections for adjudication. It will not go through a scanner today. If the board of elections determines that you’re eligible and your absentee ballot has not been returned by mail, they open the envelope and count your vote. If they have received your mailed-in ballot AND this provisional, I don’t know what they do.

A lot of people want the satisfaction of seeing the ballot they voted go into the scanner. They know it is counted. But if you registered absentee, the only way to vote in person and go through the scanner today is to bring in the ballot we mailed you and surrender it. I have seen voters go home and get their ballot so they could surrender it and vote in person.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

We had a curbside #voter today (any voter may request us to bring the ballot out to their car and they can vote from inside their car). They were registered absentee but they said they never got the ballot. That happens, I’m sure, but our only choice was a provisional ballot for them, since we can’t account for the ballot the county tried to mail them.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Another #primary #election quirk that affects me. Gerry Connolly, representative for the 11th district in Virginia, passed rather suddenly recently. The governor has announced a special election for September 9. Suddenly both parties have to pick their candidate. Democrats are having a “firehouse caucus” next week because like 5 different people are interested in being the candidate in September.

People are asking about where and when to vote and I didn’t know. It’s organised by the party not the county.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

I am very impressed with #FairfaxCounty and their office of #elections. They go to a lot of trouble to make things easy.

I mentioned before how legislators keep tinkering with the laws. Same Day Registration (“SDR” to those of us in the biz) has a bunch of legal requirements. If you are eligible to vote, but you fail to answer required questions, your registration won’t be complete and your vote won’t be counted. We want you to do this right. We want your vote to count.

The form is complex (see below). None of the questions are hard (name, address, have you been convicted of a felony, etc. But they’re scattered around the page and it’s hard to double check.

The county made these opaque plastic overlays. After the voter fills out the form, you can lay this plastic over the form and see all the things they needed to answer and tell whether or not they answered it. It is such a clever and useful helper.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

Not much more to say. We just crossed 100 voters at 5:30 local time. The county is paying about $10-12 per voter to have the 6 of us here. (Not to mention the cost of central office staff)

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

When we close out the ballot scanners, we get 2 USB drives from each. 1 set goes to the county immediately in a car so the county can start getting preliminary results out. The other goes back with everything else.

As you can imagine, they’re super important. Whenever I remove them from the machines I carry them across the room, holding them aloft in front of me, doing the chant from the monks in Monty Pythons Holy Grail.

#voting #election #elections

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 18

A couple more posts and I’ll stop. It’s 22:45 local time. We finished closing at 21:00 I drove home and have finally had a bite to eat and put my feet up. This was by far my worst closing ever. We should be able to do it in 90 minutes. 60 if you’re a team of seasoned pros. 120 minutes is long. Not the longest, but too long.

Some thoughts on closing the #election.

1. #FairfaxCounty election checklists are good. Real good. They are so good that when I got a defective piece of kit and I was following instructions, I assumed it was me. I couldn’t imagine they’d tell me to do something that couldn’t be done.

2. Reading and following written instructions in English is not a universal skill. Some people are not good at it. The checklists and instructions are clear. They have pictures for every step. But I had 2 officers with limited English skills, and following checklists was hard.

3. If you have limited English vocabulary, then you might not have learned words like “grommet” and “bungee cord” and “lanyard”. It makes following instructions hard. I had to really hold some hands. For example, I think one officer really didn’t read much English. When I assigned her the duty of bringing in signs from outside, she went all sorcerer’s apprentice and brought all kinds of signs: candidate campaign signs, our signs, even a sign for a school fundraiser. I think she simply couldn’t read them and didn’t know what they were for. Even as the instructions I handed her had pictures of the signs she is meant to bring in.

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Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 18

My final post about #elections is to BEG you. Please volunteer. Fairfax pays $250 for the day, which isn’t bad. Not all jurisdictions pay. We need people to come learn how to be election officers. It is 2 elections days a year and 2-4 hours of video training once a year.

We need new people! We need younger people! I’m in my 50s. My chief was in his late 70s. My 19-year old son was the youngest officer in his precinct by 40 years. He said “everyone in my precinct was talking about their grandkids. I AM the grand kid.”

We need you. Many hands make light work. You can do this. It’s fun. It’s fascinating. It is #democracy in action! Please consider working your local polls, wherever you are. By and large, the only mandatory qualification to be an election officer (or “election judge”) is often just being a registered voter.

Please help or encourage people you know to help!

Good night!
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@paco say the person filled it out and handed to the official who then applies the magic overlay. If the official sees that the person actually missed a box, does the person get a chance to complete it? I would hope so!

Paco Hope wishes ill for JK Rowling Jun 17

@dashrb Yeah. We are checking in front of them. Unless they decide to run away, we will make sure it’s right before they go. And if they make a mistake, we have lots of blanks.

Mike Loukides Jun 17

@paco Yes, like Connecticut.

Rob Ricci Jun 17

@paco In Utah we have a weird hybrid system in which the state does track party membership, Democrats have open primaries, but Republicans have closed ones. (You are only allowed one ballot per primary, so you still cannot vote in both.)

One consequence of this is over-registration of the Republican party, because some people will register for the party to be able to vote in the primaries for races that are unlikely to be competitive at the general level

@paco
Texas does this, too. It's nice. You let them know at check in which party's primary you want to vote in. I've done both (not the same year) back when the Republicans still had the occasional sane primary candidate.

@paco very secure. that zipper is definitely impenetrable. 😂