Reports

STATEMENT ON VARIOUS OHIO BILLS

HB/SB3

Designating"jurisdiction" for voting as the voter's correct precinct, will likely disenfranchise about 12,000 Ohio voters, compared to designating "jurisdiction" as county (or larger entity). This unfair burden will fall disproportionately on youth, low income populations, and minorities.

In the 2004 Presidential election, about 35,000 provisional ballots were disqualified statewide, but the different reasons for disqualification statewide were not collected by the Sec. of State's office. However, in Cuyahoga County, 33.8% of rejected provisional ballots were because of "wrong precinct" – i.e. these voters were disenfranchised by the state ruling that the voter had to be in the right precinct. If we take 33.8% of the statewide 35,000 rejected provisional ballots, we get the number of 12,000 rejected simply because of "wrong precinct". Whether this extrapolation to the statewide level is off by +/- 20% is immaterial: the point is still that a substantial number of Ohio voters will surely be negatively affected by this part of the bill.

U.S. government census data indicate that those who change residence most frequently (and are likely to be victims of this ruling) are disproportionately youth (up to 29 years of age), people with incomes less than $25,000 per year, and Hispanics or African-Americans. Thus, this proposed ruling may violate equal protection of the law to selected sets of Ohio citizens.

Without amendment, the bill does not require Boards of Election to notify voters if their provisional ballot is rejected, nor to provide them with and explain a reasonable process of appeal of this ruling. Some 14,000 provisional votes may have been unnecessarily rejected in the 2004 election.

A study and review of provisional ballot rejections in Cuyahoga County in the November 2004 elections found that up to 41% of them were due to Board of Elections, poll-worker, or innocent voter errors (This study is available now by writing to nxr@cwru.edu, and after about March 15, 2005, will be posted on the Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition website).

Some of these errors were made in transcribing information from the original voter application to the registration roles. Others were made by inadvertent purges of the registration lists. Translated to the 35,000 rejected provisional ballots statewide, that amounts to about 14,000 votes un-necessarily disqualified, if voters are not alerted.

Suggested Amendments:

1. Boards of Election must notify voters whose provisional ballots were rejected with sufficient time for them to appeal or correct missing or incorrect information, and to have their votes reinstated.

2. Where voters omitted information, including signature, on their provisional ballot form, it should be assumed that the poll worker failed to check the form, and that the voter has the right to provide such information and forthwith be reinstated.

3. No provisional ballot should be rejected before the Board of Elections checks the original application of the voter against the transcribed information.

4. No provisional ballot should be rejected before the Board of Elections checks whether the voter appeared on lists of registered voters at any time in the 6 months prior to the election, and whether purging of the voter, if it happened, was proper and not accidental.

The single statewide registration list required by this bill should be publicly searchable (using Name, address and birth date) on the Sec. of State's website by any individual voter, and the availability of this search mechanism should be widely publicized..

This amendment would allow voters to check their registration status, regardless in which county they live, and to make corrections, or updates, or re-register if necessary. At present, some counties do and many do not provide such a searchable list.

Recount costs.

In cases where the issue or race is above the level of automatic recount but still very close (>0.25% and up to 1%), the appropriate persons should be charged a very minimal fee for recount, regardless of whether the recount changes the final outcome.

HB31.

If absentee voting is expanded, Boards of Election must provide remedies for an expected increase in ballot spoilage through voter error.

The good aspect is that all voters are given the opportunity to vote absentee, so they need not have the qualifications for absentee balloting as previously required. However, there is one major unaddressed problem in encouraging so many absentee voters, in particular those who may do a mail-in vote. This has to do with voter errors in filling out the ballot IF done away from a voting device such as a punch card machine which helps them reduce errors, or without benefit of an optical scanner or electronic machine which recognizes or prevents voter errors ("overvotes") and alerts voters so they can correct these errors on the spot. In general, national research shows that voters are at least twice as likely to make such errors, regardless of voting system, in the absence of feedback, and therefore are twice as likely to have their Presidential vote disqualified.(The error rate goes up even higher with candidates further down the ballot, such as for Governor, US Senator or Representative, etc.)

With punch cards, for instance, the absentee error rate (which disqualified their vote) for President in 2000 and 2004 in Cuyahoga County was about 4%, whereas the county-wide error rate was about 2%. This means that at least 2% of the approx. 80,000 absentee ballots cast in Cuyahoga County in 2004, or 1600 votes, were lost simply because of lack of absentee voter access to a punch card machine. If this were true of the 610,000 absentee ballots cast statewide in the 2004 general election, then 12,000 votes would have been lost because of this problem.

The loss of absentee votes compared to votes at the polling place because of errors could be far greater if the polling places offer optical scanners that give feedback. For instance, national research shows that Optical scan error rates (and disqualification) was 4.4% without feedback and about 1.4% with feedback for voters with incomes less than $25,000.

Suggested additional reforms:

1. Require that all absentee voters be alerted to the disadvantage of voting without feedback and conversely, the advantages of voting at the Board of Elections or other place where the BOE supplies voting machines for absentee voters, especially voting machines with feedback.

2. Require that in large populous counties (set some population number), the Board of Election advertise and provide voting on specified days at temporary "satellite facilities" in convenient areas more distant from the BOE where absentee walk-in voters have access to machines which will reduce voter errors.

3. Require that voters who must vote without machines receive (along with their ballots) culturally appropriate educational flyer pictorially and otherwise explaining how best to avoid making the mistake of an overvote.

4. Require that Board of Election advertise and provide a "pre-election day" at all places (Nursing, Assisted Living, Elder housing) where over say 10 absentee voters live and mobilityt is likely to be impared, so that the BOE can supply a machine which reduces voter errors (punch card machine, optical scanner, or DRE) on that day.

SB36

There is, to our knowledge, no solid evidence of widespread voter fraud due to faulty identification, and voting under false pretenses is already subject to heavy punishment as it now stands. In addition, mechanisms are in place for ID requirements of voters who apply by mail. Unless the authors of this bill can provide solid evidence that their remedy is truly necessary, bill will disenfranchise many more Ohio citizens than it will prevent from committing election fraud.

HB 60

Good, no comment.

SB 77

Without amendment, this bill would permit counties currently using electronic voting machines to delay indefinitely the introduction of upgrades of their voting machines to provide a voter-verifiable paper trail. The threat to public confidence in elections without a recountable paper trail is enormous.

This or a similar statement appears more than once in the proposed bill:

(2) At the earliest available opportunity when it is technologically and economically feasible, if the voting machine is a direct recording electronic voting machine that was purchased, rented, or otherwise acquired for use in this state before January 1, 2005, it shall include a voter verified paper audit trail.

This provides an enormous loophole to upgrading direct recording electronic (DRE) machines to have a paper trail.

• It is currently estimated that the added machine cost for paper trail will be about 20% higher than the original DRE cost. Thus, a county has to only to plead economic inability, and it will not have to upgrade to provide a paper trail, possibly for many years, if not indefinitely.
  
  
• State certification is likely to include a requirement that the voter verified paper ballot produced by the machine is scannable by an optical scan. Therefore, in addition, counties with existing DRE's will have to purchase optical scanners, and provide appropriate paper for the DRE which will generate a scannable ballot. Counties must be prepared for this ongoing cost as well before they commit to upgrade their DRE's with paper trail add-ons.
  
  

If the history of state certification and 3rd party testing of currently available DRE's is any guide, the paper trail attachment is not likely to be ready for production for a year or perhaps two years. In the mean time, counties with DRE's will have no paper back-up.

Suggested amendments

Counties that wish to keep and eventually upgrade with paper trails DRE's they have purchased before Jan. 1, 2005 are required to:

• estimate complete costs of upgrade (attachment, paper, scanners) of doing so within 1 month of the passage of this bill, and provide same to the Sec of State;
  
  
• commit in writing that they will make such expenditures within 6 months of the availability of such upgrades; and
  
  
• commit in writing to follow, in the mean time, the EAC's highest and most stringent standards for DRE checking, inspection, etc. as posted on their website, beginning no less than 3 months after passage of this bill, and until the paper trail upgrades are fully in operation.
  
  

Fedor Election Accountability Act

Additional Suggestions:

Registration

When the Board of Election provides written acknowledge of a registration application and it comes back "undeliverable", a forwardable letter informing the voter of this problem should be automatically sent.

Casting Ballots

Absentee Ballots: Very important: (These comments and suggestions are the same as for HB31).

If absentee voting is expanded, Boards of Election must provide remedies for an expected increase in ballot spoilage through voter error.

The good aspect is that all voters are given the opportunity to vote absentee, so they need not have the qualifications for absentee balloting as previously required. However, there is one major unaddressed problem in encouraging so many absentee voters, in particular those who may do a mail-in vote. This has to do with voter errors in filling out the ballot IF done away from a voting device such as a punch card machine which helps them reduce errors , or without benefit of an optical scanner or electronic machine which recognizes or prevents voter errors ("overvotes") and alerts voters so they can correct these errors on the spot. In general, national research shows that voters are at least twice as likely to make such errors, regardless of voting system, in the absence of feedback, and therefore are twice as likely to have their Presidential vote disqualified. (The error rate goes up even higher with candidates further down the ballot, such as for Governor, US Senator or Representative, etc.)

With punch cards, for instance, the absentee error rate (which disqualified their vote) for President in 2000 and 2004 in Cuyahoga County was about 4%, whereas the county-wide error rate was about 2%. This means that at least 2% of the approx. 80,000 absentee ballots cast in Cuyahoga County in 2004, or 1600 votes, were lost simply because of lack of absentee voter access to a punch card machine. If this were true of the 610,000 absentee ballots cast statewide in the 2004 general election, then 12,000 votes would have been lost because of this problem.

The loss of absentee votes compared to votes at the polling place because of errors could be far greater if the polling places offer optical scanners that give feedback. For instance, national research shows that Optical scan error rates (and disqualification) was 4.4% without feedback and about 1.4% with feedback for voters with incomes less than $25,000.

Suggested additional reforms:

1. Require that all absentee voters be alerted to the disadvantage of voting without feedback and conversely, the advantages of voting at the Board of Elections or other place where the BOE supplies voting machines for absentee voters, especially voting machines with feedback.

2. Require that in large populous counties (set some population number), the Board of Election advertise and provide voting on specified days at temporary "satellite facilities" in convenient areas more distant from the BOE where absentee walk-in voters have access to machines which will reduce voter errors.

3. Require that voters who must vote without machines receive (along with their ballots) culturally appropriate educational flyer pictorially and otherwise explaining how best to avoid making the mistake of an overvote.

4. Require that Board of Election advertise and provide a "pre-election day" at all places (Nursing, Assisted Living, Elder housing) where over say 10 absentee voters live and mobilityt is likely to be impared, so that the BOE can supply a machine which reduces voter errors (punch card machine, optical scanner, or DRE) on that day.

Provisional Ballots

(Statement and suggestions same as for HB/SB3 section on Provisional Ballots)

Designating"jurisdiction" for voting as the voter's correct precinct, will likely disenfranchise about 12,000 Ohio voters, compared to designating "jurisdiction" as county (or larger entity). This unfair burden will fall disproportionately on youth, low income populations, and minorities.

In the 2004 Presidential election, about 35,000 provisional ballots were disqualified statewide, but the different reasons for disqualification statewide were not collected by the Sec. of State's office. However, in Cuyahoga County, 33.8% of rejected provisional ballots were because of "wrong precinct" – i.e. these voters were disenfranchised by the state ruling that the voter had to be in the right precinct. If we take 33.8% of the statewide 35,000 rejected provisional ballots, we get the number of 12,000 rejected simply because of "wrong precinct". Whether this extrapolation to the statewide level is off by +/- 20% is immaterial: the point is still that a substantial number of Ohio voters will surely be negatively affected by this part of the bill.

U.S. government census data indicate that those who change residence most frequently (and are likely to be victims of this ruling) are disproportionately youth (up to 29 years of age), people with incomes less than $25,000 per year, and Hispanics or African-Americans. Thus, this proposed ruling may violate equal protection of the law to selected sets of Ohio citizens.

Without amendment, the bill does not require Boards of Election to notify voters if their provisional ballot is rejected, nor to provide them with and explain a reasonable process of appeal of this ruling. Some 14,000 provisional votes may have been unnecessarily rejected in the 2004 election.

A study and review of provisional ballot rejections in Cuyahoga County in the November 2004 elections found that up to 41% of them were due to Board of Elections, poll-worker, or innocent voter errors (This study is available now by writing to nxr@cwru.edu, and after about March 15, 2005, will be posted on the Greater Cleveland Voter Coalition website).

Some of these errors were made in transcribing information from the original voter application to the registration roles. Others were made by inadvertent purges of the registration lists. Translated to the 35,000 rejected provisional ballots statewide, that amounts to about 14,000 votes un-necessarily disqualified, if voters are not alerted.

Suggested Amendments:

1. Boards of Election must notify voters whose provisional ballots were rejected with sufficient time for them to appeal or correct missing or incorrect information, and to have their votes reinstated.

2. Where voters omitted information, including signature, on their provisional ballot form, it should be assumed that the poll worker failed to check the form, and that the voter has the right to provide such information and forthwith be reinstated.

3. No provisional ballot should be rejected before the Board of Elections checks the original application of the voter against the transcribed information.

4. No provisional ballot should be rejected before the Board of Elections checks whether the voter appeared on lists of registered voters at any time in the 6 months prior to the election, and whether purging of the voter, if it happened, was proper and not accidental.