Curing Joe’s vote

The victory of “landslide Joe” despite election disintegrity. Do you really want to see how the sausage is made?

The recent Presidential election was not marred by the controversies seen in 2020. But ongoing problems with the election process do affect local office elections, as seen in the successful election of my friend Joe to a local county board.

Joe’s campaign as a conservative running for the local community college board was hotly contested in our deeply blue state. Local Republicans had learned from prior elections and had improved their ground game. More volunteers had been recruited to walk the district. Use of social media was more present and professional. Phone bank calling, texting, and emails were used in addition to the usual mailers. Despite the deep blueness of our state and county, Joe came from a very red city within the district with a good base of support but still needing to appeal to many independents and even weak Democrats. He anticipated a very close race, and because of work done and publicized by non-profit groups such as the Election Integrity Project of California, Restore the Vote Ventura, and others, his campaign knew that “curing” votes after Election Day would be very important if he was to have a chance of success. What is curing the vote, and why is it necessary? It is the last vital step in a long complex process.

In this state the vast majority of votes are now by mail. Because of this Election Day no longer exists; instead, we have an election period of about six weeks before the full tally of votes is known and certified. The overly difficult process is full of opportunities for errors and omissions which certainly could affect Joe’s small race, and even options for deliberate meddling with the vote totals of local, state, or national races. Let’s review how each of Joe’s votes came to be.

First, our Vote by Mail ballot packages are printed in Washington state by the low bidder. Our county, due to different districts for different offices, has approximately 250 slightly different versions of the ballot. These ballot packages are large envelopes containing the ballot pages (which do not identify the voter using them) and a return envelope barcoded with the voter’s identity to mail the ballot into the county Election Division. These envelopes require that the voter sign the envelope and date it. If someone assists the voter or collects it for them to turn in instead of mailing it, that person must sign also. More than one voter can include their ballots in one envelope if they also sign and date the outside of the envelope. These Vote by Mail packages printed with the voters’ addresses as per the state rolls (which contain, as shown in audits, thousands of voters who have moved out of county, out of state, died, etc.) are packed on large pallets in the back of semi-truck trailers that are securely locked and driven down to one of our county’s two USPS mail distribution centers. Here they are unloaded under direct supervision of the USPS staff who also check that each pallet is complete as listed on the truck manifest. The Vote by Mail packages then enter the custody of United States Postal Service.

In that distribution center, the pallets are broken down and the ballots processed for delivery to local post offices through their massive, sophisticated machinery as is all other mail. These separated groups are then trucked out to the individual post offices that same day. The receiving post offices again sort the Vote by Mail packages by “route”, meaning they are grouped according to each individual postal person’s route in order of the addresses as they drive or walk by. Your friendly individual postman then attempts to deliver your Vote by Mail package to your address. At no time are these packages under any special custody; they are treated like all other items going through the USPS system. Some of them are “UAA”, undeliverable as addressed, and these go back to the post offices, eventually making their way back to one of the distribution centers and then on to the Election Division office where they receive special separate handling (see below).

You grab your mail and sort through it, hopefully dealing with your individual Vote by Mail package immediately, being a well-informed citizen who has been paying close attention to all local, state, and national political races and candidates. After all, your right to vote carries the responsibility of actually voting. Your ballot shows the races that are particular to your “precinct”, since many offices overlap at your address like a large Venn diagram. You open the envelope and extract your ballot page(s) and return envelope, and carefully fill in the circles next to the candidates or issue of your choice. You then fold the ballot in thirds and place it in the return Voter envelope, and sign and date it appropriately. No stamps are needed. Then you put it in your neighborhood mailbox, or at the post office, or place it in your own mailbox for your USPS postman to pick up, or you deliver it to a neighborhood Drop Box. These latter are emptied daily by election officials, always two persons having custody of the Vote by Mail ballot/envelopes at all times once they enter, at any point, the custody of election officials anywhere in the process. Some few Vote by Mail ballot/envelopes enter the system at Vote Centers, where voters go physically to register their votes in person, but this process has its own systematic weaknesses. Most votes are returned via the USPS system.

So, you put your voted ballot/envelope into the postal system. Although your signature and date are on the outside of the envelope (otherwise it will not be counted), the ballot inside has no marks to identify who cast the vote. Should several voters put their ballots in the same envelope, but some not sign the outside, the Election Division has no way to know which of the ballots included are to be counted. Those that enter the neighborhood post office receive a Postmark, a legal marking or document equivalent to a Notary Seal according to USPS regulations. This must legibly show a date on or before Election Day for that vote to be counted, even if received up to seven days after Election Day. Each Vote by Mail envelope containing said ballot also receives a yellow-orange fluorescent bar-code on the back showing just a date—no day of the week, month, or year. This mark is specifically for internal USPS use only in back-tracking a piece of mail if necessary. That, and its non-use as a Postmark, is also specified in USPS regulations. The bar-code can only be read by a special scanner possessed by the USPS. But, as one of the many steps in the election process changed not by law but by administrative act, our Secretary of State has directed all Registrar of Voters to use that bar-code to certify a vote as “timely cast” in the absence of a legible Postmark even after Election Day. This requires that each Election Division possess that special scanner. One local election official told this author specifically that the USPS had provided such a scanner to our county Election Division. One local USPS official stated to me emphatically that this was not so; they are not in the habit of providing very expensive machinery to local government agencies, nor providing for calibrating or maintaining such scanners. One of many mysteries in our ponderous and “convenient” election process.

Once your Vote by Mail envelope with its ballot reaches the Election Division via postal delivery, Drop Box, or voter deposit at a Vote Center (with their own sets of violations of security), it is collected in large batches in loaned USPS “trays” with each envelope oriented in the same direction, by hand. These batches are then run through an “Apex” machine which reads and digitally photographs the signature side of the envelope and can compare the signature electronically with those on file (a bar code on the envelope identifies the voter). Those signatures may be from the voter’s registration obtained by the Election Division, or Division of Motor Vehicles (the motor voter method), or now by any state or federal agency that comes in contact with a supposed voter. Here voter registration is based on the “honor method”. If the person registering is saying they are eligible to vote, they are registered without proof of same. Recent audits of the voter rolls have shown that many people registered through the DMV have, for unknown reasons, had their place or country of birth changed, and even their birthdates. But that Apex machine signature decision is not accepted by itself. All signatures are finally “verified” by a bank of 6-8 persons sitting at computer screens. Each person views a screen showing images of four voter signatures and the registered signatures for comparison. By stopwatch, each person approves four voters’ signatures in three to four seconds, then goes on to the next screen. Occasionally a signature appears different enough from those on file for the reviewer to spend up to thirty to forty-five seconds looking at it and calling up other signatures on computer files for further comparison. A few are rejected and sent for further review by supervisors. Of these, many will result in a need to “cure” the signature and thus allow counting of the ballot. A postcard is printed and mailed to the voter asking them to confirm by mail or personal appearance that they are indeed the voter who submitted the ballot. Many never respond. Thus, as we shall see, the need for Joe to act.

Those signatures that pass rapid review allow those ballot envelopes to go to another machine. This one, called “Opex”, takes batches of ballots sorted, oriented, and loaded by hand through the machine, slices off the top of the ballot envelopes, and presents each individual envelope opened to another election worker. That worker extracts the folded ballot pages. The empty envelopes drop into a box, are strung together with zip ties via an existing hole in the envelope and then stored for twenty-two months. The ballots are moved to a series of tables, where election workers carefully unfold the tri-folded stiff ballot pages, and try to flatten out the fold creases, stacking the ballots in boxes. This room is also home to a Ballot Duplication team that “duplicates” ballots that have been damaged in mailing or handling. This is done by one person calling out what appears to be each vote on a ballot and another person marking a new ballot. There is no confirmation that the “call outs” are correct. Those duplicated ballots then enter the batches of flattened ballots for tabulating. All this takes place in a room secured by fencing ceiling to floor with doors for entry requiring a keycard so that only those with privileges to be in that room can enter, and so a record of who entered and when is obtainable. Each door has a sign saying, “to remain closed during election cycle”. For convenience (and avoiding the recording of who enters and exits via the keycard reader), these doors are routinely tied open with bungee cords throughout that election cycle. As are similarly labelled doors to where election equipment is stored. Entry to all secured areas of the Election Division as well as the Division itself is often by “piggybacking”. One person with the proper keycard credentials opens a secured door and another person who may or may not possess the proper credentials follows them into the secured room.

Boxes of flattened ballot pages are carried across a hall and pushed via a window and conveyor belt into the EMS (Election Management System) room. This room is listed as closed, secured, with no external connections, and inviolable without authorized keycard entry by only certain certified election workers. It contains high speed machines that scan and tabulate the votes on each ballot page, sending the data to the Election Management System central computer in the same room. These tabulators are connected via computer cables running under a false floor. The entire system is said to be “air gapped”. No wired, wireless, or internet connections are allowed. They are necessary, since the private company software (not reviewable by the public or by most election officials as it is “proprietary”) which runs the system needs to be updated or corrected occasionally. This programming or data can also be downloaded or modified by use of USB drives. Election workers have been observed and recorded on livestream video using USB drives with the EMS computer during election processing. When questioned as to what was being done with these drives, the Election Division does not provide answers. The publicly available live stream video coverage of all rooms in the Election Division, since these observations were documented, has been removed. Only in-person observation is allowed via standing for many hours at a time in specified “quarantine” boxes which the observer cannot leave without permission of an election worker.

Two to four inches of flattened ballots are fed by hand into each of four tabulator scanners at a time. Some ballot pages are rejected and then fed through again. Some that are rejected need to be reviewed as they show extra marks, or overvotes (voting for more than one candidate for a race), or undervotes (no apparent vote for any candidate in a race). The digital images of these ballots are transmitted to a room next to the EMS room, where several two person teams “Adjudicate” these ballots. Notably, this room has an additional doorway leading into the back of the EMS room and is not key carded for entry. Unlike the ballot duplication process, here the two election workers view the same ballot image together and come to agreement on what was the voter’s intent. Then those corrected ballot images are sent to the EMS computer for tabulation. No actual “counting” supposedly occurs until the end of the formal Election Day at 8 p.m.

The Voting Centers close at 8 p.m. on that day, although those waiting in line at that time are still allowed to enter and vote. The final “bags” of votes from Voting Centers may not be delivered to the Election Division by two person teams until late that night. The ballot pages, or voter envelopes, dropped off at a Vote Center then enter the Apex/Opex machine process or go directly to the ballot flattening room. This, plus the acceptance of Vote by Mail envelopes delivered up to seven days after Election Day, which must have a legible Postmark on or before Election Day (or, failing that, have a barcode date that the Election Division chooses, possibly illegally, to treat as a Postmark), takes the counting process several weeks past Election Day. Two types of received ballots receive special treatment.

As mentioned, many mailed Vote by Mail packages are “Undeliverable as Addressed”, or UAAs. Some of these were physical locations associated with registered voters without a residence (i.e. homeless), such as a street corner. In other cases, the address the voter listed does not satisfy certain legal requirements. Many times, due to the problems with inaccurate voter rolls, the listed voter no longer lives at that address or never lived there or no longer lives, period. These Vote by Mail packages are returned by USPS with a yellow label to one of the USPS distribution centers and then picked up by the Election Division. The Election Division then sends a postcard of inquiry to the voter at that address seeking to clarify the issue, and if no reply is received, that voter goes into an “inactive” file in the voter rolls and remains there awaiting possible correction for two federal election cycles, e.g. eight years, before they are dropped off the rolls (if at all).

The other ballots requiring special treatment are those whose signatures did not match or had other superficial discrepancies. The Election Division seeks to “cure” these votes by sending postcards to the voter asking them to come in and verify their vote and/or signature. Some do so, many do not—after all, the weeks-long counting process is already underway, and what difference can their one vote make? Candidates for office have the opportunity to view the daily results of their race and have access to the list of voters whose vote need to be cured. If the candidate has the determination and the time and/or volunteers, they can physically go to these voter’s households and “cure” the vote for a race then and there. Joe was such a determined candidate, especially since the daily returns indicated a hairs’ breadth difference between him and his opponent. He got the list, and walked his office’s district, house by house, knocking on doors and explaining the situation to the voters he was able to contact. Since it was a local office and a “small” race, his productivity was not great. But he doggedly continued throughout the final weekend that curing was allowed, turning in his final results on the last possible day at the Election Division. That last weekend’s tally was three more votes for him, and from the ongoing daily results, it looked like he would win by those three votes.

As it turned out, his estimation was off. The final certified tally from the Election Division, almost six weeks after Election Day, showed Joe’s victory by seven votes. After consideration of a very expensive recount process, his opponent decided to concede. And so “Landslide Joe” was elected.

Never discount the worth of your opinion, or the power of your vote.