The Iowa legislature adjourned June 12. Bills to abolish the straight ticket device, to require a runoff primary in certain cases, to allow voters to register on-line, to require photo ID for voters at the polls, to eliminate same-day registration, to provide for a permanent list of absentee voters, all failed to pass. Virtually the only election law bill that passed is SF 415, which lets the write-in tally be completed the day after the election, instead of on election night. Thanks to Jim Riley and Timothy Reineke for help understanding SF 415.
NH law “requires” write-in voted to be tallied & tabulated, but for the most part the SOS does not compile these numbers into anything other than “scattered”… hopefully, the Iowa SOS will do a better job!
You may be reading the bill too broadly.
Current law requires write-in votes to be tallied at the precinct level, but when canvassed at the county level, write-in votes for candidates who individually receive under 5% of the vote are aggregated as “scattering”.
These provisions remain intact. What the bill appears to do is handle the special case where ballots are electronically counted at the precinct. After a voter marks their ballot, they insert it in a reader where it is counted. But that causes problems for write-in votes.
In olden days with paper ballots, after the polls close, the election clerks would count the ballots. If they came across a write-in vote, they would tally it.
With a vote counting machine, election officials press a button and the results are printed – and they have completed their vote count, except for write-ins. But it appears that digital images of the write-in votes are captured. HB 415 gives the precinct the officials the option of tallying the votes, or separating the ballots with write-in votes to be tallied at the county level. I suspect that in either case that this is not done with the physical ballots, but with scanned images of them.
Jim Riley has the right of it, mostly. The purpose is basically to allow the counting of write-in votes to be postponed at the discretion of the County Commissioner of Elections (County Auditor) and tallied later by the special precinct. That summary of the bill’s purpose can be heard at 55:14 of the Iowa House’s video archive. http://coolice.legis.iowa.gov/Cool-ICE/default.asp?Category=Billinfo&Service=ArchiveBill&vid=1502&offset=10546&iDate=2015-04-15&hbill=SF415
I would offer one correction to Riley’s summary: Write-in votes are counted using the actual ballot, not an electronic image. My own experience as a Precinct Election Official goes to this, as does the phrasing of the bill, which talks about separating “ballots”, not “images”.
SF 415 was originally an omnibus bill from the county auditors, who conduct elections in Iowa. Two of the provisions that they had sought, one dealing with consolidation of precincts, and the other with pay of the deputy in charge of election administration, were struck by the House, making it more of a minibus bill.
I couldn’t find any committee videos, the legislators only read what the bill would do. The auditors could have provided a deeper insight into why they sought the change.
The Iowa legislature has an interesting concurrence procedure. The House had passed two amendments, each striking one section of the bill. The senate passed a single amendment to the bill striking both sections. Apparently concurrence occurs when both houses pass the same bill.
This procedure might be helpful if additions had been made in the non-originating house. Instead of simply agreeing with the changes, the originating house would have to affirmatively make the same addition.
When the bill was originally in the senate, an amendment that would have eliminated straight ticket voting was proposed, but defeated on a 23-26 vote. It might not actually have been that close. A large share of the yes votes came in after a majority in opposition had been established (roll call votes are conducted electronically, with the individual votes being shown on a tote board). So a senator can say “I voted to eliminate the straight ticket, but we just couldn’t get enough votes”. They might also claim that they didn’t want to risk passage of the underlying bill with a more controversial provision.