April 15, 2016

A joint state Senate budget and policy committee heard in great detail about the urgent need for more funding to administer elections in California this year. Specifically, the information hearing was called to review Secretary of State Alex Padilla’s request for an additional $32 million in state funding for state and county needs in the 2016 June primary and November general elections. The joint hearing today of the Senate Budget Subcommittee and the Senate Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee featured testimony from Solano County Supervisor Erin Hannigan and Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan. You can watch a recording of their testimony here. 

The urgent need for more resources only become apparent in mid-March when it became clear that the California primary in June would have a significant impact on the Presidential candidate selection process for both major parties. “What was unlikely in January became a certainty in March,” said Registrar Logan.  “California will actually matter in the primaries for the first time in many election cycles, and that is driving a near-unprecedented wave of new voter registrations.”

Secretary Padilla testified that typical on-line voter registration activity is about 30,000 per month, but in March that number tripled to more than 90,000. Padilla also predicted a much larger turnout at the polls than California has seen in recent memory. While higher participation is generally good news, the higher workload for county election officials coincides for the first time with the signature verifications they must perform for more than a dozen initiatives and referenda that are trying to qualify for the November ballot.

Petitions for more than 80 initiatives are being circulated but probably only 14 or 15 will actually get enough signatures to submit for checking. That is still a much a larger than usual number and new laws have changed the timing of the signature verification process, so it is right on top of when counties must also be preparing for the June primaries. Counties will need to either hire additional temporary staff or pay considerable overtime to current employees.

Supervisor Hannigan said Solano County is already absorbing the additional expense of printing more and longer ballots and voter guides and they will need their share of the $32 million Secretary Padilla is requesting to avoid some of the problems that voters experienced in primary elections held earlier this year. “We truly believe this investment in California, is a reasonable and timely one,” she said.  “The news stories from other Western state primaries are disconcerting to say the least. We hope California voters will go to the polls with confidence, knowing that their voices will be heard and choices will be counted.” Supervisor Hannigan is also the Vice-chair of CSAC’s Government Finance and Administration Policy Committee.

CSAC Executive Director Matt Cate wrote about the need for additional election funding in an opinion piece that ran in the Sacramento Bee this week. He agrees there is an immediate short term need for additional resources and he also discusses the longer term issue of replacing California’s aging election systems with modern and efficient equipment, and the need for the state to repay for $87 million in mandated election-related services counties have already provided.