BILL ANALYSIS Ó
AB 800
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 29, 2015
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REDISTRICTING
Sebastian Ridley-Thomas, Chair
AB 800
(Gomez) - As Amended March 23, 2015
SUBJECT: Elections: vote by mail ballots.
SUMMARY: Requires the postage on return envelopes for vote by
mail (VBM) ballots to be prepaid. Specifically, this bill
requires an elections official, when delivering a VBM ballot to
a voter, to include a return envelope with postage prepaid if
the ballot is to be mailed within the territorial limits of the
United States or the District of Columbia.
EXISTING LAW requires an elections official to deliver all of
the following to each qualified applicant for a VBM ballot:
1)The ballot for the precinct in which the voter resides and, in
the case of a presidential primary election, the ballot for
the central committee of the party for which the voter has
declared a preference, if any; and,
2)All supplies necessary for the use and return of the ballot.
AB 800
Page 2
FISCAL EFFECT: Unknown. State-mandated local program; contains
reimbursement direction.
COMMENTS:
1)Purpose of the Bill: According to the author:
Increasing voter turnout is crucial to the future of
California. AB 800 will provide paid postage envelopes
for registered voters who elect to vote-by-mail and
removes one obstacle for voters.
2)Vote by Mail Voting: AB 1520 (Shelley) Chapter 922, Statutes
of 2001, allowed any voter to become a permanent VBM voter.
Since that time, the percentage of voters in California who
choose to receive a VBM ballot has increased significantly.
While just under 25 percent of voters who participated in the
2000 statewide general election cast a VBM ballot, more than
60 percent of voters who participated in the 2014 statewide
general election voted using a VBM ballot.
While these figures demonstrate that there has been a
substantial increase in the number of voters who are casting a
VBM ballot, they also give a somewhat misleading picture of
the portion of voters who are returning their ballots by mail,
since many voters who receive a VBM ballot return their
completed ballots in person to polling places or to ballot
drop-off sites established by elections officials. In August
2014, the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization that works to advance the responsible
use of technology to improve the democratic process, released
a study that looked at the VBM process in three California
counties (Orange, Sacramento, and Santa Cruz), and made
AB 800
Page 3
recommendations to improve the VBM process based on that
study. While statewide figures are not available, the report
found that at the 2012 general election, approximately 30
percent of VBM voters in the three counties studied returned
their ballots in person. In Santa Cruz County, 48 percent of
VBM voters who cast a ballot at the 2012 general election did
not mail back their ballots, but instead returned their
ballots to the office of the elections official, to a ballot
drop-off site, or to a polling place on election day.
3)Jurisdictions that Prepay Return Postage: Although it is not
currently required by state law, some jurisdictions
nevertheless prepay the return postage for VBM ballots.
Alpine and Sierra Counties, both of which conduct elections
entirely by mailed ballot, both prepay the return postage on
all VBM ballots, as does the City and County of San Francisco.
4)San Mateo County Study: A study undertaken by a group of
academics, conducted in San Mateo County and published in the
Election Law Journal (Volume 11, Number 3, 2012) suggests
providing prepaid postage for VBM ballot return envelopes may
have little effect on overall turnout, and could create
confusion for voters. In their study, conducted at the
November 2010 statewide general election, postage-paid return
envelopes were provided to 10,000 permanent VBM voters in San
Mateo County who were selected at random. The researchers
compared participation rates between those voters who received
a postage-paid return envelope and those who did not. The
researchers found that the voters who received a postage-paid
envelope were no more likely to vote than those who did not,
but also found that voters who received a postage-paid
envelope were more likely to vote in person (i.e., not by
mail) than those who did not. Voters who had regularly voted
by mail in prior elections and who received a postage-paid
envelope were even more likely to vote in person than voters
AB 800
Page 4
who voted by mail more infrequently in the past. The
researchers hypothesized that the disruption in the routine to
VBM voters who were receiving a postage-paid return envelope
for the first time, combined with potentially confusing
instructions, may have caused some voters to vote in person in
order to ensure that their ballots were counted. The
researchers concluded that carefully worded ballot
instructions and highlighting changes to voting procedures may
help ease voter confusion and concerns.
5)Could Prepaid Return Postage Delay Ballots? As detailed
above, last summer, the California Voter Foundation released a
study of the VBM process in three California counties. One of
the counties studied-Sacramento County-prepays the return
postage on ballots for voters who live in all-mail ballot
precincts through the use of business reply mail (California
law allows elections officials to convert any precinct with
fewer than 250 voters into an all-mail ballot precinct, where
all voters in the precinct are mailed a ballot and no polling
place is established for that precinct on election day). The
study found that the ballots that had prepaid postage through
the use of business reply mail could be delayed at the post
office, because those ballots had to be processed through the
business reply unit of the post office in order to be canceled
against the county's business reply account. The study noted
that "[w]hen only one person works in the business reply unit,
mail can be delayed if that person is out of the office or if
there is a surge of business reply mail from other sources,
possibly disenfranchising a voter who waited until close to
the election to return his or her ballot." While the report
did not recommend against providing prepaid return postage for
VBM ballots, it cautioned that "[w]hile some have suggested
providing postage-paid envelopes to all VBM voters (and not
just those overseas or living in an all vote-by-mail precinct
as current law provides), doing so can actually delay VBM
AB 800
Page 5
ballot processing since postage paid mail is typically sent
business class, not first class. In addition, the cost must be
debited from the account holder before the mail piece can be
delivered. Ensuring postage-paid mail is debited from the
correct account adds extra time to ballot processing and can
further delay the return of voted ballots."
Last year, the Legislature approved and the Governor signed SB
29 (Correa), Chapter 618, Statutes of 2014, which allowed
ballots that are mailed by election day to be counted if they
are received by the third day after the election. While SB 29
may help protect against voters being inadvertently
disenfranchised if ballots are delayed due to the use of
business reply mail under this bill, if delays in the return
of VBM ballots nonetheless persist, the timeframe for ballots
to be received that was established in SB 29 may need to be
revisited to ensure that voters are not inadvertently
disenfranchised.
6)Postal Service Policy Regarding Ballots With Insufficient
Postage: In order to protect against the inadvertent
disenfranchisement of voters, it is the policy of the United
States Postal Service that VBM ballots with insufficient
postage "must not be detained or treated as unpaid mail."
Instead, under Postal Service policy, postal workers are
supposed to deliver the ballot to the appropriate elections
official, and to seek to recover the postage due from the
elections official. Notwithstanding this policy, ballots are
nonetheless occasionally returned to voters for insufficient
postage.
7)State Mandates: The last four state budgets have suspended
various state mandates as a mechanism for cost savings. Among
AB 800
Page 6
the mandates that were suspended were all existing
elections-related mandates. All the existing elections-related
mandates have been proposed for suspension again by the
Governor in his budget for the 2015-16 fiscal year. This bill
adds another elections-related mandate by requiring local
elections official to prepay the return postage for VBM
ballots. The Committee may wish to consider whether it is
desirable to create new election mandates when current
elections-related mandates are suspended.
8)Previous Legislation: This bill is similar to SB 1062 (Block)
of 2014, which was held on the Senate Appropriations
Committee's suspense file, and to AB 1519 (De La Torre) of
2009 and SB 117 (Murray) of 2005, both of which were held on
the Assembly Appropriations Committee's suspense file.
REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION:
Support
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,
AFL-CIO
Service Employees International Union, California State Council
Opposition
AB 800
Page 7
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by:Ethan Jones / E. & R. / (916) 319-2094