Date: 04/29/2015
County Meeting Notes
King County, Wednesday 04/29/2015
Sean Fahey (Quest), Jim Darragh (GCR), Matt Hazard (Quest), Stephanie Goebel
Chris Rudolph, Chris Weaver (IT), Kortney Kinzer (election operations)
Sonya Rolin (PM), Gail (GIS), Jerelyn, Dale Hartman
EMS has been DIMS (since 2004); moving to DFM (EIMS).
County Election Management Related Discussion Topics
1. EMS consists of:
1.1. MyVote
1.1.1. Online voter registration
1.1.2. Dropboxes
1.1.3. Elected officials
1.1.4. Elections I Voted
1.1.5. MyBallot
1.1.6. MyOVG Online Voter Guide (filtered version of OVG specific to the voter)
1.2. Online Voter Guide (OVG)
1.3. Candidate Filing
1.4. Candidate Statement Submission
1.5. Offices Open for Election
1.6. Candidate Who Filed
2. MyVote
King has some in-house web-based applications; not sure it is a 1-1 replacement of state MyVote. Have their own candidate filing to load to EMS. No candidates, measures, elected officials are posted. They did post the locations of drop boxes and measure and candidates for this past election to the state (as a one-off).
Working with Stuart to move toward using more of the state MyVote, but it is a manual process. Currently, King county voters do not see local officials in MyVote’s My Elected Officials section.
Did work with WEI for this past election, to help with VIP (Voter Information Project). But it does not fully accommodate the detail that they needed. They stated that they are trying to avoid duplication of effort between Wei and their local systems.
3. Elections: Voter Pamphlets, Setup, Ballots, Results
3.1. Setup
3.2. Voter Pamphlets
3.3. Ballots
3.4. Results (cover in section 10 below)
For any spring election, would need to establish from a local entity to say they want an election.
Would initialize the election in DIMS, setup the districts and candidates involved, then build ballots. Extract
Set up – Election Day, close, (polls open and close in DIMS), then let voter services update and GIS do their work. No copy function, set up one election at a time.
Then associate the districts.
DFM will pull in offices based on the office term.
DIMS – pull in districts which pulls in the precincts.
DFM – pulls in the offices, then setup the blank ballot measures, then run a function that pulls in the precincts and districts.
DFM Election Workspace – merges the VR records with the election detail (offices, measures, etc.). Ballot styles get assigned in this space, but GEMS is really where the ballots get built. DFM ballot style assigned numbering system may be different than the GEMS numbering scheme. Currently no way for the GEMS number to go back into DFM (on the list on enhancements; but they can still match up the actual precinct and splits.)
Pamphlets – special elections not county wide - will do an insert in the voters ballot, matched up with ballot style. If county-wide, all households get a pamphlet, 8-950,000 households get one regardless of if there is one, several, or nobody registered to vote. May have north, south, eastern district editions to cover the variability within the county (grouped by zip code). All done manually outside of EMS. Will pull detail from EMS to drive the groupings.
Detail is pulled from King online filing Admin system.
Candidate information filing is posted to the King county website for primary and then general.
http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/candidatefiling.aspx
Nothing pamphlet related is in EMS. Pulled from the Admin system that flows to InDesign.
Online version of the voter guide is coming from an in house system - the voter pamphlet admin system.
Measures are copy/paste to editing tools for the print version of the pamphlet, and copied into VP admin to be fed to the web. Not tied directly to the source documentation or system; need to update in multiple places if anything changes.
4. Jurisdictions, Districts, Precincts, Redistricting
4.1. Districts
4.2. Precincts
4.3. Redistricting
King will sync up the districts and precincts with the state. The state runs a job to sync those. Maybe once a year; more often if something changes. GIS group really controls that.
Stuart, how does the state use King precinct info?
Will extract tabular data and use it in GIS. Polygons have a unique code that is related to a unique set of districts. EMS keeps a precinct and precinct portion (first 4 character, 3 characters for the portion). Relates to the mapping in GIS (4.3 code). Used a primary key to relate the EMS districts to show how it relates to the polygons.
GIS is really used for QC - Export the table to use GIS for matching to show if the voters are all in the right spot. Not really importing GIS data back into the system; only for QC at this point.
There is a bill at the state level looking at voting rights act – could mean a lot more districts.
Using address ranges now. Did a test case in DFM sandbox with e911 point file to match up with voter data. Looked to see if it was possible to move to point data; it was possible, but they asked for DFM to make some changes (e.g. maintain x/y coordinates, use the e911 unique identifier). Search for an address was a slow and onerous. This is not a focus now while they are converting to DFM; will consider this most cutover.
Redistricting/reprecincting – have a test area without affecting production data. DIMS calls it scenario or redistricting. DFM has active and inactive precinct sets.
Will use GIS to do the homework outside the system to ensure they are doing what they wanted and to help develop the material to communicate the changes (before and after) to the decision makers.
DFM – an inactive set becomes the active set. The voter record contains the street segment, which points to the precinct set.
King County maintains 192 districts. King County Council passes all precinct changes in ordinance form.
For a proposed annexation, they will create a proposed district to make it a part of the election, but if it fails they will not maintain it. May do the same for regional fire authorities that are pulled in as needed for an election; exists as a district with no office.
5. Offices, Terms
5.1. Offices
5.2. Terms
DIMS has an office module to build each office, then a whole separate office holder module. The 2 modules don’t talk to each other, must be maintained manually and can cause a problem. Audited annually to check for differences and changes. Also need to manually update election dates for all offices and office holders.
DIMS is very manual – pull in all of the districts, which will pull in all of the district related offices. But then have to choose each office individually to be included in the office (or move everything in, and then pull out those that are not applicable for that year/election).
DFM – starts with a base year for the term of the office. Office holder is tied to the office. Can mark an office as vacated to put it in an election if needed. But the system will pull in all vacated offices to the next election if they select choose to add vacated, even if some are for the election after next. Can draft in an offices as a one-off if needed.
6. Candidates: File, Qualify, Maintain, Correspond
6.1. File
6.2. Qualify
6.3. Maintain
6.4. Correspond
Built a custom candidate filing system in ~‘02. WEI does not meet their bar for requirements. E.g. ballot drop box info may need variability in the days/hours, which WEI does not accommodate.
King county web application for candidates to file and a windows based application. Once approved, data goes to the EMS system.
Web DB outside the firewall has a copy of EMS system. Synced nightly, but can force it on demand. Used to lookup voter record, to validate a candidate for filing purposes.
Candidate logs in, verifies data, based on that the system will list the eligible offices, can pick the office, shows the filing fee, they enter the party preference, name, campaign contact info, personal email and phone (not published online), and check the oath, submit before review and make changes, then pay the fee and submit. The system sends an acknowledgement with a copy of the data, once review and approved, and are able to access step 3 to enter their statement information. They can come back later and log in to enter their statement information.
Data is stored in the windows admin app. Will create a candidate record in the system. Is done by the staff either individually or in batch. Statement and photo are maintained in the web DB external system. System is only available when filing is open. Do not seem to have the issues that the state has with photos.
Based on an email from the state, will log into WEI to print off the declaration (screen shot; not a nice form) which is then manually entered into DIMS. The email is not specific, it just says there are changes that affect King county. They have to review the entire list for changes. Looking at the DFM system to import from WEI. King talking with DFM to modify to not overwrite the King detail if already entered.
King system formats the data when printing; WEI is just a screen shot and how a nice, discernable report for declaration of candidacy.
Have to file a paper form for petitions in lieu of payment or mailed in, they will process for the paper. Petitions in lieu of payment will be entered and noted in the system as not yet complete until petition is verified or payment is made.
Precinct Committee Offices – have a separate workflow in the online filing system for PCOs. Over 2,500 precincts, each party can have an officer for each precinct. Maintain the office and the office holders in a separate system to keep online filing system cleaner. Also cannot file in the online system for 2 offices, but a user can file for PCO and another office. Feeds one admin app maintains all of the data for candidate filing, PCO filing and voters pamphlet. That admin app is connected to DFM to feed in the data. After the election, all of the detail is wiped from DFM.
My Voter Guide - Candidate information filing is posted to the King county website for primary and then general.
7. Referenda, Measures, Petitions: Create, Verify, Maintain
7.1. Ballot Measures
VoterPamphletAdmin – webbased tool for staff. The election is fed from DIMS.
Measure is built in EMS with district, title from prosecuting attorney, ballot text (DFM does not have a field for ballot text) (responses are candidates in DIMS (i.e. Yes or No)), DFM contains ballot responses within the measure (i.e. yes or No). DFM does not have more than 2 answers. Would have to add in on the ballot build side.
This detail is fed to the web and pamphlet.
Data is extracted from DIMS or DFM (txt file) and imported into the ballot building DB (GEMS – Global Election Management System).
Petitions – Kim – set up the petition in EMS system. Move through the lines verifying rows against VR record signatures. Once Voter Services has verified sufficient/insufficient, they report that back to the authority to decide if it will go on the ballot, or to decide if the candidate goes on the ballot if it was petition in lieu of payment.
Would like direct link to state level candidates from King page.
State does accommodate languages on state offices for King. King must provide the primary languages for the guide; state does not produce a guide for primary, so King must produce language for state level candidates on primary.
8. Election Reporting/Recording (capturing results – communicating to the state)
Jerelyn joined us.
Independent network of scan and adjudication machines and servers to handle scanning of the ballots PCS (Premier Central Scan). Download the election from GEMS to PCS so it knows how to interpret the marks. Will scan for up to 2 weeks prior to the election, which only scans and holds the digital image of the ballot, but doesn’t do any tabulation. GEMS really does the tabulation (counting).
9. Vote Publishing (to the public and media)
On Election Day, send the data to GEMS. Once a day, results are sent to GEMS to increment the value in GEMS. GEMS is the results database. GEMS Results Server can put out initial results that can be sent to a set of several internal applications to clean up the data, make up for some GEMS deficiencies (chopped off names, fix district names) to then put on a thumb drive to take to another PC on the King network.
The results are posted on the King website, to Socrata (mobile vendor) that builds for each election, and logged into the web application for state just for statewide and share races. Stuart working with Chris on populating other election statistics; a manual process.
Website notes the last update date.
About 4 versions of data posted each day; csv, pdf, txt in a couple of different formats. Would be a challenge of how downstream changes might affect those who use this data.
10. Accessible Voting Locations: Locations, Equipment, Workers
VC are accessible with old DRE touchscreens. 3 vote centers; staffed 1 to 2 people for small; 13+ for large elections. No paper ballots. Would look up the voter in EMS to ensure they had not already voted, would suspend their ballot, and issue a voter access card (blank card with a chip with ballot style for that voter). Would program the system to create that ballot style. Machines captures vote return date and time. At 8:00, memory cards get pulled and brought to be uploaded to GEMS. Machine also prints receipt as a paper trail. 4% audit performed after the election. GEMS produces a cross reference count for audits.