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Whose election is it, anyway?
- 1. Whose election is it, anyway? Dana Chisnell Center for Civic Design
- 2. A day in the life of a poll worker
- 3. A day in the life of a poll worker This is ALSO a day in the life of a poll worker.
- 4. 4 ownership attitudes ▪ I’m responsible for running the polling place ▪ I have to follow procedures ▪ I have to get the paperwork right ▪ I’m responsible for my election
- 5. Poll worker attitudinal factors ▪ Personal history ▪ Election culture ▪ Voting equipment ▪ Who manages the team ▪ Local policies ▪ Leadership of clerk or election director ▪ Changes in laws
- 6. About the project What we wanted to learn
- 7. Background First research to look at security from point of view of poll workers interacting with systems
- 8. With support from the National Science Foundation EAGER grant CNS-1301887
- 9. Coverage ▪ 19 elections in 12 states ▪ November 2012 – November 2013 ▪ 17 researchers ▪ Purposeful but convenient sample ▪ Types of elections ▪ Range of systems ▪ Geographical range ▪ Range of sizes of jurisdiction ▪ Different approaches to administration and process
- 10. What we expected ▪ Security would be a distinct part of procedures & training ▪ Issues would occur in the interaction with voting systems ▪ Issues caused by mistakes, not purposeful attacks
- 11. Highlights from the research
- 12. Security is baked in ▪ Poll workers have and use procedures designed for security ▪ Procedures are designed to support trust in elections ▪ Security is not treated separately
- 13. Security vulnerabilities are distributed ▪ People ▪ Processes ▪ Paper ▪ Procedures and training
- 14. Nobody is doing it flawlessly ▪ Even great jurisdictions see imperfect completeness, accuracy, or clarity ▪ Empowered poll workers cope well, generally
- 15. Stress points Elections seem to be optimized for opening the polls 1.
- 16. Stress points: particular challenges to security on Election Day Closing & shutdown ▪ Inventorying & packing up ▪ Recording counts ▪ Organizing, sorting ▪ Managing assignments and tasks ▪ Coping with exhaustion + urgency
- 17. Stress points Reconciling was, by far, the biggest and most persistent problem 2.
- 18. Big insights Security and the Goldilocks Problem
- 19. Everything runs on documentation • Manuals • Checklists • Job aids • Forms
- 20. The Goldilocks Problem Too hard: 200-400 pages of documentation and forms Too soft: 100-page manual and a phone number What is just right?
- 21. Enough to document. And no more.
- 22. Best practices ▪ short checklists for setting up and shutting down ▪ working in pairs while setting up and shutting down systems ▪ rotating through different stations through the day ▪ conducting mini-reconciliations throughout the day ▪ greeters-as-gatekeepers
- 23. Best practice Empower through training and trust ▪ Teams had ways to resolve disputes ▪ Leads took strong responsibility ▪ Forms and checklists helped catch mistakes before they became big problems
- 24. Helping poll workers do the best possible job ▪ Use scenarios and role-playing to practice anticipating problems ▪ Use appropriate constraints such as checklists ▪ Give clear guiding principles ▪ Have strong expectations and equivalent consequences for not meeting them
- 25. Helping poll workers do the best possible job ▪ Train them. ▪ Test them. ▪ Trust them.
- 26. Thank you.
- 27. Field Guides To Ensuring Voter Intent
- 28. Get in touch! Dana Chisnell dana@civicdesign.org @danachis civicdesign.org @civicdesign
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