Principals of Secure Intra-Party Elections – Part 2
Last week, we went over the vulnerabilities in the Feb. 22nd State Convention’s election process. This week we will look at vote counting procedures used in caucuses like the one on Feb. 21st and many of our county conventions, sub-caucuses and EC and SC meetings, along with best practices to consider for this cycle and beyond.
For years – decades even – our counting procedures have been, at best, lax and, at worst, an invitation to corruption. That’s because our intra-party elections typically do not even follow Robert Rules of Order, which state: “If the issue is a controversial one [i.e. almost ALL of them nowadays] the tellers should include members on each side of the issue…” [Roberts Rules of Order, Simplified and Applied p. 175] Instead, since I began as a precinct delegate 16 years ago, the tellers have generally been selected by the Chair and his or her partisan team. Unfortunately, we’d never know if there’s cheating going on because, by the nature of election fraud, unless there is an audit, or the cheater is caught in the act, it will go undiscovered. The inherent chaos and hubbub of a convention only increases the risk and lowers the likelihood of fraud detection.
District 9 Caucus, Detroit, Feb. 21st, 2025.
District Caucus Elections
Although time constraints and other practical aspects of election methods are important, election security must be paramount, or why bother voting? So, we will focus on the key principals of a secure vote count for both paper ballots and roll call or standing counts. At our Feb. 21st 9th District Caucus, we implemented several security measures and incorporated them into both the hand-counted paper ballot and a “divide the room” run-off when no majority was achieved in the first round.
1.
Standing counts.
These involve voting delegates standing up so that their vote can be counted. Once counted, the delegate sits back down. This can be easily corrupted if there are solo tellers (where one teller counts a section by himself). A dishonest or incompetent solo teller could count to him or herself or skip forward or backward in the count (eg. the teller counts “26, 27, 28, 29….40, 41, 42”). When there’s no one checking the crooked or incompetent teller’s work, he can get away with it (I’ve seen it myself) in loud and contentious caucuses.
To prevent the above scenario, District 9 utilized a standing callback count with good success on Friday, February 21st, making it close to tamper and fool proof. Note: the standing callback count described below is recommended in Roberts Rules as a secure method of vote counting in large meetings. Importantly, the standing callback count does not rely merely on tellers counting “1,2,3,4….” It engages each voting delegate in the count with a “callback” from one of the three tellers. This makes it nearly impossible for a teller to cheat or err.
Standing callback count in practice
Here’s how it was done by the 9th District in Detroit…
1. Security sealed the two entrances (temporarily) to prevent ineligibles from being included in the count.
2. The room was divided, with supporters of one candidate on one side of the room and those of the other candidate on the other side.
3. The 6 tellers were divided into 2 groups – 3 tellers on each side.
4. Each teller had been hand-picked by the original 3 chair candidates (one of the candidates had already been eliminated in round one, but his tellers stayed on). Each candidate had one teller in both of the two groups.
The above diagram explains a Standing Callback Count
Thus, the 3 tellers on one side of the room represented all 3 original candidates with the identical situation on the other side of the room, meaning each candidate had one of their designated tellers with eyes on the counting of every single vote. All 3 tellers on each side of the room work together side by side. This means there is no splitting up of the count, which would enable some delegates to be counted by a teller picked by only one candidate.
Note: the corrupted or corruptible intra-party elections I’ve seen over the years resulted primarily from weak acceptance by grassroots delegates of majority establishment-picked tellers. Obviously, corruption can occur on either side of this historical divide, so the solution is to make the process as close to incorruptible as possible and to standardize that process statewide for all meetings.
Procedure recap
1. Teller 1 confirms Delegate # 5 is holding up a valid credential, then points to Delegate #5.
2. Delegate #5 loudly calls out: “FIVE!”
3. Teller 2 calls back loudly “FIVE!” and tallies the vote.
4. Teller 3 enters a slash on his clipboard signifying a 5-count. Note: all three tellers will do exactly the same thing and, at the end of the count, all three tellers’ final tallies have to match exactly.
5. Teller 1 moves on to the next delegate; confirms Delegate # 6 is holding up a valid credential, then points to Delegate #6.
6. Delegate #6 calls out “SIX!”
And so on, until the count is completed…
Note that in the above scenario we had 3 tellers counting each side of the room. This could also work with only 2 tellers per side with Teller 2 doing the work of Teller 3 (step 4).
Here’s a short video clip showing you how a callback count looks in practice using only two tellers. Note that both enter their count independently and that these counts must match at the end or the count is repeated. This principle of using more than one teller per counting section and the tellers’ results matching at the end is also embodied in our paper ballot hand-count process, which we will discuss next…
Sanilac County Chair, Alyson Edwards, serves as a teller representing one of the candidates at the Feb. 21st Distict 9 Caucus. Three 2-person teller pairs, each representing a candidate/slate, hand-counted the race’s paper ballots.
2.
Paper ballots
Please consider the following principles for any SC or EC meeting, County Convention or District Caucus election involving important votes.
a. tellers should always equally represent supporters of the question or
candidates being voted on. In the Feb. 21st District 9 Caucus we had three candidates and two tellers were pre-selected by each candidate and no two tellers in a teller counting pair could be affiliated with the same candidate.
b. the teller team should rehearse the count – preferably a few days prior to the convention/election. This is where the bugs are identified. (We did a Zoom call but in person is better and will be done from now on).
c. Use an opaque ballot box container so vote tallies on ballots inserted aren’t visible.
d. Immediately prior to the voting, a teller should visibly demonstrate to all present that the ballot box is empty – challengers should be permitted to examine the inside of the box.
e. Voter credential cards should be checked and marked. This is preferably done with a card punch so that no voter can vote twice. One poll worker volunteer must be assigned to check the credential of each voter prior to his receiving a ballot.
f. All voters who receive a ballot should be marked off in the “poll book” of eligible delegates and elevated alternates (if in a convention).
g. Ballot box(s) should be closely observed by tellers and security at all times.
h. Once voting is complete, tellers should count all the ballots and match the totals with the poll book count.
i. Vote counting should be done by TELLER PAIRS that must each count the same batch of ballots, one at a time, and achieve identical results. (This is similar to bank tellers who verify large sums by counting in pairs). Any discrepancies must be resolved before the results are submitted.
j. No teller pair can have two tellers affiliated with the same candidate or question being voted on.
k. The subtotals must be co-signed by both tellers in a counting pair and transferred using strict chain-of-custody (two people transfer the results sheet(s) together) to the aggregation tellers who will add up the subtotals – preferably the subtotal sheet never leaves the counting table and the aggregation tellers merely view the sub-totals on the sheets without physically handling them.
l. The aggregation tellers’ totals must all agree as well i.e. if there are two aggregation tellers who count up the subtotals from 4 teller pairs, the aggregation totals of both tellers must be identical. Any discrepancies must be resolved prior to submitting final results.
m. Best practices in these events should include rules that allow the video taping of the entire counting process. Videotaping of the voting, on the other hand, if permitted, should be from a distance that prevents visualization of a delegate’s vote on a ballot. Note that some cameras can zoom in very closely.
A tally sheet in use during the 9th District Caucus in Detroit with the signatures of the 6 tellers, all of whose final tallies had to match perfectly.
Please consider sharing this article with your EC, county or other committee’s tellers and leadership. Let’s work together with the goal of establishing best practices in all of our intra-party elections! If we do not set the example with rigorously secure intra-party elections, how can we demand secure public elections that are essential to the survival of our constitutional republic?
Author: Phil O’Halloran, District 9 SC member and Vice Chair of MIGOP Election Integrity Committee. He welcomes feedback and is actively recruiting EI volunteers. He can be reached at: PhilipOHalloran@gmail.com.