This audit reviewed three aspects of elections in Kansas, including training, electronic vote records, and policies and processes in long-term care facilities.
With regard to training, we couldn't tell whether county election officers received adequate training and we found most counties either didn't or coun't show they had trained all election workers before the 2022 general election. Each of Kansas’s 105 counties has a county election officer responsible for overseeing all elections in the county. This includes appointing election workers who perform frontline election duties. But state law has almost no requirements related to training county election officers and workers, and no one tracks county election officers’ training. However, county election officers we surveyed still reported feeling well prepared to oversee federal elections.
With regard to electronic vote records, we found that 6 Kansas counties we reviewed use scanners to record and tally voters’ paper ballots that are also capable of producing digital copies of those ballots. But nothing requires county election officials in Kansas to create or use digital copies, which meant some counties created and used them and others didn't. None of the counties we reviewed made digital copies public. We compared Kansas to 5 other states. Those states generally used digital copies similar to Kansas. However, some other states made them public.
Finally, with regard to processes for protecting voting in long-term care facilities, facility and county election officials described having a few basic practices. The national literature on this topic is sparse and much of it dated, but it identified a few practices to address fraud and undue influence. Kansas has a few basic laws related to fraud and undue influence, but nothing specifically for long-term care.
This audit reviewed three aspects of elections in Kansas, including training, electronic vote records, and policies and processes in long-term care facilities.
With regard to training, we couldn't tell whether county election officers received adequate training and we found most counties either didn't or coun't show they had trained all election workers before the 2022 general election. Each of Kansas’s 105 counties has a county election officer responsible for overseeing all elections in the county. This includes appointing election workers who perform frontline election duties. But state law has almost no requirements related to training county election officers and workers, and no one tracks county election officers’ training. However, county election officers we surveyed still reported feeling well prepared to oversee federal elections.
With regard to electronic vote records, we found that 6 Kansas counties we reviewed use scanners to record and tally voters’ paper ballots that are also capable of producing digital copies of those ballots. But nothing requires county election officials in Kansas to create or use digital copies, which meant some counties created and used them and others didn't. None of the counties we reviewed made digital copies public. We compared Kansas to 5 other states. Those states generally used digital copies similar to Kansas. However, some other states made them public.
Finally, with regard to processes for protecting voting in long-term care facilities, facility and county election officials described having a few basic practices. The national literature on this topic is sparse and much of it dated, but it identified a few practices to address fraud and undue influence. Kansas has a few basic laws related to fraud and undue influence, but nothing specifically for long-term care.
Welcome to the Rundown, your source for the latest news and updates from the Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit featuring LPA staff talking about recently released audit reports and discussing their main findings. Key takeaways in why it matters. I'm Brad Hoff. In February, 2023, L p a released part one of a performance audit, examining Kansas' Election Security Procedures. I'm with Andy Brizo, principal auditor at Legislative Post Audit, who supervised the audit. Also, joining us are Maury Exline and Sam Dadds, senior auditors and team members. Welcome to the Rundown, everyone.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Brad. Thanks, Brad.
Speaker 1:Now, before we get into the audits findings, why don't you give me a little background on the approach the team took to this topic?
Speaker 3:The first is that we focused on 2022. We're really focused on current practices, policies, what state law currently says about things like training ballot images, um, long-term care facilities. We are not focused on 2020 and critically we're not, we're not recounting the 2020 election in any way or questioning the result of that election. I also mentioned that this is part one of a bigger audit. This was initially approved as a single five question, um, audit. We ended up splitting it up for reporting purposes. So this is questions three, four, and five questions, one and two deal more directly with security than questions three, four, and five. So although this is, um, ultimately examining Kansas' election security procedures, I think, um, listeners, readers will find that part two more directly addresses some of the, the security issues, uh, that may be top of people's minds. And then finally, I just wanna mention that there are 105 counties in Kansas, and this is ultimately, or elections are ultimately a local process. And so there's really 105 ways of doing things, and we reviewed just a handful. So, um, listeners, readers shouldn't extrapolate what we say here today or what we say in the report to be an indication of what all 105 counties do or how all 105 counties approach election administration. It's really just an indicator of, um, how a, what we think is generally a representative, um, selection of counties approach these topics.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned 105 counties in Kansas. Talk a little bit about who is involved at the county level in administering elections in Kansas.
Speaker 3:There are basically two group, two groups of people who are involved. So on the one hand we have county election officers, and on the other hand we have county election workers, and I'll take them in turn. So in 101 counties of the 105, the elected county clerk is also the county election officer. And this is on top of their non-election duties like county payroll and tax assessments, state law for the four most populous counties. Um, so this is counties that have populations over 130,000 requires the Secretary of State to appoint an election commissioner. And currently this is Johnson Sedgwick, Shawnee and Wyandot Counties. So these county election officers are responsible for overseeing really all aspects of the elections that take place in their counties. So for instance, they maintain the voter registrations, they accept candidate filings, they also appoint county election workers. These are the people who are doing the frontline election duties that sort of the typical, typical voter would interact with on election day. So each polling place has to have three or more election workers in general. And these people are doing things like opening and closing the polling places, checking voters in and assisting them and distributing and collecting ballots.
Speaker 1:Talk a little bit about what training requirements are in state law for election officers and workers, and what did you find when you reviewed whether or not they received this training?
Speaker 3:As we approached the audit, we intended to evaluate whether these 105 county election officers received adequate training, um, to, to do their jobs basically. And ultimately we couldn't determine if they received adequate training for two overarching reasons. So the first is that the training requirements for county election officers are so minimal that we couldn't define or measure adequacy. So there aren't any federal requirements. Uh, we didn't identify best practices, and most importantly, state law says almost nothing about this. It only requires that county election officers receive training relating to their duties. It doesn't say anything about what this training should cover, how much they should get, how often they should receive it. It makes the Secretary of State's office responsible for determining the training's content and delivery. And agency officials told us that the way that they do this is they have a training session each year at the Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association's annual conference. Um, and they said the content of this training, it changes depending on current events. They don't intend for it to train county election officers to sort of learn to do the basics of their jobs. Instead, it's meant to keep them updated. So we reviewed, for example, the 2022 training materials, and they covered things like legislative updates and actually the current LPA election security audit that we are discussing right now. Um, but the second issue that we ran into was that neither the Secretary of State's office nor Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association, um, tracked who attended this annual training session that is required. And the reason for that, um, that the Secretary of State's office gave us is that they feel like they can't require county election officers to do things like attend trainings because most of them, 101 of them are elected officials. They said that there's no punishment for not attending these trainings, even though state law um, requires that they occur. So that's the county election officers for the county election workers state law is also very sparse on their requirements. So it only requires that county election officers provide them with training before each election sale law doesn't say what the training should cover, how much workers should get. It really leaves it up to the county election officers to determine the trainings content, how it's delivered. And so in order to get a sense of what this looks like in reality, we looked at 2022 county training materials from, um, a few different counties. And what we found is that they generally covered frontline election administration duties, the things that the workers are are doing when an election rolls around, things like, as I mentioned before, um, ceiling and returning ballots to the county election office. And the way that this is delivered is very, very different. As I said, state law doesn't have any requirements about this. So we found a lot of, um, variation now in terms of whether election workers were adequately trained. We reviewed eight counties, um, to see whether they trained their election workers before this election. Most either didn't or couldn't show us that they had. So Harvey, Riley and Wyandot counties provided us with documentation showing, uh, that they trained all their 2022 general election workers before this election. Three counties either couldn't, um, give us documentation about whether they had given, provided this training to their election workers, or they gave us documentation that we couldn't, uh, independently confirm this included Chase Ford and Jackson Counties. St. Law doesn't have any documentation requirements in this area, so this isn't necessarily a problem from from that perspective. Two counties did give us documentation that showed that they didn't train all of their, uh, workers before the 2022 general election. This included Douglas County, which had 27 trained before the 2022 primary election, uh, 21 trained in previous years, and then two who didn't have any training records at all. Johnson County. There were 26 workers who had been trained before the primary election in 20 22, 5. Others had worked previous elections and may have received training in those previous years, and then two had never been trained. And these three different categories of, um, issues, they probably didn't have the same impact. So workers without previous experience or training, they may be unprepared to do their frontline election duties on, um, election day workers train in previous years, uh, may also not have gotten important updates, uh, related to the, the most recent election or the current election that they're working. Um, but the impact is probably the least for workers trained immediately before the primary, but then not trained again before the general election because it's only three months later. So there's probably not a lot of changes that would occur in that timeframe.
Speaker 1:Now, the audit report, uh, notes that the team surveyed county election officers to gather their opinions on whether they felt prepared to oversee their county's federally elections. Sam, I know you worked, uh, on this during the audit. What, what did you learn and what did they tell you?
Speaker 4:So we emailed our survey out to all 105 Kansas counties, and 98 of them got the email. Uh, so of these 98 76 responded for about a 78% response rate, but our results aren't projectable. Many of the county election officers told us they currently feel under intent scrutiny from the media and the public. So it's possible this heightened focus on elections could have influenced their responses. Uh, but in general, the county election, uh, officers we surveyed, reported feeling well prepared to oversee federal elections. So 73 of the 76 respondents, or 96% said they felt extremely or very prepared to administer and oversee federal elections in their county. But 13 or 17% said they felt only somewhat prepared to address problems that may arise during elections. And 10 others or 13% said they've experienced a problem they didn't know how to solve. For example, one county election official told us that, uh, their office, uh, came down with Covid and they had to administer the elections remotely. We also asked respondents about the Secretary of State's office, uh, annual training session. So 71 of the 73 respondents, or 97% who reported receiving this annual training set of cover topics extremely or very relevant to overseeing elections. But, uh, 11 or 15% said this training was only somewhat effective, and one said it wasn't very effective
Speaker 1:As part of the audit. The team also looked at the following states, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, and Utah, to determine how their training requirements, uh, compared to Kansas'. What did you find?
Speaker 3:So we looked at these states, um, to determine what their training requirements were for two groups, county election officers and county election workers, the same groups that I mentioned, uh, before we chose them because, um, they had different training requirements. We knew that sort of going in and we wanted to get a better sense of what that looked like and how they compared to Kansas. So I'll talk about the election election officers first. So three of the five states that we reviewed required or incented election officers to receive more training than Kansas. Um, Colorado had probably the most robust, um, system in place. So they required county election officers to complete a secretary of state certification program with a specific format, curriculum, number of hours and frequency. So this included 14 initial core and elective courses that covered things like election security and public service. And then to maintain their certifications, um, county election officers had to complete at least four courses annually. And then neither Missouri or Utah of the five states that we looked at had any statewide training requirements for county election officers. For workers. Uh, the three, three of the five states that we reviewed were more involved and had developed more detailed requirements for county election workers than Kansas had. So Maryland required county election officers to administer county election worker training that the state Board of Elections, uh, had created. County election officers had to train their workers before each election cycle and then update them between primary and general elections. Colorado was the most similar to Kansas, um, similar to Kansas. For the workers, it only required them to be trained by county election officers before the first election they worked and then again before each subsequent election. And the state suggested training topics for these, um, trainings like new election laws. But county election officers were ultimately responsible for developing and delivering their own training. And then Utah didn't have any county election worker training requirements and state officials there told us they assumed that county election officers trained their county election workers.
Speaker 1:Now question two of the audit dealt with ballot images and cast vote records. Uh, mor I know you worked on this part of the audit, so why don't you start by walking me through how these digital representations of voter ballots are created and what they might be useful for.
Speaker 5:Right, so let me go ahead and direct your, um, attention to figure four in our report. Um, this is an example of a ballot image and also a cast boat record. So you'll see that cast boat record there on the left, and then there's the ballot image that goes with it on the right. Um, and this kind of just shows, you know, the data that's kept, um, for each of those ballot images. So ballot images and cast boat records can be created, um, by the scanners that go and tabulate, um, ballots as they're run through the scanner. So this is not made by every scanner. Um, it's generally possible, but a lot of county election officials, um, you know, kind of decide on a case by case basis, whether or not they think that that would be a useful, um, feature for them to have. So things that those things can be useful for is a lot of times, um, you know, people will mark their ballots in a way that is kind of confusing for a scanner or for a machine just in general, um, to be able to understand what the voter's intent was. And so in practice, that goes to a resolution board. Um, and so there's, you know, a group of people that are looking at those ballots to see whether or not, um, you know, what vote they think that the voter intended to cast there. So, um, that's kind of the usefulness of ballot images is that then in, you know, bigger counties or even in smaller counties, it's just a little easier to have a bunch of people, um, looking at the ballot at one time. You can throw it up on a screen so that everybody can see it. Um, and it just allows that resolution board to work a little bit more efficiently. So another, um, thing that ballot images and cast boat records could be used for, um, is for post-election audits. So a lot of times this ballot images are kind of separated into precincts and everything, so it's a little bit easier for, um, people to, for the county election officials to go in after the election and just kind of query for a specific precinct, um, for that post-election audit.
Speaker 1:You also looked at those same states that we talked about before, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, and Utah, to determine how their use of ballot images and cas vote records compared to Kansas'. Uh, what did you find in this comparison?
Speaker 5:Right, so we did look at, um, those different states and a big reason why we picked those states specifically, um, to look at is mostly because some of them were similar to Kansas. Some of them did similar things to Kansas from what we could see statute wise, but other people did do very different things. So we wanted to be able to show, um, in our audit what people are doing in similar areas, but also what the possibilities were. Um, some different options that people have used ballot images, cast vote records for in other states, um, in places that may not be kind of in the same boat as we are. So some of the ways that we decided that we wanted to compare Kansas to other states was in retention and maintenance use and then sharing. So I'll go through each one of those individually. So first on that, um, retention and maintenance. So as far as that, maintaining ballot images, other states do generally retain, um, their ballot images and cast folk records for the same amount of time, um, as paper ballots. Um, so in general, the United States requires that you retain ballots for 22 months. Um, some states have more stringent policies than that, but in general, at least 22 months, other states are keeping their, um, houseboat records and ballot images. In Kansas, the election officials that we talked to said that they retained them for varying lengths of time. This is because statute specifically does not go over, um, ballot images and cast vote records in regards to retention use really mentions them in at all. And so that said, there really is no guidance. Um, there's no rules on this. So county election officials just kind of do what they think is best on a case by case basis. So looking into use election officials from Harvey and Wand dot counties said that they used ballot images to determine voter intent when a scanner couldn't interpret that ballot. Harvey and Wand dot counties also said that they used ballot images for that post-election audit, again, because it is more efficient than searching through ballot thousands of ballots by hand, um, and being able to pull out the ballots that are necessary for that audit so you can conduct that in inefficient manner. Um, so this is similar to how Colorado, Maryland and Utah are using ballot images statewide. So finally looking into sharing ballot images. Some other states make them public, um, or publicly available as far as like you can go in and see those ballots. But, um, Kansas election officials whose systems do create ballot images said that they did not share them compared to other states. There are several states that do make these records public. So Colorado, Florida and Maryland did make ballot images public either online or available by like a open records request. Um, and then only Missouri and Utah did not allow ballot images to be shared at all. Okay, so we're gonna go through all of that same kind of stuff. Looking at cast boat records specifically. So Kansas County officials said that they did maintain cast vote records for varying lengths of time, similarly to their ballot images. Um, so that said, other states election officials did say again that they maintain cast vote records for that same amount of time. No, county Kansas election officials said that they actually used the cast vote records. Um, there were two other states that said that they did, and they would use those for that statewide post-election auditing. Um, so as far as sharing, um, no, Kansas Co Kansas County election officials said that they shared cast vote records. Um, some other states did say that they shared cast vote records. Again, this is kind of similar to that ballot images, um, situation. So Colorado, Florida and Maryland made cast boat records public just like their ballot images. And then Missouri and Utah did not allow cast boat records to be shared.
Speaker 1:So there's clearly, um, a difference of, um, practice in these different states and in Kansas on whether or not to allow, uh, ballot images and cast vote records to be public or confidential. Talk about what you found in your, uh, work. What are some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of making those ballot images and cast vote records public?
Speaker 5:So yeah, some of the concerns that we noted, um, were that, you know, people want to review ballot images or cast vote records to be able to kind of have their own conclusion on election integrity. Um, and so this is something that we kind of saw in lots of different places and things that we, these are things that we actually reached out to county election officials to get their opinion on. Um, so county election officials did tell us that while this could increase transparency, um, it also could cause some confusions. There's a lot of situations in which there are people that look at ballots to determine what that voter's intent was, and it might be different than what a different person would decide that voter's intent was, um, just looking at a ballot online. Um, so this is just a process that happens during that election cycle that isn't necessarily, you know, shown, um, in just a ballot image. With that, there's also people that would like to see, you know, their own ballot image just to make sure that, you know, it matches up to that cast vote record, making sure that their votes were counted as they wanted. Um, but there's issues with that as well. Um, so for instance, voters are not allowed to put their names on their ballots. Voters names aren't on their ballots, um, when they get them, and you're not allowed to put identifying marks. Um, this is actually illegal. When we did talk to county election officials about whether or not they thought making ballot images or cast vote records publicly available would be a good idea, they did tell us that they felt like it might increase election transparency and public trust. But when we talked to the Secretary of State, um, they told us that there were, there's some things to think about in that process as well. Um, and that in Kansas generally people do expect that their ballots are secret and they may feel that their privacy has been violated if those ballots were to be made. Um, open to open records. Um, we also talked to those county election officials and they said that it would be logistically difficult to put ballot images or cast vote records, um, out kind of in the ether, mostly because many counties would actually have to upgrade their systems because they don't currently have systems that create, um, ballot images or cast vote records. Um, and then further, for a lot of people it would require transferring and storing large amounts of data. We did talk to Colorado to see if that was a consideration that they had to make, and they told us that there are large costs associated with the technology and upgrading technology to the point where they were able to put everything online
Speaker 1:For question three of the audit. The team reviewed best practices related to protecting, uh, voting in long-term care facilities. Sam, talk about what kinds of best practices you found and how did Kansas State law compare to these best practices?
Speaker 4:Sure. So, uh, to begin answering this question, uh, we started by reviewing national literature to understand long-term care facilities, voting related challenges and practices that might help with those challenges. So this literature came from sources like US Election Assistance Commission and the US Government Accountability Office. We also reviewed Kansas State law and talked to Secretary of State officials to determine what requirements Kansas has to protect voting in long-term care facilities. We learned that state law requires, uh, a few very basic practices that may help prevent or minimize fraud and undue influence. Those requirements apply to voters both inside and outside long-term care facilities. Uh, with that said, the national literature on the topic is, uh, sparse and much of it is dated. However, it identified a few key challenges long-term care facility residents face. So according to national literature, residents may have physical or cognitive impairments such as dementia, that may mean they need help voting or requesting mail-in ballots. Further, they may have limited access to election information and may have few opportunities to talk or to learn about candidates or issues with people outside of their facility. So the literature suggests that improving residents voting access and access to election information may help to address some of these challenges. For example, the literature suggests county election officials could set up polling places in facilities. So Kansas State law allows county election officials to set up mobile polling places and long-term care facilities, uh, for mobile polling places, bipartisan teams of county election workers would come to the facility and administer voting for the residents. State law also outlines several privacy and security requirements for mobile polling places. The national literature also suggests that long-term care facilities could allow residents to select their voting assistance. Alternatively, the literature says that the county election officials could provide bipartisan teams to help residents vote. In either case, the literature recommends that facilities document who help the residents, uh, vote. So in Kansas, the state law requires election officials to let certain voters choose who help them fill out their ballots, or if they're alone and at a polling place, uh, state law requires a bipartisan team of volunteers to assist them. Uh, these voters include those with, um, permanent illness or physical disabilities, limited English proficiency, and in some cases those who are 65 years and older. So state law also says that anyone who helps a voter must document that assistance, uh, for voting by mail. They must also attest that they didn't influence a voter, but this relies on the assistant telling the truth on that documentation. And finally, national literature suggests that facility staff could be trained on how to talk to residents about voting, but there are no laws in Kansas requiring long-term care facility staff to undergo training for assisting facility residents with requesting and voting their advanced ballots.
Speaker 1:The team also talked to officials from three counties and seven long-term care facilities to get a sense of the practices they had in place to protect voting in these facilities. Uh, tell me what you found.
Speaker 4:So we talked to Ford Lincoln and Wyandot County election officials and officials from seven long-term care facilities to understand their voting related practices. Use of facilities included five nursing and two assisted living facilities. We judgmentally selected these facilities from the counties we reviewed, uh, from our other work. Our work is limited to the interviews with facility staff and county election officials and the processes they described, we didn't evaluate and can't conclude on whether the processes worked or whether fraud or undue influence occurred. So the long-term care facility officials we talk to generally rely on normal facility practices to facilitate residents voting. Uh, they had very few election specific practices, but said they met state laws, very basic requirements. So for example, most facility officials said their residents largely vote by mail. Some facilities use the same practices as for any other mail residents receive or send, such as the same communal mailbox. They didn't do anything different when receiving mail-in ballots, but a couple officials said they hand delivered, completed ballots back to the county election office. A few facilities said they employed social workers or other staff to help residents, um, in however they need. Uh, this included help with voting if residents ask for it, but these staff weren't specifically hired or trained for this role. So several facility officials told us mobile polling would benefit their residents. It would give them a designated time and place to vote within their facility, and it would allow the county election workers to assist residents rather than facility staff who may not know, uh, election laws. But while the county election officials we talked to generally said they followed the very basic requirements in state law, they also said they don't use those optional practices like mobile polling. So a couple of county election officials said they didn't have enough election workers for mobile polling. And finally, the two assisted living facilities we talked to didn't have any election practices. Uh, they said their residents live mostly independently, so they leave it to them to vote.
Speaker 1:Finally, what's the main takeaway of this audit report?
Speaker 3:So elections are really complex processes. There are dozens of things that have to happen within really specific timeframes. Um, and Kansas has a lot of statutes that are related to, uh, you know, the administration and oversight of, of these processes and of elections. For this report, we didn't review all of these things. We were directed to focus on three specific aspects of the election process. And in all three areas, state law was either silent or pretty high level county officials run elections. As I said, there's 105 counties and there's really therefore 105 ways of doing things. And the counties that we reviewed handled things differently in in some areas. Now, weather election processes should be uniform statewide, uh, which they currently are not is a policy decision for the legislature to make. Some states that we reviewed, as we mentioned, um, throughout this podcast, had more detail, more clarity in certain areas like digital ballot copies, you know, ballot images and cast vote records and in training requirements, things like that. Others were more like Kansas, but whether the legislature is okay with that or would like to make state laws requirements more prescriptive, more robust, um, as I said, is really a policy decision.
Speaker 1:Andy Brienza is a principal auditor, and Mor Exline and Sam Dadds are senior auditors at legislative post audit. They completed an audit examining Kansas' election security procedures. Thanks for joining me in the Rundown studio and discussing the audits findings with me today.
Speaker 3:My pleasure, Brad.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Brad. Thanks Brad.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Rundown. To receive newly released podcasts, subscribe to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast. For more information about legislative post audit and to read our audit reports, visit k lpa.org. Follow us on Twitter at ks audit or visit our Facebook page.