BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON
ELECTIONS AND CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
Senator Ben Allen, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular
Bill No: SB 450 Hearing Date: 08/25/16
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|Author: |Allen |
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|Version: |8/18/16 Amended |
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|Urgency: |No |Fiscal: |Yes |
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|Consultant:|Darren Chesin |
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Subject: Elections: vote by mail voting and mail ballot
elections
DIGEST
Permits specified counties beginning in 2018, and all other
counties beginning in 2020, to conduct elections in which every
voter is mailed a ballot and vote centers and ballot drop-off
locations are available prior to and on Election Day, in lieu of
operating polling places for the election, subject to certain
conditions. Permits Los Angeles County, beginning in 2020 and
for a period of not more than four years, to conduct elections
in which vote centers and ballot drop-off locations are
available prior to and on election day, in lieu of operating
polling places for the election, subject to certain conditions.
ANALYSIS
Existing law:
1)Allows a voter who wishes to receive a vote by mail (VBM)
ballot for every election in which that voter is eligible to
vote to become a permanent VBM voter.
2)Permits, but does not require, elections officials to allow
voters to cast ballots prior to an election at their offices
or satellite locations on weekends or times beyond regular
office hours.
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3)Permits a voter who is otherwise qualified to register to vote
to complete a conditional voter registration, as defined, and
to cast a provisional ballot during the 14 days immediately
preceding an election or on Election Day at the office of the
elections official. Permits the county elections official to
offer conditional voter registration at satellite offices of
the county elections official. Provides that these provisions
do not become operative until January 1 of the year following
the year in which the Secretary of State (SOS) certifies that
the state has a statewide voter registration database that
complies with the requirements of the federal Help America
Vote Act (HAVA).
4)Allows local elections held on no more than three different
dates in Monterey, Sacramento, San Mateo, and Yolo counties to
be conducted wholly by mail, as part of a pilot project
lasting through January 1, 2018, subject to certain
conditions.
5)Permits San Diego County, as part of a pilot program lasting
through January 1, 2021, to conduct a special election to fill
a vacancy in the Legislature or in Congress as an all-mailed
ballot election, subject to certain conditions and reporting
requirements.
6)Requires precinct boundaries to be fixed in a manner so that
the number of voters in the precinct does not exceed 1,000 on
the 88th day prior to the day of election, except as
specified. Requires an elections official, at least 29 days
prior to an election, to designate a polling place for each
precinct, except as specified.
7)Requires a state or a political subdivision of a state to
provide voting materials in the language of a minority group
according to specified criteria.
8)Requires the elections official to make reasonable efforts to
recruit elections officials who are fluent in a language if
three percent or more of the voting-age residents in the
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precinct are fluent in that language and lack sufficient skill
in English to vote without assistance.
9)Requires the elections official to undertake necessary
measures when locating polling places to ensure that polling
places meet the guidelines promulgated by the SOS for
accessibility by the physically handicapped.
10)Requires, pursuant to HAVA, that voting systems used in an
election for federal office be accessible for individuals with
disabilities, including nonvisual accessibility for the blind
and visually impaired, in a manner that provides the same
opportunity for access and participation, including privacy
and independence, as for other voters.
This bill:
1)Permits the counties of Calaveras, Inyo, Madera, Napa, Nevada,
Orange, Sacramento, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Clara,
Shasta, Sierra, Sutter, and Tuolumne, on or after January 1,
2018, and all other counties, on or after January 1, 2020, to
choose to conduct elections where all voters are mailed a
ballot and where vote centers and ballot drop-off locations
are available prior to and on Election Day, in lieu of
operating polling places for the election, subject to the
following conditions:
a) Vote Centers. Requires vote centers to be open, in lieu
of polling places, on Election Day, and for the 10 days
prior to Election Day. Requires, for regularly scheduled
elections, one vote center for every 50,000 registered
voters from the 10th day to the 4th day prior to the
election, and one vote center for every 10,000 registered
voters from the 3rd day prior to the election through
election day, with no fewer than two vote centers.
Requires, for special elections, one vote center for every
60,000 registered voters from the 10th day to the day prior
to the election, and one vote center for every 30,000
registered voters on Election Day, as specified. Specifies
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minimum hours of operation at vote centers. Requires vote
centers to be accessible to voters with disabilities, and
requires language assistance to be provided at vote centers
consistent with current state and federal law. Requires
vote centers to be equitably distributed around the county
so as to afford maximally convenient options for voters at
accessible locations as near as possible to established
public transportation routes.
Requires every vote center to have an electronic mechanism
that allows elections officials to immediately access voter
registration data, including whether each voter has been
issued a VBM ballot and whether a ballot has been received
by the elections official.
Provides that the requirements for eligibility and
composition of precinct boards at polling places generally
apply for election boards at vote centers, except as
otherwise specified.
Requires that a voter be able to do any of the following at
any vote center in the voter's county of residence:
i. Return, or vote and return, a VBM ballot;
ii. Register to vote, or update his or her registration,
and vote, as specified;
iii. Receive and vote a provisional ballot, as specified;
iv. Receive a replacement ballot upon verification that
a ballot for the same election has not been received from
the voter by the elections official; and,
v. Vote a regular, provisional, or replacement ballot
using accessible voting equipment that provides for a
private and independent voting experience.
a) Vote by Mail Ballots and Return. Requires all
registered voters to be mailed ballots and requires ballot
drop-off locations, consisting of a secure, accessible,
locked ballot box, to be available from the 28th day before
the election through Election Day, as specified. Requires
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a ballot drop-off location for every 15,000 registered
voters.
b) Election Administration. Requires county elections
officials to develop a plan for conducting elections, and
specifies the elements of the plan, including voter
education and outreach, and the public process for
developing the plan. Requires the SOS to review and
approve the voter education and outreach portions of the
plan.
c) Requires a toll-free voter assistance hotline,
accessible to voters who are deaf and hard of hearing,
maintained by the county elections official that is
operational no later than 29 days before the day of the
election until 5 p.m. on the day after the election.
Requires the hotline to provide assistance to voters in all
languages in which the county is required to provide voting
materials and assistance, as specified.
d) Requires the county elections official to establish a
Language Access Advisory Committee and a Voting
Accessibility Advisory Committee, as specified.
e) Permits a county to conduct a special election as an
all-mailed ballot election under this bill, as specified.
1)Los Angeles County Alternative. Permits Los Angeles County,
beginning January 1, 2020, to conduct elections subject to the
same conditions that are generally applicable above, with the
following exceptions:
a) The county is not required to mail a ballot to every
registered voter, but is required to mail ballots to
permanent VBM voters, voters in precincts with fewer than
500 registered voters, voters in jurisdictions that are
shared with counties that are conducting elections pursuant
to this bill, and voters in precincts that are either more
than a 30-minute travel time from a vote center, or where
the precinct's polling place from the last statewide
election is more than 15 miles from the nearest vote
center.
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b) Requires, for regularly scheduled elections, one vote
center for every 30,000 registered voters from the 10th day
to the 4th day prior to the election, and one vote center
for every 7,500 registered voters from the 3rd day prior to
the election through election day. Additionally requires a
vote center to be located in every city within the county
that has at least 1,000 registered voters. Requires at
least one drop-off location for every 15,000 permanent VBM
voters, with no fewer than two drop-off locations, as
specified.
c) Provides that the county may conduct elections under
this alternative for no more than four years, and allows
the county to conduct elections as otherwise provided in
this bill after that time.
2)Requires the SOS to report specified information to the
Legislature within six months of any election conducted
pursuant to this bill and establish a task force to review
these elections and to provide recommendations to the
Legislature.
3)Allows a VBM ballot to be returned to any polling place within
the state, instead of being limited to polling places within
the jurisdiction of the elections official who issued the
ballot.
4)Contains double-jointing language to avoid chaptering problems
with AB 1921 (Gonzalez).
BACKGROUND
Colorado Model of Elections . As noted in the author's statement
below, the provisions of this bill are modeled after the way
that Colorado conducts its elections. The essence of Colorado's
elections system is that voters may choose to vote at home using
a ballot that is mailed to them, or may visit any of the several
vote centers within their home county on election day, or on the
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days leading up to Election Day, including weekends. Voters may
mail the voted ballot back to elections officials, or may return
it in person to the elections official's office, a vote center,
or a designated drop-off location.
Vote Centers vs. Polling Places . Vote centers under this bill
are polling locations at which any registered voter in a county
can cast a regular (i.e., non-provisional) ballot, regardless of
the voter's precinct. Voters do not need to vote at polling
places near their homes, but can vote at any of the vote centers
throughout the county.
Vote centers provide greater flexibility to voters in deciding
where and when to cast their ballots. The trade-off is that
there are fewer physical voting locations on Election Day itself
in elections using vote centers than in elections using
neighborhood polling places. On the other hand, because vote
centers would be open for the 10 days prior to Election Day
(including two full weekends), the number of days and hours
during which in-person voting is available would increase
significantly. Additionally, with vote centers, a voter could
have the flexibility to vote near his or her work, or near his
or her child's school, if that was a more convenient option.
Because of the reduced number of physical voting locations,
elections officials would also have greater flexibility to
locate vote centers near established public transportation
routes and in areas with sufficient parking. (In fact, this bill
would require elections officials to take those factors into
consideration when deciding where to locate vote centers.)
Technical Requirements for Vote Centers . Because voters have
the option of casting a ballot at any vote center in the county,
vote centers need to have a system that can provide any eligible
voter in the county with the appropriate ballot. While smaller
counties that have fewer ballot styles may be able to
accommodate that need using pre-printed paper ballots, vote
centers in larger jurisdictions likely will feature electronic
voting systems that are pre-loaded with all the ballot types in
the county, or ballot-on-demand printers that can produce the
appropriate paper ballots as needed.
Additionally, in order to verify the registration of voters,
determine the correct ballot type for each voter, and ensure
that a voter has not already cast a ballot, vote centers must
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have a mechanism to verify voter registration information. In
most jurisdictions, this requirement is likely to be met through
the use of electronic poll books that can communicate with the
voter registration database in real-time.
Conditional Voter Registration, a.k.a. "Election Day"
Registration . AB 1436 (Feuer, Chapter 497, Statutes of 2012),
permits "conditional voter registration," under which a person
is allowed to register to vote and vote at the office of the
county elections official at any time, including on election
day, if certain requirements are met. AB 1436 does not,
however, require conditional voter registration to be available
at polling places. Conditional voter registration will go into
effect on January 1 of the year following the date that the SOS
certifies the operation of VoteCal. Under conditional voter
registration, voters will cast provisional ballots which will be
counted only if the elections official is able to determine the
person's eligibility to vote, as specified.
One of the conditions of this bill would require that
conditional voter registration be available at every vote
center. Because counties would not be allowed to operate vote
centers pursuant to this bill until 2018, and because VoteCal is
scheduled to be fully implemented this year, the state law
providing for conditional voter registration is expected to be
in effect before any elections are conducted under the
provisions of this bill.
Early Adopters . The following table details the 14 counties
that would have the option of adopting the provisions of this
bill beginning in 2018, and the number of vote centers and
drop-off locations that each county would be required to
operate, based on current registration figures.
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|County |Registered| Polling | Vote | Vote | Drop-off |
| | Voters* |Places at | Centers, | Centers, |Locations |
| | | 11/2014 | E-10 to | E-3 | |
| | |Election**| E-4 | through | |
| | | | | Election | |
| | | | | Day | |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
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|Orange |1,395,380 | 1135 | 28 | 140 | 94 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Santa | 788,063 | 697 | 16 | 79 | 53 |
|Clara | | | | | |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Sacramento| 715,975 | 528 | 15 | 72 | 48 |
| | | | | | |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|San Mateo | 367,155 | 211 | 8 | 37 | 25 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|San Luis | 155,801 | 145 | 4 | 16 | 11 |
|Obispo | | | | | |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Shasta | 96,310 | 79 | 2 | 10 | 7 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Napa | 72,461 | 13 | 2 | 8 | 5 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Nevada | 66,149 | 39 | 2 | 7 | 5 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Madera | 54,017 | 39 | 2 | 6 | 4 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Sutter | 42,351 | 22 | 2 | 5 | 3 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Tuolumne | 29,472 | 27 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Calaveras | 27,532 | 15 | 2 | 3 | 2 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Inyo | 9,697 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
|----------+----------+----------+----------+----------+----------|
|Sierra | 2,217 | 0*** | 2 | 2 |2 |
| | | | | | |
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*As of 5/23/2016, per Secretary of State's Report of
Registration.
**According to information provided by the counties to the
United States Election Assistance Commission as part of the 2014
Election Administration and Voting Survey.
***Due to the fact that none of Sierra County's precincts have
more than 250 registered voters, all of its precincts were
designated as mailed-ballot precincts for the November 2014
Election. As a result, it did not have polling places for that
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election.
COMMENTS
1)According to the author, California saw historically low
voter turnout in 2014. Only 25 percent of all registered
California voters cast a ballot in the June primary and
only 42 percent participated in the November general
election. Los Angeles County - the largest voting
jurisdiction in the country - had the lowest turnout
among all of California's 58 counties. Fewer than 17
percent of Los Angeles County voters cast a ballot in the
June primary and only 31 percent voted in November.
While voter turnout was poor across the entire country in
2014, California ranked an inexcusable 43rd in turnout
among the 50 states and District of Columbia.
Since 1960 turnout of registered voters in California
off-year general elections has steadily decreased from a
high of 79 percent in 1966 to a previous low of 50.5
percent in 2002. Turnout for off-year primary elections
since 1960 has also steadily decreased from a high of
almost 69 percent in 1978 - when Proposition 13 appeared
on the ballot - to a previous low of 33 percent in 2010.
SB 450 is modeled on the very successful way Colorado
conducts its elections wherein every voter automatically
receives a VBM ballot who may then return that ballot by
mail or in person at numerous drop-off locations and
innovative vote centers. In lieu of traditional
neighborhood polling places, these vote centers are
placed in convenient locations all over town and open
several days prior to each election. Furthermore, voters
can use any vote center or drop-off location in their
home county - they are not limited to using the one
closest to their residence.
At the vote centers, voters can register to vote, cast a
vote, or get a new ballot if they lost or damaged their
mail ballot. They are also equipped with accessible
voting machines for disabled voters and electronic poll
books that interact with the official voter database.
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Fully implemented for the 2014 elections, this hybrid
system resulted in Colorado achieving one of the highest
voter turnouts in the nation. SB 450 will replicate this
system in California on a county by county, opt-in basis
beginning in 2018.
The language of SB 450 was painstakingly developed with the
input of the SOS, county elections officials, and
numerous advocates representing all facets of
California's very diverse electorate. This effort is
evident in the unprecedented lengths to which the bill
goes toward accommodating non-English proficient voters
and voters with accessibility needs as well as requiring
extensive community involvement and voter education.
A majority of our voters are already casting ballots by
mail. During the November, 2014 General Election over 60
percent of all voters statewide used a VBM ballot. Use
of mail ballots in local and special elections is even
higher. Furthermore, a recent poll conducted by the
Public Policy Institute of California found that 70
percent of California adults favor sending every
registered voter a VBM ballot.
SB 450 offers the best opportunity to significantly
increase voter participation while also saving
participating counties money over the current system.
RELATED/PRIOR LEGISLATION
SB 439 (Allen, Chapter 734, Statutes of 2015), allows elections
officials to offer conditional voter registration at satellite
offices on days other than election day, and requires the SOS to
adopt and publish standards for electronic poll books and ballot
on demand printers, as specified.
AB 3024 (Wolk of 2006), would have authorized Solano County to
conduct a pilot project whereby the county elections official
would establish vote centers in lieu of polling places in each
precinct. AB 3024 was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. In
his veto message, the Governor stated that "[w]hile the vote
center system may offer some advantages over the current
precinct-based voting system, the proposed pilot project would
reduce the number of voting locations by 80 percent, and thereby
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significantly increase the distance that voters would have to
travel in order to vote. This burden would fall
disproportionately on those who are less mobile, frequently the
poor, disabled, and elderly."
PRIOR ACTION
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|Assembly Floor: | 47 - 31 |
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|Assembly Appropriations Committee: | 14 - 6 |
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|Assembly Elections and Redistricting | 5 - 2 |
|Committee: | 36 - 0 |
|Senate Floor: | 5 - 0 |
|Senate Elections and Constitutional | |
|Amendments: | |
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POSITIONS
Sponsor: Secretary of State
Support: American Federation of State, County and Municipal
Employees, AFL-CIO
California Association of Clerks and Election Officials
California Association of Nonprofits
California Foundation for Independent Living Centers
California League of Conservation Voters
California Common Cause
California Nurses Association
California Public Interest Research Group
California State Association of Counties
California Transit Association
City Clerks Association of California
Consumer Watchdog
Courage Campaign
Equality California
Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
NARAL Pro-Choice California
Rural County Representatives of California
San Fernando Valley Young Democrats
San Mateo County Board of Supervisors
Service Employees International Union
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Sierra Club California
Oppose: Department of Finance
Election Integrity Project
Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association