BILL ANALYSIS
Senate Appropriations Committee Fiscal Summary
Senator Christine Kehoe, Chair
257 (Adams)
Hearing Date: 8/17/2009 Amended: 5/6/2009
Consultant: Maureen Ortiz Policy Vote: ER&CA 5-0
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BILL SUMMARY: AB 257 requires the Secretary of State to
establish a uniform format that county election officials will
use to report election incidents and voting irregularities.
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Fiscal Impact (in thousands)
Major Provisions 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 Fund
Admin expenses $22 $44
$44 General
Reporting requirement --- potentially $90 per statewide
election--- General*
*Reimbursable state mandate
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STAFF COMMENTS: This bill meets the criteria for referral to
the Suspense file.
The Secretary of State (SOS) indicates the need for PY at
approximately $44,000 annually to develop the uniform report,
collect the information and post the reports on the SOS Internet
website. In addition, counties will incur expenses for
training, data gathering, and reporting. If each county incurs
costs of only $1,500, reimbursable costs from the General Fund
would exceed $87,000 each statewide election.
The county elections officials indicate that tracking specific
instances of error could take one person several days with
statewide costs of up to $69,000. Additionally, counties would
incur a number of other expenses including costs of
approximately $11,000 to compile data from complaints received
from callers on election day, and $15,000 to track and report
incidences relating to equipment testing.
The counties will be specifically required to gather and report
data relating to election incidents and irregularities by
documenting complaints or reports of any of the following: a)
voter fraud, b) voter intimidation, c) the failure, malfunction,
or improper usage or operation of either an electronic voting
machine or a paper ballot, whether cast by mail or at a polling
place, and d) incidents resulting in voter disenfranchisement.
A major issue in a primary election is the proper distribution
of party ballots under the modified open primary election
system. Under this system, decline-to-state voters may opt for
a party ballot of any participating political party. In the
2008 statewide primary election, Democrats and American
Independents allowed decline-to-state voters to vote on their
ballots, but the Republican party did not. This led to
widespread confusion at the polls and errors in issuing ballots.
Page 2
AB 257 (Adams)
Staff notes that this bill does not contain any timeline for the
gathering of the data (such as a specific period before an
election ending at a certain day after an election) which could
result in inconsistencies in the data gathered by different
counties. The bill does also not include a specific timeframe
for transmitting the report to the Secretary of State.
This bill is similar to AB 2628 (Adams) which was held on this
committee's Suspense File last year, however, that bill required
the counties to report no later than 30 days following the
official canvass.