CityClub, UW offer Living Voters Guide
With the 2011 General Election upon us, we encourage voters to educate themselves as much as possible about candidates and issues before they cast their ballot. Here is another information source for voters to utilize.
CityClub has partnered with the University of Washington’s Center for Communication & Civic Engagement and its Department of Computer Science and Engineering to produce the Living Voters Guide, a web-based resource to advance digital democracy in our state.
New this year, the Living Voters Guide will be available to all Washington voters with county and local measures as well as statewide ones. (Typing in your zip code to the system will let it present the measures relevant for you; for example, Seattle residents will be invited to weigh in on the pros and cons of the proposed Families and Education Levy.)
Check out this news release from CityClub about the Living Voters Guide and what it hopes to accomplish.
6 thoughts on “CityClub, UW offer Living Voters Guide”
Thanks so much for your great leadership and for helping us spread the word about this resource for citizens across our state. Our goal is to encourage rich conversation and deliberation about the important decisions we share. The Secretary of State’s office has been a wonderful partner which we truly value and appreciate.
This question is offtopic, but I hope that you can answer it. It concerns the recent decision to release the names of the signers of the Referendum 71 petitions. I believe that the major reason the proponents of the referendum fought the release of the signatures so doggedly is that the petitions contain evidence of voter fraud–i.e., I think a lot of the signatures on the petitions were either gathered under fraudulent conditions or are outright forgeries. I suspect that a lot of people are going to be surprised to find that their names are on the petitions because they did not knowingly sign a petition to repeal the domestic partner statute.
What I would like to know is whether you know of any plans to post the signatures online so that people can examine the names on the petitions without buying a dvd?
Also, if one discovers that one’s name is on the petitions fraudulently, who should be notified? Can one ask the Attorney General’s office to pursue election fraud charges against the person or persons who submitted a petition that contains the name of a voter who did not actually sign the petition?
Thank you.
Hi Jay – Regarding your first question, our office does not have plans to post the petition images on our website, but that doesn’t mean that a person has to buy a DVD to see the names. It is likely that one of the requesters is going to post them online on their own website.
Regarding your second question, remember that the term “fraud” means different things to different people. If someone believes that a signature has been forged, then that is a crime and can be reported to a law enforcement agency such as a police department of sheriff’s department. – Brian Zylstra, Office of Secretary of State
Brian Zylstra:
If you would be so kind, I had a question about the R71 petitions:
As you know, most of the time initiative proponents either turn in far more signatures than are required or they clearly fall short of the minimum. However, in a small number of cases, proponents turn in signatures with a slim “cushion” above the minimum, and success or failure to qualify will turn on an accurate review by the SoS of the signatures.
R71 fell into this latter category, but under the SoS’s procedures, temp employees with minimal training reviewed the petitions and thereafter SoS staff double checked only those signature that the temps rejected. SoS staff did not check for erroneously accepted signatures. The result is that the tally of valid signatures is only adjusted upward, and never adjusted downward for errors. These procedures may have resulted in R71 qualifying for the ballot when it should not have.
Does the SoS have any plans to review the petitions to determine whether this, in fact, occurred and to determine whether different procdures are in order when proponents turn in signature totals that are above, but close to, the minimum?
Hi Sara – Sorry for not responding sooner to your comment. We don’t perform a re-check of all approved signatures for all initiative and signature checks, not just the R-71 check.
Regarding approved signatures from R-71, the signature checker located the voter registration record and compared the signature on the petition sheet with the signature on the voter registration record. These signatures either matched or did not match. In close cases, the checker may request a supervisor or master checker to help with a close call. To recheck all approved signatures would have nullified the vast majority of verification work already completed. – Brian Zylstra, Office of Secretary of State
Brian:
Thanks for your response. I do understand that your procedure (of only double checking those signatures initially rejected by the temps and not double checking those signatures initially accepted by the temps) applies to all initiatives, not just R71. My point was that in the vast majority of cases, it doesn’t really matter whether your procedures have an inherent bias in favor of certification, because proponents turn in signatures that either fall clearly above or clearly below the threshold. It is in cases like R71, where the proponents turn in the minimum number of signatures and a very thin cushion, that these procedures are inadequate. In such cases, the “only double-check the rejects” procedure can result in an initiative being improperly certified. I would respectfully suggest to you that, in those rare cases, this process of using temps and then only correcting part of their work needs to be changed.
It is untrue that the temps only make errors in rejecting signatures. During the R71 review, the SoS permitted a sampling of temp-accepted signatures to be subjected to a master checker review. In that sampling, there was a substantial error rate among those signatures accepted by the temps. (As I write this, I can’t recall the exact error rate, but I do recall that it was in excess of 10%.) If that error rate were present to the whole body of temp-accepted signatures, R71 would have fallen substantially below the minimum. Indeed, if only 1/10 of the error rate found in the sample applied to the whole body of signatures, R71 still would have failed to qualify.
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