Illinois' HAVA Implementation:

A Survey of Local Election Authorities

Executive Summary

Illinois has made substantial changes to its election laws in these three areas:

* New Balloting Equipment, including machinery that is readily accessible to voters with disabilities

* Statewide Voter Registration Database to help voters transfer registrations across local boundaries and to help local authorities identify fraudulent registrations.

* Early and Absentee Voting Laws to facilitate voting before Election Day by voters who may not be able to get to the polls during voting hours.

These changes came to different local jurisdictions at different times and have been implemented faster in some areas than in others. But by the 2006 elections all are to be fully implemented.

ICPR reviewed self assessments of the larger local authorities and conducted a survey to measure implementation at smaller authorities. Based on these reviews, it appears that the changes broadened the ability of registered voters to exercise their rights to vote and to be assured that their votes would count. Nonetheless, implementation is not yet complete and the Legislature, the State Board of Elections, and local election authorities will have to take additional actions to ensure that the promise of these reforms is fulfilled.

Some further changes are required to ensure that these changes are fully implemented to benefit Illinois voters:

* Finish the statewide database. Illinois’ statewide database is not fully compliant with HAVA. The state will need to devote additional resources in time and money to make the database serve all of the functions it is intended to serve.

* Increase the number of early voting locations, particularly in areas of high population density. Early voting proved a popular alternative, especially among grace period registrants. Local authorities, possibly with additional financing from the state, should increase the accessibility of this option by deploying more satellite registration sites, and by holding their regular offices open into the evening and on weekends.

* Enhance judicial recruitment and training. Judges remain the front line guardians of the integrity of elections. Election authorities will have to provide judges with more training on the new equipment and procedures

Illinois' HAVA Implementation:

A Survey of Local Election Authorities

Introduction …………………………………………3

Changes in Statute…………………………………..4

New Balloting Equipment

Statewide Voter Registration Database

Early and Absentee Voting

Changes in Practice……………………………….…6

Before Election Day

On Election Day

After Election Day

Changes in the Future……………………….….….10

Statewide Database

Early Voting

Judicial Recruitment and Training

Balloting Equipment

Methodology…………………………….…….…….13

Introduction

In the six years since the long count in Florida delayed the end of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, states around the nation have changed their election laws in some of the most sweeping modernization efforts in the nation’s history. This is especially true in Illinois. Some of these changes were homegrown reforms initiated at different times by some of the 110 local election authorities, some required of all parts of the state by the Illinois General Assembly.

In 2002, the federal government, with the passage of the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, offered hundreds of millions The HAVA formulas, and Illinois statutory changes, allowed Illinois to obtain $144 million from the federal government to pay for some of these election changes. HAVA resulted in some of the most sweeping changes, in impact and scope, but many of the changed mandated by HAVA had previously been adopted at the local level in some parts of Illinois and some even were begun by the state prior to HAVA.

Election reform, in short, has come to Illinois in fits and starts. HAVA imposed deadlines and provided funds for some changes, but different parts of Illinois experienced these reforms at different times. Some changes, as with balloting equipment, were relatively easy to implement in time for the 2006 Primary Elections in some jurisdictions because they had been adopted years before HAVA required them. In other parts of Illinois, the HAVA requirement of new balloting equipment resulted in a dramatic and sudden shift in procedures, which caused some upheaval as local election authorities raced to adopt the change.

This report will look at Illinois’ compliance with HAVA and how Illinois’ local election authorities fared under the first post-HAVA election, the 2006 Primary Election. It is based on an examination of Illinois’ statues, self-critiques by the larger local election authorities and a survey of smaller local election authorities.

I. Changes in Statute

Recent changes to Illinois’ election laws enacted three changes so central to the conduct of elections that they affect practices before Election Day, during actual balloting, and afterwards, while counting and verifying the results. This section will examine these changes in statute. Later, we will look at changes in procedures, and then we will consider additional needs to fully integrate these changes into Illinois’ election practices.

While new laws created statewide standards that took effect with the 2006 March Primary, many local authorities had previously adopted some of the new procedures, while others had to make additional changes to satisfy the new demands.

* New Balloting Equipment, including enhanced access for differently-abled voters, a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VPAT) and improved voting system standards

Under HAVA, the federal government offered funds to states willing to buy new balloting equipment. Accepting federal money bound the state to select machinery that was accessible to people with hearing or vision impairments. Punch cards, with their infamous hanging chads, were to be replaced. New equipment also had to allow the voter to verify that their votes were accurately represented before submitting the ballot, and notify voters if they voted for too many or too few candidates in some races, also called over-voting and under-voting, respectively.

Illinois agreed to update all of its voting equipment to ensure that a person’s vote is correctly cast and counted. This change was made to avoid problems like hanging chads and ballot inconsistencies that caused people to accidentally cast a vote for the wrong candidate. When replacing equipment, federal funds could be used only to purchase equipment that the State Board of Elections had certified as HAVA compliant; that is, that new equipment, whether optical scan machines or Direct Recording Electronic Voting systems (DREs), comply with HAVA’s requirements. The State Board also required that new equipment produce a paper audit trail; a step not required by HAVA but strongly recommended by outside observers and now required in half of the states.

Illinois received $144 million in federal funds, including $123 million for punch card buyouts, buying new equipment and making polling places accessible. As of September, 2006, Illinois had spent about $86 million of those funds.

* Statewide Voter Registration Database

HAVA requires that the state maintain a single, uniform, and official centralized database of all voters registered in the state. Every registered voter must be assigned a unique identifier within the system, both to aid in registering new voters and to help voters who either move their registrations or who attempt to vote in the wrong polling place.

Illinois had begun creation of a statewide voter roll before the passage of HAVA, but the project has been fraught with delays. The database requires cooperation between the State Board of Elections and the 110 local election authorities, along with the Secretary of State’s office to ensure that the information in the database is current and verified. HAVA, passed by the federal government after Illinois had begun its statewide database project, added new requirements and resulted in some midstream course corrections. Technical issues, such as coordinating communication among some two dozen computer platforms, have largely been addressed; as have policy goals, such as ultimate control over the registration itself.

* Early and Absentee Voting Laws/ Voter Education

The purpose of the HAVA’s voter education provisions, as well as Illinois’ early and absentee voting change, are to encourage and allow more people to participate in elections. The voter education provision involved teaching voters about the requirements for voting, new voting equipment, and their rights as voters. Illinois law now includes an early voting option, alongside the absentee ballot during the early voting period, to encourage more people to vote and remove time-related barriers that have impeded many voters in the past.

Early voting for the March 2006 primary election began on Monday, February 27 and extended Thursday, March 16. Early voting typically takes place at the central office of the local election authority, though some authorities created satellite locations outside of their central offices. Local authorities received no additional funding to support satellite locations, and satellite locations were not located systematically or consistently throughout the state. Some voters undoubtedly had better access to early voting than others.

II. Changes in Practice

The last section looked at statutory changes in Illinois law. This section will focus on how those changes were implemented in practice. Each of the new requirements, including new balloting machinery, the statewide voter database, and new procedures for early voting, required changes in procedures by local election authorities and judges of elections.

A. Before Election Day

One of the key changes allows voters to cast ballots before Election Day, outside of the traditional absentee balloting procedures. Where absentee rules required the voter to affirm that they would be out of the jurisdiction on Election Day, early voting let voters who could not swear to their travel plans vote at their convenience.

Early voting was a relatively popular option among registered voters. In Chicago and smaller surveyed jurisdictions alike, early ballots accounted for about 3.5% of all ballots cast in the March Primary. Chicago, which held early voting at 21 sites scattered around the City, reported steady week-over-week growth for most days of the week; half of all early voters cast ballots in the final four days of the 18-day period.

Less widely utilized was the change to allow voters to register during the first half of the traditional blackout period before an election. Such registrations must take place in person, generally at the central office of the local election authority although some of the larger authorities created satellite office for these “grace period” registrations.

Across Illinois, very few voters took advantage of grace period registration. Smaller jurisdictions in our survey reported just over 900 new voters in this two-week period, or less than one-tenth of one percent all registrants in those jurisdictions. The larger jurisdictions had a comparable percentage: suburban Cook County reported 151 grace period registrants; also less than one-tenth of one percent of all registered voters.

Grace period registrants, however, were particularly likely to take advantage of the early voting option. Over all, more than nine in 10 grace period registrants voted at the time of their registration, effectively creating an election-day registration option. Indeed, in most jurisdictions, 100% of grace period registrants voted at the time of their registration, and one jurisdiction told us they required grace period registrants to vote early. These accounted for a tiny percentage of the overall vote, but indicate keen interest among some voters in having the option of voting at the time they register.

Some predicted that early voting would obviate the need for absentee ballots, as it gave voters another means by which they could cast ballots before Election Day. Surveyed jurisdictions, though, saw little change in the number of absentee ballots returned. Nearly three-fourths of surveyed jurisdictions reported that the number of absentee ballot applications ran about normal for a gubernatorial primary, though, among the rest, jurisdictions were two-and-a-half times as likely to report a drop in applications as an increase.

When it came time to return absentee ballots, nearly 9 in 10 surveyed jurisdictions reported the numbers were about normal, including some jurisdictions that had reported a decline in applications. Only one jurisdiction reported an increase in returned absentees, while five reported a drop. While more saw a drop in returns than an increase, the bigger finding is that the vast majority saw no change.

Recruiting and training election judges has been a perennial issue for local election authorities. Roughly four out of five judges in surveyed jurisdictions had served in previous elections. Suburban Cook County announced a need for 2,000 new election judges, out of 12,000 openings; a percentage slightly below that of the smaller jurisdictions. About three in four jurisdictions said they had to recruit about the normal number of new judges, though tellingly, no jurisdictions said they had to recruit fewer judges, while about a quarter said they had to recruit more than usual.

Illinois law allows certain high school students to serve as election judges even if they are too young to vote. Students serving as judges must be 17-years-old, have permission from their high school principle, and meet a minimum grade point average. Local election authorities retain the final decision to recruit from high schools or not. Most in our survey did not utilize student judges. But among those who did, and who provided numbers, high school students made up just under 10% of election judges.

Surveyed jurisdictions were asked if they did anything different with judge training this year. About half reported that they held additional trainings. About a third said they held longer trainings this year. Just over a quarter reported that they brought in new trainers; some of these volunteered that they had purchased new equipment, and the vendor sent someone to direct the training of judges to set up and manage that new equipment. About a fifth of surveyed jurisdictions said they held trainings at new locations.

B. On Election Day

Election Day remains the time when most citizens vote; that’s the time when media attention on the workings of elections is the most focused, and that’s the time when, despite absentees and early voting, most elections are decided.

New standards in Illinois make several changes to the conduct of Election Day. The biggest is the requirement that local election authorities stop tabulating voters’ choices on punch card balloting machines. Punch card machines had been in use for many decades across Illinois, and the transition to other equipment was a centerpiece of HAVA.

New equipment had to meet several requirements. It had to accurately record voter choices, produce a “paper trail”, and be easy for voters with disabilities. By the time of the March Primary, jurisdictions across Illinois had adopted one of two kinds of equipment, and sometimes both. Optical scan equipment proved popular, as did touch-screen computer-assisted machines. Several vendors, including Fidlar, Election Systems and Software, Hart, Sequoia, and Populex, all sold Board-certified equipment (often manufactured by others, including Diebold), and federal funds were available through HAVA to assist with the transition.

New equipment affected not only the voters who had to adjust how they used the equipment but also the election judges who had to oversee the balloting and the back office procedures of the local authorities. Different jurisdictions adopted new equipment at different times, and some were more familiar with the punch card replacements than others, but all jurisdictions had to be rid of punch cards by 2006. The transition was particular taxing in some areas. One survey respondent voiced fears that the 75-pound unit was too much for judges to handle without risking injury; another noted that some election judges “don’t really know how to work with the new high technology.”

Another change to Election Day procedures related to provisional ballots. Voters who believed they were entitled to vote but who were denied a ballot by the judges at a polling place had the right in 2006 to cast a provisional ballot. These procedures had changed from previous years to clarify who could cast a provisional ballot, how local jurisdictions were to handle the ballot, and how the provisional ballot was to be verified and counted, or rejected.

By and large, the day of the March Primary ran smoothly. While several surveyed jurisdictions noted that bad weather complicated Election Day, none reported significant equipment problems that delayed balloting. Not one reported polling places that were late to open, nor any forced to stay open after the statutory closing time.

About a quarter of surveyed jurisdictions reported that at least one polling place had problems with the DRE equipment. One jurisdiction reported that the printer on one of their DRE machines caught fire; other jurisdictions reported less serious problems. Another reported that, in one polling place, judges were unable to coax a touch screen device to work, forcing all voters to use the optical scan equipment. Chicago and suburban Cook reported a host of problems though in general most of the machines seem to have functioned properly, and where there were problems, voters were most often able to use other equipment. About one in seven of the surveyed jurisdictions said they had at least one polling place that reported a problem with non-DRE equipment; though these do not appear to have disrupted balloting.

Some jurisdictions said they used DRE machines exclusively, but among those with both DRE and non-DRE machines, about one-fifth of ballots cast were voted on DRE machines.

It is worth noting, too, that HAVA requires that each polling place have at least one DRE machine available. Nearly three-fourth of the surveyed jurisdictions reported at least two precincts that share a polling place, and those polling places could also share one DRE machine across two or more precincts. Only one jurisdiction, though, reported any difficulty deriving precinct-specific results from a shared DRE machine. The difficulty was ascribed to human error.

C. After Election Day

After the election, local authorities faced the task of counting the ballots. Local authorities reported some difficulties with the counting, but nothing insurmountable. Most jurisdictions began releasing results to the media at about the usual time; a tenth had counts earlier than usual, while about a sixth began releasing numbers later than normal. Just over half of all surveyed jurisdictions reported having final results at the normal time, though three in 10 took longer than normal, and one in seven finished counting sooner than normal. Indeed, a week before the March Primary, Chicago Board of Elections Chairman Langdon Neal predicted it would take “considerably longer” to finish their counting.

Provisional ballots accounted for a very small number of all ballots cast. These ballots had to be reviewed after Election Day before they could be counted; if approved, they were added to the official counts for the proper precinct. Most surveyed jurisdictions were unable to provide exact numbers of provisional ballots issued, but among those that did provide an exact number, provisional ballots accounted for six one-hundredths of one percent of all ballots cast. Most provisional ballots were eventually accepted, though the acceptance rate varied significantly from one jurisdiction to another and the numbers themselves are too small to support generalizations. Our survey is unable to identify why some jurisdictions had more than others, or why some accepted more than others; it appears, though, that local authorities may employ different standards when deciding when to issue a provisional ballot, and when to accept one.

III. Changes in the Future

In recent years, Illinois has instituted several profound changes to its election conduct. New statutes, rules and practices will take time to integrate into the seamless system it is intended to be. To fully realize the potential of these changes, the Legislature, the State Board of Elections, and local authorities will have to work together, each adapting to facilitate more voter participation and confidence. For instance, grace period registration did not draw many new voters in the March primary, but that may change in the future; as one local authority told us, “If grace period [registration] becomes more popular, adjustments … will be needed.”

At the same time, reform must be measured and cautious. Like the proverbial snake that ate an elephant, Illinois election authorities will need time to adjust to these changes. As one local authority told ICPR, “Everyone should look at all the extra work they are putting on the Election Officials in your attempt to improve elections. It is easy to dream up ideas but there is always someone down the line that has to do al the work to administer these ideas”. Indeed, over one-third of the surveyed local authorities, in response to an open-ended question, urged restraint when considering additional changes.

Nonetheless, some changes, in statute, rule, or practice, are needed to bring these reforms to fruition. We identify these areas as in need of particular attention:

* Finish the statewide database.

Although Illinois received for a federal waiver to extend the deadline to finish the database by January 2006, the state has failed to complete this task. The State Board of Elections originally let the contract for the database long before HAVA was enacted in an emergency, no-bid contract. The contract was awarded to Catalyst Consulting and is intended to be completed at the latest by the 2006 general election in November. It is unclear if and what penalties the federal government might assess to the state for this failure to meet the January, 2006, deadline.

The unfinished state database means that local authorities may have a harder time verifying voter registrations. Whether faced with new registrants transferring from another jurisdictions or a voter appearing in person at the wrong polling place on Election Day, the statewide database was a lost opportunity in the March Primary. Completion will better enable election authorities to meet the needs of a growing and mobile electorate.

* Increase the number of early voting locations, particularly in areas of high population density.

Despite its novelty, early voting accounted for over 3% of ballots cast in the March primary. Data from Chicago shows that the number of early votes cast grew [TK]. When voters know about this option and have access to it, they respond by casting ballots. Local authorities, particularly those in urban areas with high population densities, should create and publicize satellite voting locations. Such voting options may be especially helpful to voters if they offer weekend and evening hours.

* Enhance judicial recruitment and training.

Asked what they would do differently in future elections, most jurisdictions said they would improve judge training. And about a third of surveyed jurisdictions said they would improve judge recruiting. These answers were not exclusive; the question was open ended and we noted whatever they reported, but concerns about helping judges apparently rank high with local authorities.

Suburban Cook County reported problems with election judges who were not familiar with the new procedures, and vowed to “provide our election judges with more support in the polling place so Election Day runs smoothly in the future.” Additional judge training was first on a list of 10 improvements that Cook County Clerk David Orr pledged to accomplish in time for the fall General Election. Too, DuPage County Election Commission Assistant Executive Director Doreen Nelson asserted that “some of our pollworkers threatened to quit when we told them they needed to implement the new electronic voting technology.” The election itself ran smoothly in DuPage according to their own analysis, but bringing judges and other staff up to speed on the new equipment and procedures will take more than one election.

Local authorities may need additional resources to facilitate the recruitment and training of new election judges. Whether from the federal HAVA funds available at the discretion of the State Board of Elections or from additional allocations of general revenue fund monies, local authorities need and deserve resources to support recruitment and training.

The Chicago Board of Elections announced plans to appoint an “administrative judge” for every polling precinct to ensure proper procedures are followed. It seems unlikely that every local election authority has the resources to make such an appointment, but the Chicago experiment should be watched in the November General to see if it is worth duplicating elsewhere.

* Ensure that balloting equipment is in full compliance with new laws

There were practical problems with implementing the new balloting equipment rules for the March, 2006 Primary. At the February 21, 2006 State Board of Elections meeting, Fidlar Election Company, which provided new equipment to about a third of Illinois’ jurisdictions, explained that it would not be able to provide modifications on many of its Accuvote systems because Diebold, its supplier, was unable to provide certain software and hardware updates. The State Board had previously certified this equipment contingent on these modifications, and had to back track when the concluded that existing machines were acceptable for the Primary without the updates. While all machinery is expected to be fully compliant in time for the November General Election, not all updates had been completed as of the date of our survey. Too, as noted earlier, at least one polling place reported that its DRE equipment failed, forcing all voters to use optical scan equipment. State and local election authorities should work together to ensure that functioning and HAVA compliant equipment is available as required in every polling place.

Too, the machinery itself, even when certified in compliance, in some cases did not work. As noted above, machines around the state failed to turn on, failed to accurately count votes and, in at least one case, caught fire when judges tried to print results. Four of the 10 improvements Cook County Clerk David Orr pledged to make concern equipment.
IV. Methodology of the Survey

ICPR developed a 67-question survey instrument to gauge implementation of recent election law changes by local election authorities with an eye to finding out what happened outside of the larger jurisdictions. During two weeks in April and two weeks in July, we phoned nearly 100 local authorities to obtain their answers. We obtained finished surveys from 57 jurisdictions. Of these, most answered the questions over the phone, but some did so by fax. Many jurisdictions were unable to provide exact answers to all questions; where we lacked enough meaningful data to draw conclusions, we ignored that question.