52 Pickup – From Theory to Practice in Johnson County, Kansas

[Image courtesy of Brian Newby’s ElectionDiary]

I’ve made no secret about my admiration for Johnson County, Kansas’ Brian Newby, whose ElectionDiary is such an amazing resource for the election community nationwide.

Brian’s last two posts have focused on redistricting in Kansas, where new lines have been held up by federal litigation. I’ve already written often about “52 pickup” – my nickname for the problems redistricting creates for election officials. Brian’s latest posts are a valuable peek inside what that process looks like on the ground.

Immediately before redistricting, there is preparation and concern about what the impact will be. Brian’s June 5 post captures this nicely:

[W]e’re continuing to watch the possibility of having two elections in August [as the result of court-ordered redistricting] and the craziness that could be happening with a voter coming in to cast two separate advance ballots for two different elections at the same time.

Meanwhile, we’re building the election in our systems, fully mindful that it may not all hold as revisions are made. Typically, after the filing deadline, we’d be preparing our paper ballot order but that’s a futile task at this point.

August of even years presents the most complicated ballot printing scenario. We print enough paper ballots for advance by mail voters, anticipated provisional voters, and for persons who request paper ballots. We expect about 75,000 voters in August and only a portion of those voters will cast paper ballots.

But with nearly 500 precincts and unique ballots for Democratic, Republican, and Unaffiliated voters, we’ll have more than 1,000 ballot styles. Then, we’ll order 25 of one, 50 of another, 30 of a third, and so on. It’s a very complex process and to be prepared, we have to over-print and end up literally throwing away thousands of dollars worth of unused ballots after every election.

We’re going to take a stab at printing paper ballots on demand at our advance voting sites, but we thought that was better as a 2014 initiative. At this rate, though, we may be combining the 2012 and 2014 elections.

For now, our office is starting to feel like a Fire Station. We’re polishing and testing our equipment, washing the truck, laying out our uniforms, and waiting for the next alarm.

Late last week, the federal court issued the new map – and Newby and his office sprung into action, as detailed in his June 9 post:

The changes are massive, renumbering districts and putting two incumbents in one district, no candidates in another, and, overall, leading to a different kind of race. Namely, candidates are racing to get filed or even withdrawn by noon on Monday.

…

In a clinical way, this is a fun time, almost starting from scratch and reinventing jurisdictions.

I know, though, that it has caused upheaval in so many lives that I doubt those impacted would call this fun. I feel especially bad for those who woke up to see a friend and someone they respected ideologically suddenly also be an opponent in a primary.

In our office, we’re now head-down putting the districts together. We have 16 employees and while that may seem like a lot, each are specialized and spread pretty thin. We have one mapping person and one person who has an end-to-end understanding of all our systems.

Those two locked up on Friday, are likely working as I type, and will be sorting all of this out for several more days. They have to ensure that each precinct is placed in the proper district. We have about 450 precincts and likely will have more because the maps split several precincts.

They finished four of the county’s nine Senate districts on Friday. They’ll have the State Board of Education and House districts to do this week.

From there, we can begin placing voters in their correct jurisdictions and create ballots. We need to mail military ballots within 2 weeks and we should meet that goal, but that’s just the first milestone.

We’ll need to create our ballot order to give our printer time to prepare and mail back about 150,000 ballots. Permanent sick and disabled ballots, and ballots for those who already have requested an advance ballot, will be in the mail July 18. We send a postcard to each voter, also, and that will go out the week before.

Redistricting is already well-known for its disruptive effect on candidates – especially when districts are drawn on a blank slate as the federal court did in Kansas; however, as we’ve seen time and again this cycle, the process also creates huge challenges for election administrators once it’s time to pick up and reassemble the pieces.

I’m very interested long-term subject in improving how legislators, courts and election officials can communicate with one another when their worlds collide in redistricting – in the meantime, having dispatches from the front lines like those found in ElectionDiary is very important and incredibly valuable.