California: Los Angeles voters won’t be offered cash prizes in March city election | Los Angeles Times

A controversial proposal to offer cash prizes to Los Angeles voters is dead — at least for next year’s city elections. Los Angeles City Council President Herb Wesson said this week that he wanted more time to consider the idea of using money or other gifts to lure voters to the polls. For now, he is looking to persuade voters on March 3 to move city elections from odd- to even-numbered years — when state and federal contests are held — beginning in 2020. “I don’t want to overload the public,” Wesson said. “So I think we’re just going to focus on” the change in election dates. Wesson and his colleagues have spent much of this year looking at different proposals for improving L.A.’s dismal voter turnout, which fell to 23% in last year’s mayoral runoff election. Three months ago, the Ethics Commission caused a small uproar by recommending that Wesson’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee look at a lottery — one with prizes of $25,000 or $50,000 — as a tool for enticing Angelenos to cast ballots.

California: Officials ponder all-mail voting | Sacramento Bee

When all the ballots are finally tallied from last week’s election, the proportion of Californians voting by mail is expected to break the record set in 2012, the first time more than half of the state’s electorate voted absentee. The uptick has more Californians pushing for the state to go all the way and ditch traditional polling places. Washington, Colorado and Oregon require all of their elections to be run entirely by mail, and at least 19 others permit some of their elections to be all mail, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. County elections officials have touted the potential increase in voter interest and significant savings from avoiding the task of recruiting and training polling place workers. And some believe an all-mail system could even help speed up and avoid some overtime ballot-counting. “I say, ‘yes, please,’” said Jill LaVine, the registrar of voters in Sacramento County. “I would love to go all vote-by-mail.” LaVine compared overseeing the current system to running two elections at the same time – one via the Postal Service and another at polling places. The latter process is so resource-heavy that her office essentially “shuts down” counting absentee votes the Friday before an election, leaving a huge pile of ballots to count in the days and weeks afterward, LaVine said. “I could direct all my money and equipment to vote-by-mail,” she said, noting that the rural counties of Alpine and Sierra issue mail ballots to everyone. “All of the expenses and problems of running two elections would be off the table. It would be smooth.” LaVine suggests it also could generate speedier election results by giving officials more time to count mail ballots before an election day. In California, seven congressional and legislative races remained undecided for a week as tens of thousands of late-arriving mail and “provisional” ballots were being tallied.

California: Tight races again put spotlight on California recount rules | The Sacramento Bee

Four months after the photo finish in the California controller primary put a spotlight on the state’s unique recount rules, possible recounts loom in a handful of close legislative and congressional races on last week’s ballot. In Sacramento County’s 7th Congressional District, Rep. Ami Bera has cut the lead of Republican former Rep. Doug Ose to 530 votes, just 0.35 percent of the total counted so far, with thousands of late-arriving mail and provisional ballots still to process. Bera’s campaign has already launched a drive to raise money for a possible recount. The next official vote tally is expected Wednesday.

California: Los Angeles officials to consider ballot measures to change election years | Los Angeles Times

Can changing when Los Angeles votes reverse a long-term decline in turnout? Los Angeles lawmakers Friday are set to consider letting voters decide whether city elections should be moved to even-numbered years. The City Council has asked its lawyers to prepare two measures for the March 3 ballot aligning city and school board elections with state and federal contests. But some activists are warning that such a move could cause voter participation to decrease even more. Hans Johnson, president of the East Area Progressive Democrats, pointed to results from the June primary, which showed slightly more than 16% of L.A. voters casting ballots. That’s down 7 percentage points from the May 2013 mayoral runoff, when around 23% of voters took part. “This process is being rushed forward with a lack of review of the implications,” Johnson said.

California: Half of California voters getting mail ballots | The Sacramento Bee

More than one-half of California’s 17.6 million registered voters have requested vote-by-mail ballots for Tuesday’s election. The question now is: Will they use them? Tuesday was the cutoff for voters to apply for a vote-by-mail ballot, barring special circumstances such as members of the military being called to active duty. A tally by the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials pegged the number of vote-by-mail applicants earlier this week at 8.8 million, based on a survey of counties. About five percent of those ballots had been returned to election officials, amid fears that next week’s election could set a record for low turnout. Paul Mitchell of Political Data, Inc., which provides voter-registration data to campaigns, said Wednesday that more than 9 million vote-by-mail ballots have gone out.

California: Heavy ballots may need extra postage; still getting delivered to elections office | Redding Searchlight

Blame the October moisture. But some Shasta County voters are paying an extra 21 cents in postage — this on top of the 49-cent stamp — to mail their absentee ballots. Voters who have mailed their ballot with 49-cent postage only, fear not. The ballots — no matter that they are slightly heavier than in the bone-dry summer — will get to the Shasta County Elections Office by Nov. 4. Cathy Darling Allen, county clerk and registrar of voters, said the U.S. Postal Service will still deliver, and her office is picking up the difference for any extra postage. “They already know about this issue,” she said of the postal service. “They understand that the purple and green ballots” are being dropped off “and they get them to us as fast as they can.” To date, the elections office has mailed 61,741 ballots and 14,675 ballots have been returned.

California: Los Angeles County takes step toward voting system overhaul | Los Angeles Times

Supervisors took a significant step Tuesday to overhaul Los Angeles County’s antiquated ink-based balloting system by approving a $15-million contract with Palo Alto consultant Ideo for the design of a more modern way to record votes. Elections officials — who must serve about 4.8 million registered voters scattered across 5,000 precincts — began planning for a new system five years ago. The process was guided by an advisory committee that included local city clerks, voting rights and open government advocates, and officials from the local Democratic and Republican parties. The current system is known as InkaVote and requires voters to mark a paper ballot with their selections. Under the new system, projected to roll out in 2020, voters would make their selections using a touch screen, and the voting machine would then print a paper ballot to be tallied.

California: Alameda County Alerts Berkeley Voters to Ballot Snafu | KQED

Alameda County elections officials are sending out cards to alert 27,000 voters in Berkeley that they’ve received mail-in ballots imprinted with the incorrect date for next month’s election. The address window in Alameda County mail-in ballots displaying incorrect date for this year’s election. The ballots arrived in voters’ mailboxes last month. In addition to the legend “Official Election Balloting Material,” the ballots’ address window says, “Election Day November 5, 2014.”

California: Los Angeles could move to even-year elections to increase voter turnout | Los Angeles Daily News

In an effort to increase voter turnout, the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday called for a proposal moving city elections to June and November of even-numbered years. The 12-1 vote, with Councilman Bernard Parks dissenting, asked that the proposal be drafted in time to submit to voters at the March 2015 election. The shift from odd- to even-numbered years would take effect with the 2020 elections. It would allow incumbent officials at that time to serve an extra 18 months. “If voting was a business, we would be going bankrupt,” said Darry Sragow, a USC professor and a former campaign consultant. “The first thing is the way people vote should be a reflection of the way they lead their lives. Everything in our lives is different with cell phones, the Internet, where we work, how we work. “Participation rates are steadily declining. It is not the people’s fault. It is the fault of a system that no longer reflects their day-to-day existence.”

California: Public database of county by county elections costs in the works for California | California Forward

Dwindling turnout at the polls demonstrates a clear need for additional electoral reforms aimed at increasing California’s chronically low voter participation rate. Identifying which policies deliver the biggest bang for the buck is the hard part. But it’s about to get a lot easier. The California Association of Clerks and Election Officials (CACEO) is building a public online database of elections costs to better inform policies and procedures and to identify and share best practices with a grant awarded from the James Irvine Foundation. This is a big deal! Here’s why. A slew of election reforms are proposed each year. When reviewing a measure, one of the first things legislators want to know is: What’s the cost? “We’ve never been able to answer that question statewide,” said Neal Kelley, Orange County Registrar of Voters and CACEO President. “Now we’re going to be at that point where we can, and I think it’s really important to be able to be part of the discussion when it comes to new legislation.” For years, Doug Chapin, Director of the Future of California Elections, has referred to election costs as the “big white whale” of election administration. California’s diversity and sheer size has hindered any quest to capture the elusive and valuable data.

California: Santa Clara County: Print shop flub compounds ballot error in two school board races | San Jose Mercury News

A flub on sample ballots for two school board races that were mailed to thousands of voters in Santa Clara and Gilroy was compounded when the printing vendor sent out official ballots repeating the error. In addition, most residents in the Santa Clara Unified and Gavilan Community College districts have yet to receive the correct ballots because the vendor didn’t send them out last week with the other vote-by-mail ballots throughout the county. The initial error, which cropped up just over two weeks ago, involved a mistake at the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters that resulted in sample ballots going out which omitted some candidates and their statements. “That was a programming error on our part in the election database,” said Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Shannon Bushey.

California: Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Admits More Mistakes for Mail-in Ballots | San Jose Inside

Just weeks after the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters re-printed a slew of sample ballots missing entire races and candidate info, the agency has to deal with another batch of faulty election literature. Earlier this month, the county had to re-print and re-mail 100,000 sample ballots because of entire sections missing candidates from the Gavilan Joint Community College District and Santa Clara Unified School District races. The county corrected the slip-up and alerted voters by snail mail, email and phone calls. But the printing company for absentee ballots used proofs from those older samples, running off 1,007 mail-in ballots missing the same information. Voters have already received those faulty ballots.

California: Same-party races force hard choices | Sacremento Bee

John McAtee, a 52-year-old voter from Elk Grove, isn’t happy about the state of his ballot this year. In two legislative contests, the Republican will not have a candidate of his own party to choose from. For state Assembly, he can pick between Democrats Jim Cooper and Darrell Fong. For state Senate, his choices are Democrats Roger Dickinson and Richard Pan. He considers the scenario one drawback of living in a heavily Democratic area. “I am not moving, but you take your lumps,” McAtee said. A reverse scenario is playing out in a Roseville-centered congressional district, where veteran conservative Rep. Tom McClintock is challenged by fellow Republican Art Moore. More than 116,000 Democrats there have no opportunity to select one of their own. Democrat Michael Adams said he’s met Moore at district events and also has attended McClintock’s town-hall meetings. Adams, a 68-year-old resident of Roseville, said the upcoming congressional contest boils down to this: “Voting for the lesser of two evils is what I have to do.” In California, 25 same-party contests populate the fall ballot, intraparty battles made possible by voter-approved Proposition 14 in June 2010. Under the measure, the top two candidates regardless of party advance to the general election.

California: Paper is Still the Tech of Choice for California Elections | KQED

In a state that that takes pride in being on the technological cutting edge, most California voters will mark paper ballots with ink by Nov. 4, whether they vote at their polling place or by mail. The state’s reliance on paper would have seemed unlikely 15 years ago. California’s then-Secretary of State Bill Jones floated a radical idea in 1999: let people vote online. He convened task force to look into the possibility. “Here we are in the dot com boom,” said David Jefferson, a computer scientist who chaired the task force’s Technology Committee. “It’s an exciting thing. Of course we would all like to vote online. Let’s just figure out how to deliver it to the people of California.” Jefferson now works on one of the world’s fastest computers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He recalls when the online voting project started to fall apart. “In the course of that study, which took place over several months, doubts began to creep in,” he said. “And then we began to find more and more flaws.”

California: Gov. Brown vetoes bill to expand California’s Voting Rights Act | Associated Press

An effort to expand California’s Voting Rights Act to allow claims of racial discrimination in the configuration of election districts has been vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The legislation, SB1365 by state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County), was passed in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That law had required state and local governments with a history of racial discrimination — including Monterey, Yuba, Kings and Merced counties in California — to obtain approval from the Justice Department or a federal court before making any changes in their voting rules. California’s Voting Rights Act, signed by Gov. Gray Davis in 2001, allows minority groups to challenge “at-large” elections. All candidates in at-large elections compete for votes in an entire city, county or special district, increasing the likelihood of control by a white majority that votes cohesively. Suits filed under the law have prompted more than 100 local governments and agencies to switch to district elections, with a better chance of minority representation.

California: Major challenges await Bowen’s successor in California | Sacramento Bee

Voting equipment around the state is breaking down. There is limited money for new systems. A complex statewide voter registration database has been years in the making. And while hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars change hands every day in California, the state’s public-disclosure system confuses searchers and occasionally stops working. Whoever gets the keys to California’s secretary of state’s office in January will inherit a lengthy to-do list for the post’s role overseeing voting and elections, its most public responsibility. The office also handles businesses filings. Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who recently disclosed that she is battling depression, has defended her tenure and blamed politics for would-be successors’ criticism of her office during this year’s campaign. Budget cuts during the recession and a lack of new funding have hampered efforts to improve some programs, she has said, such as the Cal-Access campaign-finance website. But whether it is Republican Pete Peterson or Democrat Alex Padilla, California’s next secretary of state will need to hit the ground running, county registrars and other experts say.

California: Mail-in-ballot rejections analyzed in study | UC Davis News Service

Voting by mail surpassed 50 percent of votes cast in a general election in California for the first time in 2012. A new study shows that nearly 69,000 mailed ballots, or about 1 percent, were not counted, and why they were rejected. The top three reasons mail-in ballots were rejected: not arriving on time, not being signed or because signatures could not be verified, according to the study to be released Sept. 29 by the California Civic Engagement Project at the University of California, Davis, Center for Regional Change. “California has one of the highest mail ballot rejection rates in the country,” said study author Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project. “Although 1 percent may not seem very high, that’s tens of thousands of people whose votes were not counted. And these votes could make the difference in close elections.”

California: Vendor glitch won’t delay San Bernardino ballot printing | San Bernardino County Sun

The county has dropped the company it has been using for ballot printing and mailing after the company failed to get new equipment certified by the Secretary of State in time for Monday’s printing launch for the November election. County supervisors, during a special meeting Thursday, voted 3-0, with supervisors Gary Ovitt and Robert Lovingood absent, to approve a purchase order, not to exceed $700,000, with Washington-based K&H Integrated Print Solutions, which the county previously contracted with, county spokesman David Wert said.

California: Activists appeal dismissal of voting rights lawsuit in Whittier | Los Angeles Times

Activists in Whittier on Monday filed an appeal to a judge’s dismissal this month of their lawsuit challenging the city’s system of electing its officials. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael M. Johnson on Thursday granted the city’s request to dismiss  the suit alleging that  its at-large method of electing council members violated the California Voting Rights Act. When voters gave the city permission this year to switch to electing officials by geographic district, the lawsuit became moot, Johnson said in dismissing it. Whittier is one of several California cities  with significant minority populations but few or no minority elected officials. Activists have been suing such cities, school districts and other local government bodies, claiming the at-large elections deprive minorities of opportunities to elect a representative of their choice.  Several jurisdictions have switched to district elections when confronted with evidence of racially polarized voting.

California: State Sen. Wright jail sentence could trigger special election | Los Angeles Times

The sentencing of Democratic state Sen. Roderick D. Wright to 90 days in jail and a lifetime ban from public office on voting fraud charges Friday could end up requiring a special election but is unlikely to have a significant impact on the ability of Democrats to regain a supermajority in the Senate, officials said. “Starting today, he’s barred from holding any future elective office,” said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office. If the state Senate wants to remove Wright from his current office, it would have to vote to expel him, she said. Wright has not said whether he will resign, but the Senate leadership warned him earlier this year that he would be expelled if he is sentenced to jail and does not step down.

California: Judge dismisses voting rights lawsuit against Whittier | Whittier Daily News

A Los Angeles Superior judge has dismissed a California Voting Rights Act lawsuit filed against the city of Whittier by three Latino residents. Judge Michael Johnson ruled the city’s actions to change from an at-large voting system to one that is districted, something the suit sought, alleviates the issues in the original lawsuit. ”There can be no question that the City’s adoption of a new voting system has made Plaintiffs’ original complaint moot,” Johnson stated in his ruling. The judge also rejected the plaintiffs’ motion for an amended complaint, which was filed June 23 after the city voted in the districted elections on June 3.

California: Vote for one candidate – several times: It could become legal in Santa Clarita elections | KPCC

Santa Clarita voters may become the first in California to elect city and community college officials by cumulative voting. The little-used system would allow voters to cast multiple votes for the same candidate. For example, in a City Council election to fill three seats, a Santa Clarita voter could cast three votes for just one candidate, or distribute votes to two or three candidates. After hearing arguments on Monday, Superior Court Judge Terry Green approved cumulative voting in Santa Clarita city and the Santa Clarita Community College District. The ruling could help resolve lawsuits claiming violations of the California Voting Rights Act, according to attorney Kevin Shenkman.  With cumulative voting, individuals who are part of a minority bloc of the population could amass their votes behind a single candidate and win a seat, Shenkman said. He represents two plaintiffs who had sued to eliminate the traditional at-large voting system used in Santa Clarita elections.

California: Two counties ask to form a separate state | KCRA

Representatives of two counties in far Northern California petitioned state officials Thursday for the right to form a 51st state called Jefferson, formally asking state lawmakers to vote on their proposal. Modoc and Siskiyou counties, which share a border with Oregon and have a combined population of about 53,000, submitted petitions from their county governments to the secretaries of the state Assembly and Senate after filing a petition complaining about a lack of representation to the secretary of state. Organizer Mark Baird told a crowd of about 70 supporters at a rally outside the state Capitol that residents of as many as 10 counties “would be free to create a small state with limited government.” “We don’t need government from a state telling people in a county what to do with their resources and their children’s education. You are better equipped to educate your children than the state or federal government,” Baird said to applause.

California: Automatic recount bill stalls in Senate | The Sacramento Bee

Weeks after the tight finish in the June controller’s race highlighted major weaknesess in California’s recount law, legislation to create taxpayer-funded recounts in close contests has bogged down in partisan fighting and is dead for the year. Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-San Mateo, blamed the failure of Assembly Bill 2194 on Republican members of the state Senate who, he said, have blocked efforts to waive Senate rules that prohibit committee hearings after Aug. 18. “The recount initiated in the recent State Controller’s primary race exposed serious flaws in our existing recount system, whereby candidates can cherry-pick which counties they want to recount, assuming they have the funds to pay for it,” Mullin said in a statement Friday. “

California: Can paying people to vote increase voter turnout? L.A.’s looking into it and the answer is yes. | The Washington Post

Just 23.3 percent of Los Angeles voters cast ballots in last year’s mayoral election, the lowest figures in 100 years. Turnout was “embarrassingly down,” Herb Wesson, the city’s council president said, and he’s looking at how to change that. “Someone brought up what would it be like if we had some sort of incentive program,” Wesson said. “It’s just an idea.” The Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday for Wesson to look into various ways to increase turnout, including cash incentives like a lottery. The idea is just in the “incubation process,” Wesson said, with nothing approaching even an actual proposal, but there’s data to suggest paying people to vote increases turnout. A study conducted in 2010 in Lancaster, Calif., in northern Los Angeles County, by Fordham University professor Costas Panagopoulos found nominal incentives like a few bucks don’t do much to increase turnout, but a few more dollars is enough of an incentive to convince a larger percentage of people to vote.

California: How to Make Sure Your Vote-by-Mail Ballot is Counted | KQED

Almost 8 million Californians now cast their ballots by mail instead going to the polls. A new study of three California counties found that only 0.8 percent of mailed ballots, about 30,000, are not tallied. That might seem insignificant, unless it’s your ballot. There are three main reasons vote-by-mail ballots go uncounted:

• The ballot was mailed too late. Ballots need to be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, not postmarked (61 percent of uncounted ballots).
• There was no signature (20 percent).
• The signature provided did not adequately compare with the one on file (18 percent).

The California Voter Foundation studied the vote-by-mail process for one year in Santa Cruz, Sacramento and Orange counties. The foundation estimates that about 66,000 vote-by-mail ballots went uncounted statewide in 2012.

California: State high court declines to hear Palmdale voting rights appeal | Los angeles Times

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to take up the city of Palmdale’s appeals in a voting rights lawsuit it lost last year. The high court’s decision is the latest in a series of legal setbacks the city has faced since a Superior Court judge last year ruled Palmdale was in violation of the California Voting Rights Act and ordered it to hold a new election with council members chosen by geographic district. The trial judge said the current city council, elected at large, could not hold office after July 9. The city appealed parts of the ruling but the appellate court upheld the trial judge, prompting Palmdale officials to turn to the state’s high court.

California: Report Finds Vote-by-mail Improvements Needed to Reduce Balloting Errors | Virtual-Strategy

A new report issued today by the California Voter Foundation (CVF) finds that the top three reasons why some ballots go uncounted in three counties studied are that they are received too late, lack the voter’s signature, or the signature on the ballot envelope does not sufficiently compare to the one on file. “Casting a vote-by-mail ballot has become a popular option for California voters,” said Kim Alexander, CVF president and founder and the primary author of the new report, Improving California’s Vote-by-Mail Process: A Three-County Study. “But with its rise in popularity has come an increase in the number of vote-by-mail ballots cast that go uncounted.”  Read the Report

California: Vote-by-mail election trial coming to San Mateo County | The Almanac

Voters in San Mateo County will soon be part of a trial that could help the state decide if it wants to adopt a system of primarily voting by mail, with a greatly reduced number of physical polling places. The trial, authorized by a law signed Aug. 15 by Gov. Jerry Brown, will study how mail-in voting affects election turnout and cost. A similar trial is underway in rural Yolo County. As is done in Colorado, which changed to primarily mail-in voting in 2013, the trial will have at least one polling place open in each city, where voters can drop off a ballot or vote in person.

California: Panel wants L.A. to look at using prizes to boost voter turnout | Los Angeles Times

Alarmed that fewer than one-fourth of voters are showing up for municipal elections, the Los Angeles Ethics Commission voted Thursday to recommend that the City Council look at using cash prizes to lure a greater number of people to the polls. On a 3-0 vote, the panel said it wanted City Council President Herb Wesson’s Rules, Elections and Intergovernmental Relations Committee to seriously consider the use of financial incentives and a random drawing during its elections, possibly as soon as next year. Depending on the source of city funds, the idea could require a ballot measure. Commissioners said they were unsure how big the prizes should be or how many should be offered, saying a pilot program should first be used to test the concept. “Maybe it’s $25,000 maybe it’s $50,000,” said Commission President Nathan Hochman. “That’s where the pilot program comes in — to figure out what … number and amount of prizes would actually get people to the voting box.”