FY2018 RECORDER BUDGET PRESENTATION.PDF

FY2018 Budget
Overview
18 January 2017
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Budget Snapshot
(In Thousands)
FY2017(e)/(a) FY2018(e)
• FY2018 Revenue Forecast
• Elections 3,800/5,000 1,853
• Recording 7,900/10,000 8,933
• Gross Revenue Forecast $10,786
• Expenses
• Elections Budget 21,584 9,227
• Recording Budget 2,345 2,345
• Gross Expenses $11,572
• Gross Operating Margin $(786)
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Budget Planning Parameters
• Elections require a four year budget cycle
• This smooths the cost of the State and Presidential Elections over a four year cycle to avoid sticker
shock
• Short Term Initiatives
• Diagnostics on Current Issues
• Solution Strategy
• Long Term Challenges
• Work force planning
• EAC Certification
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Short-Term Initiatives
Diagnostics Results
• Organizational initiatives are driven by our mission and how we strategically approach
implementing our mission
• Our mission is a service mission:
• We provide elections services
• We record private property documentation
• Diagnostic work on the challenges of the office has identified several major bottlenecks and
sources of error
• ePoll Book failure
• Election day lines
• Early voting ballot tabulation
• Staff control of ballot tabulation
• Special constituency voting
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Short-Term Initiatives
ePoll Book Failure
• A contributor to election day lines was the failure of the ePoll Books
• The purpose of the books is to help voters know if they have already voted and to identify their
proper polling location
• Requires a download of the Voter Registration Database including PEVL ballot status and proper
polling location
• The current books lack the data capacity to handle the database
• This will only get worse as more voters are registered as the county continues to grow
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Short-Term Initiatives
Precincts by Closing Late Times
Election Day Lines 40.0%
35.0%
• Election day lines result from too many registered voters
in a precinct and/or not choosing to participate in the
30.0%
PEVL program
Precincts
• The county currently has 724 precincts serving 2.2 million 25.0%
voters
• In 1988 we had 1,093 precincts for 1.01 million voters of
20.0%
• Wait Times
• 9% of the precincts – 66 – experienced check-ins after 7:15 - Percent 15.0%
meaning the voters experienced lines
• 2% -13 - experienced check-ins after 8:00 which means voters
stood in line for at least one hour 10.0%
• PEVL Participation
5.0%
• 294 Precincts have 1,000 or more non-PEVL voters with 20
having more than 2,000
• 438 precincts had 100 or more PEVL voters vote at the poll with 0.0%
79 having 200 or more and 11 with 300 or more after 701 after 705 after 710 after 715 after 730 after 800 after 830 after 900
Time of Last Voter Check-in (PM)
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Short-Term Initiatives
Early Voting Ballot Tabulation
• For 2016 General Election it took 10 calendar days to count
• PEVL ballots cast on the Monday before and Tuesday of election day need to verified
before they can be counted
• There were 400,000 in 2016
• Verification is accomplished through 5 stage process
• Citizen Boards who work in the MCTEC building are the bottleneck
• The current 45 boards can complete 50,000 to 60,000 per day
• The challenge is two fold:
• Physical space for boards to work
• Enough Board Workers to perform the verification
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Short-Term Initiatives
Staff Control of Ballot Tabulation
• Our current ballot tabulating technology was supplied by Dominion Voting
• Originally purchased in 1994 with retrofit in 2006
• Current software version is 3.74
• It is EAC certified. Later versions are not
• Results Reporting
• Requires that the output be manually configured for each race according to jurisdictional
boundaries
• Dominion employees are currently responsible for manual data configuration of the tabulating
machine’s results output – NOT ELECTIONS EMPLOYEES
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Short-Term Initiatives
Special Constituency Voting Services
• Additional bottlenecks in Elections includes special constituency voting
• UOCAVA (Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act)
• Highly technical requirements to serve military and overseas voters
• SEB (Special Election Boards)
• Supervises two-member boards which assists voters physically unable to mark their ballot
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Short-Term Initiatives
Solution Strategy
• Precinct Adjustment
• Community Relations Restructuring
• Internal Technology Development
• Staffing Additions
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Short Term Solution Strategy
Precinct Adjustment
Operational Mapping Services Department (formerly GIS) estimates that the county
should have ~ 1,300 precincts
With co-locations this may yield approximately 1,000 polling places
• Precincts will account for:
• Jurisdictional boundaries for cities and other jurisdictions which currently share precincts
• PEVL participation and non-participation
• This will require community presentations and meetings throughout the county to
solicit community feedback
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Short Term Solution Strategy
Internal Technology Development
We will utilize internal resources to design and construct a custom ePoll book solution
Kiosk design and fabrication is an in-house operation
• We have the skills and technical expertise to solve the problem in-house
• May require additional capital funding for the equipment needed
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Short Term Solution Strategy
Space Acquisition
We hope to acquire additional space at no cost within the MCTEC building
Utilizing the space currently being vacated by the Reprographics Department and the Sheriff’s
Department
Three 8-hour shifts will replace 15 hour workdays, increasing ballot verification accuracy
• This will accommodate at least 135 Citizen Boards for Early Voting ballot verification for 2018
• Space will allow an additional 45 boards if/when needed for 180 Boards
• The net effect will increase the ability to tabulate 150,000 to 180,000 ballots a day, reducing
the completion of the tabulation to two to three days for the foreseeable future
• Current tabulation is limited to no more than ~50,000 per day
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Short Term Solution Strategy
Community Relations Restructuring
• Community outreach is required to support the mission of the Recorder’s Office in regards to voter
registration support, polling location recruitment, poll worker recruiting, compliance, candidate
services, Citizen Board recruiting and new precinct boundary community meetings.
• Traditional media no longer has the reach to engage community participation and the current staff is
fully occupied with their current duties
The Community Relations Department will provide outreach services to all of the Office’s operations
• Serve as a means to engage the public broadly for both the Recording and Elections operations
• Provide a point of entry for new employees to be recruited to the office for succession planning
This will eliminate the need to hire people for each department to handle outreach, which would require as many as
9 people versus 5
• We are also creating a new Inter-governmental Relations position
• This individual will be responsible for managing the relationships with the jurisdictions in the county including 25
cities, towns and CDA’s, 55 school districts and 39 fire and special districts
• Will also handle legislative affairs
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Short Term Solution Strategy
Staffing Additions
The transition of elections reporting configuration to County Employees will require
the addition of three people in the Ballot Tabulating Department
• This can be completed without additional dollars
Need to hire UOCAVA and SEB support staff
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Long-term Challenges
• Work Force
• EAC Certification
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Long-term Challenges
Work Force Planning
(1 of 2)
• Currently four-in-ten – 38% - of the Office staff is eligible to retire within four years and all but
4 of these are eligible to retire immediately
• This accounts for 633 man-years of experience out of 1,070 – 60% of the institutional knowledge of the
office
• Most personnel have never worked on anything other than their current position – even after 25 years
• Key positions currently eligible for retirement include all Recorder Accounting, all Fiscal
Services, and the leadership of Recording, Citizen Board recruiting, Voter Registration, Early
Voting, Ballot Tabulation, Elections Logistics and Technology
In order to avoid catastrophic knowledge loss, we propose to launch a hiring program that will
bring in junior personnel to begin learning key positions and to establish a succession planning
program that includes business process analysis and augmented staff training
Key positions of that need to be filled immediately are Audit, Accounting and Fiscal Services
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Long-term Challenges
Work Force Planning (2 of 2)
• Wage pressures due to the economic recovery from the Great Recession are
beginning to present a challenge for retention and hiring
We support the OMB and HR department efforts to develop Performance Based
Compensation and the resetting of the Market Rates to insure competitive wages
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Short-Term Challenges
EAC Certification
• Statue requires that voting machines be Certified
• The EAC is currently starting to work on new certification requirements for voting
machines that will decertify the current Dominion Voting machines
• The timing of this effort may impact the 2018 Election and will impact the 2020 Election
We have initiated the procurement process for a new voting system for 2020 that will
be EAC Certified
We may need to change state law or receive Alternative Certification for 2018
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