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Counting in Ranked Choice Voting Land
Nov. 8th, 2009 08:36 amYesterday was my first shift counting votes. Back when dinosaurs walked the earth, we ustta tally write-ins at the end of loong day at the polling place. It was always an exercise in how not to do things and ended badly. That counting eventually shifted to Election Headquarters, and finally the state law changed (I think) so that it's only counted when it has a statistical chance to change the day. Gone wuz the tabulated lists of M. Mouse, Mikey Maus, and Mickey Mouse with the scratch lines after it. I see it less now, but many write-ins ustta be crank votes.
I arrived at the elections warehouse at 8:45 for a 9:00 - 5:30 shift. I'd attended a training session on how the counting process was going to work. Dani was standing outside in the sun, and she directed me into the main warehouse, where I picked up a colored name badge. There's a lotta color being used, but more about that later. I also signed in, and was told to look for an seat with a team member who has a different colored tag. Many of these are the people I've been working with five days a year for the last twenty years on and around election day.
The warehouse, which is normally filled with voting boxes, is now filled with pods of three banquet tables, with two office chairs on three of the four sides. The minimum to work a pod is two teams of two. Each team has to be made up of people of different parties. A full pod is six counters. There's a lot of masking tape lines on the table to split up the working space for the sorting. Two teams face each other across the width of two banquet tables. The third team has it's own banquet table that caps the end. The third team does all of the duplication and EVA(?) error correcting.
When we started, we were in the middle of counting a precinct. The woman I teamed up with had been to other sessions, so she laid out the names on the race/ballot in alphabetical order across the table plus blank and write-in. We then began sorting ballots into different piles for the first sort. The team across from us did the same. The team on the end was also sorting. After the first sort by all three teams, the three team's sorts were merged into one set of sorted ballot piles. Blanks and write-ins went to the team on the end to count, and then to put back in the general precinct pile.
Then each team took a different pile and performed the second sort. Again, blanks, write-ins, and any found issues went to the team on the end to either count or duplicate to fix any EVA error (primarily leaving a column blank before a vote, or voting for the same person in more than one column). At the end of the second sort, the next task is to perform the third sort, and then to count the ballots. Duplicated ballots are fed back into the process.
We took one of the piles of ballots, and together sorted them. There's a constant susurration of names from the teams at the tables, and from all over the warehouse as ballots are being placed in piles. The only silent time is during counting the ballots after the third sort or earlier with the blanks and write-ins.
After the third sort, it's finally time to count the ballots. Both teams count silently as one member goes through the ballots. Ballots are stacked into piles of 25. At the end of the stack or the pile, the total is announced by one of the team. If the team agrees, the work continues. Otherwise, it's back through the count again. When the whole pile is counted, the total is written down on slips color coded by race. The ward, precinct, and where applicable, district for park board go on top of the slip. The three letter code for the candidate goes into the first, second and third choice columns. The number of ballots in the pile goes into the fourth column. The slip goes into one of two small clear rubbermaid containers at the table, and the counted ballots go back into a bigger clear rubbermaid container. When all of the piles are counted, names are removed from the tables, and the slips are reviewed for completeness. When the internal review is completed, a small colored flag is put in a paper holder and another crew comes to collected the tabulated results. There's a couple of colors of paper flags. One is "Come on over, we're done with a race." One is "We need a ruling." The tabulation sheets go off to other teams who are entering the information into computers. The computers check that the counts for each race in a precinct remain the same. After we finished the precinct, we recounted one race in a precinct where the total for the race had been different from the other races in the precinct. When we finished that, we used the incredibly crappy calculators to hand tally the count, which actually took three teams to come up with the right answer because the keys were so crappy.
After the recount, we got a "new" precinct to count.
The count is ahead of schedule. It was a gorgeous day, and we were told we could go out and enjoy it at 3:30. They'd said earlier that we could leave at 4:30 instead of the scheduled 5:30. (They have seen that the error rate goes up at the end of the day, and the emphasis has switched from races to doing it slow and accurate.) Our pod continued counting until 4:30, filled out our timesheets, and wandered off into the Indian Summer.
All in all, the process seems to work really good. There's a constant sense of progress. The stacks go down. The results go off to the tabulator teams. Everybody's in a great mood.
I arrived at the elections warehouse at 8:45 for a 9:00 - 5:30 shift. I'd attended a training session on how the counting process was going to work. Dani was standing outside in the sun, and she directed me into the main warehouse, where I picked up a colored name badge. There's a lotta color being used, but more about that later. I also signed in, and was told to look for an seat with a team member who has a different colored tag. Many of these are the people I've been working with five days a year for the last twenty years on and around election day.
The warehouse, which is normally filled with voting boxes, is now filled with pods of three banquet tables, with two office chairs on three of the four sides. The minimum to work a pod is two teams of two. Each team has to be made up of people of different parties. A full pod is six counters. There's a lot of masking tape lines on the table to split up the working space for the sorting. Two teams face each other across the width of two banquet tables. The third team has it's own banquet table that caps the end. The third team does all of the duplication and EVA(?) error correcting.
When we started, we were in the middle of counting a precinct. The woman I teamed up with had been to other sessions, so she laid out the names on the race/ballot in alphabetical order across the table plus blank and write-in. We then began sorting ballots into different piles for the first sort. The team across from us did the same. The team on the end was also sorting. After the first sort by all three teams, the three team's sorts were merged into one set of sorted ballot piles. Blanks and write-ins went to the team on the end to count, and then to put back in the general precinct pile.
Then each team took a different pile and performed the second sort. Again, blanks, write-ins, and any found issues went to the team on the end to either count or duplicate to fix any EVA error (primarily leaving a column blank before a vote, or voting for the same person in more than one column). At the end of the second sort, the next task is to perform the third sort, and then to count the ballots. Duplicated ballots are fed back into the process.
We took one of the piles of ballots, and together sorted them. There's a constant susurration of names from the teams at the tables, and from all over the warehouse as ballots are being placed in piles. The only silent time is during counting the ballots after the third sort or earlier with the blanks and write-ins.
After the third sort, it's finally time to count the ballots. Both teams count silently as one member goes through the ballots. Ballots are stacked into piles of 25. At the end of the stack or the pile, the total is announced by one of the team. If the team agrees, the work continues. Otherwise, it's back through the count again. When the whole pile is counted, the total is written down on slips color coded by race. The ward, precinct, and where applicable, district for park board go on top of the slip. The three letter code for the candidate goes into the first, second and third choice columns. The number of ballots in the pile goes into the fourth column. The slip goes into one of two small clear rubbermaid containers at the table, and the counted ballots go back into a bigger clear rubbermaid container. When all of the piles are counted, names are removed from the tables, and the slips are reviewed for completeness. When the internal review is completed, a small colored flag is put in a paper holder and another crew comes to collected the tabulated results. There's a couple of colors of paper flags. One is "Come on over, we're done with a race." One is "We need a ruling." The tabulation sheets go off to other teams who are entering the information into computers. The computers check that the counts for each race in a precinct remain the same. After we finished the precinct, we recounted one race in a precinct where the total for the race had been different from the other races in the precinct. When we finished that, we used the incredibly crappy calculators to hand tally the count, which actually took three teams to come up with the right answer because the keys were so crappy.
After the recount, we got a "new" precinct to count.
- Face the ballots.
- Inspect the faced ballots for EVA issues -- blank columns before a voted column, duplicate votes in a race. We found one mark issue, but that's handled by the counting judges, not the EVA team and the end of the table.
- Perform the first sort of the first counted race on the ballot. (The mayor's race, which has the largest number of candidates is the last race counted. It requires the most space to sort.)
- Perform the second sort of the first counted race.
- Perform the third sort of the first counted race.
- Tabulate the third sort of the first counted race.
- Verify the tabulated slips and clear the table.
- Raise the flag to have the results of the first counted race removed.
- Perform the first sort of the second counted race...
The count is ahead of schedule. It was a gorgeous day, and we were told we could go out and enjoy it at 3:30. They'd said earlier that we could leave at 4:30 instead of the scheduled 5:30. (They have seen that the error rate goes up at the end of the day, and the emphasis has switched from races to doing it slow and accurate.) Our pod continued counting until 4:30, filled out our timesheets, and wandered off into the Indian Summer.
All in all, the process seems to work really good. There's a constant sense of progress. The stacks go down. The results go off to the tabulator teams. Everybody's in a great mood.
