Electoral Board Meeting   8/21/2025

Can you hear us?

Yes?

If you can hear us, please.

Good?

OK. All right.

Thank you greatly for your patience.

We're sorry.

It is 25 minutes after 1.

And this is the regularly scheduled August the 21st Algol County Electoral Board meeting.

We are very happy that we have so many people on the electronic Zoom.

We, again, appreciate your patience.

Getting our electronics set up.

Thank you for not going away.

And actually, we got a couple of extra people, so we're good.

Thank you for the people that are in the room.

The chairman will call the board the meeting to order.

And we do have a quorum because we have all three members of the electoral board.

Can we add an item to that?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Under new business?

Under new business, yeah.

Okay.

So look at dividing up topical responsibilities among board members.

During this period.

All right.

Any other new items you would like to add, Mr. Secretary?

Nope.

I would just point a clarification.

There is no meeting.

I think I wrote down the wrong date.

I put this out, I put down the wrong date.

My name's Andrea Ruege.

I'm with the County Attorney's Office.

I started in June.

And we are happy to have you.

Anyone else on the board need to make an announcement before I do?

I'd like to announce, and it will be a brief announcement, the

Former general registrar Lauren Eddy has submitted a letter of resignation, which was effective 12 August.

The board has accepted her resignation, and we are now actively engaged in recruiting a new general registrar.

The process is such that, as you all know, we are, to quote,

Dante, Harold Headford into Perilous Perdition, otherwise known as a general election in November.

And we are recruiting two people or possibly one if that happened.

First, we need a temporary general registrar to fill in the gap who can come in with all due haste and get

us through this election, and then we need someone who wants to be the general registrar to fill the unexpired term, which ends in the summer of 2028.

Both of these positions have been noted on both the general registrar listserv, which is an email serving all the general registrars, and the electoral boards for the entire state, and the full announcement

and full application process for both of these positions is on the Albemarle County website.

And we owe a great deal of gratitude to the HR head, Jessica Rice, who has been extremely helpful in getting this ball rolling.

Anyone who fills out the application or into the directions will send it in and it'll go to HR and then it will be sent

One small correction.

Yes.

Did I say 28?

Yes.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I'm still fixated on the fact that the 18th is working correctly.

Thank you.

It's a good number.

Thank you.

A very trivial point.

Can we settle on what the title of the temporary person is?

We've used the word acting and we've used the word interim and we've used the word temporary.

I don't care which one it is, but can we, this is just minutes and all that.

What do you propose?

I think probably acting.

I would think acting would be appropriate.

I think acting is fine.

So we will now, thank you.

We will refer to that position as acting.

Is it, do the other two members of the board have any announcements that they need to add?

Nope, probably not.

I have, I finished the August 14th minutes about 11.30 today.

All in favor say aye.

but we will look at those at the next meeting along with these minutes.

Now, public comment.

I have to say that the position of how, when, and how much public comment is given at various other electoral board meetings around the Commonwealth is as varied as the 133 localities.

I think the public should be actively involved in its government and its elections.

And therefore it has always been the position of the Albemarle County Board, and I hope it will continue to be so, that we welcome public comment, either electronically or in the room.

We ask that you keep your comments at the beginning

to three minutes or we could be here all night.

So three minute comment from anybody that wants to make a comment or have a question.

The board will endeavor to answer questions rather than sit like plastic potted plants and say nothing.

This is an interactive forum.

This board also entertains comments and questions

as we proceed through our agenda.

Again, we all need to be mindful of everyone's time, everyone's busy.

And so we would appreciate concise questions and comments, which we will endeavor to try to answer in a concise form.

But we all welcome the transparency of our elections.

And so does anyone either in the room or in the Zoom room

And please announce your name.

So John Zoeg, Circuit Court Clerk for Albemarle County.

I have a question.

Thank you.

So as most people should know that once the vote is in and the vote is certified, the clerk holds and maintains the vote until such time as it can be destroyed.

That is one year for state elections.

It is two years for federal elections.

because we have such a good secure facility here where the registrar's office is.

The clerk has not been historically, at least since I've been clerk, receiving the vote on the night of the election.

I would like to continue that, but given the upheaval that is going on, I would like some assurances that, and so just so the public knows what the process is, is either the day before the general election or the morning of the election, I come over to the registrar's office.

I do not swear in the director of elections.

I typically swear in the

I'm sorry.

Election manager.

Election manager.

And so I've been swearing in Erin as what she gets sworn in is as a deputy clerk of my office because the statute requires that I receive the vote after it has been taken.

because we have a secure facility here and where I have to store it is very far away and very difficult to get to in the middle of the night.

By swearing in a member of the staff as a deputy clerk for my office, and I do it for about a three to four week term, they can hold the vote here.

It actually benefits the electoral board for any auditing that they wish to do.

and it gets stayed in the secure facility in the back of this building here at COB 5th Street and then we make arrangements and it gets delivered to me.

I would like to continue that because it will be logistically very difficult if the clerk's office needs to receive the vote

at its secure facility at the Northside Library Warehouse.

And so my question is, while we are in flux, and I'm going to assume that the flux will take some time, can we agree that it's appropriate to continue to do this, whoever you make the

Interim, sorry, is that the term we're using?

Okay, well, I will knock on wood that that happens, but we may be also under and still an acting registrar.

I want to make sure that I can, whoever that is, I can work with that person to determine a person who will be sworn in as a temporary deputy clerk of my office so that we can continue to conduct business in that manner.

I think we ought to continue doing exactly what we've done.

It's worked, it's secure, everything's locked up.

Just to elaborate on that, there are certain things that have to go to the clerk's office that are sealed

that aren't open.

And in addition to other things that we need, the board and the office need to access during the canvas or the provisional canvas, they eventually will go to the clerk's office.

So this works, I think, extremely well.

We all are agreed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Do we have other public comment or questions?

Hi, this is Rick Garnett.

Yeah, I'm representing the Republican Party.

Okay.

First, I want to thank Erin for

Sending out so quickly the assignments for the fall.

That's really helpful for us.

The one is...

We received a list of the chief and assistant chief assignments for the fall.

This is going to be a running joke, because you're the watchdog of having to remind me not to swallow my words and speak up.

OK.

So I wanted to thank Erin for sending out the assignments for the chiefs and assistant chiefs so early.

That's really helpful.

It helps us to identify if we have any questions, and I just have a couple.

One is we still have a independent assigned as a chief at one precinct, which is, I think, not consistent with the code.

My understanding, because we've worked with him, is he's a very good chief, so I don't have any problem with him being a chief.

But my question is, could you get him to declare either

representing the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.

So we're in compliance.

It is not outlawed by the code.

The code says, and I'm paraphrasing, that an independent can serve as chief if neither party provides another chief.

When Mr. Merriam was first hired as chief, we went to the election officials from both parties,

and both of them said, no, we will not serve as chief.

And we felt that that meant the intent of that code section.

And so we hired him as an independent there, but she has remained for the seven years or so that he has been there.

Well, okay.

My follow-up question then,

Well, I think if he won't declare, then the solution would be

to promote a Republican assistant chief to chief and replace that person, which I wouldn't like to do necessarily because I think he's a very good chief.

I can tell you that the long-term Republican assistant chief in that precinct has said more than once to more than one of us, if he goes, I go.

Let me sort of close the loop on this.

When we go into closed session today, we will be discussing the review of chief and assistant officers of election assignments.

And since that is a personnel issue, we will discuss it

in that closed session.

Okay, that's fine.

I just wanted to raise it as a potential issue.

The other one is Nancy Murar, our chairman, had sent a list of all the election officers who could represent the Republican Party a couple of times this year.

And I noticed that two of the assistant chiefs

are listed as Republicans in the assignment and they were not on Nancy's list.

I'm not sure whether I can't answer or I prefer not to answer whether it's a mistake or just an oversight.

That would save some time.

OK. We'll do.

Thank you.

The minister, are you referring to assistant chiefs or to chiefs?

Aces.

OK. Is there anyone else either in the room or on the electronic feed that has a question?

My name is Sally Hudson.

I hope my question can be heard with the good faith that it's intended.

I would love to encourage great folks to apply for the open positions that are here.

I also recognize that any time that there is a quick set of several resignations, it raises questions.

Especially, I think this particular office has an unusual

oversight structure as far as jobs go in government because it's under a board as opposed to through the broader county HR structure and maybe, Madam Chair, maybe I don't know if this is a question for council.

I'd like to try to answer that for you.

At this time, we have been advised by council that

The information that is in the public is the information that we can give.

And we are constrained by other activities that are going on.

We have a letter of resignation, and that's all we can say.

No, that's correct.

Cannot comment on personnel matters.

publicly, that's just not advisable.

We cannot do that.

And in fairness to everyone, that's the way it is for right now.

Can I ask a quick question?

I'm giving you, and the counselor is giving us, giving you what we've got now.

Oh, yes.

I just wanted to tack on to what Sally just said.

I completely understand.

I'm an employment attorney.

I know exactly what you're allowed to say and not, and I'm not questioning that in any way.

But at some point, are you planning a communication piece to the public with kind of discussing the totality of the changes that are happening

in the Registrar's Office, because right now, I think people are concerned that there's a lack of transparency, and I'm not suggesting that's what you're trying to do, but there's just lots of people chattering, and I think the public, it would be helpful to hear something from the leadership about what's happening in terms of changes and the plans

We have a lot of information.

The board

by definition has to work as a board.

We have to work together.

We have to either discuss personnel matters in closed session and then come out in a vote.

We have had a lot of information coming and upon advice of council and because of timing, we have to be able to discuss before- I know it's been very compressed, yeah.

Right, right.

And I totally understand why it hasn't happened yet.

I'm not suggesting that there's been any untoward delay.

As do we.

and as soon as we have information that we can render, we will be delighted to do so.

But we don't want to give out misinformation and we don't want to give out information that really is private or that is premature to any decision making.

So,

That's the best we can do right now.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Yeah.

So how many positions are- I'm sorry, please identify.

Margaret Baughman.

We have to go into closed session to be able to know exactly how to answer your question.

And I'm not trying to be vague.

or obstruct the answer to your question.

It's just that we have to proceed in an orderly fashion.

And so we have to, personnel matters by definition are handled in a closed session.

And then we, and that's one of the reasons we have able counsel with us today so that we can, without invading anyone else's private information,

We have to be able to proceed in an orderly fashion.

I would add to that.

It is the constitutional duty of the electoral board to hire the general registrar.

Other positions in the office are normally hired by the registrar because they are county employees.

registrar is in this kind of limbo category where in some ways the person is a county employee, in some ways the person is a state employee, in some ways the person is only our employee.

Thank you for that question.

That is correct.

So the code provides that the electoral board selects and appoints the general registrar.

The duty then is on the general registrar to select and appoint deputies within their office.

And the code specifically says that the registrar is a county or city employee.

No, the general registrar is not a county employee.

Correct.

That's thank you.

But not a state employee.

Maybe I misunderstood her question, but I think she was just simply asking how many positions are open?

And I can't.

I mean, it's all right.

Great.

We're coming to that on the agenda.

But to the degree of the agenda, we have three positions that are open.

OK.

I mean, that's what I thought her question was.

And she wasn't getting an answer.

I'm sorry.

I didn't understand her question.

OK.

Understand.

OK.

Anything else?

OK.

I am not aware that we have any really old business.

I'm missing anything.

Speak now.

New business.

Here we go.

The recruitment process for the new general registrar, the chief deputy registrar, and the election manager.

Those are the three positions that are open.

And the active, excuse me, the interim, what do we call it?

Acting.

Or will be.

So there's been a posting for the acting general registrar as well as a posting for a permanent general registrar.

If someone is appointed as the acting, the thought is that they could be continued on if appropriate to fill the unexpired term, but that's a decision that the electoral board will need to make.

Correct.

That's correct.

But again, the, yes, ma'am, one second.

The current open positions that are advertised on the county website are the

position for someone who could come in with all due haste, who knows how to run elections, who has experience, who can come in with urgency.

If that happens to be somebody who wants to be considered to stay long-term, that will be a consideration.

We're also looking for someone who knows they want to have the job long-term, but can't come, or may not have the knowledge base to come immediately.

Is this- It was incorrectly stated.

and part of the, we are all working under new and unexpected circumstances.

We follow the Code of Virginia, which requires timing for the posting of meetings.

And some of our meetings fall under the emergency construct.

Others are regular meetings that we've scheduled a month in advance.

So we are posting them on the website and we are gonna talk about later on in our agenda scheduling upcoming meetings.

So these are not middle of the night decisions.

And that's why I said regularly scheduled.

It was scheduled.

It was posted.

A meeting that is considered a regular meeting must be posted three days before the meeting that was done for this meeting.

Yeah, there is a provision in the code for having emergency meetings.

So given what

Mr. Secretary just said this was a regularly properly scheduled meeting with notice and posting.

We are testing the room speakers here so that we can hear the folks in the audience at home.

Would one of you please unmute and say something, please?

Yeah, I can hear you fine.

We can.

Just one moment, please.

And again, please.

This is Rick Garnett.

I'm a broken record.

No, it's just simply not shifting over to the room speakers.

I do not know why.

Okay.

So to follow up, we've talked about the recruiting process.

We are grateful for the assistance from HR because they are posting job opportunities as they become available to many places other than just the county website.

So we are casting nets far and wide.

Anyone?

I also have a comment on the recruitment process.

The HR department, you could call HR.

They have a standard list of places where they post that

Other businesses and county offices send their announcements, such as, I'm not showing favoritism to any particular site, but for instance, LinkedIn.

I know they post on LinkedIn, which is a business-friendly posting.

Does that help?

And this is Diane McNeil?

Okay, thank you.

And EIL?

Anything else on that?

I want everybody to be very clear.

We are trying to proceed with all due haste and appropriate postings.

I think we should mention that Madam Chair also posted on what's called the EB list.

I mentioned that.

Oh, you did?

OK, sorry.

Right.

OK, next item on the agenda.

The board is tomorrow going to meet with our new poll pad, which we used for the June primary.

This is the check-in.

We used to use laptops, and we switched from that company to a new vendor, and they're called Knowink, as in K-N-O-W. And these are pole pads, and we used them in the primary in June.

The representative is coming back to meet with us to go over some questions we have and get us

all ready to answer our questions and make any alterations that we are requesting for our knowing.

And that's at noon tomorrow?

It is at noon tomorrow.

Okay.

Yeah.

The scheduling for logic and accuracy testing.

And there are two types of logic and accuracy testing.

that the code requires.

Code requires that we test to make sure that our machines, all of our machines, and that would be the DS-200 optical scans and our- DS-300.

The new iteration is the DS-300.

I followed that.

Thank you.

And the knowing and our handicapped accessible ballot

Marking devices.

We have to train everybody how to use them, but the board and staff are responsible for making sure they work properly the way they're supposed to, and that's called logic and accuracy testing.

The scheduling for the LNA testing for the DS-300s that will be used in in-person absentee voting beginning on September the 19th,

that have to be programmed to read all ballots for all the precincts and the DS-300s that will be used in the central absentee precinct and the pre-processing of mail back absentee ballots when the offices of election open after they've done their due diligence to put those in the machine and additional spare

DS300, so that if we have a problem with an optical scanner in the precincts on election day, we've got backup.

So all of those will be tested on the 4th of September.

The vendor who is ES&S will be here.

Members of the staff will be here.

The electoral board will be here.

And by code invitation,

The chairman of the two political parties will be invited to participate or send their representative.

If the party chairman cannot attend, they must send a written letter of authorization for a substitute for their proxy.

And that will begin at 9 o'clock on that date.

We have not set times.

and we will set times for a later date when we have to do the logic and accuracy testing for all the other DS-300s that will go to the individual precincts.

They will be programmed only to read the ballots for that particular polling place.

We are setting up pursuant to our conversations tomorrow with knowing people for LNA testing for the knowing poll paths.

And we will also test, excuse me, Tamara, and whenever we set up for all the optical scans, we will test the handicapped accessible marking devices.

Comments, questions?

Okay.

This next one is instructions for the registrar's staff.

To be clear, the code requires that the

People who work in the in-person absentee voting, and we are very happy that at least one of them is with us, two of them, three of them.

You're working in person, don't you?

No, okay.

We have two with us today and several on Zoom, or on the electronic.

Are technically, when they're working in the in-person absentee voting, are registrar's staff.

it is highly recommended across the state that they be on election day officers of election because it's much easier for the registrar and the registrar staff to teach these people how to run a polling place if they already know how to do it.

Okay.

We're in the process of submitting the ballot proof to elect.

Okay.

Elect being the top, the Department of Elections, and to clarify the term proofing, the ballots have to be

and these ladies have worked for several days to put the ballot together, meaning all the races are listed, the correct spelling of all the candidates, whether or not they have a D or an R or an I after their names, depending upon which race you're in.

And-

We're hearing other comments here.

And all this takes a great deal of time.

So they look at it and it's called proofing, just as if you were writing a book and you do a galley proof and you send it to the publisher.

They prove it, they send it to the printer, and then it goes to the Department of Elections to do a final look over, make sure everything's right,

The board also puts a set of eyes on it to make sure that everything is proper before it's printed.

I got a little bit confused there.

Okay.

Okay.

I'll start over.

So we have to prove the ballots through our vendor first.

and then we have to upload it to elect and then they have to approve it before we can make a ballot.

Well we approved them with the vendor and we are in the process of submitting them to the state but there's a question that we have because this is typically a GR task so there's a question that we have we reached out to our liaison

And before anybody panics, there is no panic here.

The ballots are going to get printed and there's no deadline right now that we're not butting up against the deadline.

So let me make sure I understand.

So you have submitted it to elect, but there is some issue so they have not yet approved it?

No, it's in the submission, the submission, not the approval.

Because I didn't want to get in the weeds with this, but in the way that it

We have to submit it.

It appears that we have to submit by ballot style, which is 32.

But we have one PDF.

So we have a question as to how they want that uploaded.

That's it.

It's just a technical question.

And remember that there is a finite number of people at elect who could do their side of reviewing to make sure that everything is the way it's supposed to be.

and there are 133 localities.

And as soon as we're done with this meeting, we'll reach out to them again.

And the issue with the length of the candidate's name is getting rid of the period.

Anybody have a question about that?

We are ahead of schedule on this.

And we like being ahead of schedule.

So that's what we're doing.

The mailing of mailed out absentee ballots, both people who are on the permanent absentee ballots and people who asked specifically for an absentee ballot for this November general election.

In the

Passed, the ballots have been printed.

They've been delivered to the office here.

And the registrar staff and sometimes temporary staff are hired to put all of this together.

And for those of you who've ever gotten an absentee ballot, it's not just a single envelope with a ballot in it and a return envelope.

There's a lot that has to go in.

There's a lot of paper in there.

for the primary print elect who prints our ballots.

And there are many companies around who are licensed to do business in Virginia who print ballots and mail ballots.

It's called a third party mail.

And we thought it was a good idea to have print elect mail out all of the ballots that were requested

before the first day of in-person absentee voting because anything that's been already requested and the people who are on the permanent absentee ballot list, their ballots must be postmarked by the first day of in-person absentee voting.

So they have to go out.

Then as people request an absentee ballot, and that's what we did for June, but the extra people who requested a ballot

up to 10 days, which is the cutoff before the election to request an absentee ballot.

You can't request a mailed out absentee ballot after that, because it's just not enough time to mail it, get it back, and then you get it back to the registrar's office by Friday after the election.

Okay.

We did that in-house.

For this election, all

of the mailed out absentee ballots will be mailed by print elect.

So the office will send the big electronic file as soon as we have it ready to go September the 10th.

All those will go September 10th is when the initial print elect needs that file, the first file.

And then

there will be subsequent electronic filings sent as requests for absentee ballots arrive in the registrar's office.

So it's simply loading that voter's information, mailing information.

It's not anything else.

Their mailing information goes to print elect and print elect mails them out.

In the past, we've had interesting circumstances.

And this seems to be an easier way to do it.

And a lot of other people do the same thing.

Would you like to comment further on that?

Yes, I've been working with Chris Andrews at Print Elect, and we have

additional meetings sent.

And he had let me know that he needed our file on September 10.

And that's what we will do.

We will get that file to him.

I think we had previously decided to just let print elect do all of our ballot mailings, even for primaries.

Anything is the

Yes, it's just a bigger file.

So once it's known how to do the big file, it's known how to do the little corrects.

Madam Chair, the previous bullet on our agenda, ballot proofing, what we discussed

We're going to try to do it at this meeting and I wanted to make sure that we discussed the mailing of absentee ballots because that affects how many ballots we order.

Everybody has to have a ballot and in the past there have been localities

that have run out of ballots.

We have paper ballots.

Everybody in Virginia votes paper ballot.

Gotta have a ballot.

Yes, we have ballot on demand that we use in the in-person absentee.

But that gets awkward if you run out of ballots in the precincts on luncheon day.

So we have the entire number of people we expect, and nobody knows how many people are gonna vote.

We have to have a ballot for everybody if they want to vote.

A certain number of people will vote in-person absentee, and they will be voting with the on-demand printer.

Printer's up.

So they come in, they check in, the registrar staff member who is an officer of election on election day checks them in, hits the key, print ballot, and a ballot comes out of the machine.

Well, clearly we don't need to order balance for everybody that's gonna be in the in-person absentee.

Now, again, we don't know how many those will be, but we can kind of extrapolate from previous elections.

Then we know how many people have voted absentee in the past, and you always pick the over number, never underestimate.

Those ballots will be sent by print elect.

But we have to tell them how many we expect.

And then we have to say, okay, how many people do we think are gonna show up on election day?

So we have to put all this together.

And you have to take into account that maybe people make mistakes.

They mismark their ballot.

They get a mailed out ballot and they change their mind.

They wanna vote in person.

on the machine, so their mailed out ballot has to be spoiled.

It doesn't get used.

It goes in a big envelope that says spoiled ballots.

So we have to take into account all of those numbers.

And let us not forget that, as Gina alluded to, every polling place has a different style of ballot because

They have to be reported, all of the votes, according to law, have to be reported by the polling place or the precinct in which that voter resides and votes.

So there's no sloshing.

You can't take ballots that were printed for Woodbrook and send them off to Stony Point because the machines won't read them.

The directions from elect, here we are at the final, the directions from elect have been for years that we print 100% of the registered voters.

And as these ladies well know, as the board knows, we can't just say 100, we've got 90,000 roughly registered voters.

You can't just print 90,000 ballots.

You've got to go by how many ballots you think you're gonna need in each precinct, meaning how many registered voters, and Bucky, excuse me, Mr. Vice Chair, kindly went through somewhere and printed up how many registered voters there are in each precinct.

Good job.

So we know how many 100% is for each precinct.

Are we into a discussion?

Yes, we are.

That was the prologue.

I believe the normal order form has how many flat ballots you want, how many folded ballots you want.

The way that order form is laid out.

I do want to ask the question.

You said an answer, but I just want to clarify.

All those absentee ballots are never leaving North Carolina.

Do we still have to put on the order for how many of those we want them printed?

I know that, but I'm just talking about what stays in North Carolina when it comes to us.

Do we actually have to put a number of those by precinct or do they just, because I believe they

That would be for mail to us for the faulted.

So I don't think we would need to put an amount for the faulted.

She will tell them how many registered voters we have in every precinct and how many, because she's sending the John file, so they know how many permanent absentee

Once the file is sent, they'll say, OK, Woodbrook precinct, we need 356.

And they'll print the 356.

So that's why I wanted to get the clarification.

So all we need to tell them is what we need.

and what we need for a possible surplus in case our Bellarmine printer goes down.

So we don't need to order 100% because that's way over the top of that.

I was just working on it in my head and assuming, well,

The absolute most voters total we will have would be 80%, because we've never hit 80% before.

I know they say we're 100%, but just looking at that 80% idea and the conservative estimate

would be that 30% of those would either be absentee by mail or early in person.

That's conservative, I think, for a governor's race.

That number goes way up for how big the race is.

So for presidential, it goes up to 50 or over percent.

For a small election, it might be 20%, 25%.

So I'm conservatively saying 30%.

took that 80% figure and subtracted 30% then that are ballots that we don't need to order.

They're either the ones that stay at Prenelec or the ones that come out of the ballot on demand.

And that leaves us with 50%.

And an overage for whatever emergencies may happen, I'm thinking 10%.

10% point.

This one, 10% extra over the other figures that I've put for the ballot on demand printers failing or something like that.

So that would total 60%.

So just as a starting shot here, I would suggest that we order 60%.

One problem is, of course, what we need in this precinct is way different percentage-wise than what we need in that precinct.

But we've never really asked you to go through and say, OK, Biscuit Ryan only votes half as much as Ivy and that kind of thing.

So forgetting that, I'm just saying a round figure of 60% of total registered voters be the order.

I had to start somewhere, so I started with that.

That in the last gubernatorial election, four years ago, Albemarle County ran out of ballots at roughly 10, 1030.

Oh, yeah.

We are not printing.

And we did not have ballot on demand printers.

But I would say to quote a very smart friend of mine who is an attorney.

Paper is cheap, lawyers are expensive.

And I agree with you, Jim, I don't think we need to print 100%.

Because as you have outlined, there are places where they're being used elsewhere.

I'd rather throw away ballots and have Clark Suggs shred them, but I don't either, but and I certainly was very much involved in that time when we did not have enough ballots, but we now do have, and we did have one subsequent time to that, that one precinct in a dual party primary

The order kind of got reversed.

We were going to run out, but because we had the ballot on demand printers by then, we could print more and get them out there.

So that solved that little problem.

But I'm just throwing out something that I think a 60% order for us is going to be much more than we need.

I bet Bucky has some ideas like this.

Looking at the last general election in November, we had 67,224 votes counted.

39.5% of those were in the cap.

45% of them were on election day.

We had 11.5% of the votes came in through absentee ballots.

Another 3% were provisionals.

There was another 1% that was post-election.

The total count on election day was 67224.

I mean, 45%?

45% was for votes cast on election day.

Right.

And between the cap and absentee ballots, that was 51% of the votes cast.

The remainder were provisionals, post-election voting.

We have 85,000, 86,000, 87,000 registered voters.

It goes up all the time, it seems like.

despite periodic winnowing of people who've moved on whether to another plane of existence or through another state.

Some voters come off, some voters come on.

The general trail of voters is that it increases each election.

So when I consider all those things and I considered that when I was working in the precincts twice, I ran out of ballots.

Fortunately, one time it was really at the end of the day and we got by using the...

Exactly, the handicap voting system, the express vote.

You don't want to put anyone in that place, in that situation.

If you assume that we have a 80% turnout, which would be fantastic for gubernatorial turnout,

Let's assume we have an 80% turnout and we've got 90,000 voters.

OK, so 80% turnout of 90,000 voters is 72,000 voters.

If we further assume that on election day we needed a minimum of 45% of those, but let's say it's 50% just to make sure we had a little margin there, then the minimum number of ballots we need for election day only is 36,000 ballots.

50% of that 72,000 I just got you to.

You're going to want a lot more than that because you've got to be prepared for systemic failure of all the early in-person on-demand ballot printing, which is a convenience for checking in people.

It's not really saving us money.

It's just a convenience for the check-in process, guaranteeing that people get the ballot that's proper for them based on how they were checked in.

So my tendency would be to have a lot of ballots ordered

Well, I proposed 60%.

Remembering before you answer.

60% of total active vote.

Remember, we've got

to clarify what he said.

We have active voters and we have inactive.

The people who are on the inactive list can switch from inactive to active simply by contacting the registrar's office or appearing on election day showing up and they suddenly become active.

So you have to look at

I think I'd push you to at least 70, maybe 75%.

I mean, I know John has limited space, but I would rather have more ballots than less.

Well, ballots are cheap, lawyers are expensive.

Of the active?

OK.

Do we hear any more discussion on going to 70,000?

So that's each precinct.

Of each precinct.

So 70% of what?

Do we need a motion?

I'd like to move that we order sufficient balance to rely at least 70%

May I offer a restatement for the record?

Well I mean I think it's important for everybody to understand there are a lot of moving parts.

You can't just pull a number out of your ear and say this is how many ballots and then you get to election day and oh whoa we made a mistake.

Yep.

Or a special election just so you understand how bad it can be.

The city of Lynchburg, and I will continually call them out, they should be called out, there was a special election in the city of Lynchburg for the seat that was going to determine who controlled the Virginia Senate.

The Senate was split even numbers of R's, even numbers of D's, and they were having a special election for the empty seat.

and the fact that there's been a snowstorm the weekend before and everybody's worried about plowing their lots.

Lynchburg, and one of the candidates lived in Lynchburg.

They ordered 5% and they ran out of ballots about 7.30 quarter rate in the morning.

Five.

Yeah, we're talking about 70%.

Yes, please.

Yes, that's correct.

I had to finish the discussion.

I'm sorry.

Second.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

And we have been told before that in a three-member board, there does not need to be a second on a motion.

Is that correct?

Robert's rules, power line procedure.

Okay.

All right.

Now, we've gotten through the printed agenda.

Yes.

I'm thinking that for the administration of things up until the point where we have an acting registrar in place, it might be convenient for the board to divide up responsibility areas of things that need to be done in the near future, such as,

I can't hear you.

Let me start again.

I can't hear you fine.

Gina has the mic covered up.

It might move the board to divide up some general responsibilities in the GR office between various topic areas of things that need to be done.

And not necessarily that the board's doing this, but there would be a point person on the board for making sure these things were getting done, at least until such time as we have an acting general registrar in place.

And the general areas that I was thinking of involved the DS300,

preparation, poll pad preparation, the ballots.

Can you do these slowly?

Here's 300.

Poll pads.

Poll pads.

Ballads.

Cages, which means not only their contents, but getting them there and back again.

Officers of election.

which is the whole range of things there, training, et cetera.

You might need to clarify that one.

The pickup and drop off that happens before election day and on election day, where the materials are distributed to chiefs and then collected back again.

And ensuring that the polling places are ready for us.

And there may be others as well.

This is just my first shot.

One is dealing with trucks that deliver the cages.

That's the cages list.

The difference.

So really election day poll pads and early in-person voting systems, which are poll pads and printers.

You said something right after staffing, and I asked for what kind of staffing, and then there was something before.

Polling places, checking the polling places.

Thank you.

That's what it was.

No, nobody can do it all.

And I think we need to

And just so we're clear, because we don't want to be in violation of meeting rules, which is why we are so grateful for your presence.

This is gonna require communication.

I did yuppity-up.

Have you taken care of whatever?

I don't see that as a violation of a meeting, because we're gonna have to have meetings anyway.

And it might be that what we need to do is, because we're gonna have so many meetings, which is another topic, we may need to, instead of giving email

I think if it's a point of just I've completed this, I've completed that, that's not the transaction of business, that's just a notification.

So I think an email would be okay.

And along that, if you're saying I've completed it, that's great.

But if you find a problem, you say I've encountered a problem, whatever it is.

I don't know if I get it.

Sure.

Go ahead.

Some boards don't let board members talk with each other unless everybody's present.

They can't conduct business.

There can be an informational just, I've received this.

And just to supplement that a little bit, we are at a great disadvantage, electoral boards in Virginia, because we are three-member boards.

The Board of Supervisors, which is six members, any two members of that board can talk to each other and make deals with each other and all sorts of things because they are not a quorum.

Any two members of us talking together are a quorum and that makes it a meeting.

The things that are clear that we can do is add an agenda item at any time.

and we can set, we can call a meeting.

Any member of the board can call a meeting and notify the other people it's got to be posted.

That we can discuss.

We can discuss, you know, if somebody needs to have quote an emergency meeting for whatever reason, one of us can contact the other two and say, we need to have a meeting for whatever.

What are your available times?

Can you meet at 11 o'clock on Friday morning?

That's completely legitimate.

Mr. Vice Chair.

The division of labor that you just went through, is that so of not having a registrar?

exactly almost all these things and you know there is no deputy assistant registrar as of today we have a chief deputy and a deputy we have other people in the office but we're going to close session because that may change that may change and

To your question, which is spot on, as Jim said, these are mostly duties of the registrar and or the registrar staff and are not things that some boards would normally be doing.

To amplify that, these are not things that I wish this board were doing, but I see no other solution to get us to the finish line that we're responsible for.

Mr. Vice Chairman.

Yes, sir.

I see two ways to go with it.

I would like to ask your opinion, and Madam Chair,

I think once we approve the concept,

My suggestion would be that we then have a brief discussion, because people's individual interests and capabilities may define who's best suited.

Well, I would say yes to both of us, or no to both of us, depending on your perspective.

I mean, we are going to have to set a series of meetings

This week is Friday, yesterday.

I would submit that we all look at this list.

You want to say something?

Yeah.

Or Bucky, since you started the list, would you like to type it up and send it around?

I'll send it around after the meeting.

No, no.

We're having a cleanup on our EB3.

Is there an agenda item that was not mentioned?

EB3.

I'll send it individually to all the people I can think of.

It would need to go to the three board members, I think, and the three staff.

because you certainly were asking for your input.

There may be something that we need to help you which we have said over and over and over that we haven't recognized.

The batch email list that's EB3 still has Lauren on EB3.

still has Jonathan.

But we need, it's being cleaned up.

So I think until we get it reconfigured, we need to probably not use it.

As of today, we've got to check.

All right, so the plan is to get a

Kind of finalized list.

And then make our choices and then discuss them at the next meeting.

Might make like first, second, third choices too.

Rank, choice, voting.

Sally, she's gone.

Okay.

All right.

I don't know that we need a motion to approve this plan.

Okay.

Okay.

Yes, sir.

There's an item as observation, and I asked the attorney to stop me if I'm out of order.

But just observation, but isn't it ironic that the general register, the general and deputy register, and the election manager, all three resigned simultaneously?

And then my follow-up to it would be, are there any

We're not going to comment on personal matters.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

We're going to have, if y'all have already started getting applications, I've looked through them.

That's personnel, but we're getting applications.

So I would suggest, and I'm open for suggestions.

Today's Thursday, the 21st.

We need to have, and counselor, you may want to advise on this.

Okay, or three.

You want to have a Monday, Wednesday, Friday?

That works for me.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

I have a special meeting on the 27th.

Is this in addition to your lunch?

We can't schedule for Monday.

Correct.

There's that cyber security web, whoever, and I think at least

I've got the invite to it.

I'm not driving.

What time does that mean?

So whatever.

So I think if we wanted, I don't think we'd want to meet before 9 o'clock.

Well, we'll get much done.

It's not my meeting, it's their meeting.

Can we just start at 2.30?

I'd say two.

2 o'clock, and we will meet in the boardroom because this will be, counselor, for the purpose of reviewing the applications.

This will be personnel.

Sure.

We can have an open meeting.

But if we have any open business to transact, we'll do this.

If you show me how to make that thing connect to Zoom and hook up with a room, which I already know how to hook up to the room, you don't even need to be there for that.

Right.

I mean, you're welcome to be there, but to answer Erin's question.

So is that done through IT?

I don't know that IT because it's something that we pay for as well as the department.

Well, I've got a Zoom account, but I don't know that it would be smart to use it.

Okay, so we are scheduling a meeting for 2 p.m. on the 26th.

Can we go ahead and schedule a meeting on the 28th Thursday?

That's the plan.

Okay, 9.30 on the 28th, 2 p.m. on the 26th.

These are public meetings, right?

They start as public meetings, and if there's public meeting to do, we'll do it, then we'll go in.

Primarily, these are gonna be, I'll say 9 or 9.30.

Jim says 9, oh, on Thursday, 9.30.

Okay, moving on to September.

Remember we are in crunch time, and the first Monday is Labor Day, and we have LNA testing on the fourth.

We could

We have one of our meetings after we finish with LNA testing, except it's going to be hard to post it.

I know.

Tuesday, I'm going to be working at Monticello.

OK, what is... Well, I'm supposed to be...

I have a reasonably important meeting at 10.

Could we do Wednesday in the afternoon?

One o'clock?

One thirty.

The acting GR position is posted through the first.

That's when that listing closes.

So I would expect all the applications we have received for that will be in hand by the second.

I agree with you, Blake.

Because remember, we have, as they say in the meeting trade, a hard out Friday the 5th.

I don't want anybody to get upset, but I agree with Bucky 100%.

Jim, would you be opposed if Bucky and I started

Tuesday afternoon earlier than when you could possibly be there.

And maybe that we'll just go through and not a chance or, yeah, that's a great, you know, whatever.

Bucky?

That would be okay.

I mean, I understand your obligations, but I agree with Bucky that

You know, we've got this hard out.

All of these meetings will open as public meetings.

Whether we have anything significant to do before we go into closed session depends on the day and what shows up.

We're scheduling, Lori, we're scheduling these meetings at advice of counsel that we schedule all these meetings, you can always cancel one of them.

Right.

There's nothing there.

No, I'm not questioning the schedule.

I'm just wondering if it was if you were right now saying we're going to go right into executive session, that would be helpful.

If I understand you might have other agenda items, I assume those will get posted.

And then that that answers my question.

I mean, we've got this long list of jobs that we've got to do, and it may be that we'll need your report.

Somebody will say, you know, something on one of these reports that we're all, our chore list.

So does that help?

Yes.

Yes, it does.

Thank you.

And you said it was going to be 9-2 at 2 o'clock.

Is that what you said?

Correct.

9-2, 2 o'clock.

And then we're doing LNA testing on the 4th.

It might be advisable if we schedule something.

I have a question for our counsel.

So I would suggest on Thursday, the 28th, we look at the schedule again and put more meetings on the calendar at that time based on what we're seeing in the candidate pipeline.

so that if necessary on, you know, after Tuesday, we might immediately want to have another meeting Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, two on Wednesday, I don't know.

Let's all pause your thought.

Okay, so we are going to have a meeting on the 26th at 2 p.m.

That's a Tuesday.

We're gonna have a meeting on the 28th, that's a Thursday, at 9.30.

At that time, we will... Post further meetings.

Post further meetings.

And we have a scheduled 2 p.m. meeting on Tuesday the 2nd.

Yep.

And yet to be determined if we want to continue the meeting at the end of that day.

Schedule something for the fourth.

That is a decision for the board to make.

I'm getting faster at that, though.

Yeah, we're going to be.

OK, anything.

So far, so good.

And right now, Erin, you're posting, not right this second, but you're going to post these meetings for us.

Thank you.

This is Rick.

I have a question or a comment about scheduling.

Yeah, with all these meetings, it's very important for the public to know what the agenda is, because if you have no public portion to it, there's no point in us doing that.

And I noticed in today's meeting,

when I went online, the agenda items had nothing to do with what you actually did today.

It said review of teaching manuals and PowerPoint slides, scheduling and office matters.

And so it's very helpful if what you're really gonna do is shown there so we know if we wanna attend.

Rick, with all due respect, and I'll let Bucky answer this also, with all due respect, everybody is in

We are in maximum output mode in trying to get things done.

And the most important items we put on this, the review of teaching manuals doesn't have to be done this week.

Yeah, thank you.

The other thing is, one other thing on scheduling, you had mentioned that the early voting training would be scheduled, it's already scheduled, it's on September the 9th, we got a notice several weeks ago about that.

There are other problems that are intervening.

I did not in any way intend to imply that that post-it would be deleted.

It may need to be changed.

Anything else?

We'll take a five minute break.

It's five minutes after three.

I got to go to my training.

If he don't get it to me twice, he ain't going to be third time.

I'm going to be able to deal with him third.

The counselor.

Andrea.

I don't think she liked my quote.

She didn't answer you either.

I don't know.

That's how I spelled it.

I just spelled it.

Her name was Ruege.

I spelled it R-O-O-K-B-E.

Who knows?

I know you got it, but let me give you yours.

Do I need to sing?

I'm really good at this.

OK, the meeting has resumed.

Good job, Jim.

Quarter after 3.

And pursuant to code section 2.2-3711.1, the board is going into executive session.

The only people who are going to be in the beginning of the executive session will be the three members of the board, council, and three members of staff.

and we will discuss personnel matters, review officer of election applications and assignments of chief and assistant chief officers for elections.

Please.

Shocking.

At 4.34, the board has come out of executive session and affirms

that only those people who were supposed to be in executive session participated as was outlined that Gina and Aaron left and Alex left when their part of the executive session was over and the attorney stayed with us the entire time and that we resolved that

To the best of our knowledge, we only discussed those things which we said we were going to discuss when we went into closed session.

And according to the code of Virginia, we have only done such bad business matters as are legitimately held in closed session.

Second.

All in favor.

Aye.

All in favor, aye.

OK. We are back in open session.

The board chairman would entertain.

Aye.

Yes, as was done with the registrar.

I didn't say, I did not tell Richard, but I did not, that came out of- If it doesn't work, we can extend it.

We can extend it.

Yeah.

Post, Post-Job Listings, Central Boarding, Chief Deputy on the election night.

Do we need something that

That's just routine communications.

I think we're okay and there's some logistics with that.

All in favor, aye.