Ballot Access Should Be Easier for Candidates, Too
We talk a lot about modernizing our elections. One thing that’s often overlooked in that discussion is modernizing how candidates get onto the ballot.
Right now, it’s a rickety system that harkens back to the early 20th century with sheaves of nominating petitions printed on specially-sized paper. Experienced candidates, or those who have the support of the major parties, find it easier to navigate the process, while new candidates often find petition-gathering a major obstacle. (Even this rule has exceptions: a prospective major party candidate for state Assembly failed to make the May 5 ballot in Brooklyn due to a paperwork error.) It is worth noting that the 2010 NYC Charter amendment greatly reduced the number of signatures city candidates must collect, but the higher thresholds for other offices remain.
But this spring there was exciting news out of Denver where election officials have broken ground on a petitioning process for the 21st century. The Denver Elections Division launched a pilot program allowing candidates to gather ballot petition signatures on a tablet for the first time. Using a new application, called eSign, candidates and their petitioners were able to collect signatures directly onto a tablet and instantly check the voters’ eligibility against the voter roll.
The Denver Elections Division still verified every petition signature collected via tablet just as with the traditional paper petitions. But eSign allowed campaigns to verify on the spot that petition signers were registered to vote. The program also tallies the number of signatures gathered in real time so campaigns can track their progress towards the threshold.
The software firm that developed the application says that the nearly two dozen candidates that used eSign “had a 2.7 percent rejection rate [for their petition signatures], whereas paper candidates had a 35-40 percent rejection rate.” According to the Denver Elections Division, all of the candidates who used the new application “hit their signature threshold the first time.”
Denver made eSign available to any candidate who wanted to use it to get on the May 5th municipal election ballot. Candidates were able to borrow petitioning tablets from the city (after putting down a $375 deposit). Candidates also could register personal tablets for eSign. Either way, signatures collected with eSign were housed on a secure Denver Elections Division server to ensure they weren’t accessible to unauthorized users even if a tablet was misplaced or stolen. All the voter information contained on the tablets to help campaigns confirm voter registration comes from a public voter information database and is not private data.
For now, state law only permits candidates for Denver’s municipal offices and for local ballot initiatives to use the eSign technology. But Denver elections officials hope that the success of their trial program will spur statewide adoption.
New York City should consider adopting a similar program to streamline this important piece of the election process and make it easier for more candidates to get involved.