BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 547
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Date of Hearing: May 13, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REDISTRICTING
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Chair
AB 547
(Gonzalez) - As Amended April 29, 2015
SUBJECT: Elections: special elections: all-mailed ballot
elections.
SUMMARY: Expands a previously authorized mailed ballot election
pilot project in San Diego County to allow certain local
elections held in San Diego County to be conducted pursuant to
the provisions of that project. Repeals a requirement that a
special election to fill a vacancy in the Legislature or
Congress can be conducted pursuant to the pilot project only if
the district is located entirely in San Diego County. Allows
any school district, special district, or small city, as
defined, to conduct a special election for a local ballot
measure as an all-mailed ballot election. Specifically, this
bill:
1)Makes the following modifications to a previously authorized
pilot project under which San Diego County is permitted to
conduct a special election to fill a vacancy in the
Legislature or in Congress as a mailed ballot election,
subject to certain conditions:
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a) Expands the pilot project to allow any special election
to be conducted as an all-mailed ballot election if the
election is to fill a vacancy in a governing body or to
vote on a local ballot measure, and is for San Diego
County, or any city, school district, community college
district, special district, or other district or political
subdivision organized pursuant to state law whose
boundaries are located wholly or in part within San Diego
County (hereinafter referred to as an "eligible entity");
b) Repeals a requirement, if the election conducted
pursuant to the pilot is a special election to fill a
vacancy in the Legislature or in Congress, that the
district for which the special election is being held must
be located entirely within San Diego County;
c) Requires the governing body of an eligible entity that
seeks to conduct an election pursuant to the pilot project
to authorize the use of mailed ballots for the election;
d) Clarifies that at elections conducted under the pilot
project, the elections official is required to ensure that
a polling place is staffed by precinct board members who
speak languages other than English if federal law requires
the elections official to recruit precinct board members
who are fluent in those languages for precincts that are
consolidated at that polling place;
e) Requires bilingual voter education workshops and voter
education workshops designed to increase accessibility for
participation of voters with disabilities that are required
to be conducted under the pilot project to be conducted
in-person;
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f) Makes the eligible entity for which the election is
being conducted responsible for complying with the
requirements of the pilot project, including the reporting
requirement; and,
g) Extends the date of the pilot project by one year, to
January 1, 2021.
2)Permits the following jurisdictions to conduct any special
election held to vote on a local ballot measure as an
all-mailed ballot election:
a) Cities with a population of 100,000 or less, as
determined by the annual city total population rakings by
the Demographic Research Unit of the Department of Finance;
b) School districts; and,
c) Special districts.
3)Makes technical and corresponding changes.
EXISTING LAW:
1)Permits a special election in San Diego County, held before
January 1, 2020 to fill a vacancy in the Legislature or in
Congress, to be conducted by mailed ballot subject to all of
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the following conditions:
a) The legislative or congressional district lies wholly
within San Diego County;
b) The election does not occur on the same date as a
statewide primary or general election, or any other
election conducted in an overlapping jurisdiction that is
not consolidated and conducted wholly by mail;
c) At least one ballot drop-off location is provided per
city, and at least one drop-off location is provided in
unincorporated areas for every 100,000 registered voters,
and such locations are open during business hours to
receive voted ballots beginning not less than seven days
before the election;
d) The elections official provides for at least six hours
of voting at a satellite location within the congressional
or legislative district on at least one Saturday and Sunday
after the ballots are delivered to voters;
e) At least one polling place is provided per city or the
polling places are fixed in a manner so that there is one
polling place for every 10,000 registered voters within the
district, as specified, whichever results in more polling
places. Provides that a polling place shall allow voters
to request a ballot between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. on the day of
the election if they need replacement ballots for any
reason;
f) Polling places are established in accordance with
existing state and federal accessibility requirements, and
access to polling places is evenly distributed throughout
the congressional or legislative district;
g) For polling places that consolidate one or more
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precincts for which the elections official is required to
recruit precinct board members who are fluent in a language
in addition to English pursuant to existing state or
federal law, the elections official makes reasonable
efforts to ensure that the polling place is staffed by
precinct board members who speak those languages;
h) Each voter receives all supplies necessary for the use
and return of the mail ballot, including a return envelope
for the voted ballot with postage prepaid;
i) Each voter receives all of the following from the
elections official:
i) A notice, translated into all languages as required
by state and federal law, that informs voters of the
following:
(1) That the election is being conducted by mail
and that each eligible voter will receive a ballot by
mail;
(2) The voter may cast a ballot in person at a
satellite location; and,
(3) The voter may request the county elections
official to send a ballot in a language other than
English pursuant to state and federal law.
ii) A list of the ballot drop-off and polling place
locations, and that list is posted on the Internet Web
site of the county elections office; and,
iii) A postage-paid postcard that the voter may return to
the elections official for the purpose of requesting a
ballot in a language other than English.
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2)Requires San Diego County, if it conducts an election by
mailed ballot pursuant to the provisions outlined above, to
report to the Legislature and to the Secretary of State
regarding the success of the election, including, but not
limited to, any statistics on the cost to conduct the
election; the turnout of different populations, including, but
not limited to and to the extent possible, the population
categories of race, ethnicity, language preference, age,
gender, disability, permanent vote by mail status, and
political party affiliation as it relates to the languages
required under the federal Voting Rights Act; the number of
ballots that were not counted and the reasons they were
rejected; voter fraud; and any other problems that became
known to the county during the election or canvass. Requires
the report, whenever possible, to compare the election
conducted under the pilot project to similar elections not
conducted as mailed ballot elections in the same jurisdiction
or comparable jurisdictions.
3)Permits an election to be conducted wholly by mail if the
governing body authorizes the use of mailed ballots for the
election, the election occurs on an established mailed ballot
election date, and the election is one of the following:
a) An election in which no more than 1,000 registered
voters are eligible to participate;
b) An election in a city, county, or district with 5,000 or
fewer registered voters that is restricted to the
imposition of special taxes, expenditure limitation
overrides, or both;
c) An election on the issuance of a general obligation
water bond;
d) An election in one of four specifically enumerated water
districts; or,
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e) An election or assessment ballot proceeding required or
authorized by the state constitution under Proposition 218.
4)Authorizes a school district or city with a population of
100,000 or less to conduct an all-mail ballot election to fill
a vacancy in a special election.
5)Authorizes a district to conduct any election as an all-mailed
ballot election on any date other than an established election
date.
6)Permits San Mateo and Yolo counties, as part of a pilot
program lasting through January 1, 2018, to conduct elections
on up to three dates as all-mailed ballot elections, subject
to certain conditions and reporting requirements.
FISCAL EFFECT: None. This bill is keyed non-fiscal by the
Legislative Counsel.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose of the Bill: According to the author:
Special elections in California are notorious for
having abysmal voter turnout levels. In fact, the
average registered turnout of the 13 deciding special
elections since January 2013 is 14.07%. In some of
those special elections, that statistic even drops
below 10%.
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This alarmingly low turnout level can be attributed to
the fact that special elections often cover fewer
issues and are generally less competitive than
statewide general elections. As a result, special
elections generate less media coverage and do not
adequately capture voter attention, which can
intensify low turnout.
Vote-by-mail voters have cast as much as 80% of the
ballots in special elections this decade as Election
Day voter participation in these contests has dropped
significantly. In fact, vote-by-mail voters have
demonstrated that they are up to 5 times more likely
to participate in a special election than voters who
do not receive their ballot in the mail.
In San Diego County alone, the Secretary of State
reported that the percentage of vote-by-mail voters
was over 4% higher than the statewide average for the
2014 General Election. This may suggest that San Diego
County's voting behavior and demographics lend
themselves to special elections conducted
predominantly by mail.
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What is more, academic studies have examined the use
of mail balloting in special elections favorably. One
California study conducted in 2007 found that a
vote-by-mail system increased turnout by 8% in special
elections. Similar increases in special elections
turnout have even been found in Oregon, California
charter cities and California counties which have used
mail balloting.
Likewise, a 2010 study published in the Social Science
Journal found that vote-by-mail systems significantly
increased the voter turnout rate of ethnic minorities
such as Latinos and African Americans.
Furthermore, pilot projects have found significant
cost savings and reported no voter fraud issues in
conducting special elections by mail. Yolo County
reported as much as 43% cost-savings in 2013 with a
predominately vote-by-mail format.
Severely low voter turnout in California's costly
special elections is causing large portions of
California's electorate to be underrepresented in
deciding the outcome of all statewide races and
ballots, which directly undercuts our principles of
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democracy and participation in a fiscally detrimental
manner.
Full voter participation produces governments with
more stability, legitimacy and a genuine mandate to
govern while making it more difficult for extremist or
special interest groups to win elections or to
influence mainstream candidates.
AB 547 would strive to increase voter turnout and cut
costs in San Diego County's special elections by
extending to other political subdivisions in the
county the option to conduct all-mailed ballot special
elections under the AB 1873 pilot program to cities,
counties, school districts, special districts and
local ballot initiatives.
2)Existing All-Mailed Ballot Pilot Projects: Last year, the
Legislature approved and the Governor signed AB 1873 (Gonzalez
and Mullin), Chapter 598, Statutes of 2014, which allows
special elections in San Diego County to fill vacancies in the
Legislature and Congress to be conducted by mailed ballot
until 2020, subject to certain conditions. This bill modifies
some of those conditions, and significantly expands the types
of elections that are allowed to be conducted as mailed ballot
elections pursuant to the pilot project.
In addition to the San Diego pilot project that was authorized
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by AB 1873, there is another ongoing pilot project authorized
by the Legislature and the Governor to examine the use of
all-mailed ballot elections for local elections. That pilot
project was originally authorized by AB 413 (Yamada), Chapter
187, Statutes of 2011, which allows Yolo County to conduct
local elections on not more than three dates as all-mailed
ballot elections. AB 413 was intended to serve as a pilot
project to evaluate the desirability of further expanding the
circumstances under which elections are permitted to be
conducted as all-mailed ballot elections. Yolo County
conducted all-mailed ballot elections in March 2013 in the
City of Davis and the Washington Unified School District as
permitted by AB 413, and submitted its report on those
elections in December 2013. Yolo County is permitted to
conduct local elections as all-mailed ballot elections on two
additional dates before the conclusion of the pilot project.
Last year, the Legislature approved and the Governor signed AB
2028 (Mullin), Chapter 209, Statutes of 2014, which allowed
San Mateo County to join Yolo County in participating in that
ongoing pilot project. Part of the author's rationale for
introducing AB 2028 was to expand the pilot program to gather
more data, and to get information from an urban county "to
contrast the rural county [Yolo] that is already part of the
program." San Mateo County has not yet conducted an election
as part of the all-mailed ballot pilot program that was
expanded by AB 2028. (San Mateo County conducted an
all-mailed ballot election on May 5, 2015, for a parcel tax
measure in the San Carlos School District, but that election
was conducted as an all-mailed ballot election pursuant to
other provisions of existing law, and not as part of the pilot
project authorized by AB 2028.)
When the Legislature considered AB 1873 last year, early
versions of the bill would have expanded the circumstances
under which local elections could be conducted as all-mailed
ballot elections. However, AB 1873 was narrowed, and
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ultimately authorized a pilot project in San Diego County
regarding the use of all-mailed ballot elections for
legislative and congressional vacancy elections. The
chaptered version of AB 1873 did not allow local elections to
be conducted as mailed ballot elections as part of that pilot
project.
Given the fact that an ongoing all-mail ballot election pilot
project for local elections was only recently expanded to
include an additional county, and given the fact that only one
set of elections have been held under the pilot project, the
committee may wish to consider whether it is warranted to
further expand the circumstances under which local elections
may be conducted as all-mail ballot elections. On the other
hand, the San Diego pilot project includes a number of
accessibility, outreach, and voter education requirements that
exceed those included in the San Mateo and Yolo pilot project.
In light of that fact, allowing local elections to be
included as part of the San Diego pilot project may provide
additional information about how the differing accessibility,
outreach, and voter education requirements affect turnout at
all-mail ballot elections.
3)Special Vacancy Elections in Multiple Counties: One of the
requirements in AB 1873 for conducting an election as an
all-mailed ballot election was that the congressional or
legislative district for which the election was being held had
to be located entirely within San Diego County. That
condition ensured that all voters within a given district
would be voting in accordance with the same rules and
procedures. Without that condition, if there was a vacancy in
a legislative or congressional district that included part of
San Diego County, but that also included portions of one or
more other counties, and if San Diego County decided to
conduct the special election to fill that vacancy as a mailed
ballot election, some voters within the district would vote
using the mailed ballot method authorized by the San Diego
pilot project, while the remaining voters in the district
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would vote using a traditional polling place-model election.
This bill would repeal the requirement that a congressional or
legislative district must be entirely within San Diego County
in order for a special vacancy election to be eligible to be
conducted under the pilot project. Furthermore, this bill
allows specified elections for local office, as detailed
above, to be conducted under the pilot project even where
those elections also include territory outside of San Diego
County. If a special election were held under this pilot
project in a district that included territory outside of San
Diego County, only the election in the San Diego
County-portion of the district would be conducted as a mailed
ballot election. The committee may wish to consider whether
this disparate treatment of voters within the same district is
appropriate.
4)Local Ballot Measure Elections and Clarifying Amendment: As
detailed above, this bill would expand existing law to allow a
school district, special district, or small city, as defined,
to conduct a local ballot measure election as an all-mail
ballot election. This provision is not limited to
jurisdictions that are located wholly or partially in San
Diego County, and elections conducted pursuant to this
provision would not be subject to the accessibility, outreach,
voter education, and reporting requirements that apply to
elections conducted pursuant to the San Diego County pilot
project. According to the author, it is not her intent for
this bill to affect elections other than those that would be
conducted as part of the pilot project in San Diego County.
To reflect this intent, committee staff recommends the
following amendment to this bill:
On page 9, strike out lines 6 to 34, inclusive.
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Disability Rights California, which had opposed a prior version
of this bill, has indicated that they will remove their
opposition and will be neutral on this bill with this
amendment.
5)Related Legislation: AB 1504 (Alejo), which is also being
heard in this committee today, authorizes Monterey and
Sacramento counties to participate in an ongoing pilot project
that allows certain elections to be conducted entirely by
mailed ballot, and extends that pilot project by two years.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
County of San Diego (sponsor) (prior version)
Urban Counties Caucus (prior version)
Opposition
Disability Rights California (prior version)
Analysis Prepared by:Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094
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