1 SSAMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION

FOUNDATION OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

2 MICHAEL T. RISHER (191627)
(MRISHER@ACLUNC.ORG)
3 RAUL L. MACIAS (293208)
(RMACIAS@ACLUCA.ORG)
4 39 Drumm Street, 2nd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94111
5 Telephone: (415) 621-2493
Facsimile: (415) 255-8437
6
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION FOUNDATION
7 JULIE A. EBENSTEIN (To Be Admitted Pro Hac Vice)
(JEBENSTEIN@ACLU.ORG)
8 125 Broad Street, 17th Floor
New York, NY 98164
9 Telephone: (212) 549-2500
Facsimile: (212) 549-2651
10
COOLEY LLP
11 WILLIAM P. DONOVAN, JR. (155881)
(WDONOVAN@COOLEY.COM)
12 REBECCA L. TARNEJA (293461)
(RTARNEJA@COOLEY.COM)
13 1333 2nd Street, Suite 400
Santa Monica, CA 90401
14 Telephone: (310) 883-6400
Facsimile: (310) 883-6500
15
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
16

17

18 SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

19 COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO
20
PETER LA FOLLETTE; and THE No. CPF 17-515931
21 AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA,
22 DECLARATION OF PAUL MITCHELL
Plaintiffs, IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS’
23 MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE
v.
24 Date: March 5, 2018
ALEX PADILLA, in his official capacity as Time: 9:30 a.m.
25 Secretary of State of the State of California; Dept: 302
and WILLIAM F. ROUSSEAU, in his official Judge: Hon. Harold Kahn
26 capacity as Clerk-Recorder-Assessor- RES ID: 01040305-03
Registrar of Voters for the County of Sonoma,
27
Defendants.
28
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1.
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DECLARATION OF PAUL MITCHELL ISO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE
 1 I, PAUL MITCHELL, declare that:

2 1. My name is Paul Mitchell and I am Vice President of Political Data Inc. (PDI), a

3 voter file company based in California with offices in Norwalk and Sacramento.

4 2. I am over the age of 18 years and qualified to make this declaration. I make this

5 declaration based upon my personal knowledge, unless otherwise specified. I have no direct or

6 indirect interest in the outcome of this case for which I am offering observations, analysis, opinions

7 or testimony.

8 3. PDI has been in business in California since 1987. The core of PDI’s business is

9 managing a voter file which is comprised of state- and county-level voter file information, along

10 with data from other data sources such as county assessor records, census data, and commercial

11 data sources.

12 4. Clients of PDI include both major political parties, the California Democratic Party

13 and the California Republican Party, along with candidates at the statewide and local level, ballot

14 measure committees, independent expenditure groups, and state and local government, including

15 contracts with local city clerks and even the Secretary of State.

16 5. PDI provides clients a deeper understanding of the voter file through processing of

17 data which is not readily available in a raw voter file. One example of this is ethnic coding.

18 6. To identify ethnicity, PDI utilizes a proprietary surname database built initially from

19 the U.S. Census surname database. This is supplemented with information from the voter

20 registrations themselves, including non-U.S. place of birth and requests for non-English language

21 ballots. Surname, birthplace, and non-English language ballot requests are all used to help define

22 ethnicity. In some cases, surnames which could be multiple ethnicities are cross-referenced with

23 the U.S. Census data from the American Community Survey, which provides the ethnic

24 composition of a census block group.

25 7. Another core function PDI provides to clients is a rich history of past voter behavior.

26 PDI collects and manages a system that tracks past votes in statewide and local contests, along with

27 information about how voters cast their ballot (in person at the polling place, by mail ballot, or by

28 another method), and when an early voter casts a ballot. From some counties, we obtain data on
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ATTORNEYS AT LAW
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DECLARATION OF PAUL MITCHELL ISO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE
 1 rejected ballots, including damaged ballots, late ballots that were received after the deadline, ballot

2 envelopes lacking signatures, and ballots rejected because the signature on the ballot envelope does

3 not match the voter’s registration signature.

4 8. At the request of the ACLU we ran counts from our database of voters in the 2016

5 California general election for whom we had identified as having their vote-by-mail ballot rejected

6 due to a signature non-match based on the data provided by the county. This data was not available

7 statewide; the data was only available in the 29 counties 1 that use the DFM Associates software

8 which collects and reports the reason a vote-by-mail ballot was rejected. While this means we only

9 have data from 29 of 58 counties, these counties span the range of urban and rural, coastal and

10 inland, big and small, and provide enough quality data to allow for detailed evaluation of ballots

11 rejected for a signature non-match by ethnicity, age, partisanship, and other factors found on the

12 voter file.

13 9. Data provided from the 2016 California general election is consistent with what we

14 have seen in prior election cycles. We find higher rates of vote-by-mail ballots rejected for a

15 signature non-match among voters who are Latino (0.88%), Asian-American (0.61%), or born

16 outside of the U.S (0.70%), compared to voters who are non-Latino and non-Asian (0.45%), and

17 U.S.-born voters (0.50%).

18 10. We also find varying rejection rates by county that are outside the normal range that

19 would be expected by normal variation. Attached as Exhibit A is the data for the 29 counties for

20 the November 2016 general election, showing (i) the total number of non-match voters, (ii) the total

21 percentage of non-match voters, (iii) the percentage of non-Latino, non-Asian non-match voters,

22 (iv) the percentage of Latino non-match voters, (v) the percentage of Asian non-match voters, (vi)

23 the percentage U.S.-born non-match voters, and (vi) the percentage of foreign-born non-match

24 voters.

25

26
1
The 29 counties for which we have data on vote-by-mail ballots are: Alpine, Butte, Calaveras,
27 Colusa, Contra Costa, Fresno, Humboldt, Inyo, Madera, Mariposa, Merced, Mono, Napa, Placer,
Riverside, Sacramento, San Benito, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Barbara, Santa Clara, Santa
28 Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Sonoma, Sutter, Tehama, Ventura, and Yuba Counties.
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DECLARATION OF PAUL MITCHELL ISO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE
 1 11. Latino, Asian-American, and non-U.S. born voters also had a higher rejection rate

2 for late vote-by-mail ballots and had higher use of provisional ballots in the 2012 and 2014

3 elections. This could speak to an unfamiliarity with the voting process or issues regarding the

4 instructions on election materials.

5 12. The variation in signature non-match rejection rates by county is not correlated with

6 counties which had higher rates of rejection for late vote-by-mail ballots or provisional ballots.

7 Anecdotal evidence suggests that some counties contact voters who have a signature which was

8 deemed non-matched and give them an opportunity to rectify the problem in time to have their vote

9 counted, while other counties do not.

10 13. The 29 counties where data was available for the 2016 general election had a 0.54%

11 rejection rate for vote-by-mail signature non-match. If that rate is applied to the 8,511,992 vote-

12 by-mail ballots cast by all California voters in the 2016 general election, that would project to

13 45,590 votes being rejected statewide for signature non-match.

14 14. There is no evidence to suggest that a significant number of vote-by-mail ballots

15 rejected for a signature non-match are the result of attempted voter fraud.

16 I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of California that the foregoing is true and

17 correct.

18 Executed at Sacramento, California on this 4th Day of January, 2018.

19

20
Paul Mitchell
21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28
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DECLARATION OF PAUL MITCHELL ISO PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR WRIT OF MANDATE
EXHIBIT A
Exhibit A: Data from November 2016 California General Election re: Vote-by-Mail Ballots

Non- Non-Match Non-Match % Non-Match Non-Match Non- Non-Match

Match % All Non-Latino and % Latino % Asian Match % % Foreign
County Total Voters Asian Voters Voters Voters US Born Born
Alpine 5 0.82% 0.86% 0.00% 0.00% 0.86% 0.00%
Butte 545 0.79% 0.71% 1.45% 2.07% 0.78% 1.14%
Calaveras 37 0.22% 0.21% 0.40% 0.00% 0.21% 0.41%
Colusa 20 0.48% 0.30% 0.93% 0.00% 0.51% 0.30%
Contra Costa 558 0.19% 0.18% 0.23% 0.16% 0.19% 0.19%
Fresno 1,909 1.18% 0.99% 1.49% 1.77% 1.00% 2.02%
Humboldt 158 0.45% 0.42% 0.95% 1.06% 0.45% 0.40%
Inyo 20 0.35% 0.36% 0.30% 0.00% 0.36% 0.32%
Madera 91 0.32% 0.23% 0.54% 0.68% 0.30% 0.46%
Mariposa 10 0.15% 0.16% 0.00% 0.00% 0.15% 0.22%
Merced 219 0.50% 0.40% 0.65% 0.82% 0.48% 0.54%
Mono 21 0.63% 0.53% 1.82% 1.59% 0.68% 0.39%
Napa 306 0.52% 0.47% 0.74% 0.64% 0.50% 0.63%
Placer 460 0.35% 0.34% 0.43% 0.31% 0.34% 0.46%
Riverside 5,735 1.15% 0.98% 1.59% 1.23% 1.13% 1.23%
Sacramento 1,399 0.37% 0.34% 0.50% 0.47% 0.34% 0.53%
San Benito 53 0.33% 0.21% 0.54% 0.26% 0.32% 0.44%
San Joaquin 565 0.37% 0.32% 0.48% 0.47% 0.31% 0.63%
San Mateo 497 0.23% 0.19% 0.38% 0.27% 0.23% 0.23%
Santa Barbara 687 0.57% 0.44% 1.04% 0.73% 0.53% 0.83%
Santa Clara 2,442 0.46% 0.35% 0.56% 0.70% 0.37% 0.67%
Santa Cruz 302 0.37% 0.32% 0.63% 0.37% 0.35% 0.50%
Shasta 155 0.27% 0.26% 0.45% 0.47% 0.27% 0.29%
Sierra 4 0.21% 0.17% 1.01% 0.00% 0.22% 0.00%
Sonoma 608 0.34% 0.28% 0.81% 0.53% 0.31% 0.55%
Sutter 275 1.08% 1.02% 1.39% 1.51% 0.89% 1.86%
Tehama 96 0.57% 0.50% 1.28% 0.69% 0.52% 1.30%
Ventura 686 0.31% 0.28% 0.40% 0.38% 0.30% 0.41%
Yuba 251 1.67% 1.50% 2.41% 3.12% 1.58% 2.30%
TOTAL 18,114 0.54% 0.45% 0.88% 0.61% 0.50% 0.70%
Source: Political Data Inc.