Inside Elections

About an elections process most favored by Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum, he has said ““The canvass is the least understood, most important part of the elections process.”

Our colleague, Rebekah Gordon, described the canvass back in November in a way we can easily understand. So we’re thanking her today for her work, as we repost most of it here.

Not to be confused with the Official “Canvas” of the Vote, which we’ll leave for our budding artists to figure out. No, this is canvass with two s’s, as in political canvassing.

The canvass is a 28-day period following the election in which vote tallies are completed and ballots and votes are reconciled. A manual tally of at least one percent of the votes cast in each race verifies that votes cast by voters are correctly reflected in results reports.

“Performing the canvass is the way that elections offices can be certain that all the vote counting systems are accurate and, ultimately, that the votes are accurate,” said Elections Manager David Tom.

There are actually eight requirements of the canvass, all nicely outlined on the Web site of Secretary of State Debra Bowen; we’ll break down the highlights for you.

First, election folk have been hard at work trying to assure every ballot and vote is accounted for which wasn’t tallied on Election Night. That includes Vote by Mail ballots received the day before or the day of the election, provisional ballots, and write-in votes. That’s why you’ll be seeing updates of semi-official results, as described earlier in this blog post. Those numbers change as we finish counting ballots.

Then there is reconciliation, which includes comparing the number of ballots – used, unused or spoiled – as well as signatures on the voter roster, with the number of votes cast. And there’s inspection of every single precinct supply, as evidenced by the sea of red supply suitcases that come back to elections headquarters to be unpacked.

Finally, there is the one percent manual tally, which involves using 10-sided dice to randomly select the precincts that will undergo tallying. When a precinct is selected, every single vote cast in that precinct is manually tallied, whether the votes were cast via paper ballot, Vote by Mail ballots, provisional ballots or eSlates. On June 12, the Elections Office announced an increase in the manual tally of Measures N and P.

“Four of the 33 precincts within the Pacifica School District and two of the 17 precincts within the Millbrae School District will undergo the manual tally.” said Slocum.

In 2007, the Secretary of State (SOS) performed a Top-to-Bottom review of all voting systems in California. Subsequently, each of the voting systems previously certified were decertified and then recertified with conditions and requirements to further the security of these systems and to enhance the accuracy of the vote. Unlike all other voting systems, San Mateo County’s Hart InterCivic Direct Recording Electronic voting system, the eSlates, was permitted to be fully used for elections in California.

One such condition for recertification of voting system imposed by the SOS for all counties was the increase in the manual tally sample sizes for close races where the margin of victory is less than 1%. That increase sampling is 10% of all precincts of that contest. Both Measures N and P fit that threshold based on the last unofficial results released by this office on June 10, 2008.

As of today, the tally has been completed, but we’re still awaiting completion of the final step.

The final step then, is to certify election results, turning them from “semi-official” into “official.” One results are certified, results are accepted by various governing bodies – like your local city council, school district governing board and the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. All this means the canvass could take a while. The Elections Office is required to get it done in 28 days, which means July 1, but we’re aiming for completion by the end of the month.

There’s more pictures of this process available on our Elections Journey Gallery. Check it out by visiting http://www.shapethefuture.org/elections/galleries/elections_journey.asp.