
Philadelphia write-in candidate: I won with one vote - LeoJiWoo
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/362934-philadelphia-write-in-candidate-shocked-by-surprise-victory
======
isostatic
"being elected as an election judge"

Is America unique in having so many elections and positions? This job title
reminds me of the "Fuse alarm fuse" (which was the fuse for the alarm that
checked if a fuse had blown)

~~~
johnnyo
It’s a pretty minimal responsibility. It’s basically the person whose job it
is to setup the polling place, collect the ballots, and make sure there is no
funny business. You literally work 2 days a year, and have no other
responsibilities.

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
I was a polling place Inspector in Orange County, CA for around six years.

In the lead up to an election I’d work, first up was ~2 hours of training. We
were the ones in charge of the polling place, so we were the ones who needed
to know all the processes and procedures.

The weekend before the election, I would pick up the supplies. Probably around
40-50 pounds of stuff. You aren’t allowed to leave In in your car: Once you
sign the chain of custody for it, the next time you get out of your car is
when you’re parked at home, ready to unload.

In the weeks before the election, I also would be getting in touch with
whomever is in charge of the polling place site. You think it’s fun dealing
with an HOA as a resident? Well, try dealing with them as an outsider.

So, leading up to the election (that is, prior to E-1), I would’ve logged
about 7 hours, most of which was during a business day (training could be
daytime or evening, as there were always multiple sessions available, and
supplies pickup was always on a weekend).

Oh, and I was also responsible for managing the other people would be at the
polling place.

On E-1, if I got prior OK from the property, I would set up some time during
the evening. Sometimes one or two of my clerks would be available to help, but
not always. Anything non-sensitive and nonessential was set up (so, no
breaking seals yet!).

On E-Day I would be waking up around 4:30. Polls open precisely at 7, so I had
to be at the polling place by 6. I would take attendance, administer the oath,
go through the same oath myself, and then do all the seal verification and
equipment setup. Then, the flood began.

If I had a full board, I could give everyone (and myself) a lunch and a break.
If we were short, then we would do what we could. Luckily, we all got some
sort of break!

There would be quiet times during the day, but it would often be nonstop
during the morning (there was always a line at opening) and after 4.

Polls close at 8. We then had to do full packing, space cleanup, and all of
the accounting. It was a win for us if we left by 9.

I then had to go to drop off everything, with a clerk driving behind me (to
make sure I went directly to the drop off point). If anything was missing, I
was on the hook for it. It was a win for me if I was out by 10.

Finally, on E+1, I’d have to return the facility key. Then I was truely done.

It was a drawn-out process, but almost everything we did had a very good
reason. Yes, the hours were long, and the work was often not fun, but I took a
_great_ deal of pride in it.

~~~
javajosh
Thank you for your service, Karl. Perhaps you might share some more light on
your experience "administering the vote" as a polling place inspector. As a
technologist, what do you see as the major error modes of the American system
of polling? Do you think fraud is wide-spread? Is it even possible to measure
fraud (since, by definition, if you detect it you eliminate it)? Are there
other methods of polling that might work better? It seems like a really hard
problem, and I've wanted to ask someone "on the inside" for a while now, and
this seems like a good opportunity. Thanks in advance.

~~~
CaliforniaKarl
Hello!

To be clear, I wasn't an employee of the Orange County Registrar of Voters, so
I wouldn't count myself as being "on the inside". Neal Kelley, who was
Registrar of Voters back when I volunteered, is still there today, and was
doing alot of stuff with YouTube at the time. Check it out:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/ocrov/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ocrov/videos)

There is also a _ton_ of poll worker training info online, which you can read
here: [https://www.ocvote.com/volunteer/poll-worker-resource-
center...](https://www.ocvote.com/volunteer/poll-worker-resource-center/) The
dates say 2016, because there won't be many updates in off years.

I first volunteered because Orange County were using the Hart InterCivic
eSlate voting system. You can read about them here:
[https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-
equipment/ha...](https://www.verifiedvoting.org/resources/voting-
equipment/hart-intercivic/eslate/)

These systems didn't run Windows. They ran some sort of minimal OS that had a
sub 10-second boot time. Power and data went through the same cable, with a
DB-9 connector at each end. All case seams and unused ports had security seals
on them, which were checked at pickup, at dropoff, and during the day (we had
chain of custody paperwork that travelled with the hardware). All the voting
machines had printers. The eSlates were in stand-up cases with all the
necessary hardware (feet for standing up, privacy shroud, etc.), and which
also kept all the ports covered up. Since power to the eSlates came through
the data cable, anyone messing with a cable would take out their eSlate, and
all the ones after it.

(NOTE: You may notice many setups having a power cable for each eSlate. That's
not a power cable for the eSlate, it's a power cable for the printer. The
printers are thermal printers, and draw enough power that they can't use the
daisy-chain power source.)

All of our eSlates had printers. Ballots lived in each individual eSlate's
memory, in the JBC's (the controller's) memory, and in paper form (the printer
was sealed). It could run on battery for a limited time, though we couldn't
use that, because the printer wouldn't work. We had a supply of paper ballots
if all else failed. Emergency support (new equipment, more paper ballots,
etc.) was available typically within an hour.

I ended up really liking the voting system, because it was simple on the face
of it, but it was also clear to me that it wasn't using a Windows OS. I wish
it was used more.

> As a technologist, what do you see as the major error modes of the American
> system of polling?

You're not going to get the answer you want. I know alot about the executing
of the voting process for Orange County, California. That _might_ translate to
other counties in California (as election policy is set most at the state
level), but I'm not going to speak to other locales. To do so, I would need to
study the county's training material, and see polling place-level records of a
previous election.

But, _speaking specifically to Orange County, California_, I noticed two
issues:

1\. Change of Address often did not make it to the voter rolls. If you moved
within a county, it was more likely to process OK, followed by moving between
counties, but moving between states often didn't remove you from your former
home's rolls.

I think this was a trust or coordination issue: Since policy is mostly set at
the state level, it's easier to coordinate information transfer between
counties in a state. There isn't much in the way of a Federal ID number,
except for the SSN, and I doubt your Registrar would want anything to do with
that number.

2\. Your full ballot is most often only available at the polling places within
your precinct. IMO, that is because of (a) the voting systems are not using
full-featured OSes, so they lack the capacity to store that many different
types + languages of ballots; plus (b) each polling place only has their own
rolls, so your info is only listed at your polling place.

Note how both issues seem to be forms of information synchronization problems:
Transferring data between regions (which doesn't have to happen quickly), or
synchronizing voter sign-in data between polling places in real time.

Personally, in my opinion, I would rather _not_ have real-time sign-in data
sync between polling places, because that adds more layers of technology that
could go wrong.

Also, we had a good method of handling provisionals: If anything would go
wrong procedural-wise, we would record information about you, and us (the
polling place), and the situation. You would then sign paperwork saying that
the information is correct, and you haven't already voted. You would then
vote, with your ballet uniquely IDed. All the info, and the unique ID of the
ballot, would go into a sealed envelope, which was treated like a voted
ballot. Your vote would not count in the immediate numbers (the numbers
released that night), but if everything checked out, it _would_ be counted in
the final, certified numbers.

According to [https://www.ocvote.com/results/left-to-count/provisionals-
le...](https://www.ocvote.com/results/left-to-count/provisionals-left-to-
count/), OC had ~130k provisional ballots processed.

>Do you think fraud is wide-spread?

No, I do not think fraud is wide-spread (_in Orange County, California_),
precisely because of the provisional process. For example, if someone voted by
mail, the rolls reflect that. If someone then comes in and tries to vote using
that name, then they have two choices:

1\. Hand over your un-mailed, empty return envelope, and vote at the polls. We
then void your envelope, and keep it in a special container, separate from
everything else.

2\. Vote provisionally.

(If you have a sealed, ready-to-mail return envelope, you could also drop it
off to us directly, to save the stamp. We treated those the same as voted
ballots.)

If anything appeared unusual, we would record all the information, and then
the voter would vote provisionally.

It's worth noting that the provisional voting process added 5-10 minutes to
the voting process, so perpetrating fraud would need a significant investment
in manpower, with no guarantee that your provisional ballot would make it past
the people at the ROV who would examine it.

The only real way I could think of to perpetrate voter fraud is to memorize a
significant number of non-vote-by-mail voters' full names and addresses, and
then claim to be them at the polling place. But, again, you need alot of
manpower, because it's the same Clerks for the entire day, so if you show up
multiple times, people will notice. Making vote-by-mail easy to do really
helps stop this, because of what I described above.

> Is it even possible to measure fraud (since, by definition, if you detect it
> you eliminate it)?

Yes, you can. You take the rolls after the election, scan in the signatures,
and compare those signatures to each voter's original registration. If a
_specialist_ can confirm a signature mismatch, then you have the _possibility_
of one instance of voter fraud, which you (by definition) _cannot_ correct,
because all the non-provisional ballots are anonymous.

This is another plus point for vote-by-mail, as you can catch these cases
before removing the ballot from the envelope.

> Are there other methods of polling that might work better?

This question is too general for me to answer. For example, the system whereby
states set election policy is something that comes from the country's history
as a tight alliance of individual States, so IMO it's not really worth arguing
that.

I think there could be two major improvements:

1\. Make it _much_ easier for change of address info to get to Registrars of
Voters. For example, when you terminate a rent/lease, or submit a Change of
Address form to the USPS or DMV/BMV, that should trigger an automatic
notification to the ROV for the county you are leaving. You would then take
responsibility for registering at your new address.

The concern there is privacy, because it makes voter information even more
valuable. That brings me to suggestion #2…

2\. Have all voter communications go through the Registrar.

Instead of offering voter rolls for sale, the Registrar should serve as a
conduit for mailing/calling.

I mean, companies like Facebook let you target ads towards specific groups of
people. The Registrar knows who voted (though not who they voted for), and
they know people's addresses & party affiliations. They also have the
infrastructure in place for doing large mailings (since they mail out
ballots), so if you're a candidate and you want to mail stuff to certain
people, give the materials to the Registrar and have them do it.

~~~
makomk
For context, there are heavy legal restrictions on why, how, and when moving
between states in the US can remove people from the voter roll in their old
state. Unless the voter tells their old state to remove them, the state has to
send them a notice and wait until after the second Federal election - if they
vote in any election before then, the state can't remove them. (This is
probably why Gregg Phillips, the guy who Trump was promoting as a voter fraud
expert for some reason, was registered in multiple states.) Also, the only
legally safe trigger for starting the removal process is the US Postal
Office's change-of-address process, and it wouldn't surprise me if the ACLU
challenged even that.

Not only that, removing people from the voter roll for this reason almost
always results in headlines implying or outright stating that this is voter
suppression. There's even a popular conspiracy theory about the 2016 US
presidential election (started by journalist Greg Palast) that relies on the
assumption that almost every voter marked for removal from the rolls in the
key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin in this process was
a Democrat voter whose vote was suppressed.

------
bkohlmann
It’s concerning that he wants to use the election judge role to “advance
progressive causes.”

Election judges should be the most non-partisan role in government.

~~~
bkohlmann
Curious as to the downvote. I’d love to see the argument for how partisan
election judges serve our Republic.

~~~
pvg
The position and the execution of its duties is supposed to be impartial and
non-partisan. There is no requirement at all that this also apply to the
_person_ elected or appointed to it. Few positions in government would be
filled at all, if that were the case. We know the political affiliations of
just about every judge on the federal bench, for instance.

------
xefer
If you go through the election results there are actually quite a number of
1-vote write-in winners for this position across the various ward divisions -
and a few with no votes at all. Quickly scanning through the hundreds of
results I didn’t see any that even had more than one candidate.

Looking at the electoral ward division maps it’s not hard to see why: these
political units only cover a few streets. There are hundreds of these
subdivisions across the city. I’d argue that this is too minor of a role to
even bother having an elected position for.

I suppose since these divisions are so tiny one might have a chance of knowing
any individuals who might be running against each other, but otherwise, what
criteria would one judge the best candidate?

------
johnnyo
Ironically, a judge of elections using his first act to call for impeachment
of a candidate likely running in an election he will preside over is extremely
inappropriate.

~~~
pornel
Why? That's exactly what his voters wanted.

~~~
desertrider12
In fact, he has a 100% approval rating among all known constituents.

~~~
dwighttk
There were two other voters who wanted someone else

------
rcthompson
my dad once won a local elected position with one write-in vote, and he wasn't
the one who wrote his name in. It turned out one of his friends had written
his name in.

~~~
dwighttk
Jerk :)

------
lowpro
Jokes aside, I wonder if we're really seeing the long term erosion of
democracy because people just don't care. You can see it in most aspects of
the nation, from the NSA revelations largely being accepted in a sigh of
hopelessness to the several social issues that have been in the news since
2014 and haven't seemed to move. People just don't take an interest in the
larger issues except to tweet their thoughts and move on. I wonder if, for
example, when events like 9/11 or Katrina happened people were moved more to
donate or help because they couldn't just say "thinking of the victims" in a
public social media space and move on with their day. And I don't think
mandatory voting is a solution to this issue because people will default to
laziest method, which would probably be whose name they heard the most. The
big picture idea is how to make people care, and that is probably the biggest
unsolved issue of our day.

~~~
LeoJiWoo
I think you are right. Also people are being worn down by the 24 hr news cycle
and always on social media. It's hijacked our emotions into thinking facebooks
likes or retweets matter more than voting or going out in the world and doing
something.

The other side is most people aren't doing well financially.I know tons of
people who work all the time, and are just too exhausted/demoralized by the
end of day for anything but tv and beer.

The apathy, desperation, political violence/polarization, filter bubbles, poor
economy for the average person, rise of the new alt-right, antifa, and
resurgence of the extreme/alt-left all make me feel like a collapse is coming.

~~~
warent
In addition to all of that, my personal experience has been the following:

Setting: 2016 US Election

    
    
      - Everybody is screaming in my ear all day every day "YOUR VOTE COUNTS, GET IN THERE AND VOTE"
      - Tons of people go to vote
      - The candidate with the lesser number of votes wins the election
    

And that's why I don't care to vote anymore. I don't know enough about
politics, social sciences, or whatever the fuck else gobbledygook to take a
stance on whether or not this result makes sense.

All I know is, simply put, my vote feels worth nothing and so I now deafen
myself to politics as much as possible. Much more worthwhile to focus energy
on building businesses and making money that I can donate to charity rather
than wasting away in my armchair yelping about politics proven to be outside
my control.

~~~
inimino
As someone smart and technical enough to hang out on HN, if your argument for
dropping out of the political process boils down to “I can’t be bothered to
understand how my country’s electoral system works”, that’s pretty weak.

~~~
chrishacken
On top of that, people don't realize how little the federal government
(Presidential Election) affects them, nor how much their local elections
affect them. Our local elections here get 4,000 votes per candidate. In a city
of 120,000 people that's pretty much shit. Your local and state elections
impact your lives substantially more than anything at the federal level.

Whether or not your city closes/opens drug/alcohol treatment centers or
homeless shelters will affect your life much more than Trump boasting about
how he's going to build a wall.

~~~
matt4077
Federal doesn't matter, until it does. It's decisive, for example, for war and
peace. Those tend to have rather large effects on people.

Even without considering the lives lost, both American and foreign: The Afghan
& Irak war have cost $5 trillion over the years. That's $60,000 for every US
family of four that could have been put to other uses if those wars had been
limited to a fast and cheap campaign against the Taliban government.

~~~
jessaustin
USA military doesn't do fast and cheap. The whole point of the operation was
to funnel trillions of dollars to armaments manufacturers and their
sockpuppets in media and politics. If Afghanistan/Iraq hadn't had that
potential, they would have agitated for War in some other unfortunate locales.

------
pmoriarty
Were electronic voting machines used here?

In past elections, whenever the issue of extremely hackable and vulnerable
electronic voting machines was brought up, objections were raised that their
use was too limited to make a big enough difference in the election. Well,
here that's clearly not the case: the difference was so slight that such fraud
could have tipped the scales.

~~~
mathgeek
The article states that write-in candidates receiving a single vote commonly
win these positions. I'd suggest reading the article before shouting "fraud
potential."

------
darkstar999
...but the official results show that he got 8 votes?

[http://phillyelectionresults.com/Citywide_Election_Results.h...](http://phillyelectionresults.com/Citywide_Election_Results.html)

~~~
lstamour
Not sure which line you’re reading, I see under “21-10” that 3 write in votes
were cast and the article says the two others were potentially disqualified.

------
mar77i
Kind of funny. He appears more qualified than people others vote for or
against.

------
timthelion
"Judges in the city are paid $100 per election they preside over" For a days
work, that's not much for a one off job even by central European standards. It
seems to me, that the pay should be increased.

~~~
osteele
On the one hand, a lower salary ensures people don't do it for the money. On
the other hand, low pay can restrict the candidate to wealthier or higher-
income individuals. This is a challenge in deciding out how much to compensate
people for service, not just for a one-off such as this but for longer-term
and more time-consuming roles as well.

~~~
baddox
Maybe pay each person the same rate they earn in their day job.

~~~
0xfffafaCrash
So if a person makes millions of dollars a day they get paid millions from
taxes but if an unemployed person does the same job they get paid nothing? I'm
not sure that's an improvement.

~~~
baddox
I was imagining there would be a minimum and maximum rate.

