<div dir="ltr"><div>I have my own material to add to the commentary from Dan Karlan, but mine comes from a different direction. I did some analysis that sheds light on some serious flaws with our convention voting. The flaws have nothing to do with whether or not we use approval voting. In fact, the use of approval voting made evident some issues that I suspected were happening, but previously didn’t have granular level information to be able to see how extensive a problem it was.<br><br>First I was curious about how many of the convention delegates took advantage of the approval voting and cast votes for more people than the number of seats to be filled. I'd suspected that delegates did take advantage of the approval voting since we had so many candidates receive a majority vote on a single ballot, and in the past very few of those elected to the same positions had received majority votes. Facts are more useful than hunches, though. David Blau sent the original ballots from Columbus home with me, so I was able to answer the question.<br><br>For the at-large race, 299 delegates cast ballots, and 97 of them voted for more than 5 candidates. That’s about 32%.<br><br>For the judicial committee, 206 delegates cast ballots, and 27 of them voted for more than 7 candidates. That’s about 13%.<br><br>I'm not a mind-reader to be able to say with certainty why the percentage is smaller for JC than for at-large, but one possible difference is that there were more seats to fill and a lot of the judicial committee candidates were not as well known as the at-large candidates.<br><br>As I did after the 2012 convention, I did a full audit of
the 2014 ballots, and that revealed some mistakes made on-site, <u>mistakes
that in one race this year impacted the outcome of the election.</u> <br><br>When I explain my findings below, I am not in any way criticizing those who served as Secretary/tellers for the convention. Secretaries/tellers are human, and mistakes happen. Manually tallying votes in our conventions is significantly more difficult than managing an election to fill one LNC vacancy with 18 people voting. <br><br>Whatever you imagine the job of convention secretary is like, it’s harder than that. The convention elections are a big job anyway, and you want to get it right so you put pressure on yourself, and there are time constraints, and the delegates are perpetually restless because you’re not done yet, and some state chairs won’t follow directions or they turn in confusing or illegible tally sheets, or they turn in more votes than they’re entitled to, and you are constantly interrupted by people asking questions or turning in motions for later, and there is loud background noise interfering with your ability to even hear the person next to you reading numbers off the state tally sheets, and you have to do error-checking, and some delegates keep insisting that we conduct other business during the vote tally so as to further distract the Secretary from the important job at hand, and you need to simultaneously wrap up the previous round of votes and document what is happening on the convention floor and generate the next round of ballots, etc. In 2012, because the chair’s race took so long to complete, there were even overlapping votes, such that delegates were voting on the next election before we finished tallying the previous one. It is maddening torture for the Secretary.<br><br>My tallying team made mistakes in the 2012 convention. Luckily the only one of them that would have impacted the outcome was caught onsite by doing a state-by-state review of the spreadsheet on the screen in the convention hall. The other mistakes that I found after-the-fact did not impact any of the outcomes.<br><br>In Columbus this year, we didn’t do any state-by-state reviews of the Secretary’s tally spreadsheet until we got to the vice-chair race, which had a margin of only 3 votes between Mr. Vohra and Mr. Goldstein. The secretary team double-checked those numbers, we did a state-by-state review of the spreadsheet on-screen, and those numbers seem to have been correct.<br><br>However, we should have done state-by-state reviews sooner, even when the results didn't seem as close.<br><br>Based on my audit of the ballots following the convention:<br><br><u>LNC Chair Election – Round 1</u> <br><br>In the first round of the chair's race, Mr. Sarwark's votes were overstated by 5 in the results shown on-screen, but that mistake didn't push him to a majority, and Mr. Pojunis would still have been dropped for round two even with the corrected totals.<br><br>The results reported on-site for LNC Chair Round 1 were:<br><br>Sarwark – 161 (40.66%)<br>Neale – 135 (34.09%)<br>Pojunis – 66 (16.67%)<br>NOTA – 31 (7.83%)<br>Starchild (write-in) – 3 (0.76%)<br>TOTAL: 396 ballots cast<br><br>However, the audited results from the state tally sheets show the results should have been:<br><br>Sarwark - 156 (39.90%)<br>Neale - 135 (34.53%)<br>Pojunis - 66 (16.88%)<br>NOTA - 31 (7.93%)<br>Starchild write-in - 3 (0.77%)<br>TOTAL: 391 ballots cast<br><br>The mistake in that round seems to have come from the Massachusetts tally sheet, which was reported in the draft minutes to have been 9 votes for Sarwark and 3 votes for Neale. However, the tally sheet showed only 4 votes for Sarwark, and 3 votes for Neale. The state’s tally sheet indicated they only had 7 delegates present at the time, not 12. This mistake could potentially have been caught by noticing that the recorded votes added up to more delegates than the tally sheet said were present, by noticing the credentials system only had 7 Massachusetts delegates credentialed at the time, or by an on-screen review of the state-by-state totals.<br><br></div><div>Note that I have attached scans of the state tally sheets in question which did not match the numbers reported in the draft minutes.<br></div><div><br><u>LNC Chair Election – Round 2</u><br><br>In the second round of the chair's race, the results reported on-screen were:<br><br>Sarwark – 194 (51.32%)<br>Neale – 144 (38.10%)<br>NOTA – 40 (10.58%)<br>TOTAL: 378 ballots cast<br><br>However, the audited results from the state tally sheets show the results should have been:<br><br>Sarwark – 194 (50.00%)<br>Neale – 153 (39.43%)<br>NOTA – 40 (10.31%)<br>Pojunis (write-in) – 1 (0.26%)<br>TOTAL: 388 ballots cast<br><br>Mr. Sarwark had exactly 50%, but not a majority which is necessary for election. Had these been the displayed results on-site, under our rules, Mr. Neale would have been dropped from the ballot, and there would have been a run-off between Mr. Sarwark and NOTA. While it is quite possible that Mr. Sarwark would have crossed the majority threshold in that scenario, it is not a given. At one point in the 2012 convention, a chair candidate had 50% of the vote, but he was not ultimately elected in the subsequent voting.<br><br>The difference of 9 votes for Neale came from the Florida tally sheet, which was reported in the draft minutes to have been 6 votes for Sarwark, 2 for Neale, and 3 for NOTA. However the tally sheet showed 6 votes for Sarwark, 11 for Neale, and 3 for NOTA, with 20 delegates present and voting. This mistake could potentially have been caught by an on-screen review of the state-by-state totals.<br><br>The on-screen results in Columbus did not report the Pojunis write-in vote that was written in the margin of the Indiana tally sheet, though write-ins are allowed for any eligible person. The ballot is merely a listing of those who have been nominated. Pojunis had been removed from the ballot (un-nominated essentially), but that doesn't prohibit write-in votes for him. See RONR (11th ed.) p. 430 line 17 – p. 431 line 8, which states:<br> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0.5in">“Strictly speaking, nominations are
not necessary when an election is by ballot or roll call, since each member is
free to vote for any eligible person, whether he has been nominated or not. In
most societies, however, it is impractical to proceed to an election without
first making nominations. While members are always free to "write
in," on a ballot, the name of an eligible person who has not been
nominated, or to vote for an eligible non-nominee during a roll-call vote,
under normal conditions it is likely that most members will confine their
choice to the nominees. Without nominations, voting might have to be repeated
many times before a candidate achieved the required majority.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Also see RONR (11<sup>th</sup> ed.) p. 441 line 25 – p. 442
line 2, which states:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0.5in">“If the bylaws require the election
of officers to be by ballot and there is only one nominee for an office, the
ballot must nevertheless be taken for that office unless the bylaws provide for
an exception in such a case. In the absence of the latter provision, members
still have the right, on the ballot, to cast "write-in votes" for
other eligible persons.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br></p>Perhaps the Indiana delegation chair wasn’t sure if he could count that write-in vote or not, and he did not include it in his own total number of votes cast, though it was clearly written in the margin of their tally sheet so the tellers could decide what to do with it. This mistake would not likely have been caught by an on-screen review of the state-by-state totals if the delegation chair was under the impression that he couldn’t count that vote, though if the results came down to a difference of 1 vote, the Indiana delegation chair might have asked if that write-in should be counted, or it might have prompted a thorough double-checking of all the tally sheets which could have caught it.<br><br>The natural question at this point is: What do we do now that we know that a chair candidate was declared elected with only 50%, rather than a majority? After some research, I’ve decided that the answer is: <u>nothing</u>.<br><br>RONR (11th ed) p. 446 has this to say about the question:<br><br><div style="margin-left:40px">"Because the voting body
itself is the ultimate judge of election disputes, only that body has the
authority to resolve them in the absence of a bylaw or special rule of order
that specifically grants another body that authority. Thus, for example, when
an election has been conducted at a membership meeting or in a convention of
delegates, an executive board, even one that is given full power and authority
over the society's affairs between meetings of the body that conducted the
election, may not entertain a point of order challenging, or direct a recount
concerning, the announced election result. While an election dispute is
immediately pending before the voting body, however, it may vote to refer the
dispute to a committee or board to which it delegates power to resolve the
dispute."
</div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And this is another instance of a point I made during the
first LNC meeting of the term, from RONR (11<sup>th</sup> ed.) p. 483, which
states:<br></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:0.5in">“In any event, no action of the
board can alter or conflict with any decision made by the assembly of the
society, and any such action of the board is null and void (see p. 577, ll.
23–33).”</p> <br>If the convention decided a person was elected, the board cannot take up a subsequent dispute about it, even with evidence that a mistake was made.<br><br>On-site error-checking is pretty important because once the convention has adjourned, we have no other body that can correct an erroneous election result. I am aware of one instance in the 2010 convention where the votes for two candidates were accidentally being reversed as they were entered into the tally sheet, but it was caught about half-way through the tally process. If that hadn’t been caught until after adjournment, there would have been no remedy for the wrong person having been declared elected.<br><br><u>Other Officer Elections</u><br><br>My audited results matched the draft minutes for the Vice
Chair and Secretary elections.<span> </span>The
Treasurer’s race only had one candidate, so it was elected by acclamation
rather than by ballot.<br>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>At-Large Elections</u><br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">For the officer elections, the only thing turned in to the Secretary team for tabulation is the state tally sheet. It is not possible in those elections to demonstrate whether the delegation chairs correctly totaled their delegation’s votes, though there is plenty of room for error there as well. Delegation chairs are humans, too, and they can just as easily make mistakes as anyone else.<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">Because the approval voting system used for the At-Large and Judicial Committee elections required that the individual delegate ballots be turned in along with the state tally sheets, that has helped demonstrate that delegation chairs do make non-trivial numbers of mistakes when they total their state results as well.<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">In the At-Large race this year, 5 of the 40 reporting states (12.5%) had incorrect totals on the sheet they gave the Secretary. In the Judicial Committee race, 5 of the 33 reporting states (15.15%) had incorrect totals on the sheet they gave the Secretary.<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">I presume that a similar number of mistakes occurred on the state tally sheets for the officer elections as well, but because we don't have the individual delegate ballots from those races, that cannot be verified.<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">I will go out of my way here to commend the Texas delegation for how meticulous they were about their voting process. It was evident from the markings on their ballots. They even caught and disallowed it when a delegate voted twice for the same candidate in an approval vote.<br></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p><p class="MsoNormal">The results reported on-site for LNC At-Large were:<br></p><br>Redpath – 225 (75.25%)<br>Goldstein – 191 (63.88%)<br>Evan McMahon – 165 (55.18%)<br>Johnson – 161 (53.85%)<br>Craig – 136 (45.48%)<br>McLendon – 136 (45.48%)<br>Pojunis – 134 (44.82%)<br>Starchild – 124 (41.47%)<br>Pickens – 97 (32.44%)<br>McVay – 58 (19.40%)<br>Fulner – 41 (13.71%)<br>Pedersen – 36 (12.04%)<br>NOTA – 0 (0.00%)<br>TOTAL: 299 ballots cast<br><br>However, the audited results from the state tally sheets show the results as:<br><br>Redpath - 215 (71.91%)<br>Goldstein - 191 (63.88%)<br>Evan McMahon - 165 (55.18%)<br>Johnson - 161 (53.85%)<br>Craig - 136 (45.49%)<br>McLendon - 136 (45.49%)<br>Pojunis - 134 (44.82%)<br>Starchild - 124 (41.47%)<br>Pickens - 97 (32.44%)<br>McVay - 58 (19.40%)<br>Fulner - 41 (13.71%)<br>Pedersen - 36 (12.04%)<br>NOTA - 0 (0.00%)<br>Brett Bittner write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>Chuck Moulton write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>Lou Jasikoff write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>TOTAL: 299 ballots cast<br><br>The differences between the on-site results and the audit of
the state tally sheets were:
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal">The
draft minutes show that Indiana
cast 34 votes for Redpath, but their tally sheet shows only 24 votes for
Redpath.</li><li class="MsoNormal">California
reported 1 write-in vote for Brett Bittner; Florida reported 1 write-in
vote for Chuck Moulton; Kentucky reported 1 write-in vote for Lou Jasikoff;
none of the write-in votes were reported on-site.</li></ul>These mistakes could potentially have been caught by an on-screen review of the state-by-state totals.<br><br>However, an audit of the individual delegate ballots revealed 13 errors made by 5 state delegation chairs when completing the state tally sheets. Results from the individual delegate ballots were found to be: <br><br>Redpath - 217 (72.58%)<br>Goldstein - 191 (63.88%)<br>Evan McMahon - 165 (55.18%)<br>Johnson - 161 (53.85%)<br>Craig - 137 (45.82%)<br>McLendon - 137 (45.82%)<br>Pojunis - 133 (44.48%)<br>Starchild - 123 (41.14%)<br>Pickens - 98 (32.78%)<br>McVay - 58 (19.40%)<br>Fulner - 42 (14.05%)<br>Pedersen - 35 (11.71%)<br>NOTA - 0 (0.00%)<br>Brett Bittner write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>Chuck Moulton write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>Lou Jasikoff write-in - 1 (0.33%)<br>TOTAL: 299 ballots cast<br><br>The differences between the state tally sheets and the audit of the individual delegate ballots were (only the erroneous totals are listed, and other reported votes for other candidates were correct):<br><ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc"><li>The Colorado tally
sheet showed Pojunis (8), Redpath (2), and Pickens (6), but the delegate
ballots had votes for Pojunis (7), Redpath (3), and Pickens (7).</li><li class="MsoNormal">The North Carolina
tally sheet showed Pojunis (3), but the delegate ballots had votes for
Pojunis (2).</li><li class="MsoNormal">The Pennsylvania tally
sheet showed Redpath (3), Craig (0), Starchild (6), Pickens (4), McLendon
(1), and Fulner (0), but the delegate ballots had votes for Redpath (4),
Craig (1), Starchild (5), Pickens (3), McLendon (2), and Fulner (1).</li><li class="MsoNormal">The South Carolina
tally sheet showed Pickens (0), but the delegate ballots had votes for
Pickens (1).</li><li class="MsoNormal">The Tennessee tally
sheet showed Pojunis (1) and Pedersen (1), but the delegate ballots had
votes for Pojunis (2) and Pedersen (0).</li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Judicial Committee Elections</u>
</p><br>Repeating myself from above, in the Judicial Committee race, 5 of the 33 reporting states (15.15%) had incorrect totals on the sheet they gave the secretary.<br><br>The results reported on-site for Judicial Committee were:<br><br>Linnabary – 117 (56.80%)<br>Carling – 116 (56.31%)<br>Wolf – 112 (54.37%)<br>Sink-Burris – 110 (53.40%)<br>Power – 107 (51.94%)<br>Latham – 104 (50.49%)<br>Visek – 104 (50.49%)<br>Fockler – 100 (48.54%)<br>Youngs – 82 (39.81%)<br>Albin – 77 (37.38%)<br>Starchild – 76 (36.89%)<br>Carol McMahon – 60 (29.13%)<br>NOTA – 3 (1.46%)<br>TOTAL: 206 ballots cast<br><br>However, the audited results from the state tally sheets show the results as:<br><br>Carling - 124 (60.19%)<br>Linnabary - 117 (56.80%)<br>Wolf - 112 (54.37%)<br>Sink-Burris - 110 (53.40%)<br>Power - 107 (51.94%)<br>Latham - 104 (50.49%)<br>Visek - 104 (50.49%)<br>Fockler - 100 (48.54%)<br>Youngs - 83 (40.29%)<br>Albin - 77 (37.38%)<br>Starchild - 76 (36.89%)<br>Carol McMahon - 60 (29.13%)<br>NOTA - 3 (1.46%)<br>TOTAL: 206 ballots cast<br><br>The differences between the on-site results and the audit of the state tally sheets were:<br><ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc"><li>The
draft minutes show that Ohio
cast 30 votes for Carling, but the state tally sheet shows 38 votes for
Carling.<span> </span></li><li class="MsoNormal">The
draft minutes show that Texas
cast 12 votes for Youngs, but the state tally sheet shows 13 votes for Youngs.</li></ul>These mistakes could potentially have been caught by an on-screen review of the state-by-state totals.<br><br>However, an audit of the individual delegate ballots revealed 5 errors made by 5 state delegation chairs when completing the state tally sheets. Results from the individual delegate ballots were found to be: <br><br>Carling - 124 (60.19%)<br>Linnabary - 118 (57.28%)<br>Wolf - 113 (54.85%)<br>Sink-Burris – 111 (53.88%)<br>Power - 107 (51.94%)<br>Latham - 105 (50.97%)<br>Visek - 104 (50.49%)<br>Fockler - 100 (48.54%)<br>Youngs - 83 (40.29%)<br>Albin - 77 (37.38%)<br>Starchild - 77 (37.38%)<br>McMahon - 60 (29.13%)<br>NOTA - 3 (1.46%)<br><br>The differences between the state tally sheets and the audit of the individual delegate ballots were (only the erroneous totals are listed, and other reported votes for other candidates were correct):<br><ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc"><li>The Colorado tally
sheet showed 3 votes for Wolf, but the delegate ballots showed 4 votes for
Wolf.</li><li class="MsoNormal">The Illinois tally
sheet showed 0 votes for Starchild, but the delegate ballots showed 1 vote
for Starchild.</li><li class="MsoNormal">The New York tally
sheet showed 4 votes for Sink-Burris, but the delegate ballots showed 5
votes for Sink-Burris.</li><li class="MsoNormal">The Ohio tally sheet
showed 46 votes for Linnabary, but the delegate ballots showed 47 votes
for Linnabary.</li><li class="MsoNormal">The Pennsylvania tally
sheet showed 0 votes for Latham, but the delegate ballots showed 1 vote
for Latham.</li></ul>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u>Conclusion</u></p><br>What is evident is that our process of manual tallying of delegate ballots has not just the potential for a lot of errors, but there actually are a lot of errors. In at least one instance this year, it impacted the outcome of an election, with someone being declared elected who did not actually have a majority.<br><br>Some of the errors from the teller team seem to have been introduced by the process of hand-copying numbers from the state tally sheets to an interim handwritten table, and then using the handwritten table as the input for the totals spreadsheet. It seems there were mistakes with interpreting handwriting on that interim table. The interim table had no convenient place to note write-in votes. In one instance, it seems likely that the Arabic numerals representing an eleven were misread to be two tick marks, so a 2 was recorded instead of an 11, though there were clearly 11 tick marks grouped beside that Arabic number. These are just the general nature of human mistakes. It’s what happens in high pressure, fast-paced situations.<br><br>I have some ideas about how to improve the accuracy of our elections, and I’ll certainly be discussing that with the next Bylaws and Rules Committee. Electronic voting would be my preference, as it would improve accuracy and the speed of the tabulations. If we can't get that, there should at MINIMUM be a MANDATORY on-screen review of the state-by-state results for each set of election results. <br><br>Perhaps we should also require that each delegation use ballots for their internal voting, and that each delegation's tallies then have to be double-checked by a delegation chair from another state before they are turned in. My other ideas are still conceptual, and they will need some details fleshed out at some point.<br><br>Again, I am not pointing out these problems to criticize the good-faith efforts of any individual to do their job well while tallying the results. My tallying team made mistakes in 2012 also. It’s much easier to find the mistakes after everyone has gone home when there are no more time pressures. Knowing that the problems exist is just a necessary first step to actually finding solutions for the problems for our future conventions.<br><br>Alicia Mattson<br>LNC Secretary<br><br> </div></div>