BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | AB 547|
|Office of Senate Floor Analyses | |
|(916) 651-1520 Fax: (916) | |
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THIRD READING
Bill No: AB 547
Author: Gonzalez (D), et al.
Amended: 5/18/15 in Assembly
Vote: 21
SENATE ELECTIONS & C.A. COMMITTEE: 4-0, 7/7/15
AYES: Allen, Hancock, Hertzberg, Liu
NO VOTE RECORDED: Anderson
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 51-24, 5/22/15 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Elections: special elections: all-mailed ballot
elections
SOURCE: County of San Diego
DIGEST: This bill 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. This bill extends
the pilot project by one year.
ANALYSIS:
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
the following conditions:
a) The legislative or congressional district lies wholly
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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
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; and,
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.
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1)Requires that each voter in the mail ballot election receives
a list of the ballot drop-off and polling place locations
(which shall also be posted on the Internet Web site of the
county elections office), 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, and a
notice, translated into all languages as required by state and
federal law, that informs voters of the following:
a) That the election is being conducted by mail and that
each eligible voter will receive a ballot by mail;
b) The voter may cast a ballot in person at a satellite
location; and,
c) The voter may request the county elections official to
send a ballot in a language other than English pursuant to
state and federal law.
1)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.
This bill makes the following modifications to the 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 the aforementioned conditions:
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1)Expands the pilot project to allow a 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 whose boundaries
are located wholly within San Diego County (hereinafter
referred to as an "eligible entity");
2)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;
3)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;
4)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;
5)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,
6)Extends the date of the pilot project by one year, to January
1, 2021.
Background
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.
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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
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 ultimately
authorized a pilot project in San Diego County regarding the use
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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.
AB 1504 (Alejo, 2015), which was approved by the Senate
Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee and is now
pending on the Senate Floor, authorizes Monterey and Sacramento
counties to participate in the ongoing Yolo/San Mateo pilot
project and extends that pilot project by two years.
Comments
1)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 was 14.07%. In some of those
special elections, turnout dropped below 10%.
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 five 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.
Additionally, 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
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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 democracy and participation in a fiscally
detrimental manner.
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)Too many pilots? 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.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:NoLocal: No
SUPPORT: (Verified7/10/15)
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County of San Diego (source)
California Association of Clerks and Election Officials
League of Women Voters of California
Rural County Representatives of California
Urban Counties Caucus
OPPOSITION: (Verified7/10/15)
None received
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 51-24, 5/22/15
AYES: Bloom, Bonilla, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos,
Chau, Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Daly, Dodd,
Eggman, Frazier, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gipson,
Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Hadley, Roger Hernández,
Holden, Irwin, Jones-Sawyer, Levine, Lopez, Low, McCarty,
Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, Obernolte, Perea, Quirk, Rendon,
Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Santiago, Mark Stone, Thurmond,
Ting, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Atkins
NOES: Achadjian, Travis Allen, Baker, Bigelow, Brough, Chang,
Dahle, Beth Gaines, Gallagher, Gatto, Grove, Harper, Jones,
Kim, Lackey, Linder, Maienschein, Mathis, Mayes, Melendez,
Patterson, Salas, Steinorth, Wagner
NO VOTE RECORDED: Alejo, O'Donnell, Olsen, Waldron, Weber
Prepared by: Darren Chesin / E. & C.A. / (916) 651-4106
7/13/15 10:09:58
**** END ****
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