School Board Election Redo? 

By Alex Saitta 

December 20, 2018 

 

Introduction: 

I am sure many have read about the school board race in Dacusville. On Tuesday, November 8, about 3,450 votes were cast in the race, and Phil Healy got 20 more votes than Alice Hendricks Vander Linden. Hendricks Vander Linden protested the election for a few reasons, mainly the voting machines in three precincts were down for a while and some voters were given emergency paper ballots that did not contain the school board race.  

 

Emergency Ballots:   

To see what went wrong you have to first understand what an emergency paper ballot is and when they are supposed to be used.  

 

There are two types of emergency ballots, provisional and failsafe ballots.  

 

A provisional ballot is just like the ballot on the voting machine and it includes all federal, state, county-wide and local races in a specific area of the county. For example the race for county sheriff (a county wide race) will be on the machine and provisional ballot, as well as the school board race for Dacusville. 

 

A provisional ballot will be used if the voting machines are not working, someone challenges the eligibility of a voter or someone didn’t have a photo ID and still insists on voting. Once filled out, this paper ballot will be placed aside and reviewed by officials after voting ends to see if the voter was truly qualified to vote. Depending on what the officials uncover, the vote may be counted or it may not.  

 

A failsafe ballot includes federal, statewide, county wide races, but not local races specific to one area of the county. For instance, a failsafe ballot would have the county wide sheriff’s race on it, but not individual school board race for Dacusville or the race for the Oolenoy Watershed.  

 

A failsafe ballot might be used if the voter comes in and is registered in Dacusville, but his driver’s license has his current address in Six Mile. So the poll workers know the voter is registered and lives somewhere in the county, but not sure where. This person would vote a failsafe paper ballot that has the federal, state and county wide races on it, but none of the races specific to any one area of the county.   

 

Election Day Problems: 

Listening to the county elections director and reading the memo he handed out at the protest hearing, 8 precincts had voting machines that were programed incorrectly. Specifically the PEBs were incorrect, so the machines had the wrong ballots on them. The PEB is the personal electronic ballot. It is the small square box the poll worker puts into the machine before you vote, and it turns-on the machine and I guess loads the ballot.  

 

Three of those precincts (Dacusville, Crossroads and Nine Forks) were in this Dacusville school board district. Those machines there were down from 7 am to about 9:30 am.  

 

Initially, the poll workers handed out provisional ballots as emergency ballots (as they should have). Given the provisional ballot is just like the machine ballot, and all went well. The state limits the number of provisional ballots that are printed (it wants to discourage paper ballot voting). However, with that many machines down for nearly three hours (during heavy voting times), all three precincts ran out of provisional ballots.  

 

Poll workers in those three precincts then started to hand out failsafe ballots that did not include the elections specific to that area of the county. There are places on the paper failsafe ballot to write in the local races like school board and the two candidates, but this did not occur in most cases in the use of failsafe ballots. In Nine Forks 50 failsafe ballots were used. In Dacusville 49 failsafe ballots were used. In Crossroads 49 failsafe ballots were handed out and used. For example, in Crossroads 650 people voted in total and of those 507 voted on voting machines. There were 143 whom voted emergency paper ballots, and of those 49 were given failsafe ballots. Of those 49 failsafe ballots, on 11 ballots the poll workers wrote in the school board choices. As a result, in Crossroads, 38 ballots did not have the school board on it.  

 

In Dacusville they handed out 49 failsafe ballots and did not write in the school board race on any of those ballots. In Nine Forks, 50 failsafe ballots were handed out and none had the school board race written on them.   

 

In sum, 137 failsafe ballots (Nine forks 50 + Dacusville 49 + Crossroads 38 = 137) were handed out and they did not have the school board race on them. In their lies the problem, 137 voters were denied the opportunity to vote in the school board race due to no fault of their own.  

 

Only About Half Vote In School Board Race: 

If you look at the overall voting in all the precincts in the Dacusville district, a bit more than 50% of the people voted in the school board race. Why only 50%? Mainly because so many vote a straight Republican or Democrat party ticket and the school board race is non-partisan. So if you just check Republican and hit confirm, you automatically select all Republican candidates, but the school board members has no party affiliation, so you would not vote in the school board race.  Those who went down the ballot, voting race by race, I suspect many didn’t know either candidate. Neither candidate campaigned hard or got out to engage the voters in mass. So many of the hunt-and-peck voters looked at the names Healy and Hendricks Vander Linden, didn’t know them, and left it blank.  If there were no machine problems, of those 137 people who got ballots without the school board race, probably a bit more than half would have went down the ballot race by race and would have voted in the school board race. So only about 70 of the 137 would have actually voted in the school board race.  

 

The Math: 

Healy beat Hendricks Vander Linden by 20 votes overall. Would Hendricks Vander Linden made up the 20 vote deficit if all 137 would have gotten complete ballots? Remember, likely only about 70 of those 137 would have voted in the school board race. Doing the math, it is extremely unlikely Hendricks Vander Linden would have won those 46 of those 70 votes (or 67%) and overcame the 20 vote deficit to win the race. I call it extremely unlikely, because it is not hard to determine the probability of that, and it is about 1%.  

 

Binomial Math To Be Specific: 

Overall Healy pulled down 50% plus a bit and Hendricks Vander Linden 50% less a bit.  Using Statistics 101 math, anyone you and show it is extremely unlikely Hendricks Vander Linden would have overtaken Healy if those 137 people were given complete ballots. I will explain. Let's say I had a fair coin and flipped it 70 times, and did that many times. The result is not always going to be 35 heads and 35 tails. There is some randomness in the process. Thirty-five heads and 35 tails will be the average over many trials of 70-flips, but the first trial may result in 37 heads and 33 tails, the next 70-flips may turn up 34 heads and 36 tails, the next trial of 70-flips might be 38 and 32, then 33 and 37,  and so on.  The chances of anyone one trial of 70 coin flips of a fair coin turning up 46 heads (or more) is only 1.1%. The Healy and Hendricks Vander Linden race was very much a 50%-50% overall, like a fair coin flip. So the probability is about a 1% probability that she would have pulled down 46 or more of those 70, and overcame her 20 vote deficit. even if those extra voters were given complete ballots.If you drill down further, looking at those 3 precincts only, Healy won those three precincts by a total of 433 to 408. So the coin was not 50%-50%, but more in favor of Healy. This makes it even more unlikely 46 or more of those 70 would have voted for her. Likely if all the voters got complete ballots that day his margin would have been wider, probably 22 or 23 votes.  

In sum, she probably has a case to say she should could have won if the machines had all functioned probably, but she does not have a statistical case.  

 

My Concern: 

I really do not have a desire whom wins this race. The district administration has a rubberstamp school board with more than 95% of the votes being 6 to 0. No matter who wins this race, nothing will change the outcomes of the votes on the school board. Most all the votes will either be 7 to 0 or 6 to 1. The bigger issue is the election process. Likely this is a sign of a lax process. We know what happened, but who was responsible for the mistakes and how can the process be improved?  

 

Too Important: 

Obviously there were some mistakes here. They were mistakes anyone could have made, but there is so much on the line those mistakes cannot be made because there is simply no good remedy when they occur in a tight race like this.  

 

If the officials had accepted the results as counted election night and declared Healy the winner, 137 people would have been denied the opportunity to vote in the election. Hendricks Vander Linden would not have been given a completely fair opportunity.  

 

If they have a re-vote, and that is likely where this is heading, about 400 people will vote, so mostly family and friends will select the next Dacusville rep on the school board. Plus the 3,450 who voted on election day, and they did nothing wrong, most of their votes would not have mattered.   

 

Additionally, it is going to cost $8,000 to have a do-over election. It is bad all around, hence such mistakes cannot be made and the process improved.  

 

Some Questions: 

It may have been bad luck, poor training or people not up to the job. I do not know. There are some questions that should be asked though:   

 

Who programed the PEB’s incorrectly? Who handed out the failsafe ballots without the school board race on them? Where these people properly trained? Did the elections committee members properly oversee the director? Who is responsible for making sure these questions get answered, some are held accountable and the process is improved? 

 

County Council: 

The state elections commission oversees the county elections commission and the county commission hires the elections director.  

 

The County council pays the county elections director, the staff in elections department, all the expenses of the department and the cost to put on the elections. While the county council has no authority in running the elections department or the elections themselves (that lies with the county elections commission), the council has a responsibility to insure that the department uses county taxpayer funds wisely and effectively.  Therefore the county has an fiscal oversight responsibility. 

 

The county council needs to push to insure the following questions are answered: what went wrong, why, who was responsible and what steps are being taken to insure it doesn’t happen again? Plus they need to look into other recents mistakes as well. All that needs to be made public in a report. This was a public election and a very public mistake. That is a key ingredient of accountability with a public government or a government agency. 

 

After that is done, then I would consider additional training, writeups and even terminations. 

 

The council could have a work session and invite in the election director to answer those questions. If he refuses, have the county administration do an investigation to uncover the answers to those questions, and the financial department do an audit.  

 

Here is the state law that seems to give the county council fiscal responsibility and oversight.  

 

SECTION 7-23-40. Expenses payable by counties. 

 

The governing bodies of the several counties shall audit and pay all accounts for necessary expenses incurred by the members of the board of voter registration and elections and managers of election for stationery, the making of election boxes, rents and similar expenses in elections held in this State. 

 

The word "audit" points out the financial oversight responsibility the council has over the activities of the elections department and the board of elections.   

 

The council has accepted this idea they have no input or say or responsibility and I am not buying it. Like I told them. You all ran as leaders. Now lead. Sometimes that means cutting a new path no one else realized existed. Wes Hendricks and Carl Hudson are the council reps over that area of the county. They should be leading this issue. They all run as leaders. It is time for them to lead.  

 

August 13, 2019 Update: 

Nothing was changed or improved so this will not happen again. No one wanted to lean on anyone to force the changes necessary to insure this doesn’t happen again. The buddy system prevailed all the way up the line from the director, to the election board, to the delegation, up to the council. Folks, this is what Pickens United means in practice. If your friends screw up, everyone just looks the other way.   

 

 

 

 

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