BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS AND REAPPORTIONMENT
Senator Don Perata, Chair
BILL NO: AB 714 HEARING DATE:
6/16/04
AUTHOR: LENO ANALYSIS BY:Darren
Chesin
AMENDED: 6/9/04
FISCAL: YES
PRIOR ACTION :
Assembly Elections, Redistricting, 6-0
and Constitutional Amendments:
Assembly Appropriations: 24-0
Assembly Floor: 79-0
NOTE : This bill was completely re-written in the Senate.
Therefore, the prior votes are not relevant to the current
version of the bill. This bill is now identical to AB 828
(Leno) of 2003 which passed this committee 3-2 and the
Senate 24-13 but was vetoed by the Governor.
SUBJECT :
Election day procedures
BACKGROUND :
Existing law provides for all of the following:
Requires elections officials to provide a sufficient
number of ballots to each precinct, which in no case
shall be a number fewer than 75% of all registered voters
in the precinct, as specified.
Requires the elections official, in the event that the
precinct board is unable to furnish a ballot to a
qualified voter due to an insufficient number of ballots,
to deliver additional ballots to the precinct so that all
eligible voters may cast a ballot by 10 p.m.
Requires the polls to remain open a sufficient amount of
time to allow any voter in the polling place, or in line
at the door, at the time the polls are to close, who is
qualified to vote but has not been able to do so, to
vote.
Requires any ballot that is torn, bent or otherwise
defective to be corrected so that tabulating equipment
may read the ballot. If necessary, a duplicate copy of
the ballot must be made, following the intention of the
voter, insofar as it can be ascertained from the
defective ballot.
Requires all voting systems used in California to be
certified by the Secretary of State.
PROPOSED LAW :
This bill would provide that if a precinct board is unable
to furnish a ballot to any eligible voter, the precinct
board shall do the following in this order:
1.Authorize official sample ballots to be marked by the
voter and used in place of a ballot.
2.Provide a sample ballot for reference, paper and pen and
permit the voter to cast his or her vote in writing.
3.Provide a sample ballot for reference and permit the
voter to supply paper and pen to cast his or her vote in
writing.
If a ballot is cast pursuant to this procedure the precinct
board must inform the voter that if the elections official
cannot determine the voter's intention during the canvass
process, the vote may not be counted. A slate mailer or
any preprinted paper with the names of candidates or ballot
measures not supplied by the precinct board, may not be
used in place of a ballot. A ballot cast this way must be
cast in a polling place and placed in a provisional ballot
envelope to be completed and signed by the voter.
Votes cast in this manner would be treated as damaged
ballots and duplicated by the elections official onto
proper ballots for tabulation purposes.
If ballots are cast pursuant to this procedure, this bill
would require the Secretary of State to investigate the
circumstances that caused it, whether or not any voters
were disenfranchised, and make recommendations to prevent
reoccurrence.
This bill would state legislative findings that, among
other things, allowing a voter to use a sample ballot or a
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piece of paper to cast a vote is an option of last resort
intended to ensure that no eligible voter is deliberately
or inadvertently disenfranchised should a precinct run out
of ballots.
This bill would also require every county utilizing a
direct recording electronic voting system (usually
touchscreens) in precincts, to establish and implement an
alternative voting procedure in the event that the
electronic system fails. The alternative procedure must be
approved by the Secretary of State.
COMMENTS :
1.According to the author, Assembly Bill 828 ensures that
all eligible voters who wish to vote, may do so. During
the 2002 General Election, there were a number of
precincts, many of which were in my district, that ran
out of ballots. While this is not common, it has
happened in other parts of the state in the past -- this
is a non-partisan problem.
This is an economical solution. The alternative is to
raise the number of required ballots, currently it is 75%
of eligible voters in a precinct. If regular ballots are
unavailable, whether they have run out, or are in
transit, sample ballots would be provided, and treated as
provisional ballots. If there were not enough sample
ballots, a pen and paper would be provided and the hand
written ballot would be treated as a provisional ballot.
2.This bill is identical to AB 828 (Leno) of 2003 which
passed this committee 3-2 and the Senate 24-13 but was
vetoed by the Governor. In his veto message, the
Governor stated the following:
"AB 828 requires elections officials to establish and
implement alternative voting procedures in the event a
precinct board runs out of ballots. It also requires
every county to develop an alternative voting procedure
in the event that an electronic voting system fails.
While I appreciate the authors effort in addressing such
issues, I am concerned that allowing voters to use any
type of paper to cast his or her vote could lead to voter
fraud and confusion. Furthermore, according to the
Department of Finance, this bill could result in a
significant reimbursable state mandated program for the
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requirement that polling places follow specified
procedures when a precinct runs out of ballots.
Therefore, I am unable to sign this bill."
3.The author points to the 2002 General Election when
nearly 20 polling places in San Francisco temporarily ran
out of ballots and the polls were forced to stay open
past the normal 8 p.m. closing time. While current law
does require elections officials to deliver additional
ballots to precincts that have run out of ballots, it is
impossible to determine how many voters, if any, simply
left without casting a ballot, rather than wait for more
ballots to be delivered.
Additionally, during the March 2, 2004 Statewide Primary
Election, failures related to electronic voting systems
led to the disenfranchisement of thousands of California
voters. In Alameda County, encoding devices necessary to
operate the voting machines failed in 24 percent of the
polling places. In San Diego County, encoding device
failures caused the delay in opening of over one-third of
all polling places - the last one not opening until after
11:00 a.m.
The problem in Alameda County was mitigated somewhat by
their ability to provide many voters at the affected
polling places with paper provisional ballots. San Diego
County, despite the Secretary of State's urging not to do
so, conducted provisional voting electronically and
therefore had no paper provisional ballots to use when
their electronic equipment failed. The Secretary of
State recently made the use of paper provisional ballots
one of several conditions for recertification of
specified electronic voting systems. This bill should be
amended to require all provisional voting to be conducted
with paper ballots in order to further mitigate the
problems it is attempting to address.
4.This bill does not specify in any way how votes should be
cast using a sample ballot or "in writing" on paper. It
would therefore give sole discretion to elections
officials to determine the intent of the voter based on
what the voter writes or marks. This bill should be
amended to require the Secretary of State to develop
guidelines to address this problem.
5.This bill permits voters to supply their own paper to
cast a vote under specified circumstances but provides no
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restriction on what constitutes acceptable paper other
than prohibiting use of a slate mailer or similar
publication. A precinct board would therefore be
required to accept any paper as a valid ballot regardless
of size or any other factor that may prove problematic.
This bill should be amended to require the Secretary of
State to develop guidelines to address this problem.
6.The alternative voting method proposed in this bill is
loosely based on provisions in current law relating to
defective ballots. Currently, if a ballot cast by a
voter is torn, bent, or otherwise unreadable by a
tabulating machine, the elections official is required to
copy the votes cast on the defective ballot onto another
ballot so that the tabulating equipment may read it.
Under this bill, an elections official may allow a voter
to cast a paper ballot using either a sample ballot or on
paper. That paper ballot would then be subject to the
same procedure as defective ballots.
POSITIONS :
Sponsor: Author
Support: None received
Oppose: None received
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