Electoral Board Meeting   7/10/2025

any brief announcements that any one of the board members needs to make

So we'll open public meeting now.

During the meeting, if you want to be recognized, just raise your hand for the chairman to recognize you.

We've got one.

I just wondered, we had talked once about, a couple of times actually, about reviewing the return ballots, and I wondered what was going on with that, if I could get involved with that.

We just have to set up the time with Gina to come to Carol.

Any other comments, questions?

Second.

All in favor, aye.

They're saying none.

I probably would have gone with all were accepted.

What do we have left?

I think we got through three of the modules or four of the modules.

Next week is not particularly auspicious for me, otherwise I would suggest it.

How about Monday the 21st?

Baker Butler, Precinct Size.

So as far as I'm concerned, this issue is resolved.

Just so everybody else understands, this is a question that's coming up all over the

I think Bucky presented this well and I think we can dispatch we've had the chief at Baker Butler so Baker Butler's okay it will probably be okay be okay and and decide somewhere along the way that's not okay I think probably rather than splitting them into two precincts

But it's even better if we don't have to do that at all.

And Richard, I'd like to introduce you at this time so that you can comment on what we need to do going forward and we'll set up a work group to review the manual depending upon his advice.

I know there's been some talk about dividing some other sections out if you want to have a separate section for

When would you like to assemble to do this?

And that's, you know, 60 days away.

Betsy has a question.

So I'd like to suggest we put together, I mean it probably won't need a whole lot.

Well, you believe the other ones got it and I could look back in my email to see if I sent

A defined process, and it's done the same way over and over and over and over, but it has to be done.

The same way.

Jim?

I wanted to ask Erin, when she said she provided...

So this is...

Happy to hear it's out there.

So thank you, Betsy.

That would also be.

Everything that's done before election day is called pre-processing.

And it falls under the Registrar's Office, basically.

Well, except it's a cap, it's an Office of Election.

It's like in-person or open.

not sure I would we can discuss that later but it's a precinct so it's it's okay guys when we look at the time to look at cap we've got Monday the 21st.

Richard's manual first.

We're doing that.

We haven't set a time to do anything for Richard.

I thought we set 9 o'clock on Monday the 21st.

Sorry.

Anybody want to do another day that week?

Sure.

On Wednesday?

Yeah.

So you want to... Richard, do you think 9 o'clock for that would be good?

On Wednesday?

Sure.

And we will do, now we've got to do a cap

I was thirsty that week.

Thirsty going once?

Well, since I'm not involved in path I would not have anything to contribute to that.

So is the one that's offered by the state not sufficient?

Yes, ma'am.

Have you seen it?

But I'd be happy to have a conversation about it.

When you said earlier we had it for the Chiefs, I didn't know what it meant.

And it's what we have.

It's always been the state that guided the man.

Thursday the 24th but not long?

What's good to me?

Okay.

Monday the 28th, yeah.

Okay.

You didn't want to read all that email.

We want to let him leave if he wants to.

So from a direction standpoint, that is the direction I think we would like to go.

I can add or pull out some of those functions into separate sections.

And it can be sections of the chiefs, it can be broken down, but they need to have something that they can use as a reminder because just coming to class, you may not hear what's said.

They're included in where we put the manual section so that they are there.

Any other questions on this?

I think we need to have.

I don't think we should be out during Canvas on vacation.

So it's written down.

Don't disagree.

I jumped ship.

Jim?

Now having said that, I still don't understand why they want an envelope taking

We're not authorized to open it.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So the difference is that the let go board has access to what they need.

I mean, it is, Richard points out, document is this way.

Or they'll seal it in 1A with a provisional ballot.

That seems to me to be more reasonable to have this as 1A because that's where the actual provisional envelopes are rather than putting them in a completely different envelope.

We get into trouble when each locality starts doing it their way.

No, I'm still not comfortable with the log being separated from what it is logging as you unload.

The logs are often not quite where they belong.

I can't remember any of them being an envelope too.

Oh no, we had some that we couldn't find inside the envelope when we had to hunt for them.

and they need to be copied.

I'd like to see an envelope 8.

I move that we change our written procedures and instruction to ask for the provisional logs to be an envelope 8.

Thoughts from Lauren on this?

I think it's going to take a couple of elections so before they all end up in a little bait because people are going to do whatever they're used to doing and they don't really read instructions so for the next couple of elections we're going to have to know them we're still going to have to hunt for

Richard's got information in the manuals about envelopes,

And we could always send out those, you know, closing officers who are specially trained on that.

So we're going to have to have a bigger offer.

The university is going to need probably a different place.

Anyway, that's a logistical question we can answer after this.

I move that we change our practices, our training, and our documentation to reflect that provisional laws should be stored in envelope 8 at the end of the day on election day as opposed to the various and sundry places where they are being put today.

There is a summation that's attached to the envelope.

So if we have a provision log after hours.

Let me amend my motion to be for envelopes 1A or 1B if used so that the same practice would apply both of them would end up with a provision log in envelope A.

on the rare, very rare occasion when you have extended hours for provisional ballots.

So your motion is actually to move that we direct election officials to place all provisional ballot laws that are cast during regular polling hours.

All provisional ballot laws, whether they would have been attached in the past to 1A or 1B.

I think you've got to keep, the code says you've got to keep the extended hours provisional ballots separate.

And those ballots will be in the envelope 1B.

Correct.

And the logs will be there in, you'll have a separate set of logs.

All in favor say aye.

Grudgingly, aye.

That's not the question.

And the rest of them are not.

The majority are not working in their home precinct?

We are available to them.

And they have been completed.

Yes, absolutely.

I know that a lot of our election officials reside in the Crozet area which would create a huge problem if all of them went to work in elections.

I think the majority of election officials come out of Ivy, but yeah there's no way for all of them to work there.

Good to hear.

So you've got, you've got a step for me.

I'm not sure.

Anyway.

To me, I don't know what you're saying.

I mean, all the caveats in the world, just open the door and say, let us know.

And the email questions.

Yes, Jim has his hand up.

So I wouldn't want all of my Republicans to say they want

We're staying where you are.

I think when we ask folks this, we should tell them, we will let you know before the next election if we were able to accommodate any requests that you make.

Well in advance.

So they don't then have to send you an email, and then three days later, another one, and another one, and another one.

Please read the email.

You've opened the door if they've got to take the initiative.

Not to everybody.

It's right there in one place.

I'm in my home precinct.

It's a good opportunity to introduce the topic to all of the EO, because if you get some new folks in your precinct that weren't there before, and they tell you, well, I used to work in, they will understand that they may be because of this reason.

Because we don't know at this point who's working November.

So we use the list of all of the currently appointed eligible to work.

Yeah, that's what I would do.

Please identify yourself and let everybody know who you are and where you are in office of elections.

Lewis, the issue is the state code says that where practicable, officers will be assigned, and we don't have that, and I'm raising the question, is there a practicable way we could do better?

Are we making a lot of fuss?

And that's all I'm asking is to put on the table the opportunity for the cards to throw themselves up in the air and see if they can come down in a different pile.

Yes, ma'am.

You've got something that's working right now, why mess with it?

And some people may not know why they've been, they live in Earlysville and they're working in Spotsville.

But if Claris asked me to work at Georgetown, by now I might be ready to think about working back in Earlysville where I would normally vote.

So they do ask.

I tend to agree with you, Ann.

We know you can't always get what you want.

You guys can weigh all the factors that would go into that to differentiate of the five people, for example, who would move from one place to the next.

Absolutely.

If anyone, you know, if we don't have enough staffing, if we don't have the party parity we required, there may be no opportunities, but there may be too.

And just to correct you, we don't have absolute here.

Shake it up even more if we had to move people, but Bucky's not suggesting that.

If you have a DNR who, you know, want to be in the opposite, well, there's an opportunity.

But can I point out that we, it is on the election official application.

Would we work somewhere else?

But if they say no,

I still think it's a good idea.

the better shot we have at making people happy with the understanding that just because you want to go home doesn't mean you're going to be able to go home.

I would like the Registrar's Office to script the inquiry because you guys are going to have to be dealing with the feedback.

Is that okay?

But I'd like the registrar's office to be responsible for the content of this, understanding what it is we're trying to achieve.

provisional same-day registration review proposed changes.

And I wonder if we might be able to make better use of the registrar's office review of those materials in our processing to expedite our process.

And we have to know that.

We're in complete agreement so far.

and I think that's their job.

Times was about me when they started, when they ended and I came up with 30 hours that we spent with us.

and so they were calling, I was in the office, I was with you guys, Keena took a lot of calls and they wanted to know what are you guys doing because there were people who had a lot more than we did and who already had their numbers submitted to the state.

That's why the effects and balance is one of everything we do.

the issues being considered there are much different from same-day registration but in both categories there are being reviewed by the registrar's office and we're not making much advantage of that pre-review for those two categories.

I'm not sure I understand.

We don't actually have enough scheduled days to process that unless we're working 16-hour days.

Well, I don't think we need to work 16-hour days, because when you work that long, you make mistakes.

Yes.

And we looked through those quickly.

Is this June?

Not drastically, but we changed it.

I'm willing to wait to move on this, but I'm more than looking at this again after we have more data.

And the church staff, the ministers.

And for their purposes, they needed to make sure of their insurance.

I talked to another person, and they didn't have a contract either.

So I want us to make sure that we don't have a county attorney because they handled all of the

What other polling places?

I don't know what other polling does.

They had all the insurance paperwork.

Right.

But the accounting attorney would have all of the contracts and agreements that we have with the other colleges.

Part of the church did have a contract

on election day.

Put together some information about all of them so you know when we need to tickle them about, hey, it's time to renew Northside or what have you.

Well, of course, the wording needs to be updated because of anything else that's changed in the contract law.

No, not contract law, election.

Vote, vote, vote.

I'm not going to ask the registrar, I guess, the county attorney.

Yeah, sure, county attorney, that's fine.

We have copies of all those contracts in our office.

I looked through Jake's files and where he left them and there were no copies of the contract.

Just the reference.

I think it's in the calls from a recent, from a place.

then I can answer their legal questions.

He doesn't want you answering legal questions.

Are you planning with this discussion?

I wasn't.

I'm going to have a separate meeting.

Lauren may or may not know that the County Attorney may or may not have come back.

I'd love to know what they tell us.

So I'm not sure which polling place you said.

Specifically, when we went through the last minute elsewhere, I believe that there was a lot of discussion.

And people like you all said,

The elections are covered, as well as the county.

I said, yes you do.

Looks like it was signed by...

and receiving process.

I'm sorry.

Ballots are sent out and you were going to talk about doing a third-party mail.

And so last November we decided it was best to have a third party in the mailing board.

So it doesn't have to be on that deadline.

Including all the ones after.

All the ones that come in after.

Is that doable within the fine constraints, the law says?

So I think their turnaround time would actually be quicker than our turnaround time.

You get a request, it goes in there, you receive a request, and that's when you back, you send them one thought of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then we're back to Alex.

Someone can hand deliver it to the window, which they do, or it comes back to our locked mailbox.

And the changes in the third party I think are important because it will

Now we might have 1,000 and we have to get it mailed out.

What's Margaret going to do?

That was never one of her responsibilities.

Anybody else have a comment on this?

And it will decrease the length of the office and potentially reduce

I was groping for that origin.

Thank you.

They wanted to do it for the business.

They wanted to do it for June.

They're ready for it.

And again, just so you know, Aldous is going to like to get the ballot.

The state requires that we do.

All the printers run out.

We have a stash.

From my discussion with the chief, they were very happy with the location.

It worked really well.

They had some.

I still wish we would have signed saying, if you are a Belvedere resident and you're not voting here, you're voting at K-Tech.

I had my car accident because I was trying to reach your side.

Most people will be turning right to go back to branchlands, but the people that are trying to turn left and say,

I came out of there and I think wisely made the decision to go ahead and turn right, go up to the stoplight and make a U-turn.

I wasn't there very much.

I ask specifically about that thing in the process.

And

I hope we haven't had any precinct problems in too long.

I hope we don't have an election.

Okay, any questions, problems, things we need to discuss?

I did not know the Elks Lodge.

With the ballot snafu, it was handy that we had Mr. Schlessel there.

Which ballot snafu?

Well, the correct ballots didn't go to...

When they mixed up their boxes.

And I think they were able to use the express vote to vote people in their precinct, so.

And there weren't a lot of people voting.

No.

That really helped.

How did they get switched around?

Oh, Aaron and Brooklyn because I think the sheriff's deputy was out somewhere.

He was delivering to Earlysville.

Do we have why that happened?

Don't tell the other chiefs but one of the chiefs started picking up things from the wrong cart and the helper said oh no that's not your cart but some things that have already gone in the back of the car so I don't think the ballots were one of the things that are already gone in the one chief's car and didn't get switched out it was just they picked up from they were parked beside each other picked up from the wrong cart and put in

We need to connect the helpers, the carts, and the chiefs together better before we send them out.

And a separation, not both coming out and... Go ahead, Richard.

She's looked at it and she's got the right number.

which is a teaching moment that we need to put back in the chiefs and probably in the regular officer.

Yeah.

Yes.

This was only for absentee ballots.

Are there large labels in the boxes in the storeroom so people can easily identify what it is?

So it was someone who

Yes, because they had run out of the democratic ballots and just grabbed them and said it wasn't.

Yes, they are labeled.

I think it was the chocolate.

I agree with that.

I mean the most we have were voters who come here because they think yes this is where I voted yes because you voted early

You guys were chilling.

It was a nice, quiet election.

We do have that issue of reason for entering the person in the whole pad as a professional.

I want to go back.

Jim, no.

so that you have somebody who comes to the same day registration you need to know for sure that that person's address is in that precinct and you have a street file lookup to say okay put in the address where is that this precinct otherwise their provisional ballot can't be counted Lauren would you like to?

Yes.

And with us not having this access, there was no way to do that.

But was there a reason that knowing

I can't say for sure why they didn't have it ready for us to look at.

But this was something that knowing should have taken care of two months ago.

By the time it was ready for us to review, I couldn't give it a proper review.

So they're working on it.

It's going to get fixed well.

Well, yeah, because now they're waiting for us to review the street file.

Because we're going to have to teach it.

So things like that we'll have to look at, yes.

If you need board back, because you think that any of your vendors, anywhere, are not giving you what you need, don't hesitate to ask.

They were only lacking in some things.

It was one of your agenda items.

Anybody else?

The voting totals at West IV had been zeroed out.

I know the whole pad got changed.

So you didn't come the first week with turning angie?

She was very nice.

He gave the great training for a whole week.

I think we need to do the same thing again.

But I would suggest that it would be more illuminating to not have generic instruction, but to have pullpads loaded without moral data, and here's how it works here.

Exactly.

Not, you know, Abe Lincoln is one of our voters kind of thing.

I mean, I think that was good for them as a first time to see it.

I would use our data.

Do we have a look for the hot watch in December?

I think it's the, wasn't it that Thursday?

I thought it was Thursday.

the 11th of December.

I think so.

It should be.

But yes, the day that you all had told me was the day that I was able to give.

Was it the 4th or the 11th?

Okay.

That is December 4th.

It was a Thursday and I've got both rooms reserved.

So yes, we are set.

Lauren, do you want to talk about the IT problems for now?

And he was like, I'm in church.

He wanted to help us.

So we couldn't do our paper poll books until we got various access back.

We couldn't upload voter credit from early voting.

So it was a very stressful.

Amazing.

I just need it to be able to pull my voter file from VARIS.

Is there a discussion opportunity or has it already been taken with the folks at Elect and or the Elect IT team about how we are supposed to follow the law if they kick us out of VARIS?

That was or Elect was going to upload my voter files for me.

Choice B already sounds better than choice A.

No, we didn't have to go to even one of those options, but they were prepared to upload the voter credit from early voting and then create my voter file and send it to me so I could load the poll books or print paper poll books for everyone to use.

It occurs to me that there's an opportunity to have a backup approach where we simply have a laptop that you don't connect to anything except the state.

but then we had the issues with the IP, you know, Bucky, I'm not very tech savvy but the issues with the IP address and getting that laptop set up with the security because elect them still wanted that laptop washed because it had been in a county building, you know, it had never been used.

Sure, it's been attached to another county machine.

so they weren't very trusting of that brand new laptop item.

And you couldn't get into this.

I don't ever want any of this to happen again.

If it does, whether it's us or one of the other 133 localities, I feel like there could be a better plan.

But I don't want to, our IT department worked very, very, extremely hard to get us back.

It's dependent on the guys in Richmond.

Three days before election.

Do y'all know of any other?

Veloster County has had a cybersecurity attack.

But that was not for this election.

Ours wasn't for an election.

No evidence it was targeted.

So I can't say that the elections office was targeted.

and the West for this period.

Well, I know when I was in Virginia that has had this type of attack.

Are we still, is county government still under this attack?

Thank you.

Could you go to another county that was not under attack?

Why can't I just go to the city and do all the things I need to do?

That's important to get involved in, ask those questions.

I think we do need to ask and that's why we're getting the update from Lauren so we've got as much information as we can have to ask because this is serious.

2015, we had 71,574 registered voters.

So in 10 years we've gained 16,377 voters.

Right.

especially in our larger areas that we need to be on the lookout for places that we could identify as polling places.

It's not easy.

If we keep shifting votes to early in-person voting and absentee voting, it may not be an issue.

That's a little bit hard to capture it to how many are really new voters because a lot of them won't be just free registration.

Well that wouldn't change the number, yeah.

Thank you.

As part of the register update, we talked about a lot of the things that I would have

If you want to give a little more insight into what Tyler is doing.

That's thrilling, right?

And we're happy to have him here with us.

I think kids don't take government until they go on to their senior year.

Well, back in the day, we didn't have government until our senior year.

but we're happy to have him.

Yes, he probably has for all those new voters.

Which letters will you fold?

The absentee cancel points, the voter registration points, the absentee cancellation points.

Lots of different letters.

There's so many different letters.

And I know you're asking questions, but you're going to be the expert when you go back to Albemarle.

So we wanted to get ahead of it while there were

I mean we want to get this locked down.

Right now the dates you see we have asked for the reservation.

So these rooms are ours.

There was nothing on the schedule for these days and we have Lane Auditorium and three breakout rooms that I requested for the Chief's training.

At Lane?

Yes, the county office.

So every time we have a Lane

No, just for the chiefs.

Because you all had boys wanting to do breakout sessions for the chiefs, but not necessarily for election.

Yeah, and we'll bring all the other trainings back.

Richard, do you have any comments on that?

We just wanted to lock in those dates at McIntire.

Yeah.

Is there any other item that anybody wants to point out that we have not discussed?

This is a candidate.

Yeah, that's a fine question.

We weren't here.

Yeah, right.

Pretty sure there were people here.

It didn't meet the requirements.

Good for votes, good for ballots, but not after seven.

And we have that code section on the drop box.

Did you have to watch the film the whole way?

And I was watching reality TV.

No.

When you stopped by on election day.

Bucky, where did you get those calls from the current and former court of supervisors?

It's like by 7 p.m. What do you mean appeal process?

Well, when I talked to the gentleman on the phone the next day, he did say we would be hearing from his people.

Oh good, look forward to hearing more.

They have more facts to bring.

You snooze, I didn't say you snooze.

Black letter law.

And you didn't tell the guy, well, you may be hearing from our people about tampering with government property and taking the part of government property.

OK.

No, it's not.

They have to put the new laws in, and we can tell you that for election law, there's some election finance laws that really aren't applicable for election officers, but there are only really two changes in, from this book to whatever color the new book is, that will be germane for officers.

Anyway, that was all I had about that.

Thank you, and I would like to know if there's two for the supervisors.

I heard from Mike and Liz Palmer.

Thank you for fielding that, all of you.

Thank you.

Okay, anything else before we go into public session?

Did you want to schedule confirm our next meeting?

I think that's a great idea.

Looks that way to me too.

Okay.

Do we have any issues with August 14th?

No, that's great.

Is that August 6th?

That is August 3rd through the 6th.

Through the 6th.

The afternoon session, they split the electoral board and the pressure supports that.

Okay, Madam Chair, may we take the time out of the break?

We will come back out of closed session if anybody wants to respond.

But we don't know when.

It's all good.

You got a question?

or become an assistant chief.

Thank you for being here.

I forget a lot of things.

All right, thank you, sir.

I'll be back.

Okay.

What do you want?

then you can open and start copying.

And what are you talking about?

I mean, you've got to have them.

I like them separate, so.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't like, yeah, because that delays me, because then I have to talk to him, and then let me just wait around.

Yeah, I mean, if we could.

and that's somebody's watching many companies well you don't know three three boards yep that's it and that's it

Thank you.