Entries from November 2008
Official certification is expected to take place on Tues., Dec. 2 for the Nov. 4 Presidential General Election. The process, which began the first day after the election, is drawing to a close as staff members put together the final documents necessary for certification.
According to Elections Code 15372, “the elections official shall prepare a certified statement of the results of the election and submit it to the governing body within 28 days of the election or, in the case of school district, community college district, county board of education, or special district elections conducted on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of odd-numbered years, no later than the last Monday before the last Friday of that month.”
The Elections Office cannot certify results for any one jurisdiction before another. Cities may conduct their own elections, but if they opt to have the County conduct the election services, the election is consolidated and treated as one election for everything on the ballot.
Our teams are finishing up the 1% manual tally, but some staff members are working on the other parts of the certification process which includes creating a Statement of the Vote, Resolution and Memo for the Board of Supervisors, and certification letters to each jurisdiction.
The Statement of the Vote, which contains the official detailed results for the contests on the Nov. 4 ballot, includes a certification page signed by the Chief Elections Officer. It is distributed to the Board of Supervisors, County Counsel, Central Committees, and the California Secretary of State.
Copies of the Statement of the Vote are available for a nominal fee to the public. It will also be posted online at www.shapethefuture.org.
Categories: Ballots · Elections Office · Results · Shape the Future · Vote counting · Voting
Tagged: election results, Statement of the Vote, official results, Official Canvass, official vote
Field Techs and Ride Along Coordinators support Election Officers and roam from precinct to precinct to assist with any issues that may arise on Election Day.
To keep track of these issues, the San Mateo County Elections Office utilizes Incident and General Tracking Logs which Field Techs return at the end of their shift. Reviewing these logs allows us to understand what types of issues are common at the polls and help us to prepare for the next election.
The California Secretary of State’s office gets a copy of any issues reported relating to electronic voting equipment. The most common equipment issue from the June 3 Statewide Direct Primary Election was paper jams with the VBOs (Verifiable Ballot Option — the printer to the side of the eSlate that allows voters to verify their ballot choices before submitting their ballot).
We’re still in the process of wading through the issues from the November 4 General Presidential. We only had a total of about 399 reported issues (including non-equipment related issues like the polling place contact wasn’t there to open the building for us or the power went out at the precinct). In June, we had about 210 issues reported. Considering the incredible turnout, this really wasn’t too bad. We had our hopes for the best but expected the worst. Chalk it up to experience — this is the sixth election we’ve held in a year!
Categories: Election Day/Night · Elections Office · Poll workers · Polling place · Testing · Training · Voting · eSlates
Tagged: electronic voting equipment, issue tracking logs, reports, voting issues
We’re halfway through the 1% manual tally, and everything still looks good for completion by close of business on Tuesday.
If you didn’t see our Twitter, the precincts randomly rolled with our 10-sided dice were 1942, 3740, 1504, 2647, 1816, 4648, 4607, 3505, 4409, 5104, 3326, 4010, 3006, 5301, 5611, 3202, 5603, 5001.
These following precincts are undergoing a full manual tally:
1942
3740
1504
2647
1816
4648
4607
This means that every single contest on every single ballot cast in these precincts will be audited during our 1% process.
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Categories: Uncategorized
The 1% Manual Tally portion of the Official Canvass begins Thursday at 8 a.m.
Can’t remember what the 1% is about? Read our previous blog, detailing the extent of the process and how the precincts to be tallied are randomly chosen. Like we wrote before, we bring a little bit of Vegas to San Mateo County!
Check back on Thursday for more about what precincts were drawn and what we’ll be tallying over the next four business days!
Categories: Elections Office · Results · Vote counting
Tagged: manual recount, Manuall Tally, canvass, 1%
Most of the Elections Office staff were in on Saturday, continuing the Canvass to ensure its timely completion. Part of the work was processing provisional ballots, but another part was duplicating ballots.
What the heck does “duplicating ballots” mean?
Well, sometimes the ballots may be damaged or somehow unreadable by our BallotNow scanners. If the BallotNow machine can’t process the voted ballot properly, the ballot is reviewed by our staff to first ensure that the voter’s intent can be determined.
If it can be, then the staff follows several steps to successfully complete the duplication process.
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Categories: Ballots · Elections Office · Results · Vote counting
Tagged: Vote counting, voting results, Official Canvass, canvass, duplicating ballots, official vote, vote results
November 14, 2008 · 1 Comment
Joseph Lorenzo Hall, a distinguished voting technology researcher and computer scientist, has spent the last week analyzing the Election Day trouble tickets of a national voter protection coalition. And while Mr. Hall notes that some of the difficulties in analyzing the tickets comes from the fact that the tickets were recorded by volunteers – not computer scientists – his analysis is still worth reviewing (especially for election administrators who want to improve the process for the next time around).
Mr. Hall writes, “If we can do anything to improve the experience of the average voter facing a machine problem, it should be reduce the amount of time they spend in line.”
He added that voters who had a machine problem and got back-up paper ballots often were not confident that their votes would be counted.
“Another curious feature of the data is the voters’ uniformly negative attitudes toward contingency or back-up plans – voters are often upset and mistrustful,” he said.
Mr. Hall’s analysis is one of the first assessments – if not the first – to look at electronic voting in November’s Presidential General Election. And I am certain more analysis will be forthcoming and that would be welcomed.
Go to Not Quite a Blog 2.0 and read Mr. Hall’s analysis.
Categories: Poll workers · Polling place · Results · Testing · Vote counting · Voting · Web Stuff We Like
Tagged: Joseph Hall, electronic voting, voting technology, voter protection coalition
We may not have reached the record turnout we had hoped for on Nov. 4, but we did have a record number of help at the polls on Election Day!
We had over 2,800 Election Officers (including students) at the polls – 2,876 to be exact! Combined with the number of Field Technicians, Ride Along Coordinators (Field Tech Assistants), and Receiving Station personnel, the total number of election workers actually exceeded 3,000.
That’s a historic number for the San Mateo County Elections Office! Previous election worker numbers usually stayed closer to about 2,000. The greater numbers really helped us to keep the lines tamed throughout Election Day.
A special thank you note to our poll workers will arrive in mailboxes by Thanksgiving!
Categories: Elections Office · Poll workers · Polling place · Uncategorized
Tagged: election officers, Poll Worker Appreciation, Poll workers, student poll workers
This blog is fairly young – just over a year old now. It was one of our first ventures into expanding the County Elections Office’s presence on the web.
Since starting this blog, we’ve tried many more ways to become more “Web 2.0.”
Chief Elections Officer Warren Slocum thinks that since the Millennial Generation spends so much time online using those resources, he has combined the use of several Web 2.0 avenues in hopes of engaging young people in the process of voting. Slocum said, “young people are changing our culture – they are becoming the dominant part of our society.”
The Elections Office My Space page (www.myspace.com/democracylive) was designed to attract student poll workers, impart information, and build community. It was set-up and shared among those student poll workers who signed up to work in the February 2008 Presidential Primary and kept in place through the November Presidential General. As we move into 2009, the page will be updated to become a more general source of information for current and future voters.
Facebook is a another social networking tool being utilized to attract and inform voters, particularly those that are still in high school and college. Used initially to promote student poll workers as well, the Facebook “fan page” for the Elections Office is also handy for alerting voters of opportunities for involvement and impending voter deadlines.
Our YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/democracylive, contains multiple videos containing great tips for voters as well as a video of democracyLIVE! and a how-to video for the eSlates.
During the live Election Night coverage, the Elections Office brought television viewers behind the scenes with “Anatomy of Election ’08.” For viewers that didn’t have PenTV channel 26, the Elections Office posted a live stream on shapethefuture.org.
Our latest venture in 2.0 is Twitter, which we started using in late October. The page, http://twitter.com/smcvote, is also fed through http://www.shapethefuture.org/twitter.asp to provide readers with quick updates on the happenings of the Elections Office.
Categories: Elections Office · Outreach · Web Stuff We Like
Tagged: elections on the web, outreach efforts, san mateo county elections, transparency, web 2.0
As we mentioned earlier, the Official Canvass of the Vote started Wednesday, marking the beginning of the 28-day period required to complete vote tallies and ballots and reconciliation of votes.
“The Canvass is the least understood, most important part of the elections process,” Slocum, our Chief Elections Officer, is apt to declare.
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Categories: Ballots · Election Day/Night · Elections Office · Results · Signature verification · Vote By Mail · Vote counting · Voting · legislation
Tagged: election results, Vote counting, provisional ballots, official results, Official Canvass, canvass
We’re still recuperating a bit from the Tsunami that was Tuesday. Here’s some pictures of yesterday’s poll opening process for you to enjoy while we catch up on our administrative tasks and get the Canvass started.
If you’re looking for results, go to RaceTracker at http://www.shapethefuture.org/elections/results/november2008. We’ll be posting updates to the results as we wrap up ballot processing, and certification of results will come within the next 28 days.
But that’s all part of the Canvass, which we’ll discuss in a bit!
In the meantime:
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Categories: Election Day/Night · Elections Office · Poll workers · Polling place · Voting · eSlates
Tagged: canvass, Election Day, poll opening, poll pictures, voting pictures
Official certification is expected to take place on Tues., Dec. 2 for the Nov. 4 Presidential General Election. The process, which began the first day after the election, is drawing to a close as staff members put together the final documents necessary for certification.
