New voting ballots coming for Sonoma residents

Bigger changes coming to local voting process.|

Sonoma Valley voters will encounter a new ballot, which will be counted by an entirely new back-office voting system known as “Democracy Suite,” the next time residents go to the polls.

The new system, which replaces the county’s 35-year-old ballot style and tallying system, debuts next month in a special election in Sebastopol.

The Registrar of Voters Office purchased the new system following approval by the Board of Supervisors last August and the machines arrived in December.

The system was developed by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. of Colorado. A committee of county staff with expertise in elections, computer and information systems made the recommendation to the Board of Supervisors to award Dominion the contract.

At the latest, Sonoma Valley voters will get the test drive the new ballots in the March 2020 presidential primary. If a special election is slated before then, local voters may see them sooner.

While the new system still uses paper ballots, Sonoma County elections chief Deva Proto says it features more modern technology and security features, in the post-election ballot processing.

“This is a positive step forward for us,” said Proto. “We will be able to process election results more efficiently.”

Proto explained that with the current system all the ballots need to be run through the machines over and over in order to update results with periodic updates until results are final.

Proto, however, said not to get too excited about faster election returns.

“The biggest factor in our ability to process election results is how many people in Sonoma County vote by mail and mail or drop off their ballots at the last minute,” said Proto.

In the 95476 zip code, only about 20 percent of voters cast their ballot at a polling center. Almost 80 percent typically use a mail-in ballot, Proto said, and many wait until election day to drop off or mail their ballots.

There is no difference in the security features of the new system.

“Security has always been high here and it will continue to be with this new system,” said Proto.

Since delivery in December, the Registrar of Voters has inspected and tested the equipment and begun training for Registrar of Voters staff.

The new voting system has been a long time coming. In 2002, U.S. Congress passed the Help America Vote Act which, among other things, encouraged local elections officials to replace their voting equipment with modern technologies.

For decades, Sonoma County has used Mark-A-Vote – a paper-based, optical-scan voting system which consists of a paper ballot that is marked by the voter with a pen or pencil, then read by optical scan machinery and tabulated by a vote-counting program. Because the majority of voters in Sonoma County vote by mail, retaining a paper-based system was preferred. It was also determined that voting systems which rely on software become obsolete quickly.

The cost to the county of the new voting system from Dominion was not to exceed $3.2 million but that amount will be paid over time, said Proto, and the state will be kicking in approximately $1.6 million.

The voting package from Dominion includes new accessibility features for voters with disabilities that might have made it difficult for them to vote in the past. Every polling place will have one of the new ballot-marking devices.

Proto noted that even bigger changes may be on the way.

After the 2020 election, Sonoma County is eligible to move toward a “Vote Center” model in which all ballots are mail-in ballets. Voters can stop by any Vote Center prior to Election Day to fill out or drop off their mail-in ballot.

The advantage of the new model is voter convenience. Citizens can drop in to fill out or submit their ballot near home, near work or school or anywhere that is convenient.

The expectation is that there will be a financial savings to the county, as with fewer locations to staff, Election Day expenses are reduced.

It is complicated though, as Vote Centers must have an electronic mechanism for county election officials to immediately access voter registration data to determine whether or not the voter has already been issued a vote-by-mail ballot, and whether or not a ballot has been received by election officials.

Counties will begin transitioning to the new model in 2020, but Proto is not pushing for Sonoma County to be first out of the block as she noted that the counties who piloted the vote center model did not see any cost savings.

Valley resident and avid voter Jennifer Gray Thompson applauds the county’s attempts to improve the election-return system.

As a former aide to Supervisor Susan Gorin, Gray Thompson observed first-hand how “dissatisfied” voters, as well as candidates, were with the length of time it would take to get final returns.

“It caused chaos in close races,” said Gray Thompson. “Newly elected officials need to hit the ground running and hire their teams and all of that was could be delayed for weeks awaiting final results.”

In the November 2019 election, for example, Sonoma County’s final results were not posted until Dec. 3.

Email Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.

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