|
National HAVA
Committee Testimony
May 20, 2003
The Center for Voting and Democracy has submitted state-specific
testimony to several HAVA committees. We are making the
following testimony available to any individuals and organizations
who wish to make use of it to promote compatibility of new voting
equipment with all election methods currently being used in public
elections in the United States.
The testimony can be downloaded as Word document and a .pdf
file.
You can also view our testimony for California
, Washington and Ohio (Word document)
HAVA Committee Testimony
Caleb Kleppner,
The Center for Voting and Democracy is a
non-partisan, non-profit organization that promotes fair elections
where every vote counts and all voters are represented. We wish to provide the
following testimony to all individuals and organizations seeking to
ensure that new voting equipment acquired under HAVA be compatible
with all voting methods currently used in public elections,
including instant runoff voting, choice voting and cumulative
voting.
Executive Summary
At no cost to the voters, states now can ensure
that all jurisdictions acquiring new voting equipment have the
option to use all election methods, including ranked ballots and
cumulative voting, currently used in American public elections. Requiring compatibility of
new equipment with these different methods will not cost anything,
nor will it reduce the number of vendors bidding for contracts. On the other hand, failing
to require compatibility will effectively prevent jurisdictions from
adopting these methods until they acquire new voting equipment,
which may not occur for another 20 to 30 years.
Interest in a wider range of voting methods is
growing rapidly across the country, so it would be a mistake not to
give all jurisdictions the cost-free options to use the electoral
system that the jurisdictions judge to be best.
We wish to make the following points about voting
equipment and compatibility with two particular methods: ranked
ballots and cumulative voting:
-
Interest in instant runoff voting and
cumulative voting is growing nationwide because they address
problems experienced with current voting methods
-
Incompatible voting equipment creates
formidable obstacles to adopting these systems.
-
Requiring compatibility with ranked ballots
and cumulative voting will not increase the cost of voting
equipment contracts or reduce the number of vendors
bidding.
-
Failing to require compatibility will
preclude many jurisdictions from even considering these voting
methods until new equipment is acquired, perhaps decades in the
future.
-
HAVA committees should recommend that all new
voting equipment be required to accommodate ranked ballot and
cumulative voting.
We expand on each of these points below and
provide extensive documentation to support them. We also include
four attachments: information about new Federal Elections Commission
voting systems standards about ranked ballots and cumulative voting;
evidence of vendors' ability to accommodate ranked ballots and
cumulative voting; excerpts from testimony prepared for the New York
State HAVA Committee; and technical requirements of
compatibility.
Introduction
The Help American Vote Act, combined with
increases in local and state funding, creates an important
opportunity to improve the elections process across the country.
In the wake of the Florida 2000 election,
modernizing voting equipment is the obvious first step to take. New voting equipment can
significantly improve the voting process by:
-
Making it easier for voters to cast a vote as
they intend through well designed, voter-friendly
interfaces;
-
Preventing invalid votes and allowing voters
to correct errors;
-
Improving access for people with
disabilities, people with low rates of English literacy and people
with limited manual dexterity; and
-
Increasing public confidence in the integrity
of the electoral process.
Many people and organizations are addressing
these issues admirably.
We wish instead to focus on a different but equally important
question: ensuring
compatibility of new voting equipment with a full range of viable
voting methods.
1.
Interest in different methods is growing because they address
problems with the current systems
Interest in different voting methods is growing
because they address problems experienced with current election
methods.
Several jurisdictions have passed legislation
that allows or implements instant runoff voting, legislation has
been introduced in many states, and many municipalities have
expressed serious interest in a wider range of systems.
-
San Francisco adopted instant runoff voting
to increase voter turnout and save the cost of December runoff
elections. Santa Clara County (CA), Vancouver (WA), San Leandro
(CA) and Oakland (CA) have all adopted charter amendments that
allow the use of instant runoff voting when such technology is
available.
-
Approximately100 jurisdictions have adopted
cumulative voting and limited voting (a similar systems) in the
last two decades to resolve Voting Rights Act lawsuits. These include Peoria (IL),
Amarillo (TX), Beafort County (NC) and Chilton County (AL).
-
Government commissions in many jurisdictions
have recommended ranked ballot systems, including Santa Rosa
County (CA), Pasadena (CA), Kalamazoo (MI), Austin (TX) and the
state of Vermont.
-
Numerous legislatures have requested studies
of the suitability of different voting systems, including Vermont,
North Carolina and the city council of Los Angeles.
-
Many colleges and universities have adopted
ranked-choice systems, and many have been using such systems for
years. Recent
adoptions include:
University of Maryland-College Park, Stanford University,
University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, Tufts, Wake Forest, Duke,
University of California-Davis, University of California-San Diego
and Vassar College.
-
Our website, www.FairVote.org, lists over
30 bills introduced in state and federal legislatures this year
relating to instant runoff voting, cumulative voting and voting
equipment compatibility.
A bill to allow cumulative voting in local elections in
Illinois passed both houses and awaits the governor's
signature.
-
Ranked ballot elections have been used for
over 60 years in the city of Cambridge (MA).
The 2000 presidential election, in which the
winner won less than 50% of the vote in Florida and third party
candidates were charged with "spoiling" the election, dramatically
increased interest instant runoff voting, with strong editorials in
support of instant runoff voting from newspapers such as USA
Today, St. Petersburg Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Trenton Times
and Sacramento Bee.
As a reflection of the growing interest in
different voting systems, many good government and civil rights
groups have endorsed the principle of compatibility and are
testifying to this effect before HAVA committees across the
country. Groups
endorsing voting equipment compatibility with ranked ballots and
cumulative voting include:
-
Asian American Legal Defense and Education
Fund
-
Brennan Center for Justice at New York
University School of Law
-
CALPIRG (California Public Interest Research
Group)
-
Center for Constitutional Rights
-
The Century Foundation (one of the conveners
of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform (Ford-Carter
Commission)
-
The Constitution Project
-
Citizens for Legitimate Government
-
Committee for the Study of the American
Electorate
-
Common Cause
-
Demos: A Network for Ideas &
Action
-
Disabilities Network of New York
City
-
Eastern Paralyzed Veterans
Association
-
Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under
Law
-
National Asian Pacific American Legal
Consortium
-
Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education
Fund
-
Texans for Public Justice
Members of HAVA committees in California, Ohio,
Washington, New York, Vermont and South Carolina have expressed
interest in requiring compatibility with ranked ballots and
cumulative voting.
2. Voting equipment and
election administration often poses insurmountable obstacles to the
adoption of new systems
Concerns about election administration played a
dominant role in stopping many promising reform efforts.
In Santa Rosa (CA), the registrar of voters in
2002 testified that the county's equipment could not handle
cumulative voting, so if the city wanted to proceed, it would have
had to acquire new equipment and run its own elections. This turned out to be
financially prohibitive, and the city council voted not to place
cumulative voting on the ballot.
In Alameda County (CA), the registrar of voters
stated in 2002 that the county's new equipment could not handle a
local instant runoff election consolidated with a countywide
election. This has
prevented the cities of Oakland, San Leandro and Berkeley from
moving forward on instant runoff voting.
In San Francisco, the voters adopted instant
runoff voting by a large margin in March 2002. It is a legal mandate for
this November's election, but the city and its voting equipment
vendor still do not have an instant runoff solution that runs on the
city's voting equipment.
As a result of difficulties in adapting the voting equipment,
the city may wind up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to
count ballots by hand.
In New Mexico and Maine, strong legislative
interest in instant runoff voting slowed primarily because election
officials reported that their equipment could not accommodate
instant runoff voting.
Efforts in Washington and Oregon have also been hampered by
incompatible voting equipment as well as local efforts in places
including Vancouver (WA), Kalamazoo (MI) and Cincinnati (OH).
3. Requiring compatibility with
different voting methods will not increase the cost of voting
equipment contracts or reduce the number of vendors
bidding.
This assertion is based on multiple sources of
information.
-
Federal regulations that require vendors
to state whether or not their equipment is compatible with ranked
ballots and cumulative voting: Attachment 1 is an excerpt
from the Federal Election Commission's Voting System Standards
released in April 2002.
These standards recognize that many electoral arrangements
are used in the United States, and they require vendors to state
whether or not their equipment can handle particular options and
if so, how it handles them.
The options include cumulative voting and
ranked ballots. These
regulations obviously give vendors the incentive to respond in the
affirmative, to avoid losing business to a competitor who offers
more options. The
federal certification process includes testing all options that
vendors provide, which means that vendors need to develop these
options and have them tested by Independent Testing Authorities
before they even apply for certification in a particular
state.
-
Requests for Proposals (RFPs) in Santa
Clara County (CA) and Mendocino County (CA) that require ranked
ballot compatibility:
Both Mendocino and Santa Clara Counties included ranked
ballot compatibility in their Requests for Proposals. All of the major vendors
are pursuing or did pursue the contracts. In Santa Clara County, the
three largest vendors all conducted pilot projects and two of them
demonstrated their ranked ballot interface.
-
Statement by Santa Clara County Registrar
Jesse Durazo after completing a competitive bidding process to
acquire voting equipment that can handle instant runoff
voting: At the
May 8th 2003 HAVA committee hearing in San Francisco, I
asked Santa Clara County Registrar Jesse Durazo whether including
the ranked ballot requirement increased the price of the voting
equipment or reduced the number of companies bidding on the
project, he unhesitatingly responded, “No." When I asked him whether
including a ranked ballot requirement for all new equipment in
California would increase the cost or reduce the number of
vendors, the answer was the same.
-
Cambridge's (MA) experience implementing
choice voting on optical scan voting equipment: In Cambridge (MA), after
counting ballots by hand in the city's ranked ballot elections for
city council and school board, the city decided to start using
voting equipment. The
vendor charged a one-time software fee of $40,000 to adapt an
existing optical scan system to accommodate the ranked ballot
system on the equipment.
This fee was independent of the number of pieces of
equipment used by the city and would not have been charged to any
other jurisdiction ordering that company's same equipment. We believe that if ranked
ballot compatibility is included in the specifications for new
equipment, rather than requiring an adaptation of existing
equipment, the feature will be included at no additional cost to
the jurisdiction.
-
Vendors' bids on contracts in foreign
countries that use ranked ballots: In addition to bidding on
RFPs in Mendocino County and Santa Clara County, several of these
vendors have bid on contracts in Ireland, which uses ranked ballot
voting for its elections.
-
Survey responses from vendors and
conversations with them about their ability to handle ranked
ballots and cumulative voting: Many of the vendors have
responded to a survey by the Center for Voting and Democracy and
stated that their equipment can handle ranked ballot voting and
cumulative voting, and in personal conversations with me, all of
the major vendors have told me that if a jurisdiction wants ranked
ballot compatibility, the vendor can and will provide
it.
-
Vendors' willingness to accommodate their
customers' demands: A bidding process with multiple vendors
competing gives all competitors incentive to provide maximum
options at minimum cost.
In Santa Clara County (CA), the county decided to conduct a
pilot project with voter-verifiable paper receipts.
The three remaining vendors were willing to add a mechanism for paper receipts at
no additional cost. The evidence I have presented suggests that the same phenomenon would occur with
ranked ballot compatibility:
vendors will compete with each other to provide the option
at no additional cost.
4. Failing to require
compatibility will preclude many jurisdictions from considering
different voting methods until new equipment is acquired decades
from now.
If compatibility with ranked ballots and
cumulative voting is not required in new equipment, the winner of
the contract will not have any incentive to include this
feature. If in the
future, the county or a city wishes to use instant runoff voting or
cumulative voting, the incumbent vendor, not facing any competitive
pressure, can and probably would raise the price dramatically to
adapt their equipment.
In San Francisco, before the voters passed
instant runoff voting, the vendor asserted that they could handle
instant runoff voting at a very modest cost. After the voters changed the
charter, the price increased dramatically, and it has taken much
longer than anyone expected to prepare the voting equipment. It's possible that the
vendor will be unable to deliver a technological solution in time
for the November 2003 election.
According to election officials in another state,
after acquiring a statewide touchscreen system, some leaders became
interested in using instant runoff voting in a statewide
election. The incumbent
vendor assured the customer that they could do it but said that it
might cost $1 million and take 6 to 12 months. State officials privately
told us that it would have been much easier to include ranked ballot
compatibility from the beginning of the RFP process.
If you wait to add this standard, the cost of
converting to these systems goes up and generally becomes
prohibitively expensive.
That would mean jurisdictions might have to wait until the
next generation of voting equipment is acquired, which might take
another 20 to 30 years.
5. HAVA Committees should
recommend that all new voting equipment be required to accommodate
ranked ballot and cumulative voting.
This simply requires that states only acquire new
voting equipment for which the vendor has responded in the
affirmative to the Voting System
Standards, Vol. 1, Sec. 2.2.8.2. m. and n.
We recommend that any Requests for Proposals
(RFPs) or authorizing legislation include a requirement that the
equipment be capable of conducting a ranked-ballot or cumulative
voting in the first election in which the equipment is used. The following language would
accomplish this:
"In the first election in which the
equipment is used, the system must be able to accommodate ranked
ballot and cumulative voting as specified in the Federal Election
Commission's Voting System Standards Vol. 1, Sec. 2.2.8.2. m. and
n."
In some states, due to the lack of currently
certified equipment, it may not be possible to require equipment
ready to accommodate ranked ballots and cumulative voting in its
first election. In
these cases, we recommend language that makes it clear that the
vendor must develop and certify such an upgrade upon request of the
jurisdiction. The
following language is based on the RFP used in Santa Clara County
(CA) in 2002-2003:
"The system must be able to accommodate ranked
ballot and cumulative voting as specified in the Federal Election
Commission's Voting System Standards Vol. 1, Sec. 2.2.8.2. m. and
n. If a ranked-ballot
or cumulative voting system is authorized for use in the
jurisdiction, the vendor must provide all necessary software and
develop and certify an upgrade within a reasonable time to be
agreed by the parties."
Conclusion
We are facing a great opportunity to improve our
elections. Please make
the most of this opportunity by requiring that all new voting
equipment be compatible with ranked ballots and cumulative
voting.
If I can provide any more information about these
issues, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Caleb Kleppner
Center for Voting and
Democracy
415-824-2735
[email protected]
Attachments
-
Federal Election Commission Voting System
Standards
-
Evidence
of ability of vendors to accommodate ranked ballots and cumulative
voting
-
Excerpts from recent testimony prepared for
the New York State HAVA Committee
-
Technical requirements of compatibility with
ranked ballots and cumulative voting
Attachment 1
Federal Election Commission
Voting System Standards
Adopted
April 30, 2002
http://www.fec.gov/pages/vssfinal/vss.html
Volume
I
2.2.8.2
Voting Variations
There are significant variations among the
election laws of the 50 states with respect to permissible ballot
contents, voting options, and the associated ballot counting logic.
The TDP accompanying the system shall specifically identify which of
the following items can
and cannot be
supported by the system, as well as how the system can implement
the items supported:
a.
Closed
primaries;
b.
Open
primaries;
c.
Partisan
offices;
d.
Non-partisan
offices;
e.
Write-in
voting;
f.
Primary
presidential delegation nominations;
g.
Ballot
rotation;
h.
Straight
party voting;
i.
Cross-party
endorsement;
j.
Split
precincts;
k.
Vote
for N of M;
l.
Recall
issues, with options;
m.
Cumulative
voting;
n.
Ranked
order voting; and
o.
Provisional
or challenged ballots.
Attachment 2
Evidence of ability of vendors to accommodate
ranked ballots and cumulative voting
A few
state HAVA Commissions that are considering requiring ranked ballot
compatibility in new equipment
-
California
-
Ohio
-
Washington
-
Vermont
-
New York
-
South Carolina
Vendors that are currently running US ranked
ballot elections
Diebold:
Cambridge MA, precinct-based optical scan
ES&S:
San Francisco CA, precinct-based and central optical
scan
Vendors that submitted bids for Irish DRE
contract, 2001
-
Diebold
-
Unilect
-
Sequoia
-
ES&S
Vendors that self-reported an ability to
handle ranked ballots (see results of survey)
-
ES&S
-
Hart Intercivic (eSlate – in development in
2001)
-
Shoup
-
Unilect
-
VoteHere
Finalists for the Santa Clara County contract,
which requires IRV-ready equipment when the county requests it
Statement by a country registrar who acquired
compatible equipment
The Santa Clara County Registrar, Jesse Durazo,
stated that including ranked ballot compatibility did not increase
the cost of their contract nor did it reduce the number of vendors
who submitted bids.
Attachment 3
Excerpts from recent testimony prepared for
the New York State HAVA Committee
The Century Foundation
Abrams, Robert, Fried Arthur et al. The Help America Vote
Act: Impact and
Potential for New York. The Century Foundation, www.tcf.org.
Excerpt from ages 44-45:
"In addition to meeting these HAVA requirements,
the new voting equipment should have software that can accommodate
instant runoff voting and cumulative voting, in case the Legislature
votes to use this method in some or all elections. Instant runoff
voting is a ranked-choice voting system that allows voters to rank
candidates in order of choice, ensuring a winning candidate will
receive an absolute majority of votes rather than a simple
plurality. Legislation to conduct primaries and local elections
through instant run-off voting has been introduced in the New York
State Legislature (A4481, S4683 and A4482). In cumulative voting,
voters cast as many votes as there are seats and can put multiple
votes for one or more candidates."
New York State Citizens' Coalition on HAVA
Implementation
Testimony of The New York State Citizens'
Coalition on HAVA Implementation
April 4, 2003
The New York State Citizens' Coalition on HAVA
Implementation is an ad hoc and diverse coalition of Good
Government, Voting Rights, Racial Justice, Disability Rights, and
Language Rights organizations and academics who are concerned about
the way in which New York implements the Help America Vote Act
(HAVA.) We are committed to protecting voting rights and improving
the electoral process in New York. The Coalition includes the Asian
American Legal Defense & Education Fund (AALDF), the Brennan
Center for Justice, Citizens Union, Common Cause/NY, DEMOS,
Disabilities Network of New York City, Eastern Paralyzed Veterans
Association, New York Immigration Coalition, New York Lawyers for
the Public Interest, the New York Public Interest Research Group,
(NYPIRG), People for the American Way, and several other
organizations.
Excerpt from page 7:
"New machines should be versatile enough to
meet New York's diverse needs. New machines should be
‘system ready' to handle a wide-range of elections like Instant
Run-Off Voting and Cumulative Voting."
Attachment 4
Technical requirements of compatibility with
ranked ballots and cumulative voting
The simplest way to ensure compatibility is to
require that vendors reply in the affirmative to the relevant voting
system standards and be prepared to provide the solution upon the
demand of the election officials.
There are three technical components of ranked
ballot voting. First,
voters rank candidates in order of choice by indicating their
1st, 2nd choice, 3rd choice and so
on. Second, the voting
equipment either prevents voters from casting an invalid vote
(overvote, skipped ranking, listing the same candidate more than
once) or notifies voters of errors and allows the voter to correct
the errors. Third, the
voting equipment stores ballot images of each voter's rankings
rather than sub-totals for each ballot position. The output of the voting
equipment is a data file that contains an anonymous record of each
voter's 1st choice, 2nd choice and so on.
For cumulative voting, the ballot must allow
voters to cast a number of votes up to the number of seats and to
give 1 or more votes to 1 or more candidates. The voting equipment must
either prevent voters from casting an invalid vote (overvote) or
notify voters of errors and allows the voter to correct the
errors. The voting
equipment has to keep track of the total number of votes received by
each candidate. |
