What you need to know about voting in 2018

by Travis Fischer

The 2018 General Election is fast approaching and, in some cases, may be the most significant mid-term election in a generation.

Tight races in United States Representative Districts could shift the balance of power in Washington D.C., while the Gubernatorial contest and state legislature races will determine the future of Iowa’s legislative path.

Iowa has a long history of being politically active. Historically, roughly 50-60 percent of Iowa’s eligible voters participate in mid-term elections, ranking the state relatively high in terms of citizens performing their civic duty.

“We’re in the top six in the nation in terms of voter participation,” said Ken Kline. “Iowans take elections seriously.”

After many years of service as the County Auditor for Cerro Gordo County, Kline has spent the last several months getting accustomed to his new position as Deputy Commissioner of Elections for the Iowa Secretary of State. While each individual county is largely responsible for conducting elections, the Iowa Secretary of State office is there to provide support and training materials for election workers.

New training and procedures have become particularly relevant for this year’s election.

In 2017, the Iowa Legislature passed a sweeping reform of state election law, modifying the rules that govern both voters and election officials, making it easier to vote in some ways but harder to vote in others, sparking legal cases against some of the new provisions.

Several provisions of the law were enjoined in July, which was later upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court following a lawsuit against the state, including injunctions on granting election officials the authority to reject absentee ballots on the basis of signature matching and preventing the Secretary of State from implying that identification will be required when voting in 2018.

Navigating the new laws, and the suspension of some of them, has been a complex endeavor but the ultimate goal of Kline’s work is still straight forward.

“Some of the main messages we have stressed is that no eligible voters are turned away,” said Kline. “We are sending out 300,000 individual mailings to people who are not-registered and encouraging them to register and participate.”

Registration

The first step in the voting process is registration.

Before you vote, county officials appreciate knowing who is coming to the polls. On the day of the election, county auditors will update their county’s electronic poll books with the most recent registration data and distribute them to their proper polling stations. These books contain

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the registries for the precinct and are used to speed up the check-in process.

Checking to see if you are registered to vote can be done online at the Iowa Secretary of State website. Entering your name and zip code into the search bar will not only confirm whether or not you are registered, it will also tell you where your local polling places will be for Primary and General Elections, School Elections, and City Elections.

If you aren’t registered already there are multiple avenues to get registered.

Registration can be done online through the Iowa Department of Transportation. Because the D.O.T. will check your registration against their own records, your driver’s license number or non-operator ID number will be needed for online registration.

For those without internet access, registration can be done at your local county auditor either in person or by mail.

Even if you don’t get registered before Election Day, you can still register to vote at the polls. Iowa allows Election Day registration, however there will be an additional identification requirement.

Election Day registration requires both a valid ID and proof of residence, such as a utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, or an official government document. To accommodate an increasingly digital world, online bills or statements can now be used as proof of identity as well.

“If somebody needs to prove residence, instead of a piece of paper they can use their cell phone,” said Kline.

Absentee Voting

Once registered, voters can either wait for Election Day to head out to the polls personally or they can request an absentee ballot and take care of their voting early. The absentee voting period began on Monday, Oct. 8 and allows registered voters the option to take care of their civic duty ahead of time if they don’t want to wait or otherwise don’t believe they will be able to make it to a polling station.

Absentee voting can be done at any time before the election at your local county auditor or, if you can’t make it to the courthouse, you can contact them and request that a ballot be mailed to your home.

Roughly 40 percent of Iowa voters cast absentee ballots.

While absentee voting cannot be done online, request forms can be printed out from the Secretary of State website. The form will require your name, date of birth, and address. It will ask for an ID number, however that is not a requirement for either requesting an absentee ballot or filling it out.

Requests for absentee ballots must be received by the county auditor by 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 19, for the 2018 election. Once received and completed, these ballots must be postmarked by the Monday before Election Day and received by the county auditor by noon on the Monday after the election.

Contrary to popular belief, absentee ballots are counted on Election Day regardless if they would affect the outcome of the election. However, while absentee ballots may be more convenient for some voters, they are at a greater risk of not being counted. Without a trained election official on hand, it is dependent on the voter to make sure that everything has been done properly when casting the absentee ballot.

“If it’s not sealed, that ballot can’t be counted. If it’s not signed, then the voter has to come in and sign,” said Kline. “Voting by mail is just more problematic. I don’t want to discourage anybody from voting by mail, but there will be a certain percentage of problems.”

Voting at the Polls

While absentee ballots may be the better option for some people, the preferred method for county auditors, and the best time to get that prized “I Voted” sticker, is to go to the polls on Election Day.

For the 2018 election, identification will not be required to vote on Election Day.

Poll workers will ask for a valid ID, however if the voter does not have ID on hand they will instead be given the option of swearing an “oath of identification,” at which point they will be allowed to cast a regular ballot.

The oath of identification option will only be available during the 2018 election.

“The purpose of that is to give voters a chance to get educated to the requirements,” said Kline.

As the law currently stands, this option will not be available in 2019 and voters will then be asked to show a valid ID before being allowed to vote. Those that do not have ID at that point will be offered a provisional ballot to fill out and asked to prove their identity to the county auditor within the next six days.

Valid identification can be a driver’s license, a non-operator’s ID, a voter ID card, a military ID, a U.S. passport, a veteran’s ID, or, new for this election, a tribal ID. As the legislature looked into revising state election laws, the Secretary of State office was approached about including tribal IDs to the list of valid identification.

“It was determined very quickly that this was a valid form of ID,” said Kline. “It’s a lot harder to get a tribal ID than it is to get a driver’s license.”

Election Security

Deputy Commissioner Kline has had to learn a lot since moving up to the state level in January, but the biggest surprise for him in preparation for the 2018 election has been the emphasis on cyber-security.

“It was not on my radar, but it quickly became a major factor in what I do and what other people in the office do,” said Kline.

Election security starts with keeping voter registration information protected. While many may think of cyber-attacks on elections as changing the vote count in voting machines, another avenue of attack would be going after the voter registry to disenfranchise voters at the polls, preventing them from casting ballots on Election Day.

“In 2016, the Russians scanned our public website,” said Kline. “Since then we have taken quite a few measures to secure that system and to secure our other systems in the state.”

While hackers were not able to penetrate the back-end of the state’s system, the state has nevertheless upped their security, moving their system off-site and implementing CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Services) level security, which Kline describes as the gold standard in cyber-security.

Along with securing their own systems, the state is shoring up security at the county level, offering anti-malware software and intrusion detection systems for county computers and training the people that access in cyber-security.

“We have formed some strong partnerships with everybody we can,” said Kline. “We had the Department of Homeland Security come in March and do a security assessment and followed their recommendations to harden security.”

Unlike other states, Iowa does not use electronic voting machines in their elections. While votes are counted by machines, the votes themselves are cast on paper ballots. With the risks of computer error and the ever present threat of cyber-attacks, keeping physical ballots on hand makes sure that any questions or concerns about election results can be properly addressed.

“The paper ballot is the safety net,” said Kline, who as a former county auditor has done his share of hand-recounts. “My personal experience with hand recounts is that they build trust.”

In addition, as part of last year’s election law reform, Iowa counties will now be required to hand count a sample of their election results to verify that the counting machines are working properly.

“Each county will have a precinct selected where they will have to get out the ballots and count the governor’s race by hand,” said Kline. “Basically to prove that it was fair and accurate.”

After the Election

While the bulk of the votes will be counted on the night of the election, the results released by the county auditor will remain unofficial until every vote has been accounted for.

“Election night results are unofficial and very rarely final,” said Kline.

There are generally two categories of ballots that will be counted following the election. The first are absentee ballots that don’t make it into the auditor’s office before Election Day. So long as absentee ballots are postmarked on the Monday before the election and arrive before noon on the Tuesday after the election, they will be counted in the final total.

“We have a whole week of absentee ballots to count as they come in if they are postdated on Nov. 5,” said Giddings.

The second kind of vote to be counted following Election Day are provisional ballots. If there is a question about a voter’s eligibility at the polls, they will be offered a provisional ballot instead of a regular ballot. This ballot is effectively the same as a regular ballot, but it won’t be counted until it is examined by the election board.

“The perk there is to give the voter the opportunity to present the information and the county auditor the opportunity to research,” said Kline. “It protects the individual’s right to vote and the integrity of the process.”

While these votes are ultimately counted in the final tally, it is exceedingly rare that the results of an election are determined by the post-election day votes. Modern systems have dramatically reduced the number of provisional ballots used in recent years.

All in all, the State of Iowa goes to great lengths to make sure anybody that wants to vote is given the opportunity. There are 20 states in the nation that require an excuse to be given before a resident is allowed to vote by absentee ballot and Iowa is one of 18 states that allow Election Day registration.

“I would encourage everyone to register, vote, and participate in the election process,” said Kline. “That’s basically the foundation of our country. A lot of people have sacrificed, fought, and even died for the right to vote. I hope people take it seriously and participate.”

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