BILL ANALYSIS �
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ELECTIONS
AND CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS
Senator Alex Padilla, Chair
BILL NO: AB 2562 HEARING DATE: 6/17/14
AUTHOR: FONG ANALYSIS BY: Frances Tibon
Estoista
AMENDED: 5/23/14
FISCAL: NO
SUBJECT
Elections
DESCRIPTION
Existing law permits a school district or community college
district board to fill a vacancy on the board by calling a
special election or by making a provisional appointment. If the
board makes a provisional appointment, registered voters may
petition for a special election to be held to fill the vacancy.
The number of signatures needed on the petition in order to
require a special election to be held is based on the number of
registered voters in the district.
This bill clarifies that the number of signatures needed on a
petition to require a special election to fill a vacancy in a
trustee area on a school or community college district board is
based on the number of registered voters in the trustee area,
rather than on the number of registered voters in the entire
school or community college district.
Existing law further provides that a person appointed to fill a
vacancy on a school or community college district board hold
office only until the next regularly scheduled election for
district governing board members, whereupon an election shall be
held to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the unexpired
term. A person elected at an election to fill the school or
community college board vacancy shall hold office for the
remainder of the term in which the vacancy occurs or will occur.
This bill provides that a person appointed to fill a vacancy on
a school or community college district board to hold office only
until the next regularly scheduled election for district
governing board members that is scheduled 130 or more days after
the effective date of the vacancy.
Existing law requires a voter who is signing an initiative,
referendum, recall, nomination, or other election petition or
paper, to personally affix his or her signature, printed name,
and place of residence on the petition or paper, and further
provides that if the residence address on the petition or paper
does not match the residence address on the voter's affidavit of
registration, the signature on the paper or petition shall not
be counted as valid.
This bill specifies that an incomplete or inaccurate apartment
or unit number in the residence address of a signer of an
election petition or paper shall not invalidate that person's
signature.
Existing law specifies that when an elections official receives
an argument relating to a city measure that will be printed in
the ballot pamphlet, the elections official must send a copy of
an argument in favor of the proposition to the authors of any
argument against the measure and a copy of an argument against
the measure to the authors of any argument in favor of the
measure immediately upon receiving the arguments.
This bill clarifies that when an argument in favor and an
argument against a measure have been selected to be printed in
the ballot pamphlet, the elections official is required to send
a copy of the argument in favor of the measure to the authors of
the argument against the measure and a copy of an argument
against the measure to the authors of the argument in favor of
the measure.
Existing law provides that a person who is qualified to register
to vote and who has a valid California driver's license or state
identification card may submit an affidavit of voter
registration electronically on the Secretary of State's (SOS)
website, and also provides that an affidavit submitted on the
SOS's website is effective upon receipt of the affidavit by the
SOS if the affidavit is received on or before the last day to
register for an election to be held in the precinct of the
person submitting the affidavit.
This bill makes various conforming changes to provisions of law
governing the voter registration process to reflect the
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existence of online voter registration.
Existing law requires a voting system that has been tested and
approved for use in all elections by the SOS before January 1,
2014, be deemed certified or conditionally approved by the SOS
and may be used in an election subject to any conditions placed
on the use of the voting system by the SOS before January 1,
2014, including conditions imposed in the reapproval documents
issued by the SOS in 2007 and 2008 following the Top-to-Bottom
Review, and its subsequent revisions. Existing law further
provides that a vendor or county that has submitted a voting
system for federal qualification before August 1, 2013, upon
obtaining federal qualification before January 1, 2015, may
request approval of the voting system from the SOS based on the
examination and review requirements in place before January 1,
2014.
This bill moves the date under which a voting system had to be
submitted for federal qualification in order for that system to
be subject to the pre-SB 360 (Padilla) testing requirements from
August 1, 2013 to September 1, 2013.
Existing law requires county elections officials to file a
statement containing all of the following information not later
than December 31 of each year for each district election in the
county held pursuant to specified provisions of law:
a) The list of offices to be filled;
b) The name of each candidate, including occupational
designation, if any;
c) The name of each successful candidate;
d) The number of voters eligible to vote in the district and, if
voting is by division, the number of voters eligible to vote
in each division;
e) The number of votes for each candidate; and,
f) The list of offices for which appointments have been made in
lieu of election pursuant to specified provisions of law,
together with the names of the persons so appointed.
This bill deletes a requirement for county elections officials
to submit an annual report to the SOS detailing information
about district elections held in the county.
This bill corrects various erroneous cross-references in the
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Elections Code and makes other technical and conforming changes.
BACKGROUND
1. School & Community College District Vacancies : Under
existing law, when a vacancy occurs on the board of a school
district or community college district, the board has two
options for filling that vacancy. The board can either call
a special election to fill the vacancy, or the board can make
a provisional appointment to fill the vacancy. If the board
chooses to make a provisional appointment, voters in the
district have the ability to require a special election to be
held to fill the vacancy by submitting a specified number of
signatures on a petition. The number of signatures needed is
based on the number of registered voters in the district.
The law concerning the number of signatures needed to force a
special election is ambiguous, however, in cases where board
members are elected from trustee areas, rather than being
elected at-large. In this situation, it is unclear whether
the number of signatures needed to force a special election
is based on the number of registered voters in the entire
school or community college district, or if it is based on
the number of registered voters in the trustee area in
question. Similarly, it is unclear whether the petition may
be signed by any voter in the school or community college
district, or whether the petition may be signed only by
voters who are registered within the trustee area.
Additionally, if a school or community college district board
fills a vacancy by appointment, the person who is appointed
holds the seat only until the next regularly scheduled
election for district governing board members, whereupon an
election is held to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the
term. If a vacancy occurs shortly before a scheduled
election for district governing board members, however, it
may not be logistically possible to add an additional contest
to the ballot for the upcoming election. This bill would
provide that a person who is appointed to fill a vacancy on a
school or community college district board would hold office
until the next regularly scheduled election for district
governing board members that is scheduled at least 130 days
after the effective date of the vacancy.
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2. Apartment Numbers on Petitions : When a voter signs an
election petition or paper, including nomination papers and
initiative, referendum, and recall petitions, the voter is
required to provide his or her address. A voter's signature
is not counted as valid if the address on the petition or
paper does not match the address on the voter's affidavit of
registration. Voters who live in apartments often omit their
apartment number, or transpose numbers in the apartment
number, when writing their address on a petition. Existing
law does not explicitly address whether an incorrect or
missing apartment number should disqualify a signature on an
election paper or petition, but many elections officials
count such signatures as valid if the street address for the
voter is correct and the voter's signature on the petition or
paper matches the signature on the voter's registration
record.
3. Online Voter Registration : In 2012, the SOS launched a
system that permits California voters to register to vote on
the SOS's website, pursuant to legislation previously
approved by the Legislature and Governor - SB 381 (Ron
Calderon), Ch. 613, Statutes of 2008 and SB 397 (Yee), Ch.
561, Statutes of 2011. Since the launch of the online voter
registration system, it has come to light that sections of
the Elections Code that describe processes related to voter
registration do not reference the existence of the electronic
application. This bill makes various non-substantive changes
to provisions of law governing the voter registration process
to recognize the existence of online voter registration.
4. City Ballot Arguments : Section 9285 of the Elections Code,
dealing with the exchange of ballot arguments on city
measures, specifies that elections officials must transmit
copies of arguments in favor of a city measure to the
opponents of the measure, and in opposition to a city measure
to the proponents of the measure, immediately upon receiving
those arguments. However, because multiple arguments may be
received by the city elections official, and because
arguments can be withdrawn up until the deadline for filing
ballot arguments, the official cannot know which arguments
will be the official arguments that will be included in
election materials until after the deadline has passed for
submitting arguments.
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This proposal clarifies that a city elections official will
transmit ballot arguments once the arguments that will be
printed in the ballot pamphlet have been selected, rather
than once they have been received.
5. District Elections Report : The Uniform District Election
Law (UDEL) was first enacted through the passage of AB 1892
(Porter, et al.), Ch. 2019, Statutes of 1965, in an attempt
to consolidate and standardize election procedures for
various districts in the state. UDEL initially applied only
to water districts, but subsequent legislation made UDEL
applicable to various other districts in the state, and made
changes to the UDEL procedures to address problems and
technical difficulties that arose during the first elections
conducted under UDEL. One such piece of legislation - AB
605 (Porter), Ch. 268, Statutes of 1968 - added a
requirement for county elections officials to file an annual
report with the SOS detailing certain information about
elections held in the county under UDEL. The legislative
history available on AB 605 does not indicate the purpose of
requiring those reports, though the reports may have been
helpful tools after the first few elections conducted using
UDEL in determining which districts were conducting
elections under that law, and in evaluating whether changes
to the law might be warranted.
In any case, regardless of the original purpose of this
reporting requirement, elections officials suggest that the
reporting requirement has outlived its usefulness, that the
reports take a significant amount of staff time and
resources to prepare, and that the completed reports that
are submitted to the SOS are filed away by the SOS and are
not regularly reviewed or otherwise used for any specific
purpose. This bill repeals that reporting requirement.
6. Outdated & Erroneous Cross References : Last year, the
Legislature approved and the Governor signed SB 360
(Padilla), Ch. 602, Statutes of 2013, which overhauled and
reorganized procedures and criteria for the certification and
approval of a voting system. Among other provisions, SB 360
moved the definitions of certain terms from Section 19251 of
the Elections Code to Section 19271 of the Elections Code,
but that bill failed to update three cross-references in the
Elections Code to the section containing those definitions.
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This bill updates those outdated cross-references.
In 1994, the Legislature reorganized the Elections Code through
the passage of SB 1547 (Elections and Reapportionment
Committee), Ch. 920, Statutes of 1994. That bill was
intended to be non-substantive, rearranging the Elections
Code into a more logical and manageable format. The same
year, AB 2219 (Horcher), Ch. 79, Statutes of 1994, eliminated
certain recall procedures that applied to recalls against
city officers, and instead made city recalls subject to the
same provisions of law that applied to recalls against all
other public officers. Pursuant to the terms of the
reorganization bill, the language from AB 2219 took effect
and prevailed over the changes proposed to the same code
sections in the reorganization bill. However, a
cross-reference to the city recall procedures was not updated
in AB 2219, and so that cross-reference remained in the law
as a part of the reorganization of the Elections Code. This
bill updates that erroneous cross-reference.
7. Voting System Certification and SB 360 : SB 360 (Padilla),
Ch. 602, Statutes of 2013, significantly modified the
procedures for the certification of voting systems that are
used in elections held in the state. Under the provisions of
SB 360, any voting system that was submitted for federal
qualification before August 1, 2013 could be submitted for
state approval under the state's voting system certification
requirements that were in place prior to the approval of SB
360. Until the last month of the legislative process, SB 360
provided that any voting systems submitted for federal
qualification prior to January 1, 2014 would be subject to
the old state certification requirements. The amendment to
move the date from January 1, 2014 to August 1, 2013 was made
due to concern that the time between the Governor's action on
SB 360 and the effective date of the bill could encourage
voting system vendors to "rush" voting systems to federal
qualification testing in order to avoid being subject to the
new state certification procedures. The August 1 date,
however, was also intended to ensure that voting system
upgrades that were ready for testing could move forward under
the voting system rules in place at the time. However, one
set of voting system equipment that was being prepared for
federal testing was not submitted for federal qualification
until late August 2013. A number of counties are interested
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in upgrading components of their voting systems with that
equipment.
This proposal moves the date under which a voting system had
to be submitted for federal qualification in order for that
system to be subject to the pre-SB 360 testing requirements
from August 1, 2013 to September 1, 2013.
COMMENTS
1. According to the Author : This elections omnibus bill
contains various minor and technical changes to provisions of
the Elections Code. All of the provisions of this bill are
either changes requested by the California Association of
Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO) or the Secretary of
State, or are technical changes identified and suggested by
Elections & Redistricting Committee staff.
PRIOR ACTION
Assembly Elections and Redistricting Committee: 6-0
Assembly Floor: 78-0
POSITIONS
Sponsor: Author
Support: Secretary of State
Oppose: None received
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