'The mission remains the same': Common Cause webinar tackles challenges, advantages of mail-in voting

A panel of experts, led by Common Cause Rhode Island Executive Director John Marion, discussed the implementation and effects of transitioning to primarily mail ballots during a webinar on Sunday night.

Marion invited three guests to bring their wide range of experience to the virtual table. The webinar featured Elena Nunez, Common Cause’s director of state operations and ballot measure strategies; Noah Praetz, a former Cook County, Illinois, elections official who now works as an election operations and security consultant; and Jennifer Morrell, a former election official in Colorado and Utah and an election audits expert.

As with most measures in the new normal, the coronavirus pandemic served as the impetus for the conversation. Rhode Island has already moved its presidential preference primary from April 28 to June 2, and Marion said there will be a “smaller than normal amount of polling places” open. He said Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea’s office is in the process of sending every registered voter a mail-in application.

Marion said it isn’t too soon to consider the ramifications of COVID-19 on future elections, such as the Sept. 8 statewide primary and the Nov. 3 general election. He noted models that show deaths from the virus continuing into October.

Morrell, as Marion noted via a release, was “instrumental” in the first risk-limiting audit, or RLA, in Colorado’s Arapahoe County, which has a population about half the size of the Ocean State’s. She said mail ballots were returned one of two ways – either at the U.S. Postal Service or through three drop boxes spread throughout the county, at “public establishments where people felt safe utilizing” them such as libraries or community gathering places.

Once ballots are returned, Morrell said, they go through a rigorous eight-step process to ensure their legitimacy. She said signature verification is a key component.

“Voters could not return a second ballot or vote in person,” Morrell said. “It would capture that vote signature so it could begin the signature verification process. When the signature is matched and accepted, the envelope would be opened and the ballot would be removed … one of the most important pieces post-election is to make sure not only the equipment operated correctly but at all those steps there was some ballot counting and tracking that happened at each step.”

Nunez, as executive director of Common Cause’s Colorado operation, oversaw massive reform to the state’s voting system. Her initiatives included the Colorado Voter Access & Modernized Elections Act, which was passed, adopted and “established same day voter registration, modernized list maintenance processes, and created more convenient options for voting.”

Both Nunez and Morrell referred to the new system as “the Burger King model,” playing off the company’s “have it your way” slogan.

Nunez said getting the legislation passed was not easy, and when the vote came to the floor it was down party lines. There was some irony in the consternation, though. The opposition mostly came from Republicans, but in the first election cycle after the law passed in 2014, Republican Cory Gardner won a hotly contested U.S. Senate race.

“I think what we saw in our experience and what we saw in our county was it’s not about partisan advantage,” Nunez said. “What we saw in Colorado was by giving voters more consistent options, and the Burger King model, it would be good for turnout and boost participation.”

In just Arapahoe County alone, Morrell said 95 percent or more opt for using their mail ballot as opposed to voting in person.

In fact, according to nonprofitvote.org figures shared during the webinar, Colorado had the second-highest turnout for any state in the country in 2018 at 63 percent, trailing just Minnesota. The top four states in turnout, which also included Montana and Wisconsin, all provide vote at home, or VAH, options. Rhode Island was 36th in turnout at 48.1 percent in 2018, and this was during a year of record voting.

Fraud wasn’t much of a concern either, at least in Morrell’s county. She said that out of 370,000 ballots returned in 2016 alone, there were only six solid cases of potential fraud.

“They weren’t definite cases of fraud, just cases we felt like we had to have the [district attorney’s] office take a closer look,” Morrell said. “It’s pretty rare. Most of the time it’s a situation with a parent or a spouse and they didn't realize they were breaking the law.”

Praetz addressed some of the questions and challenges regarding moving Rhode Island to a mail-in ballot system, including how ballots would be returned, how much will the switch cost and how can votes be counted.

“In Cook County, we were allowed to push voters to a website to request a ballot themselves online,” Praetz said. “We relied on the postal service and they are a tremendous partner but ballot drop boxes are pretty important, they could have a material effect on how much this program costs … if you’ve got drop boxes, you’ve got to figure out where those are going to go, who’s going to go pick them up, what are you going to do when you get all the envelopes?”

As far as signature verification, Morrell went a bit deeper on the process in Arapahoe. The software they used looks at points and dots along the signature and election officials can “set a tolerance” as far as how strict a match they would like to see.

“In most cases and this is across most states, election officials are looking more for similarities than dissimilarities,” Morrell said. “They are usually looking for reasons to match and to accept that ballot. If there isn’t a match and they have to reject it, it would go to a bipartisan team and they would have the physical envelope in front of them … there was a three-step process before the ballot was ultimately rejected.”

Marion and Nunez said that some people in Ohio have even more options available to them. Marion said the AARP purchased newspaper ads that are absentee ballot applications, which can be cut out and filled in. Nunez said some residents are even printing out applications and tying them to their trees or leaving them on their porches for neighbors to grab.

Marion said that Common Cause would like to see increased access to mail ballots, sufficient early voting hours and safe polling locations for voters and workers ahead of upcoming elections. Praetz said locations must also institute proper social distancing measures.

Marion asked those interested in helping to write to local legislators, write a letter to the editor or join the Common Cause Action Team at commoncause.org/act.

“No question that election officials’ focus is shifting to tremendous challenges and new operational risks that come with a changing voting system,” Praetz said. “Presidential elections are crazy difficult. Then layer on a pandemic and changes in procedures, and it’s very difficult, but the mission remains the same.”