In our current society, it is difficult to escape the fact that elections are inherently flawed mechanisms, whereas a relatively low percentage of the public will actually participate in the election by voting, a small percentage will actually be sufficiently knowledgeable about the issues to make an informed decision – and if the split is relatively close, a very small difference in opinion will decide the election.
None of this is particularly new and we certainly knew going into the Measure I water election that the voter turnout, even in an all-mail ballot, would be quite low.
And yet we placed our faith in the electoral process and rolled the dice that an election would remove inequity, in the disconnect between voter and elected representative.
John Munn, who is the listed plaintiff in the water lawsuit, writes an op-ed today in which he argues, “The Measure I election is over, and a 4 percent majority of the 40 percent of voters who participated favors a surface water project… But this is not about Measure I. It is about how the election outcome was influenced by Yolo County Elections Office mailing procedures.”
He starts his analysis looking at the early poll results that showed 63 percent in support of the water plan and only 11 opposed to it. He does not challenge the veracity of that poll, as we did, but rather he said, “This was not unexpected since only information from Yes on I supporters about problems with groundwater quality and sustainability had been presented, and it is natural to want clean water.”
The first problem, he notes, is that the ballots were mailed out on February 4 and most people did not receive their ballot guides until February 12, at least.
He writes, “Assuming that my experience was typical, voters who mailed ballots before Wednesday, Feb. 13, would not have seen the voter guide arguments.”
He adds, “Based on data from the County Elections Office, 4,738 ballots had been received by Feb. 13. So it is likely that nearly 32 percent of the final 14,884 total votes counted were cast without either seeing the voter guide or being exposed to information countering initial publicity supporting Measure I.”
But, I point, this is actually the choice of those voters. For example, I chose to vote on Election Day so I would be sure to factor in all information received during the campaign in making my decision.
I would add that many voters do not read the ballot arguments at all before voting. Knowing this, it is incumbent on the campaigns to get their information to the voters prior to the arrival of the first ballots, because after that the campaigns can control the message, but they have no longer any control over whether the voters receive that message in time to make a decision.
Mr. Munn then goes into speculation. Assuming that the poll was accurate, he asserts that Measure I already was leading by over 1000 votes after the first week of voting.
He then argues, “Support for Measure I began to fade as facts about the actual quality and sustainability of our current groundwater supply became available, along with increasing awareness of the enormous cost of the proposed surface water project, the non-competitive bidding process and long-term private operation. In fact, a majority of the votes received on the final day of the election opposed Measure I.”
This is the only safe assumption here – we know that the measure was ahead on ballots received before the election but failed in the votes that were received on election day.
However, John Munn’s argument is that the arrival of the sample ballots with the arguments is paramount, as opposed to the late organization of the No on Measure I effort and the fact that they only really gained traction with the filing of the lawsuit on January 31, five days before the ballots arrived, and with the heavy barrage of anti-surface water columns from Bob Dunning.
So when Mr. Munn argues, “The biggest advantage of the Yes on I campaign turned out to be the County Elections Office mailing process that delivered voter guides containing the pro and con arguments a week or more after the ballots. As a result, the Measure I election was neither fair nor unbiased,” we think there is plenty of room for dispute.
Mr. Munn makes a critical assumption here that the ballot arguments, rather than the campaign environment, is pivotal to the success of the measure.
He continues, “The Elections Office should have known better, because this is not the first time voter guides have arrived late. A very similar pattern was seen in last year’s June primary election. I know that the County Elections Office was informed about this, because I told them. I have also heard that ballots arrived before voter guides in at least one of the Davis school district’s all-mail parcel tax elections.”
“It is wrong for the County Elections Office to follow a process favoring high-profile and better-funded campaigns that can reach voters ahead of the voter guide,” he argues.” And it is easy to fix. Since experience shows that it takes about a week longer for the voter guides to arrive, simply mail them a week or more before the ballots, or delay mailing ballots until voter guides are known to have arrived.”
Mr. Munn’s bottom line is: “The Yes on I campaign was greatly assisted by the Yolo County Elections Office. It is not possible to know if Measure I would have passed or failed in a truly fair election. But we can be certain that the vote against Measure I would have been greater and provided even less support for the enormous water rate increases that our five City Council members have now approved.”
We agree with Mr. Munn that the Yolo County Elections Office should have provided the ballots on time. Where we disagree is that there is any notion that the vote would have been greater had they arrived earlier. Our read of the campaign environment is that the lawsuit Mr. Munn filed and Bob Dunning’s columns played a far larger role in narrowing the final margin.
Had they started right after the first of the year, would the no side have been successful? I do not know, but I believe it would have been even closer than it was.
The elections office needs to fix this problem, because it is a problem, but we see no evidence that it changed the outcome or margin of the final vote.
Further Commentary: Dunning Argues Rates Lawsuit Deserves a Fair Hearing
We did not get a chance earlier this week to respond to Mr. Dunning’s claim on Thursday, “Bartle-Wells is a relatively straightforward rate structure where you pretty much pay for the water you use at the time you use it …”
That is not really accurate. As we have shown a number of times, the Bartle Wells model is inherently unfair, charging a huge flat fee such that people who use relatively low amounts of water actually pay far higher by the gallon than do high end water users.
That is due to the fact that 40% of your bill is dependent not on water use but rather the size of your meter. You could theoretically use no water and still end up paying for your meter. So yes, Mr. Dunning has made a huge deal out of the fact that CBFR bases a large chunk of the “fixed” costs by estimating one’s impact on the system’s capacity through summer water use, but the fact remains that that method is at least based mostly on usage rather than size of equipment.
Moving onto today’s column, we wholeheartedly agree that the rates lawsuit deserves a fair hearing and it will get one in the court of law.
Mr. Dunning, however, seems to conflate a fair hearing with the city’s ultimately PR-based, rather than legally-based, response last week.
Writes Mr. Dunning, “Whether this legal challenge to our water and sewer rates ultimately prevails or fails, John Munn deserves better than the scraps of scorn the city tossed his way in its official response to the lawsuit.”
Of course, and he’ll get it – in a court of law.
Mr. Dunning picks apart the city’s PR-response and that is fair – it was not a very helpful response. It neither addressed the core issues, nor had the chance to change public opinion.
Mr. Dunning quotes the city, “It is unfortunate that the Yolo Ratepayers for Affordable Public Utility Services group are not satisfied with the outcome of the Measure I election.”
He responds, “Apparently, no one at the city has read the lawsuit, given that no part of it challenges the outcome of last month’s Measure I ballot measure that was approved by Davis voters, 54 percent to 46 percent.”
His reason is that the water rates were absent from the ballot.
We agree on this point. The lawsuit attacks the constitutionality of the water rates. The ballot measure asked the public to approve the surface water project subject to a Prop 218 approval of the water rates.
We agreed with Mr. Dunning during the election that the city should have more closely tied the water rates and the approval of the ballot measure. Now, what will happen if the court decides that the city violated Prop 218 – it may be that the city would have to go back and draw up new rates and gain their approval.
However, they would not have to go back to the voters for project approval, only to the ratepayers for rates approval.
Mr. Dunning writes, “Members of the City Council chose not to include the water rates on the measure despite the fact many Davis citizens passionately urged it them to do so. There was, of course, nothing illegal about the city’s decision. It was simply a political calculation that resulted in the successful ‘yes’ vote the city was seeking.”
Mr. Dunning seems convinced that tying the rates to the ballot would have resulted in the loss of Measure I. I see no reason for that conclusion and there is a mountain of information to the contrary, both in the fact that the rates were well-known during the course of the campaign and the Prop 218 process itself drew only nominal opposition.
Bob Dunning continues, “The city also addresses the issue of the legality of the water rates that the lawsuit raises, which is all well and good and within the rules of fair play.”
“The city firmly believes the water and sewer rates are legally valid and the lawsuit is without merit,” the city claims.
“One certainly hopes the city feels that way now and felt that way at the time it imposed this dramatic rate increase on the ratepayers of Davis,” he writes. “Then again, if things go south here, it wouldn’t be the first time the city detrimentally relied on faulty legal advice. I mean, in no time at all several years ago the city was virtually on its knees begging to modify the terms of its one-sided contract with Massachusetts-based Zipcar.”
Bob Dunning throws a lot into this statement. But there are flaws in his analysis, if you can call it that.
First, we have often criticized the legal advice council has gotten from the city attorney. We certainly question some of her opinions, notably her assertion about referendums and water rates based not on case law, but her own opinion.
However, the parallels between this and Zipcar are very flawed. The problem with Zipcar is the council passed it almost without scrutiny. There were flaws in their contract, but the city was able to fix it with relatively no problem.
In this case, you have Bartle Wells, who are prominent rate consultants, well-versed in Prop 218 law, and the city has consulted Kelly Salt, a noted Prop 218 expert.
The city, its rate consultant, its attorneys, and the WAC spent months going over the rate structure. I’m not going to guarantee it passes constitutional muster, but I am confident that the city spent far more time scrutinizing it than they did Zipcars, and practically every other legal issue that they have had.
The courts can sort this out, but I would be shocked if they invalidated the rates.
Mr. Dunning continued: “The city notes that its position ‘is based on legal analysis by statewide experts on rate structure legalities,’ even if those same statewide experts have never seen anything on the planet quite like the consumption-based fixed rate structure.”
This is an odd comment from Bob Dunning, because many legal scenarios are based on taking existing statutory law, looking at case law and applying it. In this case, they need to meet the proportionality requirements and it is certainly not a difficult test to take the settled legal principles and apply it to the new structure.
It is true the structure is untested by the courts, but to imply that this means they are flying blind is disingenuous at best.
“The surface water project and the water rates were determined and approved by the citizen-based Water Advisory Committee,” the city adds. To which Mr. Dunning replies, “Indeed, that’s true, even if several prominent members of that committee have serious reservations about the advisability of the rate structure that takes hold in less than three weeks.”
The major opposition to CBFR came from members of the group who felt that the system would be difficult to explain to the public. It is not clear how many of them actually believed that the rate structure itself was flawed. The original vote was 8-2 and the closer vote was due to the council’s expressed reservations, again not of the efficacy of the rates, but the possibility that they would confuse the public.
Mr. Dunning seems to be aggregating separate objections in order to suggest something that was not accurate.
We agree that the lawsuit deserves to be heard. We also tend to believe, other than the city’s issue of paying for the water and possibly the wastewater rate structure, most of this is quickly going be decided in the city’s favor.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“So when Mr. Munn argues, “the biggest advantage of the Yes on I campaign turned out to be the County Elections Office mailing process that delivered voter guides containing the pro and con arguments a week or more after the ballots. As a result, the Measure I election was neither fair nor unbiased,” we think there is plenty of room for dispute.
I am in full agreement with David on this point. I personally do not see it as in any way unfair to receive a ballot prior to receiving the voter guide.
Each citizen has the right to gather as much, or unfortunately as little, information as they feel is necessary to make an informed decision. There is nothing onerous about deferring completing your ballot until after receiving the voter pamphlet. It is incumbent on the proponents and opponents of any measure to make public their best arguments in a timely manner for consideration. If the voter pamphlet had not arrived until after the last day for submitting your vote, I would agree with Mr.Munn’s criticism. In reality, this did not impose an “unfair” burden on anyone.
Forty percent of an electorate is actually a large sample of public sentiment. Most polls use a sample size in the hundreds to a few thousand.
The lawsuit will get a fair hearing in Yolo County Court. It has received more than its share of publicity in the local media.
Mr. Toad: While I understand your point, you can’t compare a poll to voting. While polling is sampled and at least in theory randomly distributed throughout the entire population, polling oversamples certain segments of the population.
[quote]The lawsuit will get a fair hearing in Yolo County Court. It has received more than its share of publicity in the local media. [/quote]
Nobody is forcing you to read the articles.
in addition, ryan, you have raised the objection numerous times (and the case is filed so it seems even by your rules, discussion appropriate), but at this point, what difference does it make, the judge is going to rule on the case at some point not the public, so why not discussion it if we find it interesting?
In other Sunday Enterprise news it was interesting to find out who was behind the Gategate impersonated Internet petition fake posts.
The electoral process in our nation is fundamental to the determination of majority rule. Those who seek a finding in an election–and get it–praise the process and proclaim that the people have spoken. In truth, it was a percentage of “the people.”
Those whose position was not supported by the election results commonly attack the process. The other option is to circumvent the election results by asking the judicial branch of government to vote the other way. One person, or maybe 12, decide the election issue. Both attempts are being employed in the water case.
Every method of determining and executing public is flawed, arguably in about equal measures if for different reasons. Election losers can and will continue to complain about an election result due to special interest influence, faulty information, procedural error, and the fact that rained on election day.
Until somebody comes up with a method that is even marginally less flawed than what we have, the secret ballot remains supreme. In the final analysis post-election posturing and lawsuits are never a reflection of the populist sentiment despite claims to the contrary. The populist sentiment is not known, before during, and after ANY election where a fractional total participates.
While I certainly disagree with Mr. Munn regarding the water project itself, and while I agree with David that other factors were far more influential in deciding the outcome of the Measure I election than the timing of the voter guide arrival, I wholeheartedly concur with Mr. Munn’s assertion that the voter guide should have arrive as close to the ballots as possible. This is especially the case in all-mail elections when it is know way ahead of time when all the ballots will be mailed out.
It was public knowledge (available by calling the County office) that the ballots would be mailed February 4. The Yes on I campaign had this date circled as “Election Day 1.0” as I called it, when we wanted to do a lot of voter outreach and, specifically, when we wanted our mailer to go out (so that it would arrive with the ballots). I dropped our mailer at the Post Office on February 4, and it arrived (for many people at least) the exact same day as the ballot. The idea that the County couldn’t pull off the same thing is pretty lame.
“The idea that the County couldn’t pull off the same thing is pretty lame.” – me
Sorry for the dangling modifier. I mean to say the County is lame for not getting the voter guide out, not that the idea is lame.
As I read both the Munn OpEd and the Dunning column this morning, I found myself nodding “yes” far more often than I shook “no.” Even the moments of “no” were quite mild by comparison to the “yesses.” Rather than focusing on the problem Munn raises, I’d like to look at possible solutions.
One possibility would be to use the same bulk mailing firm for both the ballot and the ballot guide. Then they could be mailed simultaneously.
Another possibility would be to ensure that the bulk mailing take place from the West Sacramento Regional Mail Facility. Experience tells me that the delivery time of bulk pieces when mailed from Davis is often considerably slower than it is from West Sac. The reason is simple. Bulk mail is the lowest priority on the Post Office’s decision tree, and as such, in a post office like Davis where it is a very small percentage of all outgoing mail, there is a real possibility that the postal workers will run out of time performing higher priority tasks before thay get to the bulk mail. West Sac on the other hand handles a huge amount of bulk mail every day. One bulk mail customer alone (Netflix) sends more bulk mail than the whole Davis population does. If the bulk mailing firm chosen by the Yolo Elections office is located elsewhere in the state, then part of the contractual terms should be that the items must be trucked to West Sac and mailed there.
If that solution is too expensive or too cumbersome, then mailing the ballot guides a week earlier than the ballots may make sense. The downside of that would mean that the already lengthy multi-month lead-time for submission of the ballot language and the ballot guide components would be lengthened further.
Regardless, I think John Munn’s concerns are ones that should be addressed in future elections.
One of the problems I have with Mr. Munn’s argument – if I understand it correctly – is his assumption that the “tide was turning” against Measure I and [u]if only[/u] the voter guide had hit our doorsteps the same day as the ballot, the election would have turned out in favor of the No camp.
There are a lot of variables at work here and it is an empirical question that could be answered with some degree of accuracy if we knew the rate of increase over time of the No’s vs the Yes’s. All one has to do it plot them over time and then extrapolate. Has anyone done this? Is the data available? But on the other hand, it is hard to tell if ten more days would have made a difference, because the only GOTV campaign worth mentioning in this elections was from the Yes on I side.
Another set of assumptions are pointed out by the Vanguard that the “campaign environment” may have (much) more influence than ballot arguments in the voter pamphlet. Does anyone know of any research on the value or influence of official voter pamphlets? Or the pro/con arguments in them?
You want a do over? This was an election forced by a petition from the Yes on I people who could have demanded the vote was held last November but instead argued for a delay until an all mail ballot was employed as a cost saving method by the county. Now they want to claim that the outcome was flawed because some people voted before they received their ballot arguments although those arguments had been widely published here and elsewhere before they were mailed out. Of course if the vote had gone the other way these same people would be arguing how great the system works. This is just sour grapes.
[quote]Now for homework for all those in Yolo County. Document the impacts you experience as a result of sequestration. Our elected officials out here in DC want to know the specifics. [/quote]
Which elected officials are being referred to? It would be odd for the White House to be asking for specifics since the sequestration initiated from Obama and his staff.
wrong board
[quote]This was an election forced by [b]a petition from the Yes on I people[/b] who could have demanded the vote was held last November but instead argued for a delay until an all mail ballot[/quote]Is this what you meant to say? I’m thinking Munn, Harrington, et al. were not particularly Yes on I folks
Thank you.
Correction: No on I
Been there, done that. Too many T-shirts.
rdcanning said . . .
[i]”There are a lot of variables at work here and it is an empirical question that could be answered with some degree of accuracy if we knew the rate of increase over time of the No’s vs the Yes’s. All one has to do it plot them over time and then extrapolate. Has anyone done this? Is the data available?”[/i]
I would be concerned about the “secretness” of our secret ballot process if there actually is such data.
rdcanning said . . .
[i]”Another set of assumptions are pointed out by the Vanguard that the “campaign environment” may have (much) more influence than ballot arguments in the voter pamphlet. Does anyone know of any research on the value or influence of official voter pamphlets? Or the pro/con arguments in them?”[/i]
In a similar vein, the influence is going to vary from election to election. In this election, it is quite possible that a substantial proportion of the early voters felt that they had gotten all the balanced, transparent facts they needed from the year-long Water Advisory Committee meetings and process where both sides of the Measure I arguments were heard. If that was indeed the case that probably means that the people who didn’t vote early either 1) didn’t care about the issue enough to go out of their way to become informed, 2) were wanting to wait until everything possible was illuminated and discussed before voting, 3) weren’t impressed with the “facts” that either side provided, or 4) any one of a myriad of other “don’t know how I’m going to vote” reasons.
For group 1) the period of time between February 4th and February 12th was almost surely both meaningless and without impact.
For the people (like David) in group 2) anything they might have learned from the ballot guide in the period of time between February 4th and February 12th was almost surely learned prior to their well considered actual casting of their vote. So here too the period of time between February 4th and February 12th was almost surely both meaningless and without impact.
The people in group 3) were looking for “facts.” The ballot guides were long on opinion and emotion and speculation, but contained almost no factual information. So here too the period of time between February 4th and February 12th was almost surely both meaningless and without impact.
In my personal opinion the people in group 4) are the reason that the final day vote swung toward the No on I side, because the slogan, “Not sure? Vote NO!” probably resonated for that group.
In an aptly mixed metaphor, it looks like you folks are gonna argue about who’s bucket to use while the barn burns. The ridiculous waste of time and money that has already taken place proves that you will never satisfy every wish on everybody’s list . Yes won, get on with this task or suffer the cruel mockery such ridiculous pandering deserves . This is as pathetic as the neo-cons wails and cries in November.
Matt – I’m not worried about the secret ballot issue. They tell us who voted yes and no on the voting day without compromising it, they could probably tell us the day before, or the week before. And anyway, all they (Freddie that is) has to do is separate out the folks who take them out of the envelope and verifies the voter and the person who puts it in the machine and the people who read the results. I’m not so worried.
Medwoman suggests we ask Freddie Oakley how they maintain the integrity of the secret ballot and if it is possible to find out vote totals (Yea or Nay) by day of balloting period.
Maybe Freddie can tell us here on the Vanguard.
She has, this isn’t the first time the issue has come up:
Answer ([url]https://davisvanguard.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=5138:county-clerk-explains-discounts-possibility-of-privacy-invasion-in-mail-in-ballot-election&Itemid=121[/url])
David
Thanks for re posting Freddie’s explanation. My question however was a little different. I was interested specifically, at this point in time, if it would be possible to sort how many yes and how many no votes came in per day thus allowing th kind of plotting of the vote by day as suggested by rdcanning.
[quote]n our current society, it is difficult to escape the fact that elections are inherently flawed mechanisms,[/quote]
Is it the ‘Mechanism’ or the participant? Oh, never mind….DG has decided false premise, same old’ same ol.’
[quote]fact?[/quote]
Really?