County Supervisors Tighten Election Procedures

Alameda County never again wants to see a repeat of the gross mistake made in the November 2022 election, when the wrong winner was declared in the Oakland school board race. After that election, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors quickly formed an Elections Commission to play both an oversight role for the county’s Registrar of Voters and an advisory role for the board.

The newly seated Elections Commission wasted no time. In May 2024, it passed its first resolution recommending that the board direct the registrar to implement a policy of publicly releasing “cast vote record” reports beginning on election night, and then on each day the registrar updates the vote tallies.

At its Monday, October 8, meeting, the board heeded the Elections Commission’s advice and directed the registrar to adopt the cast vote record policy.

Cast vote records are an election auditing tool

The cast vote record is a digital representation of the ballot that contains the choices made on each individual ballot, but without any information that could identify an individual voter. Lines of data appear on a spreadsheet indicating the votes cast.

Cast vote records can be used by election experts to audit and verify election results to ensure that every vote is accurately counted and the outcome is correct. The data can also be used to identify which precincts and neighborhoods are making the most errors on their ballots, and target them for additional voter education and outreach.

The registrar in Alameda County has previously released cast vote record reports upon request, but only after the election results were certified 30 days after the election. San Francisco has long been posting cast vote record reports on its website throughout its ballot counting process.

Mistake by registrar in 2022

When preparing for the November 2022 election, the registrar’s office mistakenly changed some settings in its computer software program that caused votes to be tabulated incorrectly in ranked choice voting elections.

The registrar’s programming error affected the final tallies in several cities without consequence, but the Oakland school board race was very close, so the mistake in the tally caused the wrong candidate to be declared the winner.

The mistake was not discovered until election experts from an organization called FairVote caught the error by using the cast vote records the registrar had released after the election had been certified, using its own vote-counting software to rerun the election and check the accuracy of the tally.

The registrar’s mistake resulted in two lawsuits and a judge’s order to break the sealed ballots in order to recount the votes using the corrected algorithm and announce the winner. The wrong winner had already been sworn into office and needed to resign to make way for the correct winner.

Implementing the new cast vote record policy

At the board of supervisors October 8 meeting (last week), Supervisor Keith Carson urged that the new cast vote record policy be implemented immediately. “Since San Francisco uses the same voting equipment and vendor as Alameda County,” wrote Supervisor Keith Carson in the agenda report, “this practice is feasible to implement here as well.” There is no impact on net county cost.

The charters of Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro already require that cast vote record reports be released as soon as possible during the elections canvassing/counting process. But these legal mandates were not followed.

After an intense discussion over concerns about new state legislation that protects the privacy of voters, and about whether there was enough time before the November election to implement new cast vote record procedures, Supervisor Carson stated, “We should just make our best efforts to provide the cast vote record policy,” and he encouraged the registrar to utilize any resources available to make it happen.

The board of supervisors then directed the registrar to release cast vote record reports before elections are certified and to post on its website a schedule of when vote tallies will be updated.

“It’s a heavy lift,” said Registrar Tim Dupuis. “I am going to attempt to do it.”

In an environment of extreme polarization, those from across the political spectrum came together to support the move. Many on all sides agree that it will enhance transparency, accountability, accuracy, and confidence in election results.

Contributing writer Irene Dieter’s articles are collected at alamedapost.com/Irene-Dieter , and she posts stories and photos about Alameda to her site, I on Alameda .

The post County Supervisors Tighten Election Procedures appeared first on Alameda Post .