The federal Election Assistance Commission met in Seattle Thursday to discuss the topic "Vote Counting and Recounting". Jonathan Bechtle of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation attended and gives the session a mixed review. His trip report follows --

I attended the Election Assistance Commission meeting on vote counts and recounts yesterday, and came away a bit concerned with the direction the EAC is going on this issue.

The meeting was divided into two panels, the first consisting of Secretary Sam Reed, the policy director from the VA state board of elections, and the county auditor from Sacramento County, CA. This panel focused on recounts, with each sharing their experiences.

Secretary Reed talked about what he had learned from Washington’s recounts, and his advice to other jurisdictions was (1) be transparent in every part of the process, (2) have clear laws that are uniform and don’t vary during recounts, and (3) have trust between local and state election officials. I sat there thinking, “I wish Secretary Reed would follow his own advice.” He even was specific in his suggestions on uniform laws, saying he thought it was vital to have consistent signature verification standards, provisional ballot processing, and definitions of voter intent. I will admit he succeeded in having trust between his office and the auditors—too much in some cases.

The Virginia official talked about their AG recount in 05, where they primarily just retabulated the vote totals, and did a subjective “voter intent” review only in problem jurisdictions. The most interesting difference between the VA and WA recounts was displayed in a question asked by an EAC commissioner about voter confidence. The VA official said both AG candidates felt the recount was fair, and that voters had not lost any confidence in the process. Secretary Reed had to admit that voter confidence in Washington “dropped like a rock,” despite his efforts to reassure the public that everything was happening as normal.

The Sacramento auditor had a fascinating presentation about her office’s attempt to do a test recount of the paper trail from VVPAT-equipped voting machines (Avante system). Many problems cropped up, and it ended up taking 127.5 hours to count 114 ballots (67 minutes each)!

The second panel was two university professors who were conducting a study of recount laws and procedures from across the nation. It should be an interesting read when it comes out, as they both showed concern over the lack of auditing, training, and testing across the board.

One other note: apparently Dean Logan hosted the EAC commissioners on Wednesday, and told them all about King County voting system. One of the EAC commissioners latched onto King County’s ballot duplication procedure (every absentee ballot is examined for voter intent before going through the machines), and asked the Virginia official if she planned to try using that approach in Virginia. Thankfully, the VA official said no, that the state board had soundly rejected that approach, instead using the traditional approach of counting the ballots only if they were correctly filled out.

Overall, the EAC’s guidance on this issue will likely contain some good direction, but it appears that some of Washington’s less desirable election practices will also be encouraged.