Silver Lake One of Few For Online Voting

SILVER LAKE—For the first time, a little more than a third of Los Angeles’ 96 neighborhood councils will allow voters to cast ballots online in upcoming 2016 elections that will be held this spring.

Silver Lake, however, is the only neighborhood council locally that has signed on for the pilot program.

The notion of online voting was evaluated after the 2010 neighborhood council elections, when a taskforce of council representatives recommended the option as a way to increase voter turnout.

Time elapsed as details on how online voting could work and be funded.

Finally, in 2015, Los Angeles city officials approved a contract with Everyone Counts, a vendor with 20 years of experience in high-tech polling, including various elections needs for Chicago, New Jersey, Denver and Swindon Borough, in the United Kingdom.

While a majority of neighborhood councils have adopted a wait-and-see attitude to digital voting, according to Stephen Box, communications director of EmpowerLA, Silver Lake has supported the option from the beginning.

“[The Silver Lake Neighborhood Council] was one of the champions [for online voting] back in 2010,” Box said.

Over time, Box said, Silver Lake councilmembers met with some of the vendors themselves and provided EmpowerLA with research on the issue. Ultimately, according to Box, the ease of online voting and the potential to increase voter turn out, was seen by Silver Lake as a plus for the council itself as well as for the entire Los Angeles neighborhood council system.

“[Silver Lake bends] over backwards to lay down a foundation of civic engagement and local participation,” said Box.

Some Silver Lake councilmembers, however, are leery of the untested service, like Silver Lake’s Anne-Marie Johnson, who has expressed concern online voting may result in illegitimate votes from non-residents looking to sway the election.

“I hope we’re not guinea pigs,” Johnson said. “I’m hoping that the system won’t be gamed, but the jury’s still out, obviously. [The SLNC] will do our best to make sure legitimate Silver Lake residents and business owners vote, as opposed to people who frequent a certain establishment and keep their receipts, but don’t live in Silver Lake.”

Overseeing the online voting process is EmpowerLA, the city agency that oversees Los Angeles’ neighborhood councils.

When registering online, EmpowerLA will require voters to upload their photo identification and a document supporting their status in the neighborhood.

Online voters will then be notified when the voting window opens. Once the votes have been cast, Everyone Counts will then tabulate and post the results at the polling location and on EmpowerLA’s website.

For the Silver Lake election, which is May 14th, voter registration is currently open to any Silver Lake residents, workers, business or property owners at EmpowerLA.org.

Once registered, voters can access the website and cast a ballot starting April 23rd via computer, tablet or mobile phone. Those registering online will also have the option to cast their vote in person instead, at a traditional polling location on election day.

The Atwater Village Neighborhood Council voted not to offer online voting this year because, according to Torin Dunnavant, the council’s co-chair, not all the details for online voting had been worked out when the deadline came for the council to commit.

“We thought it better to allow it to be piloted elsewhere and not deal with any additional complications for the elections,” Dunnavant said.

According to Mark Mauceri, vice president, administration of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council (LFNC), Los Feliz also opted out of online voting for similar reasons, stating that the process is unproven and untested.

“[EmpowerLA] didn’t do any actual testing to work out the bugs. So, this early on, it could prove to be problematic for the election,” said Mauceri. “[The LFNC] will look at the results,” Mauceri said and then make a decision about online voting going forward.

Beginning January 30th, any community member interested in running as a candidate in the Region 7 elections has until March 15th to file at EmpowerLA.org.Counts will then tabulate and post the results at the polling location and on EmpowerLA’s website.