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Processing, Counting and Tabulating Early Voting and Grace Period Voting Ballots

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Processing, Counting and Tabulating Early Voting and Grace Period Voting Ballots Commissioners Doc_10 MARISEL A. HERNANDEZ, Chair WILLIAM J. KRESSE, Commissioner/Secretary JONATHAN T. SWAIN, Commissioner LANCE GOUGH, Executive Director PROCESSING, COUNTING AND TABULATING EARLY VOTING AND GRACE PERIOD VOTING BALLOTS 1. Early voting and grace period voting shall be conducted on a touchscreen voting device called an Edge 2 Plus, or “E2P.”1 Voters using a touchscreen device mark their candidate or proposition choices on the touchscreen and then submit the ballot by pressing “cast ballot” on the touchscreen. The touchscreen device records the ballot and the voters’ choices. The votes are stored electronically on several locations on the E2P, including on a USB compatible flash drive or “memory stick.”2 2. Prior to the start of early voting and grace period voting, the Board’s warehouse shall provide to the IT Department a list of E2P units that will be used for early voting and grace period voting, along with the serial number and location of each unit. The Board shall create files in WinEDS3 that serve as place-holders, or “buckets,” to receive vote data stored on the memory stick. A “bucket” shall be created for each memory stick used in each early voting and grace period voting E2P unit expected to be in service. Vote data on each memory stick can only be deposited in its own pre-assigned bucket on WinEDS. 3. At the end of each day of early and grace period voting, each Early Voting Site shall send to the Board’s IT Department a hand-written report called the Daily Ballot Statement,4 which lists the number of votes on a given E2P unit. The IT Department staff will manually enter all data from the Daily Ballot Statement into a spreadsheet. 4. If an early voting or grace period E2P unit incurs a problem or error such that it cannot continue in service, the error shall be noted and documented on the Daily Ballot Statement. The Early Voting Site administrator shall send the memory stick for the affected unit to the Early Voting Supervisor after properly securing and sealing the stick and recording it on a Returned Early Voting Materials Statement. The Returned Early Voting Materials Statement must be completed and signed by the EV Supervisor, the EV Transportation Deputy and the Board employee responsible for sorting, inventorying and 1 Section 19A-75 of the Code (10 ILCS 5/19A-75) permits election authorities to use what is called “direct recording electronic voting systems,” or touchscreen voting, to conduct early voting. 2 Memory sticks perform three functions. First, they copy the election configuration – the files that tell the E2P how to work (contests, candidates, ballot styles, etc.) – onto the E2P. Second, they store encrypted vote data. Third, at the conclusion of voting, they are used to transfer the encrypted vote data from the E2P to the WinEDS software residing on the Board’s central tabulation server. For this last function, the memory stick is nothing more than an electronic file cabinet – it does not calculate, sort, total or change the data on the stick. 3 WinEDS is the core application and database used by the Board to manage the election process. Its functionality includes election setup (defines the precincts, contests, candidates, etc. for the election), precinct assignment, ballot management, cartridge (or memory stick) management and vote tally. 4 The Daily Ballot Statement has columns for Early Voting officials to list the touchscreen voting unit serial number for each machine, the results cartridge & seal serial numbers, the public counter opening count, the public counter closing count and the daily ballot count, as well as other miscellaneous information. Page 1 of 3 securing the memory stick. An EV Supervisor will transfer the memory stick to the IT Department using a Transfer of Early Vote Results Cartridge Statement. Any such memory stick shall then be locked in a transfer case until after the conclusion of early/grace period voting. 5. During early and grace period voting, vote data on the E2Ps are encrypted and copied to memory sticks. At the conclusion of early and grace period voting, Early Voting officials shall place these memory sticks in a sealed bankers bag, secure the bankers bag in a larger container (which is also sealed) and deliver the container to the Board’s IT Department. A three-part “Returned Early Voting Materials Statement” shall be prepared by the Early Voting Site administrator listing, among other items, the E2P memory sticks for each unit and the container seal numbers. Persons designated to transport the materials and to receive the materials at the Board’s central office are required to sign the Statement verifying transport and receipt of the same. The IT Department shall secure all memory sticks until they are ready to be processed. 6. Beginning at 7:00 P.M. on the Monday before Election Day, all E2P memory sticks used for early voting and grace period voting at all early voting sites shall be unsealed by two Board employees, audited and the encrypted contents thereof copied to a table file within WinEDS in the manner set forth below. A comparison shall be made between the memory sticks in the sealed pouches and memory sticks shown on the Daily Ballot Statement spreadsheet. If there is a memory stick that cannot be accounted for, the cause shall be determined and appropriate action taken. The encrypted contents of each memory stick, including defective memory sticks, shall be copied to its corresponding bucket within a table file within WinEDS. As the encrypted contents of each memory stick are copied to WinEDS, each stick shall be audited to see whether the stick contents can be copied to the WinEDS file. Board staff must determine if there is a discrepancy or apparent discrepancy and why. (a) If a bucket was created for an E2P on the initial list provided by the warehouse, but that E2P was never used, the extra bucket created to hold results data for that E2P shall be removed from WinEDS. (b) If an E2P was used but it was not on the initial list from the warehouse (thus no bucket exists into which to copy the results data), the existence of the E2P needs to be confirmed by the Daily Ballot Statement and an additional bucket must be created. (c) If a memory stick cannot be copied to WinEDS due possibly to hardware malfunction, the Board shall obtain an audit trail report5 from the E2P. The copying and audit process shall continue until completed and everything reconciled. The data shall be preserved and queued within their respective buckets in WinEDS until the tally function is started after 7:00 p.m. on Election Day. 5 The E2P electronically stores vote totals and a complete audit trail of voting activity. The Audit Trail Transfer function is a special Polls Closed function that allows a copy of the Audit Trail to be made. This function copies the E2P internal Audit Trail memory onto a special Audit Trail Transfer Cartridge. The primary reason for using this function is in case a results cartridge is misplaced or is in some way damaged or unreadable by WinEDS. Page 2 of 3 7. After 7:00 p.m. on Election Day, the contents of the early voting and grace period buckets shall be tallied within WinEDS. Tallied early voting and grace period voting election results shall then be released, along with results from in-precinct voting, to the precinct results and sent to the reporting application, which shall generate results reports for release to the public. 8. The IT Department shall secure all early voting and grace period memory sticks in a sealed transfer case. 9. Access to the computer room shall be strictly controlled at all times by the IT Department Director and entrance shall require an employee badge. 10. A reasonable number of pollwatchers as authorized by Sections 7-34 and 17-23 of the Election Code, at least one representative of each established political party and authorized agents of the State Board of Elections will be permitted to observe the processing of early/grace period memory sticks and the tallying of early/grace period voting results at all times. Page 3 of 3 Commissioners Doc_11 MARISEL A. HERNANDEZ, Chair WILLIAM J. KRESSE, Commissioner/Secretary JONATHAN T. SWAIN, Commissioner LANCE GOUGH, Executive Director PROCESSING, COUNTING AND TABULATING VOTE BY MAIL BALLOTS 1. Upon receipt of a vote by mail ballot returned by any means authorized by statute, the Board shall endorse upon it the day and hour of receipt and shall enclose the same unopened, together with the application made by the voter, in a container securely sealed with the words, “This container contains vote by mail ballot(s) and must be opened on Election Day,” together with the number and description of the ward in which said ballot(s) is to be voted and the Board shall thereafter safely and securely keep the same in the office until processed and counted.1 Such ballots may be processed by the Board in its central counting location beginning on the day the ballots are received by the Board, but the results of the processing may not be counted until Election Day after 7:00 p.m., except as provided herein.2 2. Within one day after receipt of a vote by mail ballot, the Board shall enter the date of receipt, the voter’s name, street address, e-mail address, and ward and precinct information into the Vote by Mail Database and shall transmit such information to the State Board of Elections by electronic means pursuant to a process established by the State Board of Elections.3 3.
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