Will My Vote Be Counted?
How can I ensure that my provisional ballot is counted?
You can call. If you voted provisional ballot, and you're not sure your provisional ballot counted, after the election you can call. There's a phone number they give you, where you can check if your provisional ballot counted or not, and why it didn't count. I think that is part of the National Legislation. I think that every area that uses provisional ballot has a way for you to check.
What should I look out for when using an absentee ballot?
The big problem with absentee ballot is people don't trust the mail service. If you apply for one and, for some reason, it doesn't show up, then what're you going to do? So people that don't trust the postal service, don't like absentee ballots. But I will say in a huge percentage of the cases, people do get their absentee ballot. I would say make sure you apply one early enough, that you get it in time, so you can get it back in time. If you apply for one right at the deadline, and your postal service is really slow, then you might have a problem with a mail-in ballot. But you could still deliver it to the polling place on election day. Even if it comes late, as long as it comes by election day, you can get it in. An absentee ballot is just like voting at the polls basically. You just don't have the machine. But you do have the book and you say "if you select this candidate, mark number one", so then you put number one. If you want this candidate mark number six, then you mark number six. You must put that back in the envelope because the envelope is your signature envelope; it has your name and address. They've already checked that you're a registered voter, because you wouldn't get an absentee ballot unless you're a registered voter. But they need your signature because they want to make sure that somebody didn't vote on your ballot, and we check signatures on absentee ballots and provisional ballots.
What precautions are taken at polling places to make voting secure?
If you have ever worked at a polling place, you know that we sign loyalty pledges. We sign something that says there's no ballot in that box before we close it and seal it. All the poll workers have to sign off on the material to say that everything was up and up, and there was no lost ballots. You have to account for every ballot that was given to you at a polling place, even the ones that are damaged. So you're given so many ballots. At the end you're going to say, I have this many voting ballots, this one unused, this one damaged. It has to come out equal. Otherwise you might be losing ballots.
Why was there voting controversy in the 2000 Presidental election?
The biggest nightmare an election official could have is a close election. They go to bed before an election, they pray that there is no close elections, because then every vote is looked at, individually, to see if it was counted correctly. And when the Presidential election in 2000 was so close, and certain counties in Florida looked like they were having problems: people said they were voting for one candidate, but the machine was marking another candidate. Because the way the ballot was designed, people were saying that their names were not on the registrars because they had purged the lists and not notified them that they weren't registered voters anymore, there were problems in Florida. And I'm not just saying that's Florida, that could be anywhere, but because of the closeness of the election, all that was looked at under a microscope. And you realize that there's a lot of human error in elections. As long as elections are run by humans there will always be some small margin of error. What amazes me is how small that is in the United States, that people really care how secure ballots are, and there's a lot of thought going into how secure our ballots are. Of course the different parties had different ideas of what should go on after the election. The Democrats obviously wanted to continue the investigation in looking at ballots, the Republican Party wanted to close it. They went to the court because they didn't know, and the state legislature of Florida got involved in making decisions for their election officials. "You have to hand count them," "You can't hand count them," different people were making different decisions county by county, whether they were going to recount, whether they were going to look at each ballot individually, whether they were allowed to remove the chads behind the holes, and stuff like that, all those became big issues. And it went to the Supreme Court to make the final decision to stop the process of arguing between the parties.
What part of the voting process is vulnerable to abuse?
I don't think It's vulnerable at all, I think it's very secure. As long as you look at your ballot and you make sure it was voted correctly before you put it in the ballot box you have a chance of second chance voting here in California. The machine can check your ballots to see if you made over votes and blank ballots and stuff like that. I think there very secure and once that ballot goes in that ballot box we have all kinds of provisions that that's delivered safely. Those ballots are put in sealed boxes, in fireproof bags, put in police cars to take to headquarters on election night. We have helicopters delivering them on election night in those sealed bags. Having worked for the register of voters on Election Day… this is an interesting story one time we had all the ballots in but we couldn't find one precinct. So they couldn't close it was like three in the morning and what they did was they kept calling the inspectors house and there was no answer they couldn't reach her. They sent police to her house and she had died after the polls closed and before the ballots were delivered they found the ballots in her care and they were delivered, but those are very rare instances. They know exactly how many ballots have to come back and where they're coming from and they do not close until every precinct is heard from.
What about 'hanging chads', 'butterfly ballots', long lines and lost ballots?
Butterfly ballots, you know, I hadn't even heard of that before Florida. We test all our equipment before. In California we used punch cards and never had the problem that Florida had. So, I think it's between different areas it's different. Obviously, we check every machine before we ever sent it out to a polling place. There were no backup chads in the machine. Apparently, Florida didn't do that, so they had allot of little holes in their machines, little chads where clogging some of the machines and stuff like that. If a machine doesn't work, and that happens all the time, equipment doesn't work sometimes. Just take it out of use. We always give people extra voting machines, extra pens. We've had polling places where, for some reason, the polling place was locked when the election was suppose to start. We set up the polling place on a car hood outside the polling place. People should be allowed to vote even if the equipment isn't working. If they run out of ballots, no problem, just give them provisional ballots. Let them vote, you known, anyway. We had people vote on pieces of paper for their candidates. They counted. Of course, we take great, great, great strides to make sure each polling place has enough ballots. And there are emergency numbers and precinct people that are driving around with extra equipment in case there's an equipment problem. The equipment works. What happens is, sometimes we have personnel problems at the polling places. But, you know, by and large, it's amazing how well this -- you know those are volunteers, minimal pay, long hours, they got to be there 6 o'clock in the morning and they're there until 10 o'clock at night. They've got to be, have the day off from work. So allot of them are senior citizens, older people, retired people. It's amazing how the system works.
What is the most secure way to vote?
I think they're all secure, but the most secure one is the one you're most confident in. If you're confident - and they're people that say "Why can't we vote by the internet?" That may be something in the future we will be voting by the internet. I do all my banking on the internet. We use ATM machines all the time, we should be able to make voting machines so reliable and accurate that people wouldn't be afraid of them either. A lot of it has to do with verification of you are who are marking that ballot, so the signature is important, you must sign the roster book, you must sign the envelope on a mail-in ballot. Same thing if you vote at early-voting centers you check if you're a registered voter, you sign a card so they have your signature so if there is any problems - It's actually swearing, it's an affidavit when you sign one of those things.
How can a candidate manipulate my vote or an election?
We've all heard stories of candidates going door to door with absentee ballot applications and trying to get people to get an absentee ballot and pre mark it for them and stuff. I think those cases are so rare. I mean, people are smarter than that. I think that everybody should be . . . even when I do voter registration and somebody fills out the form in front of me and they hand me the form, I always say to them, "You know, you have the right to mail this by yourself if you don't trust me." So maybe you should do everything for yourself. Mail it yourself.
What can I do to make elections in my community more secure?
Keep your eyes and ears open. Go to polls. Ask questions. Make sure you understand everything that's happening. Use the equipment that's there, and ask the poll workers to explain it to you. Why do you have to put it in that machine, why I don't do it, do I have to? And if you don't like the machine they're using, there's usually an alternative, there usually is a paper ballot that you can use.
What if I see something suspicious at my polling place?
Report it to the poll workers, call you election officials, they are very interested in what the community sees when they go to vote. They do their best; they have mandatory training sessions for all their poll workers. We pay poll workers extra for going to training. But there are some people that still decide that they're going to run the election their way. So, if you saw something that you don't think is right, talk to the poll worker there that's in charge, and if you don't like their answer call the headquarters, and they have people, they will send out people right away to see what's going on.
